Background: In Alzheimer's disease (AD) the olfactory system, including the olfactory bulb, a limbic paleocortex is severely damaged. The occurrence of early olfactory deficits and the presence of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in olfactory bulb were reported previously by a few authors. The goal of the present study was to analyze the occurrence of AD-type degenerative changes in the peripheral part of the olfactory system and to answer the question whether the frequency and severity of changes in the olfactory bulb and tract are associated with those of the cerebral cortex in AD. Material and Methods: In 110 autopsy cases several cortical areas and the olfactory bulb and tract were analyzed using histo- and immunohistochemical techniques. Based on a semiquantitative analysis of cortical senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and curly fibers, the 110 cases were divided into four groups: 19 cases with severe (definite AD), 14 cases with moderate, 58 cases with discrete and 19 control cases without AD-type cortical changes. Results: The number of cases with olfactory involvement was very high, more than 84% in the three groups with cortical AD-type lesions. Degenerative olfactory changes were present in all 19 definite AD cases, and in two of the 19 controls. The statistical analysis showed a significant association between the peripheral olfactory and cortical degenerative changes with respect to their frequency and severity (P<0.001). Neurofibrillary tangles and neuropil threads appear in the olfactory system as early as in entorhinal cortex. Conclusion: The results indicate a close relationship between the olfactory and cortical degenerative changes and indicate that the involvement of the olfactory bulb and tract is one of the earliest events in the degenerative process of the central nervous system in AD.


The Warwick Triangle precinct is the busiest transport hub in Durban. The major access to the CBD from the west passes through the precinct and the precinct is the location for the main rail terminal, as well as bus and taxi ranks. To mitigate against the conflicting traffic movements it was necessary to separate, as far as possible, traffic within the precinct and traffic that was passing through. The best way to achieve this was to build a viaduct that would carry outbound traffic over the existing Eilat Viaducts, Market Road and Warwick Avenue before merging with the Western Freeway.


Patreon is a crowdfunding platform where pornographic games are funded; even the most successful game developer in terms of the number of members is developing a pornographic game. We looked at 42 developers and their Patreon pages in order to examine the effects of the Patreon crowdfunding model on videogame development. Especially we studied membership rewards. As a result, developers were not only selling the game, but rewards we much about Community, Influence, and Recognition. Regulating Content Access is used regularly but often the latest version of the game is made available to everybody, just later to the members funding the development. We propose that certain rewards are similar to backstage passes in the music business and suggest that Patron pornographic games funding deviates from the crowdfunding model is not following mainly product-oriented commodity logic but a more community-oriented concept.


Flowers of Chilopsis linearis dispense nectar into pools and grooves. The bumblebee, Bombus sonorus, extracts pool nectar at a rate seven times faster than groove nectar. The result is the coevolution of a plant-pollinator system in which bees, while foraging efficiently, increase the number of flowers visited per calorie of nectar reward provided by the plant.


This study empirically identifies dimensions of behaviour that are distinct in terms of the extent to which people act pro-environmentally. Three dimensions are identified, relating to at-home, transport-related and purchasing behaviour. The correlation between behaviour in each dimension is explored and the characteristics and attitudes associated with the extent to which behaviour is pro-environmental in each dimension are compared. The correlates of pro-environmental behaviour are found to differ between the dimensions. Attitudes towards the environment are more strongly associated with at-home or purchasing behaviours than with transport-related behaviours. The findings have implications for the design of policies intended to influence behaviours with environmental impact and for marketing of pro-environmental behaviours.


Social workers not only help service users, they also help each other, and they know the group as a space through which opportunities to give and receive help multiply. In Italy, the initiative 'Social Workers Helping Each Other' was launched to help practitioners stay resilient and mutually supportive during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these unprecedented and turbulent times, social workers have been called on to face new challenges and new concerns for service users and for themselves. The initiative consisted of online mutual support groups for social workers conducted through a virtual platform. Participants were 45 social workers divided into three groups on the basis of the social workers' area of intervention. The author facilitated the groups, encouraging the development of reciprocal support dynamics typical of self-help and mutual aid groups. Group sessions were very rich in content, and the discussion focused on several topics following the participants' needs. The content analysis revealed that the mutual support conversations among social workers focused on three main categories: practical and organizational; methodological and ethical; and personal and emotional. The groups offered supervision and mutual support based on experiential learning processes. The article presents the rationale, methods and outcomes of the experience. This initiative could inspire the development of online mutual support groups for social workers.


For a long time, scientific research has tried to establish the relationships between jet momentum and room velocities. The final breakthrough is still to come. One approach is to use a kinetic energy balance, which was initially suggested by Elterman (1980). This paper presents a thorough kinetic energy analysis. Based on the analysis, a new method is developed for calcu lating the average room velocity. The calculation method is evaluated with the experimental data from laboratory exper iments with three diff erent air distribution methods. An excel lent correlation is found between the kinetic energy method and the experimental data within the occupied zone for two air distribution methods and two room scales. With the third air distribution method, vertical air supply, a linear correlation is found, but the calculated values are smaller than the measured velocities because the occupied zone is partly within the main jet area.


Vision transformers (ViTs) have achieved impressive results on various computer vision tasks in the last several years. In this work, we study the capability of frozen ViTs, pretrained only on visual data, to generalize to audio-visual data without finetuning any of its original parameters. To do so, we propose a latent audio-visual hybrid (LAVISH) adapter that adapts pretrained ViTs to audio-visual tasks by injecting a small number of trainable parameters into every layer of a frozen ViT. To efficiently fuse visual and audio cues, our LAVISH adapter uses a small set of latent tokens, which form an attention bottleneck, thus, eliminating the quadratic cost of standard cross-attention. Compared to the existing modality-specific audio-visual methods, our approach achieves competitive or even better performance on various audio-visual tasks while using fewer tunable parameters and without relying on costly audio pretraining or external audio encoders. Our code is available at https://genjib.github.io/project_page/LAVISH/


Professional work in the modern world has become an important value, and for some individuals even the most important. Professional development fits into the personal development of a man and creates an important component of his activity. It is difficult to consider professional development in isolation from personal development. These are processes that, at a certain time in life, run in parallel, permeate and overlap each other. It is therefore important to take into account the values and aspirations of an individual as determinants of the choices made, first educational, then professional. These values serve to formulate aspirations and life goals. Assessment of the associated hierarchy of values is part of the strategy of naming the right life choices, it serves to develop human self-awareness.


Since a wheeled mobile robot is subject to nonholonomic constraints, the position and the configuration of the robot cannot be derived directly from only the rotation angle of its wheels. In other words, the position and the configuration of a mobile robot cannot be calculated correctly if its wheels skid. For the purpose of the position estimation of a mobile robot, some external sensors are used, in general. This paper uses position information from a position-sensitive detector camera that is a high-speed visual sensor to correct the errors that are due to skid and so on. Also, we estimate a skid of wheels by using its visual information. In this paper, the authors propose a control system that enables control of both the configuration of the robot and the skid of wheels simultaneously by including these estimated values in the control loop of a mobile manipulator.


Mouth-to-mouth food exchange in eusocial insects (trophallaxis) contributes to the organization of complex social activities. In the case of honeybees, foragers returning from a nectar source transfer the food collected to receiver colony-mates through oral contact. Previous studies have shown that the speed of nectar transfer within each contact (unloading rate) increases when foragers return from feeding sites with higher profitability, i.e. with more concentrated sugar solutions or higher solution flow rates. However, there is no evidence that the nectar unloading rate is actually evaluated by hive-mates during food exchange. To investigate this, trophallaxis between donor bees returning from a feeder with different flow rates of sucrose solution (range 1.0-8.2 microl min(-1) of 50% w/w sucrose solution) and receiver hive-mates was studied by combining behavioural and infrared thermal analysis. The results show that when foraging bees returned from a feeder delivering a higher flow rate they initiated unloading at higher thoracic temperatures and transferred the solution at higher speed. During these food exchanges, the thoraces of receiver bees warmed up faster in proportion to increasing forager temperature and unloading rate. Therefore, whatever the variable actually evaluated by receivers (mostly nectar processors, i.e. bees that handle nectar in the hive) during trophallaxis (unloading rate and/or donor thoracic temperature), they raised their activity level in proportion to that of the foragers. In this way, receiver bees will intensify their nectar processing when nectar foragers return from more profitable sites.


This paper explores basic aspects of the immune system and proposes a novel immune network model with the main goals of clustering and filtering unlabelled numerical data sets. It is not our concern to reproduce with confidence any immune phenomenon, but to show that immune concepts can be used to develop powerful computational tools for data processing. As important results of our model, the network evolved will be capable of reducing redundancy, describing data structure, including the shape of the clusters. The network will be implemented in association with a statistical inference technique, and its performance will be illustrated using two benchmark problems. The paper is concluded with a trade-off between the proposed network and artificial neural networks used to perform unsupervised learning.


A fast, recently developed, multiscale optimal interpolation algorithm has been adapted to the mapping of hydrographic and other oceanographic data. This algorithm produces solution and error estimates which are consistent with those obtained from exact least squares methods, but at a small fraction of the computational cost. Problems whose solution would be completely impractical using exact least squares, that is, problems with tens or hundreds of thousands of measurements and estimation grid points, can easily be solved on a small workstation using the multiscale algorithm. In contrast to methods previously proposed for solving large least squares problems, our approach provides estimation error statistics while permitting long-range correlations, using all measurements, and permitting arbitrary measurement locations. The multiscale algorithm itself, published elsewhere, is not the focus of this paper. However, the algorithm requires statistical models having a very particular multiscale structure; it is the development of a class of multiscale statistical models, appropriate for oceanographic mapping problems, with which we concern ourselves in this paper. The approach is illustrated by mapping temperature in the northeastern Pacific. The number of hydrographic stations is kept deliberately small to show that multiscale and exact least squares results are comparable. A portion of the data were not used in the analysis; these data serve to test the multiscale estimates. A major advantage of the present approach is the ability to repeat the estimation procedure a large number of times for sensitivity studies, parameter estimation, and model testing. We have made available by anonymous Ftp a set of MATLAB-callable routines which implement the multiscale algorithm and the statistical models developed in this paper.


Background An advance directive is a statement of a person's preferences for treatment, should he or she lose capacity to make treatment decisions in the future. Aims To evaluate whether use of advance directives by patients with mental illness leads to lower rates of compulsory readmission to hospital. Method In a randomised controlled trial in two psychiatric services in inner London, 156 in-patients about to be discharged from compulsory treatment under the Mental Health Act were recruited. The trial compared usual psychiatric care with usual care plus the completion of an advance directive. The primary outcome was the rate of compulsory readmission. Results Fifteen patients (19%) in the intervention group and 16 (21%) in the control group were readmitted compulsorily within 1 year of discharge. There was no difference in the numbers of compulsory readmissions, numbers of patients readmitted voluntarily, days spent in hospital or satisfaction with psychiatric services. Conclusions Users' advance instruction directives had little observable impact on the outcome of care at 12 months.


The concept of this publication is that of a dynamic textbook of surgery. The two installments on cardiac and thoracic surgery are the first portions of a multivolume venture that will include all surgical specialities. These volumes are versatile in that the sections are loose-leaf within a sturdy binder. This allows for removal of individual sections for study, updating, deleting, and revising over time as new techniques, approaches, and revisions of the specialty are incorporated. The first installment of this publication consists of 15 reports on congenital heart disease, acquired heart disease, and thoracic surgical procedures. The second installment is more of a panoply of procedures, not organized under any topics but designed to cover areas not considered in the first installment. Only one quarter of the contents deals with noncardiac thoracic procedures; there is no discussion of chest wall problems, hiatus hernia repair, or benign lesions of the esophagus


Diatom frustules continue examined commonly during autopsies of deaths due to drowning. Diatoms are unicellular microorganisms which are commonly found in almost all water bodies. Their silica wall plays significant tool in forensic diatomology. Diatom analysis has been suggested to provide supportive evidence of drowning but the consistency and applicability of quantitative and qualitative diatom analysis in the diagnosis of drowning is still tentative in the literature. Diatom test has been extensively applied to detect post mortem or antemortem drowning and comparing the diatoms found in biological sample with those found in water sample indorses that death took place, probably in same water medium. Death by drowning is the result of encumbering of respiration by comprehensive or partial submersion and subsequent entry of water into the air passages. If the person is still alive when entering the water, diatoms will enter the lungs if the person inhales water and drowns. The diatoms are then carried to distant parts of the body such as the brain, kidneys, lungs and bone marrow by circulation. Diatoms found inside the body of a drowned victim may serve as corroborative evidence in the diagnosis of cause of death. The diatom test stands as the only direct screening test for drowning.


Currently it requires an artist to create 3D human avatars with realistic clothing that can move naturally. Despite progress on 3D scanning and modeling of human bodies, there is still no technology that can easily turn a static scan into an animatable avatar. Automating the creation of such avatars would enable many applications in games, social networking, animation, and AR/VR to name a few. The key problem is one of representation. Standard 3D meshes are widely used in modeling the minimally-clothed body but do not readily capture the complex topology of clothing. Recent interest has shifted to implicit surface models for this task but they are computationally heavy and lack compatibility with existing 3D tools. What is needed is a 3D representation that can capture varied topology at high resolution and that can be learned from data. We argue that this representation has been with us all along — the point cloud. Point clouds have properties of both implicit and explicit representations that we exploit to model 3D garment geometry on a human body. We train a neural network with a novel local clothing geometric feature to represent the shape of different outfits. The network is trained from 3D point clouds of many types of clothing, on many bodies, in many poses, and learns to model pose-dependent clothing deformations. The geometry feature can be optimized to fit a previously unseen scan of a person in clothing, enabling the scan to be reposed realistically. Our model demonstrates superior quantitative and qualitative results in both multi-outfit modeling and unseen outfit animation. The code is available for research purposes at https://qianlim.github.io/POP.


While there has been substantial amount of work in speaker diarization recently, there are few efforts in jointly employing lexical and acoustic information for speaker segmentation. Towards that, we investigate a speaker diarization system using a sequence-to-sequence neural network trained on both lexical and acoustic features. We also propose a loss function that allows for selecting not only the speaker change points but also the best speaker at any time by allowing for different speaker groupings. We incorporate Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) as an acoustic feature alongside lexical information that are obtained from conversations from the Fisher dataset. Thus, we show that acoustics provide complementary information to the lexical modality. The experimental results show that sequence-to-sequence system trained on both word sequences and MFCC can improve on speaker diarization result compared to the system that only relies on lexical modality or the baseline MFCC-based system. In addition, we test the performance of our proposed method with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) transcripts. While the performance on ASR transcripts drops, the Diarization Error Rate (DER) of our proposed method still outperforms the traditional method based on Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC).


The growing number of "big" datasets present many opportunities for data mining, but also raise a variety of new challenges. Datasets may take the form of continuous streams with constantly changing patterns, they may be too widely distributed to be centralised for analysis at a single location, or they may contain sensitive values that data owners are not willing to share due to privacy concerns. Much past research has considered these issues individually, but few existing methods can address combinations of these properties. Therefore, this research develops methods for distributed and privacy-preserving data stream mining: a novel Hierarchical Distributed Stream Miner (HDSM) that learns relationships between the features of separate streams with minimal data transmission to central locations, and two data perturbation methods for privacy-preserving stream mining based on the combination of random projection, random translation, and additive noise. Experimental evaluation of HDSM demonstrates significant improvements in classification accuracy over existing distributed stream mining approaches while minimising data transmission and computational costs. HDSM's ability to dynamically trade-off accuracy with these costs is also demonstrated. Variations of the known input-output Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) attack are developed to experimentally evaluate the data perturbation methods, and the proposed composite methods are shown to achieve a better trade-off between privacy and model accuracy than random projection alone. Finally, an approach is described for combining HDSM with data perturbation to achieve distributed privacy-preserving stream mining.


This study evaluates comparative behavioral search methods for evolutionary controller design in robot teams, where the goal is to evaluate the morphological robustness of evolved controllers. That is, where controllers are evolved for specific robot sensory-motor configurations (morphologies) but must continue to function as these morphologies degrade. Robots use neural controllers where behavior evolution is directed by developmental neuro-evolution (HyperNEAT). Guiding evolutionary controller design we use objective fitness function) versus non-objective (novelty) search. The former optimizes for behavioral fitness and the latter for behavioral novelty. These search methods are evaluated across varying robot morphologies and increasing task complexity. Results indicate that both novelty and objective search evolve team controllers (behaviors) that are morphologically robust given degrading robot morphologies and increasing task complexity. Results thus suggest that novelty search is not necessarily suitable for generating robot team behaviors that are robust to changes in robot morphologies (for example, due to damaged or disabled sensors and actuators).


Earth has likely cooled by several hundred degrees over its history, which has probably affected subduction dynamics and associated magmatism. Today, the process of compositional buoyancy driven upwelling, and subsequent underplating, of subducted materials (commonly referred to as "relamination") is thought to play a role in the formation of continental crust. Given that Archean continental crust formation is best explained by the involvement of mafic material, we investigate the feasibility of mafic crust relamination under a wide range of conditions applicable to modern and early Earth subduction zones, to assess if such a process might have been viable in an early Earth setting. Our numerical parametric study illustrates that the hotter, thicker-crust conditions of the early Earth favour the upward relamination of mafic subducting crust. The amount of relaminating subducting crust is observed to vary significantly, with subduction convergence rate having the strongest control on the volume of relaminated material. Indeed, removal of the entire mafic crust from the subducting slab is possible for slow subduction ( ∼ 2 cm/yr) under Archean conditions. We also observe great variability in the depth at which this separation occurs (80–120 km), with events corresponding to shallower detachment being more voluminous, and that relaminating material has to remain metastably buoyant until this separation depth, which is supported by geological, geophysical and geodynamical observations. Furthermore, this relamination behaviour is commonly episodic with a typical repeat time of approximately 10 Myrs, similar to timescales of episodicity observed in the Archean rock record. We demonstrate that this relamination process can result in the heating of considerable quantities of mafic material (to temperatures in excess of 900 ◦ C), which is then emplaced below the over-riding lithosphere. As such, our results have implications for Archean subduction zone magmatism, for continental crust formation in the early Earth, and provide a novel explanation for the secular evolution of continental crust.


A titanium alloy sample (#6246) containing a linear friction weld has been imaged nondestructively using tomographic energy-dispersive diffraction imaging (TEDDI). The diffraction patterns measured at each point of the TEDDI image permitted identification of the material and phases present (±5%). The image also showed the preferred orientation and size–strain distribution present within the sample without the need for any further sample preparation. The preferred orientation was observed in clusters with average dimensions very similar to the experimental spatial resolution (400 µm). The length scales and preferred orientation distributions were consistent with orientation imaging microscopy measurements made by Szczepanski, Jha, Larsen & Jones [Metall. Mater. Trans. A (2008), 39, 2841–2851] where the microstructure development was linked to the grain growth of the parent material. The use of a high-energy X-ray distribution (30–80 keV) in the incident beam reduced systematic errors due to the source profile, sample and air absorption. The TEDDI data from each voxel were reduced to an angle-dispersive form and Rietveld refined to a mean χ2 of 1.4. The mean lattice parameter error (δd/d) ranged from ∼10−4 for the highly crystalline regions to ∼10−3 for regions of very strong preferred orientation and internal strain. The March–Dollase preferred orientation errors refined to an average value of ±2%. A 100% correlation between observed fluorescence and diffraction peak broadening was observed, providing further evidence for vicinal strain broadening.


This paper presents the results of a randomized controlled trial aimed at testing the effectiveness of an innovative intervention of asset building (Percorsi) on high school students' transition to the university. Contrary to most traditional forms of financial aid, the tested intervention is expected to enhance an active involvement of the families and imposes a strong conditionality in the use of the benefits. The experiment, called ACHAB (Affording College with the Help of Asset Building) has been carried out in the province of Torino (Northwest Italy) between 2014 and 2017. For the evaluation purpose, an ad hoc survey has been carried out to collect longitudinal information on enrolment decisions and academic performances (number of exams and persistence) during the first semester and at the beginning of the second year. External data and applicant baseline information were used to perform a multidimensional targeting strategy aimed at identifying the 'target population', i.e. those students who were at risk of giving up their university enrolment decisions because of economic reasons. The experimental results point to the existence of positive and significant effects of the program on university enrolment and sizeable and significant positive effects on academic performance and university persistence. The effects of the program are significantly larger for students coming from vocational schools than for students who completed technical or general secondary schools.


Zafirlukast is a drug newly used for the treatment of asthma. In this study, we examined the efficacy of zafirlukast on asthmatic patients and compared this efficacy between patients in different age groups and with different severities of pulmonary function. Patients concurrently inhaled long-acting beta2-agonist, corticosteroid or taken an oral aminophylline regimen, were treated with 20 mg oral zafirlukast twice daily for 6 weeks. In total, 32 asthmatic patients were included in the study. The primary efficacy measures included morning and evening peak expiratory flows (PEFs); secondary efficacy measures were the scoring of asthma symptoms including sleeping, coughing, and wheezing scores. Pulmonary functions including forced expiratory flow in 1 sec (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), and PEF rate (PEFR) were examined during each clinical visit. Results showed that oral zafirlukast administration resulted in improvements in morning and evening PEFs and asthma symptom scores with the following statistical p values: morning PEF (285.8 vs 308.4 L/min), p = 0.003; evening PEF (293.3 vs 312.1 L/min), p = 0.007; coughing score (1.03 vs 0.72), p = 0.011; and wheezing score (0.71 vs 0.51), p = 0.009. As to the pulmonary function during the clinical visit, only the improvement of PEFR reached a statistically significant level (74.3 vs 82, p = 0.017). We compared the efficacy between asthmatic patients of different ages and those with different severities of pulmonary function. In patients aged below 50 years, those with FEV1 above 80% of the predicted value and FVC above 85% of the predicted value were more responsive to zafirlukast. In conclusion, we demonstrate the efficacy of zafirlukast in asthma therapy particularly for those patients who are younger and have better pulmonary function. When asthmatic patients do not respond to inhaled corticosteroid, long-acting beta2-agonist, or oral aminophylline, zafirlukast may provide an adjunct effect for asthma therapy.


Background : due to this fact that hyperhomocysteinemia had role in increasing incidence of pregnancy and delivery problems such as preeklampsia, it seems that performing present study for assessing serum level of homocysteine in pregnant women with preeklampsia was necessary. Present study was performed for comparing homocysteine level between term pregnant women with and without preeklampsia. Methods : Fifty term pregnant women with higher than 37 weeks gestational age between 2005 and 2007 were recruited. Pregnant women with history of chronic hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy and those using methotrexate, carbamazepine, phenytoin and other anticonvulsant drugs, were excluded. Pregnant women with more than 300 mg protein in 24-hours urine sample or +1 results with Dipstick test for proteinuria and blood pressure more than 140/90 mmhg were defined as case group. Equal and matched pregnant women were selected for control group. Independent student t-test and logistic regression model were used as statistical test. SPSS software was used for data analysis and p-values less than 0.05 were assumed as significant. Results : Mean of serum level of homocysteine in pregnant women with preeklampsia was significantly higher than other pregnant women. Conclusion : According to the role of homocysteine in incidence of preeklampsia in pregnant women, prescribing drug and control of dietary regimen were recommended for control of serum level of homocysteine in pregnant women.


Sustainable production and consumption is one of the seventeen Sustai- nable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). The mobile phone is an important example of unsustainable production and consumption. There are widespread social and environmental impacts in its life cycle (van der Velden & Taylor, 2017) and the production and consumption of mobile pho- nes continues to increase, also in countries with a highly saturated market. In 2017, 1.47 billion mobile phone units were shipped worldwide and that number is expected to reach 1.7 billion units in 2020 (Statista, 2018).

Repair is one of the activities that disrupt the unsustainable consumption of mobile phones. Repair extends the lifespan of a product, which slows down unsustainable product life cycles. Through stories of the repair of mobile phones, from Norway and Ghana, we are able draw a global system of mo- bile phone production and consumption, which can offer insight for a more sustainable mobile phone life cycle.

The number of places where one can repair shoes, clothes, electronics, etc., after the warranty period has expired, has decreased dramatically in high- income countries such as Norway. Also when one brings a faulty item back during the warranty period, the item is most often not repaired, but replaced. As a result of increased awareness of the impact of unsustainable consumption, several community-based repair initiatives have spring up in high-income countries, such as the Restart Project in the UK (The Restart Project, 2018) and Repair Cafe in the Netherlands (Repair Cafe, 2018), both with affiliates around the world. The Restart project focuses on the repair of electronics. Restarters Norway, which is one of their affiliates, organises so-called repair parties for electronics (Restarters Norway, 2018). Repair Cafes offer all kinds of repairs, based on the availability of skills among their volunteers. Electronics, bicycles, and clothes are some of the most popular items.

Community repair is based on voluntary participation of repairers, who come together in a local setting, such as a community centre or library, to repair whatever people bring in. The meetings are organised by and for the local community. Community repair is often motivated by sustainable con- sumption or the unavailability or unaffordability of formal repair, but also the culture and joy of repair plays a central role.

In low-income countries, repair has always been an important household activity as well as economic activity. Our fieldwork on informal mobile pho- ne repair in Ghana shows that repair is a collective activity; colleagues, ma- ster repairers, and apprentices work together, sharing tools and expertise.

Rather than comparing informal repair activities in Norway and Ghana, we propose to tell system stories of mobile phone repair in both countries. Sy- stem stories have the capacity to shift the focus from parts of the system to the whole system (Stroh, 2015). They are part of what Ison calls a systemic inquiry, "a particular means of facilitating movement towards social lear- ning (understood as concerted action by multiple stakeholders in situations of complexity and uncertainty)" (2010, p. 244).

We understand repair as a "doings of care" (de la Bellacasa, 2011). Our repair stories focus on the material aspects of the mobile phone. We follow the mo- bile phones and its spare parts to the places where they are repaired and we focus on the repair process itself, by looking at the tools and resources (manuals, spare parts) used for repair. Using system mapping (Stroh, 2015), we can draw global flows of materials as well as the structures that regulate these flows, such as national, EU, and international regulation, and consu- mer practices.

System stories and system mapping are important tools in addressing com- plex problems, such as those of addressed by the SDGs. By focusing on re- pair, an activity disrupting the business as usual of unsustainable cycles of production and consumption, we are able to shift the focus towards the system as whole. By mapping global flows of materials, we are able to iden- tify what is "systemically desirable" (P. B. Checkland, 1999; P. Checkland & Winter, 2006) in terms of possible actions that will strengthen repair as an intervention in unsustainable production and consumption. We identify product design for reparability, the free and affordable availability of quali- ty spare parts, and zero value-added taxes on repair and spare parts as desi- rable actions for caring about mobile phones and other things.


Climate change causes changes in forests, their ecological functions and ecosystem services. Many of these changes will negatively impact people, plants, animals and micro-organisms that depend on forests. SDG 13 aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change and drive adaptation actions. Current commitments are insufficient to reach the Paris Agreement goals of restricting warming to less than 2oC and increasing resilience of vulnerable communities. Better forest and land management can contribute up to 20 per cent of the Paris goals, while increasing community and ecosystem resilience, and help bridge this gap. Strong synergies between SDG 13 and forests can drive investment in sustainable forest management, forest restoration and forest conservation. However, achieving these synergies is challenged by unsustainable forest exploitation and pressures to develop land for agriculture, urban areas and infrastructure. Maximising potential synergies between forests and SDG 13 requires long-term finance and local collaboration, but currently only 3 per cent of climate finance is dedicated to forest actions, and much less is used for local implementation. Improved forest management and conservation can be achieved through more efficient use of the finance, increased investment from public and private sectors and stronger commitment to local actions.


: Providers and payers in an integrated delivery system can increase the coordination and cost-effectiveness of the services they provide by developing a strong case management program. Integrated case management can provide the common thread for developing and meeting joint goals, such as reduced lengths of stay, cost-per-case reductions, decreased admission/readmission rates, and increased patient satisfaction. Providers and payers should design and integrate their case management services to allow for greater sharing of resources and integration of patient care goals and incentives.


ABSTRACT Reimann, M., Ehrlich, Ü., Tõnisson, H., 2014. Regional differences in recreational preferences of Estonian coastal landscapes. In: Green, A.N. and Cooper, J.A.G. (eds.), Proceedings 13th International Coastal Symposium (Durban, South Africa), Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 70, pp. 420–425, ISSN 0749-0208. Estonia has rich and valuable coastal landscapes. Estonian natural coastline is classified into five shore types: cliffs, till, gravel, sandy and silty. Those shore types are well distinguishable and recognised by scientists and the general public. Shoreline types are not distributed equally, some shore types occur in all counties, other shore types are found only in certain parts of Estonia. The main aim of the current study is to assess whether people's preferences for shore types are related to the types occurring in their home county. A survey (N=1,519) was carried out on an Estonian working age population in all 15 counties, of which 7 counties have a coastline. The questionnaire contained information on Estonian shores, which were presented in coloured photos. Respondents were asked to rank the photos according to the question: "Which shore type do you prefer to visit in your leisure time?" Differences were found among preferences in various regions; however, sandy shores were highly preferred among all respondents. In other types, differences appeared. Respondents are less likely to prefer shore types which are dominant in their region than shore types which are absent or less common in their county.


Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and its hemopexin C domain autolytic fragment (also called PEX) have been proposed to be crucial for angiogenesis. Here, we have investigated the dependency of in vitro angiogenesis on MMP-mediated extracellular proteolysis and integrin αvβ3–mediated cell adhesion in a three-dimensional collagen I model. The hydroxamate-based synthetic inhibitors BB94, CT1399, and CT1847 inhibited endothelial cell invasion, as did neutralizing anti–membrane-type 1-MMP (MT1-MMP) antibodies and tissue inhibitor of MMP (TIMP)-2 and TIMP-3 but not TIMP-1. This confirmed the pivotal importance of MT1-MMP over other MMPs in this model. Invasion was also inhibited by a nonpeptidic antagonist of integrin αvβ3, EMD 361276. Although PEX strongly inhibited pro-MMP-2 activation, when contaminating lipopolysaccharide was neutralized, PEX neither affected angiogenesis nor bound integrin αvβ3. Moreover, no specific binding of pro-MMP-2 to integrin αvβ3 was found, whereas only one out of four independently prepared enzymatically active MMP-2 preparations could bind integrin αvβ3, and this in a PEX-independent manner. Likewise, integrin αvβ3–expressing cells did not bind MMP-2-coated surfaces. Hence, these findings show that endothelial cell invasion of collagen I gels is MT1-MMP and αvβ3- dependent but MMP-2 independent and does not support a role for PEX in αvβ3 integrin binding or in modulating angiogenesis in this system.


The main objective of this paper is to critically assess the current status of the legal regime governing the international carriage of goods by sea, with the main focus being on the implied terms which form the foundation of international shipping law in general, and on the doctrine of deviation in particular. This will include a critical review of the rule against unjustified deviation in contracts of affreightment by posing the following questions: (i) Is the rule against unjustified deviation still relevant in the modern context of international carriage of goods by sea? In light of: The development of transport vessels, liberty clauses, different types of charterparties, and held cover clauses? (ii) Should the rule against unjustified deviation be treated any differently from other implied shipping terms? Is the rule against deviation an absolute obligation? Should unjustified deviation amount to fundamental breach of a contract? Should there not be some degree of flexibility in the judicial approach to the law on deviation? (iii) Do we need harmonisation, unification and interpretation of deviation rules? It is hoped that in attempting to answer these questions some light may be shed on this important area of shipping law.


The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education has influenced civil rights and antidiscrimination laws beyond the borders of the United States. The concept of equal protection from Brown and other American precedents has been a crucial stimulus for legal development in Europe. However, these precedents have operated in very different ways in the United States and in Europe. They have been reconstructed and in some cases transformed to fit the different social and political milieu of the European countries. This lecture examines such reconstruction using three illustrations: (1) the recognition of unintentional indirect discrimination; (2) the proof of direct discrimination; and (3) the development of positive duties on public authorities to promote equality of opportunity. There are a number of reasons for the divergences between the two continents. First, there are profoundly different contexts of racial disadvantage in the United States and in Europe. Second, racial classifications tend to be less entrenched in European countries than in the United States. Finally, European countries have recognized positive social, economic, and cultural obligations on the state. Thus, the globalization of law and the transplant of legal ideas into various countries actually creates differences between legal institutions, and these differences will continue to grow in the future.


Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who changed everything. It was Gorbachev's initiative that raised the Iron Curtain; his actions that resulted in one of the era's most symbolic events, the demolition on the Berlin Wall; his reforms that set in train events leading to the fall of Communism. Twelve years ago, when Gorbachev came to power, the globe was still divided into two armed camps, one for each superpower - as it had been ever since 1945. The Cold War dominated international politics, from Angola to Afghanistan. The man who became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 was much younger than his predecessors, yet there was little else to distinguish him from the stony-faced apparatchiks waving from the Kremlin. He seemed a model Communist, ideologically committed to socialism, raised wholly within the confines of the Party. Yet Gorbachev realized that the system could not continue. What was it about this man which enabled him to see so much more clearly than his colleagues? Like most who start a revolution, Gorbachev has been left behind. No longer in power, he has been forced to endure criticism from those wise after the event - most notably Boris Yeltsin, who became undisputed leader after the failed military coup that finally displaced Gorbachev from office. In these memoirs, Gorbachev reveals his feelings about the sad state of his country today. He tells us of his childhood in the North Caucasus during the Second World War, of coming to Moscow as a student and meeting Raisa Maksimovna, of his glittering career as a Party functionary, eventually becoming one of the most powerful men in the world. This is a historical document of the first importance. It is also a fascinating human story, an insider's account of the events that we never dared believe could happen.


This study identifies the effect of technology shocks on aggregate output using confirmatory factor analysis employed by Griliches, Hall and Pakes (1991). The analysis is based on the assumptions that there are two distinct shocks in an economy, demand and technology shocks, and that the patent data contain additional information on technology shocks. The findings show that, while the patent and R&D data do not contain significant information on technology shocks in the full sample of OECD countries, they do have significant information on these shocks in the G13 countries. The results suggest that, in the G13 countries technology shocks can explain almost all of the unexpected changes in patent stock, half of those in R&D stock and a quarter of the unexpected changes in GDP.


This experiment (N = 165) examined the effects of two aspects of in-program celebrity endorsement on brand attitudes and product claim acceptance: credibility of the celebrity and the effects of disclosure types. Although there is an increasing call for endorsement disclosures, the effects of these disclosures remained unstudied. This study, conducted in The Netherlands, showed that disclosure of the persuasive intent of in-program celebrity endorsements only resulted in reduced acceptance of product claims among viewers who did not perceive the celebrity in the endorsement as credible. This study has important implications for legislators.


Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness worldwide; however, smoking addiction remains poorly understood and cessation therapies based on nicotine replacement have limited success. The monoamine transporters are the primary mechanism for regulating the levels of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine in the synapse, and have been implicated in addiction and associated behaviors. Furthermore, the non‐nicotinic smoking cessation therapy bupropion acts at least in part by blocking the dopamine and norepinephrine transporters. Despite this, little work has been conducted into the effects of nicotine and cigarette smoke on the monoamine transporters. This review will outline research that has been conducted to date on cigarette smoke, nicotine and the monoamine transporters. This will include monoamine transporter regulation by nicotine and cigarette smoke, genetic associations of the transporters with smoking behavior, and the potential for monoamine transporters to be targets in the development of smoking cessation pharmacotherapies. Synapse , 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Compressive sampling (CS) has received extensive research attention in the past decade, as it allows sampling at a rate lower than that required by the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. Besides, benefiting from its intrinsic simplicity, convenience and simultaneous encryption, and compression performance, CS also shows great potential in the information security field. This special issue received 13 submissions and published 5 papers which are carefully peer-reviewed by experts in the field. The published papers of this special issue focus on the application security of compressive sampling. R. Zhang et al. extended the usage of CS for image authentication. Specifically, the primary image is firstly (DWT) transformed and then divided into important part, that is, low frequency part, and unimportant part, that is, high frequency part. For high frequency part, it is encrypted with CS to vacate space for watermark, whereas chaotic encryption is employed to conceal the low frequency phase. The innovation is that Zhang's scheme can realize not only tamper detection and localization but also tamper recovery, in comparison with existing authentication algorithms. J. Wang et al. proposed to use CS for identifying data injection attacks in a nonlinear cyber-physical system and it can also work well in linear systems. The authors conclude that only a small fraction of the observations is supposed to be attacked at a given time instance due to the property of data injection attacks. Hence the error correction problem can be formulated as a sparse optimization primitive and consequently highly relates to CS theory. M. Li et al. proposed to combine reversible data hidden (RDH) with CS and investigated a novel method for image encryption. The key idea is that RDH is applied in CS domain, which introduces a variety of benefits in terms of image sampling, communication, and security. It is demonstrated that the watermark embedding rate is significantly higher than those of other state-of-theart schemes. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the receiver is also reduced. Two image security papers have also been included in this special issue and are expected to be beneficial for broadening the CS security research. C. Fu et al. developed a chaos-based color image encryption scheme. Different from traditional solutions, a pixel swapping based scrambling approach is developed for permutation, whereas an efficient keystream generation strategy is employed for pixel substitution. Experimental results demonstrate the satisfactory security performance. C.-J. Ouyang et al. considered the security measure in steganography and steganalysis. The proposed security measure evaluates the similarity between two vague sets of cover images and stego images in terms of n-orderMarkov chain for capturing the interpixel correlation and has been shown to have the properties of boundedness, commutativity, and unity. Presenting these papers together in a special issue, we wish to provide better views for general readers and researchers about the state-of-the-art development of CS security and also expect that this special issue can attract more researchers into the CS security area.


An investigation into rectangular waveguide filters with open slots on the broad side walls is reported. This type of waveguide filter eliminates the need for direct contact between the two waveguide halves and intentionally leaves a gap in the middle of broad side walls. For X-band (8.2–12.4 GHz) waveguides, such a gap can be nearly as wide as 9% of the internal waveguide width a, without introducing any significant radiation loss. A fifth-order filter centred at 10 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of 2% is designed based on such a structure, and fabricated from aluminium and tested. There is good agreement between measurement and simulation results. This verifies the proposed structure as well as the design procedure.


Yield development of agricultural crops over time is not merely the result of genetic and agronomic factors, but also the outcome of a complex interaction between climatic and site‐specific soil conditions. However, the influence of past climatic changes on yield trends remains unclear, particularly under consideration of different soil conditions. In this study, we determine the effects of single agrometeorological factors on the evolution of German winter wheat yields between 1958 and 2015 from 298 published nitrogen (N)‐fertilization experiments. For this purpose, we separate climatic from genetic and agronomic yield effects using linear mixed effect models and estimate the climatic influence based on a coefficient of determination for these models. We found earlier occurrence of wheat growth stages, and shortened development phases except for the phase of stem elongation. Agrometeorological factors are defined as climate covariates related to the growth of winter wheat. Our results indicate a general and strong effect of agroclimatic changes on yield development, in particular due to increasing mean temperatures and heat stress events during the grain‐filling period. Except for heat stress days with more than 31°C, yields at sites with higher yield potential were less prone to adverse weather effects than at sites with lower yield potential. Our data furthermore reveal that a potential yield levelling, as found for many West‐European countries, predominantly occurred at sites with relatively low yield potential and about one decade earlier (mid‐1980s) compared to averaged yield data for the whole of Germany. Interestingly, effects related to high precipitation events were less relevant than temperature‐related effects and became relevant particularly during the vegetative growth phase. Overall, this study emphasizes the sensitivity of yield productivity to past climatic conditions, under consideration of regional differences, and underlines the necessity of finding adaptation strategies for food production under ongoing and expected climate change.


A locking model adopting a multi-granularity approach is proposed for concurrency control in object-oriented database systems.The model is motivated by a desire to provide high concurrency and low locking overhead in accessing objects. Locking in schemas and locking in instances are developed separately and then are integrated. Schema changes and composite objects are also taken into account. A dual queue scheme for efficient scheduling of lock requests is developed. The model consists of a rich set of lock modes, a compatibility matrix, and a locking protocol. Characteristic query examples on single class, class lattice, and composite objects are used to illustrate the comparison between the ORION model and the proposed model. It is shown that our locking model has indeed made some improvements and is suitable for concurrency control in object-oriented databases. Index Terms-Object-oriented database, locking model, concurrency control, focking granularity, compatibility matrix.


In present study, a novel deposition method combining conventional hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) method and surface polishing is adopted to deposit the micro/nano-crystalline multilayered ultra-smooth diamond (USCD) film on the cobalt cemented tungsten carbide (WC-Co) cutting inserts. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image shows that the deposited USCD film exhibits an ultra-smooth surface, whose surface roughness (Ra) is measured as ~95.7 nm using surface profilometer. The characterization of Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) further confirms that the grain size of USCD film is down to the nanometer scale. Furthermore, dry turning tests using Al/SiC-MMC as workpiece are conducted to examine the cutting performance of as-fabricated USCD coated inserts, comparing with uncoated WC-Co inserts, MCD and DLC coated inserts. The results show that the USCD coated insert exhibits much longer lifetime than other inserts, whose effective cutting length is as long as 190 m, nearly two times more than that of DLC and MCD coated inserts, and 5 times more than that of uncoated WC-Co inserts. The excellent wear resistance and ultra-smooth surface of USCD films is supposed to play determinate role on elongating the lifetime of WC-Co cutting insert.


Certain sustainability practices could be considered nearly universal in the lodging industry, based on a study of 100 resorts in the United States. Among the common green practices are water conserving fixtures and linen-reuse programs. A separate survey of 120,000 hotel customers finds that guests are generally willing to participate in sustainability programs, but the presence of green operations still do not override considerations of price and convenience in selecting a hotel. Additionally, the study finds an increased willingness to participate when hotels offer incentives, such as loyalty program points, for participating in environmental programs. Although the link between environmentally sustainable programs and improved customer satisfaction is weak compared to standard drivers like facilities, room, and food and beverage quality, hotels are increasingly expected to maintain sustainability programs as a regular feature of their business. At the same time, the study did find that environmental sustainability programs do not diminish guest satisfaction. Consequently, the decision regarding which programs to implement should rest on cost-benefit analysis and other operating considerations.


Abstract. Using a modeling framework, this study investigates how a pyrocumulonimbus
(pyroCb) event influences water vapor concentrations and cirrus-cloud
properties near the tropopause, specifically focusing on how fire-produced
aerosols affect this role. Results from a case study show that when observed
fire intensity is high, there is an insignificant impact of fire-produced
aerosols on the development of the pyroCb and associated changes in water
vapor and cirrus clouds near the tropopause. However, as fire intensity
weakens, effects of those aerosols on microphysical variables and processes
such as droplet size and autoconversion increase. Due to this,
aerosol-induced invigoration of convection is significant for pyroCb with
weak-intensity fires and associated weak surface heat fluxes. This leads to
a situation where there is a greater aerosol effect on the transport of
water vapor to the upper troposphere and the production of cirrus clouds
with weak-intensity fires, whereas this effect is muted with
strong-intensity fires.


In this work, a novel technique for the real time identi cation of uncertain nonlinear aircraft aerodynamic coe cients has been developed and analyzed. The major objective of this paper is to develop and demonstrate a system for parameter identi cation in a real time ight environment. This system should be able to calculate aerodynamic coe cient information using typical pilot inputs while ensuring robust, stable, and rapid convergence. The parameter estimator investigated is based upon the nonlinear sliding mode control schema; one of the main advantages of the sliding mode estimator is the ability to guarantee a stable and robust convergence. Stable convergence is ensured by choosing a sliding surface and function that satis es the Lyapunov stability criteria. After a proper sliding surface has been chosen, the nonlinear equations of motion for an F-16 aircraft are substituted into the sliding surface yielding an estimator capable of identifying a single aircraft parameter. Multiple sliding surfaces are then developed for each of the di erent ight parameters that will be identi ed. Sliding surfaces and parameter estimators have been developed and simulated for the pitching moment, lift force, and drag force coe cients of the F-16 aircraft. Comparing the estimated coe cients with the reference coe cients shows rapid and stable convergence for a variety of pilot inputs. Starting with simple doublet and sin wave commands, and followed by more complicated continuous pilot inputs, estimated aerodynamic coe cients have been shown to match the actual coe cients with a high degree of accuracy. This estimator is also shown to be superior to model reference or adaptive estimators, it is able to handle positive and negative estimated parameters and control inputs along with guaranteeing Lyapunov stability during convergence.


This research involves measuring maintenance productivity and seeks to measure how maintenance of equipment affects the overall productivity of the company. The Stewart Utility Concept was used along with a scaling factor. Performance measures were identified and their values were obtained. Five productivity ratios were employed to obtain the overall maintenance productivity. Results from the graphs showed that Equipment Availability was 78.32%; Emergency Failure Intensity Ratio was 28.4%; Maintenance Cost Component was 32.39/btl; Cost of Maintenance hour was N125, 081/hr; Routine Service Worked was 92.03% and Cost of Reduction was 5.32hr/N. The overall maintenance productivity of the period under review was fairly good though there is room for improvement. Average overall maintenance productivity was found to be 63.2%. This is an indication that there were evaluations and review of maintenance productivity within the period.


Identification of HLA genes and further identification of their biological role were among major achievements of medical-biological science in XX century. Several Nobel Prizes awarded in that field of science proved their importance. The end of XX Century and beginning of the XXI century were marked by introduction of molecular genetic methods in research. The contributed to development and revision of current ideas of physiological role of HLA supporting genetic homeostasis and human survival as species. Moreover they prompted to review the existing concepts of inter- and intra-populational polymorphism among HLA-frequencies.


The aim of this research is to develop a predictive model to estimate the groundwater head in Safwan-Zubair area by using an adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). This area represents the southern sector of the Iraqi Desert, an arid region with scarce and limited resources. The data required for building the ANFIS model are generated using MODFLOW model (V.5.3). MODFLOW model was calibrated based on field measurements during one year. MODFLOW model generated (3797) hydraulic head values during each month. 70% of these values (2658 samples) was used for training, 30% of these values (1139 samples) was used for checking. The accuracy of the ANFIS models are compared with previous work based on artificial neural network (ANN) technique. Different combination of successive hydraulic heads and recharge rates of groundwater is used as input variables. There is no significant increase in the estimation accuracy when adding another input variable (recharge rate). Because the amount of this variable is very little, so its influence on the results was imperceptible. A comparison of ANFIS and ANN shows that the ANFIS model performs preferable than the ANN model on the checking phase. ANFIS model combines both fuzzy logic basics and neural networks; thus their properties can be utilized in one frame. It can be concluded, the ANFIS model appears to be more convenient than the ANN model for predicting groundwater hydraulic head from related input data.


Mechanical properties of two different types of silkworm silk fibers under three conditions: (i) Bombyx mori; (ii) twisted Bombyx mori; and (iii) Tussah silk fibers were under investigations. The values of ultimate tensile strength, elongation at break and Young's modulus were examined by performing tensile test on single bave. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to observe the morphologies of the two different types of silk fibers, and measure their general diameters so as to determine the cross-sectional area of the two different types of silk fibers and convert the experimental load-extension data into stress-strain data accordingly.


In this paper, we formulate a joint optimization problem for resource allocation and scheduling in full-duplex multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiple access (MIMO-OFDMA) relaying systems with amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocols. Our problem formulation takes into account heterogeneous data rate requirements for delay sensitive and non-delay sensitive users. We also consider a theoretically optimal hybrid relaying scheme as a performance benchmark, which allows a dynamic selection between AF relaying and DF relaying protocols with full-duplex and half-duplex relays. We show that under some mild conditions the optimal transmitter precoding and receiver post-processing matrices jointly diagonalize the MIMO-OFDMA relay channels for all considered relaying protocols transforming the resource allocation and scheduling problem into a scalar optimization problem. Dual decomposition is employed to solve this optimization problem and a distributed iterative resource allocation and scheduling algorithm with closed-form power and subcarrier allocation is derived. Simulation results not only illustrate that the proposed distributed algorithm converges to the optimal solution in a small number of iterations, but also demonstrate the potential performance gains achievable with full-duplex relaying protocols.


This preliminary study of the critical reaction to the work of women practitioners in the decorative arts in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, has been undertaken in order to further an understanding of the voices which contributed to constructions of contemporary femininity. It investigates the reactions of critics to the work of 730 women who contributed to four exhibitions of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society in London, held in 1888, 1890, 1903 and 1916. The press policy of the ACES, together with the context of contemporary art criticism practices and background information on the critics and periodicals used, are set out in Chapter 1. For each exhibition, critical reaction to women's work is summarised in a section of general comments on women's exhibits, and particularised with an indepth look at the reception of Kate Faulkner, May Morris, Una Taylor, Georgina Gaskin, Grace Christie and Phoebe Stabler. Periodicals which consistently reviewed women's work were from all classes, and criticism of women's decorative arts varied widely, but certain trends emerged which revealed greater support for women designers than makers, and more praise for women designers who worked in acceptable 'feminine' mediums of embroidery, jewellery, or gesso decoration. Often women were named but their work was not discussed. Women who collaborated with their husbands also found their contributions glossed over. Some women's work was discussed with feminised language, some with both masculine and feminine terms, and some with rather gender-neutral language. Formal analysis of women's decorative art was rare. Press notices of women's work dropped significantly between 1903 and 1916, due to a combination of factors. Overall the analysis of women's press reception at ACES was facilitated by knowledge of the critic and editorial policy of the periodical.


In order to understand the exploitation/exploration trade-off in reinforcement learning, previous theoretical and empirical accounts have suggested that increased uncertainty may precede the decision to explore an alternative option. To date, the neural mechanisms that support the strategic application of uncertainty-driven exploration remain underspecified. In this study, electroencephalography (EEG) was used to assess trial-to-trial dynamics relevant to exploration and exploitation. Theta-band activities over middle and lateral frontal areas have previously been implicated in EEG studies of reinforcement learning and strategic control. It was hypothesized that these areas may interact during top-down strategic behavioral control involved in exploratory choices. Here, we used a dynamic reward-learning task and an associated mathematical model that predicted individual response times. This reinforcement-learning model generated value-based prediction errors and trial-by-trial estimates of exploration as a function of uncertainty. Mid-frontal theta power correlated with unsigned prediction error, although negative prediction errors had greater power overall. Trial-to-trial variations in response-locked frontal theta were linearly related to relative uncertainty and were larger in individuals who used uncertainty to guide exploration. This finding suggests that theta-band activities reflect prefrontal-directed strategic control during exploratory choices.


Objective: To test the acceptability and feasibility of self-administered acupressure as an intervention for knee pain among middle-aged and older adults with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Methods: In this pilot randomized controlled trial, 35 participants with KOA were randomized to receive self-administered acupressure (n = 17, two self-administered acupressure training sessions followed by self-practice for 6 weeks) or knee health education (n = 18, two health education sessions about KOA management followed by self-care for 6 weeks). Current pain intensity (primary outcome) was measured using a Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) at baseline and weeks 1, 2, 4 and 6 (post-intervention). Secondary outcome measures included worst and least pain intensity, the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), range of motion (ROM) of the knee joints and Short-Form Six-Dimension (SF-6D) scores for health-related quality of life. Results: Participants in both groups attended all training sessions. In the self-administered acupressure group, all subjects mastered the acupressure technique and passed a consistency check. Both groups showed a decreasing trend in current knee pain intensity measured using NRS post-intervention. A medium between-group effect size (0.40) was found, but between-group differences were not statistically significant. The other secondary outcome measures were also comparable between both groups post-intervention (all p > 0.05). Conclusion: A two-session self-administered acupressure training was acceptable to and feasible in participants with KOA. The data generated allowed for calculation of a sample size for a definitive randomized controlled trial (RCT) to confirm whether self-acupressure is effective for pain management in KOA. Furthermore trials with adequate power and longer follow-up periods are warranted.


We consider the optimization of the average entropy production in inhomogeneous temperature environments within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics. For systems modeled by Langevin equations (e.g. a colloidal particle in a heat bath) it has been recently shown that a space-dependent temperature breaks the time reversal symmetry of the fast velocity degrees of freedom resulting in an anomalous contribution to the entropy production of the overdamped dynamics. We show that optimization of entropy production is determined by an auxiliary deterministic problem formally analogous to motion on a curved manifold in a potential. The "anomalous contribution" to entropy plays the role of the potential and the inverse of the diffusion tensor is the metric. We also find that entropy production is not minimized by adiabatically slow, quasi-static protocols but there is a finite optimal duration for the transport process. As an example we discuss the case of a linearly space-dependent diffusion coefficient.


Aim: To analyse whether there are changes in sodium and potassium serum levels during chronic treatment with the diphenyl methanes bisacodyl and sodium picosulfate. Methods: A literature search was done using PubMed, and the reference lists of pertinent papers were screened for additional studies. Only studies of at least 4 weeks duration were considered for further analysis. Results: Four relevant studies were identified. In three randomised controlled trials with 5 to 10 mg daily of bisacodyl or sodium picosulfate, respectively, over four weeks no electrolyte losses were found. Hypokalemia was also not a problem in a group of patients with paraplegia using bisacodyl suppositories for 2 to 34 years. Conclusions: Electrolyte losses, particularly hypokalemia, are not a problem when bisacodyl or sodium picosulfate are used long-term.


ABSTRACT Previous literature on Polish migration to the UK identified a discourse of normality as a grand narrative in migrants' justifications for living and working abroad. The present article contributes to this literature by asking what happens to this discourse in the circumstances of the UK, where it cannot be easily sustained. To explore this issue, the case of Northern Ireland is chosen and it is illustratively compared to that of Scotland. Using the concept of Structures of Feeling to frame the analysis of semi-structured interviews with Polish migrant workers, the study shows that, on the one hand, migration experience in Northern Ireland seems to undermine the ideal of a normal life as well as the idealised images of the UK that the discourse of normality conveys. However, it also shows that this discourse remains an important feature of migrants' narratives. In accounting for this inconsistency within interviews, the article proposes the notion of 'normality through exclusion'. It also shows that, although not straightforwardly different from the experience of migration to other parts of the UK, the experience of migration to Northern Ireland is also characterised by certain subtleties which are well accounted for by the concept of Structures of Feeling.


Abstract While carotid interventions help decrease the risk of stroke, nearly 40% of patients experience cognitive deterioration. Genetic polymorphism in apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) have been implicated in cognitive impairment; however, it is unclear whether they may influence cognitive changes in patients undergoing carotid intervention. In this study, we seek to assess the role of genetic polymorphisms in carotid intervention-related cognitive change. Polymorphisms related to cognitive function were chosen for this preliminary analysis. Over 2 years, patients undergoing carotid interventions were prospectively recruited. Patients underwent neuropsychological testing 2 weeks prior to and at 1 month following their procedure. Saliva samples were collected for genetic analysis. Logistic regressions were used to identify associations between polymorphisms and cognitive measures. A total of 91 patients were included; all were male with an average age of 70 years. The majority of patients exhibited hypertension (95%) and a history of smoking (81%). Presence of ApoE 4 allele was associated with depression (p= 0.047). After correcting for age and genetic polymorphisms in BDNF and serotonin transporter (5-HTT), ApoE 4 allele was associated with depression (p= 0.044) and showed a trend with baseline cognitive impairment (p= 0.10). Age ≥ 70 years was associated with baseline cognitive impairment after adjusting for the three genetic polymorphisms (p= 0.03). Patients with ApoE 4 and BDNF A polymorphisms performed less well on the visual and verbal memory measures, respectively. Polymorphisms in ApoE and BDNF may provide insight on cognition in patients undergoing carotid interventions; however, the mechanism of this relationship remains unclear.


Accurate Modelling of a real-world system with probabilistic behaviour is a difficult task. Sensor noise and statistical estimations, among other imprecisions, make the exact probability values impossible to obtain. In this article, we consider Interval Markov decision processes (IMDPs), which generalise classical MDPs by having interval-valued transition probabilities. They provide a powerful modelling tool for probabilistic systems with an additional variation or uncertainty that prevents the knowledge of the exact transition probabilities. We investigate the problem of robust multi-objective synthesis for IMDPs and Pareto curve analysis of multi-objective queries on IMDPs. We study how to find a robust (randomised) strategy that satisfies multiple objectives involving rewards, reachability, and more general ω-regular properties against all possible resolutions of the transition probability uncertainties, as well as to generate an approximate Pareto curve providing an explicit view of the trade-offs between multiple objectives. We show that the multi-objective synthesis problem is PSPACE-hard and provide a value iteration-based decision algorithm to approximate the Pareto set of achievable points. We finally demonstrate the practical effectiveness of our proposed approaches by applying them on several case studies using a prototype tool.


This paper introduces a novel methodology for robust intersatellite ranging and attitude measurement planning via a case study of two low Earth orbit small satellites flying in formation. The relative position model expresses the curvilinear coordinates dynamics of the Follower in the Leader-centered local frame, and includes deterministic effects of the J2 acceleration. The relative attitude model expresses the linearized dynamics of the Euler angles from the Leader-centered local frame to the Follower body frame and includes the Gravity-Gradient torque. The atmospheric density is modeled as a stochastic process perturbing both accelerations and torques. Its means and variances are calibrated via Monte-Carlo simulations of a high-fidelity Truth model. Measured intersatellite ranges and relative attitudes are processed along a finite period of time via a Kalman filter to produce estimates of a twelve states vector of relative position and attitude and of their rates. The estimation error covariance matrix at the final time possesses a known upper bound function of the observability and noise controllability Gramians. First, an optimal ranging strategy is developed by finding the ranging noise variance profile that minimizes the upper bound. The minimization is subject to a time integral constraint on the noise variance that is derived from a laser energy budget. This results in a remarkably short sequence of ranging epoch times. Then that problem is extended to the maximization of the upper bound with respect to the atmospheric density variance profile. The density variance is assumed to satisfy a time integral constraint, derived from finite energy considerations and quantified through Monte-Carlo simulations. The problems are solved through numerical iterative schemes and their solutions consist of very few ranging acquisition times, atmospheric density impulses, along with the corresponding optimized intensities. The combined solution to both problems thus provides a robust laser ranging planning over a given window of time. Robustness is here in terms of guaranteed performances on the estimation error covariance matrix at the final time: its upper bound is designed for the worst-case atmospheric density profile along the scheduled trajectory. The proposed design has got appealing practical features such as: very few ranging epoch times compared with continuous ranging, for a given overall laser energy budget; very few process noise impulses, compared with continuous process noise, for a given overall noise energy. Extensive simulations are performed that verify the algorithms convergence and validate the proposed approach. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations are also presented to compare the performances of Kalman filters designed via the proposed approach with others based on continuous measurement and process noise.


Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the differential effects of Tai Chi vs. brisk walking on cognitive function among individuals aged 60 and greater. Patients and Methods For participant recruitment, a health talk was arranged at two communities in which two different exercise modalities (Tai Chi and brisk walking) were assigned to participants of each community free of charge. The intervention programs lasted 10 weeks, with three 60-min training sessions per week. General cognitive ability and specific cognitive outcomes were measured using the Chinese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Results A significant interaction on total scores of the MoCA was observed (F = 11.15, p < 0.05). Post hoc analysis indicated significant improvements on general cognitive performance as measured in performance on the MoCA for both exercise groups at the end of 10 weeks. A significant interaction was only observed on the delayed recall sub-domain (F = 12.93, p < 0.001). Results from post hoc analysis indicate that the Tai Chi group had a significantly better memory performance relative to brisk walking group (p < 0.05). Specifically, significant improvement was observed in Tai Chi group (p < 0.05), but not in the brisk walking group. Both exercise groups demonstrated significant improvements from baseline to Week 10, which emerged in visualspatial ability (p < 0.05) and attention performance (p < 0.001). Lastly, animal naming and orientation significantly benefited from brisk walking (p < 0.05) and Tai Chi training (p < 0.05), respectively. Conclusion Tai Chi and brisk walking as the most commonly used, culture-specific mind-body exercise method have been proven to be effective in improving general cognitive performance and specific cognitive domains. Furthermore, differential effects of two different exercise modalities on cognitive domains were observed, which has provided insightful information for customized exercise programs. Finally, aging individuals who are experiencing cognitive decline should either take Tai Chi classes regularly or engage in brisk walking, which could contribute to brain health.


The papers in this issue of JFDE discuss the potential of adaptive building envelopes, component development as well as implementation strategies. The applied practice paper demonstrates decision strategies behind the adaptive sun shading system of the Al-Bahr Towers. Additivity in building envelopes is not only a strategy to fulfil the growing demands for energy efficient buildings and comfort but has great architectural implications as well. In general it asks for more complex components as well as control strategies. But complexity also means costs and risks, and we need to discuss the means and effects. This discussion in particular is very interesting because here science and practice meet. The Journal of Facade Design and Engineering JFDE will actively follow and stimulate by providing high quality contributions. Four of the paper contributions have their origins in the Conference 'Facades 2014', held in November 2014 in Lucerne. The contributions have been carefully selected and have been subjected to the regular double blind review process of the journal. We want to thank Prof. Dr. Andres Luible for the help in making this issue happen. We are proud that JFDE is the scientific partner for a number of conferences such as 'The Future Envelope' Conference on Building Envelopes held yearly in Delft (NL) or Bath (UK), the ICAE International Congress on Architectural Envelopes in San Sebastian (ES) and the above mentioned conference 'Facades' in Lucerne (CH) and Detmold (D). Our latest partner is the ICBEST 2017 - International Conference on Building Envelope Systems and Technologies in Istanbul. The growing number of partners indicates the relevance of JFDE for our growing discipline and will assure the continuity of the journal. Facade Design and Engineering is a peer reviewed, open access journal, funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO (www.nwo.nl). We see 'open access' as the future publishing model. But it certainly requires new financial models which we will have to explore in the coming years.


Objectives: To identify attributes (i.e., characteristics describing a scenario) and levels (i.e., each characteristic may be defined by a different level) that would be included in a discrete choice experiment (DCE) questionnaire to evaluate women's preferences for water immersion during labor and birth. Methods: A mixed-method approach, combining systematic reviews of the literature and patient focus groups to identify attributes and levels explaining women's preferences. After the focus groups, preference exercises were conducted and led to the creation of the questionnaire, including the DCE. A qualitative validation of the questionnaire was conducted with women from the focus groups and with medical experts. Results: The literature reviews provided 26 attributes to be considered for childbirth in water, and focus groups identified 14 additional attributes. From these 40 attributes, preference exercises allowed us to select four for the DCE, in addition to the birth mode. Labor duration was also included, even if it was not well ranked, as it is the main clinical outcome in the literature. Validation with experts and women did not change the choice of attributes but slightly changed the levels selected. The final six attributes were: birth mode, duration of the labor phase, pain sensation, risk of severe tears in the perineum during the expulsion of the newborn, risk of death of the newborn, and general condition of the newborn (Apgar) score at 5 minutes. Conclusion: This study allowed us to detail all the stages for the design of a DCE questionnaire. To date, this is the first study of this kind in the context of women's preferences for water immersion during labor and birth.


Actionable patterns are a form of recommendations that gives knowledge required by the user on actions they need to undertake to attain profit or achieve goals. Action rule is one of the methods to mine actionable patterns that are hidden in a large dataset. In the modern era of big data, organizations are collecting massive amounts of data and they keep the data updated constantly, including in major domains like financial, medical, as well as social media and IoT. Classical action rules extraction models, which analyze the data in a non-distributed fashion, lacks efficiency when processing big volumes of data and thus require a distributed approach to extract rules. Major complications of discovering action rules with distributed methods include data distribution among processing nodes in the cluster and extracting mined rule parameters like: support, confidence, utility, and coverage, representing the entire data. In this work, we focus on data distribution phase of the distributed actionable pattern mining problem. Very few works have been proposed to distribute the big data in both horizontal and vertical fashions, and extract rules/knowledge from the distributed data. We primarily focus on the vertical data splitting strategy using information granules, which give meaningful representations of complex information systems as fine grained granules. We tend to make the vertical data partitioning more logical using information granules instead of splitting the data in random.


ABSTRACT FREQUENCY (FRQ), a key component of the Neurospora circadian clock, is progressively phosphorylated after its synthesis. Previously, we identified casein kinase II (CKII) as a kinase that phosphorylates FRQ. Disruption of the catalytic subunit of CKII abolishes the clock function; it also causes severe defects in growth and development. To further establish the role of CKII in clock function, one of the CKII regulatory subunit genes, ckb1, was disrupted in Neurospora. In the ckb1 mutant strain, FRQ proteins are hypophosphorylated and more stable than in the wild-type strain, and circadian rhythms of conidiation and FRQ protein oscillation were observed to have long periods but low amplitudes. These data suggest that phosphorylation of FRQ by CKII regulates FRQ stability and the function of the circadian feedback loop. In addition, mutations of several putative CKII phosphorylation sites of FRQ led to hypophosphorylation of FRQ and long-period rhythms. Both CKA and CKB1 proteins are found in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus, but their expressions and localization are not controlled by the clock. Finally, disruption of a Neurospora casein kinase I (CKI) gene, ck-1b, showed that it is not required for clock function despite its important role in growth and developmental processes. Together, these data indicate that CKII is an important component of the Neurospora circadian clock.


In an effort to assist medical researchers and professionals in accessing information necessary for their work, the A1 Lab at the University of Arizona is investigating the use of a natural language processing (NLP) technique called noun phrasing. The goal of this research is to determine whether noun phrasing could be a viable technique to include in medical information retrieval applications. Four noun phrase generation tools were evaluated as to their ability to isolate noun phrases from medical journal abstracts. Tests were conducted using the National Cancer Institute's CANCERLIT database. The NLP tools evaluated were Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Chopper, The University of Arizona's Automatic Indexer, Lingsoft's NPtool, and The University of Arizona's AZ Noun Phraser. In addition, the National Library of Medicine's SPECIALIST Lexicon was incorporated into two versions of the AZ Noun Phraser to be evaluated against the other tools as well as a nonaugmented version of the AZ Noun Phraser. Using the metrics relative subject recall and precision, our results show that, with the exception of Chopper, the phrasing tools were fairly comparable in recall and precision. It was also shown that augmenting the AZ Noun Phraser by including the SPECIALIST Lexicon from the National Library of Medicine resulted in improved recall and precision.


The immediate-early gene Arc is a master regulator of synaptic function and a critical determinant of memory consolidation. Arc protein is localized to excitatory synapses, where it controls AMPA receptor endocytosis, and to the nucleus, where it associates with Tip60, a subunit of a chromatin modifying complex. Here we show that Arc interacts with dynamic chromatin loops and associates with histone markers for active enhancers and transcription in cultured hippocampal neurons. When Arc induction by pharmacological network activation was prevented using a short hairpin RNA, the expression profile was altered for over 1900 genes. Many gene families were affected by the absence of Arc, most notably those associated with synaptic function, neuronal plasticity, intrinsic excitability (channels, receptors, transporters), and signaling pathways (transcription factors/regulators). Interestingly, about 100 genes whose activity-dependent expression level depends on Arc are associated with the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease, suggesting a critical role for Arc in the development of neurodegenerative disorders. When endogenous Arc expression was induced in a non-neuronal cell line (HEK293T), the transcription of many neuronal genes was increased, suggesting Arc can control expression in the absence of activated signaling pathways. Taken together, these data establish Arc as a master regulator of neuronal activity-dependent gene expression and a significant factor underlying the pathophysiology Alzheimer's disease.


Many neurological disorders are accompanied by abnormal nerve activity. However, the exact causes of this abnormal nervous activity has never been determined. Based upon my research, I propose a theory that the underlying cause of many types of neurological disorders such as minor epilepsy and narcolepsy is an abnormally functioning Na+/K+ ATPase pump at the molecular framework of the brain, notably the brainstem reticular formation (locus coerulus) and cerebellum in this particular case. The excessive and repetitive nerve activity within localized areas of the brain caused by abnormally functioning molecular Na+/K+ ATPase ion pumps may be the primary and true causes of many different types of neurological disorders since constant depolarizations of the cell membrane causes abnormally excessive amounts of certain neurotransmitters to be released. The type of neurological disorder may be a function of the abnormally occurring Na+/K+ ATPase molecular ion pump's localization within the neurological framework of the brain. To focus on my theory of repetitive nervous activity from abnormal inhibitive or defective Na+/K+ ATPase pumps, I have chosen to analyze minor epilepsy and narcolepsy intentionally. What is found is that the abnormal release of neurotransmitters during epileptic seizures or narcoleptic sleep episodes is secondary to the abnormal neuronal systematic framework underlying Na+/K+ membrane potentials since an abnormally inhibited or defective Na+/K+ ATPase pump has a direct electrogenic effect on the membrane potential.


Aiming at characteristics of production and requirement, analyzing multi-dimensional structure features of manufacturing resources, Bill of Manufacturing Resource for capacity allocation was presented based on mapping logic relationships. The state description matrixes of process load and capability were built upon Bill of Process as a coupling; the associated structure of capacity, process and material is expressed according to operations in each production stage. With manufacturing process information being integrated and carded, the accurate description of manufacturing resources can be obtained. Decision support data is provided for capacity allocation in steel enterprises. BOMR model is verified as feasible and effective by conducting in an actual enterprise.


The role of concurrent illness in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is unknown. Patients with leukemia may display altered thromboinflammatory responses. We report a 53-year-old man presenting with acute leukemia and COVID-19 who developed thrombotic complications and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Multiple analyses, including rotational thromboelastometry and flow cytometry on blood and bronchoalveolar lavage, are reported to characterize coagulation and immune profiles. The patient developed chemotherapy-induced neutropenia that may have protected his lungs from granulocyte-driven hyperinflammatory acute lung injury. However, neutropenia also alters viral clearing, potentially enabling ongoing viral propagation. This case depicts a precarious equilibrium between leukemia and COVID-19.


Within the context of student needs analysis, instructors can use the Enneagram of psychological types to shape the personal profiles of learners and apply the appropriate teaching strategies to include them in the learning process. This paper presents a case study involving 246 Italian students who were asked to take the SEDIG test, to fill in the Ehrman & Leaver questionnaire, and release a sample of their handwriting in which they described their reasons for studying foreign languages. The goal of this action research study was to improve students' self-perception and their capacity to develop an effective dialogue with instructors and fellow students. The objective of the research is to verify whether there is a connection among the three factors considered, i.e., students' personality traits, the reasons behind the choice of foreign languages as a course of study and academic success in terms of exam marks.


Using social representations theory, we studied the social meanings of a controversial Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In Study One, we describe the discursive content of the social debate by content analyzing articles from newspapers and selected websites. Study Two uses a survey to examine the fit between social representations of the political elite, as found in media, and the non-elite in Mindanao territories where the MOA was hotly contested. Study Three presents the social representations of the MOA at the local level through analysis of key informant interviews and archival data. Discriminant analysis on survey data shows that in general, the debate of political elites in media mirrors the contentions on-the-ground. However, the issue of constitutionality was only taken up by the political elite. Our findings suggest that the political stumble of the GRP-MILF peace process lay in a lack of procedural fairness and an on-the-ground participatory process acceptable to all antagonistic parties. However, the socially represented fair procedure is not about conventional democratic ways like using or not using a constitutional frame, but rather about pragmatic positioning and public consultations.


Pearl millet has been cultivated in Haryana as a dual purpose crop where grain and fodder are most
often valued equally, which supports poor smallholders and livestock in the harsh agro-climatic
region. Currently, the productivity levels are low because of limited adoption of dryland technologies
by the poor. The HOPE project aimed at increasing the productivity of pearl millet by 35-40 % over
the base level by introducing on-shelf technology and improved management practices in the
targeted clusters over a period of four years. In this regard, the baseline survey was carried out in the
primary project intervention area (HOPE) where improved technologies have been introduced, and in
matching control villages with comparable agro-ecological and market conditions in non-intervention
areas (non-HOPE), where improved technologies have not been made. The objective of this baseline
survey was to appraise the existing situation of the targeted cluster villages with respect to adoption
of technologies, productivity, income, yield gaps and other socioeconomic issues. Pearl millet is the
major crop in the rainy season followed by mustard and gram in the rabi (postrainy) season. The
average productivity of pearl millet ranges from 1.54 – 1.79 t/ha as against the potential yield of 2.5 –
2.9 t/ha, leaving a yield gap of 58-101%. In the HOPE clusters, adoption rate of hybrids is at the peak,
covering around 48% (out of 124.5 ha) under public bred hybrids (HHB 67, HHB 67 Improved), and 50
% under proprietary hybrids. While the same in non-HOPE area was 35% (out of 54.8 ha) under public
bred hybrids, and rest of the area is under proprietary hybrids. The yield gap of improved hybrids
of pearl millet was estimated as 58-101%, as compared to the potential yield, which shows further
scope for improvement in productivity levels. On an average, farmers were reaping a net benefit of is
Rs.2108 per ha in HOPE areas, while it was Rs.6238 per ha in non-HOPE area, after accounting the total
costs. Farmers most preferred traits in public hybrids of pearl millet inter alia include more palatable
grain and fodder quality and disease-pest-moisture stress. Key critical constraints expressed by the
farmers are shortage of labour especially during harves