Background: Obesity is one of the most important modifiable risk factors for type 2 diabetes. There are two types of obesity the general obesity which measured using the body mass index (BMI) and central obesity measured by using waist circumference (WC) or waist/hip ratio. This research aims to investigate the correlation between body mass index and waist circumference among diabetic patients in Indonesian population.Methods: The study was carried out using the cross-sectional plan, by analyzing the secondary data that was collected from previous research on diabetic patients that was conducted in Medical Faculty of Universitas Udayana, Bali. The research was done in 4 months from October 2015 - January 2016, and the data was categorized based on BMI, WC, gender, age, family history of diabetes and duration of diabetes mellitus.Results: On a total of 96 sample there were 5 (5.2%) were having general obesity BMI >30 kg/m2, while 61(63.5%) were having central obesity, where the WC measurement for a male was >102 cm and for a female was >88 cm. From the study, it proves that there was a strong correlation in between BMI and WC (r = 0.752, 𝑃 < 0.01). It indicates the correlation was positive and significant.Conclusions: It is concluded that people who have a higher BMI tend to have a higher waist circumference value and with that, both the BMI and WC strongly correlate. As a suggestion, it is recommended to conduct the study using primary data for future research


Benchmarking is a helpful tool often used by organizations to compare their business processes and practices with competitors or best in class, giving them something external against which to measure performance. As the Senate Administration continues to develop its performance measurement framework, directors are encouraged to include external benchmarks in their performance indicators to provide comparative measured. Benchmarks are categorized in multiple ways, which can be further characterized as qualitative or quantitative. This article will provide examples of qualitative and quantitative benchmarks in the parliamentary context.


Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) established a multi-dimensional hydrogen analysis system to evaluate hydrogen release, distribution, and combustion in the containment of a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), using MAAP, GASFLOW, and COM3D. In particular, KAERI developed an analysis methodology for a hydrogen flame acceleration, on the basis of the COM3D validation results against measured data of the hydrogen combustion tests in the ENACCEF and THAI facilities. The proposed analysis methodology accurately predicted the peak overpressure with an error range of approximately ±10%, using the Kawanabe model used for a turbulent flame speed in the COM3D. KAERI performed a hydrogen flame acceleration analysis using the multi-dimensional hydrogen analysis system for a severe accident initiated by a station blackout (SBO), under the assumption of 100% metal–water reaction in the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), to evaluate an overpressure buildup in the containment of the Advanced Power Reactor 1400 MWe (APR1400). The magnitude of the overpressure buildup in the APR1400 containment might be used as a criterion to judge whether the containment integrity is maintained or not, when the hydrogen combustion occurs during a severe accident. The COM3D calculation results using the established analysis methodology showed that the calculated peak pressure in the containment was lower than the fracture pressure of the APR1400 containment. This calculation result might have resulted from a large air volume of the containment, a reduced hydrogen concentration owing to passive auto-catalytic recombiners installed in the containment during the hydrogen release from the RPV, and a lot of stem presence during the hydrogen combustion period in the containment. Therefore, we found that the current design of the APR1400 containment maintained its integrity when the flame acceleration occurred during the severe accident initiated by the SBO accident.


Historical settlements, which are integral parts of the cultural heritage, should be documented and evaluated with their local characteristics. The aim of this study is to document, analyze and evaluate the architectural, environmental and social characteristics of an urban settlement called Değirmendağı District, which has a historical background beginning with the Roman period to the present, in the center of metropolitan city of İzmir, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. The settlement is one of the earliest that was planned by local administration in İzmir and contributes to the İzmir silhouette with its location on a steep hillside in the township of Konak. Documentation methods used are sketches, photography and architectural and social questionnaires. Inventory cards were prepared to collect architectural characteristics of each building and the social questionnaires were comprised of socio–economic characteristics of the settlers. Data gathered at the site was analyzed and evaluated to develop a conservation approach, including historical review of the ancient era. Since the area is easily accessible and close to city center, the area becomes attractive. It has the advantage of the vista based on its inclined topography and grid-planned scheme. Değirmendağı District is a special area requiring special conservation within the city of İzmir. However, historical pattern has changed through the years because of changing lifestyle. The area, which is one of the most important and valuable districts in İzmir considering its history, location, and architectural characteristics should be integrated with the city and citizens. This study documents the present potentials and values of the area and forms a basis to prepare conservation approaches.


The recognition of agricultural and territorial systems is essential to define regional development programs and the analysis of their characteristics is particularly relevant in a period when the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is going to be designed and planned. Present research tries to identify and analyse the main structural agricultural models within the European Union, whose classification could be useful to define policies and tools of intervention, in view of the new programming period (2014-2020).The research is focused on the analysis of agricultural features in 247 regional areas (NUTS 2) of all European countries; and it has been carried out adopting a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to identify the main factors that differentiate agricultural systems in EU countries, taking into account a specific set of social and economic indicators. Afterward, by applying cluster analysis on the results of PCA, we classified the different regional areas into homogenous groups.The results allow a general classification of �homogeneous agricultural areas�, whose categorization may be useful to better understand the characteristics of the European Union countryside and better orientate the planning of the new CAP.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine affective commitment, normative commitment, and continuance commitment in a cross-national context to identify if the effect of country-specific cultural orientation on organizational commitment of faculty in higher education functions invariably in different countries.

Design/methodology/approach
The work expands on Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment. It includes relevant literature review on ten countries and the results of a survey of university faculty members, assessing their institutions' human resources practices and their effect on organizational commitment. Basic descriptive statistics were performed on nominal and interval data, means, medians, and standard deviations were computed, and tests of mean equivalence, including ANOVA tests, were performed. In certain instances, Pearson and Spearman correlations were computed to ascertain correlation, and χ2 tests for randomized response were used, while Cronbach's α test helped to establish survey instrument validity.

Findings
Though certain differences may exist between different countries and cultures with respect to the three-component model of organizational commitment, there is strong evidence of the existence of invariance and, thus, generalizability of the model across cultures.

Research limitations/implications
Cultural studies have focused on differences in organizational commitment at national levels. Further attempts to identify the universality of factors leading to organizational commitment should account for culture in the study of employee-related globalization issues in higher education institutes. Knowledge of cultural impact is also useful from a managerial perspective, and for the design of relevant strategies.

Practical implications
National context plays a major role in shaping the nature of educational institutions. This study brings out the need for a deeper understanding of invariance in organizational commitment (inter-alia, through the three-component model).

Originality/value
This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between organizational commitment and its various antecedents, including human resources management practices, for faculty in higher education institutes.


SIR,-I read with interest the report by Dr P J Johnson and others (1 October, p 869) of their experience with the reptilase test in patients with various liver diseases, in which these authors contrasted their data with those which I had recorded in a group of Africans with primary liver cancer.t Pursuing the latter studies on a group of British patients I became aware of striking differences, particularly in regard to dysfibrinogenaemia. Unfortunately Dr Johnson and his colleagues do not appear to have evaluated this phenomenon. In my experience the reptilase test has been consistently abnormal in British and African patients with primary liver cancer, with and without coexistent cirrhosis, in contrast to the normal results obtained in patients with carcinoma metastatic to the liver. However, the corresponding information in cirrhosis uncomplicated by tumour does indicate that many of these patients do have an abnormal reptilase test in the absence of dysfibrinogenaemia. These data have been presented on a number of occasions,2 X and a detailed account is to appear shortly.5 It includes a description of the modified reptilase test and a putative explanation for the racial differences and the apparently discrepant findings in cirrhosis.


Summary

Mothers are expected to balance the trade-off between the number and quality of offspring, and many theoretical studies describe how the maternal environment might influence the evolution of the number–quality trade-off.
However, few empirical studies attempt to test these theories (and their assumptions) by measuring the fitness consequences of variation in investment per offspring. Part of the problem is that measuring offspring fitness is difficult, which frequently leads experimenters to measure several proxies of offspring fitness in place of a comprehensive fitness assay. This strategy tends to result in multiple univariate analyses that involve different offspring fitness proxies, and these tests can have low power and may produce conflicting conclusions.
Here, we demonstrate the benefits of integrating maternal fecundity and proxies of offspring size and fitness into multivariate analyses to elucidate variation in reproductive allocation strategies. In a 2 × 2 factorial experiment, we manipulated the quality of maternal environment (food availability) throughout early and late adulthood (acute and chronic exposure to the maternal environment) in a field cricket.
We developed a multivariate index of reproductive allocation by incorporating maternal fecundity and the performance of offspring in low- and high-food environments into a principle components analysis. This index of reproductive allocation indicated that females decreased fecundity and increased offspring quality after chronic exposure to low-food environments, thereby providing evidence of adaptive plasticity in investment per offspring. In contrast, few treatment effects were observed using univariate analyses.
The present study demonstrates that multivariate analysis can increase our ability to assess the adaptive significance of reproductive strategies, particularly in situations when offspring size and fitness are difficult to measure with accuracy. Such an approach might ultimately help assess the adaptive significance of reproductive allocation across a wider range of taxa, thereby providing broader insight into the evolution of reproductive strategies.


Sedimentary 231Pa/230Th ratios provide clues to estimate the strength of past ocean circulation. For its estimation, understanding the processes controlling the distributions of 231Pa and 230Th in the ocean is important. However, simulations of dissolved and particulate 231Pa and 230Th in the modern ocean, recently obtained from the GEOTRACES project, remain 10 challenging. Here we report a model simulation of 231Pa and 230Th in the global ocean with COCO ver4.0. Starting from the basic water-column reversible scavenging model, we also introduced the bottom scavenging and the dependence of scavenging efficiency on particle concentration. As demonstrated in a previous study, the incorporation of bottom scavenging improves the simulated distribution of dissolved 231Pa and 230Th in the deep ocean, which has been overestimated in models not considering the bottom scavenging. We further demonstrate that introducing the dependence of scavenging efficiency on 15 particle concentration results in a high concentration of dissolved 230Th in the Southern Ocean as observed in the GEOTRACES data. Our best simulation can well reproduce not only the oceanic distribution of 231Pa and 230Th but also the sedimentary 231Pa/230Th ratios. Sensitivity analysis reveals that oceanic advection of 231Pa primarily determines sedimentary 231Pa/230Th ratios. On the other hand, 230Th advection and bottom scavenging have an opposite effect to 231Pa advection on the sedimentary 231Pa/230Th ratios, reducing their latitudinal contrast. Our best simulation shows the realistic residence times of 231Pa and 230Th, 20 but simulation without bottom scavenging and dependence of scavenging efficiency on particle concentration significantly overestimates the residence times for both 231Pa and 230Th in spite of similar distribution of sedimentary 231Pa/230Th ratios to our best simulation.


In advanced gas turbine engines that operate in a dust-laden environment causing ingestion of siliceous debris into engines, thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are highly susceptible to degradation by molten CMAS (calcium-magnesium alumino silicate) deposits. In this study, the degradation mechanisms other than the commonly reported thermomechanical damage are investigated with an emphasis on the thermochemical aspects of molten CMAS induced degradation of TBCs. Free-standing yttria stabilized zirconia (8YSZ) TBC specimens in contact with a model CMAS composition were subjected to isothermal heat treatment in air at temperatures ranging from 1200°C to 1350°C. Phase transformations and microstructural development were examined by using x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. Starting at 1250°C, the molten CMAS readily infiltrated and dissolved the YSZ coating followed by reprecipitation of zirconia with a different morphology and composition that depends on the local melt chemistry. Significant amount of Y2O3 depleted monoclinic ZrO2 phase evolved from CMAS melt that dissolved ť-ZrO2 was evident. Thus the mechanism of dissolution and reprecipitation due to molten CMAS damage resulted in destabilization of the YSZ with disruptive phase transformation (t' f + m).


BACKGROUND
  Traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress symptoms were assessed in Kurdish children in their native country and in exile.

METHOD
  312 randomly selected school-age children at two sites completed assessments of traumatic experiences and post-traumatic symptoms.

RESULTS
  Although traumatic experiences showed more similarities than differences between the two samples, the PTSD frequencies and post-traumatic stress symptom scores were higher in Kurdistan than in exile. Living in exile showed negative correlation with PTSD frequencies and post-traumatic stress symptom scores.

CONCLUSIONS
  Living in exile seems to have trauma healing effect on children of Kurdistan.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To examine empirical research regarding the role of malglycemia (hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, or glycemic variability) on clinical outcomes among hospitalized patients with cancer.

DATA SOURCES
Research articles were obtained from the Ovid, PubMed, and CINAHL® databases. Key words used in the search included hyperglycemia or malglycemia and neoplasm combined with venous thromboembolism, infection, or mortality.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Eleven research articles were examined reporting the impact of malglycemia on various outcomes, including infection, mortality or survival, length of hospital stay, and toxicity.

CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that malglycemia may have a negative impact on outcomes for hospitalized patients with cancer. Increased rates of infection, mortality, length of stay, and toxicities, as well as decreased survival, were reported.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Oncology nurses play an important role in the identification of patients with malglycemia. Early assessment and intervention for those patients can improve outcomes and quality of life.


BACKGROUND
Endometriosis, a gynecological disease that affects up to 10% of women, is a major cause of pain and infertility. Deregulation of the epigenome is accountable for the onset and progression of endometriosis, although its exact mechanism is unknown. The purpose of the current study is to examine the role of the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) GRIK1-AS1 in the epigenetic regulation of endometrial stromal cell proliferation and the development of endometriosis.

METHODS
Endometriosis datasets were screened to identify GRIKI-AS1 as dramatically declining in endometriosis. Gain or loss of function endometrial stromal cell (ESC) models were established. The anti-proliferation phenotype was investigated using in vitro and in vivo experiments. Epigenetic regulatory network analyses were conducted to suggest the intrinsic molecular mechanism.

RESULTS
With bioinformatic and clinical data, we observed that GRIK1-AS1 and SFRP1 were expressed at low levels in endometriosis. Overexpressed GRIK1-AS1 inhibited ESC proliferation, while SFRP1 knockdown rescued the antiproliferative ability of GRIK1-AS1. Specifically, methylation-dependent expression inhibition of SFRP1 was revealed in ESCs. Mechanistically, GRIK1-AS1 hampers the occupancy of DNMT1 in SRFP1 promoter, leading to hypomethylation of SFRP1 and upregulated SFRP1 expression, thereby potentially suppressing Wnt signaling and its adverse proliferative effect. Therapeutically, lentivirus-mediated upregulation of GRIK1-AS1 inhibited endometriosis disease progression in vivo.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study is a proof-of-concept demonstration for GRIKI-AS1-associated endometriosis pathogenesis and highlights a potential intervention target.


1 Public information and outreach have emerged as one of the fundamental activities of transitional justice mechanisms. Their objective is to raise public awareness, knowledge and participation among affected communities. Despite this increased focus, understanding of the role, impact and effectiveness of various outreach strategies remains limited, as is understanding of communities' knowledge, perceptions and attitudes about transitional justice mechanisms, including their expectations. The study discussed in this article was designed to evaluate International Criminal Court (ICC) outreach programs in the Central African Republic. Specifically, the article examines how the public gathers information about the ICC and what factors influence knowledge levels and perceptions in relation to the Court. The findings show that mass media and informational meetings are effective at raising awareness and knowledge, but that the lack of access to formal media and reliance on informal channels of communication create a group of 'information poor' individuals. The authors suggest that outreach must be local in order to respond to individuals' needs and expectations and to ensure their access to information. Evaluation research must be implemented systematically and on a continuing basis to assess how best to reach various target groups and develop innovative, responsive and flexible communication strategies.


Colorectal cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the world. It is a heterogeneous disease with several histologic subtypes, and some of them are associated with adverse prognostic factors. Cribriform comedo-type adenocarcinoma (CCA) has been included as a colorectal adenocarcinoma subtype in the last World Health Organization (WHO) classification of gastrointestinal system tumors. Some authors have linked this subtype to an adverse prognosis, but to the best of our knowledge there is only one previous report assessing its histologic and prognostic features. We herein review a series of CCA of the colon, emphasizing its clinical and morphological features.


Background: MS-related fatigue is a common symptom in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) that restricts societal participation. Literature suggests that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) alleviates MS-related fatigue, but evidence is inconclusive. The study objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of CBT to improve MS-related fatigue and participation in patients with MS. Methods: In a multicenter, assessor-masked, randomized-controlled trial in 3 Dutch healthcare institutions, participants with severe MS-related fatigue were assigned to the CBT or control study group. The CBT study group received twelve individual face-to-face sessions with a certified psychologist; the control study group received 3 individual sessions with an MS-nurse, both for a duration of 16 weeks. Assessments took place at baseline, 8, 16 (i.e. post-intervention), 26 and 52 weeks follow-up. Primary outcomes were the Checklist Individual Strength-fatigue subscale (CIS20r-fatigue) and the Impact on Participation and Autonomy questionnaire (IPA). Data were analyzed with the intention-to-treat principle using Mixed Model Analysis. The Controlled Trials registration number is ISRCTN58583714. Findings: Between December 2011 and August 2014, 91 patients were randomly assigned to the CBT (n=44) or to the MS-nurse study group (n=47). The between-group analysis showed a positive post-intervention effect for CBT on the CIS20r-fatigue (T16: -6*7 [95%CI -10*7; -2*7] points) that diminished during follow up (T26: -3*5 [95%CI -7*4; 0*5]; T52: 0*5 [95%CI -3*6; 4*4]). No clinically relevant effects were found on societal participation. Post-intervention (T16), 22 out of 39 in the CBT, and 9 out of 37 patients in the control study group showed a clinically-relevant improvement of 8-points or more on the CIS20r-fatigue, leading to a number needed to treat of 3*3 (95%CI 1*9;10*6). Interpretation: Severe MS-related fatigue can be reduced effectively with CBT. However, effects wear off after cessation of treatment, societal participation does not improve


There are many problems in trying to construct a history of female musicians and dancers in Mughal North India. Such women appear frequently in Mughal writings and apparently played an important role in elite society; there is clearly much we can learn from such sources about gender and class in the empire generally, as well as female performers more specifically. However, what evidence we have is written from the perspective of their male patrons and cast according to long‐standing rhetorical and cultural conventions concerning the fateful roles of music and love in historical events. In this article I examine how Mughal historical chronicles transform named female performers into stereotyped agents of the downfall of noblemen. Using the stories of several historical courtesans, I demonstrate how stock topoi of desire, enslavement, longing, rebellion, danger, fate and above all musical and erotic power, were used to shape all stories of courtesans into tragic cautionary tales. I aim to show that the 'fictive' elements of Mughal courtesan tales furthermore reveal important cultural truths about the role and meanings of music in Mughal male society.


PurposeThe purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of consumers value collaboration with a service provider, specifically, how consumer self-determination affects value co-creation outcomes.Design/methodology/approachSelf-determination theory (SDT) need-based motivational factors were operationalized in co-creation as commitment to resources (autonomy), feedback (competence) and collectives (relatedness). A between–within factorial experimental design (3 × 2 × 4) was conducted using online scenarios depicting value co-creation in a destination resort setting. Respondents were randomly and equally assigned to strong and weak SDT factor conditions. Next, they were exposed to scenarios depicting four types of value co-creation: co-innovation, co-creation of marketing, co-creation of experience and co-recovery, followed by an assessment of their co-created value (CCV), well-being, satisfaction and service advantage perceptions.FindingsResults revealed that overall strong SDT conditions produce better outcomes. Consumers' relatedness showed the strongest difference between strong and weak SDT conditions on the CCV dimensions. Further analysis revealed that autonomy and relatedness are crucial for collaboration. CCV meaningfulness is central for customers to improve their well-being, satisfaction and competitive advantage perceptions through co-creation.Originality/valueThe study contributes to a line of research on successful voluntary value co-creation processes between consumers and a company. The integration of service-dominant logic (SDL), axiology of value (AOV) and SDT, uniquely operationalized as commitment to resources as autonomy, feedback as competence and co-creation collective as relatedness offers a better understanding of how customers appraise the dimensions of CCV and outcomes of well-being, satisfaction and competitive advantage.


Context Everyone working with children should have a common set of skills and knowledge and be able to effectively communicate.1,2,3 It is imperative that children are incorporated into simulation and their unique perspective heard, however most information about the practical and ethical implications of SP usage, is linked to adults. University Hospital Southampton (UHS) started with four children as SPs nine years ago, now having fifty-five children on the books; much has been learnt. Methodology Due to the paucity of information, all that we do, has been underpinned by being transparent with professional organisations including our own, seeking a broad range of advice and considering best practice internationally. In doing this, we have ensured our infrastructure is robust and all areas of governance have been critically evaluated. There are ethical implications of working with SPs whatever their age. However, working alongside child SPs poses a heightened focus on ethical issues. We have been guided by Beauchamp and Childress',4 principles of biomedical ethics: Respect for autonomy Non-maleficence Beneficence Justice Outcomes There is a synergy between ethics and practicality. We have found that the ethical and practical implications of working with children are inextricably linked. We consider what is ethical and then whether it is practical; we consider what is practical and then whether it is ethical. This becomes a cyclical exercise, which we believe is part of the dynamic process of engaging with children. As a consequence, children are now involved frequently and in a large variety of educational roles. Conclusion Engaging children as SPs is important, but not without challenges. A robust infrastructure is essential to ensure that the health and safety - in the broadest sense - of all involved, is maintained. UHS has developed guidance and operational documents to assist with ensuring our governance is secure. References United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Every Child Matters (2003), The National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services (2004). The review of the NHS by Lord Darzi (2008) Beauchamp TL, Childress JF, 2001, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5 th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.


We propose the generalized quadratic receivers (GQRs) for unitary space--time modulation over flat Rayleigh fading channels. The GQRs realize the performance improvement potential, known to be approximately 2--4 dB, between the quadratic receiver (QR) and the coherent receiver (CR), by performing channel estimation without the help of additional training signals that consume additional bandwidth. They are designed for various unitary space--time constellations (USTC) in which signal matrices may or may not contain explicit inherent training blocks, and may be orthogonal or nonorthogonal to one another. As the channel memory span exploited for channel estimation increases, the error probability of the GQRs reduces from that of the QR to that of the CR. The GQRs work well for both slow and fast fading channels, and the performance improvement increases as the channel fade rate decreases. For a class of USTC with the orthogonal design structure, the GQR is simplified to a form whose complexity can be less than the complexity of the QR or even that of the simplified form of the QR.


Aim: The aims of this study were: a) to verify if the instructions displayed on the packages and labels of dental plaster available for purchase in the city of Porto Alegre are in accordance with the Brazilian laws, and b) to analyze how information is available on packages and labels of dental plaster acquired by dentists. Methods: For this study, it was used the method proposed by Silva et al. (2010) modified, according to which the information related to instructions for product use displayed on packages and labels, if present, provided by manufacturers and/or importers from each brand of plaster was reviewed: how to use, composition, price, expiration date, health risks and disposal instructions. The collected information was subsequently confronted with the requirements laid out in national legislation on trade of dental plaster. Results: No product showed the price or the instructions for disposal. One brand showed no information of the package and another one showed only the composition of the product; this requirement was present in most products. The mode of use and the expiration date were present in almost all packages, except for two brands. Only two brands presented information on health risks, and yet unsatisfactory. Conclusions: The different brands and types of dental plaster analyzed presented some kind of violation of the provisions of the Brazilian legislation, most with missing or unsatisfactory information.


The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effects of drying temperature of wood particles on the quality properties of particleboard composite and chemical properties of wood. Test panels were manufactured using wood particles dried at different temperatures ranging from 100 to 180°C. Based on the findings obtained in this study, increasing drying temperature of the particles negatively affected the mechanical properties, surface roughness, and wettability of the particleboards. However, increasing drying temperature significantly caused a positive effect on the thickness swelling. The results showed that the particleboards made from particles dried at 180°C did not meet the required levels of mechanical strength properties according to the EN 312 (2010) standard for furniture production. The particleboards made from wood particles dried at 150°C for 35 min appeared to be a practical choice for interior fitments.


Positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) was used to visualise the flow patterns established by mixing in two laboratory-scale anaerobic digesters fitted with mechanical mixing or gas mixing apparatus. PEPT allows the visualisation of flow patterns within a digester without necessitating the use of a transparent synthetic sludge. In the case of the mechanically-mixed digester, the mixing characteristics of opaque sewage sludge was compared to a transparent synthetic sludge at different mixing speeds. In the gas-mixed apparatus, two synthetic sludges were compared. In all scenarios, quasi-toroidal flow paths were established. However, mixing was less successful in more viscous liquids unless mixing power was increased to compensate for the increase in viscosity. The robustness of the PEPT derived velocities was found to be significantly affected by the frequency with which the particle enters a given volume of the vessel, with the accuracy of the calculated velocity decreasing in regions with low data capture. Nevertheless, PEPT was found to offer a means of accurate validation of computational fluid dynamics models which in turn can help to optimise flow patterns for biogas production.


In the 2000s Barcelona's City Council initiated the demolition of the working-class neighborhood of Bon Pastor as part of a 'participatory' urban plan aimed at integrating a deprived population into the city. However, the residents' narratives show that tearing down the traditional one-story houses built in 1929, and relocating people into new and taller buildings nearby, disrupted the social forms crucial for the cultural, social, and political identities of residents. The physical verticalization of space dispossessed people not only of the old horizontal (one-story) houses they rented for many decades, but also of the practice of horizontal, face-to-face interactions in the streets, which mediated conflicts, prevented social and ethnic tensions, and kept out unwanted intrusions from the authorities. These techniques were rooted in the anarchist counterculture of Barcelona's working-class neighborhoods of the 30s, when street life was considered a tool of the workers against the state, and which had been crucial in the urban resistance to Francisco Franco's military regime. For these reasons, the demolition of Bon Pastor, although upheld through a progressive rhetoric of citizens participation which allowed most residents to remain in the neighborhood, severed the links between people and the streets, and as a result fragmented a community whose historical recalcitrance towards the state had been a defining feature since before the Spanish war.


B cell lymphomas (BCLs) are a group of severe cancers, afflicting both men and women at different ages. Gene expression profiling (GEP), have during the latest decades fundamentally contributed to a better classification and biological understanding of the different BCLs. Most studies using GEP have analyzed mRNA from tumor tissue constituted of both tumor cells and non-malignant bystander cells. This thesis is based on four original papers where pure, cell-sorted BCL cells are analyzed by GEP. This procedure allows identification of differences in tumor cells rather than variations due to cellular composition. These studies focus on identifying new prognostic, diagnostic and/or functional markers for BCLs, using four different approaches. In the first study, GEP of pure mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) cells were used to identify MCL-associated targets genes. Subsequent immunohistochemistry (IHC) using antibodies raised against a unique protein epitope signature (PrEST) was performed. Using this high-throughput strategy we were able to identify proteins either uniquely or highly expressed in MCL compared to normal lymphoid tissue. This study confirmed the usage of transcriptional screening to identify molecular tumor-associated targets, as well as suggest the PrEST-approach as a novel efficient technique to identify molecular targets with both a known and unknown identity. The indolent growing follicular lymphoma (FL) cells are dependent on interplay with cells in the microenvironment for survival. We analyzed, in a second study, pure FL cells for highly expressed genes encoding surface bound proteins. An aberrant expression of CX3CR1 on the surface, not only on FL cells but also on tumor cells in several other BCLs was identified. CX3CR1 is suggested to be involved in site-specific dissemination, the possibility to use CX3CR1 as a target for antibody-mediated intervention needs however further investigations. The indolent FL often transforms to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL-tr). Previous studies analyzing tumor tissue for markers involved in this high-grade transformation have revealed results with low concordance. In a, we analyzed purified FL and DLBCL-tr tumor cells and found that large inter-tumor heterogeneity still was observed. Despite the heterogenous gene expression, this third study identified distinct differences between tumor entities rather than differences due to various composition of bystander cell and two proteins, galectin-3 and NEK2 pinpointing a subgroup of DLBCL-tr over FL were identified. In the last study, we used a unique material of eight different B cell lymphomas and identified for the first time unique transcription factors for each of these highly purified entities. The identified TFs are not only potential new molecular targets but are also partly responsible for the differences in global gene expression in the different BCLs as demonstrated by unsupervised clustering. In conclusion, analyzing pure lymphoma cells, dramatically enhance the resolution of analyses and allowed for identification of tumor-cell related genes using different approaches. Downstream analyzes of these genes allow for identification of proteins with a major biological importance for BCLs and potentially of new biomarkers. (Less)


Percutaneous diskectomy is a new method for reducing lumbar disk herniation. This procedure is simple, safe, and only semiinvasive since it causes no direct damage to the dura or nerve roots. This technique employs a nucleotome (blunt-tipped, suction-cutting probe) with a rotating electric shaver (3 mm in diameter) that was speciallydeveloped for this procedure. I t was applied to 117 patients with lumbar disk herniation whose sciatica had not been relieved by conservative treatments. The results of the technique were considered effective in 94 patients (80.3%). The improvements were even more marked in patients with protrusion or prolapse type herniation. Reviewed with postoperative examinations using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), excision of the herniated disk, resulting in decompression of the nerve root, may be correlated with the relief of symptoms.


We show that if R is a, not necessarily unital, ring graded by a semigroup G equipped with an idempotent e such that G is cancellative at e, the nonzero elements of eGe form a hypercentral group and Re has a nonzero idempotent f, then R is simple if and only if it is graded simple and the center of the corner subring f ReGe f is a field. This is a generalization of a result of Jespers' on the simplicity of a unital ring graded by a hypercentral group. We apply our result to partial skew group rings and obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the simplicity of a, not necessarily unital, partial skew group ring by a hypercentral group. Thereby, we generalize a very recent result of Goncalves'. We also point out how Jespers' result immediately implies a generalization of a simplicity result, recently obtained by Baraviera, Cortes and Soares, for crossed products by twisted partial actions.


Using new data for the universe of firms covered in Amadeus, we reconstruct the portfolios of shareholders who hold equity stakes in private and publicly-traded European firms. We find great heterogeneity in the degree of portfolio diversification across large shareholders. Exploiting this heterogeneity, we document that firms controlled by diversified large shareholders undertake riskier investments than firms controlled by non-diversified large shareholders. The impact of large shareholder diversification on corporate risk-taking is both economically and statistically significant. Our results have important implications at the policy level because they identify one channel through which policy changes aimed at improving capital market development can improve economic welfare. JEL Classifications: G11, G15, G31


Students' persistence and success remain significant issues for universities worldwide, but Tinto (2017a; 2017b) argued that universities need to listen to perspectives of students themselves in identifying what causes them to persist and succeed. This article reports on such perspectives of Indigenous Emirati, Muslim women at one public university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Data collection from original doctoral research involved an initial, customised survey completed by 22 Emirati women with subsequent interviews conducted with a further 21 female students. Data for the purpose of this article were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings are presented within Tinto's framework: goals; sense of belonging; self-efficacy; responses to curriculum; and their impact on students' motivation. Tinto's framework provides a valuable insight in understanding the women's experiences, and their statements around persistence and success have important implications for understanding women's progression in higher education in a society where male authority remains significant.


Primary diffuse leptomeningeal Gliomatosis (PDLG) is a rare neoplastic condition characterized by primary infiltration of leptomeninges by malignant glial cells which is extremely rare to be as a result of medulloblastoma. To the best of our knowledge, there are only 5 reported localized forms of PDLG cases due to medulloblastoma affecting mainly posterior fossa and/or part of cerebrum. In this article, we are reporting for the first time a case of PDLG with extensive diffuse involvement of leptomeninges due to medulloblastoma extending from the cerebrum to sacral area in 4-year old child presented with acute headache, abducent nerve palsy and papilledema with dramatic response to chemotherapy.


Spin-reorientation-induced magnetodielectric coupling effects were discovered in two layered perovskite magnets, [C6H5CH2CH2NH3]2[MCl4] (M1⁄4Mn and Cu), via isothermal magnetodielectric measurements on single-crystal samples. Specifically, peak-like dielectric anomalies and spin-flop transitions appeared simultaneously at around 34 kOe for the canted antiferromagnet (M 1⁄4 Mn) at below 44.3 K, while a low-field (1 kOe) controlled magnetodielectric effect was observed in the "soft" ferromagnet (M 1⁄4 Cu) at below 9.5 K. These isothermal magnetodielectric effects are highly reproducible and synchronous with the field-induced magnetization at different temperatures, well confirming the essential role of spin reorientation on inducing magnetodielectric coupling effects. These findings strongly imply that the layered perovskite magnets are new promising organic–inorganic hybrid systems to host magnetodielectric coupling effects.


This paper is the fourth in a series which has described the role and construction of simulation models and a 'Management Flight Simulator' that could aid the entrepreneur-owners of so-called 'dwarf' or 'stunted growth' small firms to break out from the constraints holding them back. While the research presented to date has highlighted the issues in such companies, and has suggested that in many situations relatively simple changes only might be needed to unleash the growth potential of such firms, effecting such changes is not likely to be that "simple" in real life. It has to be possible for affected owner-entrepreneurs to understand a number of factors: that there is a problem (or opportunity), that there are real constraints on growth and how they have arisen, that simple changes might offer solutions, and that real benefits might ensue. This paper describes first field trials with the simulator. It describes interviews and trials with small firm owner-entrepreneurs to confirm that the simulator concept is generally acceptable, and that the simulations are life-like enough for entrepreneurs to be influenced by their outcomes. Early results suggest that the simulator does give a realistic picture of the possible transition between a presently constricted firm and one able to fulfil its growth potential. In this role it aids understanding of the reasons for business dwarfism and the kinds of change owner-entrepreneurs might have to make, and presents enlightening outlooks with the possible timepaths, or trajectories, of key performance measures. By demonstrating that growth objectives might be feasible, the simulator should stimulate and encourage an owner-manager, perhaps alongside other family/company stakeholders, to take a more detailed look at the practical options in their own firm's case.


To test the theory of a chemoautotrophic origin of life in a volcanic, hydrothermal setting, we explored mechanisms for the buildup of bio-organic compounds by carbon fixation on catalytic transition metal precipitates. We report the carbon monoxide–dependent formation of carbon-fixation products, including an ordered series of α-hydroxy and α-amino acids of the general formula R-CHA-COOH (where R is H, CH3,C2H5,orHOCH2 and A is OH or NH2) by carbon fixation at 80° to 120°C, catalyzed by nickel or nickel,iron precipitates with carbonyl, cyano, and methylthio ligands as carbon sources, with or without sulfido ligands. Calcium or magnesium hydroxide was added as a pH buffer. The results narrow the gap between biochemistry and volcanic geochemistry and open a new gateway for the exploration of a volcanic, hydrothermal origin of life.


The innovations approach to linear least-squares approximation problems is first to "whiten" the observed data by a causal and invertible operation, and then to treat the resulting simpler white-noise observations problem. This technique was successfully used by Bode and Shannon to obtain a simple derivation of the classical Wiener filtering problem for stationary processes over a semi-infinite interval. Here we shall extend the technique to handle nonstationary continuous-time processes over finite intervals. In Part I we shall apply this method to obtain a simple derivation of the Kalman-Bucy recursive filtering formulas (for both continuous-time and discrete-time processes) and also some minor generalizations thereof.


While the IETF standardization process of the Mobile IPv6 and Network Mobility (NEMO) protocols is almost complete, their large-scale deployment is not yet possible. With these technologies, in order to hide location changes of the mobile nodes from the rest of the Internet, a specific router called a home agent is used. However, this equipment generates resilience and performance issues such as protocol scalability and longer paths. In order to solve these problems, we describe and analyze a new concept called Home Agent Migration. The main feature of this solution is the distribution of home agents inside the current Internet topology to reduce distances to end-nodes. As is usually done for anycast routing, they advertise the same network prefix from different locations; moreover they also exchange information about their associations with mobile nodes. This produces a Global Mobile eXchange (GMX), an overlay network that efficiently handles data traffic from and to mobile nodes, and operates home agents as would an Internet eXchange Point (IXP). When a correspondent node needs to exchange packets with a mobile node, the data traffic will be intercepted by its closest GMX home agent and redirected to the home agent to which the mobile node is bound.


With fast development of wireless network technologies, a variety of different wireless networks coexist in the future. We are getting more and more focus on convergence of heterogeneous networks. In the environment of heterogeneous wireless networks, traditional mobility management has already become incapable to support mobility in heterogeneous wireless networks. As one of the key function of the future mobility management technology, handoff management which is used to provide session continuity across heterogeneous networks has been one of the most challenging technologies in heterogeneous network environments. Fast and efficient and accurate handoff can give users a different experience of networks, this paper aims to propose a cross layer based mobility management proposal which can meet the needs of the users to ensure that users at anywhere and anytime access to the best network.


Introduction. Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) ranks among nephrotic syndromes. Research shows that FSGS is brought about by several genes including transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily c member 6 (TRPC6). This study aimed to investigate TRPC6 gene in Iranian FSGS children. Materials and Methods. Twenty-six FSGS patients were included. They were all under 16 years old. Polymerase chain reaction amplification and sequencing were performed to examine exons 2 and 13 of TRPC6 gene. Results. Sampling was performed when the patients had a mean age of 9.26 ± 3.19 years. Sixteen children were boys (61.5%); malefemale ratio was 1.35:1. Four patients (15.4%) were diagnosed with TRPC6 variants. Three missense nonsynonymous mutations (C121S, D130V, and G162R) and 1 synonymous mutation (I111I) were detected. All variants were novel; in silico analysis predicted D130V and G162R as pathogenic. Patients with and without mutations were not different significantly regarding age at disease onset, sex, consanguinity, hypertension, hematuria, serum creatinine and albumin, rate of progression to kidney failure, response to steroids, and resistance to cyclosporine A and cyclophosphamide. Conclusions. This study examined exons 2 and 13 of TRPC6 gene in Iranian FSGS children. Four novel TRPC6 variants were detected; in silico analysis showed that 2 variants (D130V and G162R) could be pathogenic. It could be concluded that TRPC6 may be useful for genetic screening in Iranian FSGS children.


Summary Although foraging performance of bees is generally assumed to improve when experience is gained, not many studies have been done on the development of foraging performance over multiple days in social bees. In this study, we analysed the effect of experience on performance of naïve foragers of the stingless bee Plebeia tobagoensis over two successive days. Foraging performance, computed as the total foraging trip time and load size, improved significantly with increased experience, mostly after the first few foraging trips. The improvement in foraging trip time was mainly the result of a decrease in flower handling time and time necessary to find the food source. There was a decrease in foraging performance following night, and the highest foraging performance level of all studied aspects was reached the first foraging day. This foraging performance pattern might be adaptive for social bee species with relatively small colony sizes foraging in dynamic foraging environments.


The Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) is one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation produced in recent years and is likely to transform the way water quality monitoring is undertaken across all European Union's member states. The objectives of the WFD are to improve, protect and prevent further deterioration of quality for most types of water body across Europe. The Directive aims to achieve and ensure "good quality" status of all water bodies throughout Europe by 2015, and this is to be achieved by implementing management plans at the river basin level. Monitoring is required to cover a number of 'water quality elements' including biological, chemical (inorganic and organic priority pollutants), hydro-morphological, and physicochemical parameters. Three modes of monitoring regime are specified in the Directive and will form part of the management plans that must be introduced by December 2006. These include: (i) surveillance monitoring aimed at assessing long-term water quality changes and providing baseline data on river basins allowing the design and implementation of other types of monitoring, (ii) operational monitoring aimed at providing additional and essential data on water bodies at risk or failing environmental objectives of the WFD, (iii) investigative monitoring aimed at assessing causes of such failure when they are unknown.


This dissertation examines the relationship between computer technology and management science and changes in the role of profit planning within the commercial banking system of the U.S.A. The objective of the study is to develop a generalized profit-planning model which employs the existing decision processes to create pro-forma financial statements for a commercial bank. The study concentrated on the 300 largest commercial banks (ranked by deposits as of December 31, 1969) of the Federal Reserve System. These particular banks held the greatest potential for having a Planning Department, the computing capability necessary for problem solving, and a Management Science Department actively employing management science techniques to profit-planning problems. The research for the dissertation included an in-depth study of secondary sources, an interrogation of commercial bank executives and a detailed questionnaire which was submitted to each of the 300 largest banks. Sponsorship for the Financial Planning Questionnaire was obtained from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. The sponsorship helped obtain a large sample return (in excess of 50.0 percent) and thereby increased the statistical reliability of the results of the study.


Somatic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations have been reported in many types of cancer cells, but very few reports document the prevalence of inherited mtDNA polymorphisms including NADH-dehydrogenase (ND3) subunit polymorphisms in cancer patients compared to healthy control populations. Although, few mitochondrial ND3 subunit polymorphisms were reported in different cancers, e.g. breast, esophageal cancer but the effect of polymorphisms on cellular metabolism and growth remain obscure. ND3 subunit with other ND subunits of Complex I and Cytochrome b of Complex III of mtDNA Electron Transport Chain (ETC) are the major source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as a toxic by-product of mitochondrial Oxidative Phosphorylation (OXPHOS), thus polymorphisms in these subunits has been proposed to cause an increased rate of ROS production, therefore, may contribute in developing cancer. In an attempt to investigate mtDNA polymorphisms associated with breast cancer risk, mtDNA from twenty four breast cancer patients and twenty healthy female individuals were studied. We report that two polymorphisms G10398A and T10400C are prevalent in 75% of breast cancer patients, compared to only 35% in healthy female individuals and the difference is statistically significant (P = 0.0138). It is therefore reasonable to assume that G10398A and T10400C single nucleotide polymorphisms may constitute an inherited risk factor for the development of breast cancer in Bangladesh.

 Key words: Somatic mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA), NADH, polymorphism, breast cancer, Bangladesh.


While reinforcement learning (RL) methods that learn an internal model of the environment have the potential to be more sample efficient than their model-free counterparts, learning to model raw observations from high dimensional sensors can be challenging. Prior work has addressed this challenge by learning low-dimensional representation of observations through auxiliary objectives, such as reconstruction or value prediction. However, the alignment between these auxiliary objectives and the RL objective is often unclear. In this work, we propose a single objective which jointly optimizes a latent-space model and policy to achieve high returns while remaining self-consistent. This objective is a lower bound on expected returns. Unlike prior bounds for model-based RL on policy exploration or model guarantees, our bound is directly on the overall RL objective. We demonstrate that the resulting algorithm matches or improves the sample-efficiency of the best prior model-based and model-free RL methods. While sample efficient methods typically are computationally demanding, our method attains the performance of SAC in about 50% less wall-clock time.


1. The short-circuited midgut from the larvae of Hyalophora cecropia can actively transport potassium and rubidium from blood side to lumen. In this paper it is demonstrated that caesium also can be actively transported. 2. Transport of potassium does not interfere with the metabolism of the midgut; nor does transport of caesium. 3. Potassium and rubidium compete for the transport mechanism in a one-to-one ratio but competition between potassium and caesium is more complicated. At high caesium:potassium ratios the active transport taking place is transport of caesium when the ratio is 2 there is more transport of potassium than of caseium; when the ratio is i there is no transport of caesium.


Background
Dysmenorrhoea (occurrence of painful menstrual cramps of uterine origin) is a common gynaecological condition. The character of pain from musculoskeletal dysfunction can be very similar to gynaecological pain by presenting cyclicly and being altered by hormonal changes associated with menstruation. Medical treatment for dysmenorrhoea usually comprises anti-inflammatory drugs, oral contraceptives, or surgical intervention. Spinal manipulation is a non-medical intervention. It has been suggested that manipulation of the vertebrae may increase spinal mobility thus improving pelvic blood supply and facilitating pain relief.

Objectives
To determine the safety and efficacy of spinal manipulative interventions for the treatment of dysmenorrhoea when compared to each other, placebo, no treatment, or other medical treatment.

Search methods
In this update we searched the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group Trials Register (May 2009), CENTRAL (to second quarter, 2009), MEDLINE (1966 to May 2009), EMBASE (1980 to May 2009), CINAHL (1982 to May 2009), and PsycINFO (1806 to May 2009). Citation lists of review articles and included trials were examined.

Selection criteria
Any randomised controlled trials (RCTs) including spinal manipulative interventions (for example chiropractic, osteopathy, or manipulative physiotherapy) versus each other, placebo, no treatment, or another medical treatment were considered. Exclusion criteria were mild or infrequent dysmenorrhoea or dysmenorrhoea from an intrauterine device (IUD).

Data collection and analysis
Two trials of high velocity, low amplitude (HVLA) manipulation and one trial of the Toftness technique were included. Quality assessment and data extraction were performed independently by two review authors. No data were suitable for meta-analysis. Data were therefore reported as descriptive data. The outcome measures were pain relief or pain intensity and adverse effects.

Main results
Results from HVLA manipulation suggested that the technique was no more effective than sham manipulation for the treatment of dysmenorrhoea. One small trial indicated a difference in favour of HVLA manipulation however the one trial with an adequate sample size found no difference between HVLA and sham manipulation. There was no difference in adverse effects. The Toftness technique appeared more effective than sham treatment in one small trial but no conclusions could be made due to the size and other methodological limitations of the trial.

Authors' conclusions
There is no evidence to suggest that spinal manipulation is effective in the treatment of dysmenorrhoea. In the one trial reporting on adverse effects there was no greater risk of such events with spinal compared with sham manipulation.


This paper critically reflects upon the changes in the role, tasks and aspirations of local authority social work with children and families in England since the publication of the Seebohm Report in 1968. In particular, it analyses how far the current changes related to the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, The Children's Plan: Building Brighter Futures and the Think Family report will have the effect of either furthering or undermining the principles and ambitions set out in the Seebohm Report. It concludes by suggesting that while the aims of the current changes have much in common with those of the Seebohm Report, the roles and tasks of social workers have been recast. While social work can be seen as occupying a somewhat marginal role in the new arrangements and it functions on a much narrower terrain than that envisaged by Seebohm, at the same time its importance and contribution has been legitimated.


Purpose Given the public health significance of poorly treatable co-morbid major depressive disorders (MDD) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) and coronary heart disease (CHD), we need to investigate whether strategies to prevent the development of major depression could reduce its burden of disease. We therefore evaluated the effectiveness of a stepped-care program for subthreshold depression in comparison with usual care in patients with DM2 and/or CHD. Methods A cluster randomized controlled trial, with 27 primary care centers serving as clusters. A total of 236 DM2 and/or CHD patients with subthreshold depression (nine item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) score ≥ 6, no current MDD according to DSM-IV criteria) were allocated to the intervention group (N = 96) or usual care group (n = 140). The stepped-care program was delivered by trained practice nurses during one year and consisted of four sequential treatment steps: watchful waiting, guided self-help, problem solving treatment and referral to the general practitioner. The primary outcome was the 12-month cumulative incidence of MDD as measured with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). Secondary outcomes included severity of depression (measured by PHQ-9) at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Results Of 236 patients (mean age, 67,5 (SD 10) years; 54.7% men), 210 (89%) completed the MINI at 12 months. The cumulative incidence of MDD was 9 of 89 (10.1%) participants in the intervention group and 12 of 121 (9.9%) participants in the usual care group. We found no statistically significant overall effect of the intervention (OR = 1.21; 95% confidence interval (0.12 to 12.41)) and there were no statistically significant differences in the course or severity of depressive symptoms between the two groups. Conclusions This study suggest that Step-Dep was not more effective in preventing MDD than usual care in a primary care population with DM2 and/or CHD and subthreshold depression.


Energy management plays a critical role in electric vehicle (EV) operations. To improve EV energy efficiency, this paper proposes an effective model predictive control (MPC)-based energy management strategy to simultaneously control the battery thermal management system (BTMS) and the cabin air conditioning (AC) system. We aim to improve the overall energy efficiency and battery cycle-life, while retaining soft constraints from both BTMS and AC systems. The MPC-based strategy is implemented by optimizing the battery operations and discharging schedules to avoid a peak load and by directly utilizing the regenerative power instead of recharging the battery. Compared with the benchmark system without any control coordination between BTMS and AC, the proposed MPCbased energy management has shown a 4.3% reduction in the recharging energy and a 6.5% improvement for the overall energy consumption. Overall, the MPC-based energy management is a promising solution to enhance the battery efficiency for EVs. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4048816]


This thesis introduces the applied notion of textual entailment as a generic empirical task that captures major semantic inferences across many applications. Textual entailment addresses semantic inference as a direct mapping between language expressions and abstracts the common semantic inferences as needed for text based Natural Language Processing applications. We define the task and describe the creation of a benchmark dataset for textual entailment along with proposed evaluation measures. Challenge. We further describe how textual entailment can be approximated and modeled at the lexical level and propose a lexical reference subtask and a correspondingly derived dataset. The thesis further proposes a general probabilistic setting that casts the applied notion of textual entailment in probabilistic terms. We suggest that the proposed setting may provide a unifying framework for modeling uncertain semantic inferences from texts. In addition, we describe two lexical models demonstrating the applicability of the probabilistic setting. Although our proposed models are relatively simple, as they do not rely on syntactic or other deeper analysis, they nevertheless achieved competitive results on the pascal rte challenge. Finally, the thesis presents a novel acquisition algorithm to identify lexical entail-ment relations from a single corpus focusing on the extraction of verb paraphrases. Most previous approaches detect individual paraphrase instances within a pair (or iii set) of comparable corpora, each of them containing roughly the same information, and rely on the given substantial level of correspondence of such corpora. We present a novel method that successfully detects isolated paraphrase instances within a single corpus without relying on any a-priori structure and information. Our instance based approach seems to address some of the drawbacks of distributional similarity based methods, in particular by providing a consistent scoring scale across different words. iv Preface Portions of this thesis are joint work and have appeared elsewhere.


ITER edge localized mode (ELM) coils are important components of the in-vessel coils (IVCs) and they are designed for mitigating or suppressing ELMs. The coils located on the vacuum vessel (VV) and behind the blanket are subjected to high temperature due to the nuclear heat from the plasma, the Ohmic heat induced by the working current and the thermal radiation from the environment. The water serves as coolant to remove the heat deposited into the coils. Based on the results of nuclear analysis, the thermal-hydraulic analysis is performed for the preliminary design of upper ELM coils using a rapid evaluation method based on 1D treatment. The thermal-hydraulic design and operating parameters including the water flow velocity are optimized. It is found that the rapid evaluation method based on 1D treatment is feasible and reliable. According to the rapid analysis method, the thermal hydraulic parameters of two water flow schemes are computed and proved similar to each other, providing an effective basis for the coil design. Finally, considering jointly the pressure drop requirement and the cooling capacity, the flow velocity is optimized to 5 m/s.


Despite expectations of a landslide, the French public barely approved the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Traditional explanations for the surprise outcome that rely on socioeconomic conditions, partisanship, regional characteristics, and domestic issues are inadequate. Analysis based largely on the French National Election Study of 1995 shows that the voters were largely concerned with foreign policy. Citizens who were friendly to Germany and supportive of the European Union greatly favored the treaty. French nationalists and those possessed of strong anti-immigrant sentiment were vehemently against it. These disparate views, united in their concern about the sovereignty of France, dominated the Maastricht vote and appear to have persisted in the European Union Constitutional referendum of 2005.


Rigid polyurethane foams were excellent thermal insulation materials with widely used, which was highly flammable at the same time. In order to obtain safe application, flame retarded polyurethane foams were needed. In this paper, series flame retarded rigid polyurethane foams were prepared with loading different flame retardants such as ammonium polyphosphate, expandable graphite, red phosphorus, Tri (2-chloroethyl) phosphate and dimethyl methylphosphonate. The effects of flame retardants on the foaming-process and flame retardant property of the rigid polyurethane foams were investigated by otary viscometer and limiting oxygen index. The results showed that the combination of solid and liquid flame retardants was necessary to improve the flame retardant and different flame retardants played synergistic roles in rigid polyurethane foams. The limiting oxygen indexes of the foams could be up to 30wt% and 29.6% with 25wt% solid flame retardants and 10wt% liquid retardants, respectively.


Vulnerable transmission lines or sections have great impacts on large-scale blackouts and cascading failures in power grids. A comprehensive scheme to study transmission vulnerability based on the fault chain theory of security science is proposed in this paper. In this scheme, the cascading failure process and its generic features are described according to a fault chain. Power flow transfer, sequent overload of lines, and damage of transmission sections are modeled and normalized to predict all the fault chains. On the basis of the fault chains, a new vulnerability assessment index is presented to identify critical lines and sections contributing to failure extension and system instability. The effectiveness of the proposed assessment scheme is demonstrated via numerical examples on three power systems. Considering operation properties and transient impact, the proposed scheme can be executed in an efficient way.


The aim of this study was to explore cross-country (Taiwan versus India) differences in students' perceptions of online leaning by gender. The self-reported instrument, POSTOL (Perception of Students towards Online Learning), was conducted to the students from Taiwan and India. Of the total 441 respondents, there were 233 students from India and 208 from Taiwan. A 2x2 between-subjects multivariate analysis of variance was employed on the four dimensions of the POSTOL scale. This scale consists of four dimensions: instructor characteristics, social presence, instructional design, and trust. Results showed that there were significant differences, between India and Taiwan, in the perception of students towards online learning. However, there was no significant interaction effect of country by gender. Findings indicated that culture did influence students' perceptions towards online learning. There is a need to raise awareness about factors that may affect online learning experience and to provide guidance and for practice and future work.


We have developed a software system that takes standard electrocardiogram (ECG) input and interprets this input along with user-defined and automatically defined markers to diagnose myocardial infarctions (MI). These pathologies are then automatically represented within a volumetric model of the heart. Over a period of six months 30 patients were monitored using a digital ECG system and this information was used to test and develop our system. It was found that the STEMIs (ST segment Elevation MI) were successfully diagnosed, however NSTEMIs (Non-STEMI), although correctly interpreted, were more ambiguous due to the fact that T wave inversions are sometimes seen on normal ECGs. Control ECGs of normal hearts were also taken. The system correctly interpreted this data as being normal. A standard voxel-count metric was developed so that future work in MI monitoring will be possible. The toolkit was found to be beneficial for three possible uses, as a diagnostic tool for clinicians, as a teaching tool for students and also as an information tool for the patient.


During social interactions, people's eyes convey a wealth of information about their direction of attention and their emotional and mental states. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of past and current research into the perception of gaze behavior and its effect on the observer. This encompasses the perception of gaze direction and its influence on perception of the other person, as well as gaze-following behavior such as joint attention, in infant, adult, and clinical populations. Particular focus is given to the gaze-cueing paradigm that has been used to investigate the mechanisms of joint attention. The contribution of this paradigm has been significant and will likely continue to advance knowledge across diverse fields within psychology and neuroscience.


We introduce a process calculus with a new action prefixing operator that allows to model locally controlled reversibility. Since the observation of covalent bonding in chemical reactions is the starting point of our work we call the process calculus the Calculus of Covalent Bonding (CCB). The calculus is based on CCSK, but adds an operator of the form (s; b), where s is a sequence of actions. Action b can only be executed once all actions in s are done and executing it requires to undo one action in s. By this we achieve control over when reverse actions happen without the need of a global control or a memory. The calculus also allows spontaneous undoing and sequences of forward and reverse actions. We give a formal definition of the calculus using Structural Operational Semantics rules. We also show properties of the calculus, in particular we show that it can model out-of-causal order reversibility. In order to demonstrate the use of our calculus we model the hydration of formaldehyde in water into methanediol. We use a system of four molecules, where various paths are possible to produce the final result. These path include a range of chemical situations. Our calculus can model most of them. We also model Base Excision Repair (BER), a bio-chemical process, on a higher level. This show that our calculus is also useful to model more general situations than the chemical reactions it was derived from.


Several studies take place in order to reduce and even extinguish formaldehyde use in its various applications. This is due to its classification as a carcinogen according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Most of the formaldehyde production is destined to obtain amino resins. After the synthesis of these resins formaldehyde being fully reacted is no longer found free and therefore presents no carcinogenicity risk. However, these amine resins when used as a binder in wood composites, can release formaldehyde. MDP (medium density particleboard) panels were produced on laboratory scale using as binder urea formaldehyde resin and the mixture of urea formaldehyde resin with MDI (diphenylmethane 4,4 'diisocyanate). The MDI partially replaced the formaldehyde urea resin at concentrations of 10%, 20% and 30% in order to evaluate in these mixtures the influence on perpendicular tensile strength, also known as internal adhesion, in determining swelling and water absorption after immersion For 2 hours and 24 hours, formaldehyde emission and flexural strength. The resin blend was effective in reducing the emission of formaldehyde and an increase in the mechanical properties was possible. Among the conditions evaluated, condition 3, with 20% of methyl 4,4 'diisocyanate (MDI) and 80% of formaldehyde urea, presented the most satisfactory results in relation to costbenefit. In condition 3, the formaldehyde emission was reduced by 75% and the results of the mechanical properties evaluated were satisfactory. In all analyzes, an increase was observed in relation to the panels produced with urea formaldehyde resin.


Reviews book which primarily discusses applications of earth science to the disposal of high-level radioactive wastes. Points out that very little is said regarding practical experience with, or the epistemological foundation of, prediction in the earth and geotechnical sciences. Suggests that an in-depth examination of the difficulties of retrodiction in the earth sciences might have provided the philosophical overview missing in a volume whose title stresses predictive geology.


Ad hoc networks are wireless multihop networks whose highly volatile topology makes the design and operation of a standard routing protocol hard. With an active networking approach, one can define and deploy routing logic at runtime in order to adapt to special circumstances and requirements. We have implemented several active ad hoc routing protocols that configure the forwarding behavior of mobile nodes, allowing data packets to be efficiently routed between any two nodes of the wireless network. Isolating a simple forwarding layer in terms of both implementation and performance enables us to stream delay-sensitive audio data over the ad hoc network. In the control plane, active packets permanently monitor the connectivity and setup, and modify the routing state.


Wrinkling, wall thickness overthinning and cross-section distorting are main defects that seriously affect the forming quality of the tube in bending process. In this paper, numerical simulation based on PAM-STAMP 2G is conducted for the tube rotary-draw bending filled with steel balls as pressure transferring medium to analyze the deformation behaviors under various internal pressures. The results show that, tube bending filled with steel balls as pressure transferring medium can effectively restrain the defects of wrinkling and cross-section distorting. In addition, wrinkling and cross-section distorting of the bent tube decrease, the wall thickness thickening at the intrados of the bent tube decreases while the wall thickness thinning at the extrados increases with the internal pressure.


The objective of the work is to compare the performance of two filters, one isotropic and another one of anisotropic diffusion based on gradient. To do this, experiments are carried out to establish which of the filters exhibits a better behavior against the imperfections that characterize the computed tomography images. The structure of the experiments is as follows: a) The parameters linked to the aforementioned filters are identified. b) The ranges of valuesof these parameters and the way to use them are established. c) A database of three-dimensional cardiac images is filtered by applying, independently, the aforementioned filters considering a pre-established subset of values associated with the parameters. d) All the filtered images are addressed by a segmentation process, based on the growth of regions, which allows extracting the 3D morphology of the thoracic external aorta. e) As a metric to evaluate the performance of each technique, the Jaccard similarity index (JSI) is used. f) The one that generates the lowest calculated JSI is selected as the best technique when comparing a reference segmentation with all generated segmentations. The results indicate that the anisotropic diffusion filter, based on a gradient, obtained the best performance.


Organisms modify their behavior in response to its consequences, a phenomenon referred to as operant learning. The computational principles and neural mechanisms underlying operant learning are a subject of extensive experimental and theoretical investigations. Theoretical approaches largely rely on concepts and algorithms from reinforcement learning. The dominant view is that organisms maintain a value function, that is, a set of estimates of the cumulative future rewards associated with the different behavioral options. These values are then used to select actions. Learning in this framework results from the update of these values depending on experience of the consequences of past actions. An alternative view questions the applicability of such a computational scheme to many real-life situations. Instead, it posits that organisms exploit the intrinsic variability in their action-selection mechanism(s) to modify their behavior, e.g., via stochastic gradient ascent, without the need of an explicit representation of values. In this review, we compare these two approaches in terms of their computational power and flexibility, their putative neural correlates, and, finally, in terms of their ability to account for behavior as observed in repeated-choice experiments. We discuss the successes and failures of these alternative approaches in explaining the observed patterns of choice behavior. We conclude by identifying some of the important challenges to a comprehensive theory of operant learning.


Grounded in bioecological theories, this mixed-method article examines aspects of culturally responsive organized activities. Study 1 used path analysis to quantitatively test relations between ethnic cultural features of activities (ways of integrating ethnic culture) and concurrent experiences (N = 150 Latino adolescents). Findings were mixed, such that some features (e.g., teaching ethnic culture) predicted positive (e.g., increased autonomy) and negative (e.g., emotional) experiences. Study 2 disentangled the nuances of ethnic culture by qualitatively exploring perspectives on three features (N = 34 Mexican-origin adolescent-parent dyads): ethnic cultural content, same-ethnic leaders/peers, and Spanish language use. Thematic analysis revealed the complexities of ethnic culture. Some parents and adolescents wanted activities that represented mainstream American culture; others wanted Latino ethnic culture, but were unhappy with the ways it was integrated into activities. Parents and adolescents thought their ethnic culture was misrepresented (e.g., Cinco de Mayo was celebrated as Mexican Independence Day) or represented narrowly (e.g., La Bamba was the school band's only Mexican song). Findings suggest that integrating ethnic cultural features is not an "all or nothing" decision, and how it is done matters considerably. Families' perspectives and voice would help ensure ethnic culture is integrated in authentic, preferred ways.


This article compares different proposals for the implementation of the concept of social class and analyzes the alternatives used in each proposal, considering previous epidemiological studies on this issue and the potential of such a concept as a central category in studies on social determination in the health/disease process. Seven basic differences were identified, pertaining to the following aspects: class structure; research objective; the social class concept as a reference; the decision as to which individual has his/her occupational activity taken as defining the family's social class; the class status of the unemployed, housewives, and the retired; class status of students; and criteria for distinguishing between the "bourgeoisie", "petty bourgeoisie", "new petty bourgeoisie", and "proletariat" and whether there is a specific flow in certain population groups. Given the observed differences and underlying theoretical models, this study discusses problems related to the fact that the use of a specific concept of social class can have various implementation models.


Patterns with pleasing structure are common in art, video games, and virtual worlds. We describe a method for synthesizing new patterns of tiles on a regular grid that are similar in appearance to a set of example patterns. Exemplars are used both to specify valid tile arrangements and to emphasize multi-tile structures. We model a pattern as a probabilistic graphical model called a factor graph. Factors represent the hard logical constraints between tiles, the soft statistical relationships that determine style, and the local dependencies between tiles at neighboring sites. We describe a simple method for learning factor functions from a small exemplar. We then synthesize new patterns through a stochastic search method that is inspired by MC-SAT. Efficient synthesis is challenging because of the combination of hard and soft constraints. Our synthesis algorithm, called BlockSS, scales linearly with the number of tiles and the hardness of the problem. We use our technique to model building facades, cities, and decorative patterns.


In modern era, computing systems are designed to perform innumerable number of functions with high speed, low power consumption, less propagation delay, the number of circuits in a chip keeps increasing day by day. So, the electronics industry always faces the challenge of miniaturization of transistors which increases the package density and hence linear scaling of CMOS technology has become a necessity in the present day microelectronic and nano-electronic regime. This causes a problem for static power consumption and hence conventional MOSFETs fail to face the situation. Also Short Channel Effects (SCEs) come into picture while scaling the MOSFET. Hence non-conventional devices started gaining its significance to meet the ITRS requirements. This thesis explains the performance analysis of Single Gate and Double Gate MOSFET with presence of noise. The performance of the MOSFET degrades when different noises come in to picture as compared to the previous MOSFET Model without noise. Also the behaviour of radio frequency (RF) DG MOSFET is analysed and verified up to 1MHz with measurements over a wide range of bias voltages and channel lengths. Significant variation in the noise spectral density has been observed.


Background: Developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, the correct adaptation and implementation of the global guidelines on prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV is critical. This study explored the challenges that health workers face implementing WHO's PMTCT guidelines, and the experiences of HIV-positive clients receiving these services. Methods: We interacted with 14 health professionals, and 16 PMTCT clients through in-depth interviews. Four of seven PMTCT sites within the Accra Metropolis were purposively included. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, analyzed, and then sorted into themes. Results: Health workers had challenges translating PMTCT guidelines into useful messages for their clients. Their counselling was often prescriptive. Counselors identified inadequate in-service training as a key reason for their out-dated and inconsistent messages. HIV-positive clients exhibited general knowledge about the importance of doing exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months of life. Clients had confidence in antiretroviral for PMTCT. However, deeply rooted socio-cultural practices and the attitudes of counselors remain challenges to clients. Conclusions and Global Health Implications: Counselors require refresher training which addresses, among other things, long-held socio-cultural practices. Publicizing these challenges will prod policy makers and program implementers to develop strategies that address the challenges both locally and globally.


Metals on metal implants have long been used in arthroplasties because of their robustness and low dislocation rate. Several relatively low-corrosion metals have been used in arthroplasty, including 316L stainless steel, titanium, and cobalt–chromium–molybdenum alloy. Debris from these implants, however, has been found to cause inflammatory responses leading to unexpected failure rates approaching 10% 7 years surgery. Safety assessment of these materials traditionally relies on the use of simple two-dimensional assays, where cells are grown on the surface of the material over a relatively short time frame. It is now well-known that the composition and stiffness of the extracellular matrix (ECM) have a critical effect on cell function. In this work, we have evaluated how cobalt ions influence the assembly of type I collagen, the principle component of the ECM in bone. We found that cobalt had a significant effect on collagen matrix formation, and its presence results in local variations in collagen density. This increase in heterogeneity causes an increase in localized mechanical properties but a decrease in the bulk stiffness of the material. Moreover, when collagen matrices contained cobalt ions, there was a significant change in how the cells interacted with the collagen matrix. Fluorescence images and biological assays showed a decrease in cell proliferation and viability with an increase in cobalt concentration. We present evidence that the cobalt ion complex interacts with the hydroxyl group present in the carboxylic terminal of the collagen fibril, preventing crucial stabilizing bonds within collagen formation. This demonstrates that the currently accepted toxicity assays are poor predictors of the longer-term biological performance of a material.


In normal circumstances, concrete should never be allowed to freeze in its early life. This article examines how the use of fibres can improve performance under these unacceptable circumstances. Concrete is very vulnerable to damage by freezing in its early life. This article describes an investigation of the performance of monofilament, crimped/structural polypropylene and steel-fibre types, compared with plain and air-entrained concrete, with particular regard to resistance to damage by freezing in the very early life of the concrete. Trials by Squibbs(1) and Sermram(2) at the University of Newcastle indicated monofilament fibres in concrete provided a degree of protection against early-age freezing of concrete. Squibbs carried out 50 cycles while Sermram carried out 100 cycles. These preliminary tests showed that concrete subjected to freeze/thaw cycles that commenced 24 hours after casting survived visually intact when monofilament fibres were included in the mix. These tests were a precursor to the early life tests as detailed in this article.


Cardiovascular responses to graded intravenous infusions of norepinephrine were measured in untreated control dogs and in dogs treated for five weeks with oral chlorothiazide. Observations were made both before and after administration of a ganglionic blocking agent. In these experiments, chlorothiazide reduced the responses of the peripheral blood vessels to the vasoconstrictor effect of norepinephrine. This effect was apparent both before and after ganglionic blockade, suggesting that modification of resting neurogenic vasomotor tone did not play a major role in the reduced responsiveness. Cardiac output and heart rate were greater during norepinephrine infusion in treated dogs before hexamethonium. Output and rate became similar in both treated and untreated groups after hexamethonium. The results provide additional evidence to support the hypothesis that chlorothiazide reduces the effectiveness of cardioinhibitory reflexes.


A new kind of miniature high-voltage pulse transformer based on closed magnetic core is developed, and its output characteristics are analyzed in this paper. The amplitude of the output high-voltage pulse of the transformer is 210 kV, the step-up ratio is 1:105, and the effective coupling coefficient is 0.984. The time-domain and frequency responses of the transformer have also been analyzed in detail by circuit theory. The experimental results show that the pulse transformer can respond well to square voltage pulse with a pulsewidth ranging from 5 to 100 ¿s and a frequency band ranging from 100 Hz to 500 kHz. With these characteristics, the small pulse transformer with very low cost can be used for applications of dielectric barrier discharge and high-voltage nanosecond-pulse generator.


The knowledge of accumulated evapotranspiration by seasonal vegetation crops throughout their life cycle can be an important tool in decision-making when considering the economic viability of the crop. This knowledge can help understand how much the plants, subject to specific management, can evapotranspirate at the end of their cycle. This information assists in estimating the quantity of a production variable, for example, the mass of shoot fresh matter, besides indicating a more interesting period for its harvest. The objective of this chapter is, from the daily evapotranspiration estimative throughout the cycle, to model the accumulated evapotranspiration over the entire growth period of the crop. In order to do so, we must understand that the behavior of the response variable, i.e., the accumulated evapotranspiration, over time is not linear and keep in mind that the several observations performed in the same experimental unit have correlations and these correlations are more intense the closer temporally the measurements are. This understanding leads us to the analysis of longitudinal data from the nonlinear mixed effect models perspective.


Defining the Properties of the OS-33 Osteosarcoma Cell Line and Effects of mTORC1 Inhibition by Rapamycin Mykayla Palmer Director: Dr. Jianning Tao, PhD Osteosarcoma (OS) is the predominant form of primary malignant bone cancer and is most commonly found in children and adolescents. OS is associated with high mortality rates and poor prognosis for the majority of patients [1]. Within the last few decades, there has been little to no improvement in patient outcome. Current treatment methods include surgical excision of the tumor alongside chemotherapy. However, high rates of metastasis still persist, which is considerably more difficult to target with chemotherapy or to remove by surgery [2]. Thanks to recent advances in molecular genetics and medicine, we can better understand OS and the properties of the cancer in order to develop an improved treatment plan. We examined a novel Patient Derived Xenograft (PDX) cell line, OS-33. While little is known about OS-33, preliminary data indicates sensitivity to the drug rapamycin, which is suggested to inhibit the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway [3]. The mTORC1 pathway is upregulated in many OS patients, which highlights this pathway as a new and promising therapeutic target [3]. The inhibition of mTORC1 signaling by rapamycin was studied to determine how it suppresses cell migration, invasion, proliferation, and stem cell differentiation in the OS-33 cell line. This study underlines the importance of the mTORC1 signaling pathway and provides evidence for potential drugs which target OS.


MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History. By Stefano Mengozzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xviii, 286 p. ISBN 9780521884150. $95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Guido of Arezzo is surely the most familiar of all Medieval music theorists; certainly no history of music course fails to introduce Guido as the inventor of the staff and of solmization. And many, if not most, also credit him with the system of overlapping hexachords, taken as the way musicians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance conceived pitch relationships, and therefore seen as the key to understanding medieval and Renaissance music properly. It will therefore come as a revelation to a great many-perhaps even to some specialists in the area-to learn the degree to which the Guidonian theory we all met as undergraduates is in reality the product of reworkings, reconceptualizations, "reforms," and other manipulations by later writers. In this rich but compact book, Megozzi retraces the course of Guido's legacy from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, with an epilogue covering the period up to the early nineteenth century and the establishment of musicology as a scholarly discipline. The book is, of course, a contribution to the history of music theory, but-unusually for music theory-it also partakes of reception history, engaging wider intellectual history at key points. This monograph thus belongs to that narrowest of subspecialties: the metahistory of music theory; but, precisely because it occupies a nexus among several disciplines, it will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of niches: medievalists, Renaissance scholars, performers of medieval and Renais - sance music (to name the obvious), not to mention those engaged in the teaching of music history at all levels. The wide scope of the book (almost six centuries, plus extensions, of music history), features a large cast of characters, with an interesting variety of motives and agendas. Running through all this, almost as an idee fixe, is the hexachord system itself, as a pedagogical tool, and as a fundamental theory of pitch space. The book is, appropriately, organized into two principal sections, each with four chapters. Part 1, "Guidonian Solmization in Music Theory and Practice," covers the history and development of Guido's ideas to the end of the trecento, reading the primary sources "as 'informants' on the basic questions of the nature and function(s) of Guido's hexachord as understood in the Middle Ages" (p. 13). Part 2, "Reforming the Music Curriculum in the Age of Humanism," continues the story to the end of the sixteenth century, "address[ing] the historiographic side of the question . . . to understand the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the foundational view of the hexachordal system" (p. 13). These are framed by an introduction and an epilogue, and punctuated by an "Interlude" with the intriguing title "All Hexachords are 'Soft.' " Mengozzi opens the introduction with a series of questions, the first of which is, "Was there a hexachordal season in the long history of Western music?" That is, he continues, was there a time when "the octave scale . . . did not possess the cognitive and normative weight that it undoubtedly has had since the Enlightenment?" (p. 1). The introduction unfolds an overview of the spread of the hexachord system, and the friction between it and the system of seven pitch letters-the essential basis of the story to be told. Of central importance is the medieval distinction between proprietas (the six-note segment of the gamut) and deductio (the attached set of syllables). As Mengozzi sums it up, "this monograph aims to chart out the rich and convoluted history of the hexachordal system as a way of appreciating the cultural factors that transformed that system from a low-key method for sight-singing into an all-around structural pillar of early music" (p. …