Abstract Plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are identified from the Puskwaskau Formation of west-central Alberta, Canada. These deposits record the final stages during which the Western Interior Seaway remained open to the Boreal Sea to the North and therefore are important for determining the ranges of high-latitude marine reptiles. Polycotylid and elasmosaurid plesiosaurs shared these waters with russellosaurine (including plioplatecarpine) mosasaurs suggesting a diverse ecology of large-bodied marine predators occupied these high-latitude waters in the early Campanian. This locality, situated at 65°N paleolatitude, helps link the poorly known faunas from northern Canada with the better-known faunas from central and southern North America. Rare articulated material from the Puskwaskau Formation urges further investigation of this poorly explored unit.


A multi-level classification architecture for solving binary discrimination problem is proposed in this paper. The main idea of proposed solution is derived from the fact that solving one binary discrimination problem multiple times can reduce the overall miss-classification error. We aimed our effort towards building the classification architecture employing the combination of multiple binary SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifiers for solving two-class discrimination problem. Therefore, we developed a binary discrimination architecture employing the SVM classifier (BDASVM) with intention to use it for classification of broadcast news (BN) audio data. The fundamental element of BDASVM is the binary decision (BD) algorithm that performs discrimination between each pair of acoustic classes utilizing decision function modeled by separating hyperplane. The overall classification accuracy is conditioned by finding the optimal parameters for discrimination function resulting in higher computational complexity. The final form of proposed BDASVM is created by combining four BDSVM discriminators supplemented by decision table. Experimental results show that the proposed classification architecture can decrease the overall classification error in comparison with binary decision trees SVM (BDTSVM) architecture.


Symbiotic nitrogen (N)-fixing plants are abundant during primary succession, as typical bedrocks lack available N. In turn, fixed N accumulates in soils through biomass turnover and recycling, favouring more nitrophilous organisms. Yet, it is unclear how this facilitation mechanism interacts with competition for other limiting nutrients such as phosphorus (P) and how this affects succession. Here, we introduce a resource-explicit, community assembly model of N-fixing species and analyze successional trajectories along resource availability gradients using contemporary niche theory. We show that facilitation-driven succession occurs under low N and high enough P availabilities, and is characterised by autogenic ecosystem development and relatively ordered trajectories. We show that late facilitation-driven succession is sensitive to catastrophic shifts, highlighting the need to invoke other mechanisms to explain ecosystem stability near the climax. Put together with competition-driven succession, these results lead to an enriched version of Tilman's resource-ratio theory of succession.


Developing web applications requires dealing with their distributed nature and the natural asynchronicity of user input and network communication. For facilitating this, different researchers have explored the combination of a multi-tier programming language and functional reactive programming. However, existing proposals take this approach only part of the way (some parts of the application remain imperative) or remain naive, with no regard for avoiding glitches across network communication, network traffic overhead, compatibility with common APIs like XMLHttpRequest etc. In this paper, we present Gavial: the first mature design and implementation of multi-tier FRP that allows constructing an entire web application as a functionally reactive program. By applying a number of new ideas, we demonstrate that multi-tier FRP can in fact deal realistically with important practical aspects of building web applications. At the same time, we retain the declarative nature of FRP, where behaviors and events have an intuitive, compositional semantics and a clear dependency structure.


Over the past few years, the circular economy (CE) concept has captured considerable attention from researchers and practitioners as a potential solution for social, economic, and environmental challenges. But in literature, limited engagement has been given to explore the CE initiatives, particularly in the agri-food supply chain (AFSC). This paper aims to address this gap by critically reviewing the existing literature and identify the drivers and barriers for implementing the CE in the AFSC. This study uses a systematic literature review approach to critically analyse the current literature to develop future empirical research areas. The popularity of the CE drivers and barriers in the AFSC following the number of times they appeared in the research studies is examined. It shows that environmental (67%), policy and economy (47%), and financial benefits (43%) are the three top drivers. However, institutional (64%), financial (48%), and technological risks (40%) are the top three barriers in implementing CE practices in the AFSC. It is observed that there is an utmost need for international communities to introduce internationally accepted standards and frameworks for CE practices to be used globally to eliminate waste, particularly in the agriculture sector. Moreover, government intervention to stimulate CE initiatives plays a critical role in the transition process


We present an approach for providing quantitative insight into the production‐ecological sustainability of biofuel feedstock production systems. The approach is based on a simple crop‐soil model and was used for assessing feedstock from current and improved production systems of cassava for bioethanol. Assessments were performed for a study area in Mozambique, a country considered promising for biomass production. Our focus is on the potential role of smallholders in the production of feedstock for biofuels. We take cassava as the crop for this purpose and compare it with feedstock production on plantations using sugarcane, sweet sorghum and cassava as benchmarks. Production‐ecological sustainability was defined by seven indicators related to resource‐use efficiency, soil quality, net energy production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results indicate that of the assessed systems, sugarcane performed better than cassava, although it requires substantial water for irrigation. Targeted use of nutrient inputs improved sustainability of smallholder cassava. Cassava production systems on more fertile soils were more sustainable than those on less fertile soils; the latter required more external inputs for achieving the same output, affecting most indicators negatively and reducing the feasibility for smallholders. Cassava and sweet sorghum performed similarly. Cassava production requires much more labour per hectare than production of sugarcane or sweet sorghum. Production of bioethanol feedstock on cultivated lands was more sustainable and had potential for carbon sequestration, avoiding GHG emissions from clearing natural vegetation if new land is opened.


In this paper, we develop a new Hybrid method based on machine learning algorithms for jump detection in financial time series. Jump is an important behavior in financial time series, since it implies a change in volatility. Ones can buy the volatility instrument if ones expect the volatility will bloom up in the future. A jump detection model attempts to detect short-term market instability, since it could be jumping up or down, instead of a directional prediction. The directional prediction can be considered as a momentum or trend following, which is not the focus of this paper. A jump detection model is commonly applied in a systematic fast-moving strategy, which reallocates the assets automatically. Also, a systematic opening position protection strategy can be driven by a jump detection model. For example, for a tail risk protection strategy, a pair of long call and put option order could be placed in the same time, in order to protect the open position given a huge change in volatility. One of the key differentiations of the proposed model with the classical methods of time-series anomaly detection is that, jump threshold parameters are not required to be predefined in our proposed model. Also the model is a combination of a Long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model and a machine learning pattern recognition model. The LSTM model is applied for time series prediction, which predicts the next data point. The historical prediction errors sequence can be used as the information source or input of the jump detection model/module. The machine learning pattern recognition model is applied for jump detection. The combined model attempts to determine whether the current data point is a jump or not. LSTM neural network is a type of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). LSTM records not only the recent market, but also the historical status. A stacked RNN is trained on a dataset which is mixed with normal and anomalous data. We compare the performance of the proposed Hybrid jump detection model and different pattern classification algorithms, such as k-nearest neighbors algorithm identifier, Hampel identifier, and Lee Mykland test. The model is trained and tested using real financial market data, including 11 global stock market in both developed and emerging markets in US, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, UK, German, and Israel. The experiment result shows that the proposed Hybrid jump detection model is effective to detect jumps in terms of accuracy, comparing to the other classical jump detection methods.


The application of genome-scale approaches to study Trypanosoma cruzi–host interactions at different stages of the infective process is becoming possible with sequencing and assembly of the T. cruzi genome nearing completion and sequence information available for both human and mouse genomes. Investigators have recently begun to exploit DNA microarray technology to analyze host transcriptional responses to T. cruzi infection and dissect developmental processes in the complex T. cruzi life-cycle. Collectively, information generated from these and future studies will provide valuable insights into the molecular requirements for establishment of T. cruzi infection in the host and highlight the molecular events coinciding with disease progression. While the field is in its infancy, the availability of genomic information and increased accessibility to relatively high-throughput technologies represents a significant advancement toward identification of novel drug targets and vaccine candidates for the treatment and prevention of Chagas' disease.


Filler is added to adhesive formulations to reduce resin utilization leading to cost savings. Melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF) resin has been synthesized in the laboratory. The palm kernel meal (PKM) and palm shell (PS) are used as fillers to formulate the melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF) resin based adhesive for interior plywood manufacturing. These formulations are compared with commercialized industry wheat flour (IF) filler. Response surface methodology (RSM) is used for identification of the optimum temperature and pressing time for wood adhesive performance. The experiments have been conducted in the temperature range from 100 to 150°C and pressing time from 50 s to 250 s. The result indicates that the effect of the filler type on plywood shear strength and formaldehyde emission is significant. The optimum shear strength and formaldehyde emission performance of PKM, IF and PS are 1.41 MPa, 1.30 MPa, 1.21 MPa and 0.9988 mg/L, 0.5345 mg/L, 1.2735 mg/L respectively. In addition, the optimum hot press temperature and time of PKM, IF and PS are 124.9°C, 130.9°C, 127.9 °C and 156 s, 153 s, 149 s respectively. This work concludes that, PKM based MUF adhesive resins exhibit potential applications involved in plywood production.


A contract is an artifact that records an agreement made by the parties of the contract. Although contracts are considered to be legally binding and can be very complex, they are usually expressed in an informal language that does not have a precise semantics. As a result, it is often not clear what a contract is intended to say. This is particularly true for contracts, like financial derivatives, that express agreements that depend on certain things that can be observed over time such as actions taken of the parties, events that happen, and values (like a stock price) that fluctuate with respect to time. As the complexity of the world and human interaction grows, contracts are naturally becoming more complex. Continuing to write complex contracts in natural language is not sustainable if we want the contracts to be understandable and analyzable. A better approach is to write contracts in a formal language with a precise semantics. Contracts expressed in such a language have a mathematically precise meaning and can be manipulated by software. The formal language thus provides a basis for integrating formal methods into contracts. This paper outlines a formal language with a precise semantics for expressing general contracts that may depend on temporally based conditions. We argue that the language is more effective for writing and analyzing contracts than previously proposed formal contract languages.


The effects of pulsation intensities on the flame characteristics of a 10 deg-backward-inclined jet flame in the crossflow were investigated in a wind tunnel. The jet and the crossflow Reynolds numbers were 1527 and 2165, respectively. The jet-to-crossflow momentum flux ratio was 0.10. A loudspeaker was used to acoustically excite the jet flame. The excitation Strouhal number was 0.73, while the jet pulsation intensities varied from 0 to 1.26. The flame behaviors were studied through photography techniques. The flame temperatures were measured using a fine-wire R-type thermocouple. The combustion-induced emissions were probed by a commercial multi-gas analyzer. The jet flames were categorized into five characteristic modes with increasing pulsation intensities. Mode I was characterized by a yellowish down-washed recirculation flame, a blue neck flame, and a yellow tail flame. Modes II and III featured a split yellow tail flame, a yellowish recirculation flame, and a blue neck flame. Mode IV was characterized by a blue down-washed recirculation flame and neck flame, as well as a split yellow tail flame. Mode V was identified by a single yellow tail flame and the absence of the down-washed recirculation flame. When the jet flames were excited beyond mode I, the combustion-induced pollutants of carbon monoxide and nitric oxide were significantly reduced. However, the excited jet flame in mode V displayed low temperatures in the near-tube region.


It is the authors' opinion that low values of acid production do not exclude the importance of the acid-peptic factor in formation of duodenal ulcers. Vagotomy and pyloroplasty in most patients showing duodenal ulcer with reduced posthistamine secretion provide for good results.


This essay contains a discoursive analysis of fifteen travel reports from five of the largest papers in Sweden. The travel reports contains recaptions from wildlife tourism experiences were the predators are the main target, or at least one of the main targets. Seven of the reports are from Sweden and eight of them from Russia, Rumania, Finland, Turkey and the United States. Predators in this essay aims to those in Sweden called "the big five", these are: bears, wolves, lynxes , wolverines and golden eagles. The purpose was to study the general but also divergent discourses in the reporters perceptions of wildlife tourism with focus on predators in these travel reports. The theories used in the thesis is about the "tourist gaze" and the "post-modern tourist". The questions in my study have been formed based on these two theories and reads as follows: What was the unique object that the reporters wanted to experience? What specific symbols did the reporters highlight as important to the overall experience? Which parts of the experience were new to the reporters? What evidence did the reporters highlight to prove that the experiences were authentic? How did the postmodern tourist reveal itself in the travel reports? I came to the conclusion that the unique object that reporters wanted to experience were the predators, in cases when the predators were the only purpose of the trip. When the case was otherwise, the unique object contained of other cultural or natural values. The symbols that were important to the experience were different cultural and natural values that mainly focused on wilderness and rural traits. In cases where the predators were not the unique object they were rather symbols for the untamed, wild nature. The lifestyle and characteristics of the hosts in the form of locals and staff were also important symbols. Parts of the various experience rooms and the hosts natural lifestyles were new to the reporters and differed from the reporters' modern lifestyle. The characteristics of the predators were symbols for the experience's authenticity Other symbols were the hosts' stories about the place, about the predators and their everyday lives. While local food and other forms of local cultural expressions were also important symbols. The postmodern tourist spoke throughout the travel reports. This type of predator tourism can be considered to be very well adapted to the post-modern tourist. To watch and track wild predators in their natural environment is very suitable for the post-modern tourist's ideas about seeking out the authentic and natural along with a small group of travelers. The reporters consciously disassosiated themselves from the great hordes of mass tourists, highlighted the natural and authentic characteristics of hosts and experienceroom, something that tells that the postmodern tourist used the touristic gaze to look at and retell their experience.


Gaussian Process (GP) regression is a popular method in the field of machine learning and computer experiment designs; however, its ability to handle large data sets is hindered by the computational difficulty in inverting a large covariance matrix. Likelihood approximation methods were developed as a fast GP approximation, thereby reducing the computation cost of GP regression by utilizing a much smaller set of unobserved latent variables called pseudo points. This article reports a further improvement to the likelihood approximation methods by simultaneously deciding both the number and locations of the pseudo points. The proposed approach is a Bayesian site selection method where both the number and locations of the pseudo inputs are parameters in the model, and the Bayesian model is solved using a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo technique. Through a number of simulated and real data sets, it is demonstrated that with appropriate priors chosen, the Bayesian site selection method can produce a good balance between computation time and prediction accuracy: it is fast enough to handle large data sets that a full GP is unable to handle, and it improves, quite often remarkably, the prediction accuracy, compared with the existing likelihood approximations.


We reviewed the results of posterior interbody arthrodesis of the fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebrae with the use of a fibular strut graft in nine patients who had had a grade-III, IV, or V spondylolisthesis. The average age of the patients at the time of the operation was twenty-seven years (range, seventeen to thirty-two years). The average duration of the symptoms preoperatively was three years (range, nine months to eleven years), and the average duration of follow-up was three years (range, two to five years). The most common preoperative symptom was back pain, which was rated an average of 8.3 points (7, 8, or 9 points) on a visual-analog scale of 1 to 10 points. The average angle of the slip was 45 degrees (range, 15 to 70 degrees). Four of the slips were grade III, four were grade IV, and one was grade V. Postoperatively, the average pain score was 1.4 points (1, 2, or 3 points). This improvement was significant (p < 0.05, Student t test). All nine patients had roentgenographic evidence of osseous fusion at the one-year follow-up examination. Complications included a dural tear in one patient, a superficial wound infection in two patients, temporary weakness of the evertors of the foot in six patients, and transient decreased sensation along the dorsum of the foot of the donor leg in two patients.


ZnO film was fabricated on p-GaN film using the molecular beam epitaxy technique to form heterojunction light emitting diodes (LEDs). The devices exhibited strong light emission under both forward and reverse bias. The origin of different luminescence peaks has been investigated by comparing electroluminescence (EL) and photoluminescence spectra. When a forward bias is applied to the device, intense ultraviolet emission at ∼376 nm originating from ZnO rather than GaN can be observed, which is associated with the larger hole mobility of p-GaN than the electron mobility of n-ZnO. Under the reverse bias, the device shows broad emission at 520 nm originating from deep level-related recombination in ZnO, emission at 430 nm from GaN, 376 nm from ZnO and weak emission at 408 nm from the interface with a lower injection current of 10 mA. As the injection reverse current increases to 20 mA, the EL emission at 376 nm exhibits a dramatic increase in intensity without a peak shift. The emission mechanism of the heterojunction LED is discussed in terms of interface states and energy band theory. Our findings in this work provide an innovative path for the design and development of ZnO-based ultraviolet diodes.


This paper studied the co-pyrolysis behavior of crop straw and swill-cooked dirty oil (≈ 2:1 ratio by weight) at 10, 30, 50K/min, in dynamic thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) under inert atmosphere, from 303K to 973K. The kinetic parameters were calculated using the method of Ozawa-Flynn-Wall, and mechanism was hypothesized as first-order model. The results showed that the dirty oil led degradation temperatures to slide towards higher slightly, meanwhile broadened the temperature interval of decomposition. However, the presence of dirty oil had little impact on activation energy. These findings indicated a significant synergistic relationship between straw and dirty oil, and it was practicable for co-pyrolysis from the viewpoint of thermal and kinetics analysis.


Diabetes is a group of diseases marked by high levels of blood glucose, also called blood sugar, resulting from defects in insulin production, insulin action, or both. In modern medicine no satisfactory effective therapy is yet available to cure diabetes mellitus. Though several oral hypoglycaemic agents are used for the management of diabetes mellitus, there are several drawbacks. They are also not approved for the treatment of women who are pregnant with diabetes. Thus, alternative therapy is required. So the search for newer anti-diabetic drugs with minimum or no side effects from herbal plants is a challenge as per WHO recommendations.
The present study was aimed to evaluate the anti-diabetic potency of Allamanda cathartica on the blood glucose level in alloxan induced diabetic rats. Diabetic Albino Wistar strain rats were treated with standard drug Glibenclamide and test drug Allamanda cathartica at 200mg (low dose) and 400mg (high dose). The hypoglycemic effect was determined in the rats and the efficacy of the test drug was compared to the standard drug Glibenclamide. Allamanda cathartica was orally administered for 28 days in alloxan induced diabetic rats. At the end of the study duration, blood glucose level and body weight were statistically analyzed. Based on these results of the study Allamanda cathartica produced a significant reduction in blood glucose levels, serum enzymes (SGPT and SGOT) and slight increase in the body weight when compared with diabetic control rats. Hence the present research work proved that the Allamanda cathartica possess hypoglycemic effect.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Alloxan, Glibenclamide, Allamanda cathartica, Blood glucose level, Body weight, Anti-diabetic activity


Purpose
The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare investigates how the growing population of older people living alone is managing this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on a local level need to be brought about. This paper aims to give insight into the process of participatory action research (PAR) with older people in the community across four countries and reflects on experiences made by academic and co-researchers.

Design/methodology/approach
Following the emancipatory underpinnings of PAR, which aims to reduce inequalities through collaboration and co-design, EQualCare involved nine teams of co-researchers across Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden making older people the centre of policy development. Co-researchers were involved in formulating research aims, collecting data, reflecting on data, formulating and disseminating recommendations for local policy stakeholders.

Findings
Co-researchers' motivation to invest considerable time and effort was driven by a desire to create a more equal future for older people living alone. Moreover, they were keen to involve marginalised older people and became frustrated when this proved difficult. Power dynamics played a role throughout the process but became productive as roles and responsibilities were renegotiated. Doing PAR with older people can be emotionally challenging for co-researchers when negative feelings around ageing are encountered.

Originality/value
The paper advances understanding on the process of PAR in ageing research by reflecting on the social, cultural and political contexts of doing PAR with diverse sets of older people.


This paper is the first attempt to provide an objective assessment of the quality of real estate funds from operations (FFO) forecasts. The work, which looks past the more primitive question concerning the appropriate measure for real estate earnings, quantifies and tests the quality of real estate investment trust (REIT) FFO forecasts relative to the net income forecasts of several comparison groups. The results show the high quality of REIT forecasts are remarkably robust and are not driven by the level of analyst attention. Investors in a post-Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley era may find the implications for high quality forecasts of real estate earning to be an appealing investment concept.


The Composite Nature of Interlanguage as a Developing System This paper explores the nature of interlanguage (IL) as a developing system with a focus on the abstract lexical structure underlying IL construction. The developing system of IL is assumed to be 'composite' in that in second language acquisition (SLA) several linguistic systems are in contact, each of which may contribute different amounts to the developing system. The lexical structure is assumed to be 'abstract' in that the mental lexicon contains abstract elements called 'lemmas', which contain information about individual lexemes, and lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon are language-specific and are in contact in IL production. Based on the research findings, it concludes that language transfer in IL production should be understood as lemma transfer of the learner's first language (L1) lexical structure at three abstract levels: lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological realization patterns, and IL construction is driven by an incompletely acquired abstract lexical structure of a target language (TL) item.


This paper offers an alternative odd-quantisation approach scheme for Cartesian ΔΣ systems proposed for the all-digital upconversion of baseband modulation to radio frequency (RF). The developed Cartesian ΔΣ system with even-quantisation has a minimum pulsewidth of two clock periods. This leads to a potential coarse quantisation at low signal levels. We show that the noise problem can be reduced with a new odd-quantisation scheme which is based on pulses with an odd number of clock periods. In this paper, the minimum pulsewidth is reduced to one clock period. Other quantized amplitudes are obtained by incrementing the pulsewidth in steps of two clock periods, which maintains a constant phase reference. In both cases separate quantisers for amplitude and phase enable simple implementation. We show that both odd and even-quantisation schemes produce the same distortion products that increase with frequency offset. The odd-quantisation scheme, however, has improved SNR by approximately 2 dB.


Returnee entrepreneurs are argued to be important contributors to innovation and economic development in emerging economies by transferring advanced knowledge and skills to their home countries. To date the literature has predominantly treated returnee entrepreneurs as a homogeneous phenomenon; not accounting for variabilities in types and orientations of returnee-owned ventures. Based on empirical data from returnee entrepreneurs in China, this study proposes a classification of five venture type orientations reflecting variations in start-up motivations, ambitions for growth and independence, innovativeness, formality, and utilisation of relationships. The article then discusses theoretical and practical implications regarding the value of these different types of returnee entrepreneurship for the economic and societal development of emerging economies. The study adds to the literature by revealing that returnee entrepreneurship is more multi-faceted and heterogeneous than as treated in previous studies and by providing a tentative conceptual typology of returnee-owned ventures and their potential economic and societal value for emerging economies.


It is recognized that breast milk is the ideal food for newborns. Indeed breast milk can provide basic guidelines to improve the composition of ingredients in adapted infant formulae. One of the main parts of breast milk is milk fat. Although the exact functionality of the entire spectrum of fat is not yet fully understood, it is known that various lipids present in breast milk, can modulate functions of the gastrointestinal tract, the lipoprotein metabolism, the structure and function of cell membranes, as well as many signal pathways in the infant's organism. In this paper we tried to present evidence that dietary cholesterol (CHOL) is a very important component of the infant's nutrition. Meanwhile, almost all infant formulae, both cow and goat milk based, use nearly only vegetable oils as their fat component providing phytosterols, rather than CHOL as in breast milk. It is known that breast milk is a rich source of CHOL and phytosterols cannot perform the functions of CHOL. One can imagine that when the infant is transferred to artificial feeding with such formulae, and denied the opportunity to receive dietary CHOL in any useful amounts, this may affect outcomes like optimal child development, and may have a major long-term 'programming' effect on the metabolism of CHOL. We propose to discuss the thesis of the great importance of the presence of CHOL in infant formulae. The applied value of this thesis is the need to optimize the fat component of breast milk substitutes by introducing CHOL, for example, in the composition of milk fat. Although it is clear that compelling evidence of the potential benefits of adding various sources of CHOL infant formula is insufficient, at this stage, there is cause for a critical discussion and review of the composition of functional components of breast milk substitutes.


Indonesian archipelago consists of five main islands and more than seventeen thousand of small islands. These small islands are very effective as natural barrier to the spread of contagious animal diseases. This situation is very advantageous to develop many programs such as beef cattle farming to support beef self sufficient program in 2010. However, there are some constraints in developing of these small islands, namely human resources, natural resources, infrastructure, mean of communications and transportations and lack of intra sector integrated coordination. In taking the advantageous of developing small islands as a screening base and quarantine area, animal production technologies and veterinary science are much needed. The development can be done in integration with transmigration development program so that the beef cattle development could become source of income and job opportunity for the transmigran and local inhabitant as well. Beef cattle farming scheme are recommended by doing cow-calf operation or fattening. Political support from government and legislative are needed in establishment  of  infrastructure  in  the  area  chosen as  beef  cattle  farming  location.  Besides,  it  need facilitations in  land procurement for beef cattle farming, legal aspect, supports of law enforcement, simple regulation in land used and zone management planning, regulation in controlling beef importation, and credit with minimum interest rate. Key words: Small islands, beef cattle, policy


BACKGROUND
Cachexia is common in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and is thought to be linked to an enhanced systemic inflammatory response.

OBJECTIVE
We investigated differences in the systemic inflammatory profile and polymorphisms in related inflammatory genes in COPD patients.

DESIGN
A cross-sectional study was performed in 99 patients with COPD (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stages II-IV), who were stratified by cachexia based on fat-free mass index (FFMI; in kg/m2: <16 for men and <15 for women) and compared with healthy control subjects (HCs). Body composition was determined by bioelectrical impedance analysis. Plasma concentrations and gene polymorphisms of interleukin 1beta (IL-1beta -511), IL-6 (IL-6 -174), and the tumor necrosis factor system (TNF-alpha -308 and lymphotoxin-alpha +252) were determined. Plasma C-reactive protein, leptin, and urinary pseudouridine (as a marker of cellular protein breakdown) were measured.

RESULTS
Fat mass, leptin, and pseudouridine were significantly different (P < 0.001) between noncachectic patients (NCPs) and cachectic patients (CPs: n = 35); the systemic inflammatory cytokine profile was not. NCPs had a body compositional shift toward a lower fat-free mass and a higher fat mass compared with HCs. CPs and NCPs had a greater systemic inflammatory response (P < 0.05) than did HCs, as reflected in C-reactive protein, soluble TNF-R75, and IL-6 concentrations. The overall distribution of the IL-1beta -511 polymorphism was significantly different between the groups (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
In COPD patients, who are characterized by an elevated systemic inflammatory response, cachexia is not discriminatory for the extent of increase in inflammatory status. This study, however, indicates a potential influence of genetic predisposition on the cachexia process.


The topic of this thesis is the study of basic plasma transport and chemistry in the diffusion chamber of the ARIS (Applied Radio-frequency Ion Source). The ARIS experiment has been designed as a two chamber system, with a source (high density plasma region) and a diffusion region (plasma expansion region). The boundary conditions on the diffusion chamber and the neutral pressure determine the plasma parameters. Careful control over the boundaries give us some control on the plasma volume chemistry key element: the electron energy distribution function(EEDF). We explore the possibility of a magnetised boundary in the the diffusion chamber region by means of a multi-cusp magnetic array. A multi-cusp produces an effective field close to the boundary with low penetration on the plasma bulk. The diffusion chamber gains a sub-region defined by the magnetic field penetration region. Experimental measurements of the electron energy distribution function with a single Langmuir probe are compared with double probe results. Also the negative ion density (H- ) is measured in Hydrogen plasmas. Volume production of H_ requires special conditions of the EEDF and molecular Hydrogen vibrationally excited states to maximise the negative ion density. Results are compared for magnetised and non magnetised boundaries in the diffusion chamber. Results show th a t the magnetic field improve the plasma confinement (higher plasma density) and reduces the average kinetic electron energy (or Te) by actually changing the EEDF shape. It is proposed that this effects are the reason for the improvement on volume production of H- in a magnetised case in the diffusion chamber while the state of the population of vibrationally excited Hydrogen molecules is not clear. Finally, particle models complement the experimental work by providing some insight on single
particle interaction with a multi-cusp magnetic field and self-consistent plasma interaction with a cylindrical Langmuir probe Also a global model developed by R Zorat is used to complement and understand the experimental results.


It is known that the level of serum microRNAs, small RNA molecules involved in regulation of gene expression, is altered in diabetic patients compared to healthy individuals and that microRNAs may be involved in the regulation of inflammatory and insulin signaling pathways. Analysis of blood samples from the diet intervention in the main study revealed that variation in macronutrient composition is known to affect gene expression. The aim of this thesis was to establish a method for reliable miRNA detection and quantification and to find out if the level of serum miRNAs was affected by the macronutrient composition in the diet. This was done by analyzing the change in microRNA levels in serum samples from 10 subjects after completion of the intervention study mentioned above, consisting of two different diets; diet A, high in carbohydrates (AHC) and diet B, moderate in carbohydrates (BMC). Each diet period lasted for six days separated by an eight-day pause in which the subjects returned to regular eating habits. Fasting blood samples were collected before and after each diet period, denoted as A0, A6, B0 and B6. Total RNA was isolated from and cDNA-synthesis was done in all samples. The expression of selected microRNAs was analyzed by qPCR. The microRNA levels were normalized to a reference gene and were expressed as the change in the A6 and B6 samples relative to the A0 and B0 samples. cDNA-synthesis and qPCR were optimized, a standard for evaluation of RNA-isolation yield was suggested and several different control were applied to minimize technical variation. It was found that the AHC diet resulted in larger changes in miRNA expression than the BMC diet. The expression of miR-21, miR-29b, miR-93, miR-126 and miR-223 was found to be significantly down regulated after the AHC diet. Low plasma levels of some of these miRNA have previously been proposed to predict type 2 diabetes development. It was concluded that the dietary macronutrient composition is involved regulation of the level of serum miRNAs known to regulate insulin signaling, glucose uptake and development of type 2 diabetes after only 6 days. miR-93, a microRNA with no known role in diabetes development was also found to be significantly down regulated. However, it was concluded that it was necessary to apply more controls, do further optimization and perform the test on more individuals to be able to verify the findings in this thesis.


Language is a multiplicity of meaning-making systems, which are connected with social, cultural and psychological networks. Focusing on issues of power, this article is concerned to explore how the readings of a European folktale triggered attempts among teenage girls in Hong Kong to make their own feminist and subversive interpretations in English. The reconstructed stories are more than a partial reproduction of the conventional text, they are also a useful reflection of the teenage girls' literacy and gender experience, as well as of their generic and social knowledge. With a resistance to textual conventions, the teenage girls demonstrate their written competence to create alternative subject and reading positions, which are textually motivated by their sense of difference. The material realisation of the stories is also characterised by splits and instabilities, in the negotiation of a new boundary for femininity. This negotiation demonstrates how the teenage girls are on the move, facing and settling contradictory possibilities in acquiring literacy and social roles. Along these lines of observation, the synchronic view of language, characterised by regularity and internal consistency, needs to be challenged in second-language writing instruction.


Abstract : In connection with a study of the structural behavior of a diversion tunnel under construction at a U. S. Army Corps of Engineers project, four small-scale model steel tunnel supports were constructed and tested in order to determine how certain details of the footings of the prototype supports affected behavior. Measurements also were made of strains on the innermost and outermost fibers at several points around the circumference of each model. Dial gages at several locations measured deflections. The report presents the results of the strain and deflection measurements in tabulated and graphical form, giving moments and thrusts calculated from the measured strains. In addition, moments and thrusts were computed through use of a popular design method. Comparison of measured values with computed values of moment and thrust indicates needed modification; the design procedure will give erroneous results for ring beams subjected to concentrated loads. (Author)


All linear codes of length $100$ over a field $F$ which admit the Higman-Sims simple group HS in its rank $3$ representation are determined. By group representation theory it is proved that they can all be understood as submodules of the permutation module $F\Omega$ where $\Omega$ denotes the vertex set of the Higman-Sims graph. This module is semisimple if $\mathrm{char} F\neq 2,5$ and absolutely indecomposable otherwise. Also if $\mathrm{char} F \in \{2, 5\}$ the submodule lattice is determined explicitly. The binary case $F = \mathbb{F}_2$ is studied in detail under coding theoretic aspects. The HS-orbits in the subcodes of dimension $\leq 23$ are computed explicitly and so also the weight enumerators are obtained. The weight enumerators of the dual codes are determined by MacWilliams transformation. Two fundamental methods are used: Let $v$ be the endomorphism determined by an adjacency matrix. Then in $H_{22} = \mathrm{Im} v $ the HS-orbits are determined as $v$-images of certain low weight vectors in $F\Omega$ which carry some special graph configurations. The second method consists in using the fact that $H_{23}/H_{21}$ is a Klein four group under addition, if $H_{23}$ denotes the code generated by $H_{22}$ and a "Higman vector" $x(m)$ of weight 50 associated to a heptad $m$ in the shortened Golay code $G_{22}$, and $H_{21}$ denotes the doubly even subcode of $H_{22}\leq H_{78} = {H_{22}}^\perp$. Using the mentioned observation about $H_{23}/H_{21}$ and the results on the HS-orbits in $H_{23}$ a model of G. Higman's geometry is constructed, which leads to a direct geometric proof that G. Higman's simple group is isomorphic to HS. Finally, it is shown that almost all maximal subgroups of the Higman-Sims group can be understood as stabilizers in HS of codewords in $H_{23}$.


We present an algorithm which is a flexible and scalable trade-off both in complexity and performance between unbiased MMSE and Max-Log-APP MIMO detection. In a first step, LLRs are generated based on linear detection (Max-Log per stream). A predefined number of LLRs is chosen as 'reliable' based on LLR magnitude. For the remaining 'unreliable' subspace we compute the joint Max-Log-APP solution. The algorithm contains unbiased MMSE detection as well as full Max-Log-APP detection as special cases and is suited for iterative detection-decoding.


This study aimed to parameterize the effects of body and meal sizes on the gastric evacuation (GE) of farmed Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) fed on live food (whiting fish) or commercial pellets. The radiography technique was used to monitor the evacuation of food from the stomach into the intestine at postprandial time. Acipenser gueldenstaedtii of different body sizes (total length ranged 82–105 cm) were fed on meal sizes ranged from 23 to 72 g composed of either live food or commercial pellets (had a 20% of BaSO₄ as a radiopaque material). The square root model was found to adequality describe the process of GE in A. gueldenstaedtii independently of meal type and size. The effects of fish size on GER was described by simple power model and can be summarized by dStdt=-ρLL1.84St·(g·h-1), where ρL was 0.000053 for live food and 0.000062 for commercial pellets (estimated from combined GE data), Sₜ is stomach contents (g), L is fish total length (cm) and t is time (h). The results of this study will provide a useful tool to estimate the stomach fullness of A. gueldenstaedtii at postprandial time t. Such information should assess the feeding strategy to minimize feed wastage and optimize the fish growth.


Inoculation of 10(8) unirradiated, minor H antigen-incompatible spleen cells into recipients leads to a failure of the induction of cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) specific for these antigens. In contrast, a strong CTL response against minor H antigens is obtained when the inoculated cells are irradiated or treated with Thy-1-, Lyt-1- or Lyt-2-specific antibody and complement. Thus the failure of CTL induction is probably due to suppression mediated by radiosensitive, Lyt-1+2+ T cells in the immunizing inoculum. We demonstrate here that the inoculated cells must share class I MHC loci with the recipients for the suppression to occur. Thus, the interaction between the suppressor T (Ts) cells and their targets (presumably the CTL precursors) is restricted by class I molecules. A disparity at class II loci between the inoculated cells and the recipients overrides the class I-restricted suppression, possibly through a positive allogeneic effect. The simplest interpretation of the class I restriction of Ts cell-target cell interaction is that the CTL precursors recognize minor H antigens in the context of class I molecules on the surface of the Ts cells themselves.


Proteins from extremophiles have the ability to fold and remain stable in their extreme environment. Here, we investigate the presence of this effect in the cysteinyl-tRNA synthetase from Halobacterium salinarum ssp. NRC-1 (NRC-1), which was used as a model halophilic protein. The effects of salt on the structure and stability of NRC-1 and of E. coli CysRS were investigated through far-UV circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, and thermal denaturation melts. The CD of NRC-1 CysRS was examined in different group I and group II chloride salts to examine the effects of the metal ions. Potassium was observed to have the strongest effect on NRC-1 CysRS structure, with the other group I salts having reduced strength. The group II salts had little effect on the protein. This suggests that the halophilic adaptations in this protein are mediated by potassium. CD and fluorescence spectra showed structural changes taking place in NRC-1 CysRS over the concentration range of 0–3 M KCl, while the structure of E. coli CysRS was relatively unaffected. Salt was also shown to increase the thermal stability of NRC-1 CysRS since the melt temperature of the CysRS from NRC-1 was increased in the presence of high salt, whereas the E. coli enzyme showed a decrease. By characterizing these interactions, this study not only explains the stability of halophilic proteins in extremes of salt, but also helps us to understand why and how group I salts stabilize proteins in general.


The creation of agencies has been and still is a widespread trend in the public sector: governments in many countries often establish semi-autonomous single-purpose organizations to carry out a wide range of functions and tasks. The trend to autonomization is problematic as it affects public sector's governance: several bodies operate partly autonomously from the core elective government, and are sometimes loosely coupled with their 'parent' administration. Consequently, analysing the drivers of agencies' autonomy is a crucial issue for public management. This paper, in the light of some major contributions in organizational science, assumes that agencies' autonomy is influenced by factors that affect post-delegation relationships: agencies' structure, culture and nature of the tasks executed. The study was aimed at testing a range of hypotheses about the autonomy of public agencies, using for this purpose the so-far not investigated case of Italy–much in the spirit of the accumulation of knowledge in an area of public management. Results do not provide any strikingly counter-intuitive finding, but a mix of confirmations and disconfirmations of previous findings that allow a finer-grained analysis on the determinants of agency autonomy.


Unfortunately, IDEA implementation is still a problem for many schools today (Hill, Martin, & Nelson-Head, 2011). What are the causes of this? Could it be because many teachers do not have knowledge of the law? More and more students with disabilities are being served in the general education program with their peers. This is a result of several federal laws enacted to ensure that students with special needs are educated in the least restrictive environment. Inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education curriculum is a way to make sure that students are taught in the least restrictive environment with their peers. As more students with special needs are placed in the general curriculum, general education teachers must have knowledge on the legal requirements of IDEA and how to ensure legal rights of students are not violated directly or indirectly. Schools districts and teacher preparation programs have a responsibility to make certain that all teachers are aware of legal issues and laws that protect students with disabilities. One way to ensure that teachers understand the law and can implement the law is to provide teachers with specific training on legal issues in special education. This article will critically review the literature involving the evolution of special education law and the complex nature of preparing teachers for today's classrooms. Specifically, we examine current research on best practices in inclusion, co-teaching, and teacher preparation.


Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a genetic disorder of iron metabolism that may lead to iron overload. Clinical penetrance is low, however those afflicted may develop cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, diabetes mellitus, and cardiomyopathy. Treatment of HH involves regular phlebotomy to reduce the systemic iron burden. In many countries—including the United States—numerous blood centers do not accept donated blood obtained from HH patients during therapeutic phlebotomy and there are inconsistent positions regarding this globally. This refusal of blood is borne out of a few concerns. First, there is a theoretical increase in the infectious risk of these blood products, particularly by siderophilic organisms such as Yersinia enterocolitica. Second, given the increased incidence of hepatitis C infection from nonvoluntary donors in the 1970s, there is a concern that blood units from HH donors may harbor additional risk given the nonvoluntary nature of their presentation. In this review, we examine the existing biological and clinical data concerning infectious risk and summarize clinical experience from centers allowing HH donors, and demonstrate that blood from HH patients is safe and should be allowed into the donor pool. We conclude that there is no convincing evidence to exclude this population from serving as blood donors. (Hepatology 2018;67:1150–1157)


The broad and developing scope of ergonomics - the application of scientific knowledge to improve peoples' interaction with products, systems and environments - has been illustrated for over twenty years by the books that make up the Contemporary Ergonomics series. Presenting the proceedings of the Ergonomics Society's annual conference, the series embraces the wide range of topics. Individual papers provide insight into current practice, present new research findings and form an invaluable reference source. The volumes provide a fast track for the publication of suitable papers from international contributors. These are chosen on the basis of abstracts submitted to a selection panel in the autumn prior to the Ergonomics Society's annual conference held in the spring. A wide range of topics are covered in these proceedings, including: applications of ergonomics, air traffic control, cognitive ergonomics, defence, design, environmental ergonomics, ergonomics4schools, hospital ergonomics, inclusive design, methods and tools, occupational health and safety, slips, trips & falls and transport. As well as being of interest to mainstream ergonomists and human factors specialists, Contemporary Ergonomics will appeal to all those who are concerned with people's interactions with their working and leisure environment including designers, manufacturing and production engineers, health and safety specialists, occupational, applied and industrial psychologists, and applied physiologists. [Book Synopsis]


In 2010, Poland launched a new national strategy for regional development which is seen as an assertion of Poland's domestic regional development vision, informed by, but distinct from, EU cohesion policy which has dominated Polish regional policy since accession. A key question is whether a new model of policy implementation is emerging. The strategy includes a commitment to a place-based regional policy model. This implies spatially sensitive policy implementation capable of mobilising the potentials of all territories. However, the concept is vague. Moreover, in Poland this agenda is being launched in a context of entrenched territorial disparities, traditionally constrained policy implementation capacity and institutional change. What are the defining characteristics of place-based implementation systems? What are the challenges to the institutionalisation of the place-based model? Are these evident in delivery frameworks being developed in Poland?


The empirical importance of news shocks—anticipated future shocks—in business cycle fluctuations has been explored by using only actual data when estimating models augmented with news shocks. This paper additionally exploits forecast data to identify news shocks in a canonical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. The estimated model shows new empirical evidence that technology news shocks are a major source of fluctuations in US output growth. Exploiting the forecast data not only generates more precise estimates of news shocks and other parameters in the model, but also increases the contribution of technology news shocks to the fluctuations.


The laboratory is playing an important role in a number of research projects. Indeed, there is a continuing and increasing need for laboratory generated research involving improvements in dating techniques, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results; parameters fundamental to the validity of dating such as environmental contamination and selection of applicable dating standards. Equally important is participation on a cooperative basis in research generated by other departments and institutions, often involving field work.


Visual and textual modalities contribute complementary information about events described in multimedia documents. Videos contain rich dynamics and detailed unfoldings of events, while text describes more high-level and abstract concepts. However, existing event extraction methods either do not handle video or solely target video while ignoring other modalities. In contrast, we propose the first approach to jointly extract events from video and text articles. We introduce the new task of Video MultiMedia Event Extraction (Video M2E2) and propose two novel components to build the first system towards this task. First, we propose the first self-supervised multimodal event coreference model that can determine coreference between video events and text events without any manually annotated pairs. Second, we introduce the first multimodal transformer which extracts structured event information jointly from both videos and text documents. We also construct and will publicly release a new benchmark of video-article pairs, consisting of 860 video-article pairs with extensive annotations for evaluating methods on this task. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method on our new benchmark dataset. We achieve 6.0% and 5.8% absolute F-score gain on multimodal event coreference resolution and multimedia event extraction.


We propose what we believe is a new model to quantitatively describe the l -phage SWITCH system. The model incorporates facilitated transfer mechanism of transcription factor, which can be simplified into a two-step reaction. We first sequentially obtain two indispensable parameters by fitting our model to experimental data of two simple systems, and then apply them to study the natural l -SWITCH system. By incorporating the facilitated transfer mechanism, we find that in RecA (cid:2) host Escherichia coli , the wild-type l - lysogenic state is in a monostable regime rather than in a bistable regime. Furthermore, the model explains the weak role of Cro protein and probably sheds light on the evolution of l -Cro protein, which is known to be structurally distinct from the other Cros in lambdoid family members.


Urban trees help regulate temperature, reduce energy consumption, improve urban air quality, reduce wind speeds, and mitigating the urban heat island effect. Urban trees also play a key role in climate change mitigation and global warming by capturing and storing atmospheric carbon-dioxide which is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases. Automated tree detection and species classification using aerial imagery can be a powerful tool for sustainable forest and urban tree management. Hence, This study first offers a pipeline for generating labelled dataset of urban trees using Google Map's aerial images and then investigates how state of the art deep Convolutional Neural Network models such as VGG and ResNet handle the classification problem of urban tree aerial images under different parameters. Experimental results show our best model achieves an average accuracy of 60% over 6 tree species.


: The paper covers the past 10 years' experience in the surgical treatment of children with various osteoarticular tuberculosis types. A total of 456 children aged 10 months to 16 years were studied. The author used a system of radical corrective and reconstructive osteoplastic operations in restrictive and disseminated diseases, which had been developed with regards for age-specific features of the abnormality. In addition to radical removal of inflammatory foci, the system provides for obligatory restoration of reconstruction of the diseased joint or spine, which has a favourable influence on the further development of a child's skeleton. Successful therapy and good functional results were achieved in 100% of children with focal bone lesions, in 98.5% of those with tuberculous spondylitis, and in 84.6% with large joint tuberculosis.


Context Infected pancreatic necrosis is traditionally approached with open necrosectomy. The 2010 randomized controlled PANTER trial proposed a "Step-Up" approach with fewer major complications, comparable mortality, and fewer operations. Objective We sought to evaluate the practical adherence to the Step-Up approach at a tertiary care institution. Design Retrospective, observational study comparing outcomes between patients treated in the "early" pre-PANTER trial period (2006-2010) and "late" post-trial period (2011- 2014). Setting Tertiary care, academic teaching hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. Patients Patients with suspected or proven infected pancreatic necrosis between 2006 and 2014. Interventions Percurtaneous or endoscopic drainage, surgery including open necrosectomy and videoassisted retroperitoneal debridement. Main Outcomes Adherence to the Step-Up approach, rates of intervention, long-term complications. Results Adherence to the Step-Up approach improved from 27% (25/75) to 46% (27/55) between the early to late periods (p<0.05). Late period patients had a higher rate of percutaneous drainage (65% vs. 43%, p=0.012) and higher median number of interventions (3 vs. 2, p<0.001), but comparable rates of surgery (73% vs. 79%, p=0.432). Rates of open necrosectomy decreased by 8%. Late patients had lower rates of both pancreatitis-related readmission (47% vs. 71%, p=0.007) and multiple readmissions (31% vs. 51%, p=0.024). Conclusions Overall, adherence to the SU improved, but remained below 50%. Compliance will likely require institutional support to enforce systembased clinical pathways and improve outcomes.


Black fissile shale in Pennsylvanian cyclothems in the western part of the Illinois Basin shows low-level radioactivity as measured by alpha-particle emission. Preliminary analysis showed a ten-fold variability in radioactivity among closely spaced samples, with no apparent concentration in particular zones of the thin shale units. These relations favored design of a sampling experiment for evaluation of average radioactivity of the shale and for detection of regional radioactivity gradients. Interlocked regional and local sampling designs were set up and provided 176 samples for a regional study and 32 samples for a local study, including evaluation of the experimental error. The interlocked designs furnished data for estimating stratigraphic variability of samples spaced from about 1 foot to 18 miles apart. Strip mines, mine dumps, and some well cores provided regional samples of the 3-foot black fissile shale bed overlying Coal No. 6 in an area about 200 miles long and 20 miles wide. The local samples were collected from four localities within a single mine. In both sampling designs the maximum variability occurred at the lowest sampling level, indicative of a "spotty" distribution of radioactivity in the black shale. Neither the geological evidence nor the statistical analysis suggested any strong regional gradient in radioactivity over the area studied. Both the geological and statistical data support the inference that the radioactive material was associated with the depositional environment, rather than introduced by wholly diagenetic processes.


In a recent article, Daljord, Sorgard, and Thomassen criticize Katz and Shapiro for applying the standard formula for critical loss to the case in which the price of only one product of the candidate market is increased. They argue that the standard formula does not hold in that case and suggest another expression. We show that this argument is correct, but that the formula proposed by Daljord, Sorgard, and Thomassen does not capture the essence of what critical loss really is. We propose another formula that does. Daljord, Sorgard, and Thomassen also modify the Katz-Shapiro aggregate diversion ratio rule for deciding whether a candidate market is an antitrust market. We show that their rule happens to be correct for the single-price-increase case and that the Katz-Shapiro rule remains valid for uniform price increases, but that in both cases this is for different reasons than mentioned by the authors. We believe that the confusion is due to the fact that the critical-loss concept, which was originally designed for a single homogeneous product, needs some further explanation before it can be applied in a setting of multiple differentiated products. Such explanation is given in this article.


Philosophers have not been sceptical only about metaphysics or religious beliefs. There are a great number of other beliefs generally held which they have had at least as much difficulty in justifying, and in the present article I ask questions as to the right philosophical attitude to these beliefs in cases where to our everyday thought they seem so obvious as to be a matter of the most ordinary common sense. A vast number of propositions go beyond what is merely empirical and cannot be seen to be logically necessary but are still believed by everybody in their daily life. Into this class fall propositions about physical things, other human minds and even propositions about one's own past experiences based on memory, for we are not now 'observing' our past. The phenomenalist does not escape the difficulty about physical things, for he reduces physical object propositions, in so far as true, not merely to propositions about his own actual experience but to propositions about the experiences of other human beings in general under certain conditions, and he cannot either observe or logically prove what the experiences of other people are or what even his own would be under conditions which have not yet been fulfilled. What is the philosopher to say about such propositions? Even Moore, who insisted so strongly that we knew them, admitted that we did not know how we knew them. The claim which a religious man makes to a justified belief that is neither a matter of purely empirical perception nor formally provable is indeed by no means peculiar to the religious. It is made de facto by everybody in his senses, whether or not he realizes that he is doing so. There is indeed a difference: while everyone believes in the existence of other human beings and in the possibility of making some probable predictions about the future from the past, not everybody holds religious beliefs, and although this does not necessarily invalidate the claim it obviously weakens it.


Study objective: Administration of systemic corticosteroids in patients with severe COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) has been recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) according to the RECOVERY trial results. However, there is still ongoing debate regarding the evidence supporting the dose, timing, route of administration and type of corticosteroid. This survey aimed to describe the current clinical practice of administration of systemic corticosteroids for patients with COVID-19 within Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Czech Republic. Study design: cross-sectional survey Material and methods: Electronic survey containing 15 questions was sent to the members of Czech Society of Anaesthesiol-ogy, Resuscitation and Intensive Care, Czech Society of Intensive care and Czech Pneumological and Phthisiological Society members. The results were analysed by descriptive statistic methods. Results: The survey fulfilled 233 respondents and 231 answers were eligible for analysis. The most prevalent group was attending physician with completed training in anaesthesiology and intensive care medicine (AIM) (32 %, n = 74). The most prevalent indication for initiation of corticosteroid treatment was oxygen therapy (face mask or nasal cannula) (59,3 %, n = 137) and high-flow nasal oxygen therapy (HFNC) (21,6 %, n = 50). The most preferred corticosteroid was dexamethasone (75,8 %, n = 175) at dose of 8 mg intravenously (i. v.) (48,6 %, n = 85), or dose of 6 mg i. v. (32,0 %, n = 56) followed by methylprednis-olone (25,5 %, n= 59) at dose of 80 mg i. v. (35,6 %, n = 21), and 40 mg i. v. (13,6 %, n = 8), respectively. The preferred duration of therapy was 10 days (dexamethasone 60,6 %, n = 106, methylprednisolone 20,3 %, n = 12). Conclusion: Administration of corticosteroid was dominantly initiated in patients with severe COVID-19 receiving supplemental oxygen. The corticosteroid of first choice was intravenous dexamethasone at dose of 8 mg and 6 mg for 10 days, respectively.


This study aimed at investigating the linguistic and cultural problems that Jordanian graduate students face in rendering historical and religious texts from Arabic into English; exploring the causes of these problems and presenting solutions and recommendations to lessen these difficulties. To achieve the goals of this study, the researchers conveniently selected a sample that compromised 20 graduate students who were enrolled in the M.A. program in the Middle East University during the first semester 2012/2013. The researchers designed a translation test that consisted of six historical and religious Arabic texts which were taken from Professor Younis Amr's book "للها ةنيدم ،سدقلا". They also conducted informal open-ended interviews with students and experts in the field of translation to compile more information. Results of the study revealed various linguistic and cultural problems that graduate students faced such as encountering structural, stylistic, lexical, punctuation errors and cultural terms, i.e. proper-noun equivalents. Results also indicated that these problems were caused by (1) some differences between the source and target linguistic systems; (2) lack of awareness of the importance of the context in translation; (3) students' ignorance of cultural equivalences; (4) adopting improper translation methods; and (5) misusing dictionaries and other research tools, like Google translation.


Analysis with DNA-microrrays and real time PCR show that several genes involved in the thyroid hormone cascade, such as deiodinase 2 and 3 (Dio2 and Dio3) are differentially regulated by the circadian clock and by changes of the ambient light. The expression level of Dio2 in adult rats (2–3 months of age) kept continuously in darkness is modulated by the circadian clock and is up-regulated by 2 fold at midday. When the diurnal ambient light was on, the expression level of Dio2 increased by 4–8 fold and a consequent increase of the related protein was detected around the nuclei of retinal photoreceptors and of neurons in inner and outer nuclear layers. The expression level of Dio3 had a different temporal pattern and was down-regulated by diurnal light. Our results suggest that DIO2 and DIO3 have a role not only in the developing retina but also in the adult retina and are powerfully regulated by light. As the thyroid hormone is a ligand-inducible transcription factor controlling the expression of several target genes, the transcriptional activation of Dio2 could be a novel genomic component of light adaptation.


Abstract The indentation index, which is the ratio between the real length of a coast and its Euclidean length, is a parameter applied to characterize rock coasts and to study their evolution. Rather than subjectively selecting two or more sectors of a rock coast, the method proposed in this paper considers analyzing the indentation index on the same coastline previously split into several adjacent tracts with equal Euclidean length. By digitizing the coastline in a GIS environment, it becomes possible to test several Euclidean length values on the same coastline, obtaining a different spatial variability of the indentation index with each trial. The best length values that maximize the spatial variability of the indentation index are those that determine an indentation index pattern characterized by high variance and low spatial autocorrelation. The spatial distribution of the indentation index can eventually be analyzed considering known littoral forces acting on the studied coast. When more than one Euclidean length value is found to maximize the variability of indentation index within the same coast, it is likely that there are one or more littoral forces acting or interacting differently at different scales.


Author(s): Dreyer, Cyrus Eduard | Advisor(s): Van de Walle, Chris G | Abstract: The III-nitride semiconductors, including AlN, InN, GaN, and BN have been demonstrated as technologically exciting materials for a wide range of device applications. With band gaps that span the visible range, GaN, InN, and InGaN alloys are used for high efficiency light emitting diodes for general lighting, as well as laser diodes for optical storage. The wide gaps, large band offsets, and polarization fields in AlN, GaN, and AlGaN alloys are promising for high-frequency, high-power transistors with applications in power conversion and radio frequency amplifiers.Despite the plethora of attractive material parameters of the III-nitride materials there are several issues that significantly limit the efficiency of devices and range of possible applications. In this study, we use first-principles electronic structure calculations to explore several of these properties relevant to understanding growth, processing, and device design.Arguably the most detrimental issue in this material system is the lack of widely available, cost-effective substrates for the growth of films and devices. Heteroepitaxy, as well as the lattice mismatch between the layers of different III-nitride alloys in heterostructures, results in residual stresses in films and devices. Such stress will alter the electronic structure of the materials, so it is necessary for device design to be able to quantify these effects. We explore the influence of strain on the effective mass of carriers in GaN and AlN, a parameter that is tied to the conductivity. In addition, films under tensile strain can crack if the strain energy is sufficient. We explore the propensity for AlN, GaN, and AlGaN to crack on different crystallographic planes.There has been significant work done to overcome the issue of residual strains in III-nitride films, both through the growth of bulk crystals for substrates, and the growth of structures such as nanowires that avoid many of the thickness and alloy-content limitations of epitaxial layers. Also, selective area growth followed by lateral overgrowth techniques is used to produce high-quality GaN for laser applications. In all of these cases, growth involves multiple growth planes, and the resulting morphologies will be determined by the relative growth rates of the planes present. One of the fundamental parameters that determines the stability and growth rate on a given plane is the absolute surface energies of that plane. Calculations of such surface energies are extremely challenging; we have succeeded in obtaining such values, for the first time, for the most technologically important planes in GaN.Finally, residual stresses contribute to a piezoelectric polarization moment in the III-nitrides in the most common growth direction, and even in the absence of such strain, the wurtzite crystal structure has a spontaneous polarization moment. Polarization differences between layers of heterostructures allow for strong carrier confinement and the formation of two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) with high densities at AlGaN/GaN interfaces, exploited in high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). The effect of polarization can also be detrimental, for example causing the quantum confined Stark effect in quantum wells of light emitting diodes (LEDs). In both HEMT and LED devices, accurate values of the magnitudes of the spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization constants are required for a fundamental understanding and design of III-nitride devices. We have discovered that the set of spontaneous polarization coefficients that has been widely used for device design and analysis suffers from inconsistencies in the choice of reference structure, and have derived a new reliable and accurate set of constants to describe the polarization properties of III-nitrides. We discuss the results in the context of experimental observations.


Star-shaped and tetracatenar molecules based on 1,3,4-oxadiazole and thiadiazole derivatives were synthesized and their liquid crystallinity and gelation behavior were studied. The self-assembly and photophysical properties of these molecules are sensitive to the type of the heteroatom present in the molecule and the pattern of peripheral substitution. Only the star-shaped molecule with substituted oxadiazole arms exhibited a columnar hexagonal phase, while the tetracatenars were crystalline. This compound exhibited a supergelation behavior that is mainly supported by attractive π–π interactions. This is notable because usually supergelation is supported by H-bonding interactions. Further, this compound exhibited aggregation-induced emission with a several-fold increase in the luminescence intensity upon gelation. Surprisingly its thiadiazole counterpart was crystalline and did not gelate. The corresponding oxadiazole and thiadiazole star-shaped molecules, with peripheral 3,4-substitution, were liquid crystalline and stabilized gelation. This shows that in addition to π–π interactions, nanosegregation of incompatible molecular subunits like flexible tails plays a major role in organogelation and liquid crystalline self-assembly. Microscopy studies revealed a fibrillar network of several micrometers length confirming the long range molecular self-assembly. Electrochemical studies helped to understand the effect of peripheral substitution on the HOMO–LUMO levels and the band gaps.


The prevalence of anthropogenic drainage systems in intensively cropped areas across North America combined with the degradation of important freshwater resources in these regions has created a critical intersection where understanding phosphorus (P) transport in drainage waters is vital. In this study, drainage-associated nutrient load data were retrieved and quantitatively analyzed to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the P loading and crop yield impacts of agronomic management practices within drained landscapes. Using the Drain Load table in the MANAGE (Measured Annual Nutrient loads from AGricultural Environments) database, the effect of factors such as soil characteristics, tillage, and nutrient management on P loading were analyzed. Across site-years, generally less than 2% of applied P was lost in drainage water, which corroborates the order of magnitude difference between agronomic P application rates and P loadings that can cause deleterious water quality impacts. The practice of no-till significantly increased drainage dissolved P loads compared with conventional tillage (0.12 vs. 0.04 kg P ha). The timing and method of P application are both known to be important for P losses, but these conclusions could not be verified due to low site-year counts. Findings indicate there is a substantial need for additional field-scale studies documenting not only P losses in drainage water but also important cropping management, nutrient application, soil property, and drainage design impacts on such losses.


Double-peaked emission-line galaxies have long been perceived as objects related to merging galaxies or other phenomenawith disturbed dynamical activities, such as outflows and disk rotation. In order to find the connection between the unique activities happening in these objects and their stellar population physics, we study the stellar populations of the stacked spectra drawn from double-peaked emission-line galaxies in the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) Data Release 4 (DR4) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) databases. We group the selected double-peaked emission-line objects into 10 different types of pairs based on the Baldwin-Phillips-Terlevich (BPT) diagnosis for each pair of blueshifted and redshifted components, and then stack the spectra of each group for analysis. The software STARLIGHT is employed to fit each stacked spectrum, and the contributions of stars at different ages and metallicities are quantified for subsequent comparative study and analysis. To highlight the commonality and uniqueness in these double-peaked emitting objects, we compare the population synthesis results of the stacked spectra of double-peaked emission-line galaxies with those of their counterpart reference samples displaying single-peaked emission features. The reference samples are also selected from the LAMOST DR4 and SDSS DR7 databases. From the comparison results, we confirm the strong correlations between stellar populations and their spectral classes, and find that the double-peaked emitting phenomenon is more likely to occur in an 'older' stellar environment and the subgroups hosting different BPT components will show an obvious heterogeneous star formation history.


Deep networks are often not scale-invariant hence their performance can vary wildly if recognizable objects are at an unseen scale occurring only at testing time. In this paper, we propose ScaleNet, which recursively predicts object scale in a deep learning framework. With an explicit objective to predict the scale of objects in images, ScaleNet enables pretrained deep learning models to identify objects in the scales that are not present in their training sets. By recursively calling ScaleNet, one can generalize to very large scale changes unseen in the training set. To demonstrate the robustness of our proposed framework, we conduct experiments with pretrained as well as fine-tuned classification and detection frameworks on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and MS COCO datasets and results reveal that our proposed framework significantly boosts the performances of deep networks.


Background: Ductal lavage is a method of minimal epithelial sampling of the breast, with potential utility for repeat sampling and biomarker analysis in chemoprevention studies. We report here the baseline findings from a study designed to assess the utility of ductal lavage in this setting. Methods: Tamoxifen-eligible, high-risk women underwent ductal lavage; epithelial cell number (ECN) and morphology were assessed on Papanicolaou-stained slides. Additional slides were immunostained for estrogen receptor (ER) α, Ki-67, and cyclooxygenase-2, and the labeling index (LI) was established by counting negative and positive cells. The ductal lavage supernatant (DLS) was assayed for estradiol, several of its precursors, progesterone, cathepsin D, interleukin-6, and epidermal growth factor (EGF). Results: One hundred sixty-eight women have entered the study (mean age, 51 years; mean 5-year Gail score, 2.8). Ductal lavage was accomplished in 145 (86.3%) women. Data were analyzed by duct and by woman (averaging data across all ducts). Mild atypia was seen in 43 of 145 (29.6%), whereas severe atypia was seen in 2 (1.4%) of women. We observed significant positive correlations between ECN and cytologic atypia, ER LI, cyclooxygenase-2 LI, and Ki-67 LI. EGF levels in supernatant were significantly associated with estrogenic precursors, ER LI and ECN. A factor representing the DLS hormone and protein variables explained 36% of the variance; total ECN was highest when factor score and ER LI were high and was lowest when both were low (P for interaction = 0.001). Conclusions: Biomarker analyses in epithelial cells and DLS are feasible. The significant associations of EGF with other markers suggest a possible role in increasing epithelial cell mass.


During meiosis of heterogametic cells, such as XY meiocytes, sex chromosomes of many species undergo transcriptional silencing known as meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). Silencing also occurs in aberrantly unsynapsed autosomal chromatin. The silencing of unsynapsed chromatin, is assumed to be the underline mechanism for MSCI. Initiation of MSCI is disrupted in meiocytes with sex chromosome-autosome translocations. Whether this is due to aberrant synapsis or the lack of sex chromosome integrity has never been determined. To address this, we used CRISPR to engineer Caenorhabditis elegans stable strains with broken X chromosomes that didn't undergo translocations with autosomes. In early meiotic nuclei of these mutants, the X fragments lack silent chromatin modifications and instead the fragments are enriched with transcribing chromatin modifications. Moreover, the level of active RNA polymerase II staining on the X fragments in mutant nuclei is similar to that on autosomes, indicating active transcription on the X. Contrary to previous models, which predicted that any unsynapsed chromatin is silenced during meiosis, X fragments that did not synapse were robustly stained with RNA polymerase II and gene expression levels were high throughout the broken X. Therefore, lack of synapsis does not trigger MSCI if sex chromosome integrity is lost. Moreover, our results suggest that a unique character of the chromatin of sex chromosomes underlies their lack of meiotic silencing due to both unsynapsed chromatin and sex chromosome mechanisms when their integrity is lost.


We report a case that developed acute postoperative endophthalmitis after transconjunctival sutureless vitrectomy using the 23-gauge system. A 66-year-old man underwent non-sutured 23-gauge pars plana vitrectomy for epimacular membrane. Since the patient developed signs of acute endophthalmitis and decreased visual acuity to counting fingers on the second postoperative day, re-vitrectomy with silicone oil was performed. The patient responded well to re-vitrectomy, injection of silicone oil and intravitreal antibiotic injections. Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis was cultured from vitreous samples. Silicone oil was extracted at 11 months. The patient remains stable at 14 months with a final visual acuity of 20/50.


It is well documented that business cycles of developed countries are characterised by persistent output fluctuations, and this has been the subject of much theoretical interest. However, the case for developing countries has been somewhat neglected in the literature. This paper addresses this imbalance, revealing that whilst both developed and developing countries exhibit persistent output fluctuations, there is a significant positive relationship between output persistence and level of economic development. This relationship was successfully modelled using a vertical production chain DSGE model (Huang and Liu, 2001). This model lends itself to such an analysis, as by altering the number of production stages (N) it is possible to represent economies at different levels of development. However, calibration of low input-output (γ) parameter values for the US and UK effectively inhibited the model from generating enough persistence to match that observed in these countries. Nonetheless, after abstracting from the US and UK results, there was found to be a strong significant positive relationship between the magnitude of output persistence generated by the model and economic development. A final very significant finding of this analysis is that the model overestimates output persistence in high inflation countries and underestimates output persistence in low inflation countries. This has important implications not only for this model, but also for any economist attempting to construct a business cycle model capable of replicating the observed patterns of output persistence.


Study Design: Multi-institutional retrospective case series of 8887 patients who underwent anterior cervical spine surgery. Objective: Anterior decompression from discectomy or corpectomy is not without risk. Surgical morbidity ranges from 9% to 20% and is likely underreported. Little is known of the incidence and effects of rare complications on functional outcomes following anterior spinal surgery. In this retrospective review, we examined implant extrusions (IEs) following anterior cervical fusion. Methods: A retrospective multicenter case series study involving 21 high-volume surgical centers from the AOSpine North America Clinical Research Network. Medical records for 17 625 patients who received cervical spine surgery (levels from C2 to C7) between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2011, were reviewed to identify occurrence of 21 predefined treatment complications. Results: Following anterior cervical fusion, the incidence of IE ranged from 0.0% to 0.8% across 21 institutions with 11 cases reported. All surgeries involved multiple levels, and 7/11 (64%) involved either multilevel corpectomies or hybrid constructs with at least one adjacent discectomy to a corpectomy. In 7/11 (64%) patients, constructs ended with reconstruction or stabilization at C7. Nine patients required surgery for repair and stabilization following IE. Average length of hospital stay after IE was 5.2 days. Only 2 (18%) had residual deficits after reoperation. Conclusions: IE is a very rare complication after anterior cervical spine surgery often requiring revision. Constructs requiring multilevel reconstruction, especially at the cervicothoracic junction, have a higher risk for failure, and surgeons should proceed with caution in using an anterior-only approach in these demanding cases. Surgeons can expect most patients to regain function after reoperation.


The following essay surveys and reflects on the conference as a whole. It identifies a series of significant developments in the study of later Reformed thought, notably a series of ways in which scholarship has moved beyond the dead-ends of older approaches such as the notorious "Calvin against the Calvinists" school of thought. Among other points, the issue of continuity and discontinuity in the history of Protestant thought has received considerable nuance, the diversity and variety of Reformed thought is identified both in the Reformation roots of issues and in the later developments, and the questions of the relationship of Calvin to the Reformed tradition and of the reception of his thought by later generations are reviewed. The conference, therefore, confirms the recent work of reassessing the development of "Calvinism" and points toward significant areas for future research.


We explore the use of multiple deep learning models for detecting flaws in software programs. Current, standard approaches for flaw detection rely on a single representation of a software program (e.g., source code or a program binary). We illustrate that, by using techniques from multimodal deep learning, we can simultaneously leverage multiple representations of software programs to improve flaw detection over single representation analyses. Specifically, we adapt three deep learning models from the multimodal learning literature for use in flaw detection and demonstrate how these models outperform traditional deep learning models. We present results on detecting software flaws using the Juliet Test Suite and Linux Kernel.


The Fe-Si-Al soft magnetic composites were produced by cold pressing of water-atomized Fe-Si-Al powder using organic binder. The effect of shaping pressure, annealing temperature, magnetic annealing and dielectric content on properties of Fe-Si-Al soft magnetic composites was investigated. The results showed that increasing shaping pressure increases density and radial crushing strength of Fe-Si-Al soft magnetic cores, and decreases coercivity and total loss. Increasing annealing temperature can increase effective permeability and decrease total loss owing to decreasing hysteresis loss, and over-annealing (>660°C) can deteriorate magnetic properties. The magnetic annealing can decrease total loss of Fe-Si-Al magnetic powder core. Increasing dielectric content can reduce the eddy current loss of Fe-Si-Al magnetic powder core and decrease the real part of permeability. Fe-Si-Al magnetic powder core with shaping pressure of 1800 MPa, annealing temperature of 660 °C and dielelctric content of 0.7% presented the optimum magnetic properties with an effective permeability of 127, a total loss of 78mW/cm3 and a radial crushing strength of 18MPa.


In this paper, we study the possibility of obtaining iron and titanium-vanadium concentrates with highest contents of iron and titanium, respectively, through hydrometallurgical processing of the titanomagnetite ores of the Chineisk deposit. We varied two key parameters to determine the efficiency of the process: (a) concentration of leaching solution (ammonium fluoride); and (b) acidity of solution. Ammonium fluoride concentration was varied from 0.08 mol/L to 4.2 mol/L with the other fixed parameters. It was shown that optimum ammonium fluoride concentration for leaching the ore is 0.42 mol/L; at these concentrations iron and titanium contents are about 62.8 wt % and 3.5 wt % in solid phase, respectively. The acidity of solution was changed by adding of hydrofluoric acid with varied concentration (from 0.86 mol/L to 4.07 mol/L) to ammonium fluoride solution with fixed concentration of 0.42 mol/L. The best results (degree of titanium extraction = 63.7%) were obtained when using a solution of hydrofluoric acid with concentration 4.07 mol/L. In this case, the addition of acid makes it possible to increase the Fe/Ti ratio by 3.4 times in comparison with the original ore. Thus, we conclude that acidity and the concentration of ammonium fluoride solution significantly influences the selectivity of the hydrometallurgical process.


Firms are increasingly sourcing internal information systems functions from external service providers. However, there is limited empirical evidence of the economic impact of this delivery option and, more specifically, of the productivity gains accruing to firms that have outsourced. Moreover, there is little evidence of the role and contributions of the individual mechanisms by which service providers create value for client firms. We are particularly interested in whether client firms benefit from the accumulated knowledge held by information technology (IT) service firms. In this paper, we examine the impact of IT outsourcing on the productivity of firms that choose this mode of services delivery focusing, on the role of IT-related knowledge. Since firms selfselect into their optimal sourcing mode, we use a variety of econometric techniques including propensity scorebased matching and switching regression to control for potential bias arising from endogenously determined sourcing modes. We demonstrate that IT outsourcing does lead to productivity gains for firms that select this mode of service delivery. Our results also suggest that IT-related knowledge held by IT services vendors enables these productivity gains, the magnitude of which is moderated by a firm's IT intensity. Moreover, the value of outsourcing to a client firm increases with its propensity for outsourcing, which in turn depends on firm-specific attributes including efficiency level, financial leverage, and variability in business conditions. Our analyses also show that firms that outsource have been able to achieve additional productivity gains from contracting out compared with their counterfactuals.


Most studies on New Age spirituality remain overly descriptive and lack solid, empirically grounded historical-sociological explanations for its increasing popularity since the counter culture of the 1960s and 1970s. The authors therefore study the motivations of the 'first generation' spiritual seekers to turn to the New Age on the basis of 42 qualitative interviews with Dutch New Age teachers who grew up in the counter culture. The analysis demonstrates that they were motivated by discontentment about Christian churches and modern work organizations, especially in the field of social care. Due to the countercultural emphasis on individual liberty, the respondents experienced institutions as both 'meaningless' and 'alienating' and felt attracted to the promises of humanistic self-spirituality and holism. In the conclusion the authors speculate on how and why the young 'second generation' New Agers turns to spirituality nowadays and in what ways their motivations differ from those of the first generation.


Samuel Beckett has long carried the aura of an artist "damned to fame." Known for being a recluse with a profound distaste for publicity, Beckett gained a legendary image, infusing much of the critical attention that his literary work continues to receive. In this highly original and audacious volume, Dilks sharply departs from existing accounts of Beckett's persona by developing a critical analysis of his life as a professional writer. Focusing on the period between 1929 and 1969, and taking into account published and unpublished letters, advertising materials, photographic portraits, royalty statements, and other archival material, Samuel Beckett in the Literary Marketplace offers a powerful challenge to the received understanding of Beckett as an author shy of fame, averse to self-promotion, and unconcerned with commercial success. Showing how Beckett's assumptions about professional life were shaped by his socioeconomic upbringing in South Dublin, Dilks illustrates the author's protracted efforts to develop and sustain a successful career as a professional writer with an enduring legacy. Dilks explores in great detail how Beckett fashioned an authorial persona, shaped public reception of his work, and controlled his business affairs. He shrewdly used agents and professional acquaintances to market himself as an unknown celebrity and to defend and disseminate his public image. Throughout, the book acknowledges Beckett's self-consciousness about his mythic relationship with the literary marketplace.


Zinc oxide thin films are holographically patterned on submicronic scale by direct photodissolution method. The photodissolution process in solution is highly sensitive in the UV range (355 nm). 1D and 2D nanostructures are successfully obtained by this photoresist‐free process. The kinetic of the reaction is studied by recording the transmitted intensity through the evolution of the ZnO film thickness along the reaction time. Application of an electrical potential strongly increases the dissolution rate (1.5 μm min−1) and decreases the pattern formation time. As a first demonstration of the potential of all‐in liquid direct ZnO heterostructuring, selective growth of ZnO nanorods is performed by chemical bath deposition using holographically patterned ZnO films as a substrate.