The research deals with the socio-economic reintegration of Ethiopian women return migrants from Arabian Gulf countries. It examines the lived experiences of women who migrate to these countries and then return to their home country. How female returnees make sense of migration-related trauma, how migration settings impact on the migration as well as the reintegration process, and the understated role of home country cultural values in the reintegration process were new insights developed in the dissertation. This research also pinpoints the limited or non-existent support programs for returnees when they return to Ethiopia. It points out the practical policy implications of the findings for reintegration support programs, such as the need to support psychological and mental health, which is often neglected, but requires attention, given the immensely traumatic incidents that some returnees go through while in the destination countries. Economic reintegration as well as social reintegration such as a sense of belonging in the society and developing a good social relationship with family members, and entering a marital relationship or maintaining the existing one, was difficult for most of the returnees who participated in this study. These factors relate to migration experiences with the kafala labor system and the socio-cultural attitudes and norms that exist in the home country, which are often neglected in the discussion of the reintegration of return migrants. Particularly, the intangible social costs that women returnees from the Arabian Gulf bear (in terms of health and social relationships) and the stigma and discrimination they experience upon return are often neglected in the social science and migration debate. Often the focus is on the economic resources needed to enable returnees to reintegrate in the home society. Other societal and cultural factors are not considered in managing return crises, and reintegration programs. The study concludes by questioning the positive impact of women's migration to the Arabian Gulf and highlighting beyond short-term economic gains that mainly benefit the migrant's family, rather than the migrant herself, there are long-term intangible losses and reintegration in the home country can be difficult.


The demand of steam in process industries is increasing rapidly, and this demand can be met by increasing the capacity utilization of steam boilers. Many of the process industries depend on industrial steam boilers as a vital component for their operation. The availability of the boiler can be improved by identifying critical mechanical subsystems/components concerning failure frequency, reliability, and maintainability and minimizing their likelihood of occurrences. The selection of appropriate technique for data collection and reliability analysis is essential. The time between failure (TBF) and time to repair (TTR) of all components and subsystems were collected to carry out reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) analysis. The best-fit distribution and distribution parameters were calculated using reliasoft software weibull++10 after performing trend testing. The preventive maintenance intervals of all components and subsystems and the availability of the system were evaluated. The analysis reveals that the combustion system, feed-water system, and blow-down system are the critical subsystems from a reliability perspective and are still the biggest reasons for the boiler downtime. The research study also showed that TTR was longer for the combustion system than the other subsystems, and thus, to enhance its availability, it is suggested that maintenance resources should be allocated at the appropriate moment to the combustion system. The study also shows the usage of RAM analysis in deciding the preventive maintenance intervals of components/subsystems of the boiler. It also provides a reference for the preparation of the maintenance plan for the boiler system.


ABSTRACT Hyatt, M.W.; Anderson, P.A., and O'Donnell, P.M., 2018. Influence of temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen on the stress response of bull (Carcharhinus leucas) and bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo) sharks after capture and handling. Capture and handling stress can induce acidosis in sharks. This response, endured during commercial bycatch and in catch-and-release recreational fisheries, could be exacerbated in certain environmental conditions. To assess environmental influence on stress response, changes in acid-base, blood gas, and metabolite analytes (pH, pCO2, and lactate) measured with the i-STAT portable clinical analyzer were evaluated immediately after capture and removal from gillnets among wild bull (Carcharhinus leucas) and bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo) sharks caught in waters of differing temperature (T), salinity (Sal), and dissolved oxygen (DO). Time from capture to blood collection (C-BD) was also recorded. Effects of T, Sal, DO, and C-BD on acid-base physiology were evaluated by modeling their ability to predict pH, pCO2, and lactate concentrations using ordinal logistic regression (OLR). The OLR models suggest that C. leucas sharks experienced a mixed metabolic and respiratory acidosis in warmer waters and at the low end of their salinity tolerance, and that S. tiburo sharks experienced a metabolic acidosis in warmer waters with a potential for respiratory acidosis at the high end of their salinity tolerance. In S. tiburo, capture and handling time exacerbated acidosis. Based on these findings, it is recommended that commercial and catch-and-release fisheries conduct operations cautiously during times of the year when water temperatures are high and salinities are at either extreme, by decreasing soak times, using the strongest proper tackle gear to reduce fight times, and releasing sharks as soon as possible after capture and detection.


Abstract Objective : To compare the cost effectiveness of two possible modifications to the current UK screening programme: shortening the screening interval from three to two years and extending the age of invitation to a final screen from 64 to 69. Design : Computer simulation model which first simulates life histories for women in the absence of a screening programme for breast cancer and then assesses how these life histories would be changed by introducing different screening policies. The model was informed by screening and cost data from the NHS breast screening programme. Setting : North West region of England. Main outcome measures : Numbers of deaths prevented, life years gained, and costs. Results : Compared with the current breast screening programme both modifications would increase the number of deaths prevented and the number of life years saved. The current screening policy costs £2522 per life year gained; extending the age range of the programme would cost £2612 and shortening the interval £2709 per life year gained. The marginal cost per life year gained of extending the age range of the screening programme is £2990 and of shortening the screening interval is £3545. Conclusions : If the budget for the NHS breast screening programme were to allow for two more invitations per woman, substantial mortality reductions would follow from extending the age range screened or reducing the screening interval. The difference between the two policies is so small that either could be chosen.


This study proposes a concept extraction and clustering method, which
 improves Topic Keyword Clustering by using Log Likelihood Ratio for semantic
 correlation and Bisection K-Means for document clustering. Two value-added
 services are proposed to show how this approach can benefit information
 retrieval (IR) systems. The first service focuses on the organization and
 visual presentation of search results by clustering and bibliographic
 coupling. The second one aims at constructing virtual research communities
 and recommending significant papers to researchers. In addition to the two
 services, this study conducts quantitative and qualitative evaluations to
 show the feasibility of the proposed method; moreover, comparison with the
 previous approach is also performed. The experimental results show that the
 accuracy of the proposed method for search result organization reaches 80%,
 outperforming Topic Keyword Clustering. Both the precision and recall of
 virtual community construction are higher than 70%, and the accuracy of paper
 recommendation is almost 90%.


We investigate the performance of a dual-hop inter-vehicular communications (IVC) system with relay selection strategy. We assume a generalized fading channel model, known as cascaded Rayleigh (also called <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula>*Rayleigh), which involves the product of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula> independent Rayleigh random variables. This channel model provides a realistic description of IVC, in contrast to the conventional Rayleigh fading assumption, which is more suitable for cellular networks. Unlike existing works, which mainly consider double-Rayleigh fading channels (i.e, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n=2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>); our system model considers the general cascading order <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, for which we derive an approximate analytic solution for the outage probability under the considered scenario. Also, in this study we propose a machine learning-based power allocation scheme to improve the link reliability in IVC. The analytical and simulation results show that both selective decode-and-forward (S-DF) and amplify-and-forward (S-AF) relaying schemes have the same diversity order in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime. In addition, our results indicate that machine learning algorithms can play a central role in selecting the best relay and allocation of transmission power.


While new neural hardware is increasingly emphasizing spiking neural models, there will still be a need to model "classical" neural networks like the multilayer perceptron (MLP) for the foreseeable future. Given that the trend in new chips is towards a "neuromimetic" design that specialises the hardware for neural networks but does not hardwire the model, it is worth examining whether it is possible to implement the MLP on such hardware and realise performance gains over conventional simulation on general-purpose computers. Using the SpiNNaker chip as a demonstration platform, we show that it is possible to find efficient mappings to improve both the performance and the scalability of the MLP network, allowing for much larger models than possible in software. These mappings, however require a careful consideration of how to transform the "timeless" MLP model into an event-driven implementation. Examination of the hardware performance also reveals the importance of distributing processing and traffic load so that local congestion does not end up crippling the simulation. These considerations being solved, not only does the hardware demonstrate the potential for significant performance improvement, it also illustrates important general techniques and methods for translating nonspiking models onto the emerging generation of spiking neural hardware. The results suggest both the form that models might take and the architectures that future neural hardware could adopt for optimum generality and performance.


Piezoelectric ceramics are often used under compressive stress. We have measured the dynamic value of the piezoelectric charge coefficient, d/sub 33/, as a function of uniaxial stress in the poled direction. Results on two types of PZT ceramics manufactured by EDO Corporation are presented; in general, they show a nonlinear behaviour with an initial increase in d/sub 33/ as the stress increases followed by a significant decrease. The time dependence of the measurement has also been investigated and these studies indicate that the stress induced extrinsic contributions take a finite time to appear and that, over longer time periods, the stress causes ageing.


This brief studies the design of complex-valued variable digital filters (CVDFs) and their applications to the efficient arbitrary sample rate conversion for complex signals. The design of CVDFs using either the minimax or least-squares criteria is formulated as a convex optimization problem and solved using the second-order cone programming (SOCP). In addition, linear and convex quadratic inequality constraints can be readily incorporated. Design examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


Background Tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) has provided an objective means to quantify global and regional left ventricular (LV) and right ventricular (RV) function with improved accuracy and greater reproducibility than conventional echocardiography. This study was conducted to assess RV myocardial systolic activation by TDI in subjects with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Methods A total of 30 patients with PAH and 30 healthy volunteers, all comparable in age and sex, underwent standard Doppler echo and TDI. Using pulsed Doppler echocardiography combined with TDI, the following regional parameters were evaluated in three different myocardial segments (RV basal lateral wall, basal septal, and LV basal lateral) on apical 4-chamber view: systolic (Sm), earlyand late-diastolic (Em and Am) peak velocities. RV myocardial systolic activation delay was defined as the difference in time to peak TDI systolic velocities between the RV basal lateral wall and basal septal. In addition, RV end-diastolic and end-systolic areas were measured to calculate RV fractional area change from the same apical 4-chamber view. Results Compared with the control group, patients with PAH showed increased RA and RV end-diastolic diameter (RA: (4.5±1.2)cm vs (3.0±0.8)cm, P<0.05 and RV: (4.8±1.9)cm vs (3.4±0.5)cm, P<0.05) and reduced RV fractional area change; (35±14)% vs (56±9)%, P<0.05. These PAH patients showed lower myocardial peak velocities and a significant activation delay compared with controls (P<0.05). Moreover, a strong correlation between RV myocardial systolic activation delay and RV fractional area change was shown in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (r = −0.82). Conclusions In PAH, RV myocardial systolic activation was markedly delayed, which was directly related to the RV fractional area change. RV myocardial systolic activation delay assessed by TDI could offer a unique approach to predict RV dysfunction. Chin Med J 2007;120(13):1172-1175


Objective. To describe the tonsillectomy techniques and management used by practicing otolaryngologists in the United States. Study Design. Anonymous 18-question postal survey of pediatric and general otolaryngologists on their current tonsillectomy practices. Setting. Tertiary academic medical center. Subjects and Methods. Current preoperative, perioperative, and postoperative practices in tonsillectomy were queried with multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Pediatric otolaryngologists and general otolaryngologists were compared. Results. Eighty percent of respondents perform subcapsular (total tonsillectomy) dissection. Most otolaryngologists trained with either monopolar cautery (52%) or cold steel (42%). The Coblator (ArthroCare ENT, Austin, Texas) is the most common single instrument used for tonsillectomy (27.5%), followed by monopolar cautery (26%), but in combination with other instruments, monopolar cautery was still more common (33.5%) than coblation (28.9%). Coblation was more common among private practice and general otolaryngologists. The majority of those surveyed do not use intraoperative local anesthesia, but most do use intraoperative steroids (67%). Compared with generalists, pediatric otolaryngologists were less likely to use coblation, were less likely to use local anesthetic, managed postoperative pain slightly differently, and were more likely to recommend diet ad libitum after surgery. Otolaryngologists were more likely to admit medically compromised patients postoperatively. Conclusions. Coblation is becoming a more commonly used instrument for tonsillectomy. Pediatric otolaryngologists perform more tonsillectomies than do general otolaryngologists and manage their patients differently.


A process is described for determining the quantitative and qualitative features of a proposed daylighting design using physical scale models. Several issues (i.e., modeling techniques, testing, measurement, visual analysis and photography) are discussed that must be resolved before physical scale modeling can be undertaken. Finally, a physical scale modeling case study is presented which illustrates many of the issues outlined as well as a photographic sequence of the physical scale modeling process.


In this article, we examine the relationship between dispositional personality traits (the Big Five) and the consumption of political information. We present detailed hypotheses about the characteristics of the political environment that are likely to affect the appeal of politics and political information in general for individuals with different personalities as well as hypotheses about how personality affects the attractiveness of particular sources of political information. We find that the Big Five traits are significant predictors of political interest and knowledge as well as consumption of different types of political media. Openness (the degree to which a person needs intellectual stimulation and variety) and Emotional Stability (characterized by low levels of anxiety) are associated with a broad range of engagement with political information and political knowledge. The other three Big Five traits, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Extraversion, are associated only with consumption of specific types of political information.


A microgravity data set presented in a previous study exhibits distinct short-wavelength anomalies over a longwall coal mine panel at Soma-Darkale Coalfield. Nevertheless, our preliminary models suggest that the wavelength after the coal removal from a panel at a moderate depth and fracturing alone should be incomparably greater than that of the measured anomalies. Understanding the mechanism that causes these anomalies usually becomes critical to provide credible evidence for longwall mining-related legal cases. This study improves the model by including the post-subsidence drainage as it occurs because of fracturing that causes an increase in water storage and local density change. Since no water-level information was available at the site, we attempted to infer the drained zone from the dc-resistivity sounding measurements acquired shortly before the gravity field survey. The wavelengths of the model anomalies became reasonably comparable with that of the residual anomalies after the inclusion of the inferred drainage information. This presented approach that does not require water level measurements shows that the inclusion of the inferred drained zone to the model became an amplifying indicator of a coal panel at a moderate depth. Therefore, it may easily find application in settling the mining-related legal cases, understanding the longwall mining-related geohazard, and environmental impact assessments.


The question of how we apply knowledge from biomedical science to medical and public health practice has been the subject of heated debates about generalizability and related concepts, such as applicability and inductive inference. In this essay, I interpret the term from the perspective of two causal models: determinism and indeterminism. I suggest that theories of generalizability can be formulated on the basis of both models and take the form of testable but unverifiable hypotheses, an attribute that is common to all scientific theories. Nonetheless, there is one noteworthy difference between the two models: determinism allows one to rationalize a decision to treat a certain kind of patient but only indirectly a decision to treat any particular patient, whereas indeterminism accommodates both types of decisions.


The holopelagic macroalgae sargassum has proliferated across the tropical Atlantic since 2011, of consequence for coastal populations from West Africa to the Caribbean with limited early warning of major beaching events. As part of an interdisciplinary project, 'Teleconnected SARgassum risks across the Atlantic: building capacity for TRansformational Adaptation in the Caribbean and West Africa' (SARTRAC), an ensemble forecast system, SARTRAC-EFS, is providing seasonal predictions of sargassum drift. An eddy-resolving ocean model hindcast provides the winds and currents necessary to generate ensemble members. Ensemble forecasts are then obtained for different combinations of 'windage', the fractional influence of winds on sargassum mats, and in situ rates of growth, mortality, and sinking. Forecasts for north and south of Jamaica are evaluated with satellite-observed distributions, associated with beaching events in specific years of heavy inundation, 2015 and 2018-20. These seasonal forecasts are evaluated, on lead times of up to 180 days. Forecasts are subject to leading modes of tropical climate variability, in particular the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM). More accurate forecasts for a given year are obtained with ensemble members from hindcast years with a similar spring AMM-index. This is most clearly evident during negative AMM phases in spring of 2015 and 2018, when positive sea surface temperature anomalies and anomalously weak trade winds were established across the northern tropics. On this evidence, SARTRAC-EFS is potentially useful in providing early warning of high sargassum prevalence. Extended to sargassum drift off West Africa, extensive cloud cover limits availability of the satellite data needed for full application and evaluation of SARTRAC-EFS in this region, although experimental forecasts off the coast of Ghana are found highly sensitive to the windage that is associated with strong onshore winds during boreal summer. Alongside other forecast systems, SARTRAC-EFS is providing useful early warnings of sargassum inundation at seasonal timescale.


We first present a minimal feature set for transition-based dependency parsing, continuing a recent trend started by Kiperwasser and Goldberg (2016a) and Cross and Huang (2016a) of using bi-directional LSTM features. We plug our minimal feature set into the dynamic-programming framework of Huang and Sagae (2010) and Kuhlmann et al. (2011) to produce the first implementation of worst-case O(n^3) exact decoders for arc-hybrid and arc-eager transition systems. With our minimal features, we also present O(n^3) global training methods. Finally, using ensembles including our new parsers, we achieve the best unlabeled attachment score reported (to our knowledge) on the Chinese Treebank and the "second-best-in-class" result on the English Penn Treebank.


Smooth pursuit eye movements hold information about the health, activity and situation of people, but to date there has been no efficient method for their automated detection. In this work we present a method to tackle the problem, based on machine learning. At the core of our method is a novel set of shape features that capture the characteristic shape of smooth pursuit movements over time. The features individually represent incomplete information about smooth pursuits but are combined in a machine learning approach. In an evaluation with eye movements collected from 18 participants, we show that our method can detect smooth pursuit movements with an accuracy of up to 92%, depending on the size of the feature set used for their prediction. Our results have twofold significance. First, they demonstrate a method for smooth pursuit detection in mainstream eye tracking, and secondly they highlight the utility of machine learning for eye movement analysis.


This article applies the Rapfish methodology, a non-parametric and multi-disciplinary technique, with the objective of defining and evaluating a Sustainability Index of the Basque purse-seine fleet, fishing tropical tuna in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The estimated Sustainability Index for the fleet fishing in the Indian Ocean is above a critical sustainability threshold and improves between 1998 and 2009. The opposite occurs for the fleet in the Atlantic Ocean. The influence of the growing use of Fish Aggregating Devices on the behaviour of fishers in the Indian Ocean is also analysed.


Difficulties in obtaining high-performance p-type transistors and gate insulator charge-trapping effects present two major challenges for III-V complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics. We report a p-GaAs nanowire metal-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MESFET) that eliminates the need for a gate insulator by exploiting the Schottky barrier at the metal-GaAs interface. Our device beats the best-performing p-GaSb nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET), giving a typical subthreshold swing of 62 mV/dec, within 4% of the thermal limit, on-off ratio ∼105, on-resistance ∼700 kΩ, contact resistance ∼30 kΩ, peak transconductance 1.2 μS/μm, and high-fidelity ac operation at frequencies up to 10 kHz. The device consists of a GaAs nanowire with an undoped core and heavily Be-doped shell. We carefully etch back the nanowire at the gate locations to obtain Schottky-barrier insulated gates while leaving the doped shell intact at the contacts to obtain low contact resistance. Our device opens a path to all-GaAs nanowire MESFET complementary circuits with simplified fabrication and improved performance.


The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio is one of the most discussed sources for the Norman Conquest of England. Its authorship and date cannot be established entirely beyond dispute, but the weight of scholarly opinion supports a date of composition of 1068 or earlier, by Guy, bishop of Amiens, thus making it the earliest surviving account. Whatever its date, the Carmen remains a source of intrinsic interest and importance, and one used by some of the great chroniclers of the period, such as Orderic Vitalis. It is an epic poem, concerned with some of the most momentous events of a remarkable year, in which Halley's comet was a disturbing portent of undisclosed disasters. For this second edition, Frank Barlow has written an entirely new and substantial historical introduction, incorporating the scholarly research of a generation. He has also provided a fresh translation and notes, as well as revising the Latin text of the 1972 edition by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz.


BACKGROUND: Sleep disturbances are common among older adults. Recently there is much interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) from the population in general, and the elderly are no exception. Tai Chi exercise as a CAM can be performed by older adults. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of Tai Chi Exercise on sleep quality of elderly residents in Sadeghiyeh elderly care home. METHODS: In this Clinical Trial, 62 older subjects aged older than 65 years residents of elderly home in Isfahan were studied. They randomized in two experimental and control groups. The intervention was the Tai Chi Exercise sessions were held three times per week for 12 weeks. Duration of exercise was 5 minutes at first session which gradually increased to 20 to 25 minutes by the midpoint of intervention. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used for pre and post evaluation of older adult sleep quality. Data analyzed using the SPSS14 software. RESULTS: There were no differences in demographic characteristics or psychological variables between two groups. Mean age of studied subjects in experimental and control groups was 68.74(5.48) and 69.42(5.34), respectively. In the Tai Chi group sleep quality was improved significantly with decrease in PSQI global score. In control group sleep quality was not changed significantly. At the end of study, mean differences of PSQI global score between two groups different significantly. CONCLUSIONS: Our finding is coherent with other studies in this field indicated that the Tai Chi Exercise can have a significant effect on sleep quality in older adults.


The aim of this study was to clarify the mechanism of malignant transformation of gastric hyperplastic polyps, focusing on phenotypic expression, cell proliferation, and p53 overexpression. Twenty-two lesions of gastric hyperplastic polyps with neoplastic foci were selected for this study. The phenotypes were divided into 3 types (G, gastric; incomp I, incomplete intestinal; and comp I, complete intestinal), according to immunohistochemical stains (human gastric mucin [HGM], MUC2, and CD10). The cell proliferative activity by Ki-67 and overexpression of p53 protein were also examined. Eleven of these lesions contained carcinoma components (CA, category 5 by the Vienna classification), 6 of which were accompanied by low-grade dysplasia (LGD, category 3) and 4 of which were accompanied by high-grade dysplasia (HGD, category 4). Another 2 were composed only of HGD, and the remaining 9 were composed of both LGD and HGD components. As a result, 15 LGD, 15 HGD, and 11 CA components were recognized. The 15 LGD components were classified as 1 G type and 14 incomp I type. All hyperplastic components expressed HGM, 5 (22.7%) of which were accompanied by focal intestinal metaplasia demonstrated by MUC2 expression, whereas intestinalization frequently occurred in neoplastic components (93% of LGD, 53% of HGD, and 64% of CA components). The labeling index was 22.2% in hyperplastic, 42.2% in LGD, 55.7% in HGD, and 53.9% in CA components. p53 protein overexpression was recognized in none of hyperplastic, in 40% of the LGD, in 60% of the HGD, and in 45% of the CA components. These results suggest the importance of the dysplasia-carcinoma sequence in malignant transformation of hyperplastic polyps. Interestingly, intestinalization frequently occurs during neoplastic transformation, although it is not common in the surrounding hyperplastic components.


The arched coastline enclosing the Gulf of Venice is extremely complex because the terminal stretches and mouths of its rivers and beaches have been considerably affected by human intervention. The Lido di Jesolo has been heavily exploited for tourist purposes since World War II with no account being taken of critical beach behavior which is closely connected to the extreme variability, both natural and artificial, of the Pi ave River mouth. High tides in the 1960's caused such serious damage that the entire coastline is now protected by a range of defences. In this paper, the evolution of the Piave River mouth and beach behavior are analyzed and the effects of protective structures are assessed. Although use of the Lido di Jesolo has been severely criticized, many doubts still exist regarding the impacts of the coastal defences.


Law and Finance theory stresses the importance of shareholder rights for the reliability and development of capital markets. Many European Parliaments picked up this corporate governance issue. We expand the analysis of Lele and Siems (2007) and show that the number of shareholder rights grew steadily in many countries over the last fifteen years. In particular the protection of shareholders against shirking of the board members and the officers increased significantly. The protection of minority shareholders against the expropriation of major shareholders remained unchanged. In light of these findings, it can be expected that after a time lag ownership concentration would decrease in continental Europe. However, our evidence is mixed. The analysis of the development of shareholder structures from different perspectives - ownership concentration, shareholder classes and ownership distribution - revealed only limited support for the Law and Finance arguments. The results cause serious doubts on the influence of shareholder rights on ownership structures and the development of liquid capital markets. That is not to say, shareholder rights have no added value and should be abolished. The mixed evidence suggests that other variables, like the presence of activist shareholders, might be much more influential than the development of shareholder rights.


Purpose: To assess intra‐fraction motion of patients treated for braincancer using hypofractionated treatment, to optimize the frequency of patient imaging, and to determine whether treatment margins are appropriate or not. Material and methods: Intra‐fraction patient displacement data for twenty braincancer patients were analyzed retrospectively. Patient imaging for setup correction is done at three stages. The first set of images was taken before the patient treatment. The second set of images was taken after one third of the treatment is delivered, and the third imaging set was taken after two thirds of the treatment is delivered. During each imaging stage, two stereoscopic x‐ray images are acquired using the ExacTrac imaging system. All images were automatically fused with digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) determine patient displacement from the planning isocenter. Displacements were quantified in terms of position changes as a function of time between each two consecutive sets of stereotactic images.Results: The average patient displacements were 0.86 ± .66 mm, 1.15 ± 1.08 mm, and 0.86 ± 0.79 mm in the lateral, longitudinal and vertical directions respectively. During the first one third of the treatment, the average patient displacements were: 0.68 ± 0.62 mm, 0.83 ± 0.66 mm, and 0.65 ±0.78 mm. During the second third of the treatment, the average patient displacements were: 0.57 ± 0.64 m, 0.92 ± 1.08 mm, and 0.69 ±0.79 mm in the lateral, longitudinal, and vertical directions respectively. Conclusions: The majority of positioning errors in this study are within the safety margin of 3 mm. Without patient displacement correction, higher margins may be necessary. Because the average patient displacement during the first one third of the treatment is comparable to the patient displacement during the second third of the treatment, it may not be necessary to increase the frequency of patient imaging.


Abstract
The purpose of this research was to assess the effect of increasing levels of salt and 5 g/L of salt (0.20% extra sodium) in the drinking water in broiler chickens at various ages up to five weeks of age and to compare the response of broiler chickens and White Leghorns to saline water (0.20% sodium). The effect was measured by the response of the right ventricle to pulmonary hypertension. The results indicated that broiler chickens under three weeks are more susceptible to saline water containing 0.20% sodium than those over three weeks of age, and that broilers given increasing levels of dietary salt may be more resistant to excess dietary salt than those that have had no previous exposure. The results also demonstrated that broiler chickens are more susceptible than White Leghorns to 0.20% extra dietary sodium in drinking water. We conclude that Leghorn chicks are more resistant to excess dietary sodium than broilers and that broilers become more resistant to saline water containing 0.20% sodium after three weeks of age.


Recent studies and some policy experts have posited that dividends indicate higher quality earnings. In this study, we test this conjecture by comparing the dividend policies of firms accused of accounting fraud to those of firms not accused of accounting fraud. Specifically, we examine whether alleged fraud firms are as likely to be dividend payers as non-fraud firms and whether managers of dividend-paying fraud firms increase dividends at the same rate as managers of non-fraud firms. Our data reveal that dividend paying status is negatively associated with the probability of committing accounting fraud. In addition, we also find that, during the alleged fraud period, the earnings-dividends relation is weaker for the alleged fraud firms relative to firms not accused of fraud. Finally, using propensity score match tests, the data provide evidence that managers of alleged fraud-firms increase dividends less often than managers of firms not accused of fraud, consistent with the alleged fraud firms not being able to match the dividend policies of firms not accused of fraud. Overall, our results suggest that dividends, especially dividend increases, are associated with higher earnings quality.


This is the compelling yet disturbing story of Corbett Mack (1892-1974), an opiate addict who was a member of the Nuumuu (Numa), or Northern Paiute. The Northern Paiute are best known as the people who produced Wovoka, the Ghost Dance prophet whose revitalistic teachings swept the Indian world in the 1890s. Mack is from the generation following the collapse of the Ghost Dance religion, a generation of Nomogweta or 'half-breeds' (also called 'stolen children') - Paiute of mixed ancestry who were raised in an increasingly bicultural world and who fell into virtual peonage to white (often Italian) potato farmers.Around the turn of the century, the use of opium became widespread among the Paiute, adopted from equally victimized Chinese laborers with whom they worked closely in the fields. The story of Corbett Mack is an uncompromising account of a harsh and sometimes traumatic life that was typical of an entire generation of Paiute. It was a life born out of the turmoil and humiliation of an Indian boarding school, troubled by opiate addiction, bound to constant labor in the fields, yet nonetheless made meaningful through the perseverance of Paiute cultural traditions. Michael Hittman is chairman of the Anthropology and Sociology Department and a professor at Long Island University, Brooklyn. He is the author of "Wovoka and the Ghost Dance: A Sourcebook" and "A Numa History: The Yerington Paiute Tribe".


Thirty women with prolactin (PRL)-secreting adenomas underwent selective adenomectomy via a transsphenoidal route. All had abnormal sella polytomes or visual fields, amenorrhea with low basal serum gonadotropin levels despite decreased serum estradiol concentrations, and elevated basal serum PRL levels with blunted PRL response to neuroendocrine stimulation tests )thyrotropin-releasing hormone, levodopa, chlorpromazine, and hypoglycemia). Of 17 patients with microadenomas, 14 (82.4%) were cured and three (17.6%) improved. None were unchanged or worse. Three (60%) of five patients with larger, but still intrasellar tumors, had normalization of PRL levels, return of menses, and resolution of galactorrhea. The patients with tumors extending out of the sella did not fare as well. Overall, 21 (70%) were cured, six (20%) improved, two (6.7%) were unchanged, and the condition of one (3.3%) became worse. All preoperative neurologic deficits resolved. Postoperative complications were minimal with no neurologic morbidity. When tumors are small, surgical results are excellent with minimal risk.


The arms race between attacks and defenses for machine learning models has come to a forefront in recent years, in both the security community and the privacy community. However, one big limitation of previous research is that the security domain and the privacy domain have typically been considered separately. It is thus unclear whether the defense methods in one domain will have any unexpected impact on the other domain. In this paper, we take a step towards resolving this limitation by combining the two domains. In particular, we measure the success of membership inference attacks against six state-of-the-art defense methods that mitigate the risk of adversarial examples (i.e., evasion attacks). Membership inference attacks determine whether or not an individual data record has been part of a model's training set. The accuracy of such attacks reflects the information leakage of training algorithms about individual members of the training set. Adversarial defense methods against adversarial examples influence the model's decision boundaries such that model predictions remain unchanged for a small area around each input. However, this objective is optimized on training data. Thus, individual data records in the training set have a significant influence on robust models. This makes the models more vulnerable to inference attacks. To perform the membership inference attacks, we leverage the existing inference methods that exploit model predictions. We also propose two new inference methods that exploit structural properties of robust models on adversarially perturbed data. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that compared with the natural training (undefended) approach, adversarial defense methods can indeed increase the target model's risk against membership inference attacks. When using adversarial defenses to train the robust models, the membership inference advantage increases by up to 4.5 times compared to the naturally undefended models. Beyond revealing the privacy risks of adversarial defenses, we further investigate the factors, such as model capacity, that influence the membership information leakage.


The aim of the study learn about if the court assesses boys and girls on an equal basis, or if there are norms of gender constructed in society that appears in the Administrative Court of Appeal. And we want to find out how norms, in this field, are different between boys and girls. We used the judgments of the Administrative Court of Appeal and went through the descriptions of the girls and boys. What basis was used in the judgment of LVU, to do this, we used discourse analysis. We summarized all judgments and then described the outcome of each requirement in LVU, we categorized the results for three requirements, other socially destructive behavior, criminal activity and abuse. Quote was taken from the judges to prove our result. The results were then analyzed by two theories, gender theory and theory of social constructivism. There, we showed what standards have emerged through our analysis and it is explained by the theories and previous research. We concluded that the Administrative Court of Appeal judge based on gender norms in the society. Finally, we discuss our results and what ideas and issues that have emerged during the study.


The complexity of COVID-19 is also related to the multiple molecular pathways triggered by SARS-CoV-2, which is able to cause type I pneumocyte death, trigger intravascular coagulation, interfere with the renin-angiotensin system, dysregulate iron metabolism, ending with the insurgence of a cytokine storm which may lead to death. Old adults with obesity, hypertension, and diabetes are among the high-risk category groups more prone to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Magnesium has been reported to play a major role both in physiology and in pathology, particularly in elderly people, regulating cytotoxic functions of natural killer (NK) cells and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In spite of the absence of controlled trials, the possibility of magnesium supplementation for supportive treatment in patients with COVID-19 should be encouraged. This could be useful in all phases of the COVID-19 disease.


Sedimentary characters and depositional environments of K . Maras Terteariy sequence There is widespread Tertiary sedimentary sequence around K.Maras. One of the best outcrop of these sediments is seen bet.ween KilavuzluSiileymanfJ and Deniz area • .Stratigraphic sequences of the sediments are rather different in the southern and the northern part of this region. Ahtrdag1 mermer of the Midyat formation with Paleocene. Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene age situated at the bottom of sedimentary succession in the southern area. This cream colore~ member mostly consists of biomicrites. Lithology and fossil content such as foraminifera and Zoophycos of the member indicate that this unit is formed in shelf-basin slope environments. Firat member which is formed by reefy limestone and Cac1k mermer that consisted of conglomerate, sandstone and limestone gradually overlie the Ahudag1 member. Lower i\liocenc Firat and Cac1k member accumulated in the reef and shore-lagoon environments resμectively • Midyat formation has been gradually covered by Lower Miocene Lice formation which is mostly constituded of shales. Also. the Lice formation contains soma limestone lences (Tunaboylu member) at the intermediate levels and reefal limestones (Athk member) at the upper levels. In south, lower levels of Lice formation had accumulated in shelf, middle levels had accumulated in basin slopes and basin, and upper levels had deposited in a shallow marine-reefal-lagooner environments. Pink Be~enli formation which consists of conglomerate, litharenite · and shale intercalation is situated in the eastern part of the region. This wait laterally and perpendicularly passes to the Lice formation and mostly had been formed by the braided river sediments. • Bertiz formation which is widespread in Maras Miocene basin and that passes to the Be~enli formation is subdivided to 1five members. a) Menzelet memper consists . of litharenite and mostlr algal biomicrites and it has deposited in a shallow shelf environment. b) Budakh member consists of limestone, litharenite and shale alternation and it has generally deposited in a shelf environment. c ) islampman member is mostly formed of shales and probably has de- posited in the slope of the basin and basin environments. d) ~ak1rdcre member consists of litharenite and shale alternation and probably has deposited in environments varying from basin through basin slope and deltaic envi ronrnents. · e) Alikayasi member contains litharenite and conglomerate intercalation and it probabiy represents submarine canyon sediment. Ktlavuzlu formation which is observed in the upper level of the autochthonaus units and are formed by sandstone shale and conglomerate intercalation, has mostly deposited in the braided river environment. Mesozoic Berit group whicla is formed by 011hiolitcs, schists and granitic rocks, and Permian ~lalatya ~ldharuorphic rocks that consists of limestones, calcschist, marble and schists exist al the base of the sedimentary sequence in the northern part of the study u rL:a. These tectonicly mixed allochthcinuus units are unconformably covered by Oal11k1s1k formation which contair1s con1:l1) ml·ratt~ , sandstone, limestone and andesitic volcanics. Upper Eocene llall1k1s1J.. lor111•iti un that has probably depo-. sited in at shallow.sea environment has b1.:cn unconformably covered by Abaz member of the Lice formation whid1 wnsists of derrital limestones. This unit is followed by the other units uf the l.i<..c lo rrnution which are accumulated in environments varying from basin sl ,1pcs to busin, and to reefal environments respectively. In the north of the basin, so met i 111es C'Olllinental sediments which are equivalent of the Be~enli formation lies uver the Lice formation. Toward the upper levels, the sequence continues with the units of the Ucrtiz formation. As a result, the sediments have formation in an asirnetric peripheral basin which has been developed by comincntal collision between .'\ rabian plate in the south and Torid platform in the no rth. In this basin, the facies distril:iutions in s01mce and time indicate that sediments developed with movements uf ;dludithonous units belonging to the orog. enic belt thrusting over the platform of the subducting plate from time to time. Also, in the study area, position of the scdirnentary sequence and fasies distributions point out at least seven compression or trust movements since Upper Cretaceous in the region.


The article aims at estimating the impact of the quality of the legal system and of fiscal evasion on the difficulties of credit access of firms. The motivations of the study are twofold. First, the understanding of the determinants of credit market imperfections is a primary goal for economists. Indeed, credit lines are one of the main firms' financial sources, and the presence of credit market imperfections creates situations of financial constraints and credit rationing and, consequently, a negative impact on firm actual and potential growth. Second, the shadow economy affects all countries and there is an ongoing debate on its impact on the official economy. Our paper analyzes a specific aspect of this debate, i.e.: how the partial shadow economy affects the possibility of firms to borrow. Moreover, we improve on the existing literature by also considering the quality of the legal system in our empirical investigation. Indeed, the legal system of a country plays a relevant role in determining both the level of the shadow economy, and the efficiency of the financial markets. We use the dataset "Voices of the Firms 2000" of the "World Business Environment Survey" (WBES). The dataset contains firm-level data for the period 1999-2000 for about 10,000 firms located in 80 different countries. The firms have been interviewed randomly, and a minimum of 100 interviews for each country have been collected. Our findings show that both the shadow economy and the quality of the legal systems affect the difficulties of the credit access of firms. First, we find that the higher the level of the partial shadow economy is, the higher the probability that firms face difficulties of borrowing. Second, the estimates show that the quality of the legal system affects positively the possibility of firms to borrow from the financial market, and that a low level of the quality of the legal system enforces the negative impact of the tax evasion on the credit access.


: The Authors discuss on anatomical and functional characteristics of ileum-colon junction, physiological narrowing in alimentary tract and often involved in benign obstruction. They report their series and analyze all inflammatory or not inflammatory diseases potentially involved, by describing them shortly and giving some information about their clinical features and imaging. The treatment of this obstruction will be done as soon as possible, before wall lesions force to make a larger resection.


We report the cross sectional age-related prevalence of cutaneous features of the tuberous sclerosis complex in a defined population. Of 131 affected individuals, 126 (96%) exhibited skin signs. Although there is considerable variation in the age of expression of all the skin lesions, there is a trend towards the earlier expression of hypomelanic macules and forehead fibrous plaques compared with facial angiofibromas and ungual fibromas. Shagreen patches are usually present by puberty. Ungual fibromas appeared for the first time as late as the fifth decade and were the only clinical feature in three individuals. Gum fibromas were present in 36%. Ten individuals (8%) presented because of the skin manifestations and 21% received treatment for symptomatic skin lesions. Two individuals had large hamartomas at unusual sites (occiput and forearm).


In integrated segmentation and recognition of character strings, the underlying classifier is trained to be resistant to noncharacters. We evaluate the performance of state-of-the-art pattern classifiers of this kind. First, we build a baseline numeral string recognition system with simple but effective presegmentation. The classification scores of the candidate patterns generated by presegmentation are combined to evaluate the segmentation paths and the optimal path is found using the beam search strategy. Three neural classifiers, two discriminative density models, and two support vector classifiers are evaluated. Each classifier has some variations depending on the training strategy: maximum likelihood, discriminative learning both with and without noncharacter samples. The string recognition performances are evaluated on the numeral string images of the NIST special database 19 and the zipcode images of the CEDAR CDROM-1. The results show that noncharacter training is crucial for neural classifiers and support vector classifiers, whereas, for the discriminative density models, the regularization of parameters is important. The string recognition results compare favorably to the best ones reported in the literature though we totally ignored the geometric context. The best results were obtained using a support vector classifier, but the neural classifiers and discriminative density models show better trade-off between accuracy and computational overhead.


It is inevitable that envision of power systems will be based on the Smart Grid. On the other hand the energy crisis enforces utilizing renewable and clean energy through small-scale Microgrids. Interactions of these two new and growing technologies will require development of more complicated control strategies. In other words, while each Microgrid has to satisfy its own localized constraints and objectives, limitations and objectives enforced by the whole Smart Grid and/or Microgrids will require extended and more conservative constraints. The first part of the paper will provide a comprehensive review of Microgrid and Smartgrid control strategies. This review will cover clean energy stability analysis, generation control, generation forecasting, load forecasting, power management, load management, interchange analysis of Microgrids, multi-objective and multi-constraint optimization as well as load shedding on localized and global grids. Additionally, combination of some of the discussed control strategies will be discussed further through the application of an industrial tool on a real grid example.


Modified spray drying methods, especially a novel w/o/w emulsion-spray drying method, were developed to prepare chitosan microspheres with a sustained drug release pattern. Release of the model drugs cimetidine and famotidine, from the microspheres prepared by the emulsion-spray drying methods, was greatly retarded with release lasting for several hours, compared with drug loaded microspheres prepared by conventional-spray drying or emulsion methods where drug release was almost instant. The slow release of drug was partly due to the poor wetting ability of the microspheres which floated on the surface of the dissolution medium. The addition of a wetting agent increased the release rate significantly. The coating of the microspheres with gelatin decreased the rate of release of drug in the presence of wetting agents.


Backdoor attacks insert malicious data into a training set so that, during inference time, it misclassifies inputs that have been patched with a backdoor trigger as the malware specified label. For backdoor attacks to bypass human inspection, it is essential that the injected data appear to be correctly labeled. The attacks with such property are often referred to as"clean-label attacks."Existing clean-label backdoor attacks require knowledge of the entire training set to be effective. Obtaining such knowledge is difficult or impossible because training data are often gathered from multiple sources (e.g., face images from different users). It remains a question whether backdoor attacks still present a real threat. This paper provides an affirmative answer to this question by designing an algorithm to mount clean-label backdoor attacks based only on the knowledge of representative examples from the target class. With poisoning equal to or less than 0.5% of the target-class data and 0.05% of the training set, we can train a model to classify test examples from arbitrary classes into the target class when the examples are patched with a backdoor trigger. Our attack works well across datasets and models, even when the trigger presents in the physical world. We explore the space of defenses and find that, surprisingly, our attack can evade the latest state-of-the-art defenses in their vanilla form, or after a simple twist, we can adapt to the downstream defenses. We study the cause of the intriguing effectiveness and find that because the trigger synthesized by our attack contains features as persistent as the original semantic features of the target class, any attempt to remove such triggers would inevitably hurt the model accuracy first.


In 2014 there were more than 14 million refugees worldwide and almost a million places for permanent resettlement were needed. This article reviews administrative and survey data on the characteristics and integration outcomes of refugees resettled in the United States, Canada and Scandinavia. Refugees to these destinations are increasingly diverse in their origins and languages-posing challenges for host communities. Refugees in the United States tend to be employed due to an early focus on self-sufficiency there, but those in Sweden and Norway have low employment rates, with Canada representing a middle ground. While limited English skills slow integration in the United States and Canada, acquiring Norwegian and Swedish is tougher because refugees are seldom exposed to these languages before resettlement. In the United States, older refugee cohorts have reached income parity with the U.S.-born population, but those resettled since the 2008-09 recession have started at a greater employment and income disadvantage. This article describes the administrative and survey data on U.S. refugees in rich detail, but the available administrative data for refugees in Canada, Norway and Sweden have yet to be fully mined.


The rapidly growing rate of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the world today has made it to become a very important factor of our everyday life. All along in Nigeria case and some other developing countries, there are avalanche of avenues in which Information Technology-Mediated Potentials (IT-MP) are being presented for peoples' awareness and usage. The quest for speedy progress in scientific and technological nations largely depends on the potentials of information and communication technology this study therefore examined the impact of the access to Information Technology-Mediated Potentials (ITMP) on the socioeducational practices of Nigerian citizens. The study is a descriptive survey research. Three research questions were raised and answered in the study. A sample of 400 including lecturers, undergraduate students, computer operators and literate community people were sampled. The questionnaire used is named Information Technology-Potentials and Socio-Educational Practices Questionnaire (ITPSEPQ), with a reliability value of 0.87. The finding revealed that IT-MP have brought great gain to Nigeria socio-educational practices to a large extent in some identified areas while some other potentials of IT-MP are still strange to a large percentage of people in Nigeria. Still, the positive impact of the potentials has not been adequately felt by the community people. Also the curses of IT-MP in term of crime and much reliance on artificial intelligence are concerns for the Nigeria populace. The authors recommended the need to increase socioeducational awareness of Nigerians in some of the areas of IT-MP identified in the study, and device the means of checking the reliability of artificial intelligence in IT-MP rather than undisputable reliance on such potentials at all times.


Single-molecule fluorescence imaging was used to investigate assembly of Staphylococcus aureus LukF and HS monomers into pore-forming oligomers (gamma-hemolysin) on erythrocyte membranes. We distinguished the hetero-oligomers from the monomers, as indicated by fluorescence resonance energy transfer between different dyes attached to monomeric subunits. The stoichiometry of LukF (donor) and HS (acceptor) subunits in oligomers was deduced from the acceptor emission intensities during energy transfer and by direct acceptor excitation, respectively. Based on populations of monomeric and oligomeric intermediates, we estimated 11 sequential equilibrium constants for the assembly pathway, beginning with membrane binding of monomers, proceeding through single pore oligomerization, and culminating in the formation of clusters of pores. Several stages are highly cooperative, critically enhancing the efficiency of assembly.


The concept of necrocapitalism (Banerjee, 2008) has been a remarkable achievement in that it combines approaches from history, political economy and critical theory to describe the contemporary form of global capitalism. It is a concept that accurately depicts the militarization of civil life (Green, 1999; Hobsbawn, 2007; and Orwell, 2003) as it is experienced by people who dwell near or on the US-Mexico border (Chacon and Davis, 2006). However, necrocapitalism remains strictly conceptual since there is no theoretical basis that accounts for how markets function in necrocaptialism . To address this shortcoming a heuristic model of necrocapitalist market mechanics will be presented in this paper based on a revised version of the IS/LM model (Hicks, 1937). This modified IS/LM model will illustrate how armed conflict can be represented in commodity-form (i.e. security ) and provide a complementary approach to the conceptual way of looking at necrocapitalism that is prescriptive in nature.


HIGH SPEED PROTOCOLS FOR DUAL BUS AND DUAL RING NETWORK ARCHITECTURES by Yaling Zhou In this dissertation, two channel access mechanisms providing fair and bandwidth efficient transmission on dual bus and dual ring networks with high bandwidth-latency product are proposed. In addition, two effective priority mechanisms are introduced to meet the throughput and delay requirements of the diverse arrays of applications that future high speed networks must support. For dual bus architectures, the Buffer Insertion Bandwidth Balancing (BI_B\VB) mechanism and the Preemptive priority Bandwidth Balancing (P_BI_BWB) mechanism are proposed. BI_BWB can significantly improve the delay performance of remote stations. It achieves that by providing each station with a shift register into which the station can temporarily store the upstream stations' transmitted packets and replace these packets with its own transmissions. P_BI_BWB, an enhancement of BI_BWB, is designed to introduce effective preemptive priorities. This mechanism eliminates the effect of low priority on high priority by buffering the low priority traffic into a shift register until the transmission of the high priority traffic is complete. For dual ring architectures, the Fair Bandwidth Allocation Mechanism (FB AM) and the Effective Priority Bandwidth Balancing (EP_BWB) mechanism are introduced. FBAM allows stations to reserve channel bandwidth on a continuous basis rather than wait until bandwidth starvation is observed. Consequently, FBAM does not have to deal with the difficult issue of identifying starvation, a serious drawback of other access Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mechanisms such as the Local and Global Fairness Algorithms (LFA and GFA, respectively). In addition, its operation requires a significantly smaller number of control bits in the access control field of the slot and its performance is less sensitive to system parameters. Moreover, FBAM demonstrates Max-Min flow control properties with respect to the allocation of bandwidth among competing traffic streams, which is a significant advantage of FBAM over all the previously proposed channel access mechanisms. EP_BWB, an enhancement of FBAM to support preemptive priorities, minimizes the effect of low priority on high priority and supports delay-sensitive traffic by enabling higher priority classes to preempt the transmissions of lower priority classes. Finally, the great potential of EP_BWB to support the interconnection of base stations on a distributed control wireless PCN carrying voice and data traffic is demonstrated. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. HIGH SPEED PROTOCOLS FOR DUAL BUS AND DUAL RING NETWORK ARCHITECTURES


The power consumption of state of the art supercomputers, because of their complexity and unpredictable workloads, is extremely difficult to estimate. Accurate and precise results, as are now possible with the latest generation of supercomputers, are therefore a welcome addition to the landscape. Only recently have end users been afforded the ability to access the power consumption of their applications. However, just because it's possible for end users to obtain this data does not mean it's a trivial task. This emergence of new data is therefore not only understudied, but also not fully understood. In this paper, we provide detailed power consumption analysis of microbenchmarks running on Argonne's latest generation of IBM Blue Gene supercomputers, Mira, a Blue Gene/Q system. The analysis is done utilizing our power monitoring library, MonEQ, built on the IBM provided Environmental Monitoring (EMON) API. We describe the importance of sub-second polling of various power domains and the implications they present. To this end, previously well understood applications will now have new facets of potential analysis.


A ureterocele in an adult patient is described. The characteristic clinical features of this condition associated with pyeloureteral duplicity and several secondary disorders make it an unusual case. The clinical features and treatment are described. The etiologic aspects are discussed, highlighting the acquired factors, as well as the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.


OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The Penn State KL2 Career Development Program provides a comprehensive structured training and mentorship to junior faculty scientists (KL2 scholars). The goal of this study is to describe the perceptions of scholars after completion of the training and determine self-perceived impact of the program using exit interviews as a unique method. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Ten KL2 scholars (5 from each cohort of 2014 and 2017) participated in the evaluation. We used a descriptive qualitative design supplemented with quantitative data, to conduct an individual in-depth exit interview with each scholar to understand their perceptions on the impact of the KL2 program. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview guide developed by the program directors including scholars and a Likert scale survey. Thematic analysis of the data involved: reading and re-reading transcripts, identifying and categorizing keywords and phrases and developing overall themes that explained the processes within categories. In establishing rigor, two authors carefully coded, categorized and identified patterns and emerged themes which were also reviewed and confirmed by the other authors. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Two sets of themes emerged. The main themes that described positive aspects of the KL2 program by scholars included: Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Mentoring, and Protected Time for Independent Research. Scholars also identified some contrary themes that included: Limited Access to Expenditures, Changes in Individual Mentorship Needs and Areas for Improvement. On a Likert scale (1- not at all, 10-extremely likely), scholars reported high positive influence of the KL2 program on their scope of research (8.7±0.52) and future career (8.5±0.70). They also found mentorship experience with primary mentor (9.6±0.22) and team (8.5±0.54) as well as peer collaboration (8.5±0.67) opportunities highly beneficial to their career and professional development. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: The qualitative study strengthens the reliability of data and scholar recommendations collected via other evaluation measures. Findings broaden understanding of the processes through which program outcomes are achieved effectively and where modifications are needed. An updated program for cohort 3 was guided by cohort 1 and 2 interview responses.


ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF THE RUSSIAN EXTREME RIGHT
Guest Editor's Introduction
The collection of articles in this issue of RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW is related to a previous examination of the post-Soviet extreme right in RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW (vol. 46, no. 4 [July 2008]), and a presentation in RUSSIAN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY (vol. 47, no. 1 [Summer 2008]) of recent Russian interpretations of classical Eurasianism. Taken together, these three issues provide insight into the changing context, various sources and different permutations of a particularly virulent, and, arguably, consequential current of anti-Westernism in contemporary Russian intellectual and political discourse.
The five analyses of the Dugin phenomenon in post-Soviet society contained in the current issue sometimes compete with, but more often complement, each other. They all deal with the same object: Aleksandr Dugin, the political context of his activities, and his historical sources as well as – to a lesser degree – his followers, collaborators and competitors. It is telling that, despite such a relatively narrow empirical focus, these papers only rarely duplicate or overlap one other. In view of this circumstance, the purpose of bringing these closely related yet divergent interpretations of "neo-Eurasianism" together was threefold.
First, the papers illustrate the multifarious nature of post-Soviet "neo-Eurasianism," and eclecticism of Dugin's ideological worldview. Whereas Leonid Luks identifies in Dugin's thinking and strategy continuities with inter-war Germany's "Conservative Revolution," Mikhail Sokolov interprets the Dugin phenomenon primarily as a specifically Russian variety of the so-called "New Right" in post-war Europe. While supportive of these viewpoints, Marlene Laruelle sets "neo-Eurasianism" initially, like Valery Senderov, within the context of classical Eurasianism and its revival in post-Soviet Russia. Whereas Senderov detects resemblances between classical and "neo-Eurasianism," Laruelle finds more differences than similarities between these two intellectual movements, and discerns the most important congruence in their political behavior rather than ideology. My essay focuses on Dugin's positive references to the varieties of inter-war fascism and, in particular, to German Nazism thereby introducing yet another comparative framework within which "neo-Eurasianism" can be viewed.
The issue thus demonstrates that an unambiguous classification of Dugin's outlook and "neo-Eurasianism's" nature is not an easy task. This is even more true in view of the fact that the present edition does not even present all relevant historical approaches to Dugin's ideas. Among the major interpretative frameworks missing here are classical geopolitics, National Bolshevism and conspirological occultism – the latter understood as something yet to be differentiated from the esotericism of Integral Traditionalism on which Sokolov focuses.
The second purpose of this publication – similar to the motivations for producing the earlier RUSSIAN POLITICS AND LAW issue on the Russian extreme right – is to illustrate the emergence of a nascent international scholarly community that is trying not only to describe but also to understand current trends in Russian ultra-nationalism from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective. This comparative approach is an advance in relation to most of the publications on Russia's radical right of the 1990s that could often only chronicle the fast developments within the newly emerging anti-Western trends in a variety of sections of post-Soviet Russian society – party politics, the youth scene, high and popular culture, education, intellectual life, mass media, etc. – after the fall of the Soviet Union.
As in the case of the contributions to the earlier issue on the extreme right, the authors of this collection can regard themselves as lucky that their papers were translated from Russian, in an especially competent way, by one of the founding fathers of post-Soviet Russian right-wing extremism studies, Stephen D. Shenfield. Shenfield's 2001 monograph RUSSIAN FASCISM: TRADITIONS, TENDENCIES, MOVEMENTS set, in several ways, the standard for later research in that he provided the first comprehensive as well as an especially dense intra- and internationally comparative study of the Russian radical right pushing our sub-field outside the realm of narrowly understood area studies. To be sure, Alexander Yanov's brilliant 1995 survey WEIMAR RUSSIA AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT too can and should be regarded as a pioneering study that applied the comparative approach to the scholarly study of the post-Soviet Russian extreme right. Although Yanov demonstrated in his book (as he had in earlier publications) prophetic qualities, however, he could rely on an only slim body of primary and secondary sources that had been made available in the early 1990s. By 2001, in contrast, enough Russian and English literature – including the important 1998 monograph THE RUSSIAN QUESTION by Wayne Allensworth – was available to allow Shenfield to produce his in-depth investigation that has been informing and will continue, for years to come, to inform the international study of the Russian extreme right.
The articles in the current issue fall within this trend. The availability of high-quality English translations of them should contribute to further integrating our subfield into the larger disciplines of international studies of political extremism and neofascism. The effect of spreading the findings of Russian right-wing extremism studies to a wider public is here especially relevant with regard to the papers by Sokolov and Laruelle, which were previously published in two recently founded Russian print journals, AB IMPERIO and ACTA EURASICA/VESTNIK EVRAZII, that are available at only few Western libraries, despite their very high quality.
A final and related rationale for the present collection, as well the earlier issue on the extreme right, was to make the members of our subdiscipline and related fields better acquainted with their colleagues' research. This goal is, of course, rather trivial, but re-stating this general purpose of academic publishing seems worthwhile in this particular case. In a 1997 review article ("The Post-Soviet Russian Extreme Right," PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM, vol. 44, no. 4 [July-August 1997]) I lamented a tendency toward mutual ignorance among the different subdisciplines of Russian nationalism studies. Since then, some of the contributors to the subfield of Russian right-wing extremism have continued to suffer from a regrettable – and, arguably, unscientific – myopia. Those of us who have been following the stream of scholarly papers and books published on the Russian radical right in recent years might agree that, so far, there has been insufficient communication between, and sometimes plain disregard of, the various authors occupying our field. Therefore, we are no yet justified to call ourselves contributors to an academic subdiscipline. Perhaps, we should, instead, understand ourselves as belonging to an exclusive club of commentators, the members of which often still busy themselves with "re-inventing the wheel" rather than engaging in cumulative research based on previously published scholarly studies and on dialogue with colleagues working on the same or related topics. The current collection of articles should make a small contribution to overcome what was, in the 1990s, a still understandable childhood disease of post-Soviet Russian right-wing extremism studies but is now, in 2009, a situation that has become anachronistic.


Heat capacities, standard enthalpies of formation and entropies for 339 polybrominated/chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PXDDs) in the gas state were calculated using the density functional theory to construct a consistent set of thermodynamic values. The heat capacities and the entropies for PXDDs increase with increase in the substitute number of bromine and chlorine. As the degree of bromination increases, the standard enthalpies of formation and the Gibbs free energies of formation of PXDDs increase, while the degree of chlorination has only a small effect on their values compared with bromination. A much higher bromine potential than chlorine potential is needed for the formation of brominated dioxin congeners. However, the bromine-chlorine equilibrium potential for the formation of PXDDs suggested thermodynamically the possibility of their priority formation under the usual gaseous conditions where HBr and HCl are similar levels, because the bromine potential of the gas is much higher than the chlorine potential when the partial pressure of the two is similar.


AZ91D alloy matrix composites(MMCs) with volume fraction of 15%, 20%, 25% and 30% were prepared with the preform made of crystallized aluminum silicate short fibers as reinforcement and aluminum phosphate as binder by squeezing casting at high temperature. Dry sliding wear properties of the composites were tested by means of MM200 wear tester (block-on-ring configuration) against a hardened alloy steel counterface with hardness of 53HRC under loads of 10N, 20N, 30N, 40N and 50N and sliding speed of 0.47m/s and 0.92 m/ s, and wear morphology of the specimens was observed by SEM (scanning electron microscope). The results reveal that effects of sliding speed on wear rate of the composites are greater and more complex than on those of the AZ91D matrix alloy, which is closely related to not only volume fraction in the composites but also applied loads.


Spreading depression is characterized by slow, propagating wave of cellular depolarization (SD) and is wildly associated with migraine, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. Seizures and spreading depression (or spreading depolarization, SD) have long been reported to coincide in acute seizure induction experiments. However, SD has not been observed associated with spotaneous seizures in animal or clinical recordings. Recently, advances in acquisition systems for neurointensive care units have made routine observations of SD possible. In clinical epilepsy, SD has been suggested as a candidate mechanism for migraine/headache like events following seizures as well as for post-ictal generalized suppression. In animal models of epilepsy, seizure-induced brainstem SD has also been demonstrated as a mechanism of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP). The interplay between seizures and SD has also been suggested in computational models, where the two are components of the repetoir of neuronal activity.However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of SD with respect to spontaneous seizures in chronically epileptic brain remains ambigous. We analyzed continuous long-term DC sensitive EEG measurements from two fundamentally different animal models of chronic epilepsy. We found that SD was associated with approximately one-third of all spontaneous seizures in each model. Additionally, SDs participated in the organization of seizure clusters. These findings demonstrate that the underlying dynamic of epileptic events is broader than seizures alone.Spreading depression is characterized by slow, propagating wave of cellular spreading depolarization (SD) and is wildly associated with migraine, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. Although recently the linkage between SD and induced seizures has been recognized, the mechanistic relationship between SD and spontaneous seizures remains poorly understood. Here, we utilized long-term, stable, near-DC measurements of the brain activity in two fundamentally different animal models of epilepsy to investigate the SD-seizure interplay. We found that SD is a frequent phenomenon in the epileptic brain, in these models is associated with more than a third of all seizures, and appears to connect seizures in seizure clusters. Although in one model SD stereotypically propagates out from a single focus in the hippocampus, depression of the field-potentials is observed synchronously across much of the hippocampus. These observations highlight the value of stable DC measurements for accurate understanding of SD and its propagation. We found that spontaneous ictal events that include both seizures and SD are frequent in animal models of epilepsy. These findings suggest that SD could be a valuable target for treatment and control of epilepsy.


[Extract] Archean greenstone belts are a well-known source of gold deposits. If we ignore the giant Witwatersrand gold system we can confidently say that the majority of Archean gold comes from greenstone belts. Even though as a general rule greenstone belts are highly prospective for gold some greenstone belts have proved to be much more productive than others. For example most of the gold in Canada's Superior Province comes from Abitibi Greenstone Belt, particularly from Timmins area (e.g. Wyman, 2003). Similarly, most of the gold mined from Australia's Yilgarn Craton comes from the Kalgoorlie camp which accounts for more than half of the gold mined so far (Philips et al., 1996) in the entire craton. Interestingly, although far apart, the geology and mineralization styles of gold deposits in both areas are very much alike suggesting that the processes leading to the formation of giant ore systems must be similar starting from the ground preparation to the mineralization process. In the Tanzania Craton the giant Bulyanhulu gold deposit is also similar to the giant deposits found in the Timmins and Kalgoorlie areas, respectively. That is, lode gold mineralization style, mafic host rocks, ages, map scale patterns, deformation styles and the short premineralization crustal history are all largely similar (e.g. Bateman and Bierlein, 2007). Bulyanhulu is much more similar to the Kalgoorlie camp in the sense that it consists of one major gold deposit, while the Timmins camp is made of a large number of smaller gold deposits. These similarities between three giant gold camps situated on three different continents may indicate that in order to form giant gold deposits certain conditions need to be satisfied. However, that is not always the case and the gold mineralization found in Geita Greenstone Belt does not follow the typical pattern of Archean lode gold deposits. Geita Greenstone belt contains a minimum of fifteen gold deposits which may resemble the Timmins camp, but the mineralization style, alteration, structures and host rocks are different. The mineralization in Geita Greenstone belt is preferentially hosted within deformation zones developed along the contact of banded ironstones and porphyries of various compositions rather than along some major shear systems. The structures associated with the mineralised system are minor, the alteration zone is restricted to the mineralised zone, quartz veins are rare or missing although silicification is common.


There is limited literature to support the use of music therapy with unhoused persons and more research is needed to deepen the understanding of music therapy with this population. This researcher aimed to gather information from music therapists who work with unhoused persons to gain more perspective on the perceived benefits of the music therapy treatment process. Three music therapists were interviewed; interviews were then transcribed and coded to find themes regarding perceived benefits of music therapy with unhoused persons. The four themes derived from the data were increased resilience factors, facilitating connections, creating a safe space, and increased expression. Findings support music therapy attending to many levels of human need for unhoused individuals. These findings can be used as recommendation for practice and program development for the use of music therapy with unhoused persons and also point to a need for more research to understand the benefits of specific music therapy techniques and treatment methods with unhoused persons and subgroups of the unhoused community.


Social media platforms are public venues where conversations about issues of public interest take place. Much recent research has been devoted to evaluating the degree to which online conversations capture public opinion on issues of broad societal interest. We describe a robust and scalable platform to support such studies. Our platform allows the analysis of three semantic aspects of tweets, namely the personal values, sentiment, and humor expressed in them, as well as the public's engagement with them. I n addition, it aggregates these indicators at the level of tweet authors to shed light on the activities and style of influencers of public opinion. Finally, it offers rich visualizations to enable users to gain insights on their datasets. We demonstrate the usefulness of our platform with two case studies: (a) analyzing the fragmented narratives around established (hydro, oil and gas, coal, nuclear) and new (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass) energy sources; and (b) comparing the social-media brands of academic institutions.


Evi-2, a common site of viral integration in BXH-2 myeloid lymphomas, is located within a large intron of the Nf1 tumor suppressor gene. Viral integration at Evi-2 appears to induce disease by disrupting normal Nf1 expression. During our attempts to characterize the nature of the proviruses located at Evi-2, we found that approximately half of the proviruses were defective nonecotropic proviruses (A. M. Buchberg, H. G. Bedigian, N. A. Jenkins, and N. G. Copeland, Mol. Cell. Biol. 10:4658-4666, 1990). This was surprising, since most proviruses characterized at other BXH-2 common integration sites are full-length ecotropic viruses. In the studies described here, we found that this defective provirus carries two large deletions, one in pol and one in env, and is structurally related to another murine retrovirus, the murine AIDS retrovirus. By using oligonucleotide probes specific for this defective provirus, designated MRV, we showed that MRV-related proviruses are carried as endogenous germ line proviruses in most inbred strains. In addition, we identified the endogenous MRV provirus that gives rise to the defective proviruses identified at Evi-2. We present a model that accounts for the positive selection of MRV proviruses at Evi-2, which may allow selective identification of common viral integration sites harboring tumor suppressor genes.


Pastirma is a high value, traditional, dry cured, and edible coated meat product. For economic and sociocultural reasons, it is important to know which meat species are used in pastirma. The present study aims to carry out the determination of the meat species in pastirma. A total of 144 pastirma samples were collected from different stores. After genomic DNA isolation, the total DNAs obtained were subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using specially designed novel primers amplifying the mitochondrial ND4 (MTND4) gene region, specific for cattle (Bos taurus), water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), horse (Equus caballus), and donkey (Equus asinus) species. For the identification of the meat species, gel purified 952 bp PCR products were digested with fast digest SaqAI restriction enzymes selected based on preliminary in silico analyses. The results of the present study revealed that all of the pastirma samples were made from cattle meat. Cross-reactions and false-positive identifications are serious problems in routine determination of the meat species in food control laboratories. It is important to perform fast, inexpensive determination with high sensitivity and specificity for the identification of meat species. This study has shown that meat species can be detected with high specificity in products such as pastirma, which uses large pieces of meat cuts.


We have examined the distribution of RNA processing factors in the germinal vesicle (GV) of the common frog Rana temporaria during early vitellogenesis by immunostaining on light- and electronmicroscopic levels and by in situ nucleic acid hybridization. Small nuclear RNPs (snRNP) and factor SC35 involved in pre-mRNA splicing occur in lampbrush chromosome loops and numerous granules 1-3 microns in size. These granules are identical to B snurposomes of Xenopus laevis and Notophtalmus viridescens described earlier (Wu et al., 1991). Some of B snurposomes are attached to homologous loops of lampbrush chromosomes. Immunofluorescent study of Cajal bodies/coiled bodies (CB) showed that sometimes CB have B snurposomes attached to their surface. In this case splicing factor SC35 is found in B snurposomes and B-like inclusions in CB matrix. In CB without attached B snurposomes splicing factor SC35 localizes throughout the whole organelle. Staining of GV spreads with antibodies against nucleolar protein NO38 revealed this protein in CB, nucleoli and micronucleoli. Using in situ nucleic acid hybridization and immunofluorescent staining we have found that on GV spreads from hibernating frogs B snurposomes contact nucleoli. Nucleoli contain snRNP. These data suggest that nucleoli may be storage sites of snRNPs during natural inactivation of RNA synthesis. During winter season in Rana temporaria GV nucleoli become compacted and a number of micronucleoli (less than 2 microns) dramatically increases. Analysis of micronucleoli showed that they contain rRNA, protein NO38, trace amount of U3 small nucleolar RNA and do not contain fibrillarin, involved as U3 in pre-rRNA processing. We suggest that decrease of rRNA synthesis during frog hibernation results in transformation of part of nucleoli in micronucleoli.


This paper proposes a novel way of combining color demosaicing and the auto white balance (AWB) method, which are important parts of image processing. Performance of the AWB is generally affected by demosaicing results because most AWB algorithms are performed posterior to color demosaicing. In this paper, in order to increase the performance and efficiency of the AWB algorithm, the color constancy problem is examined during the color demosaicing step. Initial estimates of the directional luminance and chrominance values are defined for estimating edge direction and calculating the AWB gain. In order to prevent color failure in conventional edge-based AWB methods, we propose a modified edge-based AWB method that used a predefined achromatic region. The estimation of edge direction is performed region adaptively by using the local statistics of the initial estimates of the luminance and chrominance information. Simulated and real Bayer color filter array (CFA) data are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. When compared to conventional methods, the proposed method shows significant improvements in terms of visual and numerical criteria.


ranslations serve an essential function at the FBI. They serve not only to aid agents in understanding and creating a criminal case, but also as important evidence in the subsequent trial (Fishman, 2006). Having an accurate translation, an accurate representation of what was said in the source language, is crucial. Starting in 2008, the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) conducted a study to determine whether providing a human-generated quick transcript in the same language as the audio would allow FBI linguists to create verbatim translations more quickly and/or with greater accuracy (Wayland, et al., 2009). The study was commissioned to help the FBI decide how to assign transcription and translation work tasks and to aid in staffing decisions. To maximize the relevance of that study to the FBI, we designed our translation scoring methodology to work with their existing Quality Control (QC) process. This document describes the FBI's method, and provides a brief overview of other translation quality assessment methods, showing the principal strengths of the FBI's approach, specifically: • The emphasis on and identification of errors that impact the intelligence value of the translation, and • The identification and correction of errors for the purpose of mentoring. We hope that this document will serve as a useful resource for the FBI and any individual or agency interested in learning about the FBI's QC process.


Dexamethasone has been proposed as an alternative in the treatment of acute asthma exacerbation in children. It allows shortening the duration of treatment, reducing costs and adverse effects. However, it is not clear whether its efficacy is similar to the traditional steroid regimen. To answer this question, we searched in Epistemonikos database, which is maintained by screening multiple information sources. We identified six systematic reviews including 10 randomized trials. We extracted data, conducted a meta-analysis and generated a summary of findings table using the GRADE approach. We concluded dexamethasone has probably fewer adverse effects than others corticosteroids, and might be equally effective in reducing hospitalizations and revisits.


Some mechanisms of inducing resistance to experimental infection with tick-borne encephalitis virus were studied in experimental mice treated with aqueous extracts of berries of Vaccinium vitis-idaea, black currant, Vaccinium myrtillus, and of greater celandine grass. The condition of the immune system organs (spleen and thymus) after treatment with the extracts under study was analysed. A correlation was found between the degree of developing resistance to infection, virus accumulation in the brain, blood, spleen and thymus and changes in some parameters (spleen and thymus indices) of these immunocompetent organs. Possible mechanisms of induction of resistance to virus by herb extracts are discussed.


In this paper, we introduce Shop the Look, a web-scale fashion and home product visual search system deployed at Amazon. Building such a system poses great challenges to both science and engineering practices. We leverage large-scale image data from the Amazon product catalog and adopt effective strategies to reduce the human effort required to annotate data. By employing state-of-the-art computer vision techniques, we train detection, recognition, and feature extraction models to bridge the domain gap between in-the-wild query images and product images which are taken under controlled settings. Our system is designed to achieve a balance between result accuracy and efficiency. The run-time service is optimized to provide retrieval results to users with low-latency. The scalable offline index-building pipeline adapts to the dynamic Amazon catalog that contains billions of products. We present both quantitative and qualitative evaluation results to demonstrate the performance of our system. We believe that the fast-growing Shop the Look service is shaping the way that customers shop on Amazon.


Existing research on the patterns and risk factors of drug use and how they vary by age and location in Turkey is limited. The paper will examine the drug treatment options within Turkey as well as the socio-demographic characteristics, behaviors, treatment history, and identified correlates of lifetime and current injection drug use of Turkish citizens who were admitted to inpatient substance use treatment at public and private facilities in Turkey during 2012 and 2013. Of the 11,247 patients at the 22 public treatment centers in 2012-2013, a majority were male, lived with family, were unemployed, and had an average age of 27 years. Significant predictors of injection drug use included being homeless, having higher education, heroin as a preferred drug, having a longer duration of drug use, and prior drug treatment. With this information, greater prevention and intervention efforts can be made to reduce the transition to drug use among the youth population as well as improve access to a variety of tailored treatment options.


: Among 103 persons aged 20 to 57 years, related occupationally to emotional stress, 48 persons were found to have vegetative dystonia, 28 initial manifestations of cerebral circulation failure, and 27 persons appeared healthy. The determination of the character and intensity of vegetative manifestations has shown that in the formation of vegetative dystonia, of paramount importance are cardiovascular and gastrointestinal disorders. Vegetative manifestations associated with initial manifestations of cerebral circulation failure include, in addition, respiratory disturbances and impairment of sleep function, which may reflect more deep changes in the activity of the regulatory apparatus in dyshemias of organic nature. A relationship was discovered between vegetative lesions and emotional disorders, particularly the level of anxiety, as was the contingency of vegetative dysfunction and decreased emotional stress tolerance.


Abstract : The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) Laboratory in Reston, Va., has been measuring concentrations of CFCs in ground-water samples since 1989 to estimate the year that a water sample was recharged to a ground-water flow system. The water samples have been collected in flamesealed borosilicate ampoules. Typically for each site, three samples were analyzed within days to a few months after collection, and additional samples were archived for extended periods of time (up to four years). The stability of CFC concentrations in the archived water samples from the USGS CFC Laboratory was investigated by analyzing the CFC concentrations in archived water samples and comparing them with the CFC concentrations that were obtained soon after the samples were collected. The archived samples selected for analysis were chosen from sites with a wide variety of hydrogeologic and geochemical conditions. For CFC-11 and CFC-12 concentrations, approximately 14% and 10.5%, respectively, of the archived samples were statistically different (both higher and lower) from the concentrations obtained from analyses conducted soon after the sample collection. Most of the extraneous values were attributed to natural variability of CFC concentrations originally in the water discharged from wells, rather than to microbial degradation within the ampoule on storage.


Several countries around the world have adopted the inflation targeting regime for monetary policy. Despite the growing literature on the issue, it is not clear whether developing and emerging countries can improve their economic performance by adopting inflation targeting. This working paper examines the extent to which macroeconomic policies anchored to inflation targeting affect unemployment, economic growth and the output gap. The results show that inflation targeting causes no harm to employment in developing and emerging countries. On the contrary, it might reduce average unemployment and narrow the output gap. Given that the change in regime must be accompanied by institutional and economic reforms to fiscal and exchange rate policies, targeters might be better off than non-targeters. Hence there is no apparent reason to condemn the adoption of the inflation targeting regime by developing and emerging countries. (...)