Analog seismic data have been recorded by numerous pen and paper drum-type seismographs throughout the world over the past 100 years or so. Digitizing these data is necessary for studying historical earthquakes and for studying the characteristics of extreme storms and their occurrence in climate change analyses. SeisDig is an interactive Matlab based digitizing tool, designed to digitize entire scanned seismogram "tif" images with a minimum of user interaction. This User's Manual describes the SeisDig graphical user interface and its use. The SeisDig software is available for download at http://iod.ucsd.edu/SeisDig/. Use of this software is subject to certain copyright restrictions.


Pathologies including stroke and multiple sclerosis can leave patients with impaired tactile and proprioceptive sensation, which contributes to their difficulty in performing everyday tasks. We present the results that indicate that a combination of fingertip force sensing and vibrational feedback can help patients with multiple sclerosis improve their performance in manipulation tasks. The feedback can take the form of an "event cue" in which patients are alerted when forces at the fingertips stray outside of a recommended range, or proportional feedback, in which trains of vibration pulses are correlated directly with the fingertip forces. While both types of feedback allow the patients to handle objects with more accurate force control, the former approach is more successful and preferred by subjects with mild impairment while the latter approach appears to be most effective for patients with severe impairment.


Human studies indicate that consumption of olive oil is associated with decreased mortality, reduced cardiovascular risk and improved cognitive function in the elderly. Many of these benefits are thought to be due to the phenolic content of olive oil. In support of this, intervention studies in humans indicate that olive oil phenols protect blood lipids from oxidation and improve blood parameters of inflammation, hemostasis and vascular function, all risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The aim of this review is to evaluate the experimental evidence that olive oil phenols are beneficial to the aging process. Animal studies suggest that olive oil phenols have preventive actions on age-related cognitive and motor dysfunction, an important cause of disability in the elderly. Supporting mechanistic in vitro studies indicate that olive oil phenols may inhibit inflammatory pathways and associated proteins, induce pathways related to cell protection and survival, and modulate pathways related to energy metabolism similar to anti-aging substances. Furthermore, they can interact with beta-amyloid peptide and Tau protein to inhibit the formation of protein aggregates, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. However, caution should be expressed in interpreting these in vitro data are as they are based on experiments carried out mainly using un-physiological concentrations of native olive phenols rather than phenolic metabolites. In conclusion, while in vivo data for the beneficial effects of olive oil phenols in aging are growing, a mechanistic explanation for these effects requires much additional research on the effects of metabolites at relevant concentrations.


Abstract There is often a need to improve the taste of mineral water by reducing the sulphate ion content. It was found that for such an effect, nanofiltration (NF) process can be used. In the case, the proposed formula was assumed obtaining a mineral water with reduction of H2S and SO42- content through the following processes: stripping - UF/MF or rapid fi ltration - nanofiltration - mixing with raw water or filtration through calcium bed. The paper shows the results of the tests, with use of mineral waters and nanofiltration. Commercial nanofiltration membranes NF-270 Dow Filmtec and NF-DK GE Infrastructure Water&Process Technologies were applied. NF was carried out for mixed water from both water intakes (1 and 2), recovery of 50%, at transmembrane pressure of 0.8-1.2 MPa in the dead-end fi ltration mode. In addition, the permeate obtained in NF was filtered through a column fi lled with 1.0-3.0 mm limestone rock, in order to improve the composition of mineral water. The tested mineral water is the sulphate-chloride-sodium-calcium-magnesium in nature and contains 991 mg/L of SO42- and 2398 mg/L of TDS, while the permeate after NF showed the chloride - sodium hydrogeochemical type (TDS: 780-1470 mg/L, sulfate 10-202.7 mg/L, calcium 23-39.7 mg/L, magnesium 11-28 mg/L). As a result of water treatment in the NF process, high reduction of SO42- ions was obtained (79-98.7%), while the TDS was reduced in 51-64%. Because the process of NF allows for relatively high reduction of bivalent ions, a significant reduction in calcium ion content (84-88%) and magnesium (84-89%) has been also obtained. Monovalent ions were reduced to a lesser extent, i.e. sodium in 46% and bicarbonates in 39-64.1%. Despite obtaining the positive effect of the sulphate ions content reduction, the NF process significantly changed the mineralogy composition of water. The permeate filtration (DK-NF membrane) on the CaCO3 deposit led to a correction of the hydrogeochemical type of water from chloridesodium to chloride-bicarbonate-sodium. The concentration of calcium ions was increased by 60.5% and was 28.2 mg/L, and bicarbonate ions by 7.78% (increased to 195 mg/L). Based on a morphological assessment of the deposits in the SEM image and their chemical composition, the presence of gypsum crystals was detected on the surface of the NF-270 membrane. The deposits formed on the NF-DK membrane were of a completely different character as aggregations of iron and aluminium oxides/hydroxides were found. Such significant mineralogical differences between the secondary deposits crystallising on the surface of the membranes point to the impact of several factors, including membrane characteristics, concentration polarisation, mass transport mechanisms, etc.


Over 300,000 young children in America - disproportionately poor and children of color - suffer from childhood lead poisoning. This disease ordinarily is caused by the deterioration of lead paint into flakes, chips, and dust that children ingest or inhale. Victims of childhood lead poisoning have tried to sue manufacturers of lead paint or lead pigment, but they face a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Traditional tort law requires a plaintiff to prove that a specific tortfeasor caused the harm. This is almost impossible in the lead paint context because the paint that caused the harm usually consists of many layers, applied over the course of as long as a century, now covered up by non-leaded paint. To overcome this obstacle, victims of childhood lead poisoning have invoked the theory of "market share liability." Market share liability originally was devised in the 1980s to allow recovery by the victims of the generic miscarriage preventative diethylstilbestrol (DES). DES was taken by women whose daughters later developed certain cancers. But the DES daughters could not identify the specific manufacturer whose drug their mothers consumed. The California Supreme Court, in Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, granted them relief by apportioning liability among DES manufacturers according to each one's share of the market. Victims of other defective products then urged courts to extend market share liability beyond the DES context. With a few exceptions, such efforts failed because the other products were not "fungible," i.e., they were not as interchangeable as the generic drug DES. Additionally, DES was taken during a nine-month period, making it relatively easy for courts to determine the market shares of each manufacturer with a reasonable degree of accuracy - not so with other products. Thus, for some twenty years, market share liability lay dormant. In 2004, Allen Rostron published an article that challenged the implicit assumption in market share liability that fungibility meant chemical identity. Indeed, he identified three definitions of fungibility: (1) functional interchangeability, (2) physical indistinguishability, and (3) uniformity of risk. Almost immediately thereafter, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in Thomas v. Mallet, employed portions of Rostron's analysis to allow a victim of childhood lead poisoning to proceed to trial under Wisconsin's variant of market share liability. The extension of market share liability to the lead paint context is problematic. Lead paints, or paints with lead pigment, do not pose a uniform risk of harm because paints with higher concentrations of lead are more harmful than those with less. Additionally, it is impossible, as a practical matter, to determine the market shares of the manufacturers of lead paint and lead pigment given the hundred-year period in which manufacturers have entered, exited, and re-entered the market to be segmented. If market share liability is to apply beyond the DES context, this expansion must be consistent with the policies that gave rise to the theory. We thus propose that application of market share liability be predicated on three requirements: (1) uniform products must pose risk in a uniform manner and to a uniform degree; (2) it must be impossible, as a practical matter, for a victim to trace the harm-causing product back to its specific manufacturer; and (3) courts must be able to ascertain each manufacturer's market share with a reasonable degree of accuracy.


Most empirical social scientists are surprised that low-level numerical issues in software can have deleterious effects on the estimation process. Statistical analyses that appear to be perfectly successful can be invalidated by concealed numerical problems. We have developed a set of tools, contained in accuracy, a package for R and S-PLUS, to diagnose problems stemming from numerical and measurement error and to improve the accuracy of inferences. The tools included in accuracy include a framework for gauging the computational stability of model results, tools for comparing model results, optimization diagnostics, and tools for collecting entropy for true random numbers generation.


The hepatic damage induced by Paragonimus skrjabini, and the migration route of this species and that of P. westermani, were investigated in a series of animal experiments and in 34 clinical and four autopsy cases of paragonimiasis. The major symptoms and signs of an unique case reported from Sichuan Province included hepatic tenderness, disturbance of hepatic functions, remittent fever, and cough with bloody sputum. Laparotomy revealed marked adhesions surrounding the liver, spleen and duodenum. Diagnosis was made by finding P. skrjabini in a bulla on the abdominal wall about 5 months after the onset of illness. After specific treatment with bithional, body temperature and liver functions returned to normal. Twenty-three of 33 cases independently studied from Fujian Province also showed similar hepatic function disturbance. Autopsy cases showed hepatic chronic eosinophilic abscesses with Charcot-Leyden crystals. Experimentally, P. skrjabini infection caused hepatic damage in all laboratory animals used. The main pathologic changes were initially acute eosinophilic abscesses in the liver, worms being found sometimes in the necrotic cavities of the abscesses; hepatomagaly also occurred. Some cysts containing mature worms were found in the liver of dogs 3-9 months after infection. Numerous eggs were deposited in the cyst walls. The migration route of P. skrjabini was studied in young dogs. Worms appeared in the liver initially on day 3 and reached their highest level on day 14. P. westermani also migrated into liver, but their numbers were less than those of P. skrjabini.


Background. Rural‐urban disparities in access to and utilization of medical care have been a long‐standing focus of concern. Objective. Using the nine‐category Urban Influence Codes, this study examines the relationship between place of residence and having access and utilization of ambulatory health services. Research Design. Data come from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, conducted in 1996. Linear and logistic regression analyses assess the relationship between county type and having a usual source of care and ambulatory visits, controlling for demographic and health status measures. Results. Residents of counties that were totally rural were more likely to report having a usual source of care (adjusted OR: 1.98; CI: 1.01, 3.89) than residents of large metropolitan counties. Residents of places without a city of 10,000 or more, but adjacent to a metropolitan area, were also more likely to report having a usual source of care (adjusted OR: 1.92; CI: 1.16, 3.22). In a regression analysis, residents of the most rural places reported fewer visits during the year (B= −2.42, CI: −3.68, −1.32). Conclusions. Results suggest that using rural and urban definitions that go beyond the traditional dichotomy of metropolitan and non‐metropolitan may assist policymakers and researchers in identifying types of places where there is a disparity in access and subsequent utilization of health care. Rural residents, defined as totally rural in the urban influence coding scheme, may report having a health care provider but report fewer visits to health care providers during a year.


This paper studies the determinants of the spatial pattern of urban land development. Our study is motivated by an interesting fact observed in the past decade, the fact that the fastest-growing Chinese cities have undergone outward expansion of urban land development with relatively low use intensity. We link this pattern with the career concerns of local leaders who act as city developers. We first develop a theoretical model to demonstrate how a city leader whose career advancement depends on city economic growth chooses the spatial pattern of urban land development. Two major testable predications are derived. First, city leaders with high career incentives are more likely to expand the city outward in order to boost land sale revenues for financing public infrastructure and enhancing economic growth. Second, the average use intensity of newly developed land is lower for city leaders with stronger career incentives due to the trade-off between a city's upward and outward expansion. We test the theory using a large dataset of residential land transactions matched with city leaders from 2000 to 2012. We find robust evidence consistent with the predictions of our model.


Author(s): Roy, Ananya; Oldfield, Sophie; McElroy, Erin; Malson, Hilary; Graziani, Terra; Nevarez Martinez, Deyanira; Rosenthal, Tracy Jeanne; Losier, Toussaint; Samara, Tony; Blomley, Nicholas; Goodling, Erin; DeFilippis, James; Bissell, Evan; Haas, Gilda; Garcia-Lamarca, Melissa; Kaika, Maria; Kurwa, Rahim; Khan, Hamid; Fields, Desiree; Raymond, Elora; Perry, Keisha-Khan | Editor(s): Roy, Ananya; Malson, Hilary | Abstract: Housing Justice in Unequal Cities is a global research network funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1758774) and housed at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. This open-access volume, co-edited by Ananya Roy and Hilary Malson, brings together movement-based and university-based scholars to build a shared field of inquiry focused on housing justice. Based on a convening that took place in Los Angeles in January 2019, at the LA Community Action Network and at the University of California, Los Angeles, the essays and interventions situate housing justice in the long struggle for freedom on stolen land. Embedded in the stark inequalities of Los Angeles, our work is necessarily global, connecting the city's Skid Row to the indebted and evicted in Spain and Greece, to black women's resistance in Brazil, to the rights asserted by squatters in India and South Africa. Learning from radical social movements, we argue that housing justice also requires a commitment to research justice. With this in mind, our effort to build a field of inquiry is also necessarily an endeavor to build epistemologies and methodologies that are accountable to communities that are on the frontlines of banishment and displacement.


This paper proposes a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) approach that adopts the second-order reliability method (SORM) and complex-step (CS) derivative approximation. The failure probabilities are estimated using the SORM, with Breitung's formula and the technique established by Hohenbichler and Rackwitz, and their sensitivities are analytically derived. The CS derivative approximation is used to perform the sensitivity analysis based on derivations. Given that an imaginary number is used as a step size to compute the first derivative in the CS derivative method, the calculation stability and accuracy are enhanced with elimination of the subtractive cancellation error, which is commonly encountered when using the traditional finite difference method. The proposed approach unifies the CS approximation and SORM to enhance the estimation of the probability and its sensitivity. The sensitivity analysis facilitates the use of gradient-based optimization algorithms in the RBDO framework. The proposed RBDO/CS–SORM method is tested on structural optimization problems with a range of statistical variations. The results demonstrate that the performance can be enhanced while satisfying precisely probabilistic constraints, thereby increasing the efficiency and efficacy of the optimal design identification. The numerical optimization results obtained using different optimization approaches are compared to validate this enhancement.


The monograph summarizes original research data and published literature data on reproduction, life cycles, individual development and morphology of scale insects of the superfamily Orthezioidea (archaeococcids). The superfamily system is accepted mainly in its traditional concept, i.e. with four well-defined families: Margarodidae s. l., Ortheziidae, Carayonemidae, and Phenacoleachiidae. The tribe Matsucoccini (Margarodidae s. l.: Xylococcinae s. l.) is considered as a most archaic group of scale insects according to morphological, reproductive and ontogenetic characters. A complicated ontogenesis with an alternation of movable/immovable instars and with arostrate imago of both sexes (as in Matsucoccus Cockerell, 1909 and many other Margarodidae s. l.) is presumed to be initial in scale insect evolution and such ontogenesis is supposed to be an apomorphy of suborder Coccinea. Distribution of different variants of ovoviviparity/viviparity amongst scale insect families is overviewed. It is demonstrated that the evolution of scale insects shows multiple cyclic conversions of oviparous reproduction pattern to ovoviviparous/viviparous ones with the appearance of new and new peculiar adaptations to eggs protection; the most ancient scale insects (Matsucoccini and their ancestor) were probably facultatively ovoviviparous, whereas the origin of the whole neococcid phylogenetic line (Coccoidea s. s.) was probably connected with obligate complete ovoviviparity, which also appeared in some "derived" archaeococcids of the tribe Iceryini (Margarodidae s. l.), in the families Phenacoleachiidae and Carayonemidae. New taxonomic additions and changes in generic composition of some tribes are provided for the family Margarodidae s. l., in its subfamilies Monophlebinae and Callipappinae s. l. The tribe Labioproctini tr. nov. (Monophlebinae) is erected for six genera possessing peculiar quadrilocular wax pores: Aspidoproctus Newstead, 1901, Hemaspidoproctus Morrison, 1927, Labioproctus Green, 1922, Lecaniodrosicha Takahashi, 1930, Misracoccus Rao, 1950, and Walkeriana Signoret, 1876. The presence of quadrilocular pores are considered as a synapomorphic character of the Labioproctini tr. nov. and Ortheziidae. Disputable taxonomic position of Xenococcidae Tang, 1992 is discussed and this family is also placed in Orthezioidea. New genera and species are described and illustrated, based mainly on material collected in the Oriental region: Eremostoma klugei gen. et sp. nov., Crambostoma largecicatricosum gen. et sp. nov. (both in Callipappinae s. l.: Coelostomidiini s. l.), Buchnericoccus reynei sp. nov., Monophlebus neglectus sp. nov. (both in Monophlebinae: Monophlebini), Crypticerya ovivivipara sp. nov., Icerya oculicicatricata sp. nov., I. siamensis sp. nov. (all three in Monophlebinae: Iceryini).


With the development of optical fiber communication system most telecommunication companies now prefer to use optical fiber transmission medium for higher information bandwidth. The design of such a system involves many aspects such as the type of source to be used, the kind of fiber to be employed and detector. The designer must select from a set of device components to meet a given set of system requirements, one of which is the power budget analysis. In this work, four different optical fiber communication links under limited attenuation condition were studied. The design parameters include; power budget analysis, maximum link length. A power margin greater than four decibel was obtained; this indicates a healthy margin of signal strength. Keywords: Optical Networks, Fiber Optical Communication, Power Budget, Maximum link length


Programming is a core subject introduced in the first year of an Undergraduate Computer Science programme. Since programming is a core subject, it is a major concern that high attrition and failure rates continue to be reported in such courses. Evidence from the literature suggests that programming is cognitively demanding, and the solutions proposed have had minimal impact on students in introductory programming courses. However, in the literature on learning theory, there is evidence suggesting that the self-efficacy beliefs of students affect their engagement, and that their engagement affects their performance. In the literature on introductory programming courses, there is a lack of research examining the effect of self-efficacy on engagement, and the effect of engagement on the programming performance of students. This leaves a gap in programming research that this research seeks to fill. Based on student engagement frameworks in the literature on learning theory, a conceptual model was developed. To operationalise and validate the conceptual model within the context of learning programming, a study consisting of focus group interviews and a survey on students in introductory programming courses is proposed. The results of the survey will be analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques.


Background and Purpose— The benefit of carotid endarterectomy for preventing recurrent stroke is maximal when surgery is performed within 2 weeks after ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack; the benefit is reduced when surgery is delayed >2 weeks and essentially lost if delayed >3 months. Guidelines recommend endarterectomy within 2 weeks poststroke/transient ischemic attack for patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis. This study examined time to endarterectomy at designated stroke centers as a measure of evidence-based best practices for stroke prevention. Methods— From the Registry of the Canadian Stroke Network, we identified all consecutive patients presenting with acute ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack at 12 provincial stroke centers (Ontario, Canada, 2003 to 2006) and selected those with unilateral symptomatic carotid stenosis of moderate (50% to 69%) or severe (70% to 99%) degree. Using linkages to administrative databases, we identified patients who underwent carotid endarterectomy within 6 months after the symptomatic event and calculated the time intervals between the index event and surgery. We compared the timing of surgery according to age, sex, degree of stenosis, index event, geographic region, and year. Logistic regression assessed variables associated with early surgery. Results— One hundred five patients underwent endarterectomy for unilateral symptomatic carotid stenosis (50% to 99%) within 6 months of the index event. The median time from index event to surgery was 30 days (interquartile range, 10 to 81). Only one third (38 of 105) received endarterectomy within the recommended 2-week target timeframe, and in one fourth (26 of 105), surgery was delayed >3 months. Surgery within 2 weeks was more likely if the index event was a transient ischemic attack rather than a stroke. Access to early endarterectomy varied markedly between hospitals across the province and improved over time from 2003 to 2006. Conclusions— In this hospital-based cohort, the majority of patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy after a transient ischemic attack or stroke had surgery delayed well beyond the period of maximum effectiveness. To enhance secondary stroke prevention, greater efforts are needed to minimize delays to diagnosis and surgical treatment for patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis.


The ability of tonabersat to relieve the symptoms of migraine attacks with or without aura was evaluated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre, parallel-group study. Patients received 20 or 40 mg of tonabersat, or 50 mg of sumatriptan (positive control), or placebo at the onset of a moderate or severe attack. Headache intensity, relief and recurrence were recorded for 24 h after dosing. On the basis of primary or secondary efficacy measures, tonabersat did not provide a clinically or statistically significant advantage over placebo. Tonabersat generally was well tolerated and had no effect on vital signs, electrocardiogram recordings or laboratory values. The lack of efficacy may be a function of the slow absorption of tonabersat. As a consequence of slow absorption, daily administration of tonabersat as prophylaxis for migraine attacks is under investigation in ongoing studies.


Fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform (FJLT) and Sparse Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform (SJLT) are two important oblivious subspace embeddings. So far, the developments of these two methods are almost orthogonal. In this work, we propose an iterative algorithm for oblivious subspace embedding which makes a connection between these two methods. The proposed method is built upon an iterative implementation of FJLT and is equipped with several theoretically motivated modifications. One important strategy we adopt is the early stopping strategy. On the one hand, the early stopping strategy makes our algorithm fast. On the other hand, it results in a sparse embedding matrix. As a result, the proposed algorithm is not only faster than the FJLT, but also faster than the SJLT with the same degree of sparsity. We present a general theoretical framework to analyze the embedding property of sparse embedding methods, which is used to prove the embedding property of the proposed method. This framework is also of independent interest. Lastly, we conduct numerical experiments to verify the good performance of the proposed algorithm.


Sharing network data between UNIX and NT systems is becoming increasingly important as NT moves into areas previously serviced entirely by UNIX. One difficulty in sharing data between UNIX and NT is that their file system security models are quite different. NT file servers use access control lists (ACLs) that allow permissions to be specified for an arbitrary number of users and groups, while UNIX NFS servers use traditional UNIX permissions that provide control only for owner, group, and other. This paper describes a merged model in which a single file system can contain both files with NT-style ACLs and files with UNIX-style permissions. For native file service requests (NFS requests to UNIX-style files and NT requests to NT-style files) the security model exactly matches a UNIX or NT fileserver. For non-native requests, heuristics allow a reasonable level of access without compromising the security guarantees of the native model.


Internal gravity waves influence a variety of phenomena in Earth's stratosphere and upper troposphere, including aviation weather turbulence and circulations that set high‐altitude distributions of ozone and greenhouse gases. Here coupling between the dominant mode of subseasonal variability of the equatorial atmosphere—the Madden‐Julian oscillation (MJO)—and subtropical stratospheric gravity waves created by flow over topography is documented for the first time. We use three different meteorological data sets to show that during boreal winter, the MJO modifies the vertical distribution of internal gravity wave drag induced by the Tibetan Plateau and the deposition of momentum into the stratosphere. This interaction, however, has no significant impact on the vertically integrated wave drag. Our findings raise new questions about how future changes in tropical rainfall might affect stratospheric variability and highlight the importance of local processes over Tibet for the circulations that set distributions of climatically important high‐altitude trace gases.


In this paper, we apply the NetFV and NetVLAD layers for the end-to-end language identification task. NetFV and NetVLAD layers are the differentiable implementations of the standard Fisher Vector and Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (VLAD) methods, respectively. Both of them can encode a sequence of feature vectors into a fixed dimensional vector which is very important to process those variable-length utterances. We first present the relevances and differences between the classical i-vector and the aforementioned encoding schemes. Then, we construct a flexible end-to-end framework including a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture and an encoding layer (NetFV or NetVLAD) for the language identification task. Experimental results on the NIST LRE 2007 close-set task show that the proposed system achieves significant EER reductions against the conventional i-vector baseline and the CNN temporal average pooling system, respectively.


Hardness magnification reduces major complexity separations (such as EXP ⊈ NC1) to proving lower bounds for some natural problem Q against weak circuit models. Several recent works [11, 13, 14, 40, 42, 43, 46] have established results of this form. In the most intriguing cases, the required lower bound is known for problems that appear to be significantly easier than Q, while Q itself is susceptible to lower bounds, but these are not yet sufficient for magnification. In this work, we provide more examples of this phenomenon and investigate the prospects of proving new lower bounds using this approach. In particular, we consider the following essential questions associated with the hardness magnification program: – Does hardness magnification avoid the natural proofs barrier of Razborov and Rudich [51]? – Can we adapt known lower-bound techniques to establish the desired lower bound for Q? We establish that some instantiations of hardness magnification overcome the natural proofs barrier in the following sense: slightly superlinear-size circuit lower bounds for certain versions of the minimum circuit-size problem imply the non-existence of natural proofs. As the non-existence of natural proofs implies the non-existence of efficient learning algorithms, we show that certain magnification theorems not only imply strong worst-case circuit lower bounds but also rule out the existence of efficient learning algorithms. Hardness magnification might sidestep natural proofs, but we identify a source of difficulty when trying to adapt existing lower-bound techniques to prove strong lower bounds via magnification. This is captured by a locality barrier: existing magnification theorems unconditionally show that the problems Q considered above admit highly efficient circuits extended with small fan-in oracle gates, while lower-bound techniques against weak circuit models quite often easily extend to circuits containing such oracles. This explains why direct adaptations of certain lower bounds are unlikely to yield strong complexity separations via hardness magnification.


Background and Objectives: Blood transfusion is a core service within health care systems and individuals who donate their blood in the treatment of sick human for different conditions such as surgery, accident, delivery and treatment of different diseases. The donation of blood by voluntary non-remunerated blood donors is recognized as being crucial for the safety and sustainability of national blood supplies. The study is carried out to find out the prevalence of blood donors and to explore the knowledge, attitude and practice on voluntary blood donation of medical students. Material and Methods: Data were collected from a semi-structured questionnaire and technique was  self-administered  questionnaire  to  know  the  level  of  knowledge,  attitude  and  practices  of blood donation and analyze by using SPSS software among 167 medical students of Shree Medical and  Technical  College,  Chitwan.  The scoring system in knowledge was included.  Attitude was assessed by using 3-point Likert scale.  Results: Majority of respondents (92.8%) had heard about voluntary blood donation and almost all (97.2%) respondents knew the correct meaning of voluntary blood donation. About 38.9% had poor  knowledge  regarding  voluntary  blood  donation  and  61.1%  of  the  respondents  had  good knowledge  on  voluntary  blood  donation  and  mean  knowledge  was  found   to  be  56.17%.  Those respondents who had work experience had significantly low level of knowledge than who did not have work experience (p = 0.0025). Conclusion: To increase the prevalence of voluntary blood donation, specific campaigns involving interactive  awareness  sessions  on  blood  donation  should  be  organized,  targeting  the  youth, motivating them to become regular voluntary blood donors should be conducted. Efforts must be undertaken  to  bring  the  knowledge  and  positive  attitude  towards  students  into  application  in future to achieve the goal of 100% VBD. Janaki Medical College Journal of Medical Sciences (2015) Vol. 3 (2): 21-28


State of the art Speech Recognition systems use statistical language modeling and in particular N-gram models to represent the language structure. The Arabic language has a rich morphology, which motivates the introduction of morphological constraints in the language model. Class-based N-gram models have shown satisfactory results, especially for language model adaptation and training from reduced datasets. They were also proven quite effective in their use of memory space. In this paper, we investigate a new morphological classbased language model. Morphological rules are used to derive the different words in a class from their stem. As morphological analyzer, a rule-based stemming method is proposed for the Arabic language. The language model has been evaluated on a database composed of articles from Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar for the years 1998 and 1999. In addition, a linear interpolation between the N-gram model and the morphological model is also evaluated. Preliminary experiments detailed in this paper show satisfactory results.


Most statistical methods for quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping focus on a single phenotype. However, multiple phenotypes are commonly measured, and recent technological advances have greatly simplified the automated acquisition of numerous phenotypes, including function-valued phenotypes, such as growth measured over time. While methods exist for QTL mapping with function-valued phenotypes, they are generally computationally intensive and focus on single-QTL models. We propose two simple, fast methods that maintain high power and precision and are amenable to extensions with multiple-QTL models using a penalized likelihood approach. After identifying multiple QTL by these approaches, we can view the function-valued QTL effects to provide a deeper understanding of the underlying processes. Our methods have been implemented as a package for R, funqtl.


Ischaemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is the leading cause of injury seen in the liver following transplantation. IRI also causes injury following liver surgery and haemodynamic shock. The first cells within the liver to be injured by IRI are the liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSEC). Recent evidence suggests that LSEC co-ordinate and regulates the livers response to a variety of injuries. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the cyto-protective cellular process of autophagy is a key regulator of IRI. In particular LSEC autophagy may be an essential gatekeeper to the development of IRI. The recent availability of liver perfusion devices has allowed for the therapeutic targeting of autophagy to reduce IRI. In particular normothermic machine liver perfusion (NMP-L) allow the delivery of pharmacological agents to donor livers whilst maintaining physiological temperature and hepatic flow rates. In this review we summarise the current understanding of endothelial autophagy and how this may be manipulated during NMP-L to reduce liver IRI.


Weight management services in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) are on the increase, partly due to rising rates of patients classified as obese. Those attending such services are held accountable, on some level, for their weight, although this issue is rarely addressed in clinical research in this area. By contrast, critical social research on obesity considers blame a prominent issue though has yet to examine this in situ, in interactions between patients and health professionals. This paper uses discursive psychology to examine how blame is managed in the turn-by-turn interaction in group meetings within NHS weight management treatment. The data corpus comprises of digital audio recordings of 27 discussion-based group meetings between patients and practitioners in a specialist weight-management service in central Scotland. The analysis focuses on those moments in which patients appear to resist the notion that they are responsible for their weight gain. Such moments are typically managed by patients in one of two ways: By denying having performed the blameworthy activity, or locating the blame as outside of individual control. Both strategies, however, rely on an individualistic concept of weight that reifies the medical model, while at the same time, troubling that model and its efficacy. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of these discursive practices and their relevance within the field.


Men and women in advertising - a study of the ads in the magazines Cafe and Elle is an essay in media and communication studies covering 15hp. The author examines what is considered masculinity and femininity in a variety of advertisements, and which products are linked to masculinity and femininity. Besides this, the author also examines the production of happiness, and how this may differ between men and women. Although stereotypes, myths and metaphors are examined. The essay is examined on the basis of gender theory, and theories about stereotypes and myths. This is examined by using both a less extensive quantitative approach and a more detailed qualitative method. Semiotics is the qualitative method used, which include denotation and connotation that is used as some of the tools. The result of the study shows that masculinity and femininity is something that is separate from each other. Different stereotypes, myths and metaphors could also be found in the material. One of the conclusions is that while masculinity seems to be something that is associated with doing something, femininity seems to be something that is associated with being something. Also happiness is something that differs between men and women.


Growth of ice on surfaces poses a challenge for both organisms and for devices that come into contact with liquids below the freezing point. Resistance of some organisms to ice formation and growth, either in subtidal environments (e.g. Antarctic anchor ice), or in environments with moisture and cold air (e.g. plants, intertidal) begs examination of how this is accomplished. Several factors may be important in promoting or mitigating ice formation. As a start, here we examine the effect of surface texture alone. We tested four candidate surfaces, inspired by hard-shelled marine invertebrates and constructed using a three-dimensional printing process. We screened biological and artifical samples for ice formation and accretion in submerged conditions using previous methods, and developed a new test to examine ice formation from surface droplets as might be encountered in environments with moist, cold air. It appears surface texture plays only a small role in delaying the onset of ice formation: a stripe feature (corresponding to patterning found on valves of blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, or on the spines of the Antarctic sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri) slowed ice formation an average of 25% compared to a grid feature (corresponding to patterning found on sub-polar butterclams, Saxidomas nuttalli). The geometric dimensions of the features have only a small (∼6%) effect on ice formation. Surface texture affects ice formation, but does not explain by itself the large variation in ice formation and species-specific ice resistance observed in other work. This suggests future examination of other factors, such as material elastic properties and coatings, and their interaction with surface pattern.


The Groningen Institute of Archaeology has conducted field walking surveys in the northern part of the Pontine plain, on the southwestern margins of the Lepine mountains, since 1987. The results of these surveys have only partially been published in accessible journals, and in a number of different formats. Archaeological knowledge and methodology has advanced during that period, and therefore the older studies must be reassessed as well. This article draws together and reassesses all the site-based information that is available from literature and fieldwork, including that of Italian and Dutch studies dating before 1987. All sites are classified according to their observed characteristics, and presented in the catalogue. The classification system itself is explained, and the site patterns are presented and discussed in chronological detail with attention to the biases caused by the variations in land use/land cover and in the intensity of archaeological research across the landscape.


Culturability and viability techniques such as plate count on solid
agar (PC), Most Probable Number (MPN) and Direct Viable Count-Fluorescence in Situ Hybridation (DVC FISH) were used
to study the inactivation of Salmonella
typhimurium by photo-Fenton process at pH 5.5. In the presence of only
simulated solar irradiation (500 W·m-2), S. typhimurim showed that both
culturability measured by MPN and viability (measured by DVC FISH) underwent
just a slight decreasing of 2 and 1 log respectively after 240 min of light
exposition while culturability measured by PC did not show any change. Results
after 48 h of dark conditions did not reveal re-growth. However, when
experiment was carried out in the presence of 2 mg L-1 of Fe3+ and 20 mg L-1 of H2O2 and pH 5.5, culturability was strongly affected after 240 min of simulated
solar irradiation; nevertheless, viability was only slightly altered (~1 log).
During dark period of 48 h changes on culturability and viability were not
observed. On the other hand, it was also found that sugar metabolism was
affected rather the amino-acids in S.
typhimurium cells irradiated at different times upon photo-Fenton conditions.
These findings might suggest for the first time that photo-Fenton process at pH
5.5 could induce viable but nonculturable state (VBNC) on waterborne S. typhimurium and that probably sugar
metabolism damage could activate the VBNC state.


The integration of rule based techniques in traditional real-time systems is a promising approach to cope with the growing complexity of real-world applications. Real-time expert systems are on-line knowledge-based systems that combine analytical process models with conventional process control to monitor complex industrial processes and to assist in problem identification. Intelligent system for alarm diagnosis and root cause analysis and operator guidance in process plants is an important area for which the real time expert system is being used. Fault monitoring and prediction is of prime importance in a Power Plant. This paper proposes an expert system to aid plant operation engineers in diagnosing the cause of abnormal water / steam parameters in a Fossil fuel Power station. The diagnostic decisions are written in the form of fault trees. Fault trees fare developed or all steam water cycle parameters. This system enables the operator to take preventive measures in time, avoiding costly outages, in turn increasing the plant availability and efficiency. The proposed system has been successfully implemented in a thermal power plant on PI Process book environment of OSI soft and is written in Microsoft Visual Basic.


Engineering design courses at the undergraduate level pose substantial challenges to novice as well as veteran faculty, especially when implementing open-ended design problems to facilitate student learning. This paper presents a novel perspective on strategies and techniques used to teach undergraduate engineering design based on experience gained from mentoring FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams. FLL is designed to provide children age 9 to 14 with practical, hands-on experience in basic engineering design and computer programming. With guidance from mentors and coaches, teams are tasked with designing, building, and programming Lego ® Mindstorms robots to perform specific objectives. Judging is based on the performance of the robot, a team presentation, teamwork, and a team discussion regarding the robot design. This paper describes FLL mentoring experience, and paradigms employed by FLL, in the context of teaching engineering design at the undergraduate level. Parallels are drawn between the FLL mentoring experiences and similar problems encountered in project-based undergraduate design courses. Improved teaching and evaluation paradigms are presented with the intent of enhancing the undergraduate design experience. FLL mentoring experience will be presented at two distinct team levels; one at the elementary school and one at the middle school level. Experiences at both levels are discussed with respect to their relevance to undergraduate engineering design and associated strategies that facilitate their implementation.


A male pinscher dog weighing 4.2 kg with a history of intermittent fever, inappetence, weight loss, and weakness occurring periodically for 5 months showed Anaplasma (Ehrlichia) platys inclusions within the platelets of peripheral blood smears. The diagnosis was confirmed using a nested polymerase chain reaction. The dog was treated with doxycycline at a dose of 5 mg/kg twice daily for 21 days. This study is the first case of A. platys infection in Turkey.


Ascorbic acid (ASC) consumption is negatively correlated with the incidence of certain cancers. This is a review and update of the theory, which has recently been neglected, that this negative correlation is due to ASC inhibition of in vivo nitrosation. The review covers the older literature on ASC inhibition of carcinogenesis by nitrite administered with amines or amides and more recent studies on ASC inhibition of nitrosation by bacteria, nitrogen oxides, and activated macrophages; the role of oxygen in ASC inhibition of gastric nitrosation; ASC inhibition of N-nitrosoproline formation in subjects from areas with high incidences of certain cancers; dose and temporal relationships between ASC and in vivo nitrosation in humans; the role of substances other than ASC in the inhibition of nitrosation by vegetables and fruits; and the active secretion of ASC into the human stomach.


A four-level model which takes account of the polarization of the laser field by including the spin sublevels of the conduction and valence bands of a semiconductor allows us to introduce vector rate equations which account for the polarization degree of freedom of the laser emission. Analysis of these rate equations and their extension to include transverse degrees of freedom provides important physical insight into the nature of polarization instabilities in surface-emitting semiconductor lasers. In the absence of transverse effects the model predicts a marginally stable linearly polarized state. The type of dynamical response of the polarization degrees of freedom is linked to the relative time scale of spontaneous-emission and spin-relaxation processes. With transverse effects included, we predict the existence of stable transverse spatially homogeneous intensity outputs with arbitrary direction of linear polarization in the transverse plane. The stability of the off-axis emission solutions to long-wavelength perturbations is investigated and, in addition to an Eckhaus instability associated with a global phase, we predict a polarization instability associated with a relative phase of the complex field vector. The role of phase anisotropy in the laser cavity is explored close to threshold and we predict that it stabilizes two preferred orthogonal directions of polarization, which, however, are discriminated in their stability properties by transverse effects.


An approach to automatically detect bacteria division with temporal models is presented. To understand how bacteria migrate and proliferate to form complex multicellular behaviours such as biofilms, it is desirable to track individual bacteria and detect cell division events. Unlike eukaryotic cells, prokaryotic cells such as bacteria lack distinctive features, causing bacteria division difficult to detect in a single image frame. Furthermore, bacteria may detach, migrate close to other bacteria and may orientate themselves at an angle to the horizontal plane. Our system trains a hidden conditional random field (HCRF) model from tracked and aligned bacteria division sequences. The HCRF model classifies a set of image frames as division or otherwise. The performance of our HCRF model is compared with a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The results show that a HCRF classifier outperforms a HMM classifier. From 2D bright field microscopy data, it is a challenge to separate individual bacteria and associate observations to tracks. Automatic detection of sequences with bacteria division will improve tracking accuracy.


The aim of this paper is to provide the results of own researches into freeshort fatigue crack initiation and growth in residual stress field induced by surface laserhardening or by shot peening. Comparable study was carried out primary for non-treatedmedium carbon steel specimens in air and at room temperature. The high cycle fatigue testswere conducted under fully reversed torsion for smooth both non-treated and treatedspecimens. The paper consists of two parts: first part presents the experimental results ofthese studies whereas the second one derives the proposition of short crack growth descriptionin the aspect of probabilistic approach.


We consider in this paper local sensor quantizer design for large-scale bandwidth and/or energy constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) operating in fading channels. In particular, under the Neyman-Pears on framework, we address the design of binary local sensor quantizers for a binary hypothesis problem in the asymptotic regime where the number of sensors is large. Motivated by the sensor censoring idea for reduced communication rate, each sensor either transmits `1' to a fusion center or remains silent. By adopting energy detector as the fusion rule, we develop a procedure to obtain local sensor threshold that maximizes the Kullback-Leibler distance of the distributions of the fusion statistic under the two hypotheses. The proposed quantizer design is well suited for the emerging large scale resource-constrained WSNs applications. Numerical results based on Gaussian and exponential observations are presented to demonstrate the design procedure


The concept of corporate vision has been receiving considerable attention in the strategy scholarship. A clear and lofty organizational vision can provide direction to a company and can positively impact its ability to succeed. Yet research on vision at the project level has been curiously lacking. The purpose of this research is to define project vision, discuss its components and explore its impact on successful new product development. After studying the vision on a series of 13 innovations at three companies (Apple, IBM and HP), we identified several components of an effective project vision that include vision clarity, vision agreement/support and vision stability and assessed their impact on new product success. To confirm the validity and generalizability of our observations, we then tested these insights on 509 new product teams from a wide variety of firms. We found that an effective vision varies depending on the innovation type - incremental, evolutionary and radical. Our results demonstrate that vision clarity is positively associated with success in evolutionary (market or technical), and radical innovations, but not for incremental projects. Vision stability is positively associated with success in incremental and evolutionary market innovations; and vision support is positively associated with success in incremental, and evolutionary technical innovations.


Based on the complexation of phenylboronic acid (PBA) with Alizarin Red S (ARS), we developed a new chemosensor for the detection of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in aqueous media. This platform has demonstrated its ability to detect H2O2via colorimetric, fluorometric, and electrochemical measurements. The experimental observations reveal that the system displays a red-shifted visible colour change, on–off fluorescence response indicating release of indicator (ARS) and turn-on electrochemical signal indicating generation of phenol, after reaction with H2O2. With this work we have demonstrated that our reaction-based indicator displacement assay (RIA) systems, can be employed as an assay for H2O2 and hydrogen peroxide-related species for environmental and physiological detection.


ABSTRACT The role and metabolism of indole-3-acetic acid in gram-negative bacteria is well documented, but little is known about indole-3-acetic acid biosynthesis and regulation in gram-positive bacteria. The phytopathogen Rhodococcus fascians, a gram-positive organism, incites diverse developmental alterations, such as leafy galls, on a wide range of plants. Phenotypic analysis of a leafy gall suggests that auxin may play an important role in the development of the symptoms. We show here for the first time that R. fascians produces and secretes the auxin indole-3-acetic acid. Interestingly, whereas noninfected-tobacco extracts have no effect, indole-3-acetic acid synthesis is highly induced in the presence of infected-tobacco extracts when tryptophan is not limiting. Indole-3-acetic acid production by a plasmid-free strain shows that the biosynthetic genes are located on the bacterial chromosome, although plasmid-encoded genes contribute to the kinetics and regulation of indole-3-acetic acid biosynthesis. The indole-3-acetic acid intermediates present in bacterial cells and secreted into the growth media show that the main biosynthetic route used by R. fascians is the indole-3-pyruvic acid pathway with a possible rate-limiting role for indole-3-ethanol. The relationship between indole-3-acetic acid production and the symptoms induced by R. fascians is discussed.


Interest in soil health (or soil quality) by producers, conservationists, environmentalists, agricultural scientists, policy makers, and many other groups has increased exponentially during the past five years. Yet questions remain: can soil health be measured at the field or farm scale, and can that data be used to improve land management decisions and thus help protect, conserve, and restore our fragile soil resources? Our opinion, based on three years of experience through the Soil Health Partnership (SHP), is that the answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes! Recognizing that several other public and private groups are now expressing interest in assessing soil health, our goals are to (1) summarize several of the SHP lessons learned during the past three years, (2) provide guidelines for future on-farm soil health studies, and (3) share some of our preliminary soil health assessment findings. EVOLUTION OF THE SOIL HEALTH PARTNERSHIP The SHP is a farmer-led initiative of the National Corn Growers Association developed in 2014 with financial and technical support from Monsanto, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), United Soybean Board, Walton Family Foundation, Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, Environmental Defense Fund, and Nature Conservancy. The SHP defines soil health as…


This Senate report reviews amendments to how mobile device and online computer games are classified, and recommends these amendments be passed. On 3 November 2011, the Senate referred the provisions of the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (Online Games) Bill 2011 (Bill) to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee (committee) for inquiry and report by 14 March 2012. Purpose of the Bill: Mobile device and online games are regulated as computer games under the National Classification Scheme, a cooperative scheme between the Commonwealth, and the states and territories. Decisions on the classification of publications, films and computer games are made pursuant to the processes set out in the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 (Cth) (Classification Act), and the sale, demonstration and advertising of this material is regulated by state and territory laws. The Explanatory Memorandum (EM) to the Bill notes that consumers now have access to an increasing number and range of computer games on a variety of platforms including on mobile devices and other network services. The National Classification Scheme, however, was not designed to cater for the classification of these types of computer games.


Since the 2011 emergence of the San Francisco Bay Area "Tech Boom 2.0," anti-eviction activists of the region have been caught amidst a maelstrom of media wars involving an amalgam of real estate and technology speculative analyses. As tensions grow, the media itself becomes increasingly polarized, as some journals and journalists side with simplified renditions of tech being good or bad, of development being right or wrong, of housing justice activists being outmoded or salvific.
This article attends to this media polarization, studying likely and unlikely alliances between journalists, media sources, and advocates of various urban futurities. At the same time, it looks to alternative media arts and hybrid technologies that have arisen precisely to theorize contemporary realities of the region, from critical cartography digital projects to projection art productions. In doing so, I ask, how have innovative media arts projects such as that of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, People Power Media, and the Saito Group arisen out of both a media dearth and surplus, not only furthering community knowledge production but also shattering dialectical narratives clung to by other media sources? Furthermore, I question, how are entanglements and polarizations across varying media production constituted by, and constitutive of, formations of class, race, and gender? Drawing on cultural and media analysis, feminist technology studies, and critical race and ethnicity studies, this paper situates the technological media crisis and eruption of the Bay Area present alongside the spatial materialization of technological growth, looking at how technologically driven geographic mutation both mediates and is mediated by emergent media technologies.


Krüppel-like factors (KLFs), such as KLF4, KLF2, KLF5 and KLF15, have been extensively investigated in multi-cancers. However, KLF16, a member of KLFs, hasn't been well identified in cancer, especially in gastric cancer (GC). Here, we investigated the roles of KLF16 in GC. In present study, we found that KLF16 expression levels were significantly up-regulated in GC tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues both in protein and mRNA levels by using immunohistochemistry assays (IHC) and real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). And KLF16 expression levels were positively correlated to tumor size, invasion depth, lymphatic metastasis and TNM stage. Furthermore, KLF16 expression also could predict prognosis in patients with GC. Moreover, the knock-down of KLF16 could significantly suppress proliferation via increasing p21 expression and decreasing CDK4 expression in GC cell lines. In summary, these findings demonstrate that KLF16 plays a significant role in GC progression and could be a new therapeutic target for GC patients.


: With the advancement in information and communication technology (ICT), it has become a vital component of human's life. But this technology has brought a lot of threats in cyber world. These threats increase the chances of network vulnerabilities to attack the system in the network. To avoid these attacks there are various methods in which one is Intrusion Detection System (IDS). In IDS, there are various methods used in data mining and existing technique is not strong enough to detect the attack proficiently. Weighted Average One-Dependence Estimator (WAODE) is an enhanced version of AODE and in this technique; we have to assign weights to each attribute. The dependent attributes having lesser weights by defining the degree of the dependencies. This paper deals with a novel ensemble classifier (WAODE+ RepTree) for intrusion detection system. Proposed ensemble classifier is built using two well-known algorithms WAODE and RepTree. This tree improves accuracy and reduces the error rate. The performance of proposed ensemble classifier (WAODE+ RepTree) is analyzed on Kyoto data set. Proposed ensemble classifier outperforms WAODE and RepTree algorithms and efficiently classifies the network traffic as normal or malicious.


Retention reservoirs are one of the basic elements of water management. Multifunctional, they are used for flood protection, drought prevention and other purposes. Water reservoirs can also play a fundamental role in improving navigability on the lower section of the Vistula River from the Włocławek barrage to the mouth of the Gdansk Bay. Their implementation is a determinant for the possibility of restoring the economic role of the river in question. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to determine the current navigation conditions and the state of the regulatory buildings on the Lower Vistula. The investments necessary to achieve international parameters of the waterway were also determined, together with the calculation of financial benefits related to their implementation. This was possible based on the conducted bathymetric measurements, spatial analyses, economic calculations and queries of the obtained studies. It was established that fairway depths of 1.4 m are ensured for 180 days per year on average. On the other hand, the construction of five barrages (Siarzewo, Solec Kujawski, Chełmno, Grudziądz and Gniew) will make it possible to achieve at least a navigability class IV (international) on the section of the Vistula River waterway. In addition, the barrages will enable the retention of 1.2 billion m3 of water and will be associated with financial benefits such as shipping use, flood protection and counteracting the effects of drought. On this account, annual revenues may amount to approximately PLN 3.5 billion. This shows that the construction of the reservoirs is profitable, and the proposed solutions should be implemented in the context of sustainable water management and adaptation to climate change.


There have been several decades in the study of equilibria for optimizations related to road traffic due to its importance in practical applications and theoretical challenges. Wardrop (1952) studied the theoretical properties from mathematical and statistical viewpoints; since then many publications have been developed in this area. The classic book by Beckmann, McGuire and Winsten (1956) provides us equilibrium of traffic optimization with travel cost function. Quandt (1967) and Schneider (1968) first studied the equilibrium problem for traffic network with multicriteria. Dafermos (1972) studied traffic assignment problem in a network of multiclass-user model with travel units were divided into different classes, and an algorithm was given in this paper for optimizing the traffic patterns. Toll policies of the traffic network for multiclass-user were also studied (Dafermos, 1973). The conditions for the existence, uniqueness and stability of equilibria were studied by Smith (1979). Fisk introduced a network optimization problem for the traffic assignment with congestion effects, and the solution was then shown to be an equilibrium (Fisk, 1980). Wardrop's equilibrium principle has been generalized to vector space (Chen & Yen, 1993), but the equivalence between the traffic equilibrium and variational inequality does not hold any more. Therefore, it is significant to study the properties of equilibria of traffic network in different settings. Daniel et al (1999) studied the existence, characterization and computation of a special traffic network in a Banach space setting. Khanh and Luu (2004 & 2005) introduced the weak and strong Wardrop equilibria for multivalued cost functions and generalized the vector equilibrium principle to capacity constraint of paths. Recently, Lin (2010a & b) has developed some methods for equilibria with capacity constraints of arcs and (weak) vector equilibrium principle. Lin and Yu (2005) have also considered the related quasi-equilibrium problems. There are also more publications related to vector equilibrium flows of multiclass multicriteria traffic equilibria (Nagurney, 2000; Nagurney & Dong, 2002; Yang & Huang, 2002; Li & Chen, 2006). More references are available for this area and weighted equilibrium methods (Li et al, 2008; Yang & Goh, 1997; Browder, 1968; Fan, 1961). There are three important elements in the real traffic network: (1) multiple classes of vehicles, (2) multiple criteria, (3) constraints for capacity. All the models studied in the above papers or books lack at least one of the three elements. Therefore it is important to study traffic model with these three elements. We call it multiclass multicriteria traffic equilibrium problem with capacity constraint of arc. The multiclass multicriteria traffic equilibrium problem with capacity constrain of arc. (MMTEPCCA) can be treated as a combination of the multiclass multicriteria traffic equilibrium problem and the multicriteria traffic problem with capacity constraint of arc. *Supported by The National Science Foundation of China (11271389) and The Science Foundation of CQ CSTC (2011AC6104). Zhi Lin Chongqing Jiaotong University, China


Hospitalization is admission to hospital, either planned or due to unexpected health emergency. In Indonesia, the percentage of preschoolers being hospitalized in 2014 was 15.26%. Hospitalization causes anxiety reactions in children. Therapeutic communication is one solution that nurses can do to reduce anxiety and stress to hospitalized children. The therapeutic communication focused on healing patients, and it was a professional communication conducted by nurses. This research aims to determine the relationship between therapeutic communication and level of anxiety caused by hospitalization in children aged 3-6 years. Cross-sectional studies were applied to the 30 respondents obtained from quota sampling. The data was collected using questionnaires. The valid criteria results using Pearson product moment formula was defined if the value of r count ranged from 0.407-0.718, and the reliability test used Cronbach's alpha of value 0.927. The results showed that the therapeutic communication of nurses was fair (60%) and the category of patients' anxiety was severe (53.3%). Chi-square test was used at a significance level of 0.05. A p-value of 0.016 was obtained, indicating significant relationship between the therapeutic communication of nurses and the level of anxiety among hospitalized children. Conclusion: More therapeutic communication was needed, especially in communicating medical information before medical treatment. To improve therapeutic communication skills, nurses should be encouraged to participate in therapeutic communication training.


The author discusses key findings of a series of video walks developed as part of her practice-based PhD research (2011–2014). Four video walks were produced for handheld projectors and tested in four different public spaces. The first video walks (The Surface Inside, 2011; I-Walk, 2012) were guided, and only one handheld projector was available. The latter (Walk-itch, 2013; (wh)ere land, 2014) were created for multiple handheld projectors, offering participants a cocreative role. Onsite observations revealed a shift in participant engagement between earlier and later video walks. A threefold method for analyzing audiovisual documentation also emerged during the research.


Despite recent successes of large pre-trained language models in solving reasoning tasks, their inference capabilities remain opaque. We posit that such models can be made more interpretable by explicitly generating interim inference rules, and using them to guide the generation of task-specific textual outputs. In this paper we present Coins, a recursive inference framework that i) iteratively reads context sentences, ii) dynamically generates contextualized inference rules, encodes them, and iii) uses them to guide task-specific output generation. We apply to a Narrative Story Completion task that asks a model to complete a story with missing sentences, to produce a coherent story with plausible logical connections, causal relationships, and temporal dependencies. By modularizing inference and sentence generation steps in a recurrent model, we aim to make reasoning steps and their effects on next sentence generation transparent. Our automatic and manual evaluations show that the model generates better story sentences than SOTA baselines, especially in terms of coherence. We further demonstrate improved performance over strong pre-trained LMs in generating commonsense inference rules. The recursive nature of holds the potential for controlled generation of longer sequences.


1. Introduction In corrosion protection it is usual to differentiate between inert and active pigments. Inert pigments are those which, according to present theories, have a mere barrier function in the film. Active pigments, on the other hand, reduce or prevent corrosion by the formation of passivating ions, as chromates do, or by the formation of metal soaps like lead, and zinc pigments. Long‐term work with inert pigments in primers has shown that they, too, influence the performance of primers in a variety of ways — such obvious factors like differing water‐soluble salts contents or strongly varying critical pigment volume concentrations being left out of account.


It's time for teachers to consider themselves as learners in ICT-rich learning environments and to become more aware of factors that enable their learning in such environments. The notion of teachers as learners in ICT-rich environments is not new but the focus is usually on school teachers and formal professional development, rather than teachers in universities learning as part of the change-of-practice process. This research investigated the enablers that were identified by teacher educators as most significant in the development of their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) while transforming their teaching practice. As part of the evaluation of the effectiveness of strategies implemented to improve graduating pre-service teacher ability to demonstrate innovative use of ICT in education, Most Significant Change Stories were compiled from focus group discussions with teacher educators in four curriculum areas, English, Mathematics, Science and History. The teacher educators were provided with support, an ICT Pedagogy Officer, as they planned, implemented and evaluated innovative ICT-rich learning experiences. The enablers identified by the teacher educators as contributing most significantly to their learning are explained. Findings show that there are common themes across these enablers and that not all enablers are factors over which the teacher educator has control.


Accurate demand forecasts are critical for logistics enterprises to improve the efficiency of their resource usage. Demand forecasts of logistics enterprises are closely related to the overall social environment, local economic development, related industries development, seasonal demand change, and the development of the enterprises. Therefore, a direct analytical model is difficult to obtain. Based on the analysis of the historical data of a typical shipping company, this paper presents a time series prediction model for logistics enterprises in the goods traffic forecasts, and through experimental analysis and comparison study, it found that the method proposed in this paper has higher prediction accuracy. Thus, the proposed model can be used to forecast the demand of the freight transport companies and has a spread value.


Abstract High school underrepresented minority students in the US are at an increased risk of dropping out of the STEM pipeline. Based on expectancy-value theory, we examined if Latino students' perception of support from parents, siblings/cousins, teachers, and friends in 10th grade predicted their science ability self-concepts and values, which in turn predicted their classroom engagement. Survey data were collected from 104 Latino high school students and their science teachers. The findings suggest that adolescents' perceptions of overall support and home-based support predicted adolescents' science ability self-concepts at 10th grade while controlling for their 9th grade self-concepts. Although adolescents reported high support from teachers, teacher or school-based support alone was not a strong correlate of their motivational beliefs. Perceived support was indirectly related to classroom engagement through adolescents' ability self-concepts. Feeling supported across home and school may be necessary to sustain adolescents' science motivational beliefs and, in turn, their science classroom engagement.


The main objective of this study was to identify factors affecting growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania as an effort to contribute knowledge in addressing matters related to growth of enterprises. The contribution of SMEs to economic development is a concern world wide by governments and private sectors. The study focused on Small and Medium Food Processor Enterprises (SMFPEs) in Coast region. Coast region was chosen as an area of study because there is substantial production of raw materials which if well processed could add value to the agricultural produces and reduce post harvest losses. To achieve the intended
objective, four hypotheses that rested on four major factors namely; owner managers' business knowledge and skills, accesses to capital, product access and competitive in the market and compliance to the Tanzania Food, Drugs and
Cosmetics Act, 2003 standards were developed and tested.
Data were collected from a cross sectional sample of 36 SMFPEs from four districts of the Coast region namely; Kibaha, Bagamoyo, Kisarawe and Mukulanga by personal administration of the questionnaire to the owner managers. The five point likert rating scale was used to questions that were used to test the hypotheses. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in the analysis of the collected data. The decision for accepting or rejecting the hypotheses was based on a t-test at 1% level of significance whereby the cut off point was an average score above 3 as the predetermined average. Furthermore multiple linear regressions at 5% level of significance were employed in testing the hypotheses. The study findings indicated that; owner managers' business knowledge and skills, accesses to capital, product access and competitive in the market and compliance to the Tanzania Food, Drugs
and Cosmetics Act, 2003 standards has positive influence to growth of SMFPEs. The null hypotheses were all accepted with statistical one sample mean t-test and multiple regressions at two sided 5% level of significance. The research findings conforms to the studies done in other parts of the world as provided in the reviewed
literature.


A new type of enterprise network based on B2B website platform, which is expanding constantly, has appeared now. Such new enterprise network based on B2B website platform is different from traditional network in competition and cooperation among members, dynamics of enterprise network and scope of network. An enterprise joins a B2B website platform in order to complement each other's advantages and create competitiveness. According to the basic features of B2B platforms, we selected 4 indexes including correlativity, centrality, scope and stability of network to analyze the effect of B2B enterprise network on enterprise performance.


Human beings have evolved in steps so that our consciousness has three major components - procedural learning of habits and skills, semantic learning of facts and propositions, and self-awareness of an identity that develops over time and place. Consequently, human consciousness involves growth in our subjective awareness integrating these three aspects of learning and memory. Contemporary psychiatry is substantially impaired by an anti-spiritual bias that is implicit in operational approaches to diagnosis, research, and treatment. Human subjectivity cannot be adequately deconstructed into a collection of mutually independent objects that are free of any psychosocial context, as is usually assumed in a "Chinese-menu" approach to diagnosis and structured interviewing. Materialistic perspectives predispose people to have an outlook of separateness that impairs the well-being of both mental health professionals and their patients. Progress in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment requires a person-centered approach that respects and appreciates human subjectivity and promotes the cultivation of human virtues like hope, love, and courage, along with judicious use of other psychobiological methods of treatment. Healthy functioning requires the development of self-transcendence in addition to self-directedness and cooperativeness. Without self-transcendence, people are consuming more resources than the earth can replenish. The pursuit of individual well-being in the absence of collective well-being is a self-destructive illusion. Consequently contemporary psychiatry needs to focus its attention on understanding human consciousness in a balanced ternary way rather than trying to reduce people to separate material objects.


A study is reported comparing the electrical and optical properties of CdTe solar cells, prepared using CdS and CdSe buffer layers, to investigate defects in the bulk and interface, carrier transport, and recombination. Temperature dependent capacitance–voltage measurement and admittance spectroscopy were used to extract carrier concentration, resistivity, charge carrier mobility, and their temperature dependence. The authors identify the presence of two defect signatures corresponding to carrier freeze-out and the formation of a Schottky back-contact barrier. The back-contact barrier height (≈300 meV) extracted from the temperature dependent current density–voltage (JVT) experiment was confirmed by conventional admittance spectroscopy. The activation energies of mobility (resistivity) are 101.2 ± 2.5 meV (92.6 ± 2.3 meV) and 84.7 ± 2.7 meV (77.6 ± 4.5 meV) for CdS and CdSe buffer layers, respectively. Intensity dependent photoluminescence analysis demonstrates that the CdSe/CdTe device exhibits lower radiative efficiency than the CdS/CdTe device. This confirms the presence of higher defects in the CdSe/CdTe device corroborated by temperature dependent VOC analysis. The comparative electrical and optical analysis provides insight into improving the performance of CdTe solar cell device by selenization.A study is reported comparing the electrical and optical properties of CdTe solar cells, prepared using CdS and CdSe buffer layers, to investigate defects in the bulk and interface, carrier transport, and recombination. Temperature dependent capacitance–voltage measurement and admittance spectroscopy were used to extract carrier concentration, resistivity, charge carrier mobility, and their temperature dependence. The authors identify the presence of two defect signatures corresponding to carrier freeze-out and the formation of a Schottky back-contact barrier. The back-contact barrier height (≈300 meV) extracted from the temperature dependent current density–voltage (JVT) experiment was confirmed by conventional admittance spectroscopy. The activation energies of mobility (resistivity) are 101.2 ± 2.5 meV (92.6 ± 2.3 meV) and 84.7 ± 2.7 meV (77.6 ± 4.5 meV) for CdS and CdSe buffer layers, respectively. Intensity dependent photoluminescence analysis demonstrates that the CdSe/CdTe device exhibits lower rad...


The Higgs-inflaton coupling plays an important role in the Higgs field dynamics in the early Universe. Even a tiny coupling generated at loop level can have a dramatic effect on the fate of the electroweak vacuum. Such Higgs-inflaton interaction is present both at the trilinear and quartic levels in realistic reheating models. In this work, we examine the Higgs dynamics during the preheating epoch, focusing on the effects of the parametric and tachyonic resonances. We use lattice simulations and other numerical tools in our studies. We find that the resonances can induce large fluctuations of the Higgs field which destabilize the electroweak vacuum. Our considerations thus provide an upper bound on quartic and trilinear interactions between the Higgs and the inflaton. We conclude that there exists a favorable range of the couplings within which the Higgs field is stabilized during both inflation and preheating epochs.


Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court decided one of the most important cases concerning the use of science in courtrooms. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals , the Court addressed widespread concerns that courts were admitting unreliable scientific evidence. In addition, lower courts lacked clarity on the status of the previous landmark case for courtroom science, Frye v. United States. In the years leading up to the Daubert decision, policy-makers and legal observers sounded the alarm about the rise in the use of "junk science" by so-called expert witnesses. Some critics went so far as to suggest that American businesses and the viability of the court system itself were at stake. Despite the likely exaggeration of such claims, the law of the admissibility of expert testimony certainly needed reform by the time of Daubert. As the Court itself acknowledged, there was a circuit split on the appropriate standard for courts to apply. Lower courts had been applying inconsistent criteria and, for the most part, had ignored the nearly twenty year-old codified rule of evidence on the subject. In addition, after a century of the growth of science in the courtroom, expert witnesses had become a prominent feature of the legal system, requiring courts to respond to more and more questions concerning the admissibility of their testimony. Part I of this Article will address the history of expert witness admission in the modem legal era and the important role of Frye. Part II of this Article will explore what led to Daubert and the Court's decision. Part III of this Article will distill the meaning of Daubert and subsequent Supreme Court cases and examine the many studies that have attempted to measure Daubert's impact on the court system. Part IV will discuss Daubert's limited impact on the criminal justice system, highlighting a few profoundly disturbing examples of unreliable forensic science that currently plague criminal courts. Part V will discuss potential options for improving how courts admit expert witness testimony.


The incidence rates of cervical adenocarcinoma have been increasing over the last two decades, contrary to those of squamous cell carcinoma. This trend is particularly evident among females aged <40 years and has occurred despite extensive cytology-based screening programs. The aim of the present retrospective database study was to investigate adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) with respect to previous cytological results, high-risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and histological results from AIS-adjacent squamous mucosa. Databases were used to identify 32 female patients with AIS treated for various conditions between 2009 and 2012 at the Department of Gynecology, Uppsala University Hospital (Uppsala, Sweden) and previous cytological, HPV and histological results. Of the individuals in the study, 64.3% had a previously recorded cytological result showing squamous cell abnormalities; five had glandular cell abnormalities (18%) and two had AIS (7.1%). Among the patients with available HPV results, 95% were HR-HPV-positive; HPV18/45 predominated (77%), followed by HPV16 (27%). The patients with multiple HPV infections were aged ≤32 years, while patients aged ≥38 years were only infected with HPV18/45. All but three patients had cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) in the AIS-adjacent squamous mucosa, 79% of which was CIN2 or worse. The present retrospective database study suggests that AIS is detected at screening mainly due to simultaneous squamous precursor lesions and that HPV18/45 infection is an increasing cofactor for AIS in older patients. HPV analyses of glandular precursor lesions aid in the identification of female individuals at risk of progression to invasive disease, and thus have a favorable effect on adenocarcinoma prevention, together with vaccination.


A short‐term flood inundation prediction model has been formulated based on the combination of the super‐tank model, forced with downscaled rainfall from a global numerical weather prediction model, and a one‐dimensional (1D) hydraulic model. Different statistical methods for downscaled rainfall have been explored, taking into account the availability of historical data. It has been found that the full implementation of a statistical downscaling model considering physically‐based corrections to the numerical weather prediction model output for rainfall prediction performs better compared with an altitudinal correction method. The integration of the super‐tank model into the 1D hydraulic model demonstrates a minimal requirement for the calibration of rainfall–runoff and flood propagation models. Updating the model with antecedent rainfall and regular forecast renewal has enhanced the model's capabilities as a result of the data assimilation processes of the runoff and numerical weather prediction models. The results show that the predicted water levels demonstrate acceptable agreement with those measured by stream gauges and comparable to those reproduced using the actual rainfall. Moreover, the predicted flood inundation depth and extent exhibit reasonably similar tendencies to those observed in the field. However, large uncertainties are observed in the prediction results in lower, flat portions of the river basin where the hydraulic conditions are not properly analysed by the 1D flood propagation model. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Detailed understanding of lipid bilayers are of tremendous importance due to their role in many biological processes. This Thesis focuses on structural and dynamical properties of lipid bilayers and their interactions with locally acting anesthetics, studied by Molecular Dynamics simulations.The effect of dehydration of a lipid bilayer is a biologically important phenomenon which was investigated by detailed examination of a number of structural and dynamical lipid parameters at different levels of hydration. The result shows that whereas the structural properties of the bilayer only moderately depend on the degree of hydration, the dynamics of the system is affected very strongly.Related to changes in the bilayer caused by hydration are structural and dynamical changes caused by the presence of anesthetics. Lidocaine is a common, locally acting anesthetic that interacts with lipid bilayers. The difference in position, orientation and diffusional behavior for charged and uncharged lidocaine was examined. The overall results indicate a rather restricted motion, determined by the lipids for the charged lidocaine, whereas the uncharged molecules are more free to diffuse in the lateral direction, as well as able to cross the bilayer.For membrane associated anesthetics, the effect on the bilayer electrostatic potential when introducing anesthetic compounds could contribute to the anesthetic effect. When the change in electrostatic potential and headgroup orientation was examined, both properties were found to be changed by charged as well as uncharged lidocaine. Surprisingly, the potentials in the middle part of the bilayer were almost the same for the charged and uncharged form of lidocaine. The suggested explanation for this is that the uncharged lidocaine gives a significant contribution to the electrostatic potential due to its orientation.Knowledge about the three dimensional structure and structural changes of the lipids in a bilayer is an important biological question. The validity of a method based on the additive potential and maximum entropy model applied to a lipid bilayer was investigated by comparing distributions for two torsion angles extracted from simulations with their corresponding distributions received from the combined model. The results indicates that this new method could be used as a tool for interpretation of experimental data in bilayer systems.For better correspondence with experiment, a calibration of the CHARMM force field was conducted by changing interactions in the lipid tails and charges in the lipid head group. With these new parameters, the simulations gave a fraction of gauche conformations in the lipid tails close to the experimentally determined value, and a very good experimental agreement for the area per lipid, electron density, X-ray structure factor, and NMR order parameters.


The impact of training on physicians' commitment to professional values is examined, using a cohort design to assess the evolution of attitudes toward AIDS during residency training. Cohorts of surgeons training in the same six residency programs were followed at key junctures, and their outlooks on three AIDS-related attitudes were examined: willingness to treat people with AIDS (PWAs), concern about exposure to HIV, and perceived benefits of treating AIDS. The findings revealed a consistent, negative impact of training on all three attitudes. Cohort and period (historical) effects were limited: younger cohorts more often viewed treating PWAs as a clinically valuable experience, and greater concern about exposure was evidenced as training progressed. The findings yield new evidence of the importance of residency training to professional socialization. More knowledge of alterable aspects of residency training that play a role is key to assuring that physicians emerge with a dedication to fulfilling their social responsibilities.


A decentralized control system for stabilizing a longitudinal power system is studied. The system is designed by a design methodology proposed earlier for decentralized control. In the process of the design, it is found that only the control information of phase angles from other areas is indispensable for maintaining the system stability. New measurements of the tieline power flow are substituted for the indispensable information. Simulation studies demonstrate that the resulting decentralized control system using tieline power flow measurements has as excellent performance in enhancing the stability of a longitudinal power system as a centralized control system.


A leader is someone people follow. But why do people follow? Books abound on leaders, but much less is known about followers. In The Leaders We Need, Maccoby steps into this yawning gap in the literature. This insightful book shows that followers have their own powerful motivations to follow. Many relate to their leader as to some important person from the past--a parent, a sibling, a close friend. With major shifts in family structure and other social changes (especially transformations in technology and work life), these "transferences" have grown complex--making leaders' work more challenging. The key for modern-day leaders? Being sensitive to how a group's collective psychology and social context shape its leadership needs. For example, factory workers in a large city during a period of relative calm would need very different leaders than people working in a star management consultancy during a time of stiffening competition. The author outlines the profound shift from a more bureaucratic society and leadership model to an interactive, collaborative one--and provides crucial advice on how to become a "leader we need." Offering provocative psychological insight and thoughtful analysis of social and cultural changes, this book examines leadership through an entirely new lens.


Dobutamine-atropine stress echocardiography is used for the non-invasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease, but stress test results may be influenced by beta-blockers. The aim of this study was to assess if the addition of atropine can compensate for the presence of beta-blockers in dobutamine stress echocardiography. Twenty-six patients referred for evaluation of chest pain were studied twice, on and off metoprolol 100 mg b.i.d. (in random order sequence) with a wash-out period of at least 48 h. Dobutamine stress echocardiography was performed using up to 40 micrograms.kg-1.min-1, followed, if necessary, by the addition of atropine to achieve 85% of the age-predicted maximal heart rate, unless symptoms or markers of ischaemia appeared. Atropine was given to patients on beta-blockers more often [(22/26) vs (6/26)] than to those off beta-blockers (P < 0.001). Heart rate at every stage of the test was lower on beta-blockers. Chest pain occurred in patients on beta-blockers significantly less than in those off beta-blockers (8% vs 46%), and the addition of atropine made no significant difference (31% vs 46%). During dobutamine stress, new wall motion abnormalities occurred in three patients on beta-blockers (12%); this number increased to 15 after the addition of atropine (57%). New or worsened wall motion abnormalities occurred in 12 patients (46%) off beta-blockers with dobutamine alone and in 14 patients after adding atropine (53%).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Human microbiome research has gained increasing importance due to its critical roles in comprehending human health and disease. Within the realm of microbiome research, the data generated often involves operational taxonomic unit counts, which can frequently present challenges such as over-dispersion and zero-inflation. To address dispersion-related concerns, the generalized Poisson model offers a flexible solution, effectively handling data characterized by over-dispersion, equi-dispersion, and under-dispersion. Furthermore, the realm of zero-inflated generalized Poisson models provides a strategic avenue to simultaneously tackle both over-dispersion and zero-inflation. The phenomenon of zero-inflation frequently stems from the heterogeneous nature of study populations. It emerges when specific microbial taxa fail to thrive in the microbial community of certain subjects, consequently resulting in a consistent count of zeros for these individuals. This subset of subjects represents a latent class, where their zeros originate from the genuine absence of the microbial taxa. In this paper, we introduce a novel testing methodology designed to uncover such latent classes within generalized Poisson regression models. We establish a closed-form test statistic and deduce its asymptotic distribution based on estimating equations. To assess its efficacy, we conduct an extensive array of simulation studies, and further apply the test to detect latent classes in human gut microbiome data from the Bogalusa Heart Study.


Mentoring is traditionally viewed as a dyadic, top-down apprenticeship. This perspective, however, overlooks other forms of informal mentoring taking place in everyday activities in which developers invest time and effort. Here, we investigate informal mentoring taking place in Open Source Software (OSS). We define a specific type of informal mentoring—implicit mentoring—situations where contributors guide others through instructions and suggestions embedded in everyday (OSS) activities. We defined implicit mentoring by first performing a review of related work on mentoring, and then through formative interviews with OSS contributors and member-checking. Next, through an empirical investigation of Pull Requests (PRs) in 37 Apache Projects, we built a classifier to extract implicit mentoring. Our analysis of 107,895 PRs shows that implicit mentoring does occur through code reviews (27.41% of all PRs included implicit mentoring) and is beneficial for both mentors and mentees. We analyzed the impact of implicit mentoring on OSS contributors by investigating their contributions and learning trajectories in their projects. Through an online survey (N=231), we then triangulated these results and identified the potential benefits of implicit mentoring from OSS contributors' perspectives.