I. Introduction. The importance of the Witwatersrand as a gold-producing area has given an impetus to geological enquiry in this part of South Africa. The result has been the appearance of numerous books, pamphlets, and papers. My apology for adding to their number by the present communication is a five-years' residence in the Transvaal, during which time I have had perhaps unusual opportunities and facilities for closely studying the geology of the Southern Transvaal, or more correctly the region lying between the Magaliesberg Range and the Vaal River. Having in the course of professional duties to journey backward and forward through this country, I gradually became acquainted with its geological structure; and as a means of crystallizing and correlating the information thus obtained, I began to lay it down on a map and have continued to do so until now. The survey of some 8000 square miles of country, embracing the districts of the Witwatersrand, Potchefstroom, and Heidelberg, and a portion of those of Rustenburg and Pretoria, being now completed, I desire to lay the results before the Geological Society. The difficulties of geological mapping in a sparsely-inhabited country, and where the inhabitants since the Jameson raid have not been particularly disposed to welcome the Uitlander, may be easily imagined. I do not claim for my map that accuracy in detail which can only be obtained by leisurely work on a large scale; still, the main geological boundaries have been drawn with as near an approximation to correctness as was


When I was invited to make a contribution to this column, I asked the Editor to give me some sort of guide line on what he saw as being the nature of the column. The reply he gave was: It is intended to be a forum where one can grind one's favourite axe about the South African Defence Force; one does not have to tread on anYO'1e's toes; in order to allow a similar measure of academic freedom as enjoyed by such prestigious periodicals as the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, contributions do not have to be vetted . by one's boss. Looking at these guide lines I can't help thinking that whichever course of action I choose ... This leaves me with the difficult task of choosing an appropriate axe that needs grinding. The one that comes to my mind almost immediately is the lack of articles in Militaria on the history of the English speaking folk in South Africa. Before I go any further let me point out to the negativists (to whom any comment will always appear as adverse or destructive criticism) that one can be FOR something without being AGAINST something else.


Semiological analysis of educational phenomena allow researchers access to a multidimensional universe of meanings that is represented by the school, not so much seen as an institution, but as a vector of social action through educational strategies. We consider education as a multidimensional phenomenon since its analysis allows the researcher to explore a variety of research hypotheses of different paradigmatic perspectives that converge in an educational finality. According to the author Simona Branc one of the most appropriate methods used in qualitative data analysis is Grounded Theory; this one assumes a systematic process of generating concepts and theories based on the data collected. Specialised literature defines Grounded Theory as an inductive approach that starts with general observations and during the analytical process creates conceptual categories that explain the theme explored. Research insist on the role of the sociologic theory of managing the research data and for providing ways of conceptualizing the descriptions and explanations.Qualitative content analysis is based on the constructivist paradigm (constructionist in the restricted sense that we used previously). It aims to create an "understanding of the latent meanings of the analyzed messages". Quantitative content analysis involves a process of encoding and statistical analysis of data extracted from the content of the paper in the form of extractions like: frequencies, contingency analysis, etc


The continuing search for genetic loci which may influence multiple sclerosis susceptibility has probably been more complex and exciting than Spielman and Nathanson (4) could have imagined in 1982. Restriction fragment length polymorphisms no longer represent the "cutting edge" of technology. This entire area of research has gained incredible impetus with advances in molecular genetics and the advent of the "Human Genome Project." Readers must be cautioned that identification of a gene does not equate with a cure. Nevertheless, we are entering into a very exciting era with respect to the genetics and treatment of common complex disorders such as breast cancer, Alzheimer disease, and multiple sclerosis. Given the increasing awareness of the public about the role of genetics in the etiology of such disorders, a better understanding is needed of the legal, social, ethical, and psychologic implications of genetic research in multiple sclerosis.


A major area of innovation within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry involves the re-engineering of project delivery processes, yet successful implementation of such processes requires a significant organizational change effort. The AEC industry is often regarded as a laggard in the uptake of innovation, and personnel resistance to change is among the most commonly cited barriers to change adoption. The objective of this study was to understand the extent to which project level personnel change readiness is affected by a variety of antecedents within 16 AEC owner organizations, each of which independently implemented a planned strategic change in their project delivery processes. An outcomeoriented perspective of change readiness was incorporated to empirically document behavioral response to change at the individual level (n = 96) among owner project managers and contracting officers. Change readiness outcomes were measured via an action research method in relation to contextual, personnel, content, and process antecedents present prior to change implementation on each AEC project. Results indicated that change management process factors of increased change message delivery and extensive change agent involvement had the greatest effect on outcomes of high change readiness. Individual experience and project scope considerations also had a relationship with change readiness, although to a far lesser extent. Contributions of this study include an empirical, multi-organization, real-time data set of change implementation within the AEC industry, identification of significant antecedent effects on personnel change readiness outcomes, and associated recommendations for change practitioners. Future research is recommended to investigate additional personnel-oriented characteristics of project teams and their corresponding relationship to change readiness.


Wakaf (property donated for religious/community purposes) is a service to God with the motive of love to all human beings and helping other people. The property which has been donated will not belong to the benefactor anymore; it belongs to God (public) so that a wakaf land which has been donated cannot be sold, given, or inherited. In the Islamic fiqh, it is not difficult to make a wakaf valid: we only give it orally and the requirement for its validity is adequate. In Law No. 41/2004 on Wakaf, a pledge on wakaf is performed by Wakif to Nadzir before PPAIW to make it authentic. Nevertheless, up to the present, there have been many wakaf lands are sold or withdrawn by the benefactor or his heir since the donation is done orally and not embodied in AIW (Pledge on Wakaf Certificate) by PPAIW so that the land does not have law enforcement as what occurs in Batin XXIV Subdistrict, Batang Hari District, Jambi. Keywords        :           Denial on Wakaf Land, Oral Vow on Wakaf


Background and purpose In patients with acute ischemic stroke who receive antiplatelet treatment, uncertainty exists about the effect and safety of intra-arterial treatment. Our aim was to study whether intra-arterial treatment in patients with prior antiplatelet treatment is safe and whether prior antiplatelet treatment modifies treatment effect. Methods All 500 MR CLEAN patients were included. We estimated the effect of intra-arterial treatment with ordinal logistic regression analysis, and tested for interaction of antiplatelet treatment with intra-arterial treatment on outcome. Furthermore, safety parameters and serious adverse events were analyzed. Results The 144 patients (29%) on antiplatelet treatment were older, more often male, and had more vascular comorbidity. Intra-arterial treatment effect size after adjustments in antiplatelet treatment patients was 1.7 (95% confidence interval 0.9–3.2), and in no antiplatelet treatment patients 1.8 (95% confidence interval: 1.2–2.6). There was no statistically or clinically significant interaction between prior antiplatelet treatment and the relative effect of intra-arterial treatment (p = 0.78). However, in patients on antiplatelet treatment, the effect of successful reperfusion on functional outcome in the intervention arm of the trial was doubled: the absolute risk difference for favorable outcome after successful reperfusion in patients on prior antiplatelet treatment was 39% versus 18% in patients not on prior antiplatelet treatment (Pinteraction = 0.025). Patients on antiplatelet treatment more frequently had a symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (15%) compared to patients without antiplatelet treatment (4%), without differences between the control and intervention arm. Conclusions Prior treatment with antiplatelet agents did not modify the effect of intra-arterial treatment in patients with acute ischemic stroke presenting with an intracranial large vessel occlusion. There were no safety concerns. In patients with reperfusion, antiplatelet agents may improve functional outcome.


Public procurement is proces supply of goods and services by government of the private sector. Due to the use of public resources through public procurement on the supply of goods and servicesPublic, private and public sectors due to conflicts of interest and misuse of public. consumption of public resources and ensuring effective management of public resources requires principles and mechanisms. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for all stages of the deal cycle of government guidelines and criteria on the four pillars of transparency, good governance, accountability and control as well as prevention of misconduct  is classified.Of course, these principles are not objective but rather a tool to achieve the main objectives of public procurement, including increased public confidence, maintaining the value of money (fair price), conservation and optimal management of financial resources. In the Iranian legal system, public procurement should be done through tenders and tenders law enacted by the legislature in 2004 is an attempt to transparency, competitiveness and non-discrimination, fair treatment and equal in the public tenders taken.In order to effective management in public procurement the authorities must explain the risk map vulnerable spots and bottlenecks and adopt practices that lead to promotion effective mechanisms public procurement, be considered. In this study, after sketching the concept of public procurement and its objectives,The role of the principles to promotion function in public procurement from the perspective of the OECD and Iranian legal system. Keywords: public procurement, OECD , the Iranian legal system, , Transparency,competion


Uniform, well-dispersed platinum nanoparticles were grown on SrTiO3 nanocuboids via atomic layer deposition (ALD) using (methylcyclopentadienyl)trimethylplatinum (MeCpPt(Me)3) and water. For the first half-cycle of the deposition particles formed through two sequential processes: initial nucleation and growth. The final particle size after a single complete ALD cycle was dependent on the reaction temperature which alters the net Pt deposition per cycle. Additional cycles resulted in further growth of previously formed particles. However, the increase in size per cycle during additional ALD cycles, beyond the first, was significantly lower as less Pt was deposited due to carbonaceous material that partially covers the surface and prevents further MeCpPt(Me)3 adsorption and reaction. The increase in particle size was also temperature dependent due to changes in the net Pt deposition. Pt nanoparticles increased in size by 59% and 76% after 15 ALD cycles for reaction temperatures of 200 °C and 300 °C, respectively. There was minimal change in the number of particles per unit area as a function of reaction time, indicating that there was minimal Ostwald ripening or secondary nucleation for the reaction conditions. Supplementary material for this article is available online


As far as literary genres are concerned, the relation between magical realism and paranoid fiction is diametrical. Magical realism demonstrates the supernatural elements in a mundane, secularistic fashion, without highlighting its apparent displacement. Conversely, paranoid fiction constantly forces the readers to question the reliability of the plot of a story, its characters and the storyteller as well. In short, magic realism renders the most intangible events earthly, while paranoid fiction makes a temporal situation elusive. Using two short stories — "The Ground Beneath Paritosh's Feet" and "The Merman's Prayer" — from Syed Manzoorul Islam's The Merman's Prayer and Other Stories (2013), this paper shows how employing paranoia as an agent arouses feelings of magical realism in the readers. In these stories, the writer aptly exhibits a perfect mélange of fairy tale elements as well as moments of abrupt shocks and inexplicable experiences. These stories constitute momentousness in a voluble language that produces a magical terrain where everything fantastical appears real. This paper proposes to present a detailed critique on how the elements of magical realism and paranoia are intertwined with each other in the mentioned stories. The authors draw references from dream interpretation, wish-fulfilment, psychosis and escapism to support their argument.
Spectrum, Volume 16, June 2021: 82-92


The ESA Sentinels constitute the first series of operational satellites responding to the Earth Observation needs of the EU-ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The GMES space component relies on existing and planned space assets as well as on new complementary developments by ESA. This paper describes the transponder development for the Sentinel-1 mission. It provides an overview of the transponder requirements, and a potential technical concept for the implementation.


The qualitative responses that firms give to business survey questions regarding changes in their own output provide a real-time signal of official output changes. The most commonly-used method to produce an aggregate quantitative indicator from business survey responses - the net balance, or diffusion index - has changed little in 40 years. It focuses on the proportion of survey respondents replying "up", "the same" or "down". This paper investigates whether an improved real-time signal of official output data changes can be derived from a recently advanced method on the aggregation of survey data from panel responses. It also considers the ability of survey data to anticipate revisions to official output data. We find, in a New Zealand application, that exploiting the panel dimension to qualitative survey data gives a better in-sample signal about official data than traditional methods. This is achieved by giving a higher weight to firms whose answers have a close link to official data than to those whose experiences correspond only weakly or not at all. Out-of-sample, it is less clear it matters how survey data are quantified with simpler and more parsimonious methods hard to improve. It is clear, nevertheless, that survey data, exploited in some form, help to explain revisions to official data.


Active learning when applied to content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems is a challenging task. In an effort to effectively retrieve visual information, statistical learning plays a pivotal role. Active learning methods have been considered with increased interest in the statistical learning community. The aim of using active learning to CBIR is to retrieve large image categories with only a few training data. This paper provides algorithms within a statistical framework to extend active learning for content-based image retrieval .The classification framework is presented with experiments to compare several powerful classification techniques in this information retrieval context. In this paper we have focused on simple binary classification algorithms. Focusing on interactive methods, active learning strategy is then described. Experimental results on Corel database show the comparison of classification strategies to evaluate active learning contribution for CBIR.


Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common genetic cardiovascular disorder worldwide which exhibits considerable genetic heterogeneity. Widespread utilization of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in HCM has uncovered substantial genetic variation and highlighted the importance of a standardized approach to variant interpretation. According to this, accurate and consistent interpretation of sequence variants is essential for effective clinical care for individuals and their families with HCM. With this regard, the 2015 guidelines from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG/AMP) were widely applicable, but several elements lacked specificity for given genes or diseases. The latter guideline was adapted for the most frequent causative HCM gene, the beta myosin heavy chain gene (MYH7) by the ClinGen (Clinical Genome Resource) expert panel, the Inherited Cardiomyopathy Expert Panel. Due to the adaptation, the guideline became gene-specific, with general considerations which are widely adaptable for most of the causative genes in HCM. Based on the modified guideline, web-based interpretation algorithms have been developed which integrate data from population databases and define pathogenicity of different variants independent of the observer, therefore aiding standardized clinical interpretation of genetic testing. The latter approach serves as a basis for recommendation for genetic testing in the recent ACC/AHA HCM guideline published in 2020. The current review is meant to compile the latest advances in HCM genetic testing in clinical practice, while bringing into focus some of the ongoing challenges clinical geneticists are still facing. Although nowadays the interpretation of genetic findings is two steps closer to a more accurate approach due to gene adaptation and automatization, the multitude of putative causative genes have been once again reduced to the 8 sarcomere genes, a backward step.


Due to the lack of valid testability evaluation methods for complex equipment in the final phase, a new testability evaluation method based on test data in development phase is proposed. The problems that classic statistic method can produce the conclusion with low confidence level and high risk under the condition of small sample are effectively solved. This method adopts mixed prior distribution and determines the inheritance factor by using chi-square goodness of fit between the history test information and the field information. Finally, the fault detection rate of certain large-scale radar equipment is validated. The analysis result of the practical case proves that this method can produce evaluation conclusion with high confidence level, and shows that this method is more rational than the classical statistical method and the traditional Bayes method.


Abstract. The persistence and pervasiveness of growth stunting in low- and middle-income countries spur reexamination of disease transmission pathways related to water, sanitation, and hygiene. Animal feces constitute a more important reservoir of enteric pathogens in homes in low-income countries than previously recognized, and exploratory object mouthing and direct ingestion of soil and animal feces represent underexplored exposure pathways. The effectiveness, adoption, constraints, and scale-up potential of measures for reducing infant and young children's exposure to fecal pathogens are recently beginning to be systematically explored. This mixed methods study tested the feasibility and appeal of using playpens to establish a hygienic "safe zone" for infants in rural Ethiopia. We conducted home trials of three playpen designs, including two models made from locally available materials through user-centered design. After using playpens for several weeks, caregivers reported extensive benefits, ranging from perceived safety to developmental and hygiene benefits for infants and relief from physical stress and worry for caregivers. We observed many playpens contaminated with Escherichia coli after weeks of use, though at concentrations below those of the common room floor on which infants might otherwise have played. Caregivers reported daily playpen use, but for intervals likely insufficient to protect infants from pathogen exposure affecting growth. We determine that playpens alone cannot plausibly protect infants from environmental contamination, but our results support further exploration of the potential benefits and commercial viability of scaling up use of playpens in rural, agricultural households as part of a comprehensive approach to child development and women's empowerment.


Apparently equating the question of whether expert testimony is reliable with the question of whether it is genuinely scientific, in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993) the US Supreme Court ran together Karl Popper's and Carl Hempel's incompatible philosophies of science. But there can be no criterion discriminating scientific, and hence reliable, testimony from the unscientific and unreliable; for not all, and not only, scientific evidence is reliable. In subsequent rulings (General Electric Co v Joiner, 1997; Kumho Tire Co v Carmichael, 1999) the Court has backed quietly away from Daubert's confused philosophy of science, but not from federal judges' responsibilities for screening expert testimony. Efforts to educate judges scientifically, and increased use of court-appointed experts are, at best, only partial solutions to the problems with scientific testimony.


Purpose To compare the effectiveness of toric foldable iris-fixated phakic intraocular lens (pIOL) implantation and non-toric foldable iris-fixated pIOL implantation with limbal relaxing incisions (LRIs) for correcting moderate-to-high astigmatism in myopic eyes. Materials and Methods The medical records of 146 patients (195 eyes) with myopic astigmatism who underwent toric foldable iris-fixated pIOL implantation (toric group; 94 eyes) or non-toric foldable iris-fixated pIOL implantation with concurrent LRIs (LRI group; 101 eyes) were retrospectively reviewed. For subgroup analysis, the two groups were subdivided according to preoperative astigmatic severity [moderate, 2.00 to <3.00 diopters (D); high, 3.00–4.00 D]. Visual and astigmatic outcomes were compared 6 months postoperatively. Results The uncorrected distance visual acuity was at least 20/25 in 100% and 98% of the toric and LRI group eyes, respectively. The toric group had lower mean residual cylindrical error (-0.67±0.39 D vs. -1.14±0.56 D; p<0.001) and greater mean cylindrical error change (2.17±0.56 D vs. 1.63±0.72 D; p<0.001) than the LRI group, regardless of the preoperative astigmatic severity. The mean correction index (1.10±0.16 vs. 0.72±0.24; p<0.001) and success index (0.24±0.14 vs. 0.42±0.21; p<0.001) also differed significantly between the groups. Conclusion Both surgical techniques considerably reduced astigmatism and had comparable visual outcomes. However, toric foldable iris-fixated pIOL implantation was more reliable for correcting moderate-to-high astigmatism in myopic eyes.


This article analyses Lima Barreto's Brazilian diction as suggested by Manuel Bandeira in 1929. I focus on the period between 1915 and 1922 when Lima Barreto collaborated to the magazine Careta, one of the most popular publications in that period, circulating widely within Brazil and abroad. I argue that Lima Barreto's Brazilian diction goes beyond grammar and collocation issues and can be regarded as connected to the emerging visual culture of the period. In Careta he was able to reach a nationwide audience in a context of great advance of images over belletrism. In this context, I point out that Lima Barreto did not react against this process and indeed incorporated pictorial strategies into his pieces of mass circulation.


Purpose - – This study aims to examine the factors influencing the consumer acceptance on Islamic home financing products amongst clients of Islamic banks. For the purpose, the study extends the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in explaining the Islamic home financing adoption along. Further, the study also intends to analyze the effects of "Islamicity of product" and seven demographic factors on the consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing products. Design/methodology/approach - – Using the TPB model as a baseline theory, data are collected from bank customers in East Malaysia involving two cities, namely, Kota Kinabalu and Labuan, using self-administered questionnaires. A total of 300 questionnaires are distributed; however, only 278 are found usable. We use ordered probit model to analyze the effects of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, Islamicity of product and demographic factors. Findings - – Using the ordered probit model, this study finds that attitude, subjective norm, perceived control and Islamicity of product are instrumental in determining the consumer acceptance of Islamic home financing products. Concerned with demographic items, the study finds that marital status, ethnic, occupation and religion are influential. It is also discovered, however, that gender, academic qualification and monthly income have little effects on the consumer acceptance. Research limitations/implications - – Three limitations are available for future studies. First, the current work does not include the experienced users who patronize Islamic home financing products. Second, the contribution of the present study is confined to the analyzed explanatory variables. Third, this study also has geographical constraint in which it is conducted in East Malaysia whilst samples from West-Malaysia are overlooked. These limitations, however, provide directions for further future research. Practical implications - – Essentially, this study is a pioneering effort in applying the TPB model to the new context of Islamic home financing products in Malaysia. The study integrates the effects of Islamicity of product and demographic factors on the consumer acceptance on Islamic home financing products. The TPB model is proven valid and is reliable in predicting the consumer acceptance on Islamic home financing products. Originality/value - – This study introduces Islamicity of product and demographic factors in explaining the consumer acceptance on Islamic home financing products. Most fundamentally, this study proposes a modified theoretical framework that is of paramount importance to predict the demand of Islamic home financing products in the future.


The treatment of atherosclerosis has for many years centered around attempts to lower the serum cholesterol level. The rationale for such therapy rests entirely on the statistically significant correlation which exists between coronary atherosclerosis and elevated serum cholesterol levels. 1 However, it has yet to be shown that reduction of serum cholesterol significantly modifies the course of coronary atherosclerosis. In fact, there is evidence that the serum cholesterol is not a true reflection of tissue cholesterol levels, and, therefore, definitive evaluation of any therapy can only be obtained from long-term clinical studies based on the incidence of myocardial infarction and on survival. Nevertheless, because of our almost total ignorance of the etiology of atherosclerosis, the best available field for the clinical investigation of atherosclerosis remains the experimental reduction of the total cholesterol stores of the body. The cholesterol content of the body can be lowered in three ways: Destruction of


The preparation of a novel ferrofluid out of one-dimensional magnetic structures is attempted by the reverse-micelle-based wet-chemical formation of FePt nanowires and nanorods. The latter were found to manifest lengths ranging from 25 to 250 nm, with an average diameter of only 1.5 to 2 nm. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution TEM revealed a polycrystalline microstructure, with individual grains having the disordered fcc structure in the as-prepared state; a thermally induced transition to the chemically ordered phase was observed around 550°C. The samples were determined to be superparamagnetic at room temperature, with the blocking temperature measured to be ~26 K.


We provide and analyze an average for two convex functions, based on a kernel function. It covers several known averages such as the arithmetic average, epigraphical average, and the proximal average. When applied to the Fitzpatrick function and the conjugate of Fitzpatrick function associated with a monotone operator, our average produces an autoconjugate (also known as selfdual Lagrangian) which can be used for finding an explicit maximal monotone extension of the given monotone operator. This completely settles one of the open problems posed by Fitzpatrick in the setting of reflexive Banach spaces.


The past few decades have witnessed an increasing interest in private correspondence as a source of information for linguistic analysis. Letter collections represent an invaluable source of evidence at a historical and sociological level and, it has been argued, they are also unique sources for the documentation of language development. Recent research has shown how this type of written data can help in analyzing the correlation between social status/gender and language change. Other uses of personal letters have served to document the presence and development of specific syntactic structures. Within the realm of this genre, the value of emigrant letters is enormous, given that they reflect language features that were transported away from the environments in which they initially emerged. This paper takes a bottom-up approach to the analysis of the language of Irish emigrants and concentrates specifically on gender differences in the use of certain linguistic devices. By applying the tools and techniques of corpus linguistics, this study analyses the expression of closeness, spontaneity and solidarity in the use of a few significant features such as pragmatic markers and pronominal forms. The data under investigation is a corpus of letters written between 1844 and 1886 by members of two families who emigrated from Ireland to Argentina. The paper also argues that, given that letter writing is often at the intersection between spoken and written discourse, this type of approach can help us reconstruct the most characteristic properties of spoken discourse in the past.


A high-speed datacommunication over low-voltage power line has become a hot research topic for electrical advancements in recent years. Power-line communication (PLC), based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), is developing rapidly. OFDM is used for high speed data communications. However, it is unable to deal with the orthogonality degradation between the sub channels due to the time-variant characteristics of the multipath power-line channels, which is known as the Inter Channel Interference (ICI) problem. In this paper we propose a nonlinear equalizer based on Multilayer Perceptron trained with a mean square error (MSE) criterion to eliminate the ICI. In this paper first linear equalizer is designed with LMS algorithm. We compare the performance of linear equalizer and nonlinear equalizer based on constellation error probability.


Criminal Litigation offers a guide to the areas of criminal litigation covered in the Legal Practice Course. Making use of realistic case studies backed up by online documentation, the text combines theory with practical considerations and encourages a focus on putting knowledge into a practical context. The volume covers all procedural and evidential issues that arise in criminal cases. The more complex areas of criminal litigation are examined using diagrams, flowcharts, and examples, while potential changes in the law are highlighted. This edition has been fully revised to reflect the most recent law and practice in all aspects of criminal litigation.


The universally conserved ribonucleoprotein RNase P is involved in the processing of tRNA precursor transcripts. RNase P consists of one RNA and, depending on its origin, a variable number of protein subunits. Catalytic activity of the RNA moiety so far has been demonstrated only for bacterial and some archaeal RNase P RNAs but not for their eukaryotic counterparts. Here, we show that RNase P RNAs from humans and the lower eukaryote Giardia lamblia mediate cleavage of four tRNA precursors and a model RNA hairpin loop substrate in the absence of protein. Compared with bacterial RNase P RNA, the rate of cleavage (kobs) was five to six orders of magnitude lower, whereas the affinity for the substrate (appKd) was reduced ≈20- to 50-fold. We conclude that the RNA-based catalytic activity of RNase P has been preserved during evolution. This finding opens previously undescribed ways to study the role of the different proteins subunits of eukaryotic RNase P.


Interest in student voice has come to the fore in recent years, stimulated by political concern for the rights of children and young people as well as recognition of them as consumers. Moreover, children and young people are increasingly understood as people with something interesting and worthwhile to say - competent to have an opinion on their lives, learning, participation and engagement (Tangen 2008). For those young people who excluded from (mainstream) education or with a label of behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD), this issue of student voice takes on particular relevance in negotiating access to learning. However, the voice of girls labelled with BESD, and those with experiences of disaffection with, and exclusion from, mainstream learning provision are often hidden, going unheard both in education, and educational research (Osler & Vincent 2003). In this paper, we address the issue of giving voice to girls excluded from mainstream education attending special, girl-only provision. We report on our exploration of finding ways, using digital technologies, to listen as part of formal gathering of the views of stakeholders in the school and in ongoing, informal ways of engaging the girls in curriculum and school development. We particularly attend to how the girls perceive their educational inclusion and exclusion and what they feel works for them. We reflect on the affordances of visual and digital methods and on the core messages of belonging and not belonging through concerns of identity, identification and the relational self enabled via attachments and demonstrated through interaction that we heard in the girls' accounts.


Great progress has been made in StyleGAN-based image editing. To associate with preset attributes, most existing approaches focus on supervised learning for semantically meaningful latent space traversal directions, and each manipulation step is typically determined for an individual attribute. To address this limitation, we propose a Text-guided Unsupervised StyleGAN Latent Transformation (TUSLT) model, which adaptively infers a single transformation step in the latent space of StyleGAN to simultaneously manipulate multiple attributes on a given input image. Specifically, we adopt a two-stage architecture for a latent mapping network to break down the transformation process into two manageable steps. Our network first learns a diverse set of semantic directions tailored to an input image, and later nonlinearly fuses the ones associated with the target attributes to infer a residual vector. The resulting tightly interlinked two-stage architecture delivers the flexibility to handle diverse attribute combinations. By leveraging the cross-modal text-image representation of CLIP, we can perform pseudo annotations based on the semantic similarity between preset attribute text descriptions and training images, and further jointly train an auxiliary attribute classifier with the latent mapping network to provide semantic guidance. We perform extensive experiments to demonstrate that the adopted strategies contribute to the superior performance of TUSLT.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Derek M. Dykxhoorn. No. of pages in text (182) Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. Parkinson disease related variants have been identified in many different genes, and the products of these genes are involved in autophagy, mitochondria and cell stability pathways. However, these identified variants are responsible for only 15% of PD cases, with the bulk of these cases being idiopathic PD. While genes do play a role, the most important risk factor in PD is age. Though the average age of onset for PD is 62, early onset forms of PD have been diagnosed in patients even prior to 40 years of age. This poses the question, how does genetics play a role in PD dysfunction, and is the dysfunction that causes PD present throughout life, or does it only manifest in later stages. The advent of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell technology (iPSCs) allows for a unique model system for disease study. Though useful in furthering our understanding of the disease, previous model systems lacked the human genetic background relevant to PD. iPSCs derived from patients with confirmed disease status, and in some cases PD-associated variants can be differentiated into cell types of interest for in-vitro characterization. Identification of commonalities between the many forms of PD could be valuable in identifying targets which will aid in the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Patient-specific iPSC lines were derived from individuals with PD. These lines were subsequently differentiated into midbrain dopaminergic neurons. In the first study, individuals carrying variants in GBA (beta-glucocerebrosidase) exhibited an early temporal phenotype. GBA-variant lines induced from neuronal aggregates consistently displayed deficits in neurite outgrowth after five days of differentiation. When compared to control lines these cells exhibited migration from the tight aggregates and shorter neurite growth from aggregates. This phenotype is less prevalent as cells were passaged from aggregate culture, and in non-aggregate based differentiation scheme this phenotype was not observed. The findings of our transcriptomic and pathway analysis indicate that patient derived PD lines showed altered expression in genes involved in extracellular matrix receptor interaction, focal adhesion, and p53 signaling, when compared to age-matched controls. Furthermore, this is consistent with transcriptomic studies utilizing post-mortem PD patient brains. In total, our data indicates that in the case of GBA-variant lines the dysfunction that leads to PD may be present early on. This could account for the fact that many GBA carriers with PD suffer from early onset PD, and in some cases, a more severe form of the disease. The transcriptomic study highlighted differential expression in genes related to focal adhesion, and extracellular matrix receptor interaction dysfunction in these gene sets has been previously demonstrated in other systems. Additionally, these pathways have been linked to neuronal cellular instability and subsequent cell death seen in PD.


Abstract Aim To describe reasons why nurse managers in perioperative settings decide to leave their employment. Background Current literature has shown that perioperative nurse managers' reasons to leave their positions are formed through an interaction of factors. Methods Individual in‐depth interviews were performed with seven nurse managers, all women, in perioperative settings in Sweden. Data were analysed using systematic text condensation. Results Five key themes were identified: (a) to end where I started, as a frontline nurse; (b) I wanted to develop further to the next level in my career; (c) I ran out of ideas; (d) I lost trust in my head manager and did not believe in the new organisation and (e) I had had enough of being offended by my superior manager and my employees. Conclusion Nurse managers experienced feeling forced into a decision to leave because of being offended by their superiors or their employees. Furthermore, the findings indicate that nurse managers should be offered support from superior managers and the organisation together with time for discussions. Implications in Nursing Management The most essential element should be the influence of caritative leadership and the obvious expectation of being treated with dignity, respect and appreciation.


This report summarizes the second International Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP 2021), held as a part of the 4th Workshop on Formal Methods for ML-Enabled Autonomous Systems that was collocated with the 33rd International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV). Twelve teams participated in this competition. The goal of the competition is to provide an objective comparison of the state-of-the-art methods in neural network verification, in terms of scalability and speed. Along this line, we used standard formats (ONNX for neural networks and VNNLIB for specifications), standard hardware (all tools are run by the organizers on AWS), and tool parameters provided by the tool authors. This report summarizes the rules, benchmarks, participating tools, results, and lessons learned from this competition.


Summary In multi-agent systems, the Requirement/Service is a cooperation way that is simple, efficient, and wildly applied. Under the framework of Situation Calculus, the agents' mental states (knowledge, task/goal, etc.) are represented by some special fluents and complex actions, and communication actions are introduced into the earlier ConGolog referring to FIPA-ACL. Consequently, we propose a Requirement/Service cooperation model and semantics for multi-agent System based on the extended ConGolog. What's more, in terms of the model and semantics, we specify a feasible case of the multi-agent system in the dynamic and incompletely known environment for achieving the cooperation based on reasoning about action and change.


Heterocyclic compounds have a wide range of application in the field of chemistry. The fusions of several rings resulting in polycyclic structures from biologically active heterocyclic templates are always of interest to both organic and medicinal chemists. In view of these facts and continuation of our work on some pharmacologically active heterocyclic compounds by condensation of (3)-3hydrazinylidine-1, 3-dihyro-2h-benzo (g) indol-2-one has been condensed with different thiadiazole derivatives. The chemical structures of synthesized compounds where confirmed by means of IR, NMR spectral data and compounds were screened for their antibacterial, antifungal activity. All the novel Isatin derivatives exhibited mild to moderate activity. Compound14 & 15 exhibited better activity than the other test compounds.


To rigorously model fast ions in fusion plasmas, a non-Maxwellian equilibrium distribution must be used. In this work, the response of high-energy alpha particles to electrostatic turbulence has been analyzed for several different tokamak parameters. Our results are consistent with known scalings and experimental evidence that alpha particles are generally well confined: on the order of several seconds. It is also confirmed that the effect of alphas on the turbulence is negligible at realistically low concentrations, consistent with linear theory. It is demonstrated that the usual practice of using a high-temperature Maxwellian, while previously shown to give an adequate order-of-magnitude estimate of the diffusion coefficient, gives incorrect estimates for the radial alpha particle flux, and a method of correcting it in general is provided. Furthermore, we see that the timescales associated with collisions and transport compete at moderate energies, calling into question the assumption that alpha particles remain confined to a flux surface that is used in the derivation of the slowing-down distribution.


case study provides insight into the teaching and learning of English speaking skills at the Libyan Al Jabal Al Gharbi University as a research context, investigating the teachers' and students' perceptions in terms of the level of adoption of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach in the speaking classes held at the institution. The lens of focus was placed on the main obstacles that might impede the effective adoption of the CLT approach in the study context. The results and the findings of this study will also help to facilitate the university decision makers in their planning and designing of the English language speaking skills curricula. In order to achieve valid and reliable results, this research adopted a mixed method approach that is represented through the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. A questionnaire was used to collect the quantitative data from students at different years of academic study, while semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to gather the qualitative data from the students and also those lecturers who teach speaking skills in the English language department at Al Jabal Al Gharbi University. The main findings of this research reveal that traditional approaches and techniques are more frequently employed in the institution to teach speaking skills, whereas CLT-based techniques and activities are limited, although it was also shown that some lecturers of speaking skills are able to apply CLT approaches and techniques, notwithstanding the many obstacles that impede their effective application. Moreover, the findings also highlight that a large number of students hold the belief that utilising communicative approaches to promote the acquisition of speaking skills is beneficial and enhances their language use, although a limited number of students believe that communicative approaches do not always support the development of their speaking competences, arguing that the more traditional approaches of language teaching are more effective in their view. This study also presents a number of obstacles identified by the speaking skills teachers and their students that present challenges in the context of applying the CLT approach.


The once monolithic nation-state is in danger. Forces of modernity like globalization are causing the nation-state to recede. While the nation-state is not likely to vanish, a decline in the nation-states power is mightily consequential to the world order that is built around this central political unit. A decline in the nation-state will lead to chaos and uncertainty in the near future. In theory, this decline could be good because the nation-state is a flawed political unit. Thorough research on a world beyond the nation-state is necessary in order to adequately prepare and sculpt our future world. Ultimately, an analysis of possible futures where the nation-state is less prominent reveals that the most likely future consists of the mass privatization and the rise of corporate governance that could be worse for freedom and democracy.


This paper studies the income effect of cash transfers on adult labor outcomes. I use data of PROGRESA, a large cash transfer program in Mexico that provides money to households subject to the condition that school aged kids go to school. I focus on a subsample of the eligibles for whom the conditionality is not a constraint. This allows me to shut-down the substitution effect that the conditionality of the transfer may induce. In practice, it is as if PROGRESA was an unconditional cash transfer for this subpopulation. Contrary to standard beliefs, I find that the income effect on labor outcomes is not negative.


Diagnostic peritoneal lavage (DPL) is an established procedure in evaluation of trauma victims but is less well established for use in patients suspected of having acute intra-abdominal disease. Twenty-six seriously ill patients at our institution who had DPL for acute intra-abdominal disease form the basis of this report. Use of DPL indicated sepsis in ten patients; in seven of the ten, findings were confirmed at celiotomy or autopsy. Only one of the ten survived without laparotomy or confirmatory necropsy indicating the result of DPL had been false-positive. Sepsis was not indicated by DPL in 16 patients. Fourteen patients appeared to have true-negative results confirmed by operation (three patients), autopsy (four patients), or survival longer than two weeks (seven patients). Complications occurred in one patient whose DPL showed sepsis. Two patients with negative results of DPL died within two weeks of examination without confirmatory operation or autopsy and could not be evaluated. We therefore, consider the overall diagnostic accuracy in our patient group to be 95%. We recommend the use of DPL in patients suspected of an acute intra-abdominal disease process who are unable to undergo other evaluation for reasons such as critical illness.


The experience of partition as a political and territorial separation of groups and societies is shared by a number of states in contemporary times. As many societies have been shaped in significant yet uniquely different ways by partition, this essay examines its relevance in facilitating conversations across cultures. In moving beyond contexts and cultural specificities, this essay searches for comparative insights and approaches with the potential for fruitful dialogue. The authors suggest that the shared experience of partition could provide the incentive to search for and facilitate "listening for echoes" that connect the diverse settings of India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine and Germany. The theme illustrates the range and complexity of analytical challenges for the disciplines of social anthropology and sociology..


calculations of its magnitude' are in no way "mine", but rather those of the American National Academy of Science,' and the NCI Radiation Carcinogenesis Working Group." Nevertheless, Dr Croll is perfectly correct in stating that when the delivered dose of radiation is as low as that reported from Medicheck,' then the risk of induced breast cancer must be regarded as acceptably low. The problem here is the existence of variability between units and the provision of an adequate monitoring service; Dr Croll echoes the concern of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia on this point. With regard to benefit conferred by screening populations of well women for breast cancer, the question really comes down to the benefit to women under the age of 50. Dr Woodruff states that the "effectiveness" of mammography has been demonstrated and thus my conclusions become untenable. "Effectiveness" has been defined by Cochrane" as a medical action which successfully alters the natural history of a disease for the better. The fact that mammography can "find" breast cancer is younger women is not evidence that the natural history can be altered. This demonstration can only be made by a well-designed randomized controlled trial and unfortunately the HIP study is the only such trial reported. Concern about planning being based upon this study should not relate to the inferior mammography techniques used, nor to the length of time that has elapsed since its completion. Rather, concern should be based upon the fact that the study has not been replicated in other communities. Dr Woodruff's plea for a pilot breast cancer detection programme can only make sense if it is carried out in several areas, each with an unscreened control area for comparison. Such a programme would indeed be a worthwhile research project. DAVIO CHRISTIE. Department of Community Health, University of Melbourne, 243 Grattan Street. Carlton, Vic. 3053.


Lacteous fat globules with their membranes from human milk and calostrum were studied by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The first appear as spheroidal structures with some irregularities on the surface. Under the transmission electron microscope these irregularities are composed of islets from a material morphologically similar to cytoplasm, and with structures that resemble a fragment of rugose endoplasmic reticulum. The membranes in specimens fixed immediately after secretion are tri-layered, similar in appearance to those of a single membrane, but in samples fixed between two and four hours after secretion the details are unclear. Through freeze-etching, the laminar aspect of the fat globules is observed.


This thesis looks at competing influences in Central Asia since 1991. It looks at all five Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, and identifies the three main powers with competing influences as Russia, Islam and America. It aims at showing which of these three powers is the most enduring and powerful in the region according to how strong its influences are. The strengths of these influences are investigated in relation to the fields of security, politics, culture and economics. This thesis argues that Russian influences are at present the strongest amongst most strata of the Central Asian population. Russification (which falls under cultural influence) in both its linguistic and behavioural forms is a profound contributor to Russia's firm role in the region. Russia's security, economic and particularly political influences have gradually grown in strength, giving the other two powers a larger challenge. According to this work, Islam is a growing power in the region and has gained momentum primarily as a result of internal factors in the region, although regional and global Islamic forces are also looked at. Islam's cultural and political influences are particularly effective in the development of Islam as a power in the region. Central Asia's geo-strategic importance was soon realised by Washington after independence. This thesis argues that competition and not cooperation characterised the relationship between Russia and America throughout the 1990's and in particular after September 11, which led to America's increased involvement in the region. The USA's economic and security-related influences have been the strongest and most successful. Its political influences have often been seen as counter-productive by pushing different segments of the population towards the other two powers. America's cultural influences come last. This thesis has consequently provided a platform for measuring competing influences from Russia, Islam and America in Central Asia.


Spermatogonial stem cells (A s spermatogonia) are single cells that either renew themselves or produce A pr (paired) spermatogonia predestined to differentiate. In turn, the A pr divide into chains of A al (aligned) spermatogonia that also divide. The ratio between self-renewal and differentiation of the stem cells is regulated by glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor produced by Sertoli cells, while the receptors are expressed in stem cells. A s , A pr and A al spermatogonia proliferate during part of the epithelial cycle forming many A al spermatogonia. During epithelial stage VIII, almost all A al spermatogonia, few A pr and very few A s spermatogonia differentiate into A1 spermatogonia. A number of molecules are involved in this differentiation step including the stem cell factor-c-kit system, the Dazl RNA binding protein, cyclin D 2 and retinoic acid. There is no fine regulation of the density of spermatogonial stem cells and consequently, in some areas, many A1 and, in other areas, few A1 spermatogonia are formed. An equal density of spermatocytes is then obtained by the apoptosis of A2, A3 or A4 spermatogonia to remove the surplus cells. The Bcl-2 family members Bax and Bcl-x L are involved in this density regulation. Several mechanisms are available to cope with major or minor shortages in germ cell production. After severe cell loss, stem cell renewal is preferred above differentiation and the period of proliferation of A s , A pr and A al spermatogonia is extended. Minor shortages are dealt with, at least in part, by less apoptosis among A2-A4 spermatogonia.


In 1916, Eugene W. Stetson, a thirty-five year old banker from Macon, Georgia, became a vice-president with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, a 'Morgan Bank'. Although by this time Pierpont Morgan was dead, Guaranty still resided fully within the Morgan firm's orbit, its broader policies controlled by the votes of Morgan partners. Stetson took full advantage of the Guaranty-Morgan opportunity. Between 1916 and his death in 1959, he became president and chairman of Guaranty. He survived the booms and busts of World War I and its aftermath, the stock-crazed 1920s, the transformation of banking in the Depression, and the demands of total war in the 1940s. In 1958, Stetson spearheaded the merger of Guaranty and Morgan, beginning a long series of combinations that eventually produced JPMorgan Chase, currently the largest bank in the United States. Throughout these events, the key to Stetson's banking - as well as the key to the larger question of who got capital - was Stetson's skill at creating and sustaining personal relationships. His best clients and associates included Coca-Cola's Robert Woodruff, financier and railroad baron Averell Harriman, IBM's Tom Watson, Sr., and Morgan's Thomas Lamont. It is through these relationships that both Stetson and Wall Street banking in the middle decades of the twentieth century can be understood. By focusing on Stetson's career, this study offers a personalized portrait of the strategies and relationships that determined who received capital in twentieth-century America.


Purpose of review Preterm birth is the leading cause of global child mortality, and survivors are at increased risk of multiple morbidities that can continue into adulthood. Recent studies have suggested that maternal exposure to air pollution and high and low ambient temperatures may increase the risk of preterm birth, whereas proximity to green space may decrease it. This review summarizes these findings and suggests avenues for further research. Recent findings Particulate matter may be associated with an increased risk of preterm birth, but the magnitude of the effect remains unclear. Heat and cold likely increase the risk of preterm birth, with stronger evidence for heat. The first and third trimesters may be sensitive periods for exposure to both temperature and particulate matter, but the underlying biological mechanisms are incompletely understood. Context-appropriate green space can substantially reduce particulate matter levels and mitigate urban heat islands. Summary In a warming, urbanizing world, exposure to unusual temperatures and elevated particulate matter levels represent an increasing risk for pregnant women. Green infrastructure might help mitigate this risk, but further research is needed to confirm its effects in complex urban environments and evaluate the contribution of both indoor and outdoor particulate matter and air temperature to personal exposure and preterm birth.


Following the recognition of pathogen-encoded effectors, plant TIR-NB-LRR immune receptors induce defense signaling by a largely unknown mechanism. We identify a novel and conserved role for the SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN (SBP)-domain transcription factor SPL6 in enabling the activation of the defense transcriptome following its association with a nuclear-localized immune receptor. During an active immune response, the Nicotiana TIR-NB-LRR N immune receptor associates with NbSPL6 within distinct nuclear compartments. NbSPL6 is essential for the N-mediated resistance to Tobacco mosaic virus. Similarly, the presumed Arabidopsis ortholog AtSPL6 is required for the resistance mediated by the TIR-NB-LRR RPS4 against Pseudomonas syringae carrying the avrRps4 effector. Transcriptome analysis indicates that AtSPL6 positively regulates a subset of defense genes. A pathogen-activated nuclear-localized TIR-NB-LRR like N can therefore regulate defense genes through SPL6 in a mechanism analogous to the induction of MHC genes by mammalian immune receptors like CIITA and NLRC5.


Educational timetabling problem is a challenging real world problem which has been of interest to many researchers and practitioners. There are many variants of this problem which mainly require scheduling of events and resources under various constraints. In this study, a curriculum based course timetabling problem at Yeditepe University is described and an iterative selection hyper-heuristic is presented as a solution method. A selection hyper-heuristic as a high level methodology operates on the space formed by a fixed set of low level heuristics which operate directly on the space of solutions. The move acceptance and heuristic selection methods are the main components of a selection hyper-heuristic. The proposed hyper-heuristic in this study combines a simulated annealing move acceptance method with a learning heuristic selection method and manages a set of low level constraint oriented heuris-tics. A key goal in hyper-heuristic research is to build low cost methods which are general and can be reused on unseen problem instances as well as other problem domains desirably with no additional human expert intervention. Hence, the proposed method is additionally applied to a high school timetabling problem, as well as six other problem domains from a hyper-heuristic benchmark to test its level of generality. The empirical results show that our easy-to-implement hyper-heuristic is effective in solving the Yeditepe course timetabling problem. Moreover, being sufficiently general, it delivers a reasonable performance across different problem domains.


We have previously shown that the yeast PRP19 protein is associated with the spliceosome during the splicing reaction by immunoprecipitation studies with anti-PRP19 antibody. We have extended such studies by using extracts depleted of specific splicing factors to investigate the step of the spliceosome assembly process that PRP19 is involved in. PRP19 was not associated with the splicing complexes formed in U2- or U6-depleted extracts but was associated with the splicing complex formed in heat-inactivated prp2 extracts. This finding indicates that PRP19 becomes associated with the splicing complexes after or concomitant with binding of the U6 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle (snRNP) to the precursor RNA and before formation of the functional spliceosome. We further analyzed whether PRP19 is an integral component of snRNPs. We have constructed a strain in which an epitope of nine amino acid residues recognized by a well-characterized monoclonal antibody, 12CA5, is linked to the carboxyl terminus of the wild-type PRP19 protein. Immunoprecipitation of the splicing extracts with anti-PRP19 antibody or precipitation of the extracts prepared from the epitope-tagged strain with the 12CA5 antibody did not precipitate significant amounts of snRNAs. Addition of micrococcal nuclease-treated extracts to the PRP19-depleted extract restored its splicing activity. These results indicate that PRP19 is not tightly associated with any of the snRNAs required for the splicing reaction. No non-snRNP protein factor has been demonstrated to participate in either step of the spliceosome assembly pathway that PRP19 might be involved in. Thus, PRP19 represents a novel splicing factor.


Abstract In part due to the Human Microbiome Project and related large scale efforts, there is increasing awareness that the microorganisms that live on and in us can modify risk for a number of chronic diseases including cancer. While Helicobacter pylori was the first bacterium to listed as a carcinogen, recent studies have begun to associate additional bacteria with cancers. Moving beyond association requires establishment of causality and biological mechanism. I will discuss these issues broadly and in the context of our recent efforts to query the role of the upper-GI microbiome in modifying risk for developing esophageal adenocarcinoma. Esophageal cancer is the fastest growing cancer in the US, rising nearly 600% from 1972 – 2002, suggesting a new environmental exposure. Esophageal adenocarcinoma is highly lethal with five year survival of less than 15%. Barrett's esophagus is a precursor to esophageal adenocarcinoma and H. pylori is a Proteobacterium colonizing the stomach of 50% of the world's population. Infection with H. pylori can cause peptic ulcers and gastric cancers but also shows a protective association for Barrett's esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Utilizing a large Seattle based prospective cohort of Barrett's esophagus participants, we investigated associations of H. pylori infection with development of cancer or genomic instability defined as tetraploid or aneuploid DNA content measured by flow cytometry and found a significant association of H. pylori infection with less aneuploidy. These results indicate H. pylori carriage has protective effects in the Seattle population and may act at the level of preventing genomic instability, an important step in cancer progression. Investigation of bacterial communities present in multiple niches within the upper GI tract of Seattle Barrett's Study participants (squamous esophagus, Barrett's esophagus, stomach body, stomach antrum) suggest relationships between these communities that may influence disease progression. Citation Format: Nina R. Salama. The bacterial world and the genome. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Post-GWAS Horizons in Molecular Epidemiology: Digging Deeper into the Environment; 2012 Nov 11-14; Hollywood, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(11 Suppl):Abstract nr IA17.


The development of a reusable library of components for a multi-core segmented bus platform, the SegBus, is presented. The library is based on a plug-in that we develop and deploy within a modeling tool which eventually used by the SegBus DSL while developing applications targeting the SegBus platform. The steps required in building the library and embed it into a plug-in are discussed together with the certain use of it in our design methodology.


This book has won the 2014 Qualitative Book Award. The book was awarded with the 2013 Qualitative Book Award at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience is a multi-generational story of growing up black and female in the rural South. This book captures the artistry, strength, hope, sound, language, and creativity shared by first-hand accounts of black women in a familial village community in North Carolina. Sweetwater is about the black female experience as it relates to friendship, family, spirituality, poverty, education, addiction, mental illness, romantic relationships, raising children, and everyday survival. Written from field notes and memory, the author combines narrative and autoethnography to weave her own experiences as a rural black girl into the story, revealing the complexities of black women's lived experiences and exposing the communicative and interpersonal choices black women make through storytelling. Narrative inquiry and black feminism are offered as creative educational tools for discussing how and why black women's singular interior lives are culturally and globally significant.


Knowledge of maritime traffic and knowledge of the behaviour of this traffic is essential for a successful maritime risk assessment study. For many years such knowledge has been built up and improved within Dutch national projects for the Maritime Safety Agency (DGSM) and North Sea Directorate, both part of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, and within European projects, COST 301 and EURET, for the European Commission. Based on this knowledge the MANS-model (Management Analysis North Sea) was developed, a toolbox with models to facilitate the comparison and evaluation of policy alternatives with respect to the use, physical planning and management of the North Sea. One of these models is the Ship-Offshore platform Collision Risk Assessment (SOCRA) model. This model is described in more detail in this paper.


Introduction: Trachyspermum copticum (Carom seeds) has been reported to have anti-platelet aggregatory, hypolipidemic and anti-oxidant effects. In the present study ,this was evaluated for its efficacy in the management of stable angina. Patients and Methods. A prospective double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, multicentered interventional study was conducted with patients of stable angina randomized in two groups (100 in each) in Lahore urban community for a period of 6 weeks. In trial group, patients were treated with oral T.copticum extract for 6 weeks in addition to their conventional medical therapy. In placebo group similar preparation was given to the patients alongwith conventional therapy taking already. Anginal symptoms (chest pain, chest tightness, difficulty in breathing, nausea, light headedness and anxiety) were evaluated after every fortnightly i.e.after 2,4 and 6 weeks regarding their presence. Results: In this trial 200 patients of stable angina were randomly placed in two groups i.e T.copticum (trial) and placebo. There was found no difference in both groups regarding age and sex. All patients were adults. There was significant improvement in the angina signs/symptoms in the T.copticum group as compared with placebo group(p<0.0001) after the completion of trial period. Regarding safety profile ,there was no difference found in the routine examination before and after trial in both groups, however lipid profile was improved in the T.copticum group. Conclusion: T.copticum extract significantly improved patients with stable angina.


Cultures of fibroblasts from newborn rats and successive subcultures of these cells were treated with 4-nitroquinoline -l-oxide to induce DNA repair. DNA from the cultures was examined by velocity sedimentation in alkaline sucrose gradients immediately after drug treatment and after a post-treatment incubation period of 3 h. Early passage cells were able to repair the damage that appeared as single strand breaks, however, by the seventh subculture this activity was not apparent. Measurements of repair synthesis showed a partial loss of this capacity with successive subculture. The results fit a model in which 4NQO causes two kinds of DNA modification, one of which is alkali labile and appears as a single-strand break. Both modifications are subject to excision repair, but each is recognized initially by a specific endonuclease. In the late passage cells, the endonuclease specific for the alkali labile modification is absent. It has been well documented that the capacity for


Rotational bands are commonplace in the spectra of atomic nuclei. Inspired by early descriptions of these bands by quadrupole deformations of a liquid drop, Elliott constructed a discrete nucleon representations of $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ from fermionic creation and annihilation operators. Ever since, Elliott's model has been foundational to descriptions of rotation in nuclei. Later work, however, suggested the symplectic extension $\mathrm{Sp}(3,R)$ provides a more unified picture. We decompose no-core shell-model nuclear wave functions into symmetry-defined subspaces for several beryllium isotopes, as well as $^{20}$Ne, using the quadratic Casimirs of both Elliott's $\mathrm{SU}(3)$ and $\mathrm{Sp}(3,R)$. The band structure, delineated by strong $B(E2)$ values, has a more consistent description in $\mathrm{Sp}(3,R)$ rather than $\mathrm{SU}(3)$. {In particular, we confirm previous work finding in some nuclides strongly connected upper and lower bands with the same underlying symplectic structure.


Accurate analysis of system timing and voltage margin including deterministic and random jitter is crucial in high-speed I/O system designs. Traditional SPICE-based simulation techniques can precisely simulate various deterministic jitter sources, such as intersymbol interference (ISI) and crosstalk from passive channels. The inclusion of random jitter in SPICE simulations, however, results in long simulation time. Innovative simulation techniques based on a statistical simulation framework have been recently introduced to cosimulate deterministic and random jitter effects efficiently. This paper presents new improvements on this statistical simulation framework. In particular, we introduce an accurate jitter modeling technique which accounts for bounded jitter with arbitrary spectrum in addition to Gaussian jitter. We also present a rigorous approach to model duty cycle distortion (DCD). A number of I/O systems are considered as examples to validate the proposed modeling methodology.


Abstract "Barrier reefs, when encircling small islands, have been comparatively little noticed by voyagers; but they well deserve attention. In their structure they are little less marvelous than atolls, and they give a singular and most picturesque character to the scenery of the islands they surround." (Darwin 1842, p. 2) Sediment sampling revealed six modern sedimentary facies in the barrier-reef system around the volcanic island of Bora Bora including mixed skeletal packstone, peloidal packstone, Halimeda-rich packstone to grainstone, coralgal grainstone, wackestone, and mudstone. Whereas sediments rich in corals and coralline algae are abundant on reefs and carbonate shoals, mud-rich sediments with mollusks and foraminifera occur in deep lagoons (15–40 m). Carbonate mud is composed largely of aragonite needles, probably derived from codiaceans like Halimeda, and coccoliths in moderate abundances. Despite the proximity to a volcanic island, the content of siliciclastics in the sediments is low (< 10% on average), which is a consequence of the absence of permanent water courses. In addition to skeletal grains, non-skeletal grains (cemented fecal pellets; aggregates) occur in high abundance (30–50%) in shallow lagoons (< 5 m) on the eastern side of Bora Bora. This observation opposes the widely-held concept that non-skeletal carbonate grains are abundant on platforms from the Atlantic Ocean but virtually missing in recent Indo-Pacific reefs and carbonate platforms. In Bora Bora, non-skeletal grains and aggregates apparently form in warm, shallow (< 5 m), moderately agitated areas with relatively low sedimentation rates. In addition, early cementation is probably favored by elevated alkalinity and pH in surface waters in this part of the south Pacific. In the same area, some 900 km to the southwest of the study area, ooids and peloids have recently been discovered in the shallow lagoon of Aitutaki, Cook Islands. More occurrences of abundant non-skeletal grains probably exist in the Indo-Pacific region; however, too few locations have been systematically studied. A comparison of the new Bora Bora data with other modern reefs and platforms shows that sediment occurrence and distribution exhibits basic patterns in that marginal areas are dominated by coarse-grained coralgal sediment whereas lagoons and platform interiors are characterized by mollusk, foram, Halimeda, and non-skeletal grains, and fines. Still, grain abundances may vary significantly among locations, and again suggest the need for more studies in order to fully understand the factors controlling occurrence and distribution of modern sediments.


The electric field of the modes of rectangular dielectric waveguides is known to diverge in the corners of the waveguide. An accurate numerical computation of the vector mode fields for a sample waveguide exhibits clear signs of this divergence. The divergence makes the design of rapidly converging numerical algorithms for vector mode field computations difficult. >


Cyclooxygenase (COX) is the key enzyme within the complex conversion of arachidonic acid into prostaglandins (PGs). Inhibitors of this enzyme represent a particularly promising class of compounds for chemoprevention and cancer therapy. The experimental data on the involvement of COX isoform COX-2 in tumour development and progression, as well as the observed overexpression of COX-2 in a variety of human cancers provide the rationale for targeting COX-2 for molecular imaging and therapy of cancer. A series of trifluoromethyl-substituted pyrimidines was prepared as a novel class of selective COX-2 inhibitors, based on the lead structure 1a. All compounds were tested in cyclooxygenase (COX) assays in vitro to determine COX-1 and COX-2 inhibitory potency and selectivity. Molecular docking studies using the catalytic site of COX-1 and COX-2, respectively, provided complementary theoretical support for the obtained experimental biological structure–activity relationship data of three highly potent and selective fluorobenzyl-containing COX-2 inhibitors. Selected fluorobenzyl-substituted pyrimidine derivatives were further developed as (18)F-labelled radiotracers ([(18)F]1a, [(18)F]2a, [(18)F]3a). Radiotracers [(18)F]1a and [(18)F]2a were radiolabelled using 4-[(18)F]fluorobenzylamine ([(18)F]FBA) as a building block. Radiotracer [(18)F]3a was radiofluorinated directly using a nucleophilic aromatic substitution reaction with no-carrier-added (n.c.a.) [(18)F]fluoride on an iodylaryl compound as a labelling precursor.


The identification of novel factors that orchestrate the development, growth, and function of the lymphatic vascular system is a relatively new and coveted goal in the broad field of vascular biology. With the increased incidence of lymphedema and the recent recognition of the important roles that lymphatic vessels play in cancer, obesity, and metabolic disorders, there is a strong motivation to identify factors that could serve as pharmacological targets for the therapeutic modulation of lymphatic vessel growth and function.1 Because G protein–coupled receptors constitute the largest proportion of targets for prescribed pharmaceuticals, there is intense interest in revealing novel receptor pathways that could be targeted with highly specific agonists and antagonists.2 In this issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology , Kim et al3 discover a new player in lymphatic vessels: Apelin signaling—a broadly expressed and multifunctional G protein–coupled receptors pathway that is part of the broader family of adipocytokine signaling.4,5

See accompanying article on page 338

Much of our knowledge on lymphatic vessel growth has come from developmental studies, whereby the establishment of lymphatic progenitor fate, migration, proliferation, and maturation can be elegantly teased apart using genetic approaches in mice and aquatic animal model systems.6,7 Lymphatic progenitors arise from venous endothelial cells, and the process of lymphatic endothelial cell migration away from parental veins can be stereotypically visualized and quantitated in zebrafish. Therefore, identifying key growth factors that are spatiotemporally expressed during this critical point of lymphatic vessel formation provides a strong foundation for the elucidation of new players. This pattern of highly restricted expression is precisely what led Kim et al to explore the possible functions of Apelin signaling in lymphatic development. Previous studies had shown that although the expression of Apelin receptors was broad during early zebrafish development, …


An efficient methodology for soft error analysis of sequential circuits based on Monte Carlo sampling is proposed. It uses nested sampling for faster statistical convergence: it samples only from the workload space and statically evaluates the conditional probability over the subspace of particle strike and circuit parameters. A novel check on the stationarity of machine state sequence to reduce the number of samples to convergence is introduced. The flow combines logic simulation for latch-level error propagation and stationarity diagnostic and an improved combinational error simulator with a new masking model based on signal controllability. Experiments show that nested sampling reduces the number of samples by up to 1500X and runtime by up to 25X compared to direct sampling. Stationarity checking allows reducing sampling number by 25%, on average. The new latching window model permits accuracy of within 1% from SPICE, compared to a 12% error with a prior model.


A process-independent adaptive bandwidth spread-spectrum clock generator (SSCG) with digitally controlled self-calibration techniques is proposed. By adaptively calibrating the VCO gain (Kv) and charge-pump (CP) current over C (ICP/C), the SSCG can realize not only adaptive bandwidth but also process independence at each operating frequency. The innovative point is the adaptive bandwidth control using Kv and ICP/C calibration. This control enabled a test chip to keep a sharp triangular SSC profile while operating over a wide frequency range (125 to 1250 MHz). The variations of VCO gain and CP current are reduced to one third those of the conventional architecture. At 1250 Mbps (625 MHz) the reduction of spectrum peak amplitude is 18.6 dB which is 2.3 dB better than the reduction obtained without calibration.


We estimate the effects of utility-scale wind turbines on agricultural land values in Kansas using parcel-level transaction data from 2001 to 2017 in a hedonic price model. By matching transaction data and wind turbine data at the common land units scale, we are able to ascertain on-farm effects as well as near-farm effects. Across all our analyses, the preponderance of results suggests that wind turbines do not affect agricultural property values, both on-farm and nearby, in a statistically significant way. Thus, our results cannot confirm that wind turbines will increase land values when installed on a parcel.


This paper describes the use of an Artificial Intelligence-Electromagnetic modeling approach for the performance prediction of stand alone synchronous generators during No Break Power Transfer, NBPT, operating conditions. This approach uses Radial Basis Networks, RBN, which have the advantage of not being locked into local minima as do feedforward Neural Networks. The RBNs are simply linear function approximators that use Radial Basis Functions which are powerful techniques for interpolation in multidimensional space. The RBN is used to evaluate the stresses accompanying this mode of operation which may result in the failure of the diodes in the rotating rectifier bridge of the generator brushles field exciter. The modeling approach is applied in a case study of two standalone synchronous generators system for aerospace applications. This study resulted in the prediction of the system performance characteristics including the peak currents and reverse voltages of the rotating diodes. The simulation results were validated by comparison to experimental data.


A new procedure for the functionalization of melamine sponge (MeS) with urea-formaldehyde (UF) co-oligomers is put forward. The procedure differs from the typical synthesis of the UF co-polymer, as it employs a base-catalyzed condensation step at certain concentrations of urea and formaldehyde. The produced melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) sponge cubes are hydrophobic, despite the presence of hydrophilic groups in the oligomers. The MUF sponge developed herein is used as a sorbent for the solid-phase extraction of 10 analytes, from 6 different classes (i.e., non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, benzophenones, parabens, phenols, pesticides and musks) and an analytical method is developed for their liquid chromatographic separation and detection. Low limits of quantification (0.03 and 1.0 μg L−1), wide linear ranges and excellent recoveries (92–100%) are some of the benefits of the proposed procedure. The study of the synthesis conditions of MUF cubes reveals that by altering them the hydrophilic/lipophilic balance of the MUF cubes can be tuned, hinting towards a strong potential for many other applications.


This paper presents a technique for highly constrained event sequence scheduling. System resource protocols as well as an external interface protocol are described by non-deterministic finite automata (NFA). All valid schedules which adhere to interfacing constraints and resource bounds for flow graph described behavior are determined exactly. A model and scheduling results are presented for an extensive design example.


Due to the successes in medical science people are now beginning to live much longer. With this brings increased problems associated with ageing, with one exemplar being dementia. Persons with dementia require care with activities of daily living, for example, with washing, dressing and eating. This requires additional care, which is usually provided by family and friends who assume the role of informal carers. Provision of care by informal carers brings irreversible changes to their lives that can lead to depression and feelings of loneliness. In part, these changes are linked with carers having insufficient understanding and training with dementia. The EU funded STAR project created an web portal that aims to provide the necessary online training that carers need, however, the usability of such a provision warrants investigation. This paper presents the findings of a usability test conducted on five carers of people with dementia while using the STAR Training Website. For the 21 usability issues identified, the paper outlines proposed solutions.


New Zealand data show that the inflation-output relationship is asymmetric. This asymmetry implies that positive demand shocks tend to increase inflation by more than negative demand shocks of similar magnitudes reduce it. An important implication of this asymmetry is that a monetary authority with the objective of maintaining the inflation rate within a narrow band needs to react more promptly to demand shocks than otherwise be necessary. Alternatively, policy that is slow to respond to demand disturbances will result in higher inflation, and greater losses of output than would be the case with a linear Phillips curve.


The group of diieomorphisms of a compact manifold acts isometrically on the space of Riemannian metrics with its L 2 metric. Following 1], 15], we deene minimal orbits for this action by a zeta function regularization. We show that odd dimensional isotropy irreducible homogeneous spaces give rise to minimal orbits, and nd a at two torus giving a stable minimal orbit. We also deene an innnite dimensional family of elliptic operators on a bundle over a manifold M with an action by automorphisms of the bundle. The orbits are parametrized by the metrics on M. In odd dimensions, all orbits are minimal if the cohomology of the elliptic complex vanishes. In this case, the determinant of an associated elliptic operator is a smooth invariant of M. This invariant is deened for some classes of 3-manifolds, including the simply connected ones. It is similar to analytic torsion, and has a combinatorial analogue.


Recent works on zero-shot learning make use of side information such as visual attributes or natural language semantics to define the relations between output visual classes and then use these relationships to draw inference on new unseen classes at test time. In a novel extension to this idea, we propose the use of visual prototypical concepts as side information. For most real-world visual object categories, it may be difficult to establish a unique prototype. However, in cases such as traffic signs, brand logos, flags, and even natural language characters, these prototypical templates are available and can be leveraged for an improved recognition performance. The present work proposes a way to incorporate this prototypical information in a deep learning framework. Using prototypes as prior information, the deepnet pipeline learns the input image projections into the prototypical embedding space subject to minimization of the final classification loss. Based on our experiments with two different datasets of traffic signs and brand logos, prototypical embeddings incorporated in a conventional convolutional neural network improve the recognition performance. Recognition accuracy on the Belga logo dataset is especially noteworthy and establishes a new state-of-the-art. In zero-shot learning scenarios, the same system can be directly deployed to draw inference on unseen classes by simply adding the prototypical information for these new classes at test time. Thus, unlike earlier approaches, testing on seen and unseen classes is handled using the same pipeline, and the system can be tuned for a trade-off of seen and unseen class performance as per task requirement. Comparison with one of the latest works in the zero-shot learning domain yields top results on the two datasets mentioned above.


Abstract The Myc. PN a-o-ri-me-ne may be interpreted as a possessive compound ʻwho has the μένος of the sword', or as ʻwho has the μένος in the sword', if the compounding vowel -i- was still functional as a locative marker, as Ruijgh proposed, or simply as the combination of the two elements [rage] and [sword]. The interpretation is supported by collocations of words for ʻspear' and ʻrage' in the epic language. At least in the Homeric world the μένος that temporarily resides in a weapon is probably due to the divine influence of Ares whose fury may enter both the weapon and its possessor.


Classical molecular dynamics simulations have been the preferred method to cope with the characteristic sizes and time scales of complex life-science systems. However, while classical methods have well known limitations, such as that their accuracy strongly depends on empirical tuning, the practical use of far more accurate methods that rely on quantum Hamiltonians, has been limited by the current efficiency and scalability of sparse matrix-matrix multiplication algorithms used in the self-consistent field equations. In this paper, we show unprecedented massive scalability of a recently presented method, called MPSM3, for sparse matrix-matrix multiplication. The algorithmic basis of the method was presented in a recent publication, while here we describe the algorithmic enhancements that allow us to claim at least one order of magnitude improvement in scalability and time to solution over the state of the art (original MPSM3). We achieve a time to solution for the multiplication of density matrices within the self-consistent field scheme that is approaching the time needed to evaluate energy and forces with classical force-field methods and that is independent from the system size, provided proportional resources. This latest development renders the application of entirely quantum Hamiltonians to systems of several millions of atoms for extended molecular dynamics investigations feasible.


This paper studies the design of a state-feedback delay-dependent H∞ controller for vibration attenuation problem of a seismic-excited container crane subject to having time-varying actuator delay, L2 type disturbances and actuator saturation. First, a sufficient delay-dependent stability criterion is developed by choosing a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional candidate based on matrix inequalities for a stabilizing H∞ synthesis. To convexify the Bilinear Matrix Inequality (BMI) based optimization problem involved in the delay dependent conditions; a cone complementary linearization method is adopted to find a sub-optimal solution. The proposed method also utilizes convex description of nonlinear saturation phenomenon by means of convex hull of some linear feedback which leads to a few additional ellipsoidal conditions in terms of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). By use of the proposed method, a suboptimal controller with maximum allowable delay bound and minimum allowable disturbance attenuation level can be easily obtained by a convex optimization technique. In order to show effectiveness of the proposed approach, a five Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF) container crane structure is modeled using a spring-mass-damper subsystem. The system is then simulated against the real ground motions of Kobe and Northridge earthquakes. Finally, the time history of the crane parts displacements, accelerations, control forces and frequency responses of the both uncontrolled and controlled cases are presented. Additionally, the performance of the proposed controller is also compared with a nominal state-feedback H∞ controller performance. Simulation results show that, in spite of the actuator saturation, the designed controller is all effective in reducing vibration amplitudes of crane parts and guarantees stability at maximum actuator delay.


During the past years, software platforms have proved a superior scalability with respect to hardware solutions. However, wireless communication rates can not be faced resorting only to software. Software defined radio paradigm will try to push reconfigurable blocks as near as possible to the antenna. The first block suitable in this implementation is the digital down converter, needed to adapt higher antenna's data rate to intermediate frequency ones. In this paper a fully reconfigurable IP of a cascaded integrator comb (CIC) filter, an economical class of multiplier-less filters, is proposed. FPGA implementation has lead to very satisfactory results: 135 MHz on a XCV100E.


This paper presents hot-wire measurements in a wind tunnel, close downstream of basic models of blade sections being representative for low-speed, low-Reynolds number axial fans, in order to explore the signatures of vortex shedding (VS) from the blade profiles. Using the Rankine-type vortex approach, an analytical model was developed on the velocity fluctuation represented by the vortex streets, as an aid in evaluating the experimental data. The signatures of profile VS were distinguished from blunt trailing-edge VS based on Strouhal numbers obtained from the measurements in a case-specific manner. Utilizing the experimental results, the semi-empirical model available in the literature for predicting the frequency of profile VS was extended to low-speed axial fan applications. On this basis, quantitative guidelines were developed for the consideration of profile VS in preliminary design of axial fans in the moderation of VS-induced blade vibration and noise emission.


Competency management is a very important part of a well-functioning organisation. Unfortunately competency descriptions are not uniformly specified nor defined across borders: National, sectorial or organisational, leading to an opaque competency description market with a multitude of competency frameworks and competency benchmarks. An ontology is a formalised description of a domain, which enables automated reasoning engines to be built which by utilising the interrelations between entities can make "intelligent" choices in different situations within the domain. Introducing formalised competency ontologies automated tools, such as skill gap analysis, training suggestion generation, job search and recruitment, can be developed, which compare and contrast different competency descriptions on the semantic level. The major problem with defining a common formalised ontology for competencies is that there are so many viewpoints of competencies and competency frameworks. Work within the TRACE project has focused on finding common trends within different competency frameworks in order to allow an intermediate competency description to be made, which other frameworks can reference. This research has shown that competencies can be divided up into "knowledge", "skills" and what we call "others". An ontology has been created based on this with a simple structure of different "kinds" of "knowledges" and "skills" using semantic interrelations to define the basic semantic structure of the ontology. A prototype tool for analysing a skill gap analysis has been developed. Personal profiles can be produced using the tool and a skill gap analysis is performed on a desired competency profile by using an ontologically based inference engine, which is able to list closest fit and possible proficiency gaps


In the present study a third-generation numerical wave model is used to study effects of a straight Gulf Stream and a Gulf Stream ring on ocean waves in swell and storm conditions. The model accounts for all relevant processes of propagation, generation, and dissipation of the waves (including current effects) without imposing a priori restraints on the spectral development of the waves. The dominating mechanism affecting the waves appears to be current-induced refraction even though the short-crestedness of the incoming waves tends to mask its effects (also in swell conditions). Depending on wind and wave conditions, refraction may trap locally generated waves in the straight Gulf Stream or it may reflect wave energy back to the open ocean. In the Gulf Stream ring, refraction induces a considerable variation in significant wave height and short-crestedness, but it hardly affects the mean wave direction. In storm conditions the processes of generation and dissipation are considerably enhanced in countercurrent situations and reduced following-current situations.