My dissertation consists of three essays related to policy analysis. In the first essay we ask, how can developing nations who face revenue mobilization issues and large informal sectors use taxation as a means of nation building? To answer this, we design a dynamic general equilibrium model that accounts for a large informal sector. Contrary to previous studies that model the informal economy, we focus on the importance of the government maintaining its social fiscal contract with its constituents by including the provision of productive public goods in the model. By doing so, we show that increasing taxes can be used to encourage formal sector activity and increase revenue simultaneously. In the second essay, I develop a theoretical outline explaining why treatment effects may lag the treatment event in the context of local labor shocks, and examine the impact properly identifying of treatment date. Using the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 as a case study for a negative labor demand shock in the Appalachian coal mining industry, I find lags in treatment effects on the mining industry relative to policy implementation, as well as secondary lags in the multiplier effects on the aggregate economy relative to the labor shock. Building on this, the third essay tests the predictions of the theory in the case of a positive labor demand shock and explores the timing of multiplier effects at the sector level. Using the CAAA as the source of a positive labor demand shock in the Western United States coal industry, I again find lags in the treatment effect on the mining sector, but find variety in the timing of responses of individual sectors. I also discuss the implications these findings have for local policy makers whose communities may experience such shocks, as well as national policy makers concerned with future policy initiatives such as the Clean Power Plan.


Globalisation and instability of a financial market, and also a higher competitiveness
among banks, demand from banks introduction of innovations in their business, and in
their management, either. The transition period brings a new business philosophy and a
new approach in solving business issues in banks, and also a business risk estimation,
prior to entering into certain business and financial ventures. The risks a bank faces
with are inevitable and they must be estimated, controlled and financially neutralised,
so as not to jeopardise a banking system. One of the most significant business risks of a
banking system is a credit risk, where a special emphasise has been on. It expresses a
permanent or a temporary inability of debtors to fulfil their obligations within a
contract deadline, or they are partially fulfilled within it. It is not an issue how to avoid
risks, but hot to manage them, with the primary aim of minimising their influence onto
business activity. The subject of this paper is to analyze the impact of the global
financial crisis on the creation and expansion of the credit risk in the banking system.
This paper analyzes the different views and methods in addressing the credit risk of the
banking system in the conditions of financial crisis. Banking crisis or a state of
widespread insolvency of banks that takes on the characteristics of the epidemic,
threatens a general collapse of the banking and financial system, which has caused by
credit risk, can be mitigated or eliminated with the process of change in the very
structure of banks' capital. There is no single model for solving the problem of credit
risk in the banking system, which can be applied to national economies, but anyhow
banking crisis should be approached separately from the previous one, with respect to
economic, social, political specificities of the country where the crisis originaly
become.


Abstract. Observations from the South African TrigNet global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and vertical total electron content (VTEC) data from the Jason-1 satellite were used to analyze the variations in ionospheric electron density profiles over South Africa before and after the severe geomagnetic storms on 15 May 2005. Computerized ionospheric tomography (CIT) was used to inverse the 3-D structure of ionospheric electron density and its response to the magnetic storms. Inversion results showed that electron density significantly increased at 10:00 UT, 15 May compared with that at the same period on 14 May. Positive ionospheric storms were observed in the inversion region during the magnetic storms. Jason-1 data show that the VTEC observed on descending orbits on 15 May significantly increased, whereas that on ascending orbits only minimally changed. This finding is identical to the CIT result.


[1] The Indo-Gangetic (IG) plains is one of the largest and most densely populated regions in the world. Recent studies over the IG plains using multi-year (2000-2004) satellite (including Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer: MODIS) and ground Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) data show strong seasonal variability of aerosol optical depth (AOD) with maximum aerosol loading (>0.6-0.7 at 500 nm) during the pre-monsoon (summer) season. A number of major dust storms, originating from western arid and desert regions of Africa, Arabia and western part of India (Thar Desert), affect the whole IG plains during the pre-monsoon season (April-June). The mean AOD increases from 0.4-0.5 to more than 0.6-0.7 throughout the plains (>0.8-0.9 on the western side) as a result of the dust storm events. Pronounced changes in the aerosol optical parameters, derived from AERONET, have been observed over Kanpur (26.45°N, 80.35°E) during dust storm events (2001-2005). The maximum AOD (at 500 nm) during dust event days show increase from ∼1 to ∼2.4 with advance of the pre-monsoon season (April-June). The aerosol size distribution (ASD) shows increase in radius from 1.71 to 2.24 μm (in coarse fraction) and decrease in the distribution width from 3.76 to 2.56 μm showing changes in the aerosol characteristics during dust events. The aerosol parameters [ASD, single scattering albedo (SSA, total and coarse mode) and real and imaginary parts of the refractive index] change significantly during dust events. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model (5-day back-trajectory) and MODIS level-3 daily data (AOD and Angstrom exponent) have been used to trace the source, path and spatial extent of dust storm events. During major dust events, enhancement of the total column water vapor is observed from MODIS level-3 daily water vapor data (near-infrared clear column) showing a strong association (72% correlation) with the AOD along the track of dust storms over the IG plains. A significant rise of 50-100% is observed in the ground level respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) concentration showing alarming health risks to the people living in the IG plains during dust storm events.


Life expectancy has impressively increased over the past century and the US population over 65 years is rapidly growing, especially those over 80 years. In fact, persons older than 80 years have increased by more than 250% between the years 1960 and 2000, and it is expected that the population aged >75 years will triple by the year 2030. With the increase of the geriatric population, there is a need for the development and validation of treatment strategies for NHL for these patients. Therapy in elderly patients needs special attention because older patients usually suffered of several co-morbidities and their management represents a challenge for physicians. In fact, older patients treated for lymphoma may not tolerate the high-dose therapies used in younger patients and have increased risk of therapy-related toxicity as a result of age-related physiological changes and frequent co-morbidities. The widespread use of a comprehensive geriatric assessment tool might overcome the difficulty to run prospective clinical trial in elderly patients with lymphoma.


SUMMARY Palm oil (PO) is a very important commodity used as food, in pharmaceuticals, for cooking and as biodiesel: PO is a major contributor to the economies of many countries, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. Novel tropical regions are being explored increasingly to grow oil palm as current land decreases, whilst recent published modelling studies by the current authors for Malaysia and Indonesia indicate that the climate will become less suitable. Countries that grow the crop commercially include those in Latin America, Africa and Asia. How will climate change (CC) affect the ability to grow oil palm in these countries? Worldwide projections for apt climate were made using Climex software in the present paper and the global area with unsuitable climate was assessed to increase by 6%, whilst highly suitable climate (HSC) decreased by 22% by 2050. The suitability decreases are dramatic by 2100 suggesting regions totally unsuitable for growing OP, which are currently appropriate: the global area with unsuitable climate increased from 154 to 169 million km2 and HSC decreased from 17 to 4 million km2. This second assessment of Indonesia and Malaysia confirmed the original findings by the current authors of large decreases in suitability. Many parts of Latin America and Africa were dramatically decreased: reductions in HSC for Brazil, Columbia and Nigeria are projected to be 119 000, 35 and 1 from 5 000 000, 219 and 69 km2, respectively. However, increases in aptness were observed in 2050 for Paraguay and Madagascar (HSC increases were 90 and 41%, respectively), which were maintained until 2100 (95 and 45%, respectively). Lesser or transient increases were seen for a few other countries. Hot, dry and cold climate stresses upon oil palm for all regions are also provided. These results have negative implications for growing oil palm in countries as: (a) alternatives to Malaysia and Indonesia or (b) economic resources per se. The inability to grow oil palm may assist in amelioration of CC, although the situation is complex. Data suggest a moderate movement of apposite climate towards the poles as previously predicted.


The X-Carve is an open-source 3-axis CNC-mill produced by the company
Inventables. The University purchased the X-Carve as a tool for student to easily
produce visual models of their projects. The targetgroup of Inventables is primarily
hobbyists who want an affordable milling machine to engrave or cut out models. It
is required to have some knowledge about how a CNC-machine works to be able
to control the X-Carve. Most students do not possess this knowledge and thus do
not know how to control it or what it does when they got it started.
Another bachelor assignment is being done to develop a manual of the machine
to teach students how they can use the X-Carve. This project is focussed on developing
an interface to show students what the X-Carve does while milling.
To achieve this there has been extensive analysis of the X-Carve, CAD-applications
and the use of CAD-modelling in the curriculum. From this analysis demands
and functions for the interface where produced. Based on these demands and
functions the interface was build.
The interface that was build can read numerical code called G-Code and visualise
it to lines in a 3D environment. It can also visualise how the mill-head would move
over these lines. This could be further developed to create communication between
the interface and the X-Carve so the the interface can give a more reliable visualisation
of the exact movement of the X-Carve.
On the basis of this interface there is also the possibility of some future projects.
The interface can be enhanced to become a control system that could correct the
deviation the X-Carve makes. He could even be further enhanced to interpret al
the g-code and be able to send it to the X-Carve and so becoming the controller of
the X-Carve. The final future project is developing the interface with an Augmented
Reality feature that can project the g-code in the real world via a camera and
tablet.


In recent years,there has been a resurgence of racial/ethnic conflict at predominantly White institutions of higher education. Incidents of harassment and violence at the University of Michigan, the University of Massachusetts and other campuses have highlighted the continuing racial/ethnic divisions among majority and minority students (Wilkerson 1988; Farrell 1988a and 1988b; Simpson 1987; Williams 1987). These incidents have emerged during a period when the society, in general, has expressed concern about the declining enrollment of racial minorities -- particularly Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans -- and, to a lesser extent, Asians, in higher education. Therefore, it is ironic that those minority students already enrolled in predominantly White institutions of higher education are experiencing increasing levels of racial/ethnic discrimination and feelings of isolation. To that end, this paper is a preliminary attempt to develop a perspective on this apparently worsening situation. In order to establish a contemporary understanding of this problem, a general content analytical technique was employed to delineate the most significant contemporary issues/factors surrounding racial/ethnic incidents on the campuses of predominantly White institutions of higher education (Borg and Gall 1979; Babbie 1983). Content analysis has been determined to be an effective tool for monitoring social change. During the past year, there has been an emergence of reportorial interest in racial/ethnic conflict on White university campuses, thus the employment of this technique. The basic approach was to examine the patterns of focus in selected newspapers and related publications and to summarize emergent themes and trends. For the purpose of this qualitative analysis, a national newspaper, The New York Times, a local newspaper and selected black-oriented newspapers were reviewed for the calendar years 1987 through June, 1988. In addition, related books, articles and periodicals on higher education issues also were assessed. The specific objectives of this investigation were to: - to provide an overview of minority students on White college campuses, - to examine the general perceptions of racism in contemporary society, - to determine the scope of racial/ethnic incidents on campus of predominantly White institutions of higher education, and - to assess prospects for change. The main results of this analysis indicate that Blacks were the primary minority group impacted by these "reported" racial incidents, but Hispanics and Asians also have been found to be experiencing increased levels of 'actual" and "perceived"racial discrimination. Native Americans have not emerged in this content analysis as being victims of "reported" racial incidents in contemporary higher education.


Transition zones, located at the boundaries between biogeographic regions, represent events of biotic hybridization, promoted by historical and ecological changes. They deserve special attention, because they represent areas of intense biotic interaction. In its more general sense, the Mexican Transition Zone is a complex and varied area where Neotropical and Nearctic biotas overlap, from southwestern USA to Mexico and part of Central America, extending south to the Nicaraguan lowlands. In recent years, panbiogeographic analyses have led to restriction of the Mexican Transition Zone to the montane areas of Mexico and to recognize five smaller biotic components within it. A cladistic biogeographic analysis challenged the hypothesis that this transition zone is biogeographically divided along a north-south axis at the Transmexican Volcanic Belt, as the two major clades found divided Mexico in an east-west axis. This implies that early Tertiary geological events leading to the convergence of Neotropical and Nearctic elements may be younger (Miocene) than those that led to the east-west pattern (Paleocene). The Mexican Transition Zone consists of five biogeographic provinces: Sierra Madre Occidental, Sierra Madre Oriental, Transmexican Volcanic Belt, Sierra Madre del Sur, and Chiapas. Within this transition zone, at least four cenocrons have been identified: Paleoamerican, Nearctic, Montane Mesoamerican, and Tropical Mesoamerican. Future studies should continue refining the identification of cenocrons and the reconstruction of a geobiotic scenario, as well as integrating ecological biogeographic studies, to allow a more complete understanding of the patterns and processes that have caused the biotic complexity of this transition zone.


The demand for natural refrigerants is growing in commercial refrigeration systems. In the recent years, carbon dioxide has increased its market share in the field of commercial refrigeration and has proven to be a viable solution for the replacement of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) systems. This success is mainly due to the ongoing technological evolution of carbon dioxide refrigeration systems. In the present paper, a CO2 commercial refrigeration unit serving a supermarket located in Northern Italy is presented. The unit consists of a booster compressor rack with parallel compression, with ten compressors arranged to provide around 20 kW cooling capacity at low temperature and 90 kW cooling capacity at medium temperature. Four out of ten compressors are arranged in parallel. The installation, in addition to the cooling load, provides all the thermal functions in one unit: it integrates a heat exchanger for the air conditioning and the possibility of two stage heat recovery, for sanitary hot water production and for space heating. The refrigeration unit is equipped with pressure and temperature sensors, power consumption and load analysers for the compressors. A computer model has been developed to evaluate the acquired data of the system and to analyse the key parameters. The preliminary results from the monitoring of this unit are presented in this paper and used to calibrate the model of the system. Afterwards, simulations have been performed at variable operating conditions in a cold month to evaluate the performance of the unit. The results of the model have been compared to an independent set of monitoring data.


The Impact of Affect on Neural Mechanisms Underlying Orientation Perception by Michelle L. Fowler Advisor: Andrea Li, PhD The underlying mechanisms used to process 2D visual information to form a unified 3D percept of the world remain largely unknown. Previous work in our lab has shown that accurate 3D perception of textured surfaces depends on the presence of specific patterns of orientation flows in the retinal image. Recent research has shown that affective state may influence the visual perception of oriented patterns. Relative to neutral face stimuli, fearful face stimuli have been shown to increase sensitivity to orientation of low spatial frequency patterns and decrease sensitivity to orientation of high spatial frequency patterns. How affective state influences the perception of orientation as used in more complex patterns and in patterns that convey 3D shape, which is processed higher in the visual pathway, is currently not known. Using the Radboud face database, we examined the effects of affective fear versus neutral face primes on orientation sensitivity using grating and plaid stimuli of low (2cpd) and high (4cpd) spatial frequency, and on 3D curvature sensitivity using images of 3D surfaces textured with 2cpd and 4cpd gratings. In Experiment One, we examined the role of fear on 2D orientation sensitivity of tilted gratings and plaid stimuli at both low and high spatial frequencies. Results replicated previous research showing increased orientation sensitivity to low frequency patterns and decreased orientation sensitivity to high frequency patterns; however, our results limit this finding as orientationspecific to vertically oriented stimuli only. Therefore, differences in tilt thresholds for spatial v frequency were shown to be dependent on orientation information contained within the pattern. In Experiment Two, we investigated the role of fear on 3D shape perception for surfaces slanted and corrugated in depth patterned with low and high frequency gratings. Results indicate that differences in the affective influence of orientation sensitivity for each spatial frequency were specific to processing area along the visual pathway. For 2D images conveying 3D shape, fear diminished, rather than increased, sensitivity for the low spatial frequency condition. However, for slanted surfaces, results indicated affective influence per spatial frequency for direction of slant. For corrugated surfaces, affective influence was found to be orientation specific for vertically corrugated stimuli patterned with horizontal gratings but was not found to have differential effects on spatial frequency. Therefore, affect may differentially influence visual processing of spatial frequency on orientation at multiple areas along the pathway. In Experiment Three, we assessed the contributions of the presence of a face prime, paradigm, and ordering effects on our results from Experiment One. Results confirm the robust nature of the affective influence of fear on the relationship between spatial frequency and orientation, as differences were not shown to be a result of no face primes, paradigm differences, or ordering effects. Taken together, our results indicate that the top-down modulation of affect differentially influences the saliency of spatial frequency information for orientation processing differently along multiple areas of the visual pathway.


Microbiology![Figure][1]

Helicobacter pylori follow a urea trail to the relative safety of the gut epithelium

PHOTO: SPL/SCIENCE SOURCE

Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers and is linked to gastric cancer. How does this microbe survive in the destructive environment of the stomach? Huang et al. looked at how H. pylori manages to make its way to the gastric epithelium, where it can reside relatively unscathed by the stomach's defenses. H. pylori express a protein chemoreceptor, TlpB, that sniffs out urea released by the gut epithelium. The bugs follow a urea trail to the epithelium and simultaneously degrade the urea to generate ammonia and bicarbonate, which can help to buffer the microbe from the stomach acids. The authors watched how the bacteria locate and swim toward epithelia within seconds, attracted by minute amounts of urea.

Cell Host Microbe 18 , 147 (2015).

 [1]: pending:yes


An ever-present challenge for the oral health profession is to reduce the extent of oral disease among racial and ethnic minority populations. Adding to this complex dilemma is the linkage between oral health and systemic health. We describe enhanced cultural competency, in the context of individual cultural beliefs, values, language, practice, and health behaviors, among dental professionals, as one approach to meeting the dental care needs of the underserved. An overview and examples of teaching methods used by University of Florida dental educators to enhance student cultural competency is provided. Evidence-based evaluation results provide evidence of methodology efficacy. We conclude by describing actions that can be implemented by academic dental institutions to facilitate development of culturally competent practitioners.


Since its release in 1996, ISO 14001 has emerged as the leading voluntary system for certifying a firm's commitment to environmental management. By using India as a case example, this article examines the benefits and limitations of ISO 14001 in improving the environmental performance of firms in developing nations. By overlaying an analysis of the standard with the experiences of knowledgeable stakeholders in India, we examine (a) possible motivations driving Indian firms to pursue ISO 14001 certification, (b) the value of ISO 14001 certification in encouraging firms to improve their environmental performance, and (c) the potential role of ISO 14001 as a regulatory tool. In the end, we conclude that the value of ISO 14001 certification is intimately connected to the quality of the certification process as well as the effectiveness of the local regulatory system. Furthermore, its main value appears to lie in the positive effects associated with a well-implemented environmental management system, which improves a firm's ability to comply with environmental regulations consistently and efficiently over the long term.


Metabarcoding of marine environmental DNA (eDNA), the DNA suspended in seawater originating from tissue, cells, or extracellular DNA, offers the opportunity to survey the biological composition of communities across multiple trophic levels from a non-invasive seawater sample. Here we compare results of eDNA metabarcoding of multiple trophic levels from the same seawater samples collected from a kelp forest in Monterey Bay, California in order to establish methods for future cross-trophic level eDNA analysis. Triplicate 1 L water samples were filtered using five different 47 mm diameter membrane filters (PVDF, PES, GFF, PCTE, and NC) and DNA was extracted from triplicates of each filter-type using three widely-used extraction methods (the DNeasy Blood and Tissue kit, the MoBio PowerWater DNA Isolation kit, and standard phenol/chloroform methods) resulting in 45 individual eDNA samples prepared with 15 workflow combinations. Each DNA extract was amplified using PCR primers for the 16S rRNA gene (microorganisms; Bacteria and Archaea), 18S rRNA gene (phytoplankton), and the 12S rRNA gene (vertebrates) genes, and PCR products were sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq platform. The richness and community composition of microbial, phytoplankton, and vertebrate OTUs were not significantly different between any of the 0.2 μm pore-size filter types extracted with the DNeasy or MoBio kits. However, phenol/chloroform extraction resulted in significantly different community structures. This study provides insight into multiple choices for extraction and filtration methods to use eDNA metabarcoding for biodiversity assessment of multiple trophic levels from a single sample. We recommend any combination of either DNeasy or MoBio with PES, PCTE, PVDF, or NC filters for a cross trophic level comparison.


The 16 publications included in this thesis are the results of a programme of research between 1993 and 2009 into the labour market and labour market-related impacts of the large-scale spatially concentrated losses of industrial jobs in Great Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s. The British conventional wisdom has been that labour market recovery was relatively quick, and that the effects were not particularly profound. Continuing labour market distress was mainly ascribed to labour 'supply-side' factors rather than to locally deficient labour demand. The research challenges these views. It draws particularly on the British Keynesian tradition, and on authors such as J. F. Kain, John Kasarda and William Julius Wilson from the USA, which experienced similar job losses around a decade earlier. Issues covered include the statistical measurement and spatial variation of unemployment and related economic disadvantage, unemployment disguised as sickness, long-term unemployment, migration and lone parenthood, and there is also analysis of policies on employment and social inclusion.

The research shows that 'Travel-to-Work Areas' (TTWAs) do not correctly identify the employment 'fields' of residents of areas of high unemployment. They have biased errors due to imbalance between commuting inflows and outflows, and obscure the main variation in unemployment on the urban-rural dimension. Three papers on Incapacity Benefit (IB) analyse the dynamics of change in the stock of claimants, investigating the roles played by health status and labour market conditions. The most recent of these papers examines whether the striking fall in IB claims in Glasgow and other former industrial areas in 2003-08 was the result of official interventions or of improving labour market conditions, concluding that it was mainly the latter.

A key 'supply-side' assumption was that being unemployed in itself makes people less 'employable' – the theory of 'state-dependence'. The paper on long-term unemployment radically challenges this interpretation. It points out that the literature on the relationship between long-term and short-term unemployment has generally failed to consider the appropriate time-lags or the behaviour of the standard measure of long-term unemployment. It shows that the phenomenon which the theory of state-dependence purports to explain does not occur to any significant extent.

Outmigration and housing abandonment are significant effects of local job loss. The paper on housing abandonment demonstrates a statistical relationship across England in 1997 between social housing surplus and 'real unemployment', while a further paper challenges the view that there was no longer a deficiency of demand for labour in Glasgow and the Clyde Valley in the 1990s by investigating migration patterns. It demonstrates that net flows between individual Scottish areas and the rest of the UK were to a substantial extent determined by changes in labour demand. A new finding is that little adjustment to employment change occurs through migration within Scotland.

The large increase in lone parenthood in Great Britain since the 1960s has been strongly correlated across areas with male worklessness. The US literature suggested that this relationship is causal, and this thesis is investigated in two papers. The earlier of these was the first comprehensive published application of this interpretation to the modern British case. A further paper concludes that falling male employment accounted for around half the rise in lone parenthood in Great Britain in 1971-2001.

Two of the papers present a comprehensive picture of the geographical distributions of the different groups of disadvantaged people in the labour market, showing that they all conform to a similar pattern which in turn is related to deficient labour demand.


SUMMARY 1. The spatial patterns of groundwater biodiversity in Europe remain poorly known, yet their knowledge is essential to understand local variation in groundwater assemblages and to develop sound conservation policies. We explore here the broad-scale distribution of groundwater biodiversity across Europe, focussing on obligate subterranean species. 2. We compiled published distributional data of obligate subterranean aquatic taxa for six European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain), and conducted a detailed biological survey of six regions (one in Belgium, two in France, one in Italy, one in Slovenia and one in Spain). Based on this data set, we mapped spatial patterns of biodiversity in Europe on a cell grid with 0.2 · 0.2 � resolution. 3. As of mid-2006, the total number of described stygobiotic species in the six countries was 930 and the total number of genera with at least one described stygobiotic species was 191. The total number of sampling sites where at least one stygobiont had been collected was 4709, distributed in 1228 of the 4668 grid cells covering the study area. 4. Groundwater stygobiotic biodiversity was dominated by Crustacea with 757 species in 122 genera. Insects were represented by only two species of a single genus of dytiscid beetles restricted to south-eastern France. 5. The geographic distribution of stygobionts was extremely heterogeneous. Stygobionts were recorded in 26% of the 4668 grid cells and only 33 cells had more than 20 stygobiotic species. These 33 'hot-cells' of groundwater species richness clustered in seven hotspots. 6. Endemicity was very high, with 43% of the total number of stygobiotic species restricted to a single cell, i.e. <500 km 2 . 7. Hotspots defined by rarity, number of genera, number of genera with only one species known in Europe, or number of monospecific genera differed markedly in ranking from those based on species richness. However, a core of four hotspots emerged in all cases: one stretching across Slovenia and northeastern Italy, one in the French Pyrenees, one in the


Impurity segregation at grain boundaries in polycrystalline alloys is known to have a tremendous impact on the material properties such as grain boundary mobility, cohesion... But direct measurement of grain boundary chemistry is quite complex and there are few results concerning polycrystals. In this paper we present an indirect method to measure segregationmisorientation dependence on polycrystalline Ni-S alloys using 3D reconstruction of etch grooves. Samples of Ni-S alloy (1 ppm at) have been cold rolled at respectively 0.3 and 0.9 Von Mises equivalent strain and then annealed at 455°C to promote recrystallization. Then they have been etched near the transpassive potential to form etch grooves, whose geometry depends on the sulfur segregation level. It is found that the sulfur concentration at grain boundary decreases significantly when the driving force for grain boundary migration (i.e. the initial strain) increases, as predicted by solute drag theory.


Present work has been conducted on Kothacheruvu (Tank) encircling the tomb of kotha Cheruvu in Nellore District. The Pond water is mainly used for bathing, washing of clothes and for immersion of idols besides regular inflow of domestic waste water. The investigation on physico chemical characteristics at different sites revealed its alkaline nature, suitable for aqua culture practices. Significant site variations have been recorded due to the interference of Sewage and agricultural wastes. The physico-chemical and biological characteristics of the kotha cheruvu (Tank) reveal degrading condition of the ambient water. Which can be felt on account of its obnoxious smell and greenish appearance. The impact of high anthropogenic pressure as well as favorable environmental factors like temperature. Also the impact of global warming on zooplankton present in water bodies situated at Kotha Cheruvu (Tank) discussed.


The ability to design and formulate mAbs to minimize attractive interactions at high concentrations is important for protein processing, stability, and administration, particularly in subcutaneous delivery, where high viscosities are often challenging. The strength of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) of an IgG1 and IgG4 monoclonal antibody (mAb) from low to high concentration was determined by static light scattering (SLS) and used to understand viscosity data. The PPI were tuned using NaCl and five organic ionic co-solutes. The PPI strength was quantified by the normalized structure factor S(0)/ S(0)HS and Kirkwood-Buff integral G22/ G22,HS (HS = hard sphere) determined from the SLS data and also by fits with (1) a spherical Yukawa potential and (2) an interacting hard sphere (IHS) model, which describes attraction in terms of hypothetical oligomers. The IHS model was better able to capture the scattering behavior of the more strongly interacting systems (mAb and/or co-solute) than the spherical Yukawa potential. For each descriptor of PPI, linear correlations were obtained between the viscosity at high concentration (200 mg/mL) and the interaction strengths evaluated both at low (20 mg/mL) and high concentrations (200 mg/mL) for a given mAb. However, the only parameter that provided a correlation across both mAbs was the oligomer mass ratio ( moligomer/ mmonomer+dimer) from the IHS model, indicating the importance of self-association (in addition to the direct influence of the attractive PPI) on the viscosity.


This collection focuses on the ways in which policy relating to professional development and professional learning in teacher education is changing across Europe. The chapters examine how policies change with time and with changes in personnel at various levels in the political or professional spectrum. It also highlights the continued diversity of the education systems of Europe, despite moves towards economic and social integration. A common theme running through the chapters is an understanding of the importance of professional development and professional learning of educators in the success and effective operation of the education systems of the countries concerned.


Hydrogen peroxide, povidone-iodine, and chlorhexidine are antiseptics that are commonly added to irrigants to either prevent or treat infection. There are little clinical data available that demonstrate efficacy of adding antiseptics to irrigants in the treatment of periprosthetic joint infection after biofilm establishment. The objective of the study was to assess the bactericidal activity of the antiseptics on S. aureus planktonic and biofilm. For planktonic irrigation, S. aureus was exposed to different concentrations of antiseptics. S. aureus biofilm was developed by submerging a Kirschner wire into normalized bacteria and allowing it to grow for forty-eight hours. The Kirschner wire was then treated with irrigation solutions and plated for CFU analysis. Hydrogen peroxide, povidone-iodine, and chlorhexidine were bactericidal against planktonic bacteria with over a 3 log reduction (p < 0.0001). Unlike cefazolin, the antiseptics were not bactericidal (less than 3 log reduction) against biofilm bacteria but did have a statistical reduction in biofilm as compared to the initial time point (p < 0.0001). As compared to cefazolin treatment alone, the addition of hydrogen peroxide or povidone-iodine to cefazolin treatment only additionally reduced the biofilm burden by less than 1 log. The antiseptics demonstrated bactericidal properties with planktonic S. aureus; however, when used to irrigate S. aureus biofilms, these antiseptics were unable to decrease biofilm mass below a 3 log reduction, suggesting that S. aureus biofilm has a tolerance to antiseptics. This information should be considered when considering antibiotic tolerance in established S. aureus biofilm treatment.


Sensor censoring has been introduced for reduced communication rate in a decentralized detection system where decisions made at peripheral nodes need to be communicated to a fusion center. In this letter, the fusion of decisions from censoring sensors transmitted over wireless fading channels is investigated. The knowledge of fading channels, either in the form of instantaneous channel envelopes or the fading statistics, is integrated in the optimum and suboptimum fusion rule design. The sensor censoring and the ensuing fusion rule design have two major advantages compared with the previous work. 1) Communication overhead is dramatically reduced. 2) It allows incoherent detection, hence, the phase information of transmission channels is no longer required. As such, it is particularly suitable for wireless sensor network applications with severe resource constraints.


A method for the analysis of the steady state vibration of damped Timoshenko beams is presented. The usual four differential equations of the Timoshenko Theory are increased to eight differential equations with the addition of damping in the form of complex modulii. These equations are solved by numerical integration and, therefore, no restrictions need be placed on the longitudinal variation of the beam cross-section or the forcing function. The solution gives the beam response at all values of the forcing frequency and polar-plots are used for the determination of the resonant frequencies. To illustrate the wide applicability of the method the behavior of three beams, typical of those encountered in practice, is studied. The results of these examples show the importance of considering shear deformation when determining resonant frequencies and the great effect that the damping coefficient has on the magnitude of the response at resonance.


Background and Hypothesis:
There has been a shift in focus toward metabolic factors in the study of neurodegenerative disorders as their importance has been highlighted by recent discoveries involving disruption of shared mechanisms. Alzheimer disease (AD) and Parkinson disease (PD) share similar metabolic risk factors. We hypothesize that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) will be most associated with AD, while gastrointestinal (GI) problems will be most associated with PD; however, both AD and PD will have greater associations with GI problems and T2DM relative to control.
Project Methods:
This retrospective chart review included three groups: AD, PD, and control. All data were obtained from neurology clinics in Parkview Health's electronic medical record (EMR). ICD-10 codes identified 65+ year old patients who had visited a clinic within the last year and had a diagnosis of either AD, PD, or non-neurodegenerative symptoms (control): neuropathy, headaches, or seizures. ANOVA and chi-square tests were performed for group analyses, and multiple regression analyses were performed between AD and PD disease severity and various metabolic predictors (e.g., HbA1c, total cholesterol).
Results:
This study currently consists of a protocol. Data collection and analysis will take place between May 2021 and August 2022.
Potential Impact:
This study aims to fully characterize certain metabolic disruptions with AD and PD by analyzing a ten-year span of clinical data in the same patient population; this may reveal risk factors that are amenable to clinical interventions. This may also facilitate the understanding of Lewy body dementia, a disorder that contains elements of both AD and PD. The main metabolic elements explored in this study are those concerning GI problems (e.g., constipation) and T2DM (e.g., elevated HbA1c). These associations will form the basis of a follow-up study that investigates the potential mechanisms linking these disruptions with pathogenesis of either AD or PD.


Application to the soil of the insecticide dimethoate had no effect on the growth of soybean colonized by the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus Glomus mosseae and by the indigenous AM fungus. The application of the recommended concentration of dimethoate decreased the percentage of colonization of soybean by the indigenous AM population, but no significant effect was observed on the colonization of soybean inoculated with G. mosseae. The insecticide did not affect the germination of G. mosseae spores; however, 0.5 mg/l of dimethoate increased the germination of Gigaspora roseae and 5 mg/l of dimethoate decreased the germination of Scutellospora castaneae spores.


This paper investigates the effect of spindle clamping force on the static and dynamic characteristics of the spindle-tooling system through measuring the frequency response function of the tool end point in variable spindle clamping force. The research shows that the limited static stiffness increases accordingly and normal static stiffness changes little as the spindle champing force increases. The high spindle clamping force leads to reduce the modal damping of the spindle-tooling system while the natural frequency varies slight. The analyses of process stability indicates that the low spindle clamping force can improves the process stability because of the higher damping in some clamping force range.


The length of the dry period in commercial dairy production is under close scrutiny. While the main concern is the composition and volume of milk produced, the evaluation of colostrum quality under these new paradigms has suggested a decline in IgG concentrations, while some reports indicate no change. Colostrum quality has been defined as an adequate concentration (>50 mg/ml) of immunoglobulin in the secretions to provide the newborn with maximal disease resistance. We investigated the appearance of IgG in mammary pre- and post partum secretions in cows without a dry period (continuously milked, Dry0) and compared the secretions with cows that experienced a dry period of 60 d (Dry60). Blood was collected during the experimental period and plasma analysed for progesterone (P4) and prolactin (Prl). Approximately −6 d relative to parturition, the Dry0 animals exhibited increased concentration of IgG in their secretions to an average of ∼35 mg/ml that remained rather constant through subsequent pregnancy and following parturition. Dry0 cows were producing an average IgG concentration in parturition colostrum of 44·2±17·6 mg/ml that was not different than that of controls (66·86±16·8 mg/ml). However, Dry0 cows exhibited high variation, different peak times (day) of IgG concentration including times that occurred both pre and post parturition. IgG mass of the Dry0 cows remained rather constant pre- and post partum and did not show the same declining mass following parturition that was shown for the Dry60 cows. The change in plasma P4 and Prl were shown to have no timing effect on colostrum IgG concentration.


While the Israelis and the Palestinians continue to hammer out a permanent peace agreement, another serious conflict is brewing in Israel: the ideological conflict between Israel's ultra-orthodox Jewish population and secular Israelis. While most Jews in Israel are unapologetically secular, there is a vocal ultra-orthodox minority--known in Israel as the Haredim (God-fearing)--a group which is becoming increasingly involved in the political and social affairs of the state, creating a conspicuous rift within the government. The heart of the Haredi movement is found in Me'a She'arim. The controversy generated by this small neighborhood in Jerusalem is a microcosm of the greater conflict that has become prominent in Israeli society. The Haredi community in Me'a She'arim is older than the nation itself. Primarily Eastern European Jews, the Haredim follow a strict interpretation of traditional Talmudic law. This includes rigidly defined gender roles, a comprehensive observance of the Sabbath, and a long history of anti-Zionism, all of which are in conflict with the values of the majority of Israelis. "Modesty squads" have patrolled Me'a She'arim for years, driving out women who dress provocatively or people who violate the specific norms of the Haredim. The squads sometimes go so far as to spit on and beat transgressors. The gate surrounding Me'a She'arim is a stark reminder of the ideological divide that has come to define religious life in Israel. The conflict between secular Israelis and the ultra-religious Haredim is not new. Indeed, Haredi criticism of the state of Israel has been widespread since the nation's independence in 1948. This criticism is rooted in the belief that a Jewish state has no legitimacy until the arrival of the Messiah. Because the independence movement of 1948 was largely secular, some ultra-religious consider the state fundamentally sacrilegious. "Jews beware!" warned posters that appeared in the streets of Me'a She'arim during a recent election. "If you put a ballot in the box, you are putting the Knesset above the Torah! We will die before we commit such an act." This extremism has been mirrored in other infamous incidents, including attacks on female worshippers at the Wailing Wall and stone-throwing at cars driving around Me'a She'arim on Saturdays (a violation of strict observance of the Jewish Sabbath). Some members of the Haredi community of Me'a She'arim have even been vocal supporters of terrorist activities, even writing letters to Arab leaders calling for assistance in the destruction of the Israeli state. …


Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS) is a rare autosomal recessive disease that displays genetic heterogeneity; there are 9 known subtypes. HPS is characterized by oculocutaneous albinism, a platelet storage pool deficiency and resultant bleeding diathesis, and lysosomal accumulation of ceroid lipofuscin. Patients with HPS, specifically those with the genotypes HPS-1, HPS-2, or HPS-4, are predisposed to interstitial lung disease. In addition, some patients with HPS develop granulomatous colitis. Optimal health care requires a thorough knowledge of the unique health risks and functional limitations associated with this syndrome.


Although previous research indicates that Japanese speakers' second language (L2) perception and production of English /ɹ/ may improve with increased L2 experience, relatively little is known about the fine phonetic details of their /ɹ/ productions, especially during the early phase of L2 speech learning. This cross-sectional study examined acoustic properties of word-initial /ɹ/ from 60 Japanese learners with a length of residence of between one month and one year in Canada. Their performance was compared to that of 15 native speakers of English and 15 low-proficiency Japanese learners of English. Formant frequencies (F2 and F3) and F1 transition durations were evaluated under three task conditions—word reading, sentence reading, and timed picture description. Learners with as little as two to three months of residence demonstrated target-like F2 frequencies. In addition, increased LOR was predictive of more target-like transition durations. Although the learners showed some improvement in F3 as a function of LOR, they did so mainly at a controlled level of speech production. The findings suggest that during the early phase of L2 segmental development, production accuracy is task-dependent and is influenced by the availability of L1 phonetic cues for redeployment in L2.


Range revegetation research has been dominated by empirical studies that provide some information about what works or does not work under a given set of conditions, but tell us little or nothing about the underlying ecological processes. Research has emphasized the establishment of vigorous exotic grasses on specific sites rather than the establishment of persistent, biologically diverse plant communities. A more mechanistic research approach is needed to better understand factors governing germination, seedling establishment, and plant community development in natural and synthetic systems to guide revegetation toward biological diversity. This paper evaluates selected aspects of the present knowledge of revegetation science on arid and semiarid lands, and attempts to identify areas for future research direction. Specific concepts and aspects of succession and plant community development, such as seedbed ecology, temporal and spatial patterns of resource availability and use, species life history traits, and species interactions are important areas of research. Continuous measurement of detailed environmental and biological data at the appropriate scale (down to the size of small seeds) will allow development of mechanistic models which can be used to predict plant establishment and community development for different environmental conditions.


Deep learning (DL) advances state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL), by incorporating deep neural networks in learning representations from the input to RL. However, the conventional deep neural network architecture is limited in learning representations for multi-task RL (MT-RL), as multiple tasks can refer to different kinds of representations. In this paper, we thus propose a novel deep neural network architecture, namely generalization tower network (GTN), which can achieve MT-RL within a single learned model. Specifically, the architecture of GTN is composed of both horizontal and vertical streams. In our GTN architecture, horizontal streams are used to learn representation shared in similar tasks. In contrast, the vertical streams are introduced to be more suitable for handling diverse tasks, which encodes hierarchical shared knowledge of these tasks. The effectiveness of the introduced vertical stream is validated by experimental results. Experimental results further verify that our GTN architecture is able to advance the state-of-the-art MT-RL, via being tested on 51 Atari games.


Return of Lieut. Hamilton K. Redway which details the present and absent men of Company "F" First Veteran regiment of the New York Cavalry for the month of September in the year of 1864. The return notes enlisted men on "extra or daily duty," commissioned officers present or absent, and any alterations made to the company for this particular month. This document was created while Redway was stationed at Kelly's Creek in West Virginia.


Recent developments in time series analysis allow proper modelling of nonlinearities in economic and financial variables. A growing body of research was dedicated to investigation of potential nonlinearities in conditional mean of many economic and financial variables, mainly concentrating in developed economies. However, nonlinearities in financial variables in developing economies have not been fully examined yet. In this article we investigate potential nonlinearity and cyclical behaviour of stock returns in Europe's two largest emerging stock markets, mainly in the Greek and Turkish stock markets. Specifically, we use STAR family models, which allow to model nonlinearities in the conditional mean, for modelling monthly returns on stock exchange indices of the Athens Stock Exchange and Istanbul Stock Exchange. Although we find no nonlinearity in conditional variance, we do find strong evidence in favour of nonlinear adjustment of stock returns. It is found that allowing for nonlinearity in conditional mean results in a superior model and provides good out-of-sample forecasts, which contradicts to efficient market hypothesis.


While most nucleic acid (NA)-lipid or NA-polymer complexes are studied in solution, there is growing interest in understanding their properties as naturally derived, biodegradable, biocompatible, solid-state materials with tailorable properties influenced by environmental parameters. Therapeutic and cell programming applications comprise an important new research field, particularly in gene transfection and silencing using plasmid DNA and siRNA with targeted local delivery for use in cell culture. Dried solid films have lower nuclease degradation, fewer barriers to long term storage, and allow localized delivery by direct implantation in combination with controlled release and dosage adjustment. In contrast to particulate complexes or other methods of drug delivery which are prepared and must remain in solution, films can regain their biological activity once wetted. However our understanding of the types of cationic agents that predictably form self-standing films with NA is still limited. The self-assembly and structural, physical, and chemical properties of these materials are of key importance to maintaining their activity. We therefore discuss the material properties of NA-lipid and NA-polymer films as the focus of this article. Recent studies have indicated that there is also growing interest in NA films beyond bioengineering and medical applications in the fields of nano- and optoelectronics. We survey the self-assembly of solid-state materials composed of NA complexed with lipids, surfactants, or polymers, and summarize investigations of nanoscopic assembly, structure, optical, and macroscopic material properties. We further evaluate the current and future applications of NA-lipid and NA-polymer films and the benefits and drawbacks of each type.


Background It has been hypothesized that genetic alteration at the cellular level may have a significant effect on cellular mechanisms controlling the proliferation and apoptosis of Langerhans cells (LCs). Methods We examined whether p16 protein expression can be used to predict the outcome of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). Archival paraffin blocks from children diagnosed with LCH and followed at the Asan Medical Center and Chungnam National University Hospital between March 1998 and February 2008 were studied. Results Slides were stained with p16 antibody and evaluated semi-quantitatively using the following scale: negative, no staining; ±, weakly positive; 1+, staining similar to lymphocytes surrounding the LCs; 2+, stronger staining than lymphocytes; 3+, much stronger staining than lymphocytes. Negative and ± groups were assigned to a lower expression group (LEG) and the 1+, 2+, and 3+ groups were assigned to a higher expression group (HEG). The median age of the 51 patients (24 girls, 27 boys) was 49 (range, 0.6-178) months, and LCH was diagnosed based on CD1a positivity. p16 protein was expressed to varying degrees in all but one specimen. There was a greater tendency toward multisystem disease, risk organ involvement, and relapse in the HEG than in the LEG. Conclusion The p16 protein may have a significant effect on cellular mechanisms controlling the proliferation and apoptosis of LCs, and thus may influence the clinical outcome and prognosis of LCH.


This paper presents several state space reductions for verifying non-trivial asynchronous designs with a compositional minimization approach. These reductions result in a reduced model that contains the exact set of observably equivalent behavior. Therefore no false counter-examples are produced at the end of verification. The experimental results show good scale-up of compositional minimization using these reductions on a number of asynchronous designs.


Adjusting for covariates is important in the study of the performance of diagnostic tests. In this manuscript, the simultaneous comparison of the sensitivities and specificities of two binary diagnostic tests is studied when discrete covariates are observed in all of the individuals in the sample. Four methods are presented to simultaneously compare the two sensitivities and the two specificities: a global hypothesis test and three other methods based on individual comparisons. The maximum likelihood method was applied to adjust the overall estimators of sensitivities and specificities. Simulation experiments were carried out to study the asymptotic behaviors of the four proposed methods when the covariate is binary, giving general rules of application. The results were applied to a real example.


In this study, a stochastic method was applied to investigate if there exists a statistical correlation between values of undrained shear strength at various vertical distances along Golden Horn. Therefore, the undrained shear strength values measured by field vane shear tests at different depths were used to determine the depth dependent variation of the mean value and standard deviation. Futhermore, autocorrelation functions were defined to describe the correlation between values of cu at different depths. The study showed that the applied method might provide a statistical range to estimate the undrained shear strength value at depths where no measurements are undertaken.


The paper present a solution for the economic activity evolution diagnostic and prediction by means of a set of indicators. Starting from the indicators set, there is defined a measure on the patterns set, measure representing a scalar value that characterizes the activity analyzed at each time moment. A pattern is defined by the values of the indicators set at a given time. Over the classes set obtained by means of the classification and recognition techniques is defined a relation that allows the representation of the evolution from negative evolution towards positive evolution. For the diagnostic and prediction the following tools are used: pattern recognition and multilayer perceptron implemented in the REFORME software written by the author and the results of the experiment obtained with this software for macroeconomic diagnostic and prediction during the years 2005-2012 for diagnostic and 2013-2014 for prediction. Keywords: pattern recognition, neural network, multilayer perceptron, indicators, diagnostic, prediction.


This paper deals with the trajectory estimation of a monocular calibrated camera evolving in a large unknown environment, also known as monocular visual simultaneous localization and mapping. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) We develop a new formalism that builds upon the so called Known Rotation Problem to robustly estimate submaps (parts of the camera trajectory and the unknown environment). 2) In order to obtain a globally consistent map (up to a scale factor), we propose a novel loopy belief propagation algorithm that is able to efficiently align a large number of submaps. Our approach builds a graph of relative 3D similarities (computed between the submaps) and estimates the global 3D similarities by passing messages through a super graph until convergence. 3) To render the whole framework more robust, we also propose a simple and efficient outlier removal algorithm that detects outliers in the graph of relative 3D similarities. We extensively demonstrate, on the TUM and KITTI benchmarks as well as on other challenging video sequences, that the proposed method outperforms the state of the art algorithms.


Macrophages (MΦs) in their pro-inflammatory state (M1) suppress tumour growth, while tumour-associated MΦs (TAMs) can promote tumour progression. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that targeted delivery of the immune activator poly(I:C) in aspherical silica microrods (µRs) can repolarize TAMs into M1-like cells. µRs (10 µm × 3 µm) were manufactured from silica nanoparticles and stabilized with dextran sulphate and polyethyleneimine. The THP-1 cell line, differentiated into MΦs, and primary human monocyte-derived MΦs (HMDMs) were treated with tumour-cell-conditioned medium (A549), but only HMDMs could be polarized towards TAMs. Flow cytometry and microscopy revealed elevated uptake of µRs by TAMs compared to non-polarized HMDMs. Flow cytometry and qPCR studies on polarization markers showed desirable effects of poly(I:C)-loaded MPs towards an M1 polarization. However, unloaded µRs also showed distinct actions, which were not induced by bacterial contaminations. Reporter cell assays showed that µRs induce the secretion of the inflammatory cytokine IL-1β. Macrophages from Nlrp3 knockout mice showed that µRs in concentrations as low as 0.5 µR per cell can activate the inflammasome and induce cell death. In conclusion, our data show that µRs, even if unloaded, can induce inflammasome activation and cell death in low concentrations.


Vascular anomalies are divided into tumours and malformations. Haemangiomas are the most frequent amongst the former. Not normally present at birth, except in a premonitory form, they grow for 10-12 months due to hyperplasia, to subsequently undergo a progressive involution for a period that might last from ten to twelve years. They have an incidence of up to 12% in newborns; they are more common amongst girls; and are divided into superficial, deep and compound. Congenital haemangiomas and those that do not undergo involution are considered to be rare entities.
Vascular malformations, with a lower incidence than haemangiomas, are always present at birth, they grow by hypertrophy and never undergo involution. According to the classification of the ISSVA, vascular malformations are divided - depending on the vessel affected - into capillary or venular (port-wine stain), venous, lymphatic, arteriovenous and combined or complex. Each of these has certain defining clinical and haemodynamic peculiarities. Within the final group are included some with a low flow, such as the Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome (venous and lymphatic venular vascular malformation associated with the muscular-skeletal hypertrophy of an extremity), and others with a high flow, such as the Parkes-Weber syndrome.


Abstract The Khayrgas Cave in Yakutia (eastern Siberia) is one of the most important Upper Paleolithic sites in northern Asia, and has been the subject of extensive 14C dating and study of mammal bones. The upper part of the cave sequence (Layers 2–4) dates to the Holocene (~4100–8200 BP), and the lower part (Layers 5–7) to the Late Pleistocene (~13,100–21,500 BP). In Layers 2–4, only extant animal species are known; ecologically they belong to a forest-type ecosystem. In Layers 5–7, several extinct species were identified, and the environment at that time corresponded to open and semi-open ecosystems. The Khayrgas Cave provides rare but reliable evidence of human occupation in the deep continental region of eastern Siberia at the Last Glacial Maximum, ~20,700–21,500 BP.


Objectives: To analyse the cases of falsely positive adnexal tumours suspected of malignancy in the application of the International Ovarian Tumour Analysis (IOTA) ADNEX, analysing the factors involved in the erroneous suspicion. Methods: Retrospective study conducted from March 2017 to March 2019 in the specific gynecological ultrasound unit of a gynecological oncology reference centre, where all cases of adnexal tumour which are suspected of malignancy were analysed. The scans were performed by the same sonographer expert, with IOTA certification. We analysed those cases considered high risk of malignancy (greater than 20%) in which the intraoperative pathological anatomy was benign, comparing them with those tumours considered low risk that were true negative, using the chi square test. Results: 274 women were included in the study period. 60% (166) who were classified as low-risk tumours: 97% (84) pathological anatomy confirmed the findings and 3 (3%) were malignant. 39% (108) were classified as high-risk tumours, which was confirmed in 68% (72) of the cases and 33 (31%) were benign. Analysing these 33 benign tumours, the average age was 60 years. When comparing false positives and true negatives, we observed an elevation of the Ca125 marker in 36% vs 7.2% (OR 7.2, p = 0.000); Regarding echogenicity, we observed 54% of solid tumours between false positives and 15% of true negatives (OR 6.6, p = 0.000), being 33% vs 1.2% in the case of solid multilocular. A Doppler score equal to or greater than 2 was found in 70% of the FP with respect to 20 of the VN (OR 8.7, p = 0.000). The most frequent resulting histological type was ovarian fibroma (39%). Conclusions: In our specific gynecological ultrasound unit, reference cancer centre, the IOTA ADNEX application presents 31% false-positive results, at the expense of the diagnosis of solid tumours, with elevation of Ca125 and vascularised tumours in postmenopausal patients.


The SEM observation on a conch's shell shows that the shell is a kind of laminated bioceramic composite composed of aragonite layers and organic matrix. Each aragonite layer is parallel with the surface of the shell and consists of many thin aragonite sheets. These aragonite sheets are perpendicular to the layer where they are located. The observation also shows that the orientations of the sheets in different layers are different and these aragonite sheets compose various layups. A kind of lambdoidal layup is found. The maximum pullout force of the lambdoidal layup is analyzed based on its representative model. The result shows that the lambdoidal layup can markedly increase the pullout force of the layup and improve the fracture toughness of the shell.


Rhyolitic to trachyandesitic pyroclastic deposits exposed in three canyons (La Mosca, San Mateo, and Water) around the Mt. Taylor edifice provide insight into early eruption processes at this composite volcano. Measured sections coupled with geochemical analysis of glass allow correlations between the canyon sections and, for some deposits, sources areas to be determined. A 4 m thick pyroclastic surge and ashfall deposit at the base of the La Mosca Canyon section, dated at 3.26±0.04 Ma, correlates chemically and chronologically with 3.3 Ma Grants Ridge high silica rhyolitic deposits sourced 15 km southwest of Mt. Taylor. Overlying this deposit is a 1 m. thick rhyolitic pyroclastic surge. Both deposits are absent in the nearby San Mateo Canyon, where instead, a >28 m thick, complex sequence of rhyolite ignimbrites and pyroclastic surges is found at the base of the exposed stratigraphic section. An ignimbrite in Water Canyon is chemically similar to the upper part of the basal San Mateo pyroclastic sequence. Above these pyroclastic surge and flow deposits in San Mateo Canyon, a series of small, chemically correlated, pyroclastic fall deposits are found in San Mateo and La Mosca canyons. Two rhyolitic ashfalls (one dated to 3.08±0.2 Ma), and a thin, dark-colored trachyandesite fall deposit are present. The upper of the two rhyolitic ashfalls is also found in Water Canyon. Above this sequence of ashfalls, a thick (~22 m.) rhyolitic pyroclastic flow sequence is present in San Mateo canyon that chemically correlates with a thin (<1 m.) pyroclastic fall in La Mosca canyon. All these pyroclastic beds are probably sourced from sites within Mt. Taylor. The chemical trend of the pyroclastic sequences in the canyons ranges from high silica to low silica rhyolite, consistent with derivation from a single, normally zoned magma chamber. However, the presence of the trachyandesitic tephra layer in the middle of the sequence may argue instead for multiple, small magma batches. Individual pyroclastic flow/surge deposits appear to have restricted ranges, consistent with small volume, high aspect ratio events, possibly related to dome collapse in early Mt. Taylor. In contrast, pyroclastic fall deposits, although small, are more widespread, and are deposited in all three canyons, allowing correlation between the stratigraphic sections.


Medical examinations of children from 3 types of preschool educational establishments provided educational and health-promoting measures in addition to their curricula. The measures exerted a positive impact on the children's health.


Nanostructured adsorbents based on plant waste have been derived. Optimal technological parameters of process have been established. Practical application of adsorbents produced with the use of nanotechnologies gives an opportunity to improve the indices of the refining of sunflower oil and increase the extent of the purification of sewage from heavy metal ions.


Many sequential decision-making systems leverage data collected using prior policies to propose a new policy. For critical applications, it is important that high-confidence guarantees on the new policy's behavior are provided before deployment, to ensure that the policy will behave as desired. Prior works have studied high-confidence off-policy estimation of the expected return, however, high-confidence off-policy estimation of the variance of returns can be equally critical for high-risk applications. In this paper we tackle the previously open problem of estimating and bounding, with high confidence, the variance of returns from off-policy data.


Ad hoc networks are widely used in military and other scientific areas. With nodes which can move arbitrarily and connect to any nodes at will, it is impossible for Ad hoc network to own an fixed infrastructure. It also has a certain number of characteristics which make the security difficult. Routing is always the most significant part for any networks. One way is to transplant ordinary mechanisms in common networks with some improvement while the other way is to find some other factors such as trust to achieve the objective. This paper gives an overview about trust in MANETs and current research in trust based routing.


Resources for students in creative writing courses within Penn State's English and Communications programs. Includes links to fact-checking sources, publication opportunities, writers' organizations, and more.


In this paper, the existence and uniqueness, the stability analysis for the global solution of highly nonlinear stochastic differential equations with time-varying delay and Markovian switching are analyzed under a locally Lipschitz condition and a monotonicity condition. In order to overcome a difficulty stemming from the existence of the time-varying delay, one integral lemma is established. It should be mentioned that the time-varying delay is a bounded measurable function. By utilizing the integral inequality, the Lyapunov function and some stochastic analysis techniques, some sufficient conditions are proposed to guarantee the stability in both moment and almost sure senses for such equations, which can be also used to yield the almost surely asymptotic behavior. As a by-product, the exponential stability in \begin{document}$ p $\end{document} th \begin{document}$ (p\geq 1) $\end{document} -moment and the almost sure exponential stability are analyzed. Finally, two examples are given to show the usefulness of the results obtained.


Abstract This paper presents a study on radioactive contamination of dietary components of the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in Zhytomirske Polesie (Ukraine). Studies were conducted on two research plots in forests with similar levels of radioactive contamination, 29 ± 8 kBq/m2 - 55 ± 17 kBq/m2, in mixed coniferous forests and mixed broadleaved forests, which are the dominant forest types of the area. The highest level of radionuclide accumulation was observed in young oak seedlings. The dynamics for oak sprouts indicate that the accumulation coefficient reaches a maximum in September and August in the mixed coniferous and mixed broadleaved forests respectively. A comparison of mean values of the 137Cs accumulation coefficients in the shoots of undergrowth plants confirms that an increase in soil fertility leads to a reduction of radionuclides in plant phytomass. In the mixed broadleaved forests, average values of the coefficient of 137Cs accumulation in phytomass of blackberry was 26% and of raspberries 58% lower compared to mixed coniferous forests. The maximum contamination of phytomass was observed in August for oak, in October for aspen, and in July for birch. The highest specific activity of 137Cs in raspberry shoots occurs during the three summer months, whereas the peak in blackberry occurs from August to September. The dynamics of the specific activity of 137Cs in blueberry, cranberry and heather show an increase in radioactive contamination of phytomass towards the end of the growth period. The maximum concentration of 137Cs in shoots of heather and bilberry was recorded in October and for blueberry in August. Mushrooms in mixed coniferous forests can be ranked as follows according to the degree of 137Cs contamination: Cantharellus < Boletus edulis < Russula < Leccinum < Xerocomus badius < Paxillus involutus. In mixed broadleaved forests the ranking is Cantharellus < Boletus edulis < Russula < Xerocomus badius < Leccinum < Paxillus involutus. Within one habitat type, we observed fairly significant variations in 137Cs accumulation in fruit bodies of fungi species.


In this paper, an active-integrated leaky-wave antenna with power combining scanning capability is presented. This leaky-wave antenna with the novel perpendicular L-shape topology is integrated with a varactor-tuned high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) on the same plane. Changing the VCO frequency, we can control not only the dual-beam scanning angle but also derive the power combining effect with the sum (/spl Sigma/) or difference (/spl Delta/) radiation patterns. The power combing effect of difference mode, which is the dual-beam pattern and the sum mode pattern, which is a 3-beam pattern, with the 3rd beam located along the middle direction (45/spl deg/, 135/spl deg/) of the X and Y axes. The measured scanning angle is steered over a range of 24-46/spl deg/ for the right beam and 127-148/spl deg/ for the left beam. Compared with single microstrip leaky-wave antenna, the L-shape LWAs configuration has the advantages of switchable radiation patterns as the VCO varied from 10GHz to 10.6GHz.


The current program for Mechanical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany has more than 1500 students enrolled. Lego Mindstorms' NXT Robots are fully integrated in the current Engineering Education stream to help students practically apply theoretical concepts. The courses Communication and Organizational Development (KOE) and Computer Science in Mechanical Engineering 1 (INFO1), provided by the interdisciplinary institute cluster IMA/ZLW, follow a newly-designed "blended learning" approach. This institute cluster is composed of the Institute of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering (IMA) and the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management (ZLW). These institutes are currently within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University.Two years ago, the course KOE was redesigned and redirected towards a "Flipped Classroom" concept by initiating online lectures and a discussion class. Thus, the tutorial class ROBOFLEX as part of the KOE curriculum is introduced. ROBOFLEX is a two-stage business simulation that enables students to experience realistic virtual communication within computer science and engineering disciplines. Students are divided into groups of about thirty people, and become entrepreneurs and founders of start-ups that specialize in the production of innovative robots for the automotive industry. They create these robots using Lego Mindstorms' NXT.Since its conception, the course INFO1 has been accompanied by a lab component, where students apply the concepts taught in class in a team-focused software design project. In 2011, the lab concept was changed into a two-stage robotics programming project based on Lego Mindstorms' NXT Robots and the Java programming language. In the first stage, students practice the fundamental programming concepts that are presented in the lecture by completing a series of exercises in a self-paced manner. The second stage focuses on applied problem-solving. In this stage, pairs of students apply the previously-learned programming concepts to program a "pick-and-place" robot that is equipped with various sensors.The integration of Lego Mindstorms' NXT Robots into these courses also join the concepts of the two described courses. While KOE delivers organizational and communicational skills, INFO1 provides technical and domain-specific skills. Here, the robots represent the connecting element. The problem-based second stage of INFO1 benefits from the skills that are taught in KOE. Because INFO1 is scheduled in the term following the KOE, it offers a direct opportunity for students to transfer the KOE skill set from the lecture where it was taught into a new context that is primarily concerned with a different subject. Both classes have been evaluated and developed independently in the past. Since last year's introduction of ROBOFLEX in KOE, synergies between both lectures are becoming a main component of their further developments. In this paper the recent developments in both courses will be compared and discussed. Specific measurable effects concerning learning capability, motivation and learning endurance are being portrayed by using blended learning approaches.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


Background. Sleep Apnea Syndrome (SAHS) represents a significant risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease and evidence suggests a relation with Metabolic Syndrome (MS). The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of individual components of MS and of MS as an entity, in patients with clinical suspicion of SAHS, and their relation to central obesity.
Methods. We examined the records of 486 consecutive patients, 359 (73.9%) men, with a mean age of 57.3 ± 13.5 years and a mean body mass index (BMI) of 32.1 ± 6.5 kg/m2), with clinical suspicion of SAHS. SAHS was diagnosed from the nocturnal register. An Apnea-Hipopnea Index (AHI) > 5 was considered SAHS. MS was evaluated according to the diagnostic criteria of the International Diabetes Federation.
Results. Three hundred and twenty-five (66.9%) of the entire group were moderate-severe SAHS. The mean of AHI was 30.2 ± 23.8. We had sufficient data available on 456 patients (93.8%) for MS diagnosis and its prevalence was 64.7% (295 patients). Multivariate analysis showed that age and abdominal perimeter were predictors of SAHS and MS (p<0.05).
Conclusions. Patients with SAHS have a high prevalence of MS and their prevalence is greater in patients with major levels of SAHS. The rate of central obesity, measured by abdominal perimeter, predicts SAHS and MS.


Third generation sequencing technologies from platforms such as Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Pacific Biosciences have paved the way for building more contiguous assemblies and complete reconstruction of genomes. The larger effective length of the reads generated with these technologies has provided a mean to overcome the challenges of short to mid-range repeats. Currently, accurate long read assemblers are computationally expensive while faster methods are not as accurate. Therefore, there is still an unmet need for tools that are both fast and accurate for reconstructing small and large genomes. Despite the recent advances in third generation sequencing, researchers tend to generate second generation reads for many of the analysis tasks. Here, we present HASLR, a hybrid assembler which uses both second and third generation sequencing reads to efficiently generate accurate genome assemblies. Our experiments show that HASLR is not only the fastest assembler but also the one with the lowest number of misassemblies on all the samples compared to other tested assemblers. Furthermore, the generated assemblies in terms of contiguity and accuracy are on par with the other tools on most of the samples. Availability HASLR is an open source tool available at https://github.com/vpc-ccg/haslr.


Thanks to technological advances in information and communications, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) (aka drones) technology has become one of the most important service delivery inventions these days. Equipped with sensors and cameras, these technologies can perform much on-demand critical application ranging from military and environmental to rescue operations. These UAVs devices, sometimes tiny, that can replace human and manned aircraft in several tasks, have been utilized to perform various types of services and applications more efciently. However, the deployment side of such emerging technology is still facing many issues and challenges. Using multi-drones or swarm of drones, together to accomplish one operation is one of these recent challenges. Such a system requires a high level of delicacy and cooperation to achieve the required autonomy and reduce human interaction as possible. Communication is one of the biggest challenges in these systems, since the devices should keep exchanging various types of messages with different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, a collaborative autonomous system of swarm drones based on deep learning has been proposed and a testbed of cooperative UAVs' mission to validate the performance of the dedicated QoS communication system using Paparazzi drones The proposed system is aware of the drones' requirements in term of QoS and able to meet with their dynamic demands.


The objective of this work was to investigate the color stability in air under photo-oxidative degradation influencing consumer acceptance and biodegradation behaviors in soil of soy protein isolate (SPI)/poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) blend packaging films during 30 days. The results showed that PVA could dilute the yellow color and make the SPI-based films less darkness in application and the transparency of SPI/PVA films at various stages of degradation was improved. Aerobic biodegradation of films in soil proved that the PVA compound interacting with protein imposed negative effects on biodegradation of blend films prolonging their decomposing time. The SPI/PVA blend films decomposed into small fragments of less complex molecules along with surface completely digested after 30 days.


Generating knowledge from natural language data has aided in solving many artificial intelligence problems. Vector representations of words have been the driving force behind the majority of natural language processing tasks. This paper develops a novel approach for predicting the conservation status of animal species using custom generated scientific name embeddings. We use two different vector embeddings generated using representation learning on Wikipedia text and animal taxonomy data. We generate name embeddings for all species in the animal kingdom using unsupervised learning and build a model on the IUCN Red List dataset to classify species into endangered or least-concern. To our knowledge, this is the first work that makes use of learnt features instead of handcrafted features for this task and achieves competitive results. Based on the high confidence results of our model, we also predict the conservation status of data deficient species whose conservation status is still unknown and thus steering more focus towards them for protection. These embeddings have also been made publicly available here. We believe this will greatly help in solving various downstream tasks and further advance research in the cross-domain involving natural language processing, conservation biology, and life sciences.


A common way of deploying Web services is to create proxies that expose the legacy application as a Web service. But when it comes to performance, Web services are facing the same barrage of distrust as any new middleware. Are the critics of Web services right? In this paper we will look at several performance pitfalls that Web services are facing today and at the performance penalties that have to be paid when exposing a legacy application as a Web service. We show results about the latency and scalability of Apache's implementation of SOAP, compare it with the performance of established middleware such as RMI, and look at end-to-end performance of Web services built on top of existing EJB applications.


We investigate the relationship between visual elements and statistical quantities in cities. Although certain city statistics like the presence of trees and graffiti have a natural connection to visual elements, more abstract statistical quantities such as crime rates and housing prices relate to visual content in a less intuitive way. We show that there is a strong connection between visual elements and these statistics and that this relationship is general enough to predict these statistics in new cities. Given a set of street-level images and geo-located samples of a statistic we first identify visual elements in the images that are discriminative of the statistic (e.g. our system determined that rounded windows and doors in Boston are visually discriminative of affluence). We then build a predictor by learning a weight for each of these elements using a robust regression technique. To perform these operations efficiently, we implemented a scalable distributed processing framework that can process a single statistic (10,000 images) 4x faster than previous methods. We tested the performance of our computed predictors on the statistics: theft, affluence, graffiti presence, and tree presence. We found that at least one predictor for every statistic could interpolate that statistic with 67%-81% accuracy. In addition, we found that we can predict statistics in new cities with up to 76% accuracy. We also tested human performance for predicting theft based on ∗e-mail:firstname.lastname@example.com †e-mail:firstname.lastname@example.com ‡e-mail:email@example.com images and found that our method outperformed this baseline with 39% higher accuracy. We present two prototype applications that use our predictors to provide estimates of city statistics: a statisticsensitive wayfinding program capable of routing travelers through or around statistics of interest (e.g. routing a tourist around a high theft area), and a user-assisted tool for automatically finding graffiti in street-level images.


Crowdsourcing is an emerging strategy for enterprises to harvest information, labour, expertise and innovation from a wide, anonymous crowd. To fully adopt this strategy, enterprise systems should not only extend existing frameworks with new services and users, but also efficiently integrate crowdsourced activities with, usually more stable, organisational processes. However, an ontological structure for this integration is still missing. Although a few lightweight ontologies have been proposed in the crowdsourcing domain, they seem to focus on clarifying concepts rather than providing a structure for modelling, designing, and developing an enterprise system. The current study fills the gap by building an enterprise ontology of business process crowdsourcing. Our results identified the main business processes, data entities, data attributes, and their hierarchy relationships, which were structured into a lightweight ontology. We then added decision-making relationships and business rules that turn a lightweight into a heavyweight ontology. The built ontology is evaluated by triangulation when comparing with two ontology versions generated by automated tools. The current study is significant as it is the first effort to build an enterprise ontology of crowdsourcing, which provides a blueprint for integrating business process crowdsourcing into enterprise systems.


Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a common, easily transmissible virus. There is growing awareness of acyclovir-resistant HSV particularly among immunocompromised patients, which may be due to protracted treatments with guanosine analogues. Given the considerable morbidity associated with other classes of antiherpetic medications such as foscarnet (renal impairment, seizures) and cidofovir (renal impairment, neutropenia), imiquimod, a toll-like receptor agonist that enhances the innate immunologic responses against the virus, has been utilized in treating acyclovir-resistant HSV. We present a case of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive patient who was successfully treated with topical imiquimod after treatment failures with other oral antivirals.


Two methods for the amplitude and phase calibration of hydrophones based on time-delay spectrometry are presented: a time-gating technique and heterodyne frequency conversion that allows the phase-locked (i.e., coherent) detection of hydrophone signals. Amplitude and phase of the hydrophone sensitivity are obtained in the frequency range 1-20 MHz. In addition, to show the broad-band capabilities of the methods, amplitude values are measured between 4 and 50 MHz.


The stability of lidocaine hydrochloride in six commonly used large-volume parenterals when stored for 14 days and the visual compatibility of lidocaine hydrochloride in admixtures with eight frequently used drugs were studied. Lidocaine hydrochloride admixtures of 2 mg/ml were prepared in both glass and plastic containers of 5% dextrose injection, 0.9% sodium chloride injection, lactated Ringer's injection, 5% dextrose and lactated Ringer's injection, 0.45% sodium chloride injection (plastic container only), and 0.45% sodium chloride and 5% dextrose injection. The admixtures were examined visually and stored for 14 days at 25 +/- 0.5 degrees C under fluorescent light. Lidocaine hydrochloride concentrations were determined spectrophotometrically at times 0, 0.25, 1, 3, 8, and 24 hours, and at 24-hour intervals thereafter. Spectrophotometric assays were confirmed with high-pressure liquid chromatography. Admixtures of lidocaine hydrochloride were prepared with aminophylline, bretylium tosylate, calcium gluconate, digoxin, dopamine hydrochloride, regular insulin, phenytoin sodium, and procainamide hydrochloride in 5% dextrose injection, 0.9% sodium chloride injection, and lactated Ringer's injection. The admixtures were examined visually for 24 hours. Admixtures of lidocaine hydrochloride were stable for 14 days. All admixtures of lidocaine hydrochloride with other drugs were visually compatible except those containing phenytoin sodium. It is concluded that lidocaine hydrochloride is stable in the solutions studied for 14 days at 25 degrees C and visually compatible for 24 hours in admixtures containing all drugs studied except phenytoin sodium.


This publication is a tribute to the memory of the outstanding folklorist and ethnographer Dov Noy, who passed away in 2013. In the scholarly discourse that classifies folklore by modes and media of transmission, synagogue art—as distinct from folk narrative and behavioral lore—is commonly categorized as "visual folklore." This paper examines the approach of classifying murals and sculptural decoration in east and central European synagogues from the late seventeenth century until the Holocaust as "folk creations." It suggests a revision of pre-established definitions in the field, in general, and in the analysis of representative folk narratives relating to synagogues, in particular. The position of academic research into traditional Jewish visual culture, at the seam of art history and folkloristics, challenges predefined divisions of this integral cultural phenomenon into the conventional categories of separate disciplines. In the discourse classifying folklore according to the ways and media of its transmission, synagogue art—in distinction to folk narratives and behavioral lore—commonly falls into the category of "visual folklore," defined as the visual domain of folk art and material culture. Jewish "folk art" is often attributed generally to "folk artists" and "craftsmen," without a clear distinction between the two groups. This paper holistically examines the approaches to the murals and sculptural decoration in east and central European synagogues from the late seventeenth century until the Holocaust as visual folklore, craftsmanship, and artistic work, and outlines the part of oral lore in the programming and interpretation of synagogue art. Finally, it proposes to re-approach folk synagogue art as a medium that creates a visual environment for liturgical activity and predicates its viewers' responses to the challenges, trials, and tribulations of daily life.


The zebrafish is an ideal model for imaging cell behaviors during development in vivo. Zebrafish embryos are externally fertilized and thus easily accessible at all stages of development. Moreover, their optical clarity allows high resolution imaging of cell and molecular dynamics in the natural environment of the intact embryo. We are using a live imaging approach to analyze cell behaviors during neural crest cell migration and the outgrowth and guidance of neuronal axons. Live imaging is particularly useful for understanding mechanisms that regulate cell motility processes. To visualize details of cell motility, such as protrusive activity and molecular dynamics, it is advantageous to label individual cells. In zebrafish, plasmid DNA injection yields a transient mosaic expression pattern and offers distinct benefits over other cell labeling methods. For example, transgenic lines often label entire cell populations and thus may obscure visualization of the fine protrusions (or changes in molecular distribution) in a single cell. In addition, injection of DNA at the one-cell stage is less invasive and more precise than dye injections at later stages. Here we describe a method for labeling individual developing neurons or neural crest cells and imaging their behavior in vivo. We inject plasmid DNA into 1-cell stage embryos, which results in mosaic transgene expression. The vectors contain cell-specific promoters that drive expression of a gene of interest in a subset of sensory neurons or neural crest cells. We provide examples of cells labeled with membrane targeted GFP or with a biosensor probe that allows visualization of F-actin in living cells1. Erica Andersen, Namrata Asuri, and Matthew Clay contributed equally to this work.


Translation can generally be seen as a task in which the meaning of the original should be preserved as far as possible. This paper formulates the preservation of meaning in terms of the primacy of the frame hypothesis: ideally, the frame of the original is matched by the frame of the translation. I investigate one factor overriding this principle in translations between English and German through the examination of two grammatical constructions, one in English, one in German, which are not commonly available in the other language. Picking a construction comparable in function in the target language leads to frame shifts. In addition to highlighting the interplay between construction and frame choice, the paper explores how frame-to-frame relations can be used to describe the semantic relatedness of original and translation in cases of frame divergences. Theoretical and methodological questions and implications of the cross-lingual application of frame relations are discussed at the end.


The main issues in a cloud based environment are security, process fail rate and performance. Fault tolerance plays a key role in ensuring high serviceability and reliability in cloud. Nowadays, demands for high fault tolerance, high serviceability and high reliability are becoming unprecedentedly strong, building a high fault tolerance, high serviceability and high reliability cloud is a critical, challenging, and urgently required task. A lot of research is currently underway to analyze how clouds can provide fault tolerance for an application. When numbers of processes are too many and any virtual machine is overloaded then the processes are failed causing lot of rework and annoyance for the users. The major cause of the failure of the processes at the virtual machine level are overloading of virtual machines, extra resource requirements of the existing processes etc. This paper introduces dynamic load balancing techniques for cloud environment in which RAM/Broker (resource awareness module) proactively decides whether the process can be applied on an existing virtual machine or it should be assigned to a different virtual machine created a fresh or any other existing virtual machine. So, in this way it can tackle the occurrence of fault. This paper also proposed a mechanism which proactively decides the load on virtual machines and according to the requirement either creates a new virtual machine or uses an existing virtual machine for the assigning the process. Once a process completes it will update the virtual machine status on the broker service so that other processes can be assigned to it.