This is a media ethnographic bachelor thesis. It examines journalism students at Bahir Dar University's perceptions about how television can influence their identities but also cultures and lifestyles in Ethiopia in general. Ethnographic observations, time-use diaries, group interviews and individual interviews were used to gather data. However, the individual interviews are our main method.Our results showed that the journalism students believe that television influence them in various ways: their way of dressing and looking, acting, thinking and being. They also believe that televisions' ability to change their identities in a bigger context means that cultures and traditions in Ethiopia are changing. The journalism students talk about different phenomenons that have arisen in Ethiopia during the last years, for example homosexuality, new techniques and appliances and new kind of clothes and food. And they say that they believe these phenomenons have arisen in Ethiopia because of media globalization.


The perspectives of marginalised young men on what they value in relationships with social care workers are under-researched and have not received adequate attention within policy and practice literatures. Moreover, problematic assumptions about gender pervade much political and cultural commentary. Research findings from a study of 50 young men, aged between 16 and 25, attending a range of social care services, are highly significant in this context. They highlight young men's investment in a language of care and respect and their rejection of categorical presumptions. However, the services were steeped in practices and understandings of their marginalisation and offered important opportunities for recognition.


PurposeThis study aims to examine publications of supply chain management (SCM) researchers from across the world and maps the leadership role of authors and institutions based on how prolific they are in publishing and on network measures of centrality while accounting for the quality of the outlets that they publish in. It aims to inform stakeholders on who the leading SCM scholars are, their primary areas of SCM research, their publication profiles and the nature of their networks. It also identifies and informs on the leading SCM research institutions of the world and where leadership in specific areas of SCM research is emerging from.Design/methodology/approachBased on SCM papers appearing in a set of seven leading journals over the 15-year period of 2001-2015, publication scores and social network analysis measures of total degree centrality and Bonacich power centrality are used to identify the highest ranked agents in SCM research overall, as well as in some specific areas of SCM research. Social network analysis is also used to examine the nature and scope of the networks of the ranked agents and where leadership in SCM research is emerging from.FindingsAuthors and institutions from the USA and UK are found to dominate much of the rankings in SCM research both by publication score and social network analysis measures of centrality. In examining the networks of the very top authors and institutions of the world, their networks are found to be more inward-looking (country-centric) than outward-looking (globally dispersed). Further, researchers in Europe and Asia alike are found to exhibit significant continental inclinations in their network formations with researchers in Europe displaying greater propensity to collaborate with their European-based counterparts and researchers in Asia with their Asian-based counterparts. Also, from among the journals,Supply Chain Management: An International Journalis found to exhibit a far more expansive global reach than any of the other journals.Research limitations/implicationsThe journal set used in this study, though representative of high-quality SCM research outlets, is not exhaustive of all potential outlets that publish SCM research. Further, the measure of quality that this study assigns to the various publications is based solely on a publication score that accounts for the quality of the journals, as rated byAssociation of Business Schoolsthat the papers appear in and nothing else.Practical implicationsBy informing the community of stakeholders of SCM research about the top-ranked SCM authors, institutions and countries of the world, the nature of their networks, as well as what the primary areas of SCM research of the leading authors in the world are, this research provides stakeholders, including managers, researchers and students, information that is helpful to them not only because of the insights it provides but also for the gauging of potential for embedding themselves in specific networks, engaging in collaborative research with the leading agents or pursuing educational opportunities with them.Originality/valueThis research is the first of its kind to identify and rank the top SCM authors and institutions from across the world using a representative set of seven leading SCM and primary OM journals based on publication scores and social network measures of centrality. The research is also the first of its kind to identify and rank the top authors and institutions within specific areas of SCM research and to identify future research opportunities relating to aspects of collaboration and networking in research endeavors.


Forty-four years ago, Antonio Garcia-Bellido utilized, for the first time in biology, the clonal analysis technique to characterize the parameters of proliferation and growth of a developing organ—in this case, the highly proliferative wing primordium of Drosophila [1]. A couple of years later, using the same technique, Garcia-Bellido and two of his PhD students, Gines Morata and Pedro Ripoll, reported the existence of adjacent cell populations that do not mix, which he called compartments [2]. Developmental compartmentalization of growing organs was subsequently demonstrated in all ectodermal derivatives of the fruit fly, as well as in vertebrate limbs and in the central nervous system. One of the most remarkable features of compartments is that their boundaries also act as organizing centers. Compartments are defined by the restricted expression and activity of the so-called selector genes. The homeodomain-encoding gene engrailed was rapidly identified as the one specifying the posterior compartment of all ectodermal derivatives of the fruit fly [3,4]. It was not until the early 1990s that the LIM-homeodomain-encoding gene apterous (ap) was shown to specify the dorsal compartment in the Drosophila wing [5]. These selector genes share three distinct activities: specification of compartment identity, localization of an organizing center at the compartment boundary, and establishment of the lineage restriction border. The ap selector gene rapidly became a paradigm in the identification of the signaling molecules, cell adhesion proteins, and transcription factors that mediate the construction of compartments and organizing centers [6–9]. However, how ap expression is maintained in order to fulfill its functions in all the cells of the dorsal compartment during the five days of growth and proliferation has remained largely unknown. In this issue of PLOS Genetics, Carlos Estella and colleagues [10] unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying the initiation and maintenance of ap expression in the Drosophila wing primordium. A combination of enhancers, autoregulatory and feed-forward mechanisms, and epigenetics appears to be at play.

Perhaps the best way of identifying the noncoding regions involved in the regulation of expression of a gene of interest is through classical genetics and phenotypic characterization. Indeed, this is the approach taken by Estella and colleagues in their analysis of the ap locus. A series of endogenous deletions were performed to identify the regulatory sequences required to drive ap expression and give rise to normal-looking adult wings. By doing so, the authors functionally identified a proximal region harboring a Polycomb Response Element (PRE) and a distal fragment containing a previously identified enhancer, whose deletions severely compromised ap expression and wing development. The authors next undertook a systematic in situ dissection of the ap cis-regulatory domain by bringing back sub-fragments of a previously deleted region and analyzing their capacity to rescue the wing phenotype. When combined, the PRE and two enhancers located in a distal fragment were sufficient to rescue both ap expression and wing formation.

So far so good, but what is the regulatory logic that combines the input of two distinct enhancers and a PRE to induce the expression and maintenance of ap expression in all dorsal cells throughout development? The authors again approached this issue in a clever manner. They constructed a battery of lacZ reporter lines to decipher how these enhancers were expressed in the wing, to identify the transcription factor involved in their regulation, and to analyze the contribution of the PRE to this process. As expected, the two functional enhancers located in a distal fragment and identified by the in situ rescue experiment drove expression of the lacZ reporter in dorsal cells of the wing primordium. The isolated ap-E enhancer is initially expressed in all dorsal cells and responds to the early activity of the Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF)-Receptor ligand Vein, as does the whole ap locus [11]. Interestingly, its initial expression coincides in time with the onset of ap expression and the initiation of the organizing activities of the compartment boundary through the activation of the Notch receptor. Later in development, expression of the ap-E enhancer fades away from the dorsal compartment of the wing primordium, and the ap-DV enhancer starts to be expressed in exactly the same region as a consequence of the activity of the Apterous and Vestigial proteins. It is interesting to note that Vestigial is a target of Notch [12]. Thus, both an Apterous-dependent autoregulatory mechanism and a feed-forward mechanism, through the activity of Notch and Vestigial, drive the expression of the ap-DV enhancer. The authors observed that these two enhancers were not able—either alone or in combination—to completely reproduce the ap expression pattern. Thus, additional elements appear to be at work. Following the logic of the in situ rescue experiments, the combination of the ap-E and ap-DV enhancers, together with the ap-PRE, gave rise to robust expression of the lacZ reporter in all dorsal cells throughout wing development. Interestingly, the ability of the ap-PRE to drive robust expression was shown to rely on the activity of the Trithorax group of proteins.

Taken together, the results from Estella and colleagues reveal a three-step molecular mechanism to initiate and maintain ap expression in all dorsal cells throughout development (Fig 1). Whereas the onset of ap expression relies on the restricted expression of the EGF receptor ligand Vein and on the activity of the EGF-Receptor responsive transcription factor Pointed-P1 in the presumptive dorsal compartment, the maintenance of ap expression during the subsequent stages of wing development is led by an Apterous-dependent autoregulatory loop, a Vestigial-mediated feed-forward mechanism, and the activity of the PRE. This initiation and maintenance mechanism has remarkable commonalities with the logic followed by other developmental genes whose expression has to be precisely initiated but also robustly maintained throughout the dramatic increase in tissue size and cell number that occurs in the primordia of the adult fly [13,14]. Forty-two years after the discovery of compartments, the Drosophila wing is still unraveling common principles of development.

Fig 1

Illustration of the apterous locus with its regulatory regions involved in the control of its expression in the Drosophila wing.


Tuning compiler optimization for a given application of particular computer architecture is not an easy task, because modern computer architecture reaches higher levels of compiler optimization. These modern compilers usually provide a larger number of optimization techniques. By applying all these techniques to a given application degrade the program performance as well as more time consuming. The performance of the program measured by time and space depends on the machine architecture, problem domain and the settings of the compiler. The brute-force method of trying all possible combinations would be infeasible, as it's complexity O(2n ) even for "n" on-off optimizations. Even though many existing techniques are available to search the space of compiler options to find optimal settings, most of those approaches can be expensive and time consuming. In this paper, machine learning algorithm has been modified and used to reduce the complexity of selecting suitable compiler options for programs running on a specific hardware platform. This machine learning algorithm is compared with advanced combined elimination strategy to determine tuning time and normalized tuning time. The experiment is conducted on core i7 processor. These algorithms are tested with different mibench benchmark applications. It has been observed that performance achieved by a machine learning algorithm is better than advanced combined elimination strategy algorithm.


Earlier studies showed that oral administration of green tea or caffeine to SKH-1 mice inhibited ultraviolet B light (UVB)-induced skin carcinogenesis, decreased dermal fat thickness and increased locomotor activity. In the present study, the effects of voluntary running wheel exercise on thickness of dermal fat as well as on UVB-induced tumorigenesis in SKH-1 mice were studied in UVB-initiated high-risk and UVB-induced complete carcinogenesis models. In the high-risk model, animals were exposed to UVB (30 mJ/cm(2)) 3 times/week for 16 weeks. For 14 weeks subsequent to UVB exposure, half of the animals had access to running wheels in their cages whereas the other half did not. In the complete carcinogenesis model, animals were exposed to UVB (30 mJ/cm(2)) 2 times/week for 33 weeks. From the beginning, half of the animals had access to running wheels whereas the other half did not. At the conclusion of each study, body weights were not different between groups, although animals with running wheels consumed significantly more food and water than animals without running wheels. In addition, animals with running wheels had decreases in parametrial fat pad weight and thickness of the dermal fat layer. In both UVB-initiated high-risk and complete carcinogenesis models, voluntary running wheel exercise delayed the appearance of tumors, decreased the number of tumors per mouse and decreased tumor volume per mouse. Histopathology studies revealed that running wheel exercise decreased the number of non-malignant tumors (primarily keratoacanthomas) by 34% and total tumors per mouse by 32% in both models, and running wheel exercise decreased the formation of squamous cell carcinomas in the UVB-induced complete carcinogenesis model by 27%. In addition, the size of keratoacanthomas and squamous cell carcinomas were decreased substantially in both models. The effects described here indicate that voluntary running wheel exercise inhibits UVB-induced skin tumorigenesis and may also inhibit tumor growth.


Existing information regarding methodological journeys is predominantly restricted to autobiographical accounts, which may limit understanding, particularly in relation to the development, and significance, of methodological consciousness. This thesis explores the methodological journeys of doctoral social sciences researchers in the UK, in the early stages of their research career. It investigates how they speak of their perceptions of their individual journeys, and the potential relationships between their life histories and educational experiences and the epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions they hold. The research design consisted of life history interviews with 9 researchers. In addition, 6 of the researchers were then involved in collective biography discussions. Information from these interviews was developed into a series of narrative accounts, which illustrate the complexity of the individual journeys. The analysis of the narrative information also included
attempts to approach the information through both an interpretivist and post-structuralist lens, and privileged the value of embracing multiple perspectives.
The accounts of the researchers indicated that through their journeys, their philosophical assumptions may be understood as a socially constructed product of their life histories and academic experiences. The journeys were characterised as a series of social experiences
which challenged and reinforced individual assumptions. The presentation of these journeys was seen as connected to social context and the nature of the assumptions held by the individual. Experiences of post graduate research training were presented as having the potential to unlock the methodological consciousness required to re-frame these experiences, improve understanding and resolve methodological conflict. This research presents an
original contribution to knowledge through its approach to the exploration and illustration of methodological journeys. It has implications for post graduate programmes in the social sciences and makes a case for the need for these to embrace methodological diversity and introduce paradigmatic understandings through teaching and supervision. In addition it asserts that individual researchers may benefit from directly engaging in aspects of reflexivity and contextualisation of their assumptions.


†‡ Severe bronchospasm during cardiac surgery is an uncommon, but serious problem. A 52-year-old woman with a mosaic attenuation pattern on the whole lung field was scheduled for repair of an atrial septal defect under minimally invasive cardiac surgery. Bronchospasm developed intraoperatively, but the underlying ventilatory impairment, poor performance of one-lung ventilation and initiation of cardiopulmonary bypass delayed diagnosing and treating the bronchospasm. The bronchospasm induced severe pulmonary edema that required postoperative ventilatory care.


A behavioral method is described in which increasing intensities of electric shocks were applied to the gasserian ganglia of alert monkeys. The animals were trained to press a lever to regulate the shock level. "Pain thresholds" were thereby obtained, and these thresholds were modified by varying the shock duration and by administration of morphine.


The nonlinear interaction of the first two in-plane modes of a suspended cable with a moving fluid along the plane of the cable is studied. The governing equations of motion for two-mode interaction are derived based on a general continuum model. The interaction causes the modal differential equations of the cable to be non-self-adjoint. As the flow speed increases above a certain critical value, the cable experiences oscillatory motion similar to the flutter of aeroelastic structures. A coordinate transformation in terms of the transverse and stretching motions of the cable is introduced to reduce the two nonlinearly coupled differential equations into a linear ordinary differential equation governing the stretching motion, and a strongly nonlinear differential equation for the transverse motion. For small values of gravity-to-stiffness ratio the dynamics of the cable is examined using a two-time-scale approach. Numerical integration of the modal equations shows that the cable experiences stretching oscillations only when the flow speed exceeds a certain level. Above this level both stretching and transverse motions take place. The influences of system parameters such as gravity-to stiffness ratio, density ratio, and the fluid flow randomness on the response characteristics are also reported.


BACKGROUND
The association between parasites and urticaria was first suggested in the last century. A wide range, 0-75.4%, of the prevalence of parasitic infection has been reported with chronic urticaria (CU). Moreover, urticaria may be detected in patients with parasitosis. Nematodes are a type of helminth that infect hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this work was to collect and review the published studies and cases of urticaria associated with nematode infections.

METHODS
A search of scientific literature data bases from January 1960 until May 2017 was carried out.

RESULTS
Numerous nematode infections have been associated with urticaria and/or angioedema: Anisakis simplex, Ascaris species (spp.), Dirofilaria spp., Enterobius vermicularis, Gnathostoma spp., Loa loa, Mansonella streptocerca; Necator americanus, Onchocerca volvulus, Strongyloides stercoralis, Toxocara spp., Trichinella spp., and Wuchereria bancrofti. The pathogenesis of urticaria in these infections generally remains unexplained. In some cases, skin manifestations were caused by the presence of the worm in the skin (Filaria, Gnathostoma); in other cases, such as A. simplex and S. stercoralis infections, there was a clear immunoglobulin E-mediated mechanism that led to allergic reactions, and infection and allergy coexisted; for other nematodes, the association was anecdotal and only a few cases were reported.

CONCLUSION
It is difficult to detect a certain causal effect, except when urticaria improves or disappears after infection treatment. Cases of isolated urticaria not associated with other symptoms rarely may be caused by helminths. In the current guideline for urticaria, parasitosis is considered to be a rare possible cause of CU in developed industrial countries, Therefore, although a routine screening of parasitic infection in CU is not recommended, in our opinion, testing a patient with urticaria for parasites is a physician's choice based on the characteristics of the patient, such as associated symptoms, dietary habit, provenance country and previous travel.


In recent decades, inconsistent growth in urban environment has had an impact on the quality of urban life, and historical and valuable textures, resulting in urban problems and forcing urban officials to adopt new approaches. Accordingly, refinement and improvement approaches have evolved over time with urban renaissance as the new approach. The current research assesses the quality of urban life in the historical context of Imam Ali Square in Isfahan, based on social, economical and physical criteria with urban renaissance. The research has used SWOT technique and Analytic Network Process (ANP) for the analysis. The research results showed a significant relationship between criteria and sub-criteria with an improved quality of urban life and the alternative of renaissance. The economic criterion was the most important element for improving the quality of life. The satisfaction level of the neighborhood criteria was for social quality, and the housing and land market criteria were considered for economy. Flexible development plan was considered as one of the important factors for monitoring new constructions and in urban renewal alternatives. The impact on the quality of life was also recognized in the study area. Finally, strategies such as balancing the functions of the texture by injecting business, tourism, etc., formulating urban planning rules, taking into account land economics, and monitoring the human system in new constructions were studied in order to avoid the depreciation of valuable buildings.


Longitudinal studies of neuroticism have shown that, on average, neuroticism scores decrease from adolescence to adulthood. The heritability of neuroticism is estimated between 0.30 and 0.60 and does not seem to vary greatly as a function of age. Shared environmental effects are rarely reported. Less is known about the role of genetic and environmental influences on the rank order stability of neuroticism in the period from adolescence to adulthood. We studied the stability of neuroticism in a cohort sequential (classical) twin design, from adolescence (age 14 years) to young adulthood (age 32 years). A genetic simplex model that was fitted to the longitudinal neuroticism data showed that the genetic stability of neuroticism was relatively high (genetic correlations between adjacent age bins >0.9), and increased from adolescence to adulthood. Environmental stability was appreciably lower (environmental correlations between adjacent age bins were between 0.3 and 0.6). This low stability was largely due to age-specific environmental variance, which was dominated by measurement error. This attenuated the age-to-age environmental correlations. We constructed an environmental covariance matrix corrected for this error, under the strong assumption that all age-specific environmental variance is error variance. The environmental (co)variance matrix corrected for attenuation revealed highly stable environmental influences on neuroticism (correlations between adjacent age bins were between 0.7 and 0.9). Our results indicate that both genetic and environmental influences have enduring effects on individual differences in neuroticism.


Different from traditional networks, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are highly dependent on specific applications and are severely constrained by energy, storage capacity and computing power. To prolong the lifetime of the whole networks, energy awareness is an essential consideration when we design or analyze routing protocols. In this paper, we present a review of recent routing protocols in WSNs and classify them into three categories based on the network structure in WSNs. Then we describe the existing routing protocols and discuss their advantages and disadvantages of each routing algorithm. Finally we conclude this paper with open research issues and challenges.


Rocks fail because of compression, shear, tensile and/or a combination of these stresses. Rocks are more vulnerable to tensile stresses as they can stably accommodate only a fraction of compressive stresses in tensional loading. Therefore, reliable determination of tensile strength of rocks is important. Tensile strength of rocks that can be determined by both direct and indirect tensile testing methods have great importance in rock mechanics. Although these methods have different procedures and quite a change in results, an agreement between the methods is necessary. In addition, properly appraising the data provided by direct and indirect measurements has critical importance for applying the knowledge thereby acquired. From this point, based on the conventional measurement uncertainty framework, two weighting methods are suggested to combine the tensile-strength methods. Thus, an uncertainty-based agreement between the direct and indirect tensile-strength measurements has been made. The results showed that the weighted uncertainties of the proposed methods are lower than the best single measurement uncertainties. In addition, the weighted averages and corresponding uncertainties provide additional information and unique outcomes for the users. A reliable correlation between indirect and direct tensile-strength results is certainly useful for assessing tensile strength of rocks.


AIM
To investigate relationships between colorectal adenoma incidence, metabolic syndrome (MS) components and lifestyle factors.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from individuals who had multiple sigmoidoscopies for colon cancer at the Health Promotion Center of Ulsan University Hospital in Korea from 1998 to 2007.

RESULTS
By multivariate analysis, the incidence of distal colon adenoma was increased by more than 1.76 times in individuals with at least one component of MS compared to those without a component of MS. After adjustment for age, gender, smoking, drinking, and physical exercise, only high body mass index (BMI) was significantly associated with the incidence of distal colon adenoma (Hazard ratio 1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.05-2.62).

CONCLUSION
Our results suggest that high BMI may increase the risk of colorectal adenoma in Korean adults.


OBJECTIVE
To study the cell structure changes of Gastrodia elata after Armillaria mellea infection as well as the nutritional resource of this important medicinal plant.

METHOD
Observation of the serial sections on the nutritional stems of G. elata, and measure new corms of G. elata when cut off the old corms connection with rhizomorph of A. mellea.

RESULT
After G. elata nutritional stems infected by A. mellea, the rhizomorph of A. mellea separate into several hyphal layers and penetrate hyphal stream which infect into the cells of cortex layer in the direction of outside and infect directly into layer cells in the direction of inside, these hypha can be used the nutrition of G. elata the new corms will be stop growth if cut off the rhizomorph of A. mellea connected with G. elata.

CONCLUSION
After the rhizomorph of A. mellea infected G. elata nutritional stems, hyphal coils and the hyphal stream will breakthrough passage cells as well as large cells surround the whole nutritional stems, so the passage cells is the key nutritional resource in the whole growth period of G. elata.


Previous experimental investigations have shown that expectations are not perfectly rational due to bias. Traditional adaptive models, however, in many cases do not perfectly describe the formation of expectations either. This paper makes two contributions to the experimental literature on the formation of expectations: First, we investigate whether subjects who have more information about the economic model than in previous studies also form biased expectations. Second, we argue that in some cases macroeconomic expectations might be formed by the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, which is well known in psychology. We find that subjects' expectations are biased although the design might be more favorable to rational expectations. The anchoring-and-adjustment model of expectations gets some support by our data, but the best model encompasses both the anchoring-and-adjustment model and the traditional adaptive model.


We conduct an experiment to understand how enrollment defaults affect the take up and impact of an education technology. We show that a standard and simplified opt-in process induce low take up. Automatically enrolling parents increases adoption significantly and improves student achievement. Our surveys show automatic enrollment is uncommon because its impact is underestimated: District leaders overestimate take-up under the standard condition by 38 percentage points and underestimate take-up under automatic enrollment by 31 percentage points. After learning the actual take-up rates, there is a 140% increase in willingness to pay for the technology when shifting implementation to automatic enrollment.


Low Pressure Turbine (LPT) was designed to recover exhaust energy from Internal Combustion (IC) engine. The LPT is located downstream retrieved exhaust heat energy from combustion after flowing through the high pressure turbine (HPT). The work output obtained from the exhaust energy is used to drive an electric generator with power output of 1.0kW. These was not done by commercial turbine as the low efficiency resulted when operated. The main purpose of this project is to develop a scaling model for LPT with power output up to 100kW. An existing LPT that was designed with output of 1.0 kW used as guideline to upscale the turbine. Scaling factor was obtained by comparing the baseline with power output. The turbine performance was analysed by using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) ANSYS CFX. The study found that the scaling factor f, of 10 can be used to produce a 100kW at passage. Thus, the geometrical parameter will be scaled accordingly. The rotational speed is reduced from 50,000 rpm to 5,000 rpm. The CFD analysis found that 81% of total-static efficiency, ht-s at velocity ratio VR, of 0.68 and the Pressure Ratio PR, of 1.12 producing power of 119.88 kW which nearest with the design point which is at 100 kW. Despite the LPT swallowing capacity is increased by 50 times, the LPT is still limited by the operational choking Pressure Ratio, PR limitation which is 1.4.


Recent research has revealed several shortcomings of design processes with respect to modern contexts. Two of these are complexity and sustainability. Design problems are becoming increasingly complex, to the point where designers can be easily overwhelmed. Sustainability, while recognized as pivotal to future human progress and well-being, remains largely disconnected from design processes. Current practices in the field of sustainability are not integrated into the design process and thus, are often carried out only as after-the-fact addenda. The goal of this research is to address these two problems with current design processes. It has long been known that analogies are useful and help to reduce complexity by rooting a topic into pre-existing knowledge of the user. Patterns have also been shown to be useful in helping solve complex problems in engineering, as well as architecture and computer science. Therefore, this dissertation proposes a new design framework which: reduces problem complexity through the use of an analogy and patterns, makes provisions for emergent properties within the patterns and the framework, and provides a means for generating solutions with aspects of sustainability via the patterns and evaluation criteria. The analogical framework, based on similarities found in the phenomena and processes between natural systems (nature) and design, is then used to formulate a new model for describing the design of a product, the Design Genome. The main focus of this dissertation is to use this model as a basis for a new method of concept generation, the Design by DNA method, and concept evaluation, the Fitness Space method. It is shown that the Fitness Space method has the potential to solve many, if not all, of the downfalls of conventional evaluation methods. A pilot experiment testing the Design by DNA method against previously known design methods is conducted and demonstrates the feasibility for a full-scale experiment. Even with small population sizes, results from the experiment show promise that the DbD method is useful as a tool for the concept generation process. Based on the work done, it appears that Design by DNA and the Fitness Space are promising approaches for improving design processes.


ABSTRACT Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of resistance and aerobic exercise on colorectal cancer (CRC) development in mice induced by azoxymethane (AOM) coupled with colitis. Methods: Forty animals induced with CRC were used, divided into five groups of eight animals each: sedentary; continuous aerobics; continuous anaerobic; aerobic PI; and anaerobic PI. AOM was administered to the animals in two doses of 10 mg/kg each over the course of two weeks, the first dose administered in the third week and the second administered in the fourth. For the colitis, three cycles of dextran sodium sulfate were administered for five days, separated by two weeks of water. The 14th week of the experiment saw the euthanasia, the removal of their colons, and the creation of microscopy slides for histological analysis. Results: Preneoplastic lesions developed in all five groups; there were no significant differences between them. However, in terms of inflammatory symptoms, mucosal ulceration was much more frequently in the exercise groups than in the sedentary group (p = 0.016). The number of polyps overall (p = 0.002), the distal region's polyp development (p = 0.003), and the proximal region's polyp development (p = 0.04) were all statistically different than sedentary group. Conclusions: The study discovered no significant difference in disease activity index scores between groups, but there was a significant difference in the number of polyps and the presence of mucosal ulceration in the colon.


ABSTRACT Clostridium difficile is a major cause of nosocomial antibiotic-associated infectious diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis. Detection of C. difficile by anaerobic bacterial culture and/or cytotoxicity assays has been largely replaced by rapid enzyme immunoassays (EIA). However, due to the lack of sensitivity of stool EIA, we developed a multiplex real-time PCR assay targeting the C. difficile toxin genes tcdA and tcdB. Stool samples from hospitalized pediatric patients suspected of having C. difficile-associated disease were prospectively cultured on cycloserine-cefoxitin-fructose agar following alcohol shock. Six testing modalities were evaluated, including stool EIA, culture EIA, and real-time PCR (tcdA and tcdB) of cultured isolates and stool samples. Real-time PCR detection was performed with tcdA and tcdB gene-specific primers and hydrolysis probes using the LightCycler platforms (Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, IN). A total of 157 samples from 96 pediatric patients were analyzed. The sensitivities of stool real-time PCR and stool EIA were 95% and 35%, respectively, with a specificity of 100% for both methods. The lower limit of detection of the stool real-time PCR was 30 CFU/ml of stool sample per reaction for tcdA and tcdB. This study highlights the poor performance of stool toxin EIAs in pediatric settings. Direct detection of C. difficile toxin genes in stool samples by real-time PCR showed sensitivity superior to that of stool and culture EIAs and performance comparable to that of real-time PCR assay of cultured isolates. Real-time PCR of DNA from stool samples is a rapid and cost-effective diagnostic modality for children that should facilitate appropriate patient management and halt the practice of serial testing by EIA.


We report on a man that had weakness of humeroperoneal distribution associated with limited range of motion of the cervical spine and elbows since he was 5 years old . At age 26 he developed tachycardia episodes. A complex arrhythmia was discovered, and a nodal ablation was done with a cardiac pacemaker implanted. The patient had an arrhythmia and sudden death followed this. Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy is a rare recessive X-linked muscular disorder where mixed patterns in electromyography and muscle histology (neurogenic and/or myopathic) have caused nosological confusion. The autopsy findings are here described and correlated to the clinical features in an attempt to better understand the ambiguous findings concerning the process etiology .


Abstract We report the discovery of an early tetrapod skull from the St. Louis Limestone of Missouri, USA. It was found among a collection of coelacanths in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, part of a larger collection donated to that institution by Jaekel containing other fish fossils from the same locality. The exact locality remains uncertain, but sedimentological analysis suggests that the specimens derive from the lower or middle part of the Upper St. Louis Limestone. The lithology is consistent with a deeper water marine setting, suggesting that the tetrapod specimen is an erratic. The skull is a natural mold exposed in palatal view, showing good detail of the bones preserved. Phylogenetic analysis shows it to be most closely related to colosteids, though retaining some plesiomorphic characters. Stratigraphic correlation shows that the St. Louis Limestone is older than the Verdi and Waugh Members of Iowa, here assigned to the Ste. Genevieve Formation, from which other colosteid specimens and Whatcheeria were found. The new specimen is thus both the earliest post-Devonian tetrapod from North America, and also the oldest colosteid-like tetrapod known.


PURPOSE
This study was undertaken to determine if the daily use of a verbal pain scale could improve the correlation of pain perception between hospitalized oncology patients and their caregivers.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Hospitalized oncology patients were asked to rate verbally their average pain over the past 24 hours on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The patients' primary-care physicians and nurses were asked the same question on the same morning after they had evaluated their patients.

RESULTS
During a baseline study, only 64% of caregivers' pain scores were within two points of the respective patient's score. Caregivers tended to underestimate patients' pain scores. Caregivers were alerted to these poor results and then requested to ask each patient daily for the average pain score and record this score on the patient's medical record. Nonetheless, correlation between patients' and caregivers' pain scores remained poor (68% within two points of each other) during a second study. The major reason for the poor results appeared to be because caregivers did not routinely ask patients for pain scores. Subsequently, a renewed, more intensive educational effort was undertaken and a third study was conducted. During the third study, 85% of caregivers' and patients' pain scores were within two points of each other (P = .001 when compared with baseline).

CONCLUSION
The enforced use of a simple verbal pain assessment tool appears to improve caregiver's understanding of the pain status of hospitalized oncology patients.


ABSTRACT In previous studies, liquid swine manure (LSM) was sometimes shown to reduce Verticillium wilt of potato caused by Verticillium dahliae. We also observed that microsclerotia of this fungus died within 1 day, or between 3 and 6 weeks, after addition of LSM to some acid soils and within 1 week in some alkaline soils. In this study, we demonstrated that a volatile fatty acid (VFA) mixture with an identical concentration of VFAs as that found in an effective LSM reduced germination in an acid soil (pH 5.1) to the same extent as the LSM after 1 day of exposure. Germination was reduced by 45, 75, and 90% in the 10, 20, and 40% ([wt/wt] soil moisture) treatments, respectively, with the latter being equivalent to an application of 80 hl/ha. Addition to this acid soil of 19 LSMs (30% [wt/wt] soil moisture) collected from different producers resulted in complete kill of microsclerotia with 12 manures. Effective manures had a total concentration of nonionized forms of VFAs in soil solution of 2.7 mM or higher. In some acid soils (pH 5.8), addition of LSM (40% [wt/wt] soil moisture) did not kill microsclerotia until 3 to 6 weeks later. Here, a reduction in viability of microsclerotia was attributed to the accumulation of 0.06 mM nitrous acid in the soil solution at 4 weeks. When an LSM was added (40% [wt/wt] soil moisture) to an alkaline soil (pH 7.9) where VFAs are not toxic, microsclerotia germination was reduced by 80% after 1 week. Here the pH increased to 8.9 and the concentration of ammonia reached 30 mM in the soil solution. An ammonium chloride solution having an equivalent concentration of ammonium as the manure was shown to have the same spectrum of toxicity as the manure in assays ranging from pH 7 to 9, both in solutions and above the solutions. At pH 9, the concentration of ammonia reached 18 mM and 100% mortality of microsclerotia occurred. Thus, in acid soils, LSM can kill microsclerotia of V. dahliae by VFA and/or nitrous acid toxicity and in alkaline soils by ammonia toxicity. In order to take advantage of these mechanisms for disease reduction, the manure chemical composition, rate of addition, and soil characteristics need to be determined for each instance of use.


The theory of plate tectonics has proven to be very successful in describing the behaviour of the oceanic plates; however the study of continental tectonics is complicated by the fact that continental lithosphere does not behave as a rigid plate. The narrow zones of seismicity that define plate boundaries in oceanic lithosphere become diffuse in continental lithosphere (Isacks et al. 1968). Continental crust is thicker, more buoyant with respect to the asthenosphere, of different composition and rheology, has higher heat productivity, and is up to 20 times older than oceanic crust. An understanding of continental tectonics requires that these effects upon rigid plate behaviour to be taken into account. A further, complicating, factor is that the principles of plate tectonics were derived from a remotely sensed geophysical dataset, acquired in the ocean basins over some 20 years, and held in relatively few laboratories. Continental tectonics requires the reconciliation of 150 year's worth of worldwide field data involving all branches of geology with these principles. The growth of the continents throughout time indicates that little continental lithosphere is subducted and, therefore, the records of past (pre-Jurassic) plate geometries are stored in the continental crust. The greater mean age of continental crust also means that any single continental rock mass is likely to have been affected by several cycles of creation and destruction of oceanic lithosphere (the so-called Wilson cycle). The transposed multiple fabrics associated with each cycle can only be elucidated by careful field study, if the critical evidence is still


The movement that forged the way for the rise of the Republican Party in the South In 1948, a group of conservative white southerners formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, soon nicknamed the "Dixiecrats," and chose Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate. Thrown on the defensive by federal civil rights initiatives and unprecedented grassroots political activity by African Americans, the Dixiecrats aimed to reclaim conservatives' former preeminent position within the national Democratic Party and upset President Harry Truman's bid for reelection. The Dixiecrats lost the battle in 1948, but, as Kari Frederickson shows, the political repercussions of their revolt were significant. Frederickson situates the Dixiecrat movement within the tumultuous social and economic milieu of the 1930s and 1940s South, tracing the struggles between conservative and liberal Democrats over the future direction of the region. Enriching her sweeping political narrative with detailed coverage of local activity in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina - the flashpoints of the Dixiecrat campaign - she shows that, even without upsetting Truman in 1948, the Dixiecrats forever altered politics in the South. By severing the traditional southern allegiance to the national Democratic Party in presidential elections, the Dixiecrats helped forge the way for the rise of the Republican Party in the region.


The letter on this subject from Drs Callander and Thomas (Anaesthesia 1988; 43: 7034) was interesting reading. It appears from the description given by the authors that the technique of fibreoptic tracheal intubation was not used by them especially when they state that the intubation took one hour and fifty minutes. Fibreoptic tracheal intubation seems to be more appropriate under the circumstances described by the authors, and less time An elective tracheostomy performed at 34 weeks' gestation seems to be safest approach for her future pregnancy, but due consideration should be given to fibreoptic tracheal intubation. Further, a successful fibreoptic tracheal intubation would avoid a tracheostomy at every future pregnancy.


So far, the problem of positioning in wireless networks has been studied mainly in a nonadversarial setting. In this paper, we analyze the resistance of positioning techniques to position and distance spoofing attacks. We propose a mechanism for secure positioning of wireless devices, that we call verifiable multilateration. We then show how this mechanism can be used to secure positioning in sensor networks. We analyze our system through simulations.


A study of 930 hotel guests found relatively high acceptance of certain security measures, along with a willingness to pay extra for some of them. In particular, respondents were favorable to security cameras and requiring photo identification, and they would support having a first-aid kit in every hotel room. Study participants were mixed on more intrusive security efforts, such as metal detectors, visible security guards, and background checks of guests to see whether they have police records. Respondents younger than forty were both more likely to accept stringent security measures and more willing to pay for them. Women were also more supportive of strong security measures than were men, particularly men who are frequent travelers.


Epidemiological combined with experiential evidence from communities can produce important and sometimes surprising insights into gender relations, to inform policies that address changing needs. CIET has standardised a community-based cross-design for the gender-sensitive collection and analysis of three types of evidence: impact, coverage, and costs. Five steps help to ensure that women's voices are heard in planning. Gender-stratified analysis of existing data is a starting point. Stratification of all responses by sex of the respondent prevents a numerical bias in favour of men translating into a gender bias in the analysis. Female focus groups inform survey design, interpretation, and appropriate strategies for change. Gender is a factor in risk and resilience analysis. Finally, gender-sensitive logistics ensure women's equal participation. First-order outputs include actionable gender data to advocate in favour of women. Second-order outputs include an enabling environment for equitable development, challenging the gendered patterns of economic marginalisation.


The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) plays a central role in electrolyte homeostasis and in cardiovascular disease. We have previously reported a ligand-dependent N/C-interaction in the MR. In the present study we sought to fully characterize the MR N/C-interaction. By using a range of natural and synthetic MR ligands in a mammalian two-hybrid assay we demonstrate that in contrast to aldosterone, which strongly induces the interaction, the physiological ligands deoxycorticosterone and cortisol weakly promote the interaction but predominantly inhibit the aldosterone-mediated N/C-interaction. Similarly, progesterone and dexamethasone antagonize the interaction. In contrast, the synthetic agonist 9alpha-fludrocortisol robustly induces the interaction. The ability of the N/C interaction to discriminate between MR agonists suggests a subtle conformational difference in the ligand-binding domain induced by these agonists. We also demonstrate that the N/C interaction is not cell specific, consistent with the evidence from a glutathione-S-transferase pull-down assay, of a direct protein-protein interaction between the N- and C-terminal domains of the MR. Examination of a panel of deletions in the N terminus suggests that several regions may be critical to the N/C-interaction. These studies have identified functional differences between physiological MR ligands, which suggest that the ligand-specific dependence of the N/C-interaction may contribute to the differential activation of the MR that has been reported in vivo.


The aim of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) flood attacks is to overwhelm the attacked site or to make its service performance deterioration considerably by sending flood packets to the target from the machines distributed all over the world. This is a kind of local behavior of traffic at the protected site because the attacked site can be recovered to its normal service state sooner or later even though it is in reality overwhelmed during attack. From a view of mathematics, it can be taken as a kind of short-range phenomenon in computer networks. In this paper, we use the Hurst parameter (H) to measure the local irregularity or self-similarity of traffic under DDOS flood attack provided that fractional Gaussian noise (fGn) is used as the traffic model. As flood attack packets of DDOS make the H value of arrival traffic vary significantly away from that of traffic normally arriving at the protected site, we discuss a method to statistically detect signs of DDOS flood attacks with predetermined detection probability and false alarm probability.


This paper tests empirically whether the effect of idiosyncratic income shocks on aggregate consumption depends on institutional features of national labour markets. The results show that, in a sample of 15 OECD countries, institutional heterogeneity is a significant determinant of the response of household consumption to country-specific income shocks. This is consistent with the idea that institutionally-provided social insurance may help increase income stability when people differ in their ability to access financial markets and smooth consumption fluctuations.


Abstract The Trans‐Mexican volcanic belt is an active volcanic arc being deformed by an intra‐arc extensional fault network. The Morelia fault, with a length of 14 km and a maximum throw of 260 m, is a major normal fault in the central part of this volcanic arc and forms part of a 36‐km‐long fault array. Slickenlines measured on the primary fault surface indicate north–south extensional dip slip with a minor left‐lateral component. In a well‐exposed cross section in the hanging wall of the Morelia fault, some few meters from the master fault trace, two buried soil layers, containing ceramic shards and stone tools, yielded radiocarbon ages of A.D. 420–660 (prehispanic classic period, Chupicuaro culture) and A.D. 1290–1435 (postclassic period), respectively. The underlying bedrock (Atecuaro ignimbrite) is cut in a staircase pattern by three synthetic secondary normal faults that delimit two colluvial wedges. Three slip events, with displacements ranging between 46 and 185 cm (average 109 cm), can be inferred from this section. The latest of these events must have occurred after A.D. 1290–1435, during the postclassic period or possibly during early novohispanic times. The Morelia fault, which is capable of generating M w  6–7 earthquakes, poses a major seismic ground‐shaking hazard and locally a surface fault‐rupture hazard within the metropolitan Morelia region with a population of more than 900,000 habitants. The foci of a sequence of seven small 2007 earthquakes on the Morelia fault were located below the center of town, at a depth of 11 km, and the fault trace crosses urban residential areas. Moreover, the town repeatedly experienced severe ground shaking during historical earthquakes. The best documented is the 19 June 1858 earthquake, which caused Morelia extensive damage corresponding to a macroseismic intensity of VIII–IX on the modified Mercalli scale. Online Material: Radiocarbon analysis reports, local 1894–1904 and 1909–1911 earthquake catalogs.


Previous researches have demonstrated that consumer decisions could be affected by some biases in the supplementary pension field. Decisionmaking is very often not guided by rationality, and in many cases, if forced to choose, people will decide not to decide, passively accepting the decisions made by others. Such behaviour deserves to be analyzed and studied in order to better understand its consequences, and determine whether the latter can be turned to the advantage of the decision-makers themselves. Using a database of 24 occupational pension funds representing 1.7 million employees, this paper examines the presence of default bias and extremeness aversion in Italian workers' choices regarding the supplementary pension system, as a result of the new rules enacted in 2007.The results provide insights which are important for public policy as regards the possibility of taking account of these biases when formulating the regulation, benefiting employees


Recently, a spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) determining gene, termed survival motor neuron (SMN) gene, has been isolated from the 5q13 region and found deleted in most patients. A highly homologous copy of this gene has also been isolated and located in a centromeric position. We have analyzed 158 patients (SMA types I-IV) and found deletions of SMN exon 7 in 96.8%. Mutations other than gross deletions seem to be extremely rare. In one of the undeleted SMA type I patients, a newborn who survived for only 42 days, we detected a maternally inherited 5 bp microdeletion in exon 3, resulting in a premature stop codon. By RT-PCR and long range PCR amplification we were able to show that the deletion belongs to the SMN gene, rather than to the centromeric copy, and that the proposita had no paternal SMN gene. Analysis of the neuronal apoptosis inhibitor protein (NAIP) gene, which maps close to SMN and has been proposed as a SMA modifying gene, suggests the presence of at least one full-length copy. Haplotype analysis of closely linked polymorphic markers suggests that the proposita also lacks the maternally derived copy of the centromeric homologue of SMN supporting the hypothesis that the severity of the phenotype might depend on the reduced number of centromeric genes in addition to the frameshift mutation.


Obesity is reported to be associated with chronic low-grade inflammatory state, indicated by increased plasma level of C-reactive protein (CRP). Moreover, high prevalence of overweight and obesity among young Saudis is a serious health concern. Therefore, we designed this study to investigate the effect of obesity and perceived stress on plasma high sensitivity (hs)-CRP level in young Saudis. A total of 472 young healthy males (age, 19 ± 2) were categorized as underweight, normal, overweight and obese based on their body mass index. Plasma levels of hs-CRP levels were measured by nephlometry. In addition, the level of stress among the participants was determined using PSS-14 questionnaire. The results showed about 11% (53/472) underweight, 21% (100/472) overweight, 24% (114/472) obese and 43% (201/472) normal subjects. Mean values of hs-CRP obtained from these groups showed a rising trend being minimum in underweight while maximum in obese. The mean values of hs-CRP among different BMI categories was significantly different P=0.001. We also observed a significant Positive correlation between plasma hs-CRP level and Body mass index (BMI), Weight, Waist circumference (WC), Hip circumference and Waist Hip Ratio (WHR). Thirty percent (142/472) of our participants were found to be stressed. However, there was no significant difference in their hs-CRP levels. Pearson correlation between perceived stress scores, anthropometric parameters and hs-CRP levels were not significant. On the basis of these findings we can conclude that higher the BMI higher will be the level of plasmahs- CRP level representing presence of a state of low grade systemic inflammation in overweight and obese subjects, which might lead to cardiovascular events.


Abnormalities of chromosome (ch)1 have been shown to be significant adverse prognostic factors in multiple myeloma (MM) but they have not yet been systematically studied in patients undergoing autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (auto-HCT). The aim of this study was to determine whether patients with high-risk MM and ch1 abnormalities (1q gain, 1p deletion, translocations of ch1) constitute a highest risk group compared to a contemporaneous cohort of high-risk MM patients without ch1 abnormalities. 232 patients (169 induction, 63 salvage) with MM and at least one recognized high-risk feature met criteria for inclusion. The presence of a ch1 abnormality (n=15) was highly significant in patients undergoing salvage autologous HCT (n=6) for predicting shorter PFS (p<0.001; HR= 22.93; 95% CI: 4.94- 106.48), and OS (p = 0.0002; HR= 21.22; 95% CI: 1.18-14.98). Median PFS and OS for those with a ch1 abnormality and del 13q (n=7) were 4.76 and 9.43 months, with ch1 abnormality and no del 13q (n=8) were 16.79 and 35.22 months respectively, and for those Without cytogenetic abnormalities, 24.44 and 57.03 months respectively. Based upon the impact of ch1 abnormalities on auto-HCT outcomes in this study, further investigation in larger series is warranted.


In summary, approaches from various sensory modalities indicate a similar processing deficit for various schizophrenics occurring at approximately 100 milliseconds during or post-stimulus presentation. This deficit occurs during the time period that has been associated with a dysfunctional inhibitory mechanism that is maximally activated during the 100 millisecond time period (e.g., during the period of temporal integration). The inhibitory mechanism is presently conceptualized as being a "transient" or "fast" system involved in the serial/sequential processing of information. The inability of certain schizophrenics to serially process may suggest a dysfunctional inhibitory mechanism for which GABA is a potential candidate.


Is file-sharing destroying the music industry? Should the courts encourage breach of contract? Does the threat of malpractice lawsuits cause doctors to provide too much medical care? Do judges discriminate when sentencing? With Issues in Law and Economics, Harold Winter takes readers through these and other recent and controversial questions. In an accessible and engaging manner, Winter shows these legal issues can be reexamined through the use of economic analysis. Using real-world cases to highlight issues, Winter offers step-by-step analysis, guiding readers through the identification of the trade-offs involved in each issue and assessing the economic evidence from scholarly research before exploring how this research may be used to guide policy recommendations. The book is divided into four sections, covering the basic practice areas of property, contracts, torts, and crime, with a fifth section devoted to a concise introduction to the topic of behavioral law and economics. Each chapter concludes with a series of thought-provoking discussion questions that provide readers the opportunity to further explore important ideas and concepts.


The comments of Liel are both interesting and welcome. Restoration of thyrotoxicosis to the euthyroid state serves to reduce bone resorption and to improve bone mineral density and markers of aberrant bone metabolism toward normal. 1-5 In addition to estrogen therapy as a means to reduce bone resorption, one should keep in mind the potential benefits of treatment with the bisphosphonate pamidronate disodium, which have been indicated by the findings in at least one published study. 6 Studies of the oral bisphosphonate, alendronate, are currently in progress, the preliminary findings of which are also promising. 7 Given that thyroxine therapy, as replacement or in a mildly suppressive dosage, is not associated with bone mineral loss, 8 such therapeutic adjuncts might be indicated only in patients who are taking higher suppressive dosages of thyroxine therapy, such as those with recurrent thyroid cancer, or in the unusual case, such as the one


CONTEXT
Toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit poor face recognition and atypical scanning patterns in response to faces. It is not clear if face-processing deficits are also expressed on an attentional level. Typical individuals require more effort to shift their attention from faces compared with other objects. This increased disengagement cost is thought to reflect deeper processing of these socially relevant stimuli.

OBJECTIVE
To examine if attention disengagement from faces is atypical in the early stages of ASD.

DESIGN
Attention disengagement was tested in a variation of the cued attention task in which participants were required to move their visual attention from face or nonface central fixation stimuli and make a reactive saccade to a peripheral target. The design involved diagnosis as a between-group factor and central fixation stimuli type as a within-group factor.

SETTING
Participants were taken from a cohort of patients at a university-based specialized clinic or from a pool of subjects participating in a prospective study of social cognition in ASD.

PARTICIPANTS
Toddlers with ASD (mean age, 32 months [n = 42]) were compared with toddlers with nonautistic developmental delays (mean age, 29 months [n = 31]) and with typically developing toddlers (mean age, 29 months [n = 46]).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Saccadic reaction time.

RESULTS
Developmentally delayed and typically developing toddlers had more difficulties disengaging visual attention from faces than toddlers with ASD. This effect was not present in response to nonfacial stimuli. These results suggest that toddlers with ASD are not captivated by faces to the same extent as toddlers without ASD and that this effect is not driven by a generalized impairment in disengagement of attention.

CONCLUSION
The results suggest that face-processing difficulties in toddlers with ASD involve disruption of an attentional mechanism that typically supports deeper processing of these highly socially relevant stimuli.


For centuries, paper has been an important medium of information. Currently, the basic risk to the paper collection is "acidic paper" and the action of enzymes secreted by microorganisms on them. In order to 'prolong life' of these materials, in recent years, various chemical compounds have been used. In this chapter, ionic liquids (IL) are explored as substances for deacidification of paper and its conservation, including antifungal activity. The use of these substances in the manufacturing of paper is possible, but the ingredients play an important role. Imidazolium IL cause an increase in the pH (deacidification) of historical papers and do not cause worsening of their strength properties, but these compound can cause a colour change. Benzalkonium DL ‐ lactate and didecyldimethylammonium DL ‐lactate and derivatives of 1,2,4‐triazole are used as effective inhibitors of growth of moulds on paper. The best antifungal activity in these ionic liquids is observed in the paper pine at a concentration of 5% and weakest in the samples from the pulp after chemical‐thermomechanical treatment. New paper impregnated with ionic liquids is characterised by an increase in tear resistance, reduction of breaking length and a favourable influence on the paper colour.


My thesis demonstrates that the Conquest, in the decade that followed the battle of Hastings, was the subject of more criticism, both in England and on the continent, than has previously been thought.

Common themes emerge in my thesis. King William's claim that Edward had promised him the throne, his actions at Hastings, and the belief that God had granted him victory over Harold are all shown to have been scrutinized at the outset of his rule. Familiar texts of the Conquest are approached in new ways, including Guy of Amiens's Song of the Battle of Hastings, which has long been interpreted as a poem in praise of William. On the contrary, this thesis provides a compelling argument that Guy's poem contains a damning critique of the king. William's actions at Hastings are portrayed as those of a pagan, even a bloodthirsty lion that ravaged the English sheepfold. Enslaved to Mars and the embodiment of Fury, the Conqueror is reduced to the image of an ulcer, filled with blood.

I argue that St Edmund's identity as the patron saint of England arose out of this contemporary debate. Herman's Miracles of St Edmund, neglected until now by historians of the Conquest, contains a narrative in which Edmund is portrayed as the head of a chosen people in opposition to tyranny. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin then enhanced Edmund's patronal persona by developing the saint's identity as the Father of the Fatherland.

I then look beyond Bury and explore how far Edmund's identity as England's patron saint, wrought at Bury, was accepted throughout England by the mid-twelfth century. Uncovering new evidence, I draw the conclusion that Edmund was regarded as the patron saint of the English by that time.


Recently, Ethiopia's food price inflation has increased dramatically. Given the double digit growth rate and a lagging demand reported by the government, the current food price hike in the country remained a puzzle to many. Using monthly data from 1997 to 2010, this study identified the long-run and short-run external and domestic factors causing Ethiopia's food inflation using Johansen's cointegration test and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), respectively. The study results did not support government's claim that Ethiopia's inflation is a non-monetary phenomenon. On the contrary, monetary developments remain important and significant factor in explaining the high food inflation in Ethiopia. Moreover, there are other important factors that explain Ethiopia's soaring food inflation, including the general price level, world grain price index, lagged world DAP price index, domestic benzene price index, non-food price index, shocks in the goods and money markets, the continuous depreciation of Birr against dollar and the degree of inflation inertia. Therefore, stabilization policies to dampen inflation expectations and a prudent fiscal policy as a means of avoiding sources of macroeconomic imbalance are quite apparent to reduce the rapidly rising food prices in the country.


Guaranteeing fair competition has been a guiding principle of Union action since the beginnings of the European Economic Community. Anti-competitive activities in the internal market, such as agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings and concerted practices which may affect trade between Member States and which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition, or abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position are prohibited as incompatible with the internal market. Over the years, a vast body of regulatory and soft law instruments, as well as the Commission's decisions and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union have built up to handle a variety of complex issues associated with creating a level-playing field for undertakings in the internal market.


An attempt has been made to evaluate the performance characteristics of three different fusible interlinings used in apparel industries with sheep nappa leathers in terms of bending, softness, bond strength, shrinkage, tensile strength and double hole stitch tear strength. Of all aspects of performance investigated, it is found that among the three interlinings, the fusible interlining which is warp knitted with a combination of strong nylon yarn woven with the cotton yarn performs well as compared to the other two interlining materials. The results not only facilitate the basic understanding of the fusing behavior of interlining materials with nappa leathers but also are useful for apparel design and construction.


This major new work is the second part of an important new series, Early Responses to Hume's Writings, a collection of 18th and 19th-century critical publications on Hume's philosophical, political, economic and historical writings. The themes of the two volumes printed here are the replies to Hume's metaphysical philosophy and epistemology. They contain responses to the Treatise Books 1 and 2, and the metaphysical and epistemological portions of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and A Dissertation on the Passions. Topics covered include causality, personal identity, free will and determinism, philosophical scepticism, and the nature of the passions. Among the contributors are William Wishart, Owen Manning, Thomas Reid, James Balfour, Joseph Priestley, Lord Monboddo, Dugald Stewart, Alexander Crombie, Richard Kirwan, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd. Selections are edited, annotated and introduced by Hume scholar James Fieser. Many of the selections have not been reprinted since their original publication and are inaccessible to many scholars worldwide. Fully self-contained, these two volumes will be a major contribution towards understanding Hume and eighteenth-century philosophy and thought. --unique collection of all 18th-century British reviews of Hume's metaphysical and epistemological writings --numerous critical pamphlets, presented in their entirety --selections from books, many of which contain newly discovered discussions of Hume --includes new and previously unpublished translations of three foreign language reviews of Hume's Treatise Book 1 (two French, and one German). This is the first time any of these reviews have been translated--edited and annotated by James Fieser


Late presentations, delays in diagnosis, and improper index surgeries are not uncommon presentations in patients with musculoskeletal tumors in the developing world. The reasons are multifactorial and include ignorance coupled with apathy, socioeconomic conditions, the need to travel vast geographic distances to access health care, reliance on alternate medical practices, and a shortage of trained orthopaedic oncologists. Though the developing world has considerable diversity in terms of resource and expertise availability, it is not unusual for even well-trained surgeons in established centers to continuously innovate and improvise when confronted with economic constraints while managing these difficult lesions. Balancing the goals of ensuring adequate resection of involved bone and soft tissue so as to minimize the chance of local recurrence while yet preserving adequate function of the limb after reconstruction using available resources is often a big challenge. In a resource-challenged setting, the ingenuity of the treating team is often tested when deciding on reconstruction modalities, resulting in the use of more inexpensive and locally applicable solutions for limb salvage as compared with conventional modalities. Increased experience and continuous refinement of these procedures devised owing to a lack of alternative options and sheer necessity can help them gain global acceptability even in developed countries that are facing increasing health care budgetary constraints.


Abstract Haplobothrium globuliforme maintains its position in the proximal mid-gut epithelium of Amia calva with the aid of tentacles, i.e., proboscides, everted from scolices of a primary strobila and craspedote proglottids of a secondary strobila. Weakly developed scolices of the secondary strobila appear to have little holdfast action, but the distinctly craspedote proglottids of these individuals project into the intestinal mucosa, altering the configuration of gut epithelial cells and pushing the tapeworm deeper into mucosal crypts. The basement membrane underlying the epithelium appears to act as a barrier that prevents tapeworms from penetrating into the deeper tissue layers of the lamina propria, muscularis mucosa, or submucosa. Scolex tegument modification occurs at the point of contact with host basement membrane. A mild background infiltrate of lymphocytes and granulocytes was evident adjacent to the scolex and proglottid tegument. There was no evidence of blood vessel proliferation, edema, mast cell degranulation, eosinophilia, or subsequent collagen formation associated with tapeworm activity.


Communication sub-systems that deal with switching, routing and protocol implementation often have their functionality dominated by control logic and interaction with memory. Synthesis of such Control and Memory Intensive Systems (hereafter abbreviated to CMISTs) poses demands that in the past have not been met satisfactorily by general purpose high-level synthesis (HLS) tools and have led to several research efforts to address these demands. In this paper we: characterise CMISTs from the synthesis viewpoint; present a synthesis methodology adapted for CMISTs; present the Operation and Maintenance (OAM) Protocol of the ATM, its modelling in VHDL and synthesis aspects of the VHDL model; present the results of applying the synthesis methodology to the OAM as a test case-the results are compared to that obtained using the not adapted general purpose High-level synthesis tool; prove the efficacy of the proposed synthesis methodology by applying it to an industrial design and comparing our results to the results from two commercial HLS tools and to the results obtained by designing manually at register-transfer level.


Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) has emerged as a potential candidate of the next generation access network technology to address the increasing mobile traffic, while mobile cloud computing (MCC) offers a prospective solution to the resource-limited mobile user in executing computation intensive tasks. Taking full advantages of above two cloud-based techniques, C-RAN with MCC are presented in this paper to enhance both performance and energy efficiencies. In particular, this paper studies the joint energy minimization and resource allocation in C-RAN with MCC under the time constraints of the given tasks. We first review the energy and time model of the computation and communication. Then, we formulate the joint energy minimization into a non-convex optimization with the constraints of task executing time, transmitting power, computation capacity and fronthaul data rates. This non-convex optimization is then reformulated into an equivalent convex problem based on weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE). The iterative algorithm is finally given to deal with the joint resource allocation in C-RAN with mobile cloud. Simulation results confirm that the proposed energy minimization and resource allocation solution can improve the system performance and save energy.


The Carboniferous tectonic evolution of Western Junggar is crucial to understanding the subduction–accretion process of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt, but the nature of this setting is still controversial. In this work, composite mineralogical, geochemical and detrital zircon U–Pb geochronological investigations have been conducted on Carboniferous clastic rocks in the Darbut region. The chemical compositions and sedimentary features show low sediment maturity and limited recycling, suggesting short-distance transportation and rapid accumulation. The samples contain igneous rock debris, mainly andesite and small amounts of basalt and granite, and a heavy mineral assemblage of Zr + Ap + Aug + Hbl + iron-bearing minerals (Hem-Lm, Ilm, Mag and Py). The samples feature moderate ratios of Zr/Sc (average 15.47) and Th/Sc (average 0.61), and low ratios of La/Sc, Co/Th and La/Th, as well as low Hf content, suggesting intermediate to felsic arc-related igneous provenances. Detrital zircon grains from the clastic rocks show prominent age peaks in the Devonian and Carboniferous with positive εHf(t) values, indicating a consistent provenance associated with the Tiechanggou–Halaalate island arc. Combining the petrology, geochemistry and geochronology of the sedimentary and magmatic rocks, we conclude that the Darbut Carboniferous volcanic–sedimentary strata were deposited in a back-arc basin during c. 327–311 Ma. Supplementary material: Tables S1-S6 and Figures S1-S6 are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5357293


Abstract Design simulation of a reactor for acetylene production from calcium acetylide and its purification in the gaseous phase is presented. Simulations were performed using the program ASPEN+ which is a very flexible and useful tool for the simulation and optimization of various types of chemical technologies including gas-liquid-solid systems. The first step of the acetylene synthesis, based on coal as the raw material, is the production of calcium acetylide. This substance is obtained from coke and limestone in an electric arc furnace at elevated temperatures. Raw materials used in this process contain relatively large amounts of impurities that are converted and entrapped in the desired product of the above reaction. Some of the impurities, e.g. metallic iron or its alloys, can be separated easily. However, most of the other elements present in the form of their compounds with calcium remain a part of "technical grade" calcium acetylide. Acetylene is commercially produced by the reaction of "technical grade" calcium acetylide with water under controlled reaction conditions in an inert atmosphere. Depending on the purity of calcium acetylide used, the produced raw acetylene contains a variety of admixtures that lower its quality. As a consequence, prior to its expedition to the customer, raw acetylene should be submitted to a down-stream processing that consists of the separation of basic and acidic pollutants present in acetylene by absorption. The final processing step is adsorption and/or freezing-out of water vapor from the purified acetylene stream. Besides acetylene, the reaction of calcium acetylide with an excess of water provides aqueous calcium hydroxide. In order to commercialize this byproduct, the content of water in the mixture should be lowered to the required level. In this contribution, development of a model of calcium acetylide and acetylene production as well as the simulation of these processes in ASPEN+ are presented. Simulation results of a realistic production line model correlate very well with the actual data from the technology used in Fortischem, a.s., Novaky, Slovakia.


Data-driven analysis and monitoring of complex dynamical systems have been gaining popularity due to various reasons like ubiquitous sensing and advanced computation capabilities. A key rationale is that such systems inherently have high dimensionality and feature complex subsystem interactions due to which majority of the first-principle based methods become insufficient. We explore the family of a recently proposed probabilistic graphical modeling technique, called spatiotemporal pattern network (STPN) in order to capture the Granger causal relationships among observations in a dynamical system. We also show that this technique can be used for anomaly detection and root-cause analysis for real-life dynamical systems. In this context, we introduce the notion of Granger-STPN (G-STPN) inspired by the notion of Granger causality and introduce a new nonparametric technique to detect causality among dynamical systems observations. We experimentally validate our framework for detecting anomalies and analyzing root causes in a robotic arm platform and obtain superior results compared to when other causality metrics were used in previous frameworks.


The reversed cyclic loading responses of full-scale shear wall specimens were investigated. The walls were designed and detailed to simulate non-ductile reinforced concrete construction of the 1960's, having lap splices of the longitudinal reinforcement in the potential plastic hinge region, and having inadequate confinement of the boundary regions. The walls were tested under reversed cyclic loading with loading applied near the tip of the walls. The response of the original walls was associated with the brittle failure of the lap splice. The effectiveness of a retrofit technique and a repair technique were investigated. The retrofit involved the use of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) wrap for improving the lap splice behaviour and the shear strength of the walls. The repair of the previously tested specimens using a steel fibre-reinforced self consolidating concrete (SFRSCC) jacket, and CFRP wrap was investigated. The retrofit and repair techniques improved the displacement ductility, and prevented premature failure of the lap splices.


We propose a semiparametric estimator to determine the effects of explanatory variables on the conditional interquantile expectation (IQE) of the random variable of interest, without specifying the conditional distribution of the underlying random variables. IQE is the expected value of the random variable of interest given that its realization lies in an interval between two quantiles, or in an interval that covers the range of the distribution to the left or right of a quantile. Our so-called interquantile expectation regression (IQER) estimator is based on the GMM framework. We derive consistency and the asymptotic distribution of the estimator, and provide a consistent estimator of the asymptotic covariance matrix. Our results apply to stationary and ergodic time series. In a simulation study we show that our asymptotic theory provides an accurate approximation in small samples. We provide an empirical illustration in finance, in which we use the IQER estimator to estimate one-step-ahead daily expected shortfall conditional on previously observed daily, weekly, and monthly aggregated realized measures.


Primary fallopian tube carcinoma [PFTC] is an uncommon, aggressive neoplasm. Diagnosis is based on ultrasonographic findings combined with a thorough histopathological examination. It must be considered as a differential diagnosis in patients presenting with vaginal bleed or discharge, with bilateral adnexal masses and those who fail to respond to antibiotic therapy and drainage. Tubal tuberculosis and trauma have been considered by some to be carcinogenic factors inducing multifocal tumorigenesis of the mullerian duct. Fallopian tube carcinoma being included as part of the cancer spectrum associated with inherited BRCA mutations. We present here a rare case report of a 49yr old lady who came with complains of white discharge per vagina of 6 months duration and underwent bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, in view of nodular echogenic lesions in the bilateral adnexa on ultrasonography. A diagnosis of primary serous adenocarcinoma - FIGO Stage IC was rendered after histopathological examination. It is important to note that metastasis to the tube is often bilateral in majority of the cases. Primary uterine and ovarian malignancies need to be excluded as in the present case.


Passive learning techniques infer graph models on the behavior of a system from large trace logs. The research community has been dedicating great effort in making passive learning techniques more scalable and ready to use by industry. However, there is still a lack of empirical knowledge on the usefulness and applicability of such techniques in large scale real systems. To that aim, we conducted action research over nine months in a large payment company. Throughout this period, we iteratively applied passive learning techniques with the goal of revealing useful information to the development team. In each iteration, we discussed the findings and challenges to the expert developer of the company, and we improved our tools accordingly. In this paper, we present evidence that passive learning can indeed support development teams, a set of lessons we learned during our experience, a proposed guide to facilitate its adoption, and current research challenges.


This executive profile summarized here identifies the great environmental challenges of the Mesoamerican region, highlights the achievements of the last decade, and points out the future course that will guide the region's environmental management advancements. There are three main issues addressed here: natural resources management, environmental impact of urban and industrial development and the relationship between the environment and competitiveness. This document was presented at the Environment Network of the Regional Policy Dialogue's 1st Hemispheric Meeting: Towards an Effective Environmental Management held on April 4th and 5th, 2002.


In wells producing water, oil, gas or geothermal energy, or in access wells to hydrocarbon storages, it is critical to evaluate the permeability of the formation as a function of depth. Continuous permeability logs in these wells are typically derived using tools that measure electrical, nuclear, magnetic or acoustic signals, using empirical relations that are often formation dependent. The permeability logs derived using these empirical relations often show significant differences when compared to the permeabilities obtained from core samples or well tests.
 A new technique is proposed in this paper in which the open hole is scanned with an interface between two fluids with a large viscosity contrast. The injection rate into the formation depends on interface location and well pressure history. An inverse problem is solved to estimate permeability as a function of depth from the evolution of flow rates with time. During the test, the well is equipped with a central tube, typically a drill string, and the scanning is done by injecting in the central tube a liquid that is different from the liquid in the annulus, at a constant wellhead pressure. Injection and withdrawal rates are measured at the tubing and the annulus wellheads, respectively; the difference between these two rates gives the formation injection rate. Interface location is also estimated from the flow rates and pressure at the wellhead and an injection profile in the open hole is derived.
 A permeability log is derived from this injection log by considering a radial, monophasic flow in each layer and same skin value for all formation layers. Initial formation pressure and storativity, estimated from other logs, are also used as inputs. The sensitivity of the permeability log to these inputs is estimated using analytical expressions. The proposed methodology is applicable to oil or water bearing formations drilled using oil or water-based muds, respectively.
 A continuous permeability log is estimated from the synthetic test data using the proposed interpretation workflow; it shows a correlation of 0.95 (on a scale of 0 to 1) when compared to the input permeability log. A laboratory model that mimics a multi-layered formation is used to study the repeatability of the technique and the validity of the uniform skin assumption by creating a mudcake at the inner radius. Four consecutive tests were performed on the same set of samples and the interpreted permeability logs are compared to the benchmark permeability log; correlations are greater than 0.94.


As business firms and even public sector operations opt to run leaner operating systems, the question of outsourcing becomes an increasingly popular topic for discussion. There are substantial differences between countries and between industries on what is considered "best practice" in outsourcing. There is ample evidence that some of these views on outsourcing are changing and will continue to change during the 1990s. This paper offers eight central propositions on logistics outsourcing with special emphasis on warehousing. The paper briefly reviews selected foundation literature in the area and then shapes the eight propositions. Findings are reviewed from an empirical study of U.S. firms. Among the findings are that there are significant differences across industries in their use of outsourcing. Each of the propositions are examined in turn, the evidence reviewed and conclusions and implications presented. The thrust of the findings suggest a new level of consideration for outsourcing as an element of logistics strategy.


The highest structural stiffness of an SPR joint was exhibited in the specimen constituted with 5J32 and ASPH, and the lowest stiffness in that constituted with the single 5J32 combination. Even though the structural stiffness of an SPR joint specimen is roughly the same with another type of joint, the fatigue life is different according to sheet material and its thickness. The results of numerical analysis are nearly identical to those of experiments. Thus, it can be that FEM modeling in accordance with FEMFAT is effective in assessing the stiffness and fatigue life of SPR joints, and can be an alternative to experimental analysis.


This paper proposes a new unsupervised fuzzy clustering algorithm (NUFCA) to construct a novel online evolving Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model identification method and an adaptive predictive process control methodology. The proposed system identification approach consists of two main steps: antecedent T-S fuzzy model parameters identification and consequent parameters identification. The NUFCA combines the K-nearest neighbour and fuzzy C-means methods into a fuzzy modelling method for partitioning of the input–output data and identifying the antecedent parameters of the fuzzy system; then the recursive least squares method is exploited to obtain initialization type consequent parameters and to construct a method for on-line fuzzy model identification. The integration of the proposed adaptive identification method with the generalized predictive control results in an effective adaptive predictive fuzzy control methodology. For better demonstration of the robustness and efficiency of the proposed methodology, it is applied to the identification of a model for the estimation of the flour concentration in the effluent of a real-world wastewater treatment plant (WWTP); and to control a simulated continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR), and a real experimental setup composed of two coupled DC motors. The results show that the developed evolving T-S fuzzy model methodology can identify nonlinear systems satisfactorily and can be successfully used for a prediction model of the process for the generalized predictive controller. It is also shown that the algorithm is robust to changes in the initial parameters, and to unexpected disturbances.


With care and working within well‐defined constraints, it has been previously demonstrated that a laser beam and a fast responding light detector could be made to behave as a linear line receiver of low megahertz sinusoidal ultrasonic waves. It is a sufficiently good line receiver so that the principles of tomography can be used to unfold the sound field. Many of the constraints are frequency dependent and the question arises as to whether a laser beam could be used to investigate a pulse of moderate bandwidth. The studies show that major features of the signal from the line detector can be accounted for when the sound field is produced by a commercial NDE transducer driven with a known Gaussian time pulse.


LATE LATENT syphilis presents a therapeutic problem that is unique. A patient with syphilis in this stage suffers no discomfort or disability as a result of his infection, and he is not a menace to the public health, for syphilis is transmissible only in its early stages. If any benefit is to result from treatment, it must be, therefore, through a reduction in the frequency of subsequent clinical progression. It is common for patients with untreated syphilis to live normal lives, and it is impossible to demonstrate that the treatment of latent syphilis in a particular person has improved his outlook at all. Only by comparing final results in large numbers of patients, treated and untreated, can it be shown that the prognosis in latent syphilis can be altered by therapy. The evidence available on this point is incomplete, and a convincing proof of the effectiveness of antisyphilitic therapy is


An anionic metal-organic framework (MOF) with 1D nanotube channels has been constructed. The charge and size dependent ion-exchange of cationic dyes was investigated. Rho@1 could be used as a dual-emitting fluorescent sensor for sensing explosives by self-referencing energy transfer behaviors.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the knowledge and expectations of veterinarians and clients regarding heartworm preventives and annual vaccinations for dogs.

DESIGN
Practitioner and client survey.

SAMPLE POPULATION
435 veterinarians and 1,805 clients.

PROCEDURE
A survey was mailed to veterinarians requesting information from them and their dog-owning clients on expectations and knowledge regarding heartworm preventives and annual vaccinations. Responses of veterinarians were compared with those of clients, and both were compared with label indications.

RESULTS
Expectations of veterinarians and clients regarding heartworm preventives were similar and usually were consistent with regulatory interpretation of label terms. Of clients purchasing heartworm preventives, 38% did not know that the medication was effective against intestinal nematodes. Veterinarians and clients would be unsatisfied with a product that reduced, but did not eliminate, all intestinal nematodes. Most clients knew that annual vaccinations included distemper virus, parvovirus, and rabies virus, but about half of them did not know that other antigens were in the vaccines.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Effects of heartworm preventives and diseases for which dogs are annually vaccinated should be explained fully to clients.


We demonstrate short-range terahertz radar based on a leaky-wave antenna with a beam steering capability. As a proof of concept, we develop a microstrip-based periodic leaky-wave antenna driven by a vector network analyzer. By sweeping the frequency from 235 to 325 GHz, beam steering from -23° to +15° across the broadside can be achieved with a nearly constant beam width of 4°. Small target detection is demonstrated by locating a metal cylinder with a diameter of 12 mm placed 46-86 mm in front of the antenna with a mean error of 2.4 mm. The use of a leaky-wave antenna can pave the way for developing a low-loss, low-profile, and wide-aperture terahertz radar. Importantly, it can be integrated with a solid-state source and a detector. The proposed approach is particularly promising for use with emerging small devices such as drones or wearable devices, where millimeter-wave radar is not suitable in terms of the resolution and system footprint.


Time diversification continues to be a subject of intense debate within investment and academic communities. Among practitioners it not unusual to find the recommendation that an investor with a long investment horizon, should tilt the portfolio weights towards stocks. In this study, we analyze if the portfolio weights for stocks and bills, which are formed on the basis of direct expected utility maximization for a set of utility functions, vary significantly with the investment horizon. We use a non-parametric bootstrap approach, which allow us to draw inference about the optimal weights for different investment horizons. Through this approach we are also able to study the effect of estimation risk. Our analysis shows that investors with long investment horizons should invest more heavily in stocks, that is, we find that the weights for stocks are significantly higher for long horizon investment as compared to the one-year horizon. We conclude that time diversification exists, and that the allocation decision seems to be independent of the utility function.