Background. Improved upper-extremity (UE) movement with stroke rehabilitation may involve restoration of more normal or development of compensatory movement patterns. Objective. The authors investigated the differential effects of functional task practice (FTP) and dynamic resistance training (POWER) on clinical function and reaching kinematics in an effort to distinguish between mechanisms of gains. Methods. A total of 14 hemiparetic individuals were randomly assigned to 10 weeks of either FTP or POWER and then crossed over to 10 weeks of the alternate treatment. Treatment order A was FTP followed by POWER, whereas treatment order B was POWER followed by FTP. Evaluation before and after each treatment block included a battery of clinical evaluations and kinematics of paretic UE functional reach to grasp. Results. Both FTP and POWER improved movement accuracy, as revealed by a shift toward normal, including fewer submovements and reduced reach-path ratio. However, active range of motion revealed differential treatment effects. Shoulder flexion and elbow extension decreased with FTP and were associated with increased trunk displacement. In contrast, shoulder flexion and elbow extension excursion increased with POWER and were associated with significantly reduced trunk displacement. Treatment order B (POWER followed by FTP) revealed greater overall improvements. Conclusion. FTP increases compensatory movement patterns to improve UE function. POWER leads to more normal movement patterns. POWER prior to FTP may enhance the benefits of repetitive task practice.


Research has shown that students' emotional intelligence (EI) can be enhanced with time intensive instructional methods other studies are inconclusive. I looked at the impact of including short EI lessons in an introductory hospitality management class. Results show that students who started with low EI increased their scores significantly; however, those with medium and high EI did not. More intensive EI lessons may be needed for those who start with higher levels of EI. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) reflections were used and the results of the current study were also compared to other similar studies to identify EI teaching methods among faculty in other disciplines. My recommendations are included for those who want to incorporate EI lessons into their classes to enhance students' emotional and social competencies.


During rescue missions, transferring injured people from accident scenes to rescue sites is considered crucial and time-sensitive. In particular, a one-second delay could put more lives in danger. Though ambulances are commonly equipped with standard siren devices, such siren signals are not recognized by traffic light controllers. Therefore, rescue missions could be delayed at intersections due to an urgency-unaware traffic light control system. In the worst case, pile-up accidents could also happen when the ambulances lawfully ignores the traffic lights. This paper proposes A2T to enhance the efficiency of rescue missions, by establishing a communication mechanism among ambulances and infrastructures (e.g., traffic light controllers). Thailand, which had the highest road traffic death rate in the world in 2015, is selected as a use case in this paper. A2T promotes information sharing between ambulances and traffic light controllers along the rescue path in advance. Such information, including speeds, locations, and emergency routes, allows the traffic light controllers to launch a prioritized green traffic light accordingly. This allows the ambulances to go through any road intersection efficiently and safely. Our comprehensive performance evaluation shows that A2T achieves 100 percent waiting time reduction for the ambulances, with only 2.48 percent increase in delay of other vehicles at the intersections.


Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the skeletal and dental changes after intraoral vertical ramus osteotomy (IVRO) with and without presurgical orthodontics by using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Methods This retrospective cohort study included 24 patients (mean age, 22.1 years) with skeletal Class III malocclusion who underwent bimaxillary surgery with IVRO. The patients were divided into the preorthodontic orthognathic surgery (POGS) group (n = 12) and conventional surgery (CS) group (n = 12). CBCT images acquired preoperatively, 1 month after surgery, and 1 year after surgery were analyzed to compare the intergroup differences in postoperative three-dimensional movements of the maxillary and mandibular landmarks and the changes in lateral cephalometric variables. Results Baseline demographics (sex and age) were similar between the two groups (6 men and 6 women in each group). During the postsurgical period, the POGS group showed more significant upward movement of the mandible (p < 0.05) than did the CS group. Neither group showed significant transverse movement of any of the skeletal landmarks. Moreover, none of the dental and skeletal variables showed significant intergroup differences 1 year after surgery. Conclusions Compared with CS, POGS with IVRO resulted in significantly different postsurgical skeletal movement in the mandible. Although both groups showed similar skeletal and dental outcomes at 1 year after surgery, upward movement of the mandible during the postsurgical period should be considered to ensure a more reliable outcome after POGS.


Synopsis We study the sensitivity of time-dependent diffusion MRI indices or qτ-indices to demyelination in the mouse brain. For this, we acquire in vivo four-dimentional diffusion-weighted images-varying over gradient strength, direction and diffusion time-and estimate the qτ-indices from the corpus callosum. First order Taylor approximation of each index gives fitting coefficients α and β whose variance we investigate. Results indicate that, cuprizone intoxication affects mainly index coefficient β by introducing inequality of variances between the two mice groups, most significantly in the splenium and that MSD increases and RTOP decreases over diffusion time τ.


Production of mature oil and gas fields often requires managing the related risks and limitations imposed by reservoir souring upon assets and production integrity. The corrosive effect of H2S in combination with export gas H2S specifications, escalates operational expenditure (OPEX). The treatment of produced fluids can, in a worst-case scenario, reduce production output if the appropriate toolbox for managing elevated H2S levels are not in place. Herein presented is a case where production from a subsea field was restricted by the amount of H2S produced due to constrains in the topside gas processing system. The objective of the work was to remove significant amounts of H2S from produced fluids during transit via subsea production pipelines; scavenging H2S during multiphase flow, whilst maintaining corrosion and scale inhibition.
 A novel multiphase H2S scavenger was incorporated into the incumbent subsea corrosion inhibitor. The work included identification of suitable multiphase H2S scavenging chemistry, tailoring of the multipurpose chemical to retain corrosion inhibition properties, and confirmation that this new chemistry did not deleteriously impact performance of other production chemicals used nor the production process itself. The experimental development work depicted ethylenedioxy(dimethanol) (EDDM) as capable of delivering suitable H2S scavenging capacity while maintaining corrosion inhibitor component performance. The qualification work supported a full-scale field test that demonstrated suitability of the new multipurpose chemical.
 The new environmentally acceptable combined formulation of corrosion inhibitor and H2S scavenger enables higher production rates from the subsea field without modification of the chemical injection system or topside process system.


Non-point pollution (NPP) has become a major issue of environmental degradation in China. Uncertainty, moral hazard, and incomplete knowledge of NPPP make conventional policy instruments applied to point source pollution problems difficult addressing NPP problems. NPP regulatory policies should be designed to induce agricultural producers to change their production practices in ways that improve the environmental. The economic literature on NPP has not considered the possible use of both voluntary and mandatory approaches as complementary parts of a policy package. Factors influencing farmers' cooperative action to conserve environmental public goods are critical in regulatory policy formation in transitional China with huge amount of small subsistence farmers. Under a changed political environment, a joint effort between government and farmers is the approach most favored to address NPP issues, under which relationships between environmental outcomes and agricultural production must be accounted for.


Metonymies and Proverbs in two languages open a new horizon for the contact recovering and culture relations for both nations in ancient eras. Backgrounds and features of a language hold insight and knowledge of predecessors. In fact, by considering the proverbs of a language, they can adapt to attitude that is common among antecedents of languages and cultures. In this study, we have chosen certain North Taleshi proverbs of Anbaran zone and compared with Persian one for recognizing the similar roots of these two languages. They are analogous to each other and they have similarities of ancient language and literature made current verbal forms; so, we could choose them from daily talking words. Then, they were adapted with Persian proverbs dictionary. Consequently, these both languages have the same ancient backgrounds regarding culture and language relation and both of them used separately and grew and developed gradually.


A multi-scale approach is proposed for solving both 2D and 3D non-linear inverse problems of gravity data in estimating the topography of the basement. The inversion is carried out in two stages wherein the long-wavelength features of the basement are first estimated from smoothed gravity data via a stochastic optimization algorithm. The solution of this stage is used as the starting model for a deterministic optimization algorithm to reconstruct the short-wavelength features from the full-spectrum gravity data. The forward problem is capable of handling both lateral and vertical variations in the density of sediments. Two cases are considered regarding prior knowledge about the density: (1) the density contrast between sediments at the surface and the underlying basement and its vertical variations are both a priori known and (2) only the density contrast at the surface is known with its vertical gradient to be recovered in the inversion. In the former case, the unknowns of the problem are the depths while in the latter case they are both depths and density gradients defined individually for each prism. Therefore, the inverse problem is ill-posed and has many local minima. The stochastic optimization algorithm uses a random initial model and estimates a coarse model of the basement topography. By repeating the stochastic inversion, an ensemble of solutions is formed defining an equivalent domain in the model space supposed to be within the neighborhood of the global minimum of which several starting solutions are extracted for the secondary deterministic inversion. The presented methodology has been tested successfully in converging to the global minima in both 2D and 3D cases with 50 and 2352 total number of prisms, respectively. Finally, the inversion algorithm is used to calculate the thickness of the sediments in the south Caspian Basin using the EIGEN-6c4 global gravity model.


The ability of influenza virus to adapt to various species and evade natural immunity makes the ubiquitous pathogen particularly difficult to eradicate. Annual reformulation of influenza vaccines is costly and time-consuming and has varying efficacy against influenza virus strains. Therefore, worldwide efforts aim to develop a universal influenza vaccine to prevent potential healthcare emergencies such as pandemic influenza threats, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu and pandemic Swine Flu of 2009. Efficacy of a universal influenza vaccine must overcome current challenges with subtype diversity, antigenic drift, and adequately protect against emerging reassortants from both environmental and agricultural sources. Furthermore, the manufacturing and production of vaccines largely influence the effectiveness of a vaccine and technological advancements may soon rival current vaccine strategies. This review discusses the evolution and diversity of influenza viruses, how viral glycoprotein hemagglutinin plays a dominant role in influenza surveillance and assessment of protection and compares the methodologies of current and upcoming vaccine options. While the obstacles remain daunting, growing knowledge of influenza evolution and immunity may lead to more viable candidates that protect against broader varieties of influenza viruses and help prevent future international health crises. A


This paper studies the way workers and firms behaved in a highly cyclical sector such as the cotton textile industry, which encompassed 1/5 of the Catalan industrial workforce in the early 20th century. Using firm level evidence from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the paper shows that, in spite of weak unionisation and the lack of regional or local collective bargaining institutions, piece rates in cotton spinning and weaving were not subject to competitive rate cuts and remained fixed over the cycle. When facing a negative demand shock, firms adjusted by reducing output, hours of work, labour productivity and employment. I argue that in the Catalan case the stability of piece rate lists depended on a highly flexible labour market for female workers, limiting the pressure of unemployed workers on prevailing wages.


The article examines the General provisions of vocal pedagogy: the relevance of the issue, principles, goals, objectives and methods of teaching singing; the criteria, methods of selection and basic skills necessary for those wishing to learn vocal art.


Some fifteen years ago, drawing heavily upon the theoretical orientation of Merton (1957), I attempted to specify a functional perspective for the study of mass communication (Wright, 1959, 1960). The resultant paradigm provided a useful framework (labelled a functional inventory) for the classification of many alleged and some documented consequences of mass communication activities for individuals, groups, societies, and cultural systems. The essay also considered problems in the specification and codification of. the kinds of communication phenomena that lend themselves to functional analysis,the need to formulate new hypotheses in terms of functional theory, and a variety of difficulties in inventing research designs and in finding research sites suitable for conducting functional analyses of mass communication. It was noted that various studies during the immediate preceding years had explicitly or implicitly used a functional framework for examining different aspects of mass communication (some were cited by way of illustration) and, therefore, the paper was not a call for something novel; rather, it was a preliminary first step toward explicit consideration of certain theoretical and methodological issues relevant to the future growth of a functional theory of mass communication. Disciplines Mass Communication This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/86


The purpose of this census study was to determine the food safety inservice educational needs of agriculture teachers in Iowa. The population for this study was all of the 211 agriculture teachers in the state out of which 161 were accessible. The response rate was 54.03% of the accessible population and 41.23% of the total population. Eleven food safety topics were identified with input from experts in agricultural education, food science and human nutrition, and animal science, as well as some input from the agriculture teachers themselves. The teachers were asked to rate the extent of their perceived need for inservice education on each topic on a six–point Likert–type scale. The findings indicated that these teachers needed more inservice education on all of these topics. Teachers indicated a greater need for inservice education focusing on foodborne illnesses, food safety, bacterial contamination, food irradiation, food processing, and pesticide pollution. Hence, these topics were identified as the critical professional development areas in food safety. It was recommended that all of the topics be included in the food safety inservice programs for agriculture teachers, with priority given to the identified critical professional development areas.


A series of drug-incorporating electrospun biocompatible nanofibers were fabricated by using the electrospinning process. A hydrophobic drug (ibuprofen, IBU) was directly dissolved with biopolymer systems such as polyvinyl alcohol/plasma modified chitosan (PVA/PMCh), polyvinyl alcohol/chitosan (PVA/Ch) and cellulose acetate (CA) into an organic solvent prior to electrospinning. The release of IBU from drug-loaded electrospun fibers was monitored using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The results were compared with utilizing UV/Vis spectroscopy results. The biocompatible fibers were Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The IBU-loaded PVA/Ch and PVA/PMCh fibers demonstrated more effective and uniform release profiles than the IBU–loaded CA fibers.


The molecular-level mechanisms behind the formation of aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) composed of ionic liquids (ILs) and polymers are hitherto not completely understood. For the first time, it is herein shown that polymer-IL-based ABS are a result of a "washing-out" phenomenon, and not of a salting-out effect of the IL over the polymer as assumed in the past few years. Novel evidence is herein provided by experimental results combined with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations.


Abstract The pretropical storm Agnes rainstorm across western New York and Pennsylvania is analyzed using conventional surface and aerological data. Hourly precipitation maps and surface maps showed the north-eastward motion and intensification of a developing rain area over eastern Kentucky at 1200 GMT 20 June 1972. This area remained a separate entity from the main Agnes rainshield. Nonlinear balanced omega as well as kinematic omega computations suggest that a weak short wave in the mid and upper troposphere provided the initial triggering mechanism for the growth of the rain area. Plentiful moisture was available from the Agnes circulation to the south and the western Atlantic. Latent heat release then played a dominating role in modifying the resulting vertical velocity patterns. Finally, some possible general forecast considerations are suggested by these results.


On the basis of known coumarin-based prodrug system, a novel coumarin-based mutual prodrug of 5-fluorouracil and dichloroacetic acid was designed, synthesized and evaluated as a promising oral chemotherapeutic agent basing on in vitro stability study in HCl buffer (pH 1.2) and in phosphate buffer (pH 7.4), as well as in vitro release study in human serum. The chemical structure of prodrug was confirmed by analyzing its FTIR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS-ESI spectra. The results of in vitro kinetic study indicated that the prodrug was significantly stable in HCl and in phosphate buffers, and was hydrolyzed in human serum followed pseudo first order kinetics.
Keywords: Coumarin-based prodrug, 5-fluorouracil, Dichloroacetate, kinetics.


SIR,-Dr M D Flynn and colleagues, in their letter' about our paper,2 suggested that the relation between serum sialic acid concentration and cardiovascular mortality may be due tb confounding by impaired glucose tolerance. So far, we have not been able to test this hypothesis as the Varmland study lacks valid information about the condition. However, as the relation between serum sialic acid concentration and cardiovascular mortality was virtually unaffected by body mass index,a measure strongly related to glucose tolerance,' we consider it unlikely that this source of confounding would more than marginally explain our results. Again, our primary hypothesis is not that serum sialic acid concentration is causally linked to the risk of cardiovascular disease. We agree with Dr Flynn and colleagues that "the observation of the relation of serum sialic acid and mortality is of undoubted interest but warrants further detailed investigation. " GUNNAR LINDBERG Ccntre of Public Health Research, Karlstad, Swedeni


Research on deductive databases and Datalog led to beautiful results in the late 80s, but with little industrial impact, essentially because recursive data that required such technology was in practice rare. Years later, with networks everywhere, recursive data management is essential, and consequently this research is becoming relevant. Things are of course more complex than in classical Datalog: the architecture is often based on distributed autonomous peers and the interaction is often asynchronous. Nevertheless, one encounters again the management of a mix of intensional and extensional information in a recursive setting, and the old optimization methods proposed for Datalog meet the new needs. Specifically, recent research showed that it is possible to adapt QuerySub-Query (QSQ), a technique that optimizes the evaluation of Datalog queries, to a distributed setting, and use it to make query evaluations over distributed data more efficient. The problem was modeled using a distributed version of Datalog, which is called dDatalog, and optimized with a distributed version of QSQ, called dQSQ. In this work we checked the feasibility of implementing a real system for optimization of distributed Datalog queries based on the dQSQ technique, examined the challenges that arise from it, and eventually built such a system that can be used in practice. Our implementation of dQSQ is based on Active XML (AXML), a system with XML documents where some parts of the data are given explicitly, while other parts are given intensionally as calls to Web services. We defined a mechanism to represent dDatalog programs using AXML. We also defined a termination detection mechanism and showed how to embed it to the system. Finally, we developed a full-fledged dQSQ system, based on these mechanisms.


Pharmacoepidemiologic studies are increasingly conducted within linked databases, often to obtain richer confounder data. However, the potential for selection bias is frequently overlooked when linked data is only available for a subset of patients. We highlight the importance of accounting for potential selection bias by evaluating the association between antipsychotics and type 2 diabetes in youths within a claims database linked to a smaller laboratory database. We used inverse-probability of treatment weights (IPTW) to control for confounding. In analyses restricted to the linked cohorts, we applied inverse-probability of selection weights (IPSW) to create a population representative of the full cohort. We used pooled logistic regression weighted by IPTW only or IPTW and IPSW to estimate treatment effects. Metabolic conditions were more prevalent in linked cohorts compared to the full cohort. Within the full cohort, the confounding-adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) was 2.26 (95% CI: 2.07-2.49) comparing initiation of antipsychotics to initiation of control medications. Within the linked cohorts, a different magnitude of association was obtained without adjustment for selection, whereas applying IPSW resulted in similar point estimates as the full cohort (e.g., aHR of 1.63 became 2.12). Linked database studies may generate biased estimates without proper adjustment for potential selection bias.


Abstract Social scientists are commonly interested in relating a latent trait (e.g., criminal tendency) to measurable individual covariates (e.g., poor parenting) to understand what defines or perhaps causes the latent trait. In this article we develop an efficient and convenient method for answering such questions. The basic model presumes that two types of variables have been measured: Response variables (possibly longitudinal) that partially determine the latent class membership, and covariates or risk factors that we wish to relate to these latent class variables. The model assumes that these observable variables are conditionally independent, given the latent class variable. We use a mixture model for the joint distribution of the observables. We apply this model to a longitudinal dataset assembled as part of the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development to test a fundamental theory of criminal development. This theory holds that crime is committed by two distinct groups within the population: Adoles...


A potent antioxidative compound in crude canola oil, canolol, was recently identified, and reported herein are studies of its scavenging capacity against the endogenous mutagen peroxynitrite (ONOO-). ONOO- is generated by the reaction between superoxide anion radical and nitric oxide, both of which are produced by inflammatory leukocytes. Among various antioxidative substances of natural or synthetic origin, canolol was one of the most potent antimutagenic compounds when Salmonella typhimurium TA102 was used in the modified Ames test. Its potency was higher than that of flavonoids (e.g., rutin) and α-tocopherol and was equivalent to that of ebselen. Canolol suppressed ONOO--induced bactericidal action. It also reduced intracellular oxidative stress and apoptosis in human cancer SW480 cells when used at a concentration below 20 μM under H2O2-induced oxidative stress. In addition, canolol suppressed plasmid DNA (pUC19) strand breakage induced by ONOO-, as revealed by agarose gel electrophoresis. Keywords: O...


Babesia bovis infections in cattle and B. canis infections in dogs are characterized by non-haemolytic anaemia and low parasitaemia during the acute phase of the disease. In this phase of the disease, animals suffer from hypotension followed by disturbances of the coagulation system. This review discusses the hypothesis that may explain the process of parasite localization in the host, and the consequences of such localization. It is suggested that hypotension favours the interaction between infected erythrocytes and the endothelial lining, thus facilitating localization of the infection. In addition, activation of the coagulation system by a parasite-derived molecule (one associated with the surface of infected erythrocytes or a soluble antigen) might consolidate this situation by causing cellular plugs to form. The continued proliferation of parasites in such plugs may then result in the occurrence of capillaries that are particularly heavily parasitised. An explanation is also suggested for the protective effect of vaccines against clinical babesiosis, based on the soluble parasite antigens that are released into the medium in cultures of babesial parasites.


Permanent or temporary migration results in communication issues related to language barriers. The migrant's mother tongue is often different from that of the host country. Even when the same language is spoken, communication barriers arise because of differences in accent. These communication barriers have a significant negative impact on migrants accessing health care and their ability to understand instructions and seek follow-up care. A multidisciplinary team often has professionals from various countries. These migrant health care professionals find it difficult to communicate with patients of the host country and with their colleagues. Communication barriers, therefore, result in miscommunication or no communication between health care professionals and between health care professionals and patients. This increases the risk of medical errors and impacts quality of care and patient safety. This review looks at the impact of communication barriers in health care and endeavors to find effective solutions.


Analyzing differences in the quality of information-intensive goods may require information processing from consumers. Focusing on the differences between organic and conventional milk, we propose analyzing such markets using a tractable micro-founded discrete choice framework with Rational Inattention, non-homothetic preferences, and heterogeneous consumers. We predict theoretically and confirm empirically that consumers with higher efficiency of information processing (EIP) choose higher quality goods than those with lower EIP; however, this does not hold for poorer consumers for whom budget constraints are binding. Similarly, choosing higher quality increases with income, but the effect is weak without sufficiently high EIP.


OF DISSERTATION FUEL OR FIZZLE: THE ROLE OF COLLABORATION NETWORK CENTRALITY ON TEACHER BURNOUT Professional burnout refers to the development of negative emotions, cynical thoughts, and physical and mental exhaustion as a response to stressors associated with one's career. Within the teaching profession, professional burnout has been associated with an increase in teacher attrition. In an effort to promote a positive school environment where teachers feel supported and committed to the profession, many administrators have implemented structured collaborative opportunities within their buildings. While personal relationships within the school network can provide a mitigating effect against professional burnout, the possibility exists that teacher leaders can be overcentralized and negatively impacted by the maintained relationships. By potentially forcing centralization on critical team members and emphasizing them as the "go-to" person for collaboration, schools may be inadvertently putting their best at risk for burnout. Using a mixed-methods design, the following study investigates the perceived benefits and constraints of centrality within the school network on reported burnout. The social networks at four elementary schools were analyzed to determine the level of connectivity for each certified staff member. Participants were asked to identify the colleagues with whom they collaborate. Using Social Network Analysis, the level of centrality (as measured by number of network connections both received and directed) was calculated for each participant based on number of network ties both received and directed. Centrality scores were included with previously identified variables associated with teacher burnout including level of perceived stress, perception of school environment, principal support, and other demographic data in a series of hypothesis tests to assess the relationship between network connectivity and reported burnout. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with a selection of participants to further explore the impact of network connections on participant burnout. The results of this exploratory study found that not all collegial relationships are beneficial. A significant positive relationship between number of collaborative ties directed toward a teacher and their depersonalization score on the Maslach Burnout Inventory was identified, indicating that individuals who are frequently identified as a collaborator report higher burnout. The findings from this study produce a unique perspective on collaboration within the school network. As has been reported previously, level of connectivity within the school network as measured by the number of teachers one can identify as collaborators appears to mitigate (or not significantly increase) a teacher's risk of professional burnout. However, being identified as a collaborator by a large number of teachers (in-degree) significantly increases one's risk for depersonalization behaviors.


Hairdressers are exposed to various chemical factors and agents that cause occupational respiratory and skin diseases. Aim: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence and risk factors of occupational allergy in apprentices hairdressers and hairdressers from the region of Lodz in Poland. Material and methods: Prospective study was done in apprentices. A group of apprentices hairdressers were tested twice (34 at the beginning of education and 21 at the end) for respiratory and skin allergy. 54 hairdressers were tested for respiratory and 40 for skin allergy. Results: The prevalence of respiratory symptoms in apprentices after two years at school was not significantly higher after 2 years of education. One student became sensitized to latex. Positive skin prick tests to common allergens was a risk factor of rhinitis related to work in apprentices hairdressers OR = 9,75 (CI 1,03 – 14,64). Prevalence of cough, dyspnoe and rhinitis was significantly higher in hairdressers than apprentices in the 1st class (p Two of 54 hairdressers was sensitized to ammonium persulfate and one to paraphenylenediamine. One subject had an occupational astma diagnosis. Contact allergy was common in hairdressers and apprentices, however more prevalent in the first group. Conclusions: Respiratory symptoms were not the most important health problem in apprentices hairdressers at the end of education probably due to "healthy worker effect". Hypersensitivity to common allergens in apprentices and smoking in hairdressers were risk factors of respiratory symptoms.


Staphylococcus aureus produces a golden carotenoid virulence factor called staphyloxanthin (STX), and we report here the inhibition of the enzyme, dehydrosqualene synthase (CrtM), responsible for the first committed step in STX biosynthesis. The most active compounds are halogen-substituted phosphonosulfonates, with K(i) values as low as 5 nM against the enzyme and IC(50) values for STX inhibition in S. aureus as low as 11 nM. There is, however, only a poor correlation (R(2) = 0.27) between enzyme and cell pIC(50) (= -log(10) IC(50)) values. The ability to predict cell from enzyme data improves considerably (to R(2) = 0.72) with addition of two more descriptors. We also investigated the activity of these compounds against human squalene synthase (SQS), as a counterscreen, finding several potent STX biosynthesis inhibitors with essentially no squalene synthase activity. These results open up the way to developing potent and selective inhibitors of an important virulence factor in S. aureus, a major human pathogen.


Abstract. The macrobenthic community in shallow soft-bottom areas in the Bay of Ancon, Peru, is characterized by low biodiversity due to low oxygen concentrations. During El Nino (EN) events, higher water temperature and higher concentrations of dissolved oxygen induce a temporary increase in biodiversity. However, the structure and dynamics of the emerging macrobenthic community and populations, especially the polychaete Sigambra bassi, vary strongly among events. The reasons for this variation are poorly understood, in particular the relative influence of abiotic versus biotic factors. To disentangle how abiotic and biotic factors influence the different responses of the population of S. bassi, population models were developed based on detailed long-term monitoring data, which include four El Nino events. The results show that S. bassi abundances are favored by abiotic environmental conditions during EN, namely high temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration, but these abiotic effects are modulated by different biotic processes. In two EN events with relatively similarly high temperature anomalies (EN 1982-1983 and 1997-1998) different biological interactions (competition, predation, facilitation) and different species composition of the community resulted in different responses of the population of S. bassi.


The paper presents an adaptive model-reference fuzzy controller (AMRFC) to control the water level of a water tank. It derives the AMRFC and compares its performance with the more conventional methods of proportional-integral (PI) control and model-reference adaptive control (MRAC). The gradient descent method is chosen to adapt the AMRFC. Unlike most of the papers reviewed, which use the error and error change as inputs to the fuzzy system, the paper uses the theoretical background developed for MRAC in choosing these inputs. Although the controller uses many inference rules (441 rules), it is shown that the required mathematical calculations are not much, making implementation on a low-end microcontroller feasible. The control algorithm is implemented in simulation and real-time using an 8-bit microcontroller. It is found that the AMRFC and MRAC have approximately similar performance, however they compare favorably to the PI controller. This similarity in performance is due to the linearity of the plant, and it is expected that the AMRFC would have a much performance if the plant had a stronger non-linearity.


The study examined the impact of public debt management on the economic growth of Nigeria putting into consideration the influence of military and civilian rule for the period of 1983-2015. The estimation techniques employed in the study is Error Correction Model. To avoid spurious regression due to the problem of non-stationarity of data, the Augmented Dickey Fuller test was used to check for the presence of a unit root, Ljung-Box Q-statistics test for autocorrelation and Breusch-Pagan Godfrey test for Heteroscedasticity in the variables. The results showed a significant long run relationship exists between public debt management and economic growth in Nigeria under the military, but a relative low impact on economic growth of Nigeria under the civilian rule. This may due to poor management strategies and indiscriminate borrowing by states of the federation without check and caution by the civilian regime. It was advised that public borrowing should be channelled to developmental projects and productive sectors of the economy that will stimulate growth in the long run.


The widespread assumption that human capital development through education and training will improve the economic capabilities of people is the basis throughout the industrialized world for various support programs to assist the unemployed to "adjust to the labour market" by returning to work, and contribute to the prosperity of the region. Substantial investment of public funding is made in anticipation of fulfilling those expectations. Such was the case in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1990s when, after the closure of the northern cod fishery and the subsequent displacement of about 30,000 workers, several government income and adjustment support programs were initiated.

This research project relied upon a case study approach to develop an understanding of the complex social phenomena associated with assisting the workers to adjust and evoking economic renewal in Newfoundland. The research went beyond the standard statistical economic indicators, based on the notion that human capital development happens to individuals in the context of their lives in their home communities. Gaining an understanding of the "actual changes" that had occurred in people's lives by recording their perceptions and stories was a significant feature in the project design. Documentation, key informant interviews and focus groups were the instruments used.

Statistical evidence revealed that the province is a region of sporadic growth, persistently high unemployment, high part-time and seasonal employment, increasing transfer dependency, and declining population size, but with potential for economic turn-around. The perceptions of the research participants added much detail to that image and, perhaps more importantly, added further enlightenment as to what is required to enhance that potential and successfully move employment beyond the traditional economic mainstay of their communities, the cod fishery. The strongest theme which emerged in people's estimation of the renewal events required was the need for "an integrated approach" to development support.

Both the literature reviewed and the research findings indicate that the relationship between human capital development and economic renewal is not simple cause and effect, but a far more complex, multi-faceted and synergistic relationship--that education and training can make an effective contribution to economic renewal of a region struggling with a depressed economy, but only as a component of an integrated package of strategic interventions. This thesis identifies potential elements in that package and proposes an accountability framework for evaluating its impact as a contribution to informed planning and decision making in both social and economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador.


Structural integrity of a reinforced concrete wall and a pipe penetration under detonation conditions in a selected reactor building room of Olkiluoto BWR were studied. Hydrogen leakage from the pressurised containment to the surrounding reactor building is possible during a severe accident. Leaked hydrogen tends to accumulate in the reactor building rooms where the leak is located leading to a stable stratification and locally very high hydrogen concentration. If ignited, a possibility to flame acceleration and detonation cannot be ruled out. The structure may survive the peak detonation transient because the eigenperiod of the structure is considerably longer than the duration of the peak detonation. However, the relatively slowly decreasing static type pressure after a peak detonation damages the wall more severely. Elastic deformations in reinforcement are recoverable and cracks in these areas will close after the pressure decrease. But there will be remarkable compression crushing and the static type slowly decreasing over pressure clearly exceeds the loading capacity of the wall. Structural integrity of a pipe outlet was considered also under detonation conditions. The effect of drag forces was taken into account. Damping and strain rate dependence of yield strength were not taken into consideration. The boundary condition at the end of the pipe line model was varied in order to find out the effect of the stiffness of the pipeline outside the calculation model. The calculation model where the lower pipe end is free to move axially, is conservative from the pipe penetration integrity point of view. Even in this conservative study, the highest peak value for the maximum plastic deformation is 3.5%. This is well below the success criteria found in literature.


Background Nonspecific clinical signs and suboptimal diagnostic tests limit accurate identification of late onset sepsis (LOS) and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants, resulting in significant morbidity and antibiotic overuse. An infant's systemic inflammatory response may be identified earlier than clinical suspicion through analysis of multiple vital signs by a computerized algorithm (RALIS). Aim To evaluate the revised RALIS algorithm for detection of LOS and NEC in preterm infants. Methods In this nested case-control study, VS data (heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, desaturations, bradycardias) were extracted from medical records of infants 23-32 weeks gestation. RALIS generated an output, with score >5 triggering an alert. Patient episodes were classified based on culture, radiograph, and antibiotic data into categories: LOS, expanded LOS, NEC, and controls. Paired t-tests, linear regression and cross-validation analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between RALIS alert and LOS/NEC. Results Among 155 infants with 161 episodes, there were 41 expanded LOS (+ blood, CSF, urine, respiratory culture), 31 LOS (+ blood, CSF, urine), 9 NEC, and 93 controls. RALIS alert was 43.1+/-79 hours before culture in LOS (p=0.012). There was a significant association between RALIS alert and LOS/NEC (β=0.72, p<0.0001). Sensitivity and specificity for LOS/NEC were 84% and 80%, (PPV=63%; NPV=93%). The regression model demonstrated an AUC of 89.9%. Conclusions For infants <32 weeks, RALIS detects systemic inflammatory responses in LOS and NEC in the first month of life. The algorithm identifies infection earlier than clinical suspicion, even for NEC with negative cultures. RALIS has high NPV to rule-out LOS and NEC, and may, after prospective validation, aid in antibiotic treatment decisions.


We present the clinical case of a man of 68 years who was admitted for dizziness and sensation of loss of conscience. The clinical examination revealed a body temperature of 37.5 degrees C and a murmur of mitral regurgitation. The echocardiogram showed a severe mitral regurgitation and left cavitie's dilatation; transesophageal echocardiogram showed a vegetation in the anterior leaflet of the mitral valve. In blood cultures grew a Gram-negative bacteria identified as Bartonella spp. A PCR demonstrated that it was a Bartonella quintana. The patient was treated with gentamicin, doxiciclin and ceftriaxone with satisfactory evolution. The remaining mitral insufficiency awaits surgical treatment.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of religiosity, gender and Islamic educational background of Muslims on zakat compliance. It also aims to identify which dimensions of religiosity are significantly related to zakat compliance.

Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a self-administered questionnaire that was distributed to working Muslims individuals in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Analysis of the data was based on 690 usable questionnaires.

Findings
The findings show that religiosity had a significant influence on zakat compliance and three dimensions of religiosity, namely obligation, virtues and vices, and optional ritual, were significantly related to zakat compliance. Gender was also significantly related to zakat compliance, but in a negative direction, suggesting that Muslim working females are less compliant to zakat obligations compared to their male counterparts. It is found that formal Islamic educational background had no significant influence on zakat compliance.

Practical implications
Given the importance of zakat collection to the growth of the economy and society, the findings of this paper might provide some insights to Muslim-majority countries and zakat institutions which areas require more attention to encourage zakat payment among Muslims.

Originality/value
Compared to prior zakat studies, the findings of this study were derived from a larger sample size of Muslim working respondents. Furthermore, this study also identifies which dimensions of religiosity are significantly related to zakat compliance. Hence this study enriches the scarce literature on zakat and religiosity.


In Denis Villeneuve's 2017 film Arrival , twelve alien pods land across the world. In focusing on the experience of linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) as she learns to decode the alien language, the film explores cinematic representations of death in a multitude ways. This paper considers the various ways in which death is signified in the film including the depiction of melancholia and warfare in mise-en-scene, trauma and sublimation in temporal structure, and the expression of language in the film's unfolding narrative. By considering how other contemporary science-fiction genre films play with time in their narrative structure, this paper argues that Arrival 's linking of language, death and time is particularly sophisticated in how it weaves these three concepts in its overall construction. This article uses psychoanalytical theory to recognise the ways in which Arrival communicates the interplay between the life/death cycle and language,  with particular reference to the work of Jacques Lacan, and the interpretation of Lacanian theory by Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan.


An unimmunized schoolchild with no history of foreign travel developed severe diphtheria. Epidemiological investigations led to the discovery of a child in the same class with cutaneous diphtheria who had just returned from Bangladesh; this highlights the importance of swabbing all skin lesions acquired in endemic areas during any outbreak investigation.


This study presents a pricing model for power exchange options, in which the possibility of default by the risky counterparty as well as the arrival of important business information are taken into consideration. The idiosyncratic and common jump components induced by the arrival of business information are subsumed into all asset price processes whose dynamics are correlated with each other. Employing the measure‐change technique, we obtain a pricing formula for the values of power exchange options with counterparty risk. At last, based on the derived formula, we numerically analyze the impacts of counterparty risk and jump risk on option prices. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 37:499–521, 2017


Over the last few years, an emergent body of International Relations scholarship has taken an interest in the rise of global cities and the challenges they bring to existing geographies of power. In this article, I argue that a focus on race and empire should be central to this literature. Using the Grenfell Tower fire in London as a starting point, the article shows that global cities are part of a historical and ongoing imperial terrain. From London to New York, São Paulo to Cape Town, Singapore to Cairo, the 'making' of global cities has typically gone hand in hand with racialized forms of displacement, dispossession and police violence. Drawing on the literature on racial capitalism, as well as Aimé Césaire's image of the 'boomerang', I show that these strategies build on practices of urban planning, slum administration and law-and-order policing long experimented with in the (post)colonies. By examining the colonial dimensions of what many assume to be a strictly national problem for the welfare state, the article thus reveals global cities as part of a much wider cartography of imperial and racial violence. This not only calls into question the presentism of scholarship that highlights the 'newness' of neoliberal urbanism. In demonstrating how global cities and colonial borderlands are bound together through racial capitalism, it also exposes the positionality of scholars and policymakers that seek to counter the violence of neoliberalism with a nostalgic return to the post-1945 welfare state. As the Grenfell fire revealed, the global city is less a new type of international actor or governance structure than an extension and reconfiguration of the domestic space of empire.


Red blood cells from 31 healthy donors were examined for the cholesterol content, the fatty acid composition, and the susceptibility to lipid peroxidation induced by either hydrogen peroxide or phenylhydrazine. Lipid peroxidation was monitored by the release of pentane and ethane. In addition, plasma fatty acids were measured in order to find out, whether plasma and red cell fatty acids were correlated. In experiments with hydrogen peroxide, a significant positive correlation was found between the proportion of arachidonic acid (C 20:4n - 6; r = 0.57, p less than 0.01) and docosahexaenoic acid (C 22:6n - 3; r = +0.71, p less than 0.01), and the release of pentane and ethane, respectively. A significant negative correlation was found between the membrane cholesterol content and the pentane release (r -0.44, p less than 0.05). In experiments performed with phenylhydrazine, red cell membrane lipid composition did not influence the susceptibility of red cells to lipid peroxidation. A close correlation was found between plasma and red cell fatty acids (palmitic acid, r = +0.46, p less than 0.01; linoleic acid, r = +0.41, p less than 0.05; arachidonic acid, r = +0.59, p less than 0.01; docosahexaenoic acid, r = +0.67, p less than 0.01). The results demonstrated that the degree of peroxide-induced oxidation of erythrocyte lipids depends on the content of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the membrane, which on the other hand, is determined by plasma fatty acids. It is suggested that dietary variations may influence the susceptibility of red cells to lipid peroxidation.


Functional data, where samples are random functions, are increasingly common and important in a variety of applications, such as health care and traffic analysis. They are naturally high dimensional and lie along complex manifolds. These properties warrant use of the subspace assumption, but most state-of-the-art subspace learning algorithms are limited to linear or other simple settings. To address these challenges, we propose a new framework called Functional Subspace Clustering (FSC). FSC assumes that functional samples lie in deformed linear subspaces and formulates the subspace learning problem as a sparse regression over operators. The resulting problem can be efficiently solved via greedy variable selection, given access to a fast deformation oracle. We provide theoretical guarantees for FSC and show how it can be applied to time series with warped alignments. Experimental results on both synthetic data and real clinical time series show that FSC outperforms both standard time series clustering and state-of-the-art subspace clustering.


The basic purpose of the economic design of the control charts is to find the optimum control charts parameters to minimize the process cost. In this paper, an R package, edcc (economic design of control charts), which provides a numerical method to find the optimum chart parameters is presented using the unified approach of the economic design. Also, some examples are given to illustrate how to use this package. The types of the control chart available in the edcc package are X̄, CUSUM (cumulative sum), and EWMA (exponentially-weighted moving average) control charts.


There is currently much research interest in developing, evaluating, and verifying intensity-modulation techniques. Of particular interest is how well the delivery of intensity-modulated profiles can be simulated by planning algorithms, and how accurately these profiles can be delivered given the specification constraints of linear accelerators. In this paper we present a planning and verification study based on delivering radiation in "static-tomotherapy" mode via the NOMOS MIMiC (Multileaf intensity-modulation collimator), which sheds some light on these issues. An inverse-planning algorithm was used to compute intensity-modulated profiles for a 9-coplanar-field plan for a body phantom. The algorithm makes several approximations about the form of the elementary fluence profile through bixels during delivery. Specifically, it is independent of the state of adjacent bixels (i.e., open or closed) and obeys the superposition principle. From the standpoint of comparing the predicted versus the delivered dose, these assumptions were made irrelevant by a final one-step forward dose calculation performed using the optimized intensity profiles. This forward dose calculation took into account the penumbral characteristics of the delivery system by decomposing the intensity profiles into the set of delivery components. Each component was assigned the appropriate penumbral functions thereby ensuring that the calculated dose distribution closely predicted the delivered dose distribution. The nine intensity modulated fields were delivered to a perspex phantom with the same geometry, containing a verification film. In general good agreement was found between the predicted and the measured delivered dose distributions. All the main features of the predicted dose distribution are seen in the delivered. The 90% isodoses were consistently in spatial agreement to within 3 mm. At the 50% isodose level consistent spatial agreement was again found to within 3 mm, the largest deviation being about 5 mm. The close correspondence between the predicted and measured dose distribution demonstrates the potential of the MIMiC delivery system. Our results indicate the level of dose conformation that is achievable in practice and the accuracy of the dose computation algorithm. However, this study only concerned delivery of radiation to a 2 cm thick slice, and the dose distribution was only verified in the central plane of the phantom where the film was placed. We therefore cannot comment as yet on what happens to the dose distribution away from the central film-plane.


Research on second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition has revealed that words associated with actual objects or imagery techniques are learned more easily than those without. With multimedia applications, it is possible to provide, in addition to traditional definitions of words, different types of information, such as pictures and videos. Thus, one of the fundamental research questions posed in the use of multimedia systems is: How effective are annotations with different media types for vocabulary acquisition? This article discusses the results of three studies done with 160 university German students using CyberBuch, a hypermedia application for reading German texts that contains a variety of annotations for words in the form of text, pictures, and video. The issues examined are related to (a) how well vocabulary is learned incidentally when the goal is reading comprehension, (b) the effectiveness of different types of annotations for vocabulary acquisition, and (c) the relationship between look-up behavior and performance on vocabulary tests. The results showed a higher rate of incidental learning than expected (25% accuracy on production tests, 77% on recognition tests), significantly higher scores for words that were annotated with pictures + text than for those with video + text or text only, and a correlation between looking up a certain annotation type and using this type as the retrieval cue for remembering words.


In the process of retaining engineers, organisations are often pressurised to fulfil the various employment expectations outlined by engineers' to lead in innovation, and to remain competitive in uncertainty business demands. Mounting problems of retaining individual engineers are often linked to the limited entrepreneurial paths and social exchange underlying engineers' behavioural intentions. Although the departing behaviour is related to the weakness in this two core aspects, the relationship between individual entrepreneurial orientation and social relationships in predicting engineers' intention to stay is still uncertain.Therefore, this research examined the relationships between individual entrepreneurial orientation (e.g. innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking and autonomy), social relationships (e.g. teamwork and trust-in manager) and intention to stay amongst engineers. This research assessed the mediating effect of perceived organisational support on the relationships between individual entrepreneurial orientation, social relationships and intention to stay amongst engineers. Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey, whereby, 572 Malaysian engineers (58.4 percent response rate) from manufacturing companies were recruited as samples. Purposive sampling method was employed to determine the sample size of the study. The research model was analysed using partial least squarestructural equation modelling. Meanwhile, SmartPLS 3.2.6 was used to validate the research model and the proposed hypotheses of the study. The findings from the study confirmed that innovativeness, proactiveness, teamwork, trust-in manager and perceived organisational support positively influenced engineers' intention to stay, but not for risk-taking and autonomy. Findings also showed that intention to stay, proactiveness, risk-taking and trust-in manager significantly and positively correlated to perceived organisational support amongst engineers, but not for innovativeness, autonomy and teamwork. The mediation analysis reported that perceived organisational support had positively mediated the relationships between individual entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking and autonomy), social relationships (teamwork and trust-in manager) and intention to stay amongst engineers. The research model explained 57.8 percent of the substantial amount of variance in intention to stay model. This research theoretically contributed to the extension of entrepreneurial orientation theory and social exchange theory in predicting engineers' intention to stay. It was confirmed that individual entrepreneurial orientation could be used to predict engineers' intention to stay. Teamwork and trust-in manager also contributed to the engineers' social relationships, thus, increasing their intention to stay within organisations. Practical contributions were explained the implications of research to different levels, such as nation, industry, organisations, individual engineers and policymakers. The limitations of this study were discussed, and recommendations for future research concerning the improvisation of intention to stay model and variables presentation amongst engineers and other types of workers were also suggested.


The development of Dicer-substrate small interfering RNAs (DsiRNAs) has been pursued in recent years because these molecules exhibit a much more potent gene-silencing effect than 21-nucleotide (nt) siRNAs. In the present study, we designed eight different types of amino-modified DsiRNAs and a palmitic acid-conjugated DsiRNA expected to result in improved biological properties of siRNAs, including their stability against nuclease degradation, membrane permeability, and RNAi efficacy. The DsiRNAs were modified with an amine at the 5'- and/or 3'-end of the sense and/or antisense strand. Dicer enzyme cleaved most of the amino-modified DsiRNAs to lead to the release of 21-nt siRNA; some of them, however, were not or partly cleaved. All amino-modified DsiRNAs exhibited strong resistance against nuclease degradations. Among the amino-modified DsiRNAs, the DsiRNA modified with an amine restricted at the 3'-end of the sense strand showed the most enhanced gene-silencing effect and maintained its potent gene suppression after one week of cell transfection against Renilla luciferase activity. For further improvement, palmitic acid was conjugated to DsiRNA at the 3'-end of the sense strand (C16-DsiRNA) to facilitate the membrane permeability and potent gene-silencing activity. The C16-DsiRNA showed enhanced membrane permeability to HeLa cells. The C16-DsiRNA exhibited extremely high inhibition of Renilla luciferase activity.


PURPOSE
The goal of this multi-institutional retrospective study of children with intracranial ependymoma was to identify risk factors associated with unfavorable overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Clinical data, including demographics, tumor location, spread, histology, details of surgery, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy were collected. Clinical characteristics and univariate and multivariate analyses of risk factors for OS and EFS are presented.

RESULTS
Eleven U.S. institutions contributed 83 patients treated from 1987 to 1991. The OS at 5 and 7 years was 57% and 46%, and EFS at 5 and 7 years was 42% and 33%. Patients 3 years of age or younger differed from the older group by more common infratentorial location, less common gross total resection (GTR), and postoperative use of chemotherapy rather than radiation. This younger group of patients had worse survival (P < 0.01) than the older age group. Other than young age, less than GTR and World Health Organization (WHO) II grade 3 histology were significant adverse risk factors for EFS in univariate and multivariate analyses. OS shared the same adverse risk factors except for histology in multivariate analysis, which was only of borderline significance (P = 0.05). Progression at the original tumor location, present in 89% of patients, was the major pattern of tumor recurrence. Adjuvant chemotherapy in the group older than 3 years or craniospinal radiation in M0 patients did not significantly change EFS.

CONCLUSIONS
Adverse outcome in childhood intracranial ependymoma is related to age (3 years or younger), histology (grade 3), and degree of surgical resection (less than GTR). New approaches, particularly for local tumor control in younger patients, are needed to improve survival.


This paper compares direct measurements of evaporation with the values predicted for reference transpiration. The measurements of actual evaporation were made using an eddy correlation device on a grass field adjacent to the river Thames. Measurements of soil moisture and the driving meteorological variables were also made. The results showed that, during a period with minimal rainfall but no water stress, the cumulative values of reference transpiration compared very well with the cumulative measured evaporation and changes in soil moisture content. However, the values on specific days did not compare well. Following significant rainfall, the measured evaporation increased for a few days, probably due to evaporation of free water from the canopy or soil. Reference transpiration fell consistently below the measured evaporation once the soil moisture deficits exceeded 140 to 150 mm.


Background: In Kenya, asthma affects 10% of the population. One of the modifiable risk factors contributing to asthma morbidity and mortality is environmental exposure . Naivasha flower farms introduce pesticides persistently into the environment and these may drift onto residential property or other areas where children play. Proximity of households to the pesticide treated farms may also increase exposure of children to the pesticides. Pesticide exposure has been shown to exacerbate already existing asthma, a relationship that has not been studied in Kenya. Objectives: To identify risk factors that exacerbate asthma and influence adequacy of Asthma control in children residing in a flower growing area in Kenya. Methodology: The design was a cross-sectional study that involved 150 asthmatic children aged 5-12 years residing a flower growing area.  The study was conducted between May and July, 2014 in Naivasha, which is home to Kenya's largest horticultural flower farms.  Participants were interviewed using a structured questionnaire while asthma control was measured using a validated Asthma control tool. Logistic regression was done to identify variables that affected asthma control. Results: Majority of the asthmatic children were males (56.7%) while females were 43.33%. Risk factors that were found to be significantly associated with asthma control were; duration of stay in or near a flower farm (OR = 0.723, 95%CI (0.538-0.975), presence of a smoker in the family (OR = 0.463, 95%CI (0.094-22.629) and presence of household pet (OR = 4.358, 95%CI (1.182-16.057). There was no significant relationship between the child's asthma control and age of child, sex of child, distance of school from flower, guardian's level of education, guardian's income, and guardian's occupation as a flower farm worker, child's age of diagnosis and use of indoor pesticides. Conclusion :  The use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) should be promoted as it keeps environmental exposure pesticides to a minimum. Key words: asthma, household pet, flower farm, pesticide, smoking


Low-voltage atmospheric-plasma generation is reported, in which the breakdown voltage is significantly reduced by utilizing afterglow ions generated on integrated electrodes. Using micromachining techniques, a microanode and two microcathodes were integrated on a glass substrate. Atmospheric glow discharge was first generated in the narrow gap of 10 μm, and the resulting afterglow ions were utilized as an initiation carrier in a subsequent discharge induced in the wide gap of 270 μm. In the presence of the initiation carrier, the atmospheric glow discharge was generated at a substantially low voltage. The feasibility of the proposed generation scheme as an efficient compact plasma source is also evaluated.


The Inuit Cancer Project aims to help Inuit better understand cancer and improve communication between Inuit with cancer and non-Inuit healthcare providers and support services. The project has created resources that are culturally relevant, appropriate, and accessible to Inuit patients and the healthcare providers working with them. Not only are we helping to educate and empower Inuit patients and their families, but also better educating healthcare providers around the importance of cultural knowledge in cancer care. Our ultimate goal is to improve health outcomes by increasing awareness and understanding of cancer among Inuit communities. This project is a collaboration between Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society. It highlights how partnerships with organizations, both big and small, and connected with the community, can have a real impact.


The Ca2+-binding properties of isolated brush-border membranes at physiological ionic strength and pH were examined by rapid Millipore filtration. A comprehensive analysis of the binding data suggested the presence of two types of Ca2+-binding sites. The high-affinity sites, Ka = (6.3 +/- 3.3) X 10(5) M-1 (mean +/- S.E.M.), bound 0.8 +/- 0.1 nmol of Ca2+/mg of protein and the low-affinity sites, Ka = (2.8 +/- 0.3) X 10(2) M-1, bound 33 +/- 3.5 nmol of Ca2+/mg of protein. The high-affinity site exhibited a selectivity for Ca2+, since high concentrations of competing bivalent cations were required to inhibit Ca2+ binding. The relative effectiveness of the competing cations (1 and 10 mM) for the high-affinity site was Mn2+ approximately equal to Sr2+ greater than Ba2+ greater than Mg2+. Data from the pH studies, treatment of the membranes with carbodi-imide and extraction of phospholipids with aqueous acetone and NH3 provided evidence that the low-affinity sites were primarily phospholipids and the high-affinity sites were either phosphoprotein or protein with associated phospholipid. Two possible roles for the high-affinity binding sites are suggested. Either high-affinity Ca2+ binding is involved with specific enzyme activities or Ca2+ transport across the luminal membrane occurs via a Ca2+ channel which contains a high-affinity Ca2+-specific binding site that may regulate the intracellular Ca2+ concentration and gating of the channel.


We present a realtime tracking algorithm, Road-Track, to track heterogeneous road-agents in dense traffic videos. Our approach is designed for dense traffic scenarios that consist of different road-agents such as pedestrians, two-wheelers, cars, buses, etc. sharing the road. We use the tracking-by-detection approach where we track a road-agent by matching the appearance or bounding box region in the current frame with the predicted bounding box region propagated from the previous frame. Roadtrack uses a novel motion model called the Simultaneous Collision Avoidance and Interaction (SimCAI) model to predict the motion of road-agents by modeling collision avoidance and interactions between the road-agents for the next frame. We demonstrate the advantage of RoadTrack on a dataset of dense traffic videos and observe an accuracy of 75.8% on this dataset, outperforming prior state-of-the-art tracking algorithms by at least 5.2%. RoadTrack operates in realtime at approximately 30 fps and is at least 4× faster than prior tracking algorithms on standard tracking datasets.


This paper describes the rationale and the development of a structured digital approach for measuring corporate environmental sustainability using performance metrics. It is impossible to imagine today's age without the preservation of our environment, not even in the corporate environment. Currently, sustainability is mostly only rudimentarily considered in companies, mostly only with written down phrases on the website. This will no longer be sufficient in the future, which is why companies should record sustainability on a numerical basis. Based on the development of a workable concept for companies, a small empirical study was carried out, which can be used to numerically measure the sustainability performance of companies. Two utility analyses were completed. One of them was supplemented by expert interviews. Well-known practitioners from the business world were interviewed and asked for their assessment of ecological performance indicators. The result of the research is an indicator-based concept that can be applied in corporate practice to determine ecological sustainability performance.


Evidence is presented that suggests that articulation should be considered separately from acoustics (or the auditory impression) in investigations of the interface between phonetics and phonology. We use Ultrasound Tongue Imaging to show that onset and coda versions of Dutch /r/ can have secondary articulations, categorical allophones, and subtle or covert articulations which have few acoustic implications. Covert rhotic (retroflex) articulation was observed in one speaker, who displayed acoustic derhoticisation. We also consider this finding in relation to ongoing work in Scottish English.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
To ensure long-term safety of living kidney donors, it is now recommended that they be followed for at least 2 years after donation and that serum creatinine levels be monitored. Such levels are often subjected by clinical laboratories to estimating equations and are reported as estimated GFR (eGFR). The accuracy of such equations in uninephric living donors has yet to be validated. This is especially important in older living donors, who often have senescence-related depression of GFR.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS
We compared urinary creatinine clearance, four-variable Modification of Diet in Renal Disease estimating equation (eGFR), and the recently reported CKD-EPI GFR estimating equation with true GFR measured by the urinary iothalamate clearance (iGFR) in 64 subjects after kidney donation.

RESULTS
Creatinine clearance overestimated iGFR. Both creatinine-based estimating equations were poorly correlated with and underestimated iGFR. More than half of kidney donors had eGFR <60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2) after donation, a level that categorized them as having stage 3 chronic kidney disease by our current laboratory reporting, whereas only 25% had iGFR <60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2). This misclassification disproportionately affected older donors age > or =55 years, of whom 80% had eGFR <60 ml/min per 1.73 m(2). Neither significant albuminuria nor hypertension was observed.

CONCLUSIONS
The current practice of reporting eGFR after donation commonly leads to a misclassification of chronic kidney disease, particularly in older donors. To ensure long-term well-being of living kidney donors, more precise estimates of GFR are required, particularly among older potential donors.


Abstract We investigate the 2013 M w  7.5 Craig, Alaska, earthquake and nearby seismicity to understand better how temperature and composition may control the depth of seismic rupture along a strike‐slip fault offsetting contrasting lithosphere types. The Queen Charlotte–Fairweather (QCF) fault lies between the oceanic lithosphere of the Pacific plate and the accreted Insular superterrane of the North American continent. We use point‐source and finite‐fault modeling of teleseismic body waves to characterize the focal mechanism and the depth extent of seismic rupture of five M w  5.9–7.5 earthquakes. Four of the five earthquakes are consistent with rupture on the QCF fault. We find that these four earthquakes have centroid depths between 11 and 18 km (±3  km) and aftershocks with an order of magnitude less than typical continental earthquakes. Finite‐fault modeling of the 2013 Craig earthquake favors bilateral rupture along a 150 km fault with a depth range of slip between 5 and 25 km, with faster rupture (4–5  km/s) to the north than the south (1  km/s). These results suggest that the transition of brittle to ductile deformation along this section of the Pacific–North American plate boundary is thermally controlled by a more mafic rheology than average continental crust, exhibiting behavior consistent with that of an oceanic strike‐slip fault. Online Material: Figures of best‐fitting point‐source focal mechanism and waveform fits, dip sensitivity, directivity tests, aftershock distributions, and finite‐fault results.


Neuromarketing lies at the intersection of three main disciplines: psychology, neuroscience, and marketing, and it has been a successful neuroscientific approach for the study of real-life choices such as consumer behavior [1]. A current gap in the cosmetics field is the lack of published research studies, considering the marketing investment done yearly in this category. With the rapid economic expansion and the rise of social media in China, consumers' interest in beauty is growing. Even though the Chinese cosmetics sector is rapidly expanding, no studies have been done with Chinese consumers. This study aims to employ the same approach as previously done in consumer neuroscience studies to evaluate cosmetic brands' marketing strategy to understand better if immediate emotional responses can be measured using Electrodermal Activity (EDA). Here, we focus on cosmetics products advertisement as a model to understand consumer preference formation and choice. Eighteen Chinese female consumers were recruited between 19 and 37 years old. From the results obtained, it was understood that none of the participants have voted for the product advertisement for which they showed higher emotional arousal. However, it appears that the participants' preference is for the products for which the brand awareness is stronger since the product advertisements with more votes are the ones for the Korean brand used. The product advertisements with Asian faces were the ones with more votes, suggesting that Asian faces have engaged consumer preference. However, the product advertisements for the Brazilian brands, unknown to the Chinese public, were the ones with fewer votes, although, those product advertisements were the ones with more emotional arousal per minute. Those advertisements were also those with non-Asian faces, suggesting that this feature influenced voting decisions. From this study, it has been observed that Electrodermal Activity is a measure of emotional arousal that by itself cannot be translated into consumer engagement. Therefore, it is also proposed to evaluate brand awareness in future studies related to product advertisements. The physical features of the people included in the advertisements is also suggested to be further evaluated in future studies since a different cultural background seems to influence the consumers' engagement. Furthermore, using EDA to complement other neurophysiological tools like facial expression analysis is also suggested for future studies to have evidence about the nature of the emotions raised.


The paramyxovirus family can cause a broad spectrum of diseases from mild febrile illnesses to more severe diseases that may require hospitalisation and can in the most serious cases have fatal outcomes. Understanding the virus infection dynamics is fundamental to the development of novel targets for therapeutic and vaccine development.

The advancement of High-throughput sequencing (HTS) has revolutionised biomedical research providing unparalleled opportunities to answer complex questions. In this study we developed a workflow using directional analysis of HTS data to gain a unique opportunity to simultaneously analyse the kinetics of virus transcription and replication for PIV5 strain W3, PIV2, MuV and PIV3. The workflow could be used for the study of all negative strand viruses.

The developed workflow was used to investigate a number of characteristics of paramyxovirus transcription including quantification of the transcription gradient, RNA editing resulting in the generation of non-templated mRNAs and the production of read-through mRNAs. Interestingly, the processivity of the RNA polymerase during transcription was shown to remain consistent throughout the infection amongst all of the viruses analysed.

Additionally, virus replication and the generation of antigenomes were found to occur at early times post infection. This was surprising, as the current model for virus replication requires sufficient levels of NP to be present in the cytoplasm before the virus can enter replicative mode. These results suggest a revision of this model in which the virus produces local sites of virus transcription and replication in the cytoplasm known as foci and it is the level of NP surrounding the virus genomes at these local sites that dictates the virus ability to enter a replicative mode.

PIV5 strain W3 was shown to supress virus gene expression at late times post infection resulting in the establishment of a persistent infection. The developed workflow was used to analyse the infection dynamics of PIV5. There were no changes in the RNA polymerase processivity of transcription that could account for the suppression of protein synthesis. A comparative analysis of PIV5 strains W3 and CPI+ identified a mutation of a serine to a phenylalanine at position 157 of the P protein in CPI+, a phosphorylation site that when phosphorylated by polo-like kinase 1 (PLK-1) was previously shown to play a role in the inhibition of virus RNA synthesis, that abolished the virus ability to supress protein synthesis and establish a persistent infection. This indicates that phosphorylation of serine at position 157 is responsible for the inhibition of virus gene expression and the establishment of persistence.


The green economy model for India is a system dynamics model that has been customized to the national context in the structure of the model and input data. It also takes into account the key priorities for the country, incorporating primary and allied sectors affecting climate change at the national level. The model has been developed jointly by World Resources Institute India and KnowlEdge Srl (Switzerland); it is based on a Green Economy Model (GEM) published by Andrea M. Bassi (Bassi 2015). The GEM has also been used in other countries to explore low-carbon development pathways; the model is customized to the context in which it is applied. The model is intended to provide tools for making informed policy decisions that would take India to a low-carbon development pathway. This technical note focuses on the structure of the model, the motivation behind developing it, and the data and assumptions accompanying it.


Federated learning data is drawn from a distribution of distributions: clients are drawn from a meta-distribution, and their data are drawn from local data distributions. Thus generalization studies in federated learning should separate performance gaps from unseen client data (out-of-sample gap) from performance gaps from unseen client distributions (participation gap). In this work, we propose a framework for disentangling these performance gaps. Using this framework, we observe and explain differences in behavior across natural and synthetic federated datasets, indicating that dataset synthesis strategy can be important for realistic simulations of generalization in federated learning. We propose a semantic synthesis strategy that enables realistic simulation without naturally-partitioned data. Informed by our findings, we call out community suggestions for future federated learning works.


Big data is creating many opportunities for different and diverse fields to achieve deeper and faster insights that can enhance the decision making. This paper addresses, analyzing and forecasting the export trend in Indian Green Coffee using various descriptive analytics and visualization techniques. With the rapid growth of technologies, large amount of data is produced from different sources that can either be structured or unstructured. Such type of data is very difficult to process and manage as it contains millions of records of information sourced from social media, web sales, audios, videos, images etc. Timely analysis of this data is a key factor for success in many business and service domains. Calculating descriptive statistics is a vital step while conducting research and should always be done before making inferential statistical comparisons. For this purpose MongoDB (Nosql) is made extensive use of in this paper.


It is well known that multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have high spectral efficiency, especially when channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is available. In many practical systems, it is reasonable to assume that the CSIT is obtained by a limited (i.e., finite rate) feedback and is therefore imperfect. We consider the design problem of how to use the limited feedback resource to maximize the achievable information rate. In particular, we develop a low complexity power on/off strategy with beamforming (or Grassmann precoding), and analytically characterize its performance. Given the eigenvalue decomposition of the covariance matrix of the transmitted signal, refer to the eigenvectors as beams, and to the corresponding eigenvalues as the beam's power. A power on/off strategy means that a beam is either turned on with a constant power, or turned off. We will first assume that the beams match the channel perfectly and show that the ratio between the optimal number of beams turned on and the number of antennas converges to a constant when the numbers of transmit and receive antennas approach infinity proportionally. This motivates our power on/off strategy where the number of beams turned on is independent of channel realizations but is a function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When the feedback rate is finite, beamforming cannot be perfect, and we characterize the effect of imperfect beamforming by quantization bounds on the Grassmann manifold. By combining the results for power on/off and beamforming, a good approximation to the achievable information rate is derived. Simulations show that the proposed strategy is near optimal and the performance approximation is accurate for all experimented SNRs.


Carbon dioxide injection in geological formations is currently a common procedure in several reservoirs worldwide. More recently, it has been considered a permanent storage solution, avoiding emission to the atmosphere from large industrial sources. Also, it is largely employed in the oil & gas exploration industry, for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. However, it is a known fact that injection of large amounts of CO 2 into geological reservoirs may lead to a series of alterations due to chemical and physical interactions with minerals and fluids, especially in carbonate or carbonate‐rich reservoirs. Experimental and numerical models have been employed in many studies in the past, to investigate these effects on the geological environment. So far, most of these studies focused on siliciclastic formations, whereas carbonate reservoirs, which are known to be much more chemically reactive when interacting with CO 2 , were much less investigated. We present a review of experimental and numerical models that have been employed for studying CO 2 ‐water‐rock interactions, and their application to the investigation of the impact in carbonate reservoir quality and integrity caused by the injection of carbon dioxide. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The author argues that the social studies devoted to the Russian local self-government are dominated by uncritical borrowing of the basic vocabulary and the axiomatics of the municipal law. Such studies reproduce ideal concepts enshrined in the legislation and legal doctrine to substitute for the critical analysis of the social reality processes. To understand the true meaning of what is referred to as local self-government the author proposes to consider the correlation between the legal-dogmatic concept and the results of empirical research. For that purpose, three constitutive features of local self-government are singled out:  inclusiveness, accessibility and autonomy of local authorities. Analyzing the data of the public opinion surveys, the author observes the lack of public confidence in the municipal authorities, their distancing from the local communities and proximity to the regional government.  As an example, the author examines cancelation of direct elections of heads of municipalities which brings into sharp focus contradictions between actual processes and the local self-government theory. At the same time, public perceptions of local self-government as a value and a directly observed phenomenon remain uncertain. Based on the results of the analysis, the author concludes that there is a principal divergence between the reality and the normative conception of local self-government which raises the issue of its rethinking in social sciences. The basis of the study is the data of the nationwide representative surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center and the Public Opinion Foundation.
Acknowledgment. The paper is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 14-28-00218-II "Dynamics of social transformation in modern Russia in socio-economic, political, socio-cultural and ethno-religious contexts".


Human bile salt export pump (BSEP) mutations underlie progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis type 2 (PFIC2). In the PFIC2 animal model, Bsep(-/-) mice, biliary secretion of bile salts (BS) is decreased, but that of phospholipids (PL) and cholesterol (CH) is increased. Under physiological conditions, the biliary secretion of PL and CH is positively related ("coupled") to that of BS. We aimed to elucidate the mechanism of increased biliary lipid secretion in Bsep(-/-) mice. The secretion of the BS tauro-β-muricholic acid (TβMCA) is relatively preserved in Bsep(-/-) mice. We infused Bsep(-/-) and Bsep(+/+) (control) mice with TβMCA in stepwise increasing dosages (150-600 nmol/min) and determined biliary bile flow, BS, PL, and CH secretion. mRNA and protein expression of relevant canalicular transporters was analyzed in livers from noninfused Bsep(-/-) and control mice. TβMCA infusion increased BS secretion in both Bsep(-/-) and control mice. The secreted PL or CH amount per BS, i.e., the "coupling," was continuously two- to threefold higher in Bsep(-/-) mice (P < 0.05). Hepatic mRNA expression of canalicular lipid transporters Mdr2, Abcg5, and Abcg8 was 45-55% higher in Bsep(-/-) mice (Abcg5; P < 0.05), as was canalicular Mdr2 and Abcg5 protein expression. Potential other explanations for the increased coupling of the biliary secretion of PL and CH to that of BS in Bsep(-/-) mice could be excluded. We conclude that the mechanism of increased biliary lipid secretion in Bsep(-/-) mice is based on increased expression of the responsible canalicular transporter proteins.


Proper utilization of renewable energy sources in electricity production is inevitable due to the environmental concerns and global warming fight. Therefore, predictability of renewable electricity is a very significant issue for a long time. Main aim of this study, different from the literature, is to investigate the change of wind speed prediction errors for different time horizons. Different prediction time horizons (10, 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes) were used, and the results were compared through the error measures and the regression values. The mean squared errors and the regression values vary between 0.819 and 5.570, and between 77.8% and 97.1%, respectively. The prediction error changes almost logarithmically, and the rate of change decreases with the increasing time horizon. A new analysis approach was proposed to see the change of the prediction error with time horizon. The equation, y = 1.5413 ln ( x ) - 2.7428, representing the change of the mean squared error with time horizon was obtained.


Three quarters of the micro-environment of early secretory stage enamel consist of protein and water. The physical arrangement of this enamel matrix is closely related to enamel crystal growth and habit. In the present study, structural components of developing enamel were analyzed using atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, immuno-ultracryotomy, and electron diffraction. Atomic force images revealed spherical subunits measuring between 108 nm and 124 nm in diameter. Transmission electron micrographs indicated that developing crystals were surrounded by an electron dense coat which may be rich in proteins. Transmission electron micrographs and electron diffraction studies supported a concept in which initial enamel crystals consist of amorphous calcium phosphate and later fuse to hydroxyapatite. Cryo-immuno electron microscopy demonstrated homogeneous distribution of amelogenin epitopes within the entire enamel matrix. The current study suggests an intricate role of protein aggregation phenomena involved in initial enamel crystal growth and habit.


This paper introduces an empirical strategy to estimate dynamic treatment effects in randomized trials that provide treatment in multiple stages and in which various noncompliance problems arise, such as attrition and selective transitions between treatment and control groups. Our approach is applied to the highly influential four-year randomized class size study, Project STAR. We find benefits from attending small classes in all cognitive subject areas in kindergarten and first grade. We do not find any statistically significant dynamic benefits from continuous treatment versus never attending small classes following grade 1. Finally, statistical tests support accounting for both selective attrition and noncompliance with treatment assignment.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are often deployed in hostile environments where an adversary can physically capture some of the nodes, first can reprogram, and then, can replicate them in a large number of clones, easily taking control over the network. A few distributed solutions to address this fundamental problem have been recently proposed. However, these solutions are not satisfactory. First, they are energy and memory demanding: A serious drawback for any protocol to be used in the WSN-resource-constrained environment. Further, they are vulnerable to the specific adversary models introduced in this paper. The contributions of this work are threefold. First, we analyze the desirable properties of a distributed mechanism for the detection of node replication attacks. Second, we show that the known solutions for this problem do not completely meet our requirements. Third, we propose a new self-healing, Randomized, Efficient, and Distributed (RED) protocol for the detection of node replication attacks, and we show that it satisfies the introduced requirements. Finally, extensive simulations show that our protocol is highly efficient in communication, memory, and computation; is much more effective than competing solutions in the literature; and is resistant to the new kind of attacks introduced in this paper, while other solutions are not.


Thiamine diphosphate (ThDP) is used as a cofactor in many key metabolic enzymes. We present evidence that the ThDPs in the two active sites of the E1 (EC 22.214.171.124) component of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex communicate over a distance of 20 angstroms by reversibly shuttling a proton through an acidic tunnel in the protein. This "proton wire" permits the co-factors to serve reciprocally as general acid/base in catalysis and to switch the conformation of crucial active-site peptide loops. This synchronizes the progression of chemical events and can account for the oligomeric organization, conformational asymmetry, and "ping-pong" kinetic properties of E1 and other thiamine-dependent enzymes.


What do Rembrandt and social media platforms have in common? Light. Both judiciously use it to emphasize certain aspects and relegate others to obscurity, leveraging darkness to highlight flattering features.

This article assesses the accountability of social media platforms with regards to content moderation. It probes voluntary measures like the Facebook Oversight Board and transparency reports for similarities with the chiaroscuro painting technique. These two self-governance initiatives shed light on fairly uncontroversial aspects of content moderation, obscuring more problematic areas in the process. In that sense, chiaroscuro and self-governance actually travel in opposite directions; chiaroscuro uses darkness to create light while self-governance uses light to create darkness.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) could fill self-governance gaps by activating a clearer link between companies and user well-being. The notions of access to remedy and due diligence support the case for harmonizing accountability measures across moderation practices. External oversight should cover a broader array of moderation decisions, beyond individual content takedowns. It should also approach harms holistically, integrating privacy, equality and other human rights dimensions to the analysis. Transparency reports should provide more granular information about platforms' informal collaboration with states.


The selection of an animal model for the collection of biomedical data should be based on a careful analysis of research requirements and the specific characteristics of the different animal species available for use. 1 There are many examples in which a disease does not naturally occur in animals but can be induced by appropriate manipulation. But how does one select the appropriate model? Once it is chosen, how does one obtain the animals, keep them healthy, and handle them properly in a laboratory environment? An excellent source of information is the Proceedings of a Workshop on Animal Models for Perinatal Research , sponsored by the Perinatal Biology and Infant Mortality Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 2 I will present models involving maternal nutrient deprivation and its effects on the fetus and young animal. Congenital Hydrocephalus Models for the study of congenital hydrocephalus have been generally unphysiologic