Martha Wollstein was not only the first fully specialized pediatric perinatal pathologist practicing exclusively in a North America children's hospital, she also blazed another pathway as a very early pioneer female clinician-scientist. Wollstein provided patient care at Babies Hospital of New York City from 1891 until her retirement in 1935, and also simultaneously worked for many years as a basic scientist at the prestigious Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Wollstein published over 65 papers, many frequently cited, during her career on a wide range of topics including pediatric and infectious diseases. Wollstein was a rare female in the field of pathology in an era when just a relatively small number of women became doctors in any medical specialty. Wollstein was born into an affluent Jewish American family in New York City in 1868 and graduated from the Women's Medical College in 1889. This paper explores her family support and ethnic and religious background, which helped facilitate her professional success. During her time, she was recognized internationally for her research and was respected for her medical and scientific skills; unfortunately today her important career has been largely forgotten.


For the 2D continuous space-time (CST) systems are described by linear 2-D partial equations, generally, it is impossible to get the closed solutions of the CST systems. To get the space-time response of CST systems needs the inverse 2-D Laplace transform. However, the 2-D inverse Laplace transform (ILT) does not exist for unstable CST, a theorem is proposed to ensure the 2-D ILT to be obtained for stable CST systems. In this paper, we present the approach to get the solutions of CST systems, we also derive an algorithm of numerical 2-D ILT for the vector spatial-time response analysis of CST systems.


Hydrodeoxygenation of palm oil and Jatropha curcas oil over NiMo/ZAL (nickel molybdenum/zeolit alam Lampung) catalyst was investigated under temperatures of 375°C and 400°C and H2 pressure of 15 bar in a semibatch stirred autoclave reactor. NiMo/ZAL catalyst was prepared using a rapid cooling method. NiMo/ZAL characterization revealed a crystal size of 70.07 nm, surface area of 12.25 m 2 /g, and pore size and pore volume of 9.83 Å and 0.0062 cm 3 /g, respectively. The hydrodeoxygenation removal pathway of palm oil and Jatropha curcas oil over NiMo/ZAL catalyst was primarily achieved through decarboxylation. Under hydrogen pressure of 15 bar and temperature of 375°C, palm oil and Jatropha curcas oil can be converted into paraffin chains (from n-C15 up to n-C18) by a decarboxylation reaction that produces water, methane, and COx gases as byproducts and contains some undesirable reactions. These byproducts can produce alkene bonds that form chains different from those in conventional diesel fuel. The conversion was 80.87%, selectivity was 52.78%, and yield was 45.66%. The hydrodeoxygenation reaction catalyzed by NiMo/ZAL catalyst was found to be suitable for removing oxygen and producing paraffin chains; this increased the heating value and stability of renewable diesel fuel.


A method for immobilization of β-galactosidase from Kluyveromyces lactis on an adsorptive membrane for the continuous synthesis of galacto-oligosaccharides from lactose was carried out. The immobilization was performed at 4, 10, 15 and 40°C. Two strongly basic anion exchange membranes with tradename Mustang TM Q and Sartobind TM Q were investigated. In static experiments, the highest enzyme activity was measured on Mustang TM Q membranes at the immobi- lization temperature of 10°C. The synthesis of GOS was performed in a Continuous Membrane-Chromatography- Reactor-System (CMCRS) at 40°C and pH 7.0 using 20 wt% initial lactose concentration. The investigated membranes proved to be a good support for the continuous process at high convective flow rates in the enzyme reactor system. Up to 82% lactose conversion with 24% GOS yield was achieved at different fluxes. The corresponding reactor productivity for the production of GOS from lactose in the CMCRS was 98.7 grams GOS per hour and cubic centimeter membrane vol- ume, which significantly exceeds previously reported results.


Progress in the miniaturization and automation of complex analytical processes depends largely on increasing the sensitivity, diversity, and robustness of current labels. Because of their ubiquity and ease of use, fluorescent, enzymatic, and bioluminescent labels are often employed in such miniaturized and multiplexed formats, with each type of label having its own unique advantages and drawbacks. The ultrasensitive detection limits of bioluminescent reporters are especially advantageous when dealing with very small sample volumes and biological fluids. However, bioluminescent reporters currently do not have the multiplexing capability that fluorescent labels do. In an effort to address this limitation, we have developed a method of discriminating two semisynthetic aequorin variants from one another using time resolution. In this work we paired two aequorin conjugates with different coelenterazine analogues and then resolved the two signals from one another using the difference in decay kinetics and half-life times. Utilizing this time-resolution, we then developed a simultaneous, dual-analyte, single well assay for 6-keto-prostaglandin-FI-alpha and angiotensin II, two important cardiovascular molecules.


Rumen acidosis and rumen alkalosis are among the most frequent diseases caused by a faulty diet in dairy cattle husbandry. The economic losses are caused more by subclinical or chronic cases than by acute acidosis. Recent research has shown that sampling of urine is the best way to diagnose disturbances in the acid-base equilibrium. Acidogenic salts and sodium bicarbonate are additives often used in dairy cattle feed rations in order to prevent both parturient paresis as well as rumen acidosis. Since they interfere with the acid-base equilibrium, they may also change the urine composition which complicates diagnosis. The purpose of the following studies was to investigate the influence of both feeding additives on urine composition. The studies took place on eight high producing dairy cattle farms in East Germany. The milk production ranged from 7000 l (FCM) to 11000 l /FCM), the herd size ranged from 150 to 1300 cattle. The farms were visited once a month. On these visits urine samples were taken from ten apparent healthy cows during each of five different stages of lactation The urine samples were pooled from each group and stored at -20°C until laboratory testing. The concentrations of the following parameters were measured in the pooled samples: pH, Netto-acid-base-excretion (NABE), Acids, Bases, Ammonium (NH4+), Sodium, Potassium, Chloride, Calcium, Phosphorus. The mean pH for all groups showed a basic response within or above the physiological ranges. Only the cows sampled during the transit period fed acidogenic salts had pH-values below the physiological ranges on certain times. The NABE showed an acidic response in the majority of the samples of group 2. Dependent on the quantity of the acidogenic salts feed the NABE could reach values below zero. The cows fed sodium bicarbonate had higher NABE than the animals tested during the same stage of lactation without this feed additive. The concentrations of acids showed only little variation among the nine groups.The excretion of bases in group 2 was reduced compared to group 6 and had increased in groups 3, 4 and 5 compared to groups 7, 8 and 9. Among the six groups post partum, there were no differences in the concentrations of calcium in the urine. Groups 1 and 6 showed a slightly increased excretion of calcium with concentrations around 1,5 mmol/l. Cows of group 2 had the highest excretion of calcium and the measured concentrations had been above the physiological ranges. The cows fed acidogenic salts (group 2) had the highest mean concentration of magnesium with a mean concentration above the physiological ranges. The other groups showed mean concentrations mostly within the normal ranges. The mean concentrations of potassium were above the normal ranges for the three groups ante partum. The six groups post partum had mean concentrations within the normal ranges. The cows fed sodium bicarbonate had higher concentrations than the corresponding animals of the groups without sodium bicarbonate. The cows fed sodium bicarbonate had the lowest mean concentration of chloride reaching the inferior physiological range. Acidogenic salts and sodium bicarbonate have an influence on the composition of urine causing changes in acids, bases and major elements that is not to neglect. 188 Abstracts – Oral presentations at 11th ICPD


ABSTRACT:Otto and B.D.G., a black and desi gay couple in the film Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya, 2007), are an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, they use a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems that surround them. This essay explores the unconventional ways through which Otto and B.D.G.'s intimacies are depicted, and analyzes the performance styles they use to express critical perspectives on racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. I argue that Otto and B.D.G.'s performances offer alternative ways to think through contemporary conversations around cultural appropriation and interracial desire in ways that decenter whiteness or a white desiring subject. However, I also observe how their critical deployments of hypermasculinity potentially skew public conversations about racialized violence.


Takotsubo syndrome (TS) is a recognized acute cardiac disease entity. The defining feature of TS is the regional circumferential pattern of left ventricular wall motion abnormality (LVWMA) with good contractions in the remainder of the left ventricle resulting in a conspicuous ballooning of the left ventricle during systole. In about 70 of cases, TS is preceded by an emotional or a physical stress factor. Externally administered epinephrine or innate elevation of epinephrine in diseased condition as pheochromocytoma has been reported to trigger TS. Herein, we report the case of a 42-year-old man with epinephrine-induced TS with 3 important features: immediate induction of the disease after epinephrine administration and rapid recovery; the mid-basal pattern (inverted) TS pattern, which may be seen in one thirds of patients with epinephrine-induced TS; and the post-extrasystolic augmentation of the stunned myocardial contractility.


An earthquake-induced sand blow was discovered in a shallow trench dug on the premises of the Colonial Dorchester State Historical Site in Summerville, South Carolina. A comparison of its location with available seismicity, seismic reflection, and shallow geological and geomorphologic data suggests that the sand blow was associated with a splay of the currently active Sawmill Branch fault zone. This is the first sand blow to be directly associated with a specific fault in the Middleton Place–Summerville seismic zone, the source zone for the Charleston earthquakes. Geotechnical and vibracore data revealed that the source sand is ∼3 m thick and the top of the sand is at a depth of ∼2.5 m below the ground surface. The sand blow was associated with a pre-1886 earthquake that occurred possibly 3,500 YBP or earlier, with an estimated maximum magnitude of 5.6.


We study the problem of imposing conversational goals/keywords on open-domain conversational agents, where the agent is required to lead the conversation to a target keyword smoothly and fast. Solving this problem enables the application of conversational agents in many real-world scenarios, e.g., recommendation and psychotherapy. The dominant paradigm for tackling this problem is to 1) train a next-turn keyword classifier, and 2) train a keyword-augmented response retrieval model. However, existing approaches in this paradigm have two limitations: 1) the training and evaluation datasets for next-turn keyword classification are directly extracted from conversations without human annotations, thus, they are noisy and have low correlation with human judgements, and 2) during keyword transition, the agents solely rely on the similarities between word embeddings to move closer to the target keyword, which may not reflect how humans converse. In this paper, we assume that human conversations are grounded on commonsense and propose a keyword-guided neural conversational model that can leverage external commonsense knowledge graphs (CKG) for both keyword transition and response retrieval. Automatic evaluations suggest that commonsense improves the performance of both next-turn keyword prediction and keyword-augmented response retrieval. In addition, both self-play and human evaluations show that our model produces responses with smoother keyword transition and reaches the target keyword faster than competitive baselines.


The Arctic lower atmosphere has warmed more rapidly than that of the globe as a whole, and this has been accompanied by unprecedented sea ice melt. Such large environmental changes are already having profound impacts on the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of the Arctic region. An open question, however, is whether these Arctic changes have an effect on the jet‐stream and thereby influence weather patterns farther south. This broad question has recently received a lot of scientific and media attention, but conclusions appear contradictory rather than consensual. We argue that one point of confusion has arisen due to ambiguities in the exact question being posed. In this study, we frame our inquiries around three distinct questions: Can Arctic warming influence the midlatitude jet‐stream? Has Arctic warming significantly influenced the midlatitude jet‐stream? Will Arctic warming significantly influence the midlatitude jet‐stream? We argue that framing the discussion around the three questions: Can it?, Has it?, and Will it? provides insight into the common themes emerging in the literature as well as highlights the challenges ahead. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:277–286. doi: 10.1002/wcc.337


The aim of the article is to explore the location and the meaning given to the rainbow flag in places outside the hegemonic centre. Through three case studies in the global North and South, held together by a multi-ethnographic approach, as well as a certain theoretical tension between the rainbow flag as a boundary object and/or a floating signifier, we seek to study where the flag belongs, to whom it belongs, with particular focus on how. The three case studies, which are situated in a city in the Global South (Buenos Aires), in a conflict war zone in the Middle East (the West Bank) and in a racialised neighbourhood in the Global North (Sweden), share despite their diversity a peripheral location to hegemonic forms of knowledge production regimes. Central to our analysis is how the rainbow flag is given a multitude of original and radical different meanings that may challenge the colonial/Eurocentric notions which up to a certain extent are embedded in the rainbow flag.


The Philippine business economy is largely fuelled by micro, small and medium enterprises.  In order to cope with the competition with large firms in the industry, the government has poured investments in form of technology upgrading in the last 15 years. The research aimed to assess the impact on productivity and profitability of state assistance to agri-based micro, small enterprises.  Partial Budget Analysis was used in assessing the profitability of the proponent after the intervention. The study showed an average increase in enterprises' production volume, sales level, and generated employment by 157.9%, 51.65%, and 191.82%, respectively. Further, the assistance generated a positive increase in income. However, the defective equipment, failure to meet the repayment schedule, and non-compliance to documentary requirements were among the major problems encountered by the proponent during program implementation. Nonetheless, the state assistance was able to spur innovations among the enterprises. Market potential, market knowledge, financial capability to repay the loan as well as the entrepreneur's resiliency were some of the observed success factors of MSMEs. With its positive firm-level impact, the state assistance program has generally been able to improve its proponent's competitiveness and thus worthy for continuous implementation.


Renal transplant recipients treated with cyclosporine A (CsA) and FK506 (tacrolimus) develop signs of hypoaldosteronism despite normal plasma aldosterone levels, suggesting a relative resistance of the distal nephron to aldosterone action. To examine the effects of immunosuppressants on human MR (hMR) function, we established the M cell model, renal tubular cells stably transfected with hMR. Upon CsA and FK506 administration, hMR mRNA levels and aldosterone binding in M cells remained unchanged (maximum number of sites, 80 fmol/mg protein; Kd 1n M). Aldosterone-dependent intracellular localization of green fluorescent protein-hMR was not affected by immunosuppressants. A major impact of CsA or FK506 on the multidrug resistance gene product in cellular accumulation of aldosterone was also excluded. In contrast, aldosterone-stimulated hMR transcriptional activity was reduced to 53 11.2% (P < 0.03) after pretreatment of M cells for 3 d with CsA and to 71 9.6% (P < 0.05) after pretreatment with FK506. These effects were both time and concentration dependent (IC50 of CsA, 10 6 M ;I C50 of FK506, 10 5 M) and needed at leas t2dt odevelop. Such an inhibitory effect does not depend on the N-terminal part of hMR, as CsA also reduced transcriptional activity of a 1– 453 deletion mutant of hMR. Our results demonstrate that immunosuppressants inhibit hMR transcriptional activity without affecting hMR expression, aldosterone binding properties, and hMR nucleocytoplasmic trafficking. They suggest that ion transport alterations in renal graft recipients are in part induced by impaired hMR function. (Endocrinology 143: 1932–1941, 2002)


Many attempts have been made to estimate the soil organic carbon (SOC) storage under different land uses, especially from the conversion of forest land or grassland into cultivated field, but limited reports were found on the estimation of this storage after cultivated field converted into woodland or grassland, especially in small scales. This study is aimed to investigate the dynamics of SOC concentration, its storage and carbon /nitrogen (C/N) ratio in an aquic brown soil at the Shenyang Experimental Station of Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences under four land use patterns over 14 years. The four land use patterns were paddy field (PF), maize field (MF), fallow field (FF) and woodland (WL). In each pedon at 0-150 cm depth, soil samples were collected from ten layers. The results showed that the profile distribution of SOC was different under different land uses, indicating the effect of land use on SOC. Soil organic carbon was significantly related with soil total N, and the correlation was slightly closer in nature ecosystems (with R2=0.990 and P0.001 in both WL and FF, n=30) than in agroecosystems (with R2=0.976 and P0.001 in PF, and R2=0.980 and P0.001 in MF, n=30). The C/N ratio in the profiles decreased generally with depth under the four land use patterns, and was comparatively higher in WL and lower in PF. The C/N ratio of the FF was closer to that in the same soil depths of MF than to that of PF. Within 100 cm depth, the annual sequestration of SOC was 4.25, 2.87, and 4.48 t·ha-1 more in WL than in PF, MF and FF, the annual increase rate of SOC being 6.15 %, 3.26 %, and 5.09 %, respectively. As a result, the SOC storage was significantly greater in WL than other three land use patterns(P=0.001, 0.008, and 0.008). As compared with PF, MF, and FF, respectively, while there was no significant difference among the other three land uses. It is suggested that woodland has a great potential in making a significant contribution to C storage and environmental quality.


The majority of human cancers harbour mutations promoting activation of the Akt protein kinase, and Akt inhibitors are being evaluated in clinical trials. An important question concerns the understanding of the innate mechanisms that confer resistance of tumour cells to Akt inhibitors. SGK (serum- and glucocorticoid-regulated kinase) is closely related to Akt and controlled by identical upstream regulators {PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase), PDK1 (phosphoinositide-dependent kinase 1) and mTORC2 [mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) complex 2]}. Mutations that trigger activation of Akt would also stimulate SGK. Moreover, Akt and SGK possess analogous substrate specificities and are likely to phosphorylate overlapping substrates to promote proliferation. To investigate whether cancers possessing high SGK activity could possess innate resistance to Akt-specific inhibitors (that do not target SGK), we analysed SGK levels and sensitivity of a panel of breast cancer cells towards two distinct Akt inhibitors currently in clinical trials (AZD5363 and MK-2206). This revealed a number of Akt-inhibitor-resistant lines displaying markedly elevated SGK1 that also exhibited significant phosphorylation of the SGK1 substrate NDRG1 [N-Myc (neuroblastoma-derived Myc) downstream-regulated gene 1]. In contrast, most Akt-inhibitor-sensitive cell lines displayed low/undetectable levels of SGK1. Intriguingly, despite low SGK1 levels, several Akt-inhibitor-sensitive cells showed marked NDRG1 phosphorylation that was, unlike in the resistant cells, suppressed by Akt inhibitors. SGK1 knockdown markedly reduced proliferation of Akt-inhibitor-resistant, but not -sensitive, cells. Furthermore, treatment of Akt-inhibitor-resistant cells with an mTOR inhibitor suppressed proliferation and led to inhibition of SGK1. The results of the present study suggest that monitoring SGK1 levels as well as responses of NDRG1 phosphorylation to Akt inhibitor administration could have a use in predicting the sensitivity of tumours to compounds that target Akt. Our findings highlight the therapeutic potential that SGK inhibitors or dual Akt/SGK inhibitors might have for treatment of cancers displaying elevated SGK activity.


In this paper, we apply the aggregate production function to approximate the path of potential output. We use a time-varying NAIRU to derive the amount of potential labour and a newly developed measure of capital services to account for the productive impact of capital. In addition, trend total factor productivity is estimated. Production functions for the key sectors (Agriculture, Industry, etc.) are also calculated, exploring the growth accounting approach and decomposition of total factor productivity growth. During 1995--2005, the growth in potential output was constrained by a gradual increase in the NAIRU, a temporary drop in investment activity and, most importantly, by only a modest rise in total factor productivity. In this period, the Czech economy also suffered from a structural burden, i.e. all growth in total factor productivity was exclusively due to better utilisation of resources, given their initial allocation, with an even negative contribution of resource reallocation. Just from 2001 onwards, we observe substantial improvements in supply-side performance, except for the functioning of the labour market.


This article deals with the beginnings of the translation of Modern Hebrew literature into Arabic, and at the same time with the beginnings of Arabic literary writing by Jewish intellectuals. We will focus on Salim al-Dawudi's translation of the first Hebrew novel, Avraham Mapu's Ahavat Tsiyon [The love of Zion] (1853), one of the most important texts to advocate the renewal of ties between Jews and Palestine. Al-Dawudi's translation was published in Egypt in two non-identical editions in 1899 and 1921–1922, and is probably the first Arabic translation of Modern Hebrew literature. When he declared that his translation was designed to remind his people that Hebrew was a living language, al-Dawudi accorded his translation Jewish national aspirations, which is perhaps the reason for the mixed aims of his translation's policy. On the one hand, there are phenomena that illustrate his desire to be accepted in the target culture, such as neglect of the integrity of the text, raising its stylistic register, preserving the ethical norms of the source text and even a tendency to paraphrase. On the other hand, there are places that display over-consideration of the source language and text, such as numerous deviations from the standard linguistic, syntactical and grammatical rules of Arabic, preservation of elements unique to Jewish culture and a multitude of Hebrew interferences in the Arabic translation. This unsystematic behavior apparently reflects a lack of literary skills, deep admiration of the source text (and language), and the fact that the translation was addressed mainly to a Jewish audience.


Stress pervades daily society, often with deleterious consequences for those prone to react intensely to it. Intervention techniques to attenuate stress reactivity are thus paramount. With that goal in mind, researchers have sought to identify and alter malleable psychological dispositional variables that influence stress reactivity. Trait emotional intelligence (TEI), anxiety sensitivity (AS), and experiential avoidance (EA) are increasingly receiving attention in these research efforts. The self-reported emotional component of stress reactivity has been emphasized in investigations and is our focus. Specifically, this paper overviews the role of TEI, AS, and EA in self-reported stress responses. We also discuss empirically supported psychological methods to adjust suboptimal levels of these variables in normal populations. Both psycho-educational (information, skills) and mindfulness-based interventions (specific mindfulness therapies or components) are covered. Findings include that (1) TEI, AS, and EA are each correlated with the emotional component of stress reactivity to both naturalistic and lab-based stressors; (2) preliminary support currently exists for psycho-educational intervention of TEI and AS but is lacking for EA; (3) adequate evidence supports mindfulness-based interventions to target EA, with very limited but encouraging findings suggesting mindfulness methods improve TEI and AS; and (4) although more research is needed, stress management approaches based on mindfulness may well target all three of these psychological variables and thus appear particularly promising. Encouragingly, some methods to modify dispositional variables (e.g., a mindfulness-based format of guided self-help) are easily disseminated and potentially applicable to the general public.


Research outputin Malaysia is shown through publications, funding, intellectual property and knowledge transfer. This paper studies the issues of translating knowledge of social science and humanities research into beneficial products. Data is gathered from primary and secondary sources. The findings show slower output and fair amount of publications, reasonable funding for research, lack of quantified knowledge translation between universities and industry, and relatively new research culture. Conclusively, more effort is needed to translate research into practice for social science and humanities research in Malaysia. 2398-4295 © 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK.. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Keywords: Translational research; social science; humanities; research to practice


Scripts encode knowledge of prototypical sequences of events. We describe a Recurrent Neural Network model for statistical script learning using Long Short-Term Memory, an architecture which has been demonstrated to work well on a range of Artificial Intelligence tasks. We evaluate our system on two tasks, inferring held-out events from text and inferring novel events from text, substantially outperforming prior approaches on both tasks.


Join the Employee Wellness Team as we "hike" Canada's Great Trail from Niagara Falls to Regina, Saskatchewan which is 3,240 miles. Each team will record its mileage to see how far it travels along the trail. Accumulate steps by walking, running, swimming, dancing, or whatever exercise you prefer. This 12-week challenge will begin on February 11 and continue to May 5, 2019. Register your team by emailing with your Team Name, Captain's Email Address, and a page will be created so email@example.com that teammates can be added by the captain. (maximum of 12 members). If you need a team, we will find you one. Hikers who participate in all twelve weeks will become part of a drawing for a prize.


Alkanethiols form stable, homogeneous, and well-organized self-assembled monolayers and can be used as lubricants in micro- and nanodevices when sufficiently hydrophobic and resistant to sudden temperature changes. In this paper, we demonstrate a new analysis method which provides a deep physical insight into adhesive interactions and their temperature dependencies at the single molecule level. We have focused on the adhesion between a silicon nitride tip and a 1-decanethiol self-assembled monolayer in the temperature range from 25 to 85 °C. We performed dynamic force spectroscopy measurements and applied theoretical models of adhesive-mechanical interactions and thermally activated unbinding to obtain detailed information on the adhesive interactions. The parameters of the interaction potential describing a single adhesive bond were calculated, and their temperature dependence was discussed. Although the changes of the adhesion force versus temperature are significant and nonmonotonic, the energy of the activation barrier of a single adhesive bond appears temperature independent. We attribute observed changes in the position of the activation barrier to the interplay between the rupture and rebinding of adhesive bonds, as well as to thermal reorganization, in particular the change of the tilt angle of thiol molecules in the self-assembled monolayer.


New electronic imaging devices and products, such as cameras or image retouch software, demand new solutions for image correction and enhancement. In this paper we describe significant modifications to the retinex approach, a human vision based model proposed by Land, introducing nonlinear filtering and functions to obtain improvements in both local and global contrast of the images, avoiding more complex implementations. Concerning color images, we propose to work in a different color space than the classical RGB-space; in this way, color corrections, which compensate for graying-out and color shifting effects in the processed images are no longer needed.


Volatile species released during the initial stages of oxidation of a P92 ferritic steel, with and without an aluminized coating, at 650°C in Ar+20%H2O for 150h were studied. TG-MS experiments were conducted in a closed steam loop in order to obtain information about the oxyhydroxides formation as reaction between coatings and steam. From those results, the role of the different coating element could be established and optimized for the coating durability. An oxidation mechanism based on the TG-MS results is given. The morphology/composition and structure of the oxidized samples were also studied using SEM/EDS and XRD techniques.


The present article reviewed some of the treatment modalities for restoring anterior teeth in the primary dentition. It divided the treatment types into three classifications based on the severity of the carious lesions or injury. Treatments that are not usually found in current textbooks were outlined and commented upon. It was suggested that dentists have to consider a wide range of treatment options since factors such as the age of the child, ability to cope with treatment and cost of treatment have to be taken into account.


Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in America impacting the lives of millions. There are many modifiable risk factors that may help in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease or congestive heart failure. Proper diet and healthy weight management is a crucial factor in preventing disease. Dieting is a large component of American living, and the low-carbohydrate high-protein diet remains the most common form of weight loss. This thesis will investigate different types of diets and eating habits that can affect risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
 An apolipoprotein E-deficient mouse model was used to investigate different diets and how they may develop cardiovascular disease, more specifically, atherosclerosis in the aorta and altered mitochondrial functioning in the heart. The diet of interest for this project, was a low-carbohydrate high-protein diet. This diet promotes an environment that causes a shift in cellular metabolism due to macronutrient imbalances. Past research has yet to address a possible link between low-carbohydrate high-protein diets and atherosclerosis and vascular smooth muscle cells, and mitochondrial functioning. This thesis contains data that will be of interest to both clinicians and patients, in terms of safe dieting and the potential for cardiovascular risk.


A myocardial bridge (MB) is a common anatomic variant, most frequently located in the left anterior descending coronary artery, where a portion of the coronary artery is covered by myocardium. Importantly, MBs are known to result in a proximal atherosclerotic lesion. It has recently been postulated that these lesions predispose patients to acute coronary events, even in cases of otherwise low-risk patients. One such mechanism may involve acute plaque rupture. In this article, we report 2 cases of patients with MBs who presented with acute coronary syndromes despite having low cardiovascular risk. Their presentation was life-risking and both were treated urgently and studied with coronary angiographies and intravascular ultrasound. This latter modality confirmed a rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque proximal to the MB as a likely cause of the acute events. These cases, of unexplained acute coronary syndrome in low-risk patients, raise the question of alternative processes leading to the event and the role MB play as an underlying cause of ruptured plaques. In some cases, an active investigation for this entity may be warranted, due to the prognostic implications of the different therapeutic modalities, should an MB be discovered.


Many real-time systems must control their CPU utilizations in order to meet end-to-end deadlines and prevent overload. Utilization control is particularly challenging in distributed real-time systems with highly unpredictable workloads and a large number of end-to-end tasks and processors. This paper presents the decentralized end-to-end utilization control (DEUCON) algorithm, which can dynamically enforce the desired utilizations on multiple processors in such systems. In contrast to centralized control schemes adopted in earlier works, DEUCON features a novel decentralized control structure that requires only localized coordination among neighbor processors. DEUCON is systematically designed based on advances in distributed model predictive control theory. Both control-theoretic analysis and simulations show that DEUCON can provide robust utilization guarantees and maintain global system stability despite severe variations in task execution times. Furthermore, DEUCON can effectively distribute the computation and communication cost to different processors and tolerate considerable communication delay between local controllers. Our results indicate that DEUCON can provide a scalable and robust utilization control for large-scale distributed real-time systems executing in unpredictable environments.


Morphological and cytochrome oxidase 1 ( Cox1 ) data show that Aphis floridanae Tissot (Hemiptera: Aphididae) is not synonymous with A. nasturtii Kaltenbach. Instead, A. floridanae matches the morphological characters of A. impatientis Thomas. Additionally, the range of cytochrome oxidase 1 ( Cox1 ) pair-wise distance of the multiple collections of A. impatientis on Cornus spp., Impatiens spp. and Erechtites hieraciifolius (L.) Raf. ex DC. is 0–0.39%. Therefore, we conclude that A. floridanae Tissot, 1933 is a junior synonym of A. impatientis Thomas, 1878, new synonymy. In addition, A. impatientis is re-described, including first descriptions of the ovipara and alate male of that species.


Background For years there has been a tremendous gap in our understanding of the mental health effects of deployment and the efforts by military forces at trying to minimize or mitigate these. Many military forces have recently systematized the mental support that is provided to support operational deployments. However, the rationale for doing so and the consequential allocation of resources are felt to vary considerably across North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) International Security Assistance (ISAF) partners. This review aims to compare the organization and practice of mental support by five partnering countries in the recent deployment in Afghanistan in order to identify and compare the key methods and structures for delivering mental health support, describe bottlenecks and illustrate new developments. Method Information was collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with key military mental healthcare stakeholders. The review resulted from close collaboration between key military mental healthcare professionals within the Australian Defense Forces (ADF), Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), United Kingdom Armed Forces (UK), Netherlands Armed Forces (NLD), and the United States Army (US). Key stakeholders were interviewed about the mental health support provided during a serviceperson's military career. The main items discussed were training, prevention, early identification, intervention, and aftercare in the field of mental health. Results All forces reported that much attention was paid to mental health during the individual's military career, including deployment. In doing so there was much overlap between the rationale and applied methods. The main method of providing support was through training and education. The educative focus was to strengthen the mental resilience of individual soldiers while providing a range of mental healthcare services. All forces had abandoned standard psychological debriefing after critical incidents. Instead, by default, mental healthcare professionals acted to support the leader and peer led "after action" reviews. All countries provided professional mental support close to the front line, aimed at early detection and early return to normal activities within the unit. All countries deployed a mental health support team that consisted of a range of mental health staff including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses, and chaplains. There was no overall consensus in the allocation of mental health disciplines in theatre. All countries (except the US) provided troops with a third location decompression (TLD) stop after deployment, which aimed to recognize what the deployed units had been through and to prepare them for transition home. The US conducted in-garrison 'decompression', or 'reintegration training' in the US, with a similiar focus to TLD. All had a reasonably comparable infrastructure in the field of mental healthcare. Shared bottlenecks across countries included perceived stigma and barriers to care around mental health problems as well as the need for improving the awareness and recognition of mental health problems among service members. among service personnel as well as the need for improving the awareness and recognition of symptoms as being indicative of a mental health problems among service members. Conclusion This analysis demonstrated that in all five partners state-of-the-art preventative mental healthcare was included in the last deployment in Afghanistan, including a positive approach towards strengthening the mental resilience, a focus on self-regulatory skills and self-empowerment, and several initiatives that were well-integrated in a military context. These initiatives were partly/completely implemented by the military/colleagues/supervisors and applicable during several phases of the deployment cycle. Important new developments in operational mental health support are recognition of the role of social leadership and enhancement of operational peer support. This requires awareness of mental problems that will contribute to reduction of the barriers to care in case of problems. Finally, comparing mental health support services across countries can contribute to optimal preparation for the challenges of military deployment.


In this paper, a direct weight optimization method is proposed for nonlinear system identification based on the minimal probability idea. The approach has several quite attractive features and is very different from existing ones. It is optimal for any given number of finite data points and at the same time possesses asymptotic convergence. The estimator admits a closed form and no numerical optimization is needed. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the approach is a very competitive alternative to existing nonlinear identification methods


A series of experiments and analyses on five types of hypercube and grid-topology multicomputers, carried out to evaluate interprocessor communication performance, is described. The effects on the system of communication speed, message routing, interprocessor connectivity, and message-passing software/hardware protocols were studied. The experimental results clearly show the difference in interprocessor communication performance between the first-generation multicomputer systems and the second-generation distributed multiprocessor systems. The traditional store-and-forward technique for interprocessor communication greatly limits the communication speed among the processors. In addition, the processors of the first-generation systems are not very powerful, which is another major reason communication proceeds slowly in these systems. It is seen that the wormhole routing model greatly reduces communication latency and is not sensitive to the distance involved in passing messages.<<ETX>>


Background and purpose: The human body is composed of various inhomogenous tissues with a variety of physical and radiological properties. These inhomogeneities could change isodose distributions, increase the probability of geometric errors, and eventually lead to missing of the target irradiation or incorrect isodose coverage in conformal radiation therapy (CRT) due to the uncertainties resulted from the effect of such inhomogeneties on isodose curves. In this study, the effect of inhomogeneities on dosimetric accuracy of the CRT of prostate was investigated using Monte Carlo simulation method. Materials and methods: An anthropomorphic pelvis phantom was used in two modes representing a homogeneous and heterogeneous phantom. Three dimensional (3D) CRT planning composed of five fields were performed on the CT images of the phantoms using the CorPLAN treatment planning system (TPS) of a 2100C/D Varian linac. Delivery of 3DCRT was also simulated by EGSnrc Monte Carlo code for the same conditions used in the CorPLAN TPS. The dose distributions resulted from the MC simulations were compared with those of the CorPLAN TPS for both of the phantoms based on the "dose difference (DD) percentages" and "distance to agreement (DTA)" parameters. Results: Findings indicated that the heterogeneity leads to an overdose estimation at the target location up to 2.8% and 4.4% for the 6 and 18 MV energies, respectively by the CorPLAN TPS compared with the MC simulation data. The average DD and DTA for the homogeneous phantom were 2.7%3.4mm and 1.6%-2.3 mm while for the inhomogeneous phantom they were 5.5%-3.7 mm and 6.0%-2.5 mm at the 6 and 18 MV energies, respectively. Conclusion: Our results indicates that the accuracy of the dosimetry parameters estimated by the CorPLAN TPS at 18 MV is more than that of 6 MV energy. But, the heterogeneity deteriorates more the accuracy level of such dosimetry parameters estimated by this commercial TPS at 18 MV energy.


Abstract Companies with market power occasionally engage in intentional quality reduction of a portion of their output as a means of offering two qualities of goods for the purpose of price discrimination, even absent a cost saving. This paper provides an exact characterization in terms of marginal revenues of when such a strategy is profitable, which, remarkably, does not depend on the distribution of customer valuations, but only on the value of the damaged product relative to the undamaged product. In particular, when the damaged product provides a constant proportion of the value of the full product, selling a damaged good is unprofitable. One quality reduction produces higher profits than another if the former has higher marginal revenue than the latter.


In this work, the ethyl propiolate method for analysing thiols in white wine by GC-MS, originally proposed by Herbst-Johnstone et al.) (2013), has been adapted to GC-MS/MS and has been validated. The method performance has shown improvement in terms of sensitivity (limit of detection, LOD) and of the number of compounds measured. In addition to 3-mercaptohexanol (3MH), 3-mercaptohexyl acetate (3MHA), and 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one (4MMP), the adapted method can also measure 2-furanmethanethiol (FMT) and makes use of a commercially-available internal standard (IS), 4-methoxy-2-methyl-2-butanethiol (4M2M2B, IS). The proposed method was applied to determine thiol levels in young commercial South African Sauvignon and Chenin Blanc wines. The samples (n=20 for each cultivar) were chosen according to a high frequency of the typical descriptors associated with this class of impact compounds. 3MH was found at 178-904 ng/L and 99-1124 ng/L, and 3MHA at 23-151 ng/L and 5-253 ng/L in Sauvignon and Chenin Blanc respectively. 4MMP was present in Sauvignon Blanc in concentrations up to 21.9 ng/L, but in none of the Chenin Blanc samples.


Anonymous questionnaire data will be collected before, during and after completion of the MBSR course. These data will be used by student teams to evaluate the impact of MBSR on multiple outcomes. Groups will prepare a written report and present their findings to the class at the end of the semester.


Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) are categorized as fungi which have symbioses with terrestrial plants and are distributed in various habitat types. The objectives of this research were to investigate the diversity of AMF in stands of kayu kuku (Pericopsis mooniana Thw.) in Southeast Sulawesi. Collection of samples of soil and root were conducted in six locations. Isolation of spores used the method of wet sieving and decanting, whereas AMF identification was conducted by observing morphology of AMF spores. Parameters of AMF diversity, namely species richness, diversity index, dominance index, evenness index and colonization were studied using method of infected root length. Research results showed that location differences affected significantly the spore density and parameters of AMF diversity, except colonization of AMF (p < 0.116). Location around the Governor office showed the highest number of spores (208.6 spores/100 g of soil). Soil chemical properties, such as C, N, P and heavy metal contributed towards AMF spore density and diversity. Soil C and N correlated negatively with spore density. In terms of location, Glomeraceae constituted the genera with the largest number of species and possessed wide distribution in all research locations. In general, natural forest has higher AMF diversity index (Shannon-Weiner diversity index-H'), evenness (E) and species richness (S) as compared with location of PT. Vale Indonesia Tbk.


Abstract Background and aims Carbon allocation in plants is usually represented at a topological scale, specific to each model. This makes the results obtained with different models, and the impact of their scales of representation, difficult to compare. In this study, we developed a multi-scale carbon allocation model (MuSCA) that allows the use of different, user-defined, topological scales of a plant, and assessment of the impact of each spatial scale on simulated results and computation time. Methods Model multi-scale consistency and behaviour were tested on three realistic apple tree structures. Carbon allocation was computed at five scales, spanning from the metamer (the finest scale, used as a reference) up to first-order branches, and for different values of a sap friction coefficient. Fruit dry mass increments were compared across spatial scales and with field data. Key Results The model was able to represent effects of competition for carbon assimilates on fruit growth. Intermediate friction parameter values provided results that best fitted field data. Fruit growth simulated at the metamer scale differed of ~1 % in respect to results obtained at growth unit scale and up to 60 % in respect to first order branch and fruiting unit scales. Generally, the coarser the spatial scale the more predicted fruit growth diverged from the reference. Coherence in fruit growth across scales was also differentially impacted, depending on the tree structure considered. Decreasing the topological resolution reduced computation time by up to four orders of magnitude. Conclusions MuSCA revealed that the topological scale has a major influence on the simulation of carbon allocation. This suggests that the scale should be a factor that is carefully evaluated when using a carbon allocation model, or when comparing results produced by different models. Finally, with MuSCA, trade-off between computation time and prediction accuracy can be evaluated by changing topological scales.


The aim of this study was to specify the signs and course of patients with a dilated common bile duct without obstruction. We included patients with a dilated common bile duct of more than 12 mm on endoscopic retrograde cholangiography, and we excluded patients with stones, tumor or other visible obstruction. Two hundred and seven patients (8.4 p. 100 of endoscopic retrograde cholangiography) were included. One hundred and nineteen (57.5 p. 100) had undergone cholecystectomy. Sixty-five p. 100 of patients had signs suggesting biliary tract disease, and 78 p. 100 had biological signs of cholestasis. The size of the common bile duct was not different whether the patient had been cholecystectomized (16.2 +/- 0.3 mm.M +/- SEM) or not (16.2 +/- 0.4 mm). Forty-one patients in the non cholecystectomized group had gallbladder stones. Thus, 47 of our 207 patients (23 p. 100) had neither gallbladder stones nor previous cholecystectomy. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiography was completed by endoscopic sphincterotomy in 130 patients, either in the intent of not missing obstruction, or for therapeutic purposes. Follow-up more than one month after endoscopic retrograde cholangiography was available for 159 patients (77 p. 100). The median survival was 73 months. One hundred and ten patients (69 p. 100) were asymptomatic, 36 (23 p. 100) had atypical abdominal pain while 13 (8 p. 100) patients had episodes of biliary colic and/or fever and/or jaundice. During follow-up, an initially unrecognized obstacle was discovered in 8 patients: 5 common bile duct stones, 2 ampullary tumors and one pancreatic tumor.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Communication is central to human life, yet it leaves humans vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation. Humans have therefore evolved a suite of psychological mechanisms for the evaluation of speakers and their messages. Here, we test a key hypothesized function of these "epistemic vigilance" mechanisms: the selective remembering of links between speakers and messages that are inconsistent with preexisting beliefs. Across four experiments, participants (N = 707) read stories associated with different contexts, with each story containing concepts that violate core knowledge intuitions ("counterintuitive concepts") and ordinary concepts. Experiment 1 revealed that after a brief distractor (2 min) participants more accurately attributed counterintuitive concepts to their speakers than ordinary concepts. Experiments 2a and 2b replicated this finding and found that this attribution accuracy advantage also extended to counterintuitive versus ordinary concepts associated with other contextual details-places and dates. Experiment 3 then tested whether this attribution accuracy advantage was more stable over time for speakers than for places. After a short distractor (20 min), there was a counterintuitive versus ordinary concept attribution accuracy advantage for both speakers and places. However, when participants were tested again after a long delay (48 hr), this attribution accuracy advantage more than doubled for speakers but disappeared entirely for places. We discuss the implications of these findings to the set of psychological mechanisms theorized to monitor and evaluate communication to guard our database of beliefs about the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).


We demonstrate a method for label-free monitoring of hydrolytic activity of crystalline-chitin-degrading enzyme, chitinase, by means of Raman spectroscopy. We found that crystalline chitin exhibited a characteristic Raman peak at 2995 cm-1, which did not appear in the reaction product, N,N'-diacetylchitobiose. We used this Raman peak as a marker of crystalline chitin degradation to monitor the hydrolytic activity of chitinase. When the crystalline chitin suspension and chitinase were mixed together, the peak intensity of crystalline chitin at 2995 cm-1 was linearly decreased depending on incubation time. The decrease in peak intensity was inversely correlated with the increase in the amount of released N,N'-diacetylchitobiose, which was measured by conventional colorimetric assay with alkaline ferricyanide. Our result, presented here, provides a new method for simple, in situ, and label-free monitoring of enzymatic activity of chitinase.


A novel scheme called the selective mapping of partial tones (SMOPT) is addressed for the reduction of the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The SMOPT first produces a set of modified OFDM symbols with reduced PAPRs by adding a set of mapping symbols designed on peak reduction tones (PRT) to the original OFDM symbol. The SMOPT then selects the symbol with the lowest PAPR for transmission among the modified OFDM symbols. When simulated under the IEEE 802.11a wireless local area network and ETSl EN 300 401 digital audio broadcasting physical layer models, the SMOPT is observed to have lower sensitivity to PRT positions, lower complexity, and more design flexibility than the tone reservation scheme.


Up until around ten years ago, third language acquisition (L3A) research was generally subsumed under the umbrella term of second language acquisition (L2A). In this short space of time, however, L3A has established itself as an independent strand of linguistic research, providing an invaluable source of information into language and language acquisition. This paper emphasises the crucial differences between L2A and L3A. It provides a snapshot of the current state of cognitive research into L3A, discussing studies in the domains of morphology, syntax, phonology and lexicon. Recently proposed (specific L3) generative models are discussed, such as Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn, Foley & Vinnitskaya, 2004), L2 Status Factor (Bardel & Falk, 2007) and Typological Primacy Model (Rothman, 2011) together with an alternative proposal (Contextual Complexity Hypothesis, Hawkins & Casillas, 2007). Finally this paper highlights the gaps in our knowledge and the direction for future research in this fast-growing area of research.


Abstract We assess whether the probability of a sample member cooperating at a particular wave of a panel survey is greater if the same interviewer is deployed as at the previous wave. Previous research on this topic mainly uses nonexperimental data. Consequently, a) interviewer change is generally nonrandom, and b) continuing interviewers are more experienced by the time of the next wave. Our study is based on a balanced experiment in which both interviewer continuity and experience are controlled. Multilevel multiple membership models are used to explore the effects of interviewer continuity on refusal rate as well as interactions of interviewer continuity with other variables. We find that continuity reduces refusal propensity for younger respondents but not for older respondents, and that this effect depends on the age of the interviewer. This supports the notion that interviewer continuity may be beneficial in some situations, but not necessarily in others.


One of the hallmarks of human fairness is its insensitivity to power: although strong individuals are often in a position to coerce weak individuals, fairness requires them to share the benefits of cooperation equally. The existence of such egalitarianism is poorly explained by current evolutionary models. We present a model based on cooperation and partner choice that can account for the emergence of a psychological disposition toward fairness, whatever the balance of power between the cooperative partners. We model the evolution of the division of a benefit in an interaction similar to an ultimatum game, in a population made up of individuals of variable strength. The model shows that strong individuals will not receive any advantage from their strength, instead having to share the benefits of cooperation equally with weak individuals at the evolutionary equilibrium, a result that is robust to variations in population size and the proportion of weak individuals. We discuss how this model suggests an explanation for why egalitarian behaviors toward everyone, including the weak, should be more likely to evolve in humans than in any other species.


Candidates for kidney transplant are susceptible to a variety of problems related to blood transfusions, including sensitization and infection. Because of delayed graft function or rejection, these problems often persist after transplantation. Epoetin alfa therapy offers a method of maintaining the red cell count while avoiding the risks of transfusion.


The measurement of particle size and velocity in particle laden flows is a subject of interest in a variety of industrial applications. In combustion systems for electricity generation, industrial processes and heating, and transportation, where liquid and solid fuels are injected into air streams for burning in furnaces, boilers, and gas turbine and diesel engines, the initial size and velocity distributions of particles are determining factors in the overall combustion efficiency and the emission of pollutants and particulates. In the design of injectors and burners for the atomization of liquid fuels, a great deal of attention is being focused on developing instrumentation for the accurate measurement of size and velocity distributions in sprays as a function of space and time. Most recent advances in optical engineering techniques using lasers for particle measurement have focused on detailed spray characterization, where there is a major concern with spherical liquid droplets within the size range of 1 to 500µm in diameter, with droplet velocities within the range of 1 to 100 m/s, and the requirement for making in situ measurements of moving particles by nonintrusive optical probes. The instruments being developed for spray analysis have much wider applications. These include measurement in particle laden flows encountered in a variety of industrial processes with solid particles in gas and liquid streams and liquid particles in gas streams. Sprays used in agriculture, drying, food processing, coating of materials, chemical processing, clean rooms, pharmaceuticals, plasma spraying, and icing wind tunnels are examples of systems for which information is being sought on particle and fluid dynamic interactions in which there is heat, mass, and momentum transfer in turbulent reacting flows.


Bipolaris is an increasingly recognized cause of fungal sinusitis. Reports of imaging features are sparse. Our purpose was to review the imaging features in patients with Bipolaris fungal sinusitis. A review of our data showed seven patients with culture-proven Bipolaris fungal sinusitis. Computed tomography of the paranasal sinuses in all the patients and MRI in five patients were analysed for the location, nature, extent of the disease and density/signal characteristics on CT/MRI. The sphenoid and posterior ethmoid sinuses were most often involved (six of seven), followed by the anterior ethmoid sinus (five of seven), frontal sinus (four of seven) and maxillary sinus (three of seven) involvement. Five of seven cases had bilateral disease. Secretions were seen to fill the sinus and were expansile in nature in six of seven cases. Bony erosion was noted in all the patients. Air-fluid levels and bony sclerosis were rarely seen. Computed tomography showed central hyperdensity in all the cases. In the corresponding MR images (n = 5), the sinus contents appeared hyperintense on T1-weighted images and hypointense on T2-weighted images. Extension into the nasal cavity was found in six of seven cases. Five of seven cases had intracranial (extradural) spread. Intraorbital extension was seen in three of seven cases, with associated optic nerve compression in two. All the patients responded to surgical debridement, and systemic antifungal therapy was not required. Bipolaris fungal sinusitis typically presents with an allergic fungal sinusitis picture with expansile sinus opacification and bony erosions. There is central hyperdensity on CT scan, which appears hyperintense on T1-weighted and hypointense on T2-weighted MR images.


Abstract. Bordetella pertussis infection is a vaccine preventable disease, but immunity following the vaccination is not life-long. Moreover parapertussis may share similar clinical presentation with pertussis and mostly recognized in prolonged bronchitis. Although the serology of pertussis has been well studied, those of parapertussis have not. We herein investigated antipertussis and antiparapertussis serology in asymptomatic healthy children. We examined IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies against B. pertussis and B. parapertussis among 100 asymptomatic children aged from 6 to 8 years who got regular vaccination. The antibody titers were measured by indirect immunofluorescence test (IFA). 10% of them had IgA titers of > or = 100 EU/ml, 33% had IgM titers of > or = 320 EU/ml who could be considered as acute or recent pertussis infection and 89% had IgG titers > or = 100 EU/ml as a protective level of pertussis. Bordetella parapertussis antibody levels of IgG, IgA and IgM were detected in 33%, 17%, and 11% respectively. We suggest 2 explanations for the acquisition of pertussis and parapertussis antibodies in our children: (1) asymptomatic pertussis and parapertussis infections are common; (2) Although higher values of IgG observed, acute infection markers still persisted, and one problem in this regard may be waning immunity against pertussis. Of the strategies considered, the addition of a preschool booster is therefore a priority in Turkey. Key words: Asymptomatic children, Bordetella parapertussis, Bordetella pertussis, seroprevalence


Purpose: To analyze the stationarity of 3D x‐ray cone‐beam computed tomography(CBCT) through spatial and frequency domain descriptions of noise. Such analysis of the stationarity assumption is an essential component of task‐based assessment of CBCTimaging performance. Method and Materials: Three objects (air, water cylinder + bowtie filter, and water cylinder only) were imaged using a CBCT benchtop and the Feldkamp algorithm for 3D filtered backprojection. Noise‐only 3D images were analyzed from the difference of two CBCT volumes under the three conditions. In the spatial domain, noise stationarity was analyzed in terms of variance maps, and in the frequency domain, in terms of the covariance matrix of the Fourier coefficients — of which the diagonal is the noise‐power spectrum (NPS). For a stationary random process, the Fourier covariance matrix (FCM) is diagonal and the same at every location in the image.Results: The three experimental conditions affected the degree of stationarity: air (highest stationarity), water+bowtie, water cylinder (least stationary). This rank order was consistent in terms of variance maps and the NPS. The off‐diagonal elements of the FCM were non‐negligible in comparison to the NPS and believed to have measurable effect on detectability. Conclusion: The degree of non‐stationarity in CBCT can be controlled experimentally and analyzed through both spatial and frequency domain techniques. From a practical standpoint of system design and evaluation, the findings suggest strategies for meaningful CBCTnoise and NPS analysis. Model observer analysis should assess the validity of the stationarity assumption, recognizing its potential effect on task performance.


Contractual fairness and the will's role on the bindingness of contracts can be regarded as essential elements for the task of juridically argument that it is possible to find enough tools within the law of obligations to protect the contracting party that is in a weak position with respect to the other. In this sense, it is not necessary to have the status of a consumer to be entitled to the aforementioned protection, since such regime can be articulated from particular notions integrated to our legal system. In this framework, the modern interpretation of legitimate trust and contractual equilibrium are stressed. These notions can be inspired by the favor debilis criterion rather than the notion of good faith. This criterion is fundamental to define the directive line of this work.


Accelerating Process Improvement Using Agile Techniques explains how agile programming is applied to standard process improvement. By applying agile techniques, IT organizations can speed up process improvement initiatives, minimize the resources these initiatives require, and maximize the benefits of process improvement. The book details step-by-step how to implement the Accelerating Process Improvement Methodology (APIM) and how to integrate APIM with various standard process improvement models and methodologies, including the ISO 9000 series, SPICE, TQM, SPIRE, PMBOK, and CMM/CMMI. Agile process improvement enables organizations to rapidly set strategic goals, meet a greater percentage of user requirements, and realize a quicker return on investment. About the Author Deb Jacobs is a Professional Consultant with Focal Point Associates specializing in process improvement and project management. She currently provides support to organizations in training, process improvement consulting, project management consulting, software engineering consulting, and proposal development. Ms. Jacobs has over 25 years in project management, process improvement management, system/software engineering, and proposal development with a BS in Computer Science.


Diarrhea is a disease, and patients must have bowel movements at least three times per day. This condition may last for several days and may cause dehydration due to fluid loss. Spleen-deficiency makes a person more vulnerable to some infectious diseases. Persistent diarrhea due to spleen-deficiency may affect amino acids and glucose metabolic pathways, and urinary metabolic characteristics. For this purpose, this research was carried out to investigate the pathogenesis and changes of metabolic profiling in urine samples that come from 3 months to 3 years old children with persistent diarrhea due to Spleen-deficiency were analyzed by metabolomics methods based on gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The urine samples were collected and divided into normal children group (NC group, n=30), persistent diarrhea group (PD group, n=30).The endogenous metabolites in urine were obtained by GC-MS. Principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) was used to analyze the data.The results were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and Fold change.Finally,there was a significant difference between the normal group and the diarrhea group, and the significant metabolites, glutamic acid, serine,phenylalanine, histidine, and et al. were identified between two groups. The metabolism of glycine, serine and threonine, arginine and proline, glutathione and pentose phosphate were involved. The result demonstrated that amino acid metabolism and glucose metabolism were the main metabolic pathways and responsible for persistent diarrhea due to Spleen-deficiency.


Many researchers have studied rates of weathering layer development. Weathering layers broadly include weathering rinds, hydration layers, rock varnish, and weathering crusts, each of which has been discussed within individual research fields. To understand the development of these weathering layers, previous research on the growth rates of weathering layer thickness and formation processes is reviewed. Then, terminology relating to weathering layers is elucidated. Weathering rind development is affected by the porosity and mobility of many elements. Conversely, the obsidian hydration layer is mainly controlled by moisture content and rock varnish is influenced by microbial activities. Environmental differences in the thickness of these thin weathered or alteration layers with weathering time are also examined. Although data are limited, the growth of weathering rind thickness varies by rock types and environmental conditions. The next stage of weathering rind studies will be supported by the progress of analytical methods including isotopic elements, interpretation of rock properties, biomineralization, and introduction of environmental parameters.


The workshop will show selected case studies demonstrating possible uses of the GEMAS data set. In addition, a twin-like project carried out by the USGS and covering the Conterminous United States will be presented, as well as preliminary results from a European Commission soil survey. Examples for the importance of scale and of the selection of the optimal sample density for a given purpose will also be highlighted.


Abstract The paper reviews the author's own findings and the data available in the literature on the pathogenesis and anatomic pathology of alcoholic cardiomyopathy. The macro-, microscopic, and ultrastructural signs of alcoholic cardiomyopathy in the context of its differential diagnosis are characterized. The implication of alcoholic cardiomyopathy in the structure of pathologoanatomic diagnosis is considered.


: Nuclear factor Y (NF-Y) transcription factors play an essential role in regulating plant growth, development, and stress responses. Despite extensive research on the NF-Y gene family across various species, the knowledge regarding the NF-Y family in Ginkgo biloba remains unknown. In this study, we identified a total of 25 NF-Y genes (seven GbNF-YAs, 12 GbNF-YBs, and six GbNF-YCs) in the G. biloba genome. We characterized the gene structure, conserved motifs, multiple sequence alignments, and phylogenetic relationships with other species (Populus and Arabidopsis). Additionally, we conducted a synteny analysis, which revealed the occurrence of segment duplicated NF-YA s and NF-YB s. The promoters of GbNF-Y genes contained cis-acting elements related to stress response, and miRNA–mRNA analysis showed that some GbNF-YA s with stress-related cis-elements could be targeted by the conserved miRNA169. The expression of GbNF-YA genes responded to drought, salt, and heat treatments, with GbNF-YA6 showing significant upregulation under heat and drought stress. Subcellular localization indicated that GbNF-YA6 was located in both the nucleus and the membrane. Overexpressing GbNF-YA6 in ginkgo callus significantly induced the expression of heat-shock factors (GbHSFs), and overexpressing GbNF-YA6 in transgenic Arabidopsis enhanced its heat tolerance. Additionally, Y2H assays demonstrated that GbNF-YA6 could interact with GbHSP at the protein level. Overall, our findings offer novel insights into the role of GbNF-YA in enhancing abiotic stress tolerance and warrant further functional research of GbNF-Y genes.


Based on case studies in 12 nursing homes in the United Kingdom, the authors illustrate how financial cutbacks affect job quality and the quality of care. The dimensions of job quality that suffered most were those directly related to the ability of workers to provide care: reductions in staffing, longer working hours, and work intensification. Cuts to labor costs eroded the quality of workers' jobs in all 12 homes but with two differential outcomes: in seven homes, care quality was maintained, and in five homes, it deteriorated. Care quality was maintained in homes where a patient-centered care approach and remaining job quality allowed workers to develop work-arounds to protect residents from spillover effects. Care quality declined in homes where custodial approaches to care and low job quality did not provide workers the time or resources to protect residents or to maintain prior levels of care. A tipping point was reached, leading to a spillover into impoverished care.


Forest management has altered the age structure, tree species composition and dead wood availability of Swedish boreal forests. As a consequence, many saproxylic (wood living) insect species have decreased in abundance and many species are threatened. New conservation-oriented forestry uses management measures to favour saproxylic species in managed forests. In my thesis, I evaluated the importance of these measures for saproxylic beetles and possible improvements by using a large-scale field experiment at ten sites in northern Sweden. The substrate types used in the experiment included burned and shaded logs, logs inoculated with two species of wood-decaying fungi, untreated control logs, created snags and the tops of the snags. The experiment was performed in three stand types: clear-cuts, mature managed stands and old-growth stands. Additionally, I performed attraction experiments to examine the attraction of saproxylic beetles to sporocarps and mycelia-infected wood of wood-decaying fungi in landscapes with different proportions of old spruce forest. Saproxylic beetles were affected by both forest management and dead wood characteristics. Snags differed from lying untreated logs and tops and supported different assemblages of saproxylic beetles and significantly higher numbers of several bark beetle and predator species. Tops attracted different assemblages from both snags and untreated logs. Burned logs supported a lower abundance of saproxylic beetles, particularly fire-favoured species and cambium consumers (especially Dryocoetes autographus, Hylurgops palliatus, Hylurgops glabratus and Hylastes cunicularius) and different assemblages of fire-favoured beetles, cambium consumers and predators from the untreated logs, probably because burning makes the cambium less suitable as food for bark beetles. However, some species were attracted to the burned logs. Log exposure proved to be important, especially on clear-cuts where shaded logs supported different assemblages of saproxylic beetles, particularly predators, from untreated logs. Shaded logs on clear-cuts also hosted different saproxylic beetle assemblages from untreated logs in mature managed and old-growth stands, suggesting that shaded logs on clear-cuts do not provide suitable substrate for all shade-demanding species. Sporocarps and mycelia-infected wood attracted some beetle species; Lordithon lunulatus was attracted to Fomitopsis pinicola sporocarps and D. autographus to Fomitopsis rosea mycelium-infected wood. Forest management affected the saproxylic beetle fauna and landscapes with lower proportions of old spruce forest supported depauperate saproxylic beetle assemblages compared with landscapes with higher proportions of old spruce forest. Clear-cuts supported different assemblages of saproxylic beetles, and all functional groups, compared with mature managed and old-growth stands. The assemblages of saproxylic beetles and predators also differed between old-growth and managed stands. Properties of the substrate are important for saproxylic insects and many species have specific substrate demands. To conserve functionally intact beetle assemblages in an area with intense forestry, both old-growth forest reserves and measures in the managed forest, such as the creation of a variety of dead wood substrates, is needed.


The multipath-induced intersymbol interference (ISI) and fluorescent light interference (FLI) are the two most important system impairments that affect the performance of indoor optical wireless communication systems. The presence of either incurs a high optical power penalty and hence the interferences should be mitigated with suitable techniques to ensure optimum system performance. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and the artificial neural network (ANN)-based receiver to mitigate the effect of FLI and ISI has been proposed in the previous study for the ON-OFF keying (OOK) modulation scheme. It offers performance improvement compared to the traditional methods of employing a high-pass filter and a finite impulse response equalizer. In this paper, the investigation of the DWT-ANN-based receiver for baseband modulation techniques including OOK, pulse position modulation, and digital pulse interval modulation is reported. The proposed system is implemented using digital signal processing board and results are verified by comparison with simulation data.


The abandoned refugee child is a powerful yet simplistic cultural trope that can inspire intense, sympathetic reactions to asylum seekers but cannot sustain that sympathy in more complex contexts. In contrast, literary novels unpack the intricacies, details, and nuances of refugee children's experiences, serving as a reliable representation of reality and a winsome pedagogical tool for increasing curiosity and attention to refugee children. As cultural pedagogy, refugee fiction promotes public discussions around the complex situations of vulnerable children, educates readers about sovereignty as responsibility, and thus mobilises and nuances the political will to fulfill a nation's responsibility to protect. Literary novels leverage a rhetoric that is concrete, polyphonous, interlocking, and intimate. This paper uses the example of Stella Leventoyannis Harvey's Canadian novel The Brink of Freedom, which embeds complex, even contradictory, representations of R 2 P issues into the particular details of a displaced child's perspective. The pedagogical work of this example of literary fiction is accomplished through the differing perspectives embodied concurrently by sympathetic characters, the concrete details of one child's deeply intimate moments, the central metonym of the child/caregiver as the citizen/nation, and the contrasting first person child narrator. In a highly polarised global context that appears to be moving towards protectionist policies, this kind of local, creative cultural intervention can feed an alternative social imaginary that prioritises interdependence over independence for the health of everyone.


The regeneration potential of human bone is limited in the cases of repairing large bone defects, such as those associated with comminuted fractures or bone tumor resection. In most cases, autogenous and allogenic bones are used as bone grafts. However, the amount of both of them is severely limited. Nowadays, natural biomaterials are in question, like corals, cuttlefish, and various nacre species, or hydroxyapatite (HA) made from egg shells. The present work aims at preparing inexpensive nano-sized HA and whitlockite particles from various raw materials of natural-biological origin. Razor shells (ensis ensis) were collected from beaches of Thessaloniki in Greece. Each sample was reduced to particle size <100 µm and DTA/TG was employed to determine their exact CaCO3 content. The suspended raw powders were put on a hotplate. The temperature was set to 80°C for 15 min. Then, equivalent amount of H3PO4 was added, drop by drop, into the solution. Different Ca/P ratios were tried. The reaction was ultrasonically assisted and continued for 8h. Then, to evaporate the liquid part, the mixture was put into an incubator at 100°C for 24 h and the resulting dried sediment was collected. The morphology of the produced powders was examined by SEM and revealed nano-sized particles. X-ray diffraction analysis indicated various Ca-phosphate phases, i.e. monetite and calcium phosphate hydrate. Thus, razor shells could be an alternative source for calcium phosphate ceramics production. In this study, long nacre shells were converted to various bioceramic structures with simple ultrasonic method without using hydrothermal method, which is carried out in a close vessel heated in a furnace and could cause accident if the vessel is worn. Chemical ultrasonic method is very safe and reliable method for bioceramic production from aragonite structures.


As a fundamental structure in computer science and information technology, graphs are commonly employed to model relational structures that are sets of objects and the relationships between them. As an effective tool, graph visualization is about visualizing such relational information. The book provides a systematic framework for graph visualization, and presents the techniques for filtering, clustering and dynamic layout of large graphs. These techniques offer the solutions to questions such as how to rank online users, how to discover online user communities, and how to visualize online users? interactive activities. Except for theoretic analysis, the book presents the algorithms in detail, and exemplifies how to visualize Web graphs, complete with a number of illustrative figures. The book accommodates both beginning and advanced students in computer science and IT. It is also indispensable for researchers and practitioners in the area of visualization, particularly for those who are interested in visualizing graphs in online environments.


Personalizing learning with technology in secondary schools is a way to empower students to take control of their learning. The more learners can direct their own learning experiences, including path, pace and instructional approach, the more they may learn what they want and need to learn. In a quasi-experimental design, data about the implementation and evaluation of three interventions in one secondary school in the Netherlands have been gathered with student questionnaires and regular exams. In these three interventions, each lasting one entire school year, teachers attempted to support their students' autonomy in decisions during their learning process. Effects on students' perceived autonomy support, learning motivation and their achievement have been examined. One intervention – the one with the highest scores on perceived autonomy support – shows small positive effects on students' learning motivation and their achievement. Learner control over structural aspects of the curriculum, such as students' autonomy to choose their tasks for practicing and reviewing and the way to complete them, is a possible effective way of designing personalizing learning in secondary education. In future research, more attention should be addressed to which combination of autonomy supportive activities might be effective. These effects might also be different for different student groups, based on, for example, their learning preferences and abilities.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the potential of adipose-derived nucleated cell (ADNC) fractions to improve tendon repair in horses with collagenase-induced tendinitis.

ANIMALS
8 horses.

PROCEDURES
Collagenase was used to induce tendinitis in the superficial digital flexor tendon of 1 forelimb in each horse. Four horses were treated by injection of autogenous ADNC fractions, and 4 control horses were injected with PBS solution. Healing was compared by weekly ultrasonographic evaluation. Horses were euthanatized at 6 weeks. Gross and histologic evaluation of tendon structure, fiber alignment, and collagen typing were used to define tendon architecture. Biochemical and molecular analyses of collagen, DNA, and proteoglycan and gene expression of collagen type I and type III, decorin, cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), and insulin-like growth factor-I were performed.

RESULTS
Ultrasonography revealed no difference in rate or quality of repair between groups. Histologic evaluation revealed a significant improvement in tendon fiber architecture; reductions in vascularity, inflammatory cell infiltrate, and collagen type III formation; and improvements in tendon fiber density and alignment in ADNC-treated tendons. Repair sites did not differ in DNA, proteoglycan, or total collagen content. Gene expression of collagen type I and type III in treated and control tendons were similar. Gene expression of COMP was significantly increased in ADNC-injected tendons.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
ADNC injection improved tendon organization in treated tendons. Although biochemical and molecular differences were less profound, tendons appeared architecturally improved after ADNC injection, which was corroborated by improved tendon COMP expression. Use of ADNC in horses with tendinitis appears warranted.


Since radiation therapy remains a primary treatment modality for gliomas, the radioresistance of glioma cells and targets to modify their radiation tolerance are of significant interest. Human apurinic endonuclease 1 (Ape1, Ref-1, APEX, HAP1, AP endo) is a multifunctional protein involved in base excision repair of DNA and a redox-dependent transcriptional co-activator. This study investigated whether there is a direct relationship between Ape1 and radioresistance in glioma cells, employing the human U87 and U251 cell lines. U87 is intrinsically more radioresistant than U251, which is partly attributable to more cycling U251 cells found in G2/M, the most radiosensitive cell stage, while more U87 cells are found in S and G1, the more radioresistant cell stages. But observed radioresistance is also related to Ape1 activity. U87 has higher levels of Ape1 than does U251, as assessed by Western blot and enzyme activity assays (approximately 1.5-2 fold higher in cycling cells, and approximately 10 fold higher at G2/M). A direct relationship was seen in cells transfected with CMV-Ape1 constructs; there was a dose-dependent relationship between increasing Ape1 overexpression and increasing radioresistance. Conversely, knock down by siRNA or by pharmacological down regulation of Ape1 resulted in decreased radioresistance. The inhibitors lucanthone and CRT004876 were employed, the former a thioxanthene previously under clinical evaluation as a radiosensitizer for brain tumors and the latter a more specific Ape1 inhibitor. These data suggest that Ape1 may be a useful target for modifying radiation tolerance.


The drinking of seawater and absorption of water along with sodium across the intestinal epithelium are well-known osmoregulatory events in marine teleosts. The insecticide DDT impairs fluid absorption in intestinal sacs from eels adapted to seawater. Furthermore, this functional impairment has an enzymatic basis; DDT also inhibits the (Na+ and K+) activated, Mg2+-dependent adenosine triphosphatase in homogenates of the intestinal mucosa. Thus, the extreme sensitivity of teleosts to organochlorine pollutants may involve the disruption of osmoregulatory transport mechanisms.


Sediments collected from hypersaline and anoxic deep-sea basins in the eastern Mediterranean (Thetis, Kryos, Medee, and Tyro) were characterised in terms of their mineralogical composition, the distributions of rare earth elements (REE), Zr, and Hf and their content of microbial DNA. We identified two major mineralogical fractions: one fraction of detritic origin was composed of quartz, gypsum, and low-Mg calcite bioclasts (with 0 We found that in the Medee and Tyro sediments, the shale-normalised REE pattern of these sediments is strongly enriched in middle REE (MREE), whereas in the Thetis and Tyro basins, a positive Gd anomaly in the residue was obtained after the removal of the water-soluble fraction. In all investigated basins, Y / Ho ratio clustered around chondritic values, whereas Zr / Hf ratio ranged from slightly subchondritic to superchondritic values. Subchondritic Y / Ho and Zr / Hf values were mainly found in the high-Mg carbonate having a microbial origin. The observed preferential removal of Zr with respect to Hf without significant partitioning of Y with respect to Ho indicates that the Zr / Hf ratio and Y–Ho fractionations are influenced by the microbial activity in the sediments. We propose that the concurrent Y-Ho and Zr–Hf fractionations are a suitable tracer of microbial activity in marine sediments.


ZnO nanorod/porous silicon nanowire (ZnO/PSiNW) hybrids with three different structures as highly sensitive NO2 gas sensors were obtained. PSiNWs were first synthesized by metal-assisted chemical etching, and then seeded in three different ways. After that ZnO nanorods were grown on the seeded surface of PSiNWs using a hydrothermal procedure. ZnO/PSiNW hybrids showed excellent gas sensing performance for various NO2 concentrations (5-50 ppm) at room temperature, and the electrical resistance change rate reached as high as 35.1% when responding to 50 ppm NO2. The distinct enhancement was mainly attributed to the faster carrier transportation after combination, the increase in gas sensing areas and the oxygen vacancy (VO) concentration. Moreover, the p-type gas sensing behavior was explained by the gas sensing mechanism and the effect of VO concentration on gas sensing properties was also discussed concerning the photoluminescence (PL) spectra performance.


Acute kidney failure is one of the most severe complications of surgery on the aorta. We describe two kidney-transplanted patients diagnosed of aneurysm of the abdominal aorta who underwent resection of the aneurysm and placement of an aorto-aortic graft. Cryopreservation of the renal implant was used with good results. Prevention of kidney damage also requires maintenance of adequate intravascular volume and the use of drugs (dopamine, mannitol and furosemide) to increase renal blood flow and urinary output.


Mathematics is not a race-neutral subject. Access and opportunity in mathematics for students of color in the United States continue to be limited. While a great deal of attention has been given to increasing the number of underrepresented minority students in the mathematics pipeline, there is little consideration of who they are as learners or the context in which their mathematics learning takes place. We argue that culturally relevant instruction coupled with teaching for social justice can motivate marginalized students to learn mathematics. Throughout this conceptual article, we (a) explore the theoretical frameworks underlying culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and social justice pedagogy (SJP), (b) present illustrative cases of mathematics teaching that reveal the possibilities and challenges associated with these pedagogical approaches, and (c) offer to the field of teacher education recommendations related to the successful use of CRP and SJP within today's classrooms.


ABSTRACT: Little is known about TANF recipients and leavers use of consumer credit. Using data from a 2001 North Carolina household survey of low-income households, we analyze banking and credit behavior of current and recent welfare recipients in Charlotte, North Carolina. Other things equal, TANF families are 70% less likely than other low-income families to have a bank account and much more likely to have participated in a credit counseling program. Except for more frequent contact with bill collectors and credit counselors, leavers are no different from other low income families struggling to make ends meet. Race also matters when it comes to accessing mainstream banking and credit systems. Targeted programs help TANF families gain greater access to the financial mainstream. When it comes to specialization programs, however, those involved in the welfare system are not very different from other poor families. However, by virtue of their formal involvement with TANF, this population can be more efficiently served than other low-income populations. For this reason and the desire to keep families from recycling back onto welfare rolls, TANF programs should address banking and credit issues.


We explore the relationship between underwriter reputation and pricing (fee and yield) of corporate bond underwriting services in the U.S. during the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. We compare the effect of underwriter reputation on bond pricing during the GFC with that in pre- and post-crisis periods. We find that during non-crisis times, reputable underwriters charge premium fees and obtain lower yields. However, during the crisis period, the relationship between underwriter reputation and fee and yield is reversed. Reputable underwriters charge lower fees and obtain higher yields compared to less reputable underwriters. A plausible explanation for this finding lies in the tarnished reputation of large banks and the resulting competitive advantage gained by less reputable banks. However, the certification effect of reputable underwriters is restored following the crisis period, resulting in premium fees and lower yields.


The large, nutrient-rich seeds of Whitebark Pine ( Pinus albicaulis Engelmann) are important food for bears ( Ursus spp.) in Yellowstone National Park. In Banff National Park, studies have shown that American Black Bears ( Ursus americanus ) eat these seeds, but little additional information is available. We studied Whitebark Pine in Banff National Park to address this information gap. Because bears obtain Whitebark Pine seeds from Red Squirrel ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus ) middens, our objective was to measure the abundance, habitat characteristics, and use by bears of middens in Whitebark Pine forests. A second objective was to determine whether Grizzly Bears ( U. arctos ) in Banff National Park also eat Whitebark Pine seeds. In 2011–2012, we ran 29 ha of 20–50 m wide transects at 10 sites with accessible Whitebark Pine stands and found 0–3.7 middens/ha (mean 1.23, SD 1.17, n = 10). Midden density was weakly related to total basal area of all conifers but not to basal area of Whitebark Pine. Middens were located in the upper subalpine at an average elevation of 2110 m (SD 90, n = 8) on 41–248° facing slopes with a mean steepness of 28° (SD 5, n = 8). Bears had excavated middens at all eight sites where we found middens; at the remaining two sites, middens did not occur within our transects. Overall, 24 (67%) of the 36 middens located in our transects had been dug by bears. In October 2013, we searched areas where three global positioning system (GPS)-collared Grizzly Bears had been located in late September 2013 and found five recently dug middens located less than 6 m from GPS fixes. These observations are, to our knowledge, the first conclusive evidence that grizzly Bears in Banff National Park eat Whitebark Pine seeds. Because Whitebark Pine occurs at high elevations on steep slopes where human use is low, this resource may be important in keeping bears in habitat where risk of human-caused mortality is lower. Our results may assist managers responsible for conservation of bears in Banff National Park, where both American Black Bears and Grizzly Bears are subject to high levels of human-caused mortality.


The increased input of nutrients into biological systems has been shown to result in altered biotic interactions through changes in food availability. The aim of this study was to test for an association between phytoplankton nutrient content and epibiont variables in natural zooplankton populations. Via a field survey, we studied how a gradient in food quantity and quality impacted host population density and epibiont variables in Daphnia pulex. We found a significant decrease in epibiont prevalence and infracommunity richness, which could mainly be attributed to a changing phytoplankton N : P ratio (caused by P‐limitation). We performed a lab experiment in which we exposed Daphnia magna to different algal nutrient ratios and the epibionts detected in the field study. P‐limitation in the algae affected D. magna performance and resulted in similar trends of food quality effects in the epibiont variables. The experiment, however, also reflected subtle differences between different epibiont species.