Cilantro is a leafy vegetable commonly used for seasoning purpose that is highly perishable and has high postharvest loss losing 1.03 ml water per gram per day. It is therefore an alternative method of storage is needed to extend storage life of Cilantro. So, the research was carried out to study the effect of Modified Atmospheric Packaging (MAP) on postharvest storage life of Cilantro at different storage conditions. The experiment was laid under Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with ten treatments viz. open in tray along with 0, 5, 10 and 15 perforations (having pore size 5 mm) which are stored both in lab and Zero Energy Cool Chamber (ZECC) with three replications of each treatment during March/April (2018) at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) Lamjung Campus. Cilantro bought from market was packed in 250 gauge polyethylene bags, each bag was filled with 200 g Cilantro. Physiological loss in weight (PLW), Chlorophyll content, Colour change and Decay are the parameters that were evaluated. Results revealed that with the increase in number of perforation PLW was increased. Cilantro packed in MAP without perforation and stored in ZECC had minimum PLW (0.75%), no decay development as well as minimum loss of chlorophyll (11.18%) in comparison with Cilantro stored in lab at two days after storage. Decay percentage was however higher, greater than 50% at 6 days after storage in ZECC. Polyethylene bags without perforation were observed to be best packaging materials for extending storage life of Cilantro up to 4 days in ZECC followed by 2 days in lab.


As the complex societal and technological challenges of the 21st century cannot be addressed by solutions from just one field of expertise, academics are increasingly expected to cross the disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary Learning Activities contains concrete suggestions in the form of examples of learning activities that university teachers can use to teach and foster interdisciplinary skills in graduate and undergraduate students. These skills for interdisciplinary understanding include critical thinking, collaboration, and reflection. Socratic style questioning, Breaking news, The Walt Disney strategy, and The interdisciplinary shuttle are just four examples of the 32 interdisciplinary learning activities for workshops, courses and curricula that are shared by university teachers in this handbook. Incorporating these activities into education will contribute to creating a challenging, engaging and successful learning environment.


This study focuses on generic competences that have been considered to be lacking in graduates from Malaysian polytechnics specifically their problem solving, critical thinking, communication skills, and team building. The argument concerning generic competences has focused upon teachers' pedagogical approaches and their relation to students' learning. There is therefore a need to explore innovative learning environments which will help students to improve their attitudes and skills as well as their learning achievements, with regard to these generic competences. The creation of a hybrid teaching approach was proposed in order to consider whether this would enhance students' generic competences, as well as to enhance their academic achievements. This study is significant and original in that it aimed to establish an alternative pedagogical approach in teaching engineering subjects at polytechnics and assesses its validity. The approach was based on the combination and integration of collaborative learning and metacognitive strategies to produce a hybrid system (HybCoMet Strategy). A central objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the instructional module using the HybCoMet Strategy compared to the more traditional approaches. The study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to obtain the data including: questionnaires distributed to students, pre and post-test quasi-experiments design, diary methods and semi structured interviews with lecturers. The quantitative data was used to support the qualitative data in order to triangulate the study. The First Semester Students in Civil Engineering Courses from three polytechnics and lecturers who were teaching the selected engineering subject were selected as a sample. Findings from this study show that the pattern of teaching and learning processes in the majority of polytechnics under investigation were more traditionally focused with an emphasis on teacher-centred approaches. By introducing the HybCoMet Strategy, students considered that the hybrid classroom helped to establish an atmosphere in which they felt more valued and more comfortable. Above all, it helped students to think critically; solve complex problems; write and speak effectively; have respect for others; be able to adapt to change and be ready to engage in lifelong learning. The HybCoMet Strategy, it is considered, can challenge students in their learning so that, in employment, they will be able to transfer this learning to workplace environments.


The Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837 has been called the most important event in pre-Confederation history. Previously, it has been explained as a response to economic distress or as the result of manipulation by middle-class politicians. Lord Durham believed it was an expression of racial conflict. The Patriots and the People is a fundamental reinterpretation of the Rebellion. Allan Greer argues that far being passive victims of events, the habitants were actively responding to democratic appeals because the language of popular sovereignty was in harmony with their experience and outlook. He finds that a certain form of popular republicanism, with roots deep in the French-Canadian past, drove the anti-government campaign. Institutions such as the militia and the parish played an important part in giving shape to the movement, and the customs of the maypole and charivari provided models for the collective actions against local representatives of the colonial regime. In looking closely into the actions, motives, and mentality of the rural plebeians who formed a majority of those involved in the insurrection, Allan Greer brings to light new causes for the revolutionary role of the normally peaceful French-Canadian peasant. By doing so he provides a social history with new dimensions.


INTRODUCTION
Facial fractures, from straightforward closed nasal reductions to complex pan facial fractures, are commonly encountered in the Plastic Surgical community. However, very little has been discussed in the literature regarding the outcomes of facial fractures relating to contributing factors. Our aim was to evaluate a battery of independent variables in order to identify, which, if any, factors correlate with suboptimal outcomes in patients who have undergone facial fracture surgery.

METHODS
Under the data use agreement of the American College of Surgeons public use files of the NSQIP, patients involving repair of facial fractures, Current Procedural Terminology codes 21310 to 21470 inclusive, were queried. The outcomes examined included: wound dehiscence, superficial surgical site infection, deep surgical site infection, readmission, open wound/wound infection and return to the operating room.

RESULTS
There were 2069 facial fracture patients in the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program datasets (2005-2013). Thirteen perioperative risk factors and patient comorbidities were evaluated for correlation with the 6 outcomes. Of the 6 outcomes evaluated, open wound/wound infection was the most prevalent outcome (6%). Factors statistically significant for presence of open wound/wound infection were American Society of Anesthesiology classification (P = 0.002), presence of bleeding disorder (P = 0.008), emergency patient (P = 0.001), chronic alcohol use (P = 0.002), and chronic steroid use (P = 0.034).

DISCUSSION
Several factors correlated with presence of an open wound/wound infection; however, variables such as diabetes and active tobacco use, which are often thought to contribute to wound infections, were shown to be statistically nonsignificant. Although this study was limited by its observational nature, these data may indicate a change in perception of the factors correlated with wound infections.


The introduction of all-trans retinoic acid, or ATRA, in 1985, combined with anthracycline-based chemotherapy, has transformed acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) from a fatal disease to one that is now highly curable. With appropriate contemporary therapy, more than 90% of patients achieve complete remission, and cure rates of approximately 80% and higher response and survival rates can be expected for patients at low and intermediate risk. The introduction of arsenic trioxide, or ATO, in 1994 has provided the opportunity to minimize and even eliminate standard cytotoxic chemotherapy from initial treatment regimens without compromising the excellent outcomes achieved by anthracycline-containing protocols. APL is a unique subtype of acute myeloid leukemia that is curable with targeted therapies and potentially without exposure to conventional DNA-damaging chemotherapy. The omission of conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy may reduce long-term complications such as cardiomyopathy and therapy-related myelodysplastic syndromes. Cure rates of APL may be further increased by adopting management strategies to reduce early hemorrhagic deaths, which now appear to be the major cause of treatment failure.


BACKGROUND
Surgical treatment may be necessary in childhood chronic pleural empyema.

METHODS
Over a 21-year period 642 children with pleural empyema were hospitalized and 104 of them underwent surgical treatment. The records of the children who underwent surgery for the treatment of empyema were retrospectively reviewed to describe the role, indications, and results of surgical treatment of childhood chronic pleural empyema.

RESULTS
Etiologic diseases or conditions leading to empyema were pneumonia in 69 patients, tuberculosis in 13, hydatid cyst in eight, postpneumonectomy empyema in five, and other causes in nine patients. Indications for surgery were severe pleural thickening in 54 cases (51.9%), trapped lung in 36 cases (34.6%), loculated empyema in eight cases (7.7%) and broncho-pleural fistula in six cases (5.8%). Operations performed were decortication in 90 patients, pulmonary resection and decortication in seven, muscle flap closure in five, and pneumonectomy in two. Success rates in the treatment of nonspecific and tuberculous empyema were 93% and 54%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
Surgical treatment is still necessary in childhood pleural empyema in developing countries, and success rates are very high in nonspecific pleural empyema and acceptable in tuberculous pleural empyema.


The prevalence of internet gaming disorders (IGD) is considerably high among youth, especially with the social isolation imposed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. IGD adversely affects mental health, quality of life, and academic performance. The Internet Gaming Disorder Scale (IGDS9-SF) is designed to detect IGD according to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. However, inconsistent results are reported on its capacity to diagnose IGD evenly across different cultures. To ensure the suitability of the IGDS9-SF as a global measure of IGD, this study examined the psychometric properties of the IGDS9-SF in a sample of Sri Lankan university students (N = 322, mean age = 17.2 ± 0.6, range = 16–18 years, 56.5% males) and evaluated its measurement invariance across samples from Sri Lanka, Turkey, Australia, and the USA. Among Sri Lankan students, a unidimensional structure expressed good fit, invariance across different groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and income), adequate criterion validity (strong correlation with motives of internet gaming, daily gaming duration, and sleep quality), and good reliability (alpha = 0.81). Males and online multiplayers expressed higher IGD levels, greater time spent gaming, and more endorsement of gaming motives (e.g., Social and Coping) than females and offline players. Across countries, the IGDS9-SF was invariant at the configural, metric, and scalar levels, although strict invariance was not maintained. The lowest and highest IGD levels were reported among Turkish and American respondents, respectively. In conclusion, the IGDS9-SF can be reliably used to measure IGD among Sri Lankan youth. Because the scale holds scalar invariance across countries, its scores can be used to compare IGD levels in the studied countries.


Background: The aim of a biliary-digestive derivation is, in fact, restoring biliary transit no matter the obstacle. There are three essential factors that make this possible: the biliary partner of the anastomosis, the digestive partner and the anastomosis stoma itself. Over the time, many attempts were made, so that nowadays hepaticojejunal anastomosis on isolated loop is imposed. In this way alimentary pollution of the biliary sector is avoided, as well as the reflux cholangitis, a disadvantage that occurs in other types of biliary-digestive anastomoses. Methods: This is a retrospective, unicentric, multi-operative study, performed on 267 anastomoses, 148 with axial drainage, 119 without drainage, 209 malignant and 58 benign. Results: Final results show the predominance of stented anastomoses over the non-stented ones. 103 from the 148 stented anastomoses (94%) were made using axial drainage. It was determined that the evolution was favorable for the drained patients in what regards both the fast or relatively slow remission of the icteric syndrome and the decrease in the patients with very slow or incomplete remission, though without observing significant differences. During the study, some complications occurred: hemorrhage complications in one patient, two septic complications, partially or totally malfunctioning drainage and anastomotic fistulas. Conclusions: Despite the relatively difficult way of the set up and the bigger possibility of accidental mobilization of the tube, axial stenting of the hepaticojejunal anastomosis is the gold standard in derivations due to its best possible results on short and long terms while avoiding alimentary pollution of the biliary segment.


and Implications This paper includes results from two separate studies: one surveyed the level of contamination at four points during the slaughter and processing of chilled pork; the second study surveyed ground pork from 17 companies representing five different segments of ground pork distribution. Regarding the carcass study, the highest percentage of Salmonella spp. isolated from the different sampling sites by a swab method, for both pork loin and ham surfaces, was 4.4% after the singeing step of the slaughter process. Overall, 1.7% of all pork samples showing positive isolations for Salmonella spp., however, there were no Salmonella spp. found in one of the three plants surveyed. Salmonella were isolated primarily from pork before fabrication and refrigerated storage. A continous reduction in the numbers of Salmonella spp. isolates was detected from the point of singeing to the point of fabrication. No Salmonella spp. were isolated from vacuumpackaged pork stored for 36 days at 2EC. The purpose of the ground pork project was to survey current sources of ground pork, and to determine the effects of different handling methods and raw material sources on the microbial quality of ground pork. There were no significant differences in the microbial counts, or prevalence of selected organisms, between the different types of companies from which the ground pork was obtained. Estimated variance among locations, samples and sample duplicates show that additional ground pork samples are needed to strengthen the results of this study.


Lithium ion secondary batteries have been widely used with high capacity and energy density. However, safety problems such as explosion of organic electrolytes have been raised, all solid lithium secondary batteries which do not use organic electrolytes have been attracting attention as next generation batteries [1]. Garnet-type solid electrolytes has good advantages with stable in the atmosphere and electrochemical potential window. In this study, gallium-doped LLZO material, which are cubic single phase and nano-grade size, was synthesized by Taylor reactor process. As a result, the ionic conductivity of the Ga-LLZO material was about 1.2x10 S cm 1 at room temperature, indicating a wide electrochemical window of 0~6.0 V. Furthermore, all solid lithium batteries were fabricated using Ga-LLZO material and the electrochemical properties were investigated in more detail.


Sentiment analysis is also known as opinion mining which it extracts opinions to learn about public point of view. In general, people prefer to take advice from others not only to get sensible products but also to invest in a wise way. Nowadays, the popular sources of personal opinion are blogs. The consumer review sites are helpful to know about the features and services available to a specific product. This sentiment analysis is also helpful to the manufactures to improve their business by knowing the public opinion. The online sources gather public opinion content in the form of blogs, forums, social media, review websites, etc. The sentiment analysis automatically mines the huge content that is available online. This paper gives a complete study of various supervised and unsupervised classifiers.


The effects of a constant uniform magnetic field on dendritic solidification were investigated using an enthalpy based numerical model. The interaction between thermoelectric currents on a growing crystal and the magnetic field generates a Lorentz force that creates flow. The need for very high resolution at the liquid-solid boundary where the thermoelectric source originates plus the need to accommodate multiple grains for a realistic simulation, make this a very demanding computational problem. For practical simulations, a quasi 3-dimensional approximation is proposed which nevertheless retains essential elements of transport in the third dimension. A magnetic field normal to the plane of growth leads to general flow circulation around an equiaxed dendrite, with secondary recirculations between the arms. The heat/solute advection by the flow is shown to cause a change in the morphology of the dendrite; secondary growth is promoted preferentially on one side of the dendrite arm and the tip velocity of the primary arm is increased. The degree of approximation introduced is quantified by extending the model into 3-dimensions, where the full Navier-Stokes equation is solved, and compared against the 2-dimensional solution.


This study evaluates the existing resources and procedures of the Indiana Department of Transportation's (INDOT's) current traffic monitoring program, with the objective of transforming this program into a comprehensive Traffic Monitoring System for Highways (TMS/H). Reliable traffic data is a valuable input for studies and decision-making at various levels and in various phases of highway management including planning and design, finance and taxation, legislation and safety. The nature and scope of the various components comprising a TMS/H for any state were identified in available literature such as the Federal Register and Traffic Monitoring Guide. A complete inventory of the existing resources (personnel and equipment) and procedures used for field data collection and office-based data processing were compiled and evaluated for adequacy and/or accuracy and appropriateness by matching them with requirements stated in available literature to ensure compliance with ISTEA recommendations. In general, the existing traffic monitoring program was found to be adequate in meeting the needs of most management systems, with the exception of vehicle classification monitoring at sections having 'abnormal' traffic conditions. For the Continuous Count program, a large number of additional classification ATR stations are recommended while very few additional WIM sites are needed. All HPMS sample sections and NHS segments are covered under the existing program, although a lack of resources sometimes limits the frequency of data collection. Also, a new schedule for coverage counts is proposed to place greater emphasis on NHS roads and high-growth areas of the state. A new database system is recommended to effectively address data management issues. Also, documentation of field operations and office factoring procedures was carried out in this study. With the recommendations from this study, INDOT intends to streamline its overall data collection activities and to improve the accuracy, adequacy, timeliness, and delivery of data to the end-users.


(substantial changes to section 3.2, otherwise minor) We present an analysis of the hydrodynamic stability of a cold slab bounded by two accretion shocks. Previous numerical work has shown that when the Mach number of the shock is large the slab is unstable. Here we show that to linear order both the bending and breathing modes of such a slab are stable. However, nonlinear effects will tend to soften the restoring forces for bending modes, and when the slab displacement is comparable to its thickness this gives rise to a nonlinear instability. The growth rate of the instability, above this threshold but for small bending angles, is $\sim c_sk (k\eta)^{1/2}$, where $\eta$ is the slab displacement. When the bending angle is large the slab will contain a local vorticity comparable to $c_s/L$, where $L$ is the slab thickness. We discuss the implications of this work for gravitational instabilities of slabs. Finally, we examine the cases of a decelerating slab bounded by a single shock and a stationary slab bounded on one side by thermal pressure. The latter case is stable, but appears to be a special case. The former case is subject to a nonlinear overstability driven by deceleration effects. We conclude that shock bounded slabs with a high density compression ratio generically produce substructure with a strong local shear, a bulk velocity dispersion like the sound speed in the cold layer and a characteristic scale comparable to the slab thickness.


SIR,-As you are aware, the Minister of Health addressed a meeting of hospital junior staff on 15 September at the Medical School in Birmingham, and selected parts of his speech have appeared in the newspapers and on the television screen. The invitation to the Minister was couched in terms that left no doubt in the minds of all who saw it that the subject of the speech should be the future of the hospital service and the role of junior grades of hospital staff in the future. It was made clear that the questions of pay and emigration were not of deep concern to us compared with the degree of anxiety we feel for the future of the Service. Whilst I am pleased that the Minister chose to accept my invitation to speak in Birmingham I must place on record the severe disappointment which the substance of that speech has caused in my region. The invitation, given in good faith, was a golden opportunity for the Minister to address hospital doctors and indicate to them that their anxieties were shared, and that deep thought and urgent action are being taken. Instead, members of the profession (i.e., those who really know) were treated to (i) a review of the wonders of the National Health Serviceas seen by the Ministry, (ii) an unnecessary deviation on doctors' pay but without any mention of attempts to improve ancillary services, (iii) the widely reported slur on the profession that we train here with the intention of practising abroad (the actual words used were, "But to accept a fine medical education in Britain with the deliberate intention of selling it elsewhere . . ."). Dr. Edmund Harvey-Smith has already, and quite rightly, replied to this final point (Daily Telegraph, 17 September), but as well as supporting him most fully in his statement on behalf of all those that I represent, I hope, Sir, that you will allow me to indicate to all my colleagues, in all branches of the profession, our distress at the way the meeting was misused by the Minister. Many of us feel aggrieved that such a gathering was used for plainly political purposes, but as Peter Draper indicated (Guardian, 16 September) medicine and politics can no longer be separated. What we now require is not yet another committee but professional representatives who are devoid of the political naivete that Draper so rightly accuses many doctors of possessing. Such representatives, unfettered by the day-to-day problems of medical practice, would ease the doctor's burden in negotiations and also remove the fear of many that their chosen representatives do not press their case hard enough in the right quarters. Splinter groups are doomed to failure not because they are idealistically wrong, nor necessarily because they are not recognized officially, but because they do not have adequate organization or finance. It is clear, therefore, that all those who think such organizations will help them, however wellintentioned, are misguided. I would hope that now we have all seen and heard the Minister all those who doubted the integrity of our representatives or the difficulties they face will now join (or rejoin) the Association and by being as active as members as they are whilst non-members change the organization so that we do improve both the Association and the lot of those who follow us. Finally, Sir, we in Birmingham cannot accept the Minister's lack of proposals for a career structure, his lack of discussion of plans for ancillary services in the future, or his final remarks on emigration as in any way helpful in the present context. We urge all our colleagues to unite, to attack the new proposals of a junior staff charter with vigour, to enlist the support not the antagonism of their consultant staff, and to support the idea of a single central hospital committee with as much strength as they can muster, as well as continuing to give the best service they can to their patients under the present trying conditions. I would also hope that an alternative name for our group can be found in place of this awful phrase "Junior Hospital Staff."-I am, etc.,


After the World War II, approx. 40.000 tonnes of chemical munitions containing about 13.000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) were dumped in the Baltic Sea [1]. As the artillery shells, aircraft bombs and containers are corroding, the contents are leaking into the environment contaminating the surrounding sediments but also spreading far beyond the dumpsite boundaries [2]. Thus, the necessity of investigations on the impact of chemical warfare on biota, such as inorganic arsenic and organo-arsenic compounds, is increasing.
Among the dumped CWAs are the vesicant mustard gas (Bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide), the tear gas chloroacetophenone (2-Chloro-1-phenylethanone) as well as the irritants Clark I (Diphenylarsinechloride) and Adamsite (10-Chloro-5-hydrophenarsazine(10)) [3]. Persistent contaminations at dumping sites are mostly related to arsenic containing compounds [2]. Thus, arsenic containing CWAs have been chosen as model CWAs in the present study.
Here, we present the first approach to investigate biological effects of CWA mixtures on the health of blue mussels (M. trossulus) under laboratory conditions. The evaluation of the health status was based on a great array of biomarkers encompassing immunocompetence, oxidative stress defence and pathological alterations in different tissues. Chemical analysis of tissue and water samples facilitated an integrated assessment.


This paper concerns the possibility of building Montague grammars in a modular and incremental way. As an illustration, we investigate the following question. Given an atemporal Montague grammar, on the one hand, and a temporal ontology, on the other hand, is it possible to combine them into a new grammar such that it would: (i) conservatively extend the original grammar, and (ii) allow temporal modifiers to be accommodated.


The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 (BNT162b2) vaccine is a lipid nanoparticle-formulated, nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine encoding the prefusion spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine consists of 2 intramuscular doses (30 μg, 0.3 mL each) administered 3 weeks apart. On December 11, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer, Inc; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in persons aged ≥16 years (1); on December 12, 2020, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued an interim recommendation for use of the vaccine in the same age group (2). As of May 12, 2021, approximately 141.6 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine had been administered to persons aged ≥16 years.* On May 10, 2021, FDA expanded the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include adolescents aged 12-15 years (1). On May 12, 2021, ACIP issued an interim recommendation† for use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in adolescents aged 12-15 years for the prevention of COVID-19. To guide its deliberations regarding the vaccine, ACIP used the Evidence to Recommendation (EtR) Framework,§ using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.¶ The ACIP recommendation for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in persons aged ≥12 years under an EUA is interim and will be updated as additional information becomes available.


Abstract This article examines citizenspeak, or the discourses available to citizens talking about politics. The paper is based on 81 interviews with voters in Bristol, England, during the 2001 British national elections. The paper finds that citizens have a narrow range of discourses to draw on. The dominant type of citizenspeak is that of immobilising discourses, expressing disenchantment with the political process. The second category is that of oppositional discourse, capturing a view of politics as the bastion of elites out to exploit the working classes. Thirdly, the paper discusses cynical chic discourses. The voters who engage in these discourses take pleasure in their superior knowledge of the political process, which allows them to creatively poke fun of it. Fourth, discourses of duty emphasise the importance of voting, despite the shortcomings of representative democracy. Finally, some citizens master discourses of relevance: They speak with engagement about events touching on their own lives. And it is in these discourses that we may find hopes for the revival of citizenship. The paper suggests that to solve the problems of disengagement, we must provide contexts in which it is acceptable to be interested in politics. This, in turn, entails broadening our definition of the political.


The aim of this paper is to present a statistical measure of energy poverty in Poland. This is the first research for Poland which is strictly based on the methodology applied in the United Kingdom - the only country with a statutory definition of energy poverty. We calculate three measures: absolute – 10% of income, modified absolute – 13% of income and relative - Low Income High Costs (LIHC). The results are compared with a subjective energy situation assessment made by households. Moreover, we answer the question to what extent energy poverty coincides with income poverty. After examining the different variants of the definition, we recommend using the relative LIHC definition in Poland. According to this measure, 17% of the Polish population (6.44 million people) are exposed to energy poverty, especially occupants of detached houses, inhabitants of rural areas, households living on non-earned sources, single parents and married couples with at least 2 children.


HEATSTORE is a GEOTHERMICA ERA-NET co-funded project, aiming at developing High Temperature (~25°C to ~90°C) Underground Thermal Energy Storage (HT-UTES) technologies by lowering the cost, reducing risks, improving the performance, and optimizing the district heating network demand side management at 6 new pilot and demonstration sites, two of which are in Switzerland, plus 8 case studies. The European HEATSTORE consortium includes 24 contributing partners from 9 countries, composing a mix of scientific research institutes and private companies. The Swiss consortium, developing HEATSTORE in Switzerland, involves of two industrial partners (Services Industriels de Geneva - SIG and Energie Wasser Bern - EWB) and four academic partners (Universities of Geneva, Bern, Neuchâtel and ETH Zurich), with support from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. The aims are to develop two demonstration projects for High Temperature Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (HT-ATES) in the cantons of Geneva and Bern such that industrial waste heat can be converted into a resource. This paper presents the results of the first year of activities in the Swiss projects. The activities planned cover subsurface characterization, energy system analysis, surface implementation design, legal framework improvement and business modelling to ensure the sustainability of the projects. This approach is supported by large industrial investments for subsurface characterization. Two wells, down to 1200m below surface level (bsl) are being drilled in the Geneva area to tap potential targets in the carbonate Mesozoic units and at least three additional wells, down to 500m bsl will target the Molasse sediments in the Bern area next year. These wells allow subsurface exploration and characterization and will provide data, used for detailed THMC modelling to assess the thermal energy storage potential at the two sites in Switzerland. The results of such numerical modelling are combined with energy system analysis to quantify the waste heat availability and heat demand and hence optimize the production and injection operations. The outcomes of the coupled assessments will aid in designing the integration of the new installations into the districtheating network. Legal framework improvements, based on complete technical evaluation and on the best-practice sharing with the other European partners, will be an enabling tool to accelerate the implementation of the HT-ATES systems, while business modelling helps calibrate the economic feasibility of the projects and helps industrial partners to plan future investments.


The Didactic Networks proposed in this paper are based on previous publications in the field of the RSR (Rhetorical-Semantic Relations). The RSR is a set of primitive relations used for building a specific kind of semantic networks for artificial intelligence applications on the web: the RSN (Rhetorical-Semantic Networks). We bring into focus the RSR application in the field of elearning, by defining Didactic Networks as a new set of semantic patterns oriented to the development of eleaming applications. The different lines we offer in our research Jail mainly into three levels: • The most basic one is in the field of computational linguistics and related to Logical Operations on RSR (RSR Inverses and plurals. RSR combinations, etc), once they have been created. The application of Walter Bosma 's results regarding rhetorical distance application and treatment as semantic weighted networks is one of the important issues here. • In parallel, we have been working on the creation of a knowledge representation and storage model and data architecture capable of supporting the definition of knowledge networks based on RSR. • The third strategic line is in the meso-level, the formulation of a molecular structure of knowledge based on the most frequently used patterns. The main contribution at this level is the set of Fundamental Cognitive Networks (FCN) as an application of Novak's mental maps proposal. This paper is part of this third intermediate level, and the Fundamental Didactic Networks (FDN) are the result of the application of rhetorical theoiy procedures to the instructional theory. We have formulated a general set of RSR capable of building discourse, making it possible to express any concept, procedure or principle in terms of knowledge nodes and RSRs. The instructional knowledge can then be elaborated in the same way. This network structure expressing the instructional knowledge in terms of RSR makes the objective of developing web-learning lessons semi-automutkally possible, as well as any other type of utilities oriented towards the exploitation of semantic structure, such as the automatic question answering systems.


Thermal distortion tests were made on a stainless steel clad, cadmium-silver control rod furnished by the Argonne National Laboratory. Two temperature patterns supplied by the Argonne National Laboratory were simulated in these tests; one represented the shim-rod-out condition and the other the shim-rod-50-percent-inserted condition. The greatest reduction in clearance effected by thermal distortion was 0.076 inch. No permanent set of the control rod was observed after repeated heating and cooling cycles.


The paper uses 18 waves of BHPS data to provide evidence of the roles of both own social status and upward mobility relative to one's parents on job and life satisfaction, preferences for redistribution, pro-public sector attitudes and voting. Both own social status and greater mobility with respect to parents are positively associated with subjective well-being. However, this symmetric effect disappears for political preferences. While greater social status is associated with less favourable attitudes to redistribution and the public sector, greater upward mobility is associated with more Left-wing attitudes. These attitudes translate into actual reported voting behaviour. Upwards social mobility produces satisfied Left-wingers.


C onsider the following three facts: complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) appeals to more and more patients; patient choice is rapidly becoming an important theme in healthcare; and much of the existing patient information on this kind of medicine is unreliable. Taken together, these facts suggest an urgent need for reliable patient information in this area.

> The days when sceptics could claim correctly that complementary medicine is a data free zone are clearly past

The aim of such information should be to help people participate in decisions about their care. In order to achieve this, the information must be relevant, accurate, and objective, sufficiently detailed and comprehensive, as well as accessible and understandable. It should address the needs and concerns of patients and focus on outcomes that matter to them. Producing such a guide would require a range of skills—for example, scientists who are aware of, and able to correctly interpret, the …


Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential nutrients in growth of plants. In addition, the type and method of fertilizer application play an important role in the efficient absorption of nutrients and reduce fertilizer use. Therefore, an experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications in the Bahar city in 2017: phosphorus fertilizer was three levels (no application, triple superphosphate and diammonium phosphate), nitrogen fertilizer with two levels (placement and no-placement) and potato cultivar with three levels (Agria, Banba and Sante). The highest leaf area index (5.27), crop growth rate (13.22 g.m-2) and total dry matter (582.86 g.m-2) were obtained from diammonium phosphate along with nitrogen placement in by using Agria cultivar. The results also showed that under conditions phosphorus deficiency, nitrogen application method did not affect leaf area index, crop growth rate and total dry matter: However, tuber yield of Agria under phosphorus deficiency increased by nitrogen placement treatment. In this study, the use of diammonium phosphate, compared to triple superphosphate, increased leaf area index, crop growth rate, relative growth rate and total dry matter. The effect of nitrogen placement along with triple superphosphate was higher than that of nitrogen with diammonium phosphate. Chlorophyll index was not affected by nitrogen placement when using diammonium phosphate, whereas, nitrogen placement increased chlorophyll index by 6.5% with triple superphosphate. The results also showed that the tuber yield increased by 25.4% when nitrogen used by placement combined with triple superphosphate fertilizer. As a whole, highest tuber yields of all three cultivars, especially in Agria and Banba, were increased under nitrogen placement treatment along with diammonium phosphate.


Recent sub-mm CO molecular line observations of nearby ultra-luminous IRAS galaxies, (U)LIRGs with LIR ≥ 10 11 L� ,h ave shown that exceptionally large gas column densities (NH ≥ 10 25 cm −2 ) can be present across some of the very dense gaseous disks that are typically found in these objects. In particular, Papadopoulos et al. proposed a diagnostic for finding such obscured sources using CO and HCN molecular lines. Given that these high column densities are expected to absorb any X-ray luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN), yielding Compton-thick sources, we set out to explore whether this can be discerned using X-ray observations. More specifically we examine X-ray spectral observations of 14 sources in their sample, using public Chandra observations (0.5–10 keV) for eleven sources as well as BeppoSAX results (2–100 keV) from the literature for another three sources. Our goal is to find candidate Compton-thick AGN and to check whether the molecular line selection criterion is successful in selecting these systems. X-ray spectroscopy reveals four candidate Compton-thick AGN, of which two fall within the high obscuration region in the molecular line ratio diagnostics. Of the remaining five sources falling into the "high dust obscuration" box, one (Mrk273) is highly obscured (NH ∼ 4 × 10 23 cm −2 ), while in the other four the X-ray emission is most probably associated with star-forming processes rather than an AGN on the basis of their X-ray and mid-infrared properties. Overall, we argue that although this method cannot of course recover all Compton-thick AGN, there are no examples of X-ray luminous AGN inside that region that have low obscuration, suggesting that this method is efficient in finding heavily obscured AGN in dust-enshrouded star-forming galaxies. The above results bear important implications for future joint ALMA and X-ray observations for the detection of Compton-thick AGN.


Wound healing is a complicated biological process consisting of many types of cellular dynamics and functions regulated by chemical and molecular signals. Recent advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to predictably design and build closed-loop controllers that can function appropriately alongside biological species. In this paper we develop a simple dynamical population model mimicking the sequential relay-like dynamics of cellular populations involved in the wound healing process. Our model consists of four nodes and five signals whose parameters we can tune to simulate various chronic healing conditions. We also develop a set of regulator functions based on type-1 incoherent feed forward loops (IFFL) that can sense the change from acute healing to incomplete chronic wounds, improving the system in a timely manner. Both the wound healing and type-1 IFFL controller architectures are compatible with available synthetic biology experimental tools for potential applications.


This paper examines the on-going process of the e-government initiative in Korea (EGK), which started in February 2001 and - was implemented by October 2002. The EGK is an agenda propelled by the President's determination and leadership. Scrutinized for three months after its formulation, the Presidential Committee of E-Government in Korea finally s e l e c t e d eleven projects among agencies with interconnected business processes and coordinated t h e m oriented to a single window portal by strengthening a government-wide information-sharing center. The EGK will deliver government services to anyone at any time in any place. It consists of four government-to-citizen and government-to-business services in the front office, four government-to-government services in the back office, and three infrastructure projects for e-government. Top-down and supply-side approaches, which are typical in mega-projects in Korea, are applied to the development and deployment of e-government services. Those approaches can contribute to implementing e-government services to citizens within the stated timeframe. They are expected to enhance government officials' responsiveness to citizens and the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration, which will result in fundamental changes in public service. These approaches, too, may create some unexpected weaknesses that prove a deterrent to mature e-government. It is desirable to have a well-prepared post-implementation plan.


A combinatorial Gray code for a class of objects is a listing that contains each object from the class exactly once such that any two consecutive objects in the list differ only by a `small change'. Such listings are known for many different combinatorial objects, including bitstrings, combinations, permutations, partitions, triangulations, but also for objects defined with respect to a fixed graph, such as spanning trees, perfect matchings or vertex colorings. This survey provides a comprehensive picture of the state-of-the-art of the research on combinatorial Gray codes. In particular, it gives an update on Savage's influential survey [C. D. Savage. A survey of combinatorial Gray codes. SIAM Rev., 39(4):605-629, 1997.], incorporating many more recent developments. We also elaborate on the connections to closely related problems in graph theory, algebra, order theory, geometry and algorithms, which embeds this research area into a broader context. Lastly, we collect and propose a number of challenging research problems, thus stimulating new research endeavors.


This paper is among the first to analyse children's experiences of reparations programmes, taking into consideration programmes from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The violence, abuse and hardship that girls and boys suffer during armed conflict and political violence under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes continues to severely affect their development long after the end of war or demise of the violent regime. They experience violations of their civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, including the rights to life, freedom of movement and association, education, health and family, which embraces the right to knowing and being cared for by their parents. Their rights to development and to a safe and healthy environment are also violated. It is not possible to fully repair children who have experienced such harms. Nonetheless, girls and boys have a right to remedy and reparation under international law – to benefit from reparation in material, symbolic, individual and collective forms. This working paper draws from reparation as conceived in the United Nations Resolution on Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (2005). It offers a concise overview of trends in reparation programmes set up to address situations of armed conflict and under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes where children are subjected to systematic forms of grave violence. The authors demonstrate the failure to name and address grave rights violations against children in www.unicef-irc.org.past reparations programmes and efforts, much to the detriment of surviving children. The authors argue that at the heart of much of the violence against children in situations of armed conflict is the terrible damage done to relationships and social fabric among individuals, communities, societies and cultures. Recognizing the need to address the healing of relationships and reweaving of social fabric, in part through reparation, the paper offers suggestions for reparation approaches that could lead to better informing and shaping reparation responses for child victims.


A compact and versatile vibrometer is designed based on self-mixing laser diode vibrometry interference to measure the oscillation amplitude of a piezoceramics (PZT). A fraction of the light emitted by the laser diode (LD) is reflected by the PZT, and then mixes with the light inside the cavity, causing a modulation of the laser output. The self-mixing signal is detected by the photodiode accommodated in the LD package and acquired by a data acquisition and processing system based on sound card and LabVIEW. Amplitude of the PZT is detected by fringe counting. According to results of test, this device can measure the vibration signal with a measurement accuracy of λ/2. The measurable oscillation amplitude range from 0.325 um to 6.5um


In change point problems, there are three main questions that researchers are interested in. First of all, is there a change point or not? Second, when does the change point occur in a time series? Third, how quickly can we detect the change point? In this thesis, we first explain what a change point is, and what a cross-correlation is. We then discuss prior research in this area. Then we discuss and examine a test based on Spearman's rho, introduced by Wied and Dehling (2011), which tests the null hypothesis of no change point, and compare the change point we set with the results from the proposed statistic in simulation. We also use this statistic on data we selected from the U.S. stock market. We conclude with the pros and cons of this statistical method, and how we can detect the change point sensitively using the proposed statistic. INDEX WORDS: CHANGE POINT, CROSS-CORRELATION, U.S. STOCK PRICE


Over the past years, application of health impact assessment has increased substantially, and there has been a strong growth of tools that allow quantification of health impacts for a range of health relevant policies. We review these developments, and conclude that further tool development is no longer a main priority, although several aspects need to be further developed, such as methods to assess impacts on health inequalities and to assess uncertainties. The main new challenges are, first, to conduct a comparative evaluation of different tools, and, second, to ensure the maintenance and continued availability of the toolkits including their data contents.


This work investigates the use of robust optimal transport (OT) for shape matching. Specifically, we show that recent OT solvers improve both optimization-based and deep learning methods for point cloud registration, boosting accuracy at an affordable computational cost. This manuscript starts with a practical overview of modern OT theory. We then provide solutions to the main difficulties in using this framework for shape matching. Finally, we showcase the performance of transport-enhanced registration models on a wide range of challenging tasks: rigid registration for partial shapes; scene flow estimation on the Kitti dataset; and nonparametric registration of lung vascular trees between inspiration and expiration. Our OT-based methods achieve state-of-the-art results on Kitti and for the challenging lung registration task, both in terms of accuracy and scalability. We also release PVT1010, a new public dataset of 1,010 pairs of lung vascular trees with densely sampled points. This dataset provides a challenging use case for point cloud registration algorithms with highly complex shapes and deformations. Our work demonstrates that robust OT enables fast pre-alignment and fine-tuning for a wide range of registration models, thereby providing a new key method for the computer vision toolbox. Our code and dataset are available online at: https://github.com/uncbiag/robot.


St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, M See Research, p. 118 his issue of the Journal includes confronting data about inT equities in the treatment and outcomes for men and women with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Khan and colleagues report that the 6-month mortality for women presenting with STEMI is twice that of men, a difference that persists after statistical correction for age and comorbid conditions. The article relates worrying evidence of a disparity in the delivery of evidence-based treatment, raising many important questions: What barriers are preventing women from presenting for treatment earlier? Why are there delays in providing women with recognised life-saving treatments? Why are women as a group treated less intensively than men despite having higher Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) risk scores? What biological differences require distinct therapeutic approaches and dedicated clinical trials?


Background: The calcaneus is the frequently injured tarsal bone.75% of calcaneal fractures are intraarticular. Treating calcaneal fractures is a challenge for orthopaedic surgeon due to complex fracture pathology. Aim: The aim of the present study determines the Functional and anatomical outcome of displaced intraarticular fractures of calcaneum treated using locking plate fixation. Material and methods: This Prospective open label observational study was done the Department of Orthopaedics, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pardesh, India, from January 2016 to December 2017, A total of 60 patients aged n≥ 18 years, displaced intra articular fractures of calcaneum were included in this study. Post-operative management involved, immobilization using a below the knee slab for a duration of 2-3 weeks to ensure wound healing. Subsequently on the second post operative day non weight bearing mobilization was advised followed by ankle movements on removal of the slab. Complete weight bearing was recommended only after ensuring fracture union onx-ray. Follow upPatients were followed up at an in terval of 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months post surgery and imaging via x-ray, at each visit was done to assess the fracture healing. Results: In our study we included 60 patients, amongst them 8 were female and the rest 52 were male. The mechanism of injury was noted to be road traffic accident in 13 patients and fracture sustained as a result of fall from a height in the rest. According to this scale, 39 patients (65%) had good outcome, 17patients had fair outcome (28.33%) while 4 patient (6.67%) had poor outcome. 4 out of the 60 patients, was noted to have wound dehiscence where suture removal was delayed until 3 weeks and the wound healing was ensured at the end of 8 weeks. Conclusion: we concluded that the anatomic locking plate can be used effectively in the treatment of displace dintraarticularcal caneal fractures using simple reduction techniques with a potentially shortened operating time.


Lipid-free apolipoprotein (apo) A-I contributes to the reverse transport of cholesterol from the periphery to the liver by solubilizing plasma membrane phospholipid and cholesterol. The features of the apolipoprotein required for this process are not understood and are addressed in the current study. Membrane microsolubilization of human fibroblasts is not specific for apo A-I; unlipidated apos A-II, C, and E incubated with the fibroblast monolayers at a saturating concentration of 50 μg/ml are all able to release cholesterol and phospholipid similarly. To determine the properties of the apolipoprotein that drive the process, apo A-I peptides spanning the entire sequence of the protein were utilized; the peptides correspond to the 11- and 22-residue amphipathic α-helical segments, as well as adjacent combinations of the helices. Of the 20 helical peptides examined, only peptides representing the N-and C-terminal portions of the protein had the ability to solubilize phospholipid and cholesterol. Cholesterol efflux to the most effective peptides, 44–65 and 209–241, was approximately 50 and 70%, respectively, of that to intact apo A-I. Deletion mutants of apo E and apo A-I were constructed that have reduced lipid binding affinities as compared with the intact molecule. The proteins, apo A-I (Δ222–243), apo A-I (Δ190–243), apo E3 (Δ192–299) and apo E4 (Δ192–299) all exhibited a decreased ability to remove cellular cholesterol and phospholipid. These decreases correlated with the reduced ability of these proteins to penetrate into a phospholipid monomolecular film. Overall, the results indicate that insertion of amphipathic α-helices between the plasma membrane phospholipid molecules is a required step in the mechanism of apolipoprotein-mediated cellular lipid efflux. Therefore the lipid binding ability of the apolipoprotein is critical for efficient membrane microsolubilization.


A new layered nanocomposite, HTaWO6/(Pt, TiO2) was synthesized using n-type semi-conductor HTaWO6 as a host material. HTaWO6 and HTaWO6/TiO2were white, while both HTaWO6/Pt and HTaWO6/(Pt, TiO2) were yellow. The yellow color might be attributed to H1-xTaWO6-x/2 formed by the photo-induced phase transformation promoted by Pt. Although HTaWO6/Pt showed absorption in visible light region (λ > 400 nm), the hydrogen evolution activity was negligibly small. On the other hand HTaWO6/(Pt, TiO2) showed excellent photocatalytic activities even under visible light irradiation. The sample containing rutile type titania such as TiO2(P-25) also showed hydrogen evolution activity, but the activity was smaller than that of HTaWO6/(Pt, TiO2). These results suggested that rutile type titania, which can be excited by visible light of wavelength less than 413 nm, played an important role in the visible light-induced photocatalytic activity. The improvement of the hydrogen evolution activity of rutile type titania by intercalating into HTaWO6/Pt may be due to the depression of the recombination of photoinduced electrons and holes by the heterogeneous electron transfer from rutile type TiO2 to HTaWO6/Pt.


: The production of immunoreactive TSH by hemipituitaries (Hps) to the stimulation of TRH in perifusion with negligible influence of the feedback of secretogogues and hormones was analysed. The stimulations were of long term continuous (3 hrs) and short term (15 min), with the dose levels of 1, 10 and 100 ng per ml of medium (for 3 hrs) or in 2 ml (for 15 min). The largest amount in production and the fastest rate in release of TSH found in present report is at 10 ng level. Only total TSH, in tissue plus in medium, after continuous TRH stimulation were dose-related, but not in release alone. We present herein an analysis of pituitary TSH production, in a perifusion system under steady TRH stimulation. This arrangement is believed to be a condition simulating hypothyroidism in pituitary level and suitable for study of the functions of the pituitary with hyperactivated thyrotrophs.


In Bodies That Matter Judith Butler demonstrates that materiality is a "site at which a certain drama of sexual difference plays itself out" and suggests that "to invoke matter is to invoke a sedimented history of sexual hierarchy and sexual erasures which should surely be an object of feminist inquiry" (49). The object of my inquiry is an early moment in militant suffragette history, an originary moment in suffragette literary history. That moment comprises the British performance and reception of Elizabeth Robins's play Votes for Women! a Dramatic Tract, which opened for a season of eight matinee performances at the avant-garde Court Theatre on 9 April 1907. It was published as Votes for Women: A Play in Three Acts by the Dramatic Publishing Co. in the U.S. in 1907, in the U. K. (by Mills and Boon in an earlier phase of its operations) in 1909; Robins revised and expanded it as a novel The Convert, published in late 1907.(1) In 1996 the script Robins submitted to the Court Theatre, edited by Joanne E. Gates, was published. The play marked a new kind of insurgency effort for the Women's Social and Political Union,(2) although Robins divided part of the proceeds of the play equally between the W. S. P. U. and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Robins worked in Votes for Women to represent "sexual matter" as object and ground of militant political and aesthetic praxis and theory within available generic registers and political discourses. Robins makes the sexual matter -- seduction, abortion, infanticide and shelter for homeless women -- culturally and politically intelligible through melodrama and romance. In the play's reception her use of sexual matter was evaluated and contested. My title alludes to Arnold Bennett's review of Votes for Women! He complained of women's incapacity to appreciate "principles in the abstract" and of his bemusement at the inextricable mixing of "the sexual matter with the political side of Miss Robins's tract" (12). The binary hierarchy abstract reasoning/sexual matter invoked by Bennett circulates in a wide range of reviews of the play, also being mapped across other gendered hierarchies: masculine/feminine, public/private, political/personal, and realism/melodrama. Robins figures her perception of British women's actual and ideal relationship to the State through connections among various kinds of houses, including the Houses of British Parliament; these connections are metonymic, in highly generalized terms, of the institutional ties and social hierarchies they materialize. This figuring allows her to comment sharply on the ideology that a woman's proper place is in the home, exercising, she remarked in her 1907 pamphlet "Woman's Secret," "patience at the cradle and the hearth" (Way Stations 2). The pamphlet was originally intended as a preface to The Convert (Gates, Robins 167). The ostensibly open-air suffragette rally in Act II of Votes for Women, and the historical allusion in the play to the unfurling of the banner "Votes for Women" in the House of Commons on 25 April 1906 imply that the interests of women outlined in the speeches are not housed in British constitutional political processes inside Parliament. One of her key implicit political propositions is that the interests of homeless, destitute and working-class women are not represented in the current State, and that those interests cannot be trusted to the chivalry of the propertied man. That women's material interests were not represented in the State which denied them a vote was a stock suffragist and suffragette argument; the argument contested anti-suffrage propositions about the civic value of chivalry. In 1907 the qualifications for voting at the national level were ownership of property and maleness. It was urged that the interests of all women and working-class men who did not meet the property qualification could be adequately represented by the votes of propertied men, whose interests were the same. …


Genomic selection, where selection decisions are based on estimates of breeding value from genome wide-marker effects, has enormous potential to improve genetic gain in dairy and beef cattle. Although successful in dairy cattle, some major challenges remain 1) only a proportion of the genetic variance is captured, particularly for some traits 2) marker effects are rarely consistent across breeds, 3) accuracy of genomic predictions decays rapidly over time. Using full genome sequences rather than DNA markers in genomic selection could address these challenges. However, sequencing all individuals in the very large resource populations required to estimate the typically small effects of mutations on target traits would be prohibitively expensive. An alternative is to sequence key ancestors contributing most of the genetic material of the current population, and to use this reference for imputation of sequence from SNP chip data. The reference set must still be large, in order to capture for example, rare variants which are likely to explain some of the variation in our target traits. Recognising the need for a comprehensive "reference set" of key ancestors by many groups undertaking cattle research and cattle breeding programs, we have initiated the 1000 bull genomes project. The project will assemble whole genome sequences of cattle from institutions around the world, to provide an extended data base for imputation of genetic variants. This will enable the bovine genomics community to impute full genome sequence from SNP genotypes, and then use this data for genomic selection, and rapid discovery of causal mutations. Some preliminary results from the variant detection pipeline will be reported.


Objective: The objective of current study was to find out the resilience level among patients with Myocardial Infarction in Tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 150 myocardial infarction patients in three major tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan in December 2017. Data was collected through an adopted questionnaire. Data was analyzed through SPSS 22 version.
Results: Total 150 participants were selected for the study with a response rate of 100%. Study consisted of 58% of female, 88% married, 62.7% unemployed participants. Majority of the participants (48.7%) had age greater than 55years. In the study 82 (54%) participants represented moderate to very high degree of resilience while 51 (34%) of participants were recorded as a very low degree of resilience.
Conclusion: This study concluded that half of the individuals represented moderate to very high degree of resilience in their post myocardial infarction period. Older participants represent more resilience as compared to younger.


Miller suggests that the proposed check-the-box regulations, which would retroactively invalidate the tax nothing status of a foreign entity that is sold within 12 months after its check-the-box election, reflects the Treasury Department's unhappiness both with current law's favorable treatment for U.S. taxpayers that sell the assets rather than the equity of their foreign businesses and with U.S. taxpayers' ability to use hybrid entities to reduce their foreign tax liability without increasing their U.S. tax burden. Miller argues that the proper tax treatment of foreign business sales and the broader question of U.S./foreign tax symmetry each present fundamental tax policy issues that should be resolved by Congress, and not solely by Treasury and the IRS. Miller urges Congress to rationalize the treatment of foreign sales of assets and equity interests, and recommends that any changes be made to the substantive rules, and not the "procedural" check-the-box regulations. If the proposed regulations are finalized in their current form, Miller cautions, they will trap unwary taxpayers, give rise to wholly unanticipated results, be completely avoidable, and ultimately permit untold abuse. In short, they will hatch a "snake in the box."


The cost of retaining structures used for the lateral support of roadside embankments can be significantly reduced through the use of lightly cemented mixtures of expanded polystyrene (EPS) beads and backfill soils as lightweight roadside embankment material. Four grades of residually derived sandy soils were mixed with EPS beads and the geocomposites were stabilised with 3% cement content, compacted and cured. The textural properties and shear strength parameters of dry and soaked specimens of the cemented geocomposites were determined by direct shear tests. The shear parameters and slope stability charts were used to simulate the slope of typical road embankments. The settlement potentials at different applied normal stresses were also determined. Inclusion of EPS reduced the dry density of the residual soils from an average value of 1790 kg/m3 to 1335 kg/m3. The maximum friction coefficient, tan O', mobilised by the geocomposite specimens decreased with an increase in the soil fines content (>0.425 mm). The difference in tan O' between the stabilised geocomposites and the natural soil was also dependent on the fines content. For an embankment height of 20 m, slope angles of 38° and 62° were determined for fine sand geocomposites in fully saturated drainage and drained conditions, respectively. Lower slope angles were determined for geocomposites made from silty, coarse and gravelly sands. A limiting embankment height of 50 m was determined for the four geocomposites. Rainfall-induced settlement of geocomposites was dependent on pre-inundation stiffness; for the range of applied stress up to 200 kPa, the settlement exhibited by the fine and silty sand geocomposites was lower than that for the coarse and gravelly sand geocomposites. Fine and silty sands make poor materials for slope embankments because of their poor hydraulic conductivity; however, fine and silty sand geocomposites have a good conductivity and friction angle to support slope embankments.


While the challenge of rehabilitating juvenile offenders has attracted international research interest, the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders in Vietnam has received little research attention. This study employed a qualitative collective case study approach to gain insights into how eight juvenile offenders perceived and experienced a rehabilitation programme in a correctional school in Vietnam. It drew on the perspectives of juvenile offenders, teachers and one manager. Deprivation, importation and Aker's social learning theories provided a theoretical framework to explore the juvenile offenders' experiences. Data were collected through observations, interviews and document analysis supplemented by field notes and a research journal. Data were then analysed thematically. The findings suggest that individual characteristics, family and peers played roles in the development of juvenile offenders' antisocial behaviours and in their engagement with the rehabilitation programme. These roles could be positive and negative. The case studies illustrate the ways in which the programme was perceived to influence the young people's thinking and behaviour in positive and negative ways. For instance, the eight young participants all recounted examples of modifying their behaviour in a deliberate attempt to 'game' the staff. This was done in order to gain preferential treatment, and as a means to coping with the 'pains' of incarceration.  The case studies illustrated short coming in the current provision of educational and vocational training programmes intended to support reintegration into the community. A lack of alignment between the school programmes and future educational and labour market opportunities is likely to potentially undermine the policy goal of successful reintegration into the community. Based on the findings of this study, it is proposed that rehabilitation policy and practice in Vietnam should be reviewed and reformed. This study highlights the need to better meet the social, emotional and educational needs of young people in the Vietnamese juvenile justice system. Future research and policy initiatives should be focused on minimising recidivism and supporting reintegration into society on release. There should be guidelines to ensure there is active cooperation between families, the correctional schools and local authorities. It is recommended that the family should be involved in youth rehabilitation processes in the correctional school.


Insect infestation during storage and processing causes millions of dollars of wheat damage annually in the United States. Insect infestation reduces wheat storing processing profit as well as consumer confidence in wheat food products. Meanwhile, increased concerns about insecticide use have increase interest in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies. This research compares the costs of IPM and chemical-based approaches to insect control to determine why most elevator managers have not adopted IPM practices.


To explore the expression of the autoantibodies to ICA512 and GAD65 in the sera of diabetic patients who will be diagnosed as Type 1 diabetes, autoantibody assays were carried out in 15 diabetic patients complicated with ketonemia or ketoacidosis and in 19 healthy controls. The results were that the positive ratios of these autoantibodies were higher in the patient's sera than in the control's, and were higher in patients with shorter disease duration than those with longer disease duration. It is suggested that detecting these autoantibodies is helpful to the classification of diabetes and the disease duration affects the antibody's positive ratio.


In order to better understand migration governance and the concrete, daily practices of civil servants tasked to enforce state laws and policies, this special issue focuses on the core artefact of bureaucratic work: documents, in their diverse manifestations, including certificates, letters, reports, case files, decisions, internal guidelines and judgements. Based on ethnographic studies in various contexts, we show how civil servants produce statehood, restrict migrants' movements, and engage with migrants' strategies to make themselves legible. State actors simultaneously limit access to legal statutes and benefits, question their own practices, and use their discretion in order to help themselves as well as migrant individuals. We also highlight organisational and professional differences in the way civil servants deal with migrants, relate to the state and its policies and define their obligations towards both, migrants and the state. This special issue therefore contributes to the study of the state as documentary practice and highlights the role of paperwork as serious practice of migration control.


Current evidence based data found in the scientific literature recommend that the therapeutic management of patients suffering from temporomandibular disorders (TMD) should be based initially on simple, conservative and reversible procedures including exercise therapy. The integration of this message into oral health instructions for patients makes it easy for them to keep informed about TMD and aware of the steps they can take to deal with their symptoms. The integration of exercise therapy into structured patient education programs provides patients with information about TMD and suggests methods to deal with it. This medical approach is similar to those used to treat other joints in the musculoskeletal system. Easy to set up, this exercise therapy helps patients suffering from temporomandibular disorders to become partners in the conduct of their treatment plan of reducing pain and restoring functional comfort.


The Great Recession has shattered the consensus on the benefits of capital account liberalization. Capital account controls have been introduced in several countries and have even been supported by the International Monetary Fund. In this paper we investigate whether capital account policies in the post-Bretton Woods era can be explained as a process driven by learning by policymakers, who update their beliefs on the basis of their own experience and of the policies adopted by other countries. We emphasize the impact of financial crises on the learning process. The learning model developed in the paper explains more than 90% of the variability of capital account policies. We find that over time beliefs about the growth effects have changed slowly and not smoothly from negative to positive. However, at the outset of the Great Recession beliefs on the positive growth dividends from capital account liberalization were still affected by a significant degree of uncertainty, which suggests that reversals in external liberalizations in the aftermath of the Great Recession are consistent with rational learning by policymakers. Finally, in evaluating the potential benefits and costs of capital controls in a given set of countries, contagion effects through changing beliefs of other countries should be taken into account.


An approximation method for obtaining the throughput of cyclic queueing networks with blocking as a function of the number of customers in it is presented. The approximation method was developed for two different blocking mechanisms. It was also extended to the case of the central server model with blocking. Validation tests show that the algorithm is fairly accurate. >


Nevus lipomatosus cutaneous superficialis is a rare idiopathic hamartomatous anomaly of the skin characterized by the presence of clusters of mature fat cells among the collagen bundles of the dermis. The classic, or solitary type, presents with asymptomatic soft, skin-colored to yellow papules or nodules. We report the case of a 12-year-old boy with congenital, classical nevus lipomatosus cutaneous superficialis that started as a single painless nodule. Over time, the nodule developed into lesions that presented as skin-colored, well-defined, soft sessile growths with a cerebriform surface centered by comedo-like plugs that increased in size and spread over a large area (approximately 12×4 cm) over the right gluteal region. We report this case as it is an uncommon condition with the intent to highlight its clinical and histopathological features, and differential diagnosis.


Bacteria detection methods that are presently used in laboratories and quality control inspections, such as
serological testing, biological enrichment, culturing, and gas chromatograph mass spectroscopy (GCMS), are expensive,
labor intensive, and time consuming. Therefore, in order to ensure that consumers receive a safe and high-quality product,
rapid and reliable methods need to be developed for detection of pathogens. Raman spectroscopy, an optical technique based
on light scattering, was investigated as a means of rapid on-site produce safety assessment. In this study, a dispersive system
spectrophotometer, with a 785 nm diode laser, was employed. Chemometric methods such as partial least squares (PLS)
regression and classification analysis were used to evaluate low-concentration suspensions of Erwinia carotovora pv.
carotovora (ECC) and Clavibacter michiganense (CBM). The pathogens chosen represent Gram-positive and Gram-negative
bacteria. A clear distinction between samples containing bacteria and clean samples was obtained by this method. The system
was able to determine bacterial concentrations within 2% of the level in the basic bacteria suspension, based on PLS
regression models. Classification analysis enables researchers to detect the presence of each of the tested bacteria in
mixed-bacteria suspensions that contain between 10 and 100 cells/mL of ECC and CBM.


Mixing in microscale flows with rotating chains of paramagnetic particles can be enhanced by adjusting the ratio of viscous to magnetic forces so that chains dynamically break and reform. Lattice Boltzmann (LB) simulations were used to calculate the interaction between the fluid and suspended paramagnetic particles under the influence of a rotating magnetic field. Fluid velocities obtained from the LB simulations are used to solve the advection diffusion equation for massless tracer particles. At relatively high Mason numbers, small chains result in low edge velocities, and hence mixing is slower than at other Mason numbers. At low Mason numbers, long, stable chains form and produce little mixing toward the center of the chains. A peak in mixing rate is observed when chains break and reform. The uniformity of mixing is greater at higher Mason numbers because more small chains result in a larger number of small mixing areas.


The Working Group on Operator Training (WGOT) and the Power System Restoration Working Group (PSRWG) established a joint task force In 1992to determine howto train System Operatorsin the area of system restoration. The Initial assignment for this task force wasto determine what is the present level of restoration training being given to system operators. To perform this task the new task force developed a survey and sent It to electric utilities, across the NERC regions. The survey was designed to categorize existing programs and to surface additional training needs. The survey was also to serve as a reference for those utilities embarking on a power system restoration training program.


: A study was made of changes in the heat resistance of isolated m. sartorius of Rana temporaria L. caused by a 15 minutes exposure to 34 degrees. The hardening effect of heating resulted in a 22.2% increase in the average heat resistance level of muscles (P less than 0.001). This increase was due to non-uniform and even opposite directed changes in the heat resistance levels of muscles of different individuals. Thus, in 81% of muscles their heat resistance increased on average by 27.7%, whereas in 14.3% of muscle the heat resistance decreased on average by 18.7%. These results, as well as the analysis of correlation coefficients between the initial resistance levels of muscles, taken from different individuals, and their changes caused by the hardening enabled us to detect an inverse functional relation between these indices.


Background and Objectives: Teachers' pedagogical content knowledge competence is seen as a combination of something one has(knowledge), what one does in the classroom (abilities) and which values one bases teaching on (attitudes), to perform his/her functions satisfactorily. The study investigated the awareness's of teachers and students about teachers' in-depth pedagogical content knowledge, teachers' practices of PCK, and correlates of practicing PCK with academic result of students.

Research methods and Participants: The researcher used mixed design(descriptive survey & co-relational) and quantitative research approach. The study sample consisted of 257 who were selected by proportionate stratified sampling,74 comprehensively selected teachers and 6 department heads. The questionnaire developed consisted of 21 statements on teachers' in-depth pedagogical content knowledge and 21 statements on teachers classroom practices of PCK and both teachers and students  were asked to rate the statements on a five likert scale. And department heads and the researcher rate teachers' classroom practices of teachers using rubric developed for classroom observation in line with statements included in the questionnaire which asked teachers classroom practices of PCK. Standard deviations, arithmetic Means; one sample t-test, independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and regression coefficient were used for data analysis.

Results: Then the result from the process revealed that teachers perceived that they had adequate pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) but not to the maximum level intended to be per the scale (3.90 from the possible mean score of 5.00). It was also found that there was no statistically significant mean difference between teachers self-rating and students rating on teachers classroom practices of their PCK (3.2 and 3.04 respectively, from the maximum mean score 5.00); all the constructs of PCK  practices and students cumulative  grade point average have  statistically significant relationships in that  perceived practices of pedagogical knowledge with the magnitude of (r=.483); perceived practices of subject matter knowledge with the magnitude of(r=.663) and Perceived practices of knowledge of students learning characteristics coefficient of correlation(r=0.504)  all at P<0.01 and in similar directions. And last the cumulative effect of classroom practices of PCK was found to be with R-square=22.9 which accounts 22.9% effect for students' academic result.

Conclusion: To conclude both teachers and students rated similarly rate that the status of applying PCK in classroom teaching was less than adequate level. Therefore, it can be suggested that provision of continuous and transformative professional training, arranging workshops and subject specific rigorous supervision to teachers on their practices of PCK can effectively improve quality of teaching towards attainment of high students' academic results.


Identification and Validation of Structures in Neural Population Responses Gamaleldin Fathy Elsayed A fundamental challenge of neuroscience is to understand how interconnected populations of neurons give rise to the remarkable computational abilities of our brains. Large neural datasets offer promise, but they are perilous: they are too complex to be studied with traditional single-neuron analyses, and thus require new analyses that can uncover structure at the level of the population. However, since these analyses operate on large datasets, our intuition whether structure is significant breaks down. Hence, we run the risk of over-interpreting structure from the population data that may have a simple explanation. Thus, with population analysis methods, there is also a need for methods that can validate the significance of structure identified. In this dissertation, I discuss topics covering both the identification and the validation of structure in population data. In the first part, I discuss novel methods for uncovering the computational strategy employed by the motor cortex to flexibly switch between different neural computations. I demonstrate that collective activity patterns of motor cortex neurons related to different computations are orthogonal yet can still be linked, indicating a degree of flexibility that was not displayed or predicted by existing cortical models. In the second part, I discuss a novel analytical framework to rigorously test the novelty of population-level findings, given a specified set of primary features such as correlations across time, neurons and experimental conditions. This framework provides a general tool for validating population findings across the brain and across population-level hypotheses.


Using the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study database, a national survey conducted by the National Center of Education Statistics, the authors investigated the characteristics of students who seek out professional school counselors in order to receive college information. Results indicated that African Americans and female students were more likely to contact the school counselor for college information. In addition, students in high-poverty, large schools and schools with smaller numbers of counselors were less likely to seek school counselors for college information. School counselors' postsecondary aspirations for students also impacted students' contact with the school counselor. Implications for school counselors and future research are included.


To understand the function of membrane proteins, it is imperative to know their topology. For such studies, a split green fluorescent protein (GFP) method is useful. GFP is barrel-shaped, consisting of 11 β-sheets. When the first ten β-sheets (GFP1-10) and the 11th β-sheet (GFP11) are expressed from separate genes they will self-assembly and reconstitute a fluorescent GFP protein. However, this will only occur when the two domains co-localize in the same cellular compartment. We have developed an easy-to-use Gateway vector set for determining on which side of the membrane the N- and C-termini are located. Two vectors were designed for making N- and C-terminal fusions between the membrane proteins-of-interest and GFP11, while another three plasmids were designed to express GFP1-10 in either the cytosol, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen or the apoplast. We tested functionality of the system by applying the vector set for the transmembrane domain, CNXTM, of the ER membrane protein, calnexin, after transient expression in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. We observed GFP signal from the ER when we reciprocally co-expressed GFP11-CNXTM with GFP1-10-HDEL and CNXTM-GFP with cytosolic GFP1-10. The opposite combinations did not result in GFP signal emission. This test using the calnexin ER-membrane domain demonstrated its C-terminus to be in the cytosol and its N-terminus in the ER lumen. This result confirmed the known topology of calnexin, and we therefore consider this split-GFP system highly useful for ER membrane topology studies. Furthermore, the vector set provided is useful for detecting the topology of proteins on other membranes in the cell, which we confirmed for a plasma membrane syntaxin. The set of five Ti-plasmids are easily and efficiently used for Gateway cloning and transient transformation of N. benthamiana leaves.


Purpose: The aim of the study is to gain a holistic understanding of the reflection ofemployee empowerment practiced in the customer's perception of service quality in serviceencounters.Research Method: Exploratory research method based on a single case studyResults: Through the analysis of both primary and secondary data, it has been found thatemployee empowerment practice is reflected in customer perception of service quality through improved service delivery provided by empowered frontline employees.Research limitations: This is a single case study, which is confined to the activities of onesmall company related to the health industry in Mexico. The choice of conducting theresearch only focusing on one company ignoring others can not open a true reflection of theentire problem.Practical implications: The results may be applicable for companies which in some extenthave similar retailing and services activities.Originality/value: This research makes a contribution to the existing literature on employeeempowerment by adding relevant qualitative data.


Hasidism, a mid-eighteenth century mysticism of Polish Jewry, represents for Buber the heart of both Judaism and his personal way of being religious. In his essays on the Hasidim Buber sumo up their faith and his neo-Hasidist theology best in the term "pansacramentalism." God is believed to be everywhere present in our immediate world, and hence by turning to Him in every moment we are able to live in an intimate, free, and reciprocal relationship with God. And all human existence is made sacred by this joining together of man and God in everyday life. Buber argues in Ich und Du that man encounters God only through that mode of our being referred to as "I-Thou." Our "Thou" might be a person, a part of nature, and what Buber calls Geistige Wesenheiten. Furthermore, any one of these "Thous" might become, so to speak, a sacrament though which we meet the eternal Thou. Surely many problems arise out of such an "'I-Thou" theology, but we concentrate our critical attention on one, namely Buber's tendency to reject formal religion in favour of his rather mystical, individualistic relation to the eternal Thou. Fox him the Jewish laws and rituals seem to fall in the godless category of "I-It." Therefore, he affirms the supposedly non-ecclesiastical religion of Moses and the free prophets instead of official Judaism. He sees in Biblical Judaism a historical dialogue between Israel and their God. The history of faith in the Bible, according to Buber, centres around the struggle to establish the kingship of God in the national life of Israel. The divine kingship would be expressed not by a priesthood and a religious establishment but by actualizing the love and justice of God in the daily life and national affairs of the elect people of God. Jewish life and Hebraic religion are only properly fulfilled when Israel simultaneously becomes a community of faith and a nation. The "I-Thou" philosophy and Buber's interpretation of Biblical Judaism are both closely linked to his Zionist and socialist line of thought, The socialist society that ho envisages is established by the spiritual power of the "I-Thou" relation between men and with God. As opposed to the militant revolution advocated by the Marxists, Buber argues for a gradual social evolution towards true community. By community Buber means social relations based on spontaneity, mutuality, and trust rather than capitalistic exploitation and political power. He believes that the local communities would eventually federate into larger ones by means of purely voluntary association. The problems of trade and defence would be turned over to a restricted administration rather than a powerful, permanent State. Now, Buber views the theo-political experiment of Moses as the germ of true religious socialism. By identifying Biblical history with modern socialist theory Buber comes to the conclusion that both the destiny of man and the mission of the Jewish people are served by the development of a socialist society in Israel. Throughout Buber's writings we find him very confident in spontaneous association but distrustful of objectivity, formality, and permanency. In other words, order and freedom are set over against one another, and he tends to choose the latter. For Buber this priority involves disapproval of both government and organised religion. However, it seems that we might formulate a more balanced view that still takes the value of Buber's thought into account. Firstly, It is pointed out that "I-It" can be seen as an integral part of the "I-Thou" relation. Secondly, It is suggested that Goistige Wesenheiten, the third category of "I-Thou" relations, might be extended to include a just State and formal religion, i .e. liturgies, doctrines, and moral precepts. This accommodation of organised religion, however, does not imply the approval of authoritarian, doctrinarian principles, legalistic morality, and the perpetuation of outmoded rituals and irrelevant symbols. It is my opinion that liberal-minded Protestants must join with Buber in upholding religious freedom and in advocating the unity of religion and daily life.


Obtaining the human-like perception ability of abstracting visual concepts from concrete pixels has always been a fundamental and important target in machine learning research fields such as disentangled representation learning and scene decomposition. Towards this goal, we propose an unsupervised transformer-based Visual Concepts Tokenization framework, dubbed VCT, to perceive an image into a set of disentangled visual concept tokens, with each concept token responding to one type of independent visual concept. Particularly, to obtain these concept tokens, we only use cross-attention to extract visual information from the image tokens layer by layer without self-attention between concept tokens, preventing information leakage across concept tokens. We further propose a Concept Disentangling Loss to facilitate that different concept tokens represent independent visual concepts. The cross-attention and disentangling loss play the role of induction and mutual exclusion for the concept tokens, respectively. Extensive experiments on several popular datasets verify the effectiveness of VCT on the tasks of disentangled representation learning and scene decomposition. VCT achieves the state of the art results by a large margin.


An increasing business transaction can cause rapid growth in online shops and marketplace. One of the affected is an online shop. From several logistic services, tracking and tracing information services are the main focus in this study because online shops as the business partner have a lack of attention in these services. The objective of this study is to investigate the factors of online shop behavior in using tracking and tracing information services.This study used a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) as the framework. The quantitative data were collected through questionnaires from 207 samples of online shops selling women's fashion and listed in the marketplace. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with LISREL 8.70.The result of this study found that "the intention to use" the tracking and tracing information services depend on the effort expectancy (EE) dan social influence (SI), while "user behavior" depends on facilitating condition (FC) and the intention to use. The ease of access factor and learning the tracking and tracing information services are the important factors for the intention to use, whereas electronic devices and internet network factors used by the online shops are the main factors for the user behavior. Logistics companies need to provide information services that can help the online shops in controlling their goods in a good way where the ease of access and learning become the main focus that needs attention. Furthermore, online shops need to facilitate their admins with technological devices and a good internet network to make the admins easy to access information services.


While implicit invocation (publish-subscribe) systems have good engineering properties, they are difficult to reason about and to test. Model checking such systems is an attractive alternative. However, it is not clear what kinds of state models are best suited for this. We propose a structural approach, which factors the model checking problem into two parts: behavior specific to a particular implicit invocation system, and reusable run-time infrastructure that handles event-based communication and delivery policies. The reusable portion is itself structured so that alternative run-time mechanisms may be experimented with.


Success in a modern world requires more than just technical skills, with employers requiring graduates with arange of skills which can be critical for job performance and career advancement (Cohen, 1999; Tucker & McCarthy, 2001). An important graduate attribute is good communication skills (Usoff & Feldmann, 1998), with self confidence a key in its development (Reinsch & Shelby, 1996). The literature also demonstrates that the use of professionals and industry representatives can enhance students' confidence and their self-belief (Subramaniam & Freudenberg, 2007). It is on the basis of these findings that a full day Student-Industry Conference involving first to third year students in a number of related undergraduate financial planning courses was developed. The conference provided opportunities for these students to come together and present research papers that they had worked on in their courses. These student presentations were attended by not only other students, but also industry representatives who were involved in the assessment process. Furthermore, students had the opportunity to listen to a number of relevant industry speakers on current topics and research in the field. This also included discussions about the overall direction of the industry and the graduate recruitment process. Through this and other mechanisms, the Student-Industry Conference was designed to allow for the improvement of students' selfefficacy through mastery, modelling and verbal persuasion. This paper details the empirical evidence as to whether students' participation in this Student-Industry Conference improved their self-efficacy, particularly in terms of their communication skills. Data from a questionnaire of participating students indicates that the students perceived greater self-efficacy as a result of this initiative. With such improved self-efficacy students may be able to enhance their careers in the future.