We study a setting in which a community wishes to identify a strongly supported proposal from a large space of alternatives, in order to change the status quo. We describe a deliberation process in which agents dynamically form coalitions around proposals that they prefer over the status quo. We formulate conditions on the space of proposals and on the ways in which coalitions are formed that guarantee deliberation to succeed, that is, to terminate by identifying a proposal with the largest possible support. Our results provide theoretical foundations for the analysis of deliberative processes in systems for democratic deliberation support, such as, e.g., LiquidFeedback or Polis.


The relativistic energy-momentum relationship is far more subtle than it seems to be at a first sight. As concerns the relativistic quantum mechanics, its underlying equations were deduced from, or in relation with the relativistic energy-momentum relationship by means of the principle of correspondence. Without a clear physical role and meaning associated, the matrices of the Dirac equation seemed to confirm that the principle of the physical determination of equations would not be proper to the new quantum mechanics. Therefore, we have to search for genuine physical information in the terms of the underlying equations of the relativistic quantum mechanics. This information concerns a level of structure of matter "even below that on which nuclear transformations take place."


At the start of the twenty-first century, America is in the midst of a profound national reconsideration of the death penalty. There has been a dramatic decline in the number of people being sentenced to death as well as executed, exonerations have become common, and the number of states abolishing the death penalty is on the rise. The essays featured in The Road to Abolition? track this shift in attitudes toward capital punishment, and consider whether or not the death penalty will ever be abolished in America.

The interdisciplinary group of experts gathered by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., and Austin Sarat ask and attempt to answer the hard questions that need to be addressed if the death penalty is to be abolished. Will the death penalty end only to be replaced with life in prison without parole? Will life without the possibility of parole become, in essence, the new death penalty? For abolitionists, might that be a pyrrhic victory? The contributors discuss how the death penalty might be abolished, with particular emphasis on the current debate over lethal injection as a case study on why and how the elimination of certain forms of execution might provide a model for the larger abolition of the death penalty.
Book description from publisher website at: http://www.nyupress.org/


The fossil record of birds from Antarctica is concentrated in the James Ross Basin, located in north-east of the Antarctic Peninsula. Birds are here represented by an extensive Paleogene record of penguins (Sphenisciformes) and Cretaceous–Paleogene record of Anseriformes, followed by other groups with a minor representation (Procellariiformes, Falconiformes, and Pelagornithidae), and others previously assigned controversially to "Ratites", Threskiornithidae, Charadriiformes, Gruiformes, Phoenicopteriformes, and Gaviiformes. We provide a complete update of these records, commenting on the importance of some of these remains for the evolution of the major clades. Citation:Acosta Hospitaleche C, Jadwiszczak P, Clarke J A, et al. The fossil record of birds from the James Ross Basin, West Antarctica. Adv Polar Sci, 2019, 30(3): 251-273, doi: 10.13679/j.advps.2019.0014


Abstract. The terrestrial biosphere regulates climate through carbon, water, and energy exchanges with the atmosphere. Land-surface models estimate plant transpiration, which is actively regulated by stomatal pores, and provide projections essential for understanding Earth's carbon and water resources. Empirical evidence from 204 species suggests that significant amounts of water are lost through leaves at night, though land-surface models typically reduce stomatal conductance to nearly zero at night. Here, we test the sensitivity of carbon and water budgets in a global land-surface model, the Community Land Model (CLM) version 4.5, to three different methods of incorporating observed nighttime stomatal conductance values. We find that our modifications increase transpiration by up to 5 % globally, reduce modeled available soil moisture by up to 50 % in semi-arid regions, and increase the importance of the land surface in modulating energy fluxes. Carbon gain declines by up to  ∼ 4 % globally and  >  25 % in semi-arid regions. We advocate for realistic constraints of minimum stomatal conductance in future climate simulations, and widespread field observations to improve parameterizations.


This meta-analytic study reviews empirical research published from 2007 to 2013 with an aim of providing robust conclusions about the relationship between social media use and citizen engagement. It includes 22 studies that used self-reported measures of social media use and participation, with a total of 116 relationships/effects. The results suggest that social media use generally has a positive relationship with engagement and its three sub-categories, that is, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. More specifically, we find small-to-medium size positive relationships between expressive, informational, and relational uses of social media and the above indicators of citizen engagement. For identity- and entertainment-oriented uses of social media, our analyses find little evidence supporting their relationship with citizen engagement.


8 The delimitation of species is a major issue in systematic biology and has been a re-emerging discipline in the last decade. A number of studies have shown that the use of multiple data sets is critical for the identification of cryptic species, particularly in groups with complex evolutionary histories. Liolaemus monticola is a montane lizard species distributed in central Chile (32°-42°S), with four described subspecies in a latitudinal gradient from north to south: L. m. monticola, L. m. chillanensis, L. monticola ssp. and L. m. villaricensis. In order to test the systematic status and phylogenetic relationships of the taxa included in the L. monticola group, we analysed morphological (morphometric and meristic) and molecular (allozyme and mitochondrial DNA) data sets. The results of the morphological analyses showed that meristic variables correctly assigned individuals with higher accuracy than did morphometric characters. The results of the analyses of allozyme data revealed eight diagnostic loci that are evidence for significant differences among the four L. monticola subspecies. Phylogenetic analyses with mitochondrial DNA data, including additional species, showed that the L. monticola group is polyphyletic. We postulate that the four current subspecies represent independent evolutionary lineages and must be raised to the specific level as L. monticola, L. chillanensis and L. villaricensis. The taxonomic status of the unnamed L. monticola ssp. remains unresolved, although we provide a preliminary proposal. © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 96, 635-650.


THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF INTEGRIN REGULATION BY PAR6 IN TGF-BETA-INDUCED APOPTOSIS Geordon James Avery-Cooper Advisor: University of Guelph, 2011 Dr. A.M. Viloria-Petit The Par6-polarity pathway regulates breast cancer metastasis, and more recently has been shown to regulate transforming growth factor β (TGFβ)-induced apoptosis. Integrins may mediate the regulation of TGFβ-induced apoptosis by Par6, as they are key regulators of cell polarity, survival and death. First, we confirmed that blocking Par6 activation significantly inhibits TGFβ-induced apoptosis in both monolayer and three-dimensional NMuMG (Normal Murine Mammary Gland) cell culture models. TGFβ altered the expression of β1 and β4 integrins in NMuMG monolayers. In addition, TGFβ significantly reduced the basal localization of α6 and β4 integrins in NMuMG three-dimensional acini-like structures (p < 0.001), which was dependent on both Par6 and TGFβ receptor I (TβRI)/SMAD activation. We went on to show that the activities of integrin pro-survival signaling mediators, NF-κB and FAK, were altered in response to TGFβ, and that blocking Par6 activation in the Par6/S345A mutant maintained polarity and basal α6 and β4 integrin expression in the presence of TGFβ in NMuMG threedimensional structures, in addition to a significant increase in FAK activation. This suggests that TGFβ alters the expression, localization and downstream signaling of integrins, which may contribute to TGFβ-induced apoptosis


We propose a novel framework that unifies and extends existing methods of transfer learning (TL) for regression. To bridge a pretrained source model to the model on a target task, we introduce a density-ratio reweighting function, which is estimated through the Bayesian framework with a specific prior distribution. By changing two intrinsic hyperparameters and the choice of the density-ratio model, the proposed method can integrate three popular methods of TL: TL based on cross-domain similarity regularization, a probabilistic TL using the density-ratio estimation, and fine-tuning of pretrained neural networks. Moreover, the proposed method can benefit from its simple implementation without any additional cost; the regression model can be fully trained using off-the-shelf libraries for supervised learning in which the original output variable is simply transformed to a new output variable. We demonstrate its simplicity, generality, and applicability using various real data applications.


Despite documented health benefits of household water treatment and storage (HWTS), achieving sustained use remains challenging. In prior evaluations of a long-term HWTS program in Haiti, multiple marketing interventions failed to increase use or had prohibitively high costs. Using mobile phones is a potentially cost-effective way to change HWTS behavior. We conducted a randomized experiment to evaluate the impact of sending short-message service (SMS) messages to promote household chlorination in this program in Haiti. Households (n = 1327) were randomly assigned to: One of four SMS frequencies; one of ten behavioral constructs; "cholera" or "disease" framing; and one or zero household visits from a sales agent. During the three-month campaign, there were no statistically significant relationships between the four outcomes related to chlorine purchases and any SMS frequency, any behavioral construct, or either "cholera" or "disease" framing. Receiving one visit increased the probability of purchasing a bottle of chlorine by 17.1 percentage points (p < 0.001) but did not affect subsequent purchase behavior. Costs of managing the SMS campaign were higher than expected. SMS campaigns may not be cost-effective behavior change interventions in certain contexts. If pursued, we recommend simple interventions, timed with the target behavior, and tailored to mobile phone usage patterns of the target population.


Multicopters are small, typically unmanned helicopters having more than two rotors. The wide range of possible applications of multicopters, spanning from environmental research to recreation, has raised the need to come up with innovative solutions to reduce the power demand of these platforms, with the goal of guaranteeing safe completion of missions. To this end, it is of paramount importance to understand the way in which the energy is invested and spent. The goal of this work is to provide reliable means to monitor multicopters energy consumption. We developed a monitoring platform to keep track of the energy consumption of multicopters. The platform relies on a set of sensors to collect the energy consumption data at different points of interest; data are then visualized in a monitoring dashboard. The monitoring system allows further analysis of the recorded data, which could be used to optimize multicopters energy consumption.


The automotive low pressure exhaust gas recirculation or closed-cycle gas turbine engines are among applications where an alternative fluids to air are used. This paper analyses compressor performance measured while operating with substitute gas. Several compressor performance maps were generated and compared on a steady-state turbocharger test facility run in a closed-loop mode. The automotive centrifugal compressor was mapped with pure air, CO2-air mixtures (3%, 5%, 10% CO2 by mass) and pure CO2. The analysis of the obtained data has indicated that the use of reduced speed parameter and reduced mass flow parameter formulas worked well in the process of the compressor map correction for the CO2-air mixtures. The corrected (with reduced mass flow and speed parameters) compressor performance map generated for the case of pure CO2 has shown a shift in both choke and surge lines and changes in measured pressure ratio and efficiency. Further efficiency and pressure ratio corrections based on the method proposed by Roberts and Sjolander [1] have shown no match between the predicted and measured values of efficiency for CO2. The series of adiabatic 3D CFD simulations indicated that this was likely caused by the heat transfer between the uninsulated turbomachinery components.


Objective: The epigastric artery perforator flap is commonly used in the breast reconstruction. Ischemia during surgery results in the necrosis of the flap. We aimed to study the effect of fondaparinux in reperfusion injury in perforator flap model and determined its effects on the flap viability. Materials and Methods: Twenty-eight female Wistar Albino rats were included in this study. Rats were separated into three groups: A control (n = 9), B ischemia (n = 9), and C ischemia + drug (n = 10). Superior epigastric artery perforator flap on the single perforator was elevated in all groups. In Group A, flap was sutured back. In Group B, ischemia was applied for 4 h to the pedicle. In Group C, fondaparinux was administered 30 min before the reperfusion of the flap. Serum malondialdehyde (MDA), myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels, and histopathological examination of the flaps were studied. Results: The mean survival areas of flaps were 92.5%, 50.1%, and 91.1% in Group A, Group B, and Group C, respectively. Statistical differences were observed between these values (P < 0.05). The means of MPO and MDA were 22.3 ng/ml and 4.5 nmol/ml; 31.1 ng/ml and 4.7 nmol/ml; 27.1 ng/ml and 4.5 nmol/ml, respectively, for Group A, Group B, and Group C, and no statistically significant difference was found between groups (P > 0.05). Histopathologically, statistically significant difference was found between Group A, Group B, and Group C in terms of the infiltration of the leukocytes with polymorph nuclei (PMNL) for 24 h (P < 0.05). In the histopathological examinations done at the 7th day, statistically significant difference was found between groups in terms of edema, necrosis, increase in connective tissue, and leukocytes with polymorph nuclei (PMNL) (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Administration of fondaparinux after ischemia increased the flap viability in the epigastric artery perforator flap model.


ABSTRACT Knowledge of thermal traits is essential for understanding and modelling physiological responses to environmental change. Egg temperatures are poorly studied in most tubenose species. We employed a contactless infrared thermometer to measure egg and nest surface temperatures throughout the incubation period for four albatross species at Bird Island, South Georgia. The observed mean warm-side temperature of 33.4°C for Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) was similar to measurements obtained from this species using dummy eggs elsewhere. Observed mean warm-side temperatures for Black-browed Albatross (Thalassarche melanophris), Grey-headed Albatross (Thalassarche chrysostoma), and Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata), reported here for the first time, were 30.7–31.5°C, which is lower than the egg temperatures reported for most Procellariiformes. Temperature gradients across viable eggs declined by up to 9°C during incubation, reflecting increased embryonic circulation and metabolic heat production. This suggests that bioenergetic models should not assume constant egg temperatures during embryo development. Non-viable (addled) eggs could be identified by large temperature gradients in late incubation, indicating that infrared thermometry can be used to determine whether the embryo has died or the egg is infertile in monitoring and managed breeding (e.g. translocation) programmes. Egg temperatures were correlated with ground temperatures, indicating that incubated eggs are vulnerable to environmental variability.


Several studies have shown positive effects of a speed reading course on students' reading speed improvement (Chung & Nation, 2006; Macalister, 2008, 2010). Yet, little research has aimed to see if the speed increase transfers to other types of reading and if it has any effects on other language skills. This study set out to answer these questions and examine the relationships between EFL reading speed, reading comprehension, and memory span by looking at the comprehension scores and language memory span results. It was found that the reading speed improvement in the speed reading course transferred to other types of reading and did not necessarily negatively affect comprehension. The results demonstrated that the treatment groups considerably expanded their memory span (p<.05). Strong relationships between speed increases in the speed reading course, speed improvement in other types of reading and memory span development were also found. © Centre for Language Studies National University of Singapore.


OBJECTIVE
This study investigated the cognitive effect of chronic exposure to environmental noise on RAWM performance of juvenile rats, and the ability of adult rats exposed to a novel acute stress to perform in the RAWM as a function of whether or not they were exposed to environmental noise as juveniles.

METHODS
We examined the consequences of exposure to noise during the juvenile-early periadolescent period on adulthood stress response by assessing cognitive performance in the RAWM. Male rats were exposed to environmental noise during the childhood-prepubescent period (21-35 PND), and their RAWM performance was tested at the end of the exposure to noise, and then again two months later when they had to cope with a new stressful event. RAWM execution included a 3-day training phase and a reversal learning phase on day 4. Escape latency, reference memory errors and working memory errors were compared between experimental and control groups. In addition, body weight gain and serum corticosterone levels were evaluated.

RESULTS
Stressed rats demonstrated spatial impairment, as evidenced by poor execution on day 4. This effect was significantly noticeable in the doubly stressed group. Noise annoyance was evidenced by reduced body weight gain and increased serum corticosterone levels.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that environmental noise may produce potent stress-like effects in developing subjects that can persist into adulthood, affecting spatial learning abilities. This cognitive impairment may restrict the subject's ability to learn under a new spatial configuration.


Social scientific research has demonstrated that increasing racial or ethnic diversity can reduce overall levels of social solidarity in a community. Yet many community development organizations, including Extension, are deeply committed to creating a broader sense of cohesion in rural communities. This article highlights a recent interagency effort, known as the Welcoming Communities Assessment, to assess a community's readiness for inclusion. The Welcoming Communities Assessment helps community members gain a baseline, action-oriented understanding of how inclusive different sectors of their community are for immigrants, refugees, and people of color. This article describes the assessment's context, design, analysis, and implementation.


Abstract:
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how using innovative interpretivist approaches and diverse qualitative methods advance our understanding of dirty work and dirty work research. The paper introduces the articles that form the basis of this special issue of QROM.

Design/ methodology / approach: The Guest Editors' adopt a literature review approach identifying key arguments in the dirty work research to date and reflecting on the challenges of doing dirty work research.

Findings: The Guest Editors' conclude that research into dirty work incorporates the embodied experiences of the researchers and that through writing differently we can better understand dirty work / research as an embodied and reflexive engagement. Dirty work and dirty work research is complex and dynamic in nature marked by ambivalence and ambiguity and enveloped in relations of power.

Originality / value: This issue of QROM details illustrative and innovative qualitative methods of doing dirty work research, it offers novel insights into understudied dirty work sites and the challenges of doing dirty research using qualitative methods. It is also the first dedicated journal issue in organization and management research literature entirely focused on dirty work.


Recent scholarship on resilience has shed light on the processes by which organizations absorb strain and maintain functioning in the face of adversity. These theories, however, often focus on the operational impacts of adversity without accounting for the strain it puts on organizational members and their abilities to work effectively together. We apply a relational lens to better understand how adversity, and the anxiety it triggers in people, affects processes of organizational resilience. This conceptual frame enables us to begin uncovering the relational micro-dynamics underlying the absorption of strain. Drawing on group relations theory, we describe two trajectories of intragroup behavior in which strain, in the form of adversity-triggered anxiety, is either acted out or defused. In the brittle trajectory, group members react to anxiety with defensive patterns that leave them vulnerable to effects of adversity. In the resilience trajectory, groups defuse and mitigate adversity-triggered anxiety through a reflective process we call "a relational pause," ultimately leaving them strengthened and resilient. We elaborate the model by exploring the potential fragility of relational pauses and likely factors that influence groups' ability and tendency to enact resilience.


A motivation behind much UbiComp research has been to make our lives convenient, comfortable and informed, following in the footsteps of Weiser's calm computing vision. Three themes that have dominated are context awareness, ambient intelligence and monitoring/tracking. While these avenues of research have been fruitful their accomplishments do not match up to anything like Weiser's world. This paper discusses why this is so and argues that is time for a change of direction in the field. An alternative agenda is outlined that focuses on engaging rather than calming people. Humans are very resourceful at exploiting their environments and extending their capabilities using existing strategies and tools. I describe how pervasive technologies can be added to the mix, outlining three areas of practice where there is much potential for professionals and laypeople alike to combine, adapt and use them in creative and constructive ways.


In this paper, we address the problem of service function chaining in a network and present a solution that tackles this problem in Software Defined Data Centers. Service function chaining can broadly be categorized into middlebox placement in a network and packet steering through middleboxes. We address packet steering in this paper. In particular, we present a One Pass Packet Steering (OPPS) approach for use in multi-subscriber environments. We show algorithms and proof of concept implementation using emulation. We examine how OPPS can benefit from Software Defined Data Center architecture to overcome challenges that occur in simple linear networks. Our results show how OPPS can utilize a lesser number of middleboxes and achieve the same hop counts as a reference model which has been described in previous work as ideal, without violating the subscriber's policy chain.


Question answering (QA) based on machine reading comprehension has been a recent surge in popularity, yet most work has focused on extractive methods. We instead address a more challenging QA problem of generating a well-formed answer by reading and summarizing the paragraph for a given question.For the generative QA task, we introduce a new neural architecture, LatentQA, in which a novel stochastic selector network composes a well-formed answer with words selected from the question, the paragraph and the global vocabulary, based on a sequence of discrete latent variables. Bayesian inference for the latent variables is performed to train the LatentQA model. The experiments on public datasets of natural answer generation confirm the effectiveness of LatentQA in generating high-quality well-formed answers.


This research reports the findings of focus group interviews which explored potato buying motives and preferences for russet, red skinned and round white potatoes among selected Northeastern consumers. The results indicate that the group members perceived all russets as "Idaho" potatoes, associated the red potatoes with gourmet meals, and viewed the round whites as generic potatoes, unsuitable for company meals. However, participants identified round whites as their personal favorite and as the kind they purchased most often.


A hydrocooling system applied to Semillon (Vitis vinifera L.) grapevines as a means of protecting the vines from recurrent high temperatures. This system was assessed for impacts on vegetative and reproductive growth and development as well as for carbon economy of vines growing in vineyard conditions. The system maintained canopy temperatures at 35°C over the growing season. Leaf and bunch biomass and yield were all higher in the hydrocooled compared with control vines: the major effect was on dynamics of leaf and berry expansion. Leaf expansion was delayed and occurred over a longer duration whereas berry expansion was advanced and occurred over a longer duration than in control vines. Berry ripening was also faster in the hydrocooled vines and berries had accumulated more sugar at harvest. Leaf photosynthesis along the shoot was also higher in hydrocooled than control vines and there was a significant effect of leaf position on rates of photosynthesis of the hydrocooled vines but not with control vines. However, no differences were observed in the net shoot carbon budget. Lowered canopy temperatures were beneficial for yield and berry composition and, therefore, the cooling system warrants adoption in vineyards at risk from high temperature events during the growing season.


Given a directed graphical model with binary-valued hidden nodes and real-valued noisy observations, consider deciding upon the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) or the maximum posterior-marginal (MPM) assignment under the restriction that each node broadcasts only to its children exactly one single-bit message. We present a variational formulation, viewing the processing rules local to all nodes as degrees-of-freedom, that minimizes the loss in expected (MAP or MPM) performance subject to such online communication constraints. The approach leads to a novel message-passing algorithm to be executed offline, or before observations are realized, which mitigates the performance loss by iteratively coupling all rules in a manner implicitly driven by global statistics. We also provide (i) illustrative examples, (ii) assumptions that guarantee convergence and efficiency and (iii) connections to active research areas.


Abstract Nierembergia (Solanaceae) contains 21 species found primarily in South America, with one species occurring disjunctly in Mexico. Among other features, a pollination system not found elsewhere in the Solanaceae typifies this genus. In most species, nectaries are absent, but oil-producing elaiophores are present on the corolla limb and these attract oil-collecting bees. Molecular phylogenetic hypotheses based on nuclear ITS and chloroplast rpl16 intron data support the monophyly of Nierembergia, which is sister to a clade composed of Bouchetia plus Hunzikeria. The data reconstruct two clades within the genus: one composed primarily of herbaceous species with broad stigmas and the second containing woody species with crescent-shaped stigmas. Morphological homoplasy is frequent among the species of the herbaceous clade, while the woody clade is morphologically cohesive. Chromosome counts are confirmed and karyotype features are given for 13 Nierembergia species (including six varieties) and for Bouchetia anomala, Leptoglossis linifolia, and Petunia axillaris. The two clades are also supported by karyotypic features: one has asymmetrical karyotypes, small chromosomes, and two chromosome pairs with nucleolar organizing regions (NOR) and the other has symmetrical karyotypes, large chromosomes, and only one NOR.


In our analysis, we examine the effects of emigration from Hungary on the labour market and its other economic implications. Since 2008 the number of emigrants has been rising significantly faster than the previous trend, and thus it is important to assess the possible consequences of higher mobility in the Hungarian economy. We focus primarily on the effects on wages, for which it is indispensable to give an overview of the productivity effects as well. To that end, we need to gain a deeper insight into the characteristics of emigrants. As the information in the database available to us is limited to a single segment of those working abroad, namely cross-border commuters, this is the only group for which we can provide a detailed description. We find that the number of cross-border commuters is growing especially rapidly among skilled workers with secondary qualifications and among those employed in the sectors of construction, accommodation and food service activities. As regards age groups, younger generations account for a dominant portion of commuters. Based on the individual characteristics of commuters we assume that cyclical reasons may have contributed significantly to the rise in emigration. At this time, it is difficult to gauge the full impact of emigration on wages, productivity, growth and sustainability, as these factors depend partly on future growth rate of emigration and on the extent to which those working abroad return to the Hungarian labour market.


Traditional Christian confessions — for example, in Catholicism or in Orthodoxy — in scholarly literature, in modern legislation, or at the level of everyday consciousness, are understood primarily as clerical corporations. This corporate reading of modern Christianity also influences the understanding of the phenomenon of religion itself, as it happens, for example, in the famous essay on the "field of religion" by P. Bourdieu. This reading also determines the perception of Christianity as a historical phenomenon as well, which, within the framework of such a representation, appears as a corporation at every moment of its historical existence. This article argues that a "clerical corporation" is not a form of social organization that was originally inherent in Christianity, but a historical phenomenon that embraces various confessional contexts at different times. In particular, the emergence of a clerical corporation is fixed within the framework of an asynchronous comparative perspective relying on the examples of Western European Catholicism of the 11th — 13th centuries, and Russian Orthodoxy of the 17th — 18th centuries.


The effect of bearings on the vibrational behavior of machine tool spindles is investigated. This is done through the development of a calibrated dynamic stiffness matrix (CDSM) method, where the bearings flexibility is represented by mass less linear spring elements with tuneable stiffness. A dedicated MAT LAB code is written to develop and to assemble the element stiffness matrices for the system's multiple components and to apply the boundary conditions.The developed method is applied to an illustrative example of spindle system.When the spindle bearings are modeled as simply supported boundary conditions, the DSM model results in a fundamental frequency much higher than the system's nominal value.The simply supported boundary conditions are then replaced by linear spring elements, and the spring constants are adjusted such that the resulting calibrated CDSM model leads to the nominal
fundamental frequency of the spindle system.The spindle frequency results are also validated against the experimental data.The proposed method can be effectively applied to predict the vibration characteristics of spindle systems supported by bearings.


Infosys Technologies Ltd. provides a full range of IT and consulting services. One of Infosys' major customers is Prairie Four Square Insurance (PFS). PFS maintains extensive and mission critical IT systems across the United States. Relentless pressure from Wall Street to cut costs dramatically prompted the PFS senior management to outsource offshore portions of its IT maintenance activities. A PFS "white paper" had indicated that the purchasing department was one area where IT could make significant contributions in lowering operating costs. PFS managers decided to forego their traditional "best of breed" approach to outsourcing in favor of a pilot test of single sourcing. Thus, PFS managers bundled all activities related to procurement process re-engineering, vendor selection, Ariba software customization, system installation and maintenance into a single project. PFS managers narrowed candidates for the project down to two consulting firms (i.e. Excalibur and Merrimac) plus Infosys. A win for Infosys would enable it to not only grow its share of PFS business but also expand the scope of its market offerings. Successful completion of the project, in turn, would increase the likelihood that PFS would turn to Infosys for other end-to-end IT solutions.


Objective: To determine the role of variants in BRCA1 gene in breast cancer development, women of Pakistani origin, diagnosed with breast cancer, were screened for variants in the BRCA1. Methods: The present study involved screening of 5000 women for breast cancer. 302 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Using Sanger sequencing, DNA extracted from peripheral blood of 100 patients was screened for disease causing variants in the BRCA1. Results: Analysis of sequenced data revealed two frame shift (Gly312Trpfs*8, Ala322Glyfs*4), six missense (p.Glu362Lys, p.Lys651Arg, p.Asp693Asn, p.Pro871Leu, p.Glu1134Lys, p.Lys1183Arg), four synonymous (p.Thr327Thr, p.Ser694Ser, p.His771His, p.Gln1135Gln), and two intronic variants (g.75407T>C, g.75401_75401delT) in the patients. Conclusion: The present investigation showed that variations in BRCA1 made substantial contribution in causing hereditary/early-onset breast cancer in Pakistani women.


Objectives: Coping with patient death among pediatric liver transplant teams has received little attention despite general recognition of the potentially negative emotional consequences associated with such loss. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which members of pediatric liver transplant teams cope with the death of patients on the waitlist and post-transplant and the institutional resources available to facilitate this coping. Methods: Participants included 120 physicians, nurses, and mental health professionals from multiple transplant centers across the United States. Participants completed an online questionnaire that assessed the availability of formal coping resources at their institutions, informal sources of support used to cope with patient death, and as indices of coping, bereavement, and emotional exhaustion symptoms experienced. Results: Debriefing, the most commonly offered support, was available to about half (55.8%) of the sample; yet, nearly all respondents (98.3%) indicated that debriefing would be useful. On average, bereavement and emotional exhaustion levels were comparable to normative data, but patterns of coping varied based on participants' position within the transplant team. For participants who reported that debriefing was available at their institutions, emotional exhaustion was lower. Conclusions: Overall, formal supports were inconsistently offered to pediatric transplant team members. Team members expressed high acceptability for debriefing, which has been associated with benefits in other populations, and findings indicated better coping in the transplant setting when it was offered.


This dissertation focused on quantity-space mapping as a building block of numerical cognition. The aim was twofold: (1) to explore the early onset and development of quantity-space mapping, and (2) to analyze the relation between quantity-space mapping and numerical cognition. Quantity-space mapping refers to the ability to associate quantities or symbolic numbers with space. Two types of quantity-space mapping were studied in this dissertation: (1) associations between ordinalities and spatial directions, as measured by block counting, adding and subtracting, and (2) associations between quantities and spatial intervals, as measured by number line estimation. Chapter 2 reported on a study on the role of hand use in mapping ordinalities to spatial directions in 3.5-year-old children. It was found that the majority of the children mapped numbers to space from right to left in the counting task, and from left to right in the adding and subtracting tasks. The change in mapping direction across tasks can be explained by physical interaction between the body and the task: the starting point of block counting, adding and subtracting direction was related to the hand used to perform the task. Chapter 3 reported on a study on ordering strategies in mapping quantities to spatial intervals in 3.5- and 5-year-old children. It was found that performance on a non-symbolic number line estimation task builds on two types of ordering strategies: local ordering and global ordering. Local ordering refers to ordering of successively presented quantities and global ordering refers to the ordering of all quantities across the number line. In Chapter 4 it was found that the early development of mapping quantities to spatial intervals acts as a building block for the development of later (early) math skills. Mapping quantities to spatial intervals at age 3.5 years was related to mapping symbolic numerical to spatial intervals and counting skills at 5 years. In contrast, quantity comparison and enumerating skills at 3.5 years could not predict early math skills at 5 years. Chapter 5 showed that mapping quantities to spatial intervals is also related to mathematical difficulties. It was found that children with mathematical difficulties are less accurate and use different reference points in symbolic number line estimation than children without mathematical difficulties. This suggests that children with mathematical difficulties have problems with dynamic spatial processing of symbolic numbers; they are not able to use accurate spatial reference points for estimation. Together, the results of this dissertation suggest that quantity-space mapping is influenced by an interplay of situated, embodied and cultural/educational processes. The development of later numerical cognition builds on this early development of quantity-space mapping.


A multidisciplinary approach has been used for the first time to study the widespread occurrence of hydrocarbon seeps in the northern Adriatic Sea. Geological, geophysical and geochemical analyses were performed to identify and characterize the gas-charged fluids occurring throughout the Plio-Quaternary succession, and to date the shallow gas seeping at three leakage sites. The analysis of CHIRP, morpho-bathymetric and multichannel seismic data allowed us toidentify different types of gas-related features, which occur within the whole Plio-Quaternary succession up to the seafloor and to the water column. Quantitative analyses of CHIRP data were conducted to better define, characterize and quantify the gas occurrence within the uppermost stratigraphic succession. CHIRP data also allowed the identification of the gas leakage sites. Three gas seepage areas were sampled with the aim to determine the gas composition and origin.The isotopic analyses revealed that seep gases are microbial in origin, and are primarily composed of methane, mostly formed within relatively laterally persistent Late Pleistocene peat layers, which are widely distributed throughout the northern Adriatic Sea and represent the main source of organic matter feeding the seeping gases.


The wave-envelope (WE) method is a technique that has been applied to acoustic problems to model the unbounded domain surrounding an acoustic source. Here it is applied to electromagnetic wave problems. A key feature of the method is that it uses a change of dependent variable to remove the wave-like qualities of the solution and thereby permits the use of arbitrarily large elements in the exterior domain. This makes it possible to apply to wave problems some of the techniques developed for magnetostatics, such as transformation methods. These methods map the very large exterior domain into a smaller region which is more easily meshed. The combined wave-envelope transformation method is applied to two time-harmonic electromagnetic wave problems: radiation of a single cylindrical wave function; and scattering of an incident plane wave by a perfectly-conducting circular cylinder. In both cases the near-zone electric field is compared to the exact solution, for a range of frequencies.


Geometrical characteristics of obstacles on the ground, which determine the roughness of the terrain, cause the air flow turbulence. The friction level of air flow on the surface depends on the height and density of the location of obstacles, which determines the magnitude and direction of the load on a corresponding specific object. Any obstacle located in the way of the turbulent flow experiences a corresponding wind load. In the given study we have considered a multi-span one-storey industrial building as an obstacle. In order to estimate the load on the object of study caused by the wind, we decomposed the corresponding load into two components: middle and fluctuating. The first one shows the static wind load characteristics estimated according to the territorial division into districts of the Russian Federation, where the areas of calculated values of wind pressure are exhibited. Their distribution is the result of the implementation of the probabilistic model presented in the form of non-stationary random field of wind flow speeds. In order to obtain calculated values and automated processing of the value of wind load on the surface of an industrial building under blow the profiles of wind flow velocities at different heights were approximated. The resulting functional dependency on the heights is of a distinct power character. In order to describe the dynamic parameters of the process, presented in the form of the fluctuating component of wind load and the resulting reactions of structural elements of the building, we considered the random functions according to the time parameter. They represent the energy spectrum of the proportion of the wind flow power, attributable to an infinitesimal frequency band. The set of reciprocal spectral densities when selecting the points in space, each of which determines the correlation degree between the states of a random process, has allowed establishing the magnitude of the correlation coefficient of wind pressure pulsations to the entire surface of the building. When studying wind load impact on the operation of an industrial building framework, the corresponding response elements of the system are defined separately from the effects of the average and the sum of pulsation components. The combined effect which corresponds to the most unfavorable load value is achieved in case of coincidence of their signs. The present approach to the assessment of the forces caused by wind and the response to them on the part of the object became the basis of the calculation methodology as one of the components of the generalized load on the object of study.


Laser microdissection is a combined microscopic-separation technique enabling to extract the samples of interest from histological slides - single cells, organs and tissues. The isolated samples can be further analysed and various parameters determined. The adoption of mass spectrometry analysis could give us the detail information about the sample composition and relative quantity of particular components (e.g. protein molecules) can be calculated too. Moreover, this technology enables the fast determination of distribution of selected molecule within the studied biological object. Thus, we can avoid the time-consuming preparation of specific antibodies in laboratory animals, which are widely used for protein tissue localization. In our current research, we used Eudiplozoon nipponicum, ectoparasitic blood-feeder from gills of Cyprinus carpio with aim to reveal the protein composition of its tegument region, gut and inner parenchyma. So far, we have identified 405 unique proteins in inner parenchyma/gut and 131 unique proteins in tegument. Among them, some already described functional molecules have been found.


What can we expect in old age, assuming we are lucky enough to make it that far? We may hope for physical and mental well being, independence, fun, dignity, and a peaceful death, but what are the prospects? Based on current trends, it's hard to say. There will be more of us, with proportionately fewer younger people to finance our longer lives. The expansion of private provision in health care (p 1172) raises fears that the old and chronically ill will be increasingly poorly served. And yet recent reports and initiatives suggest that new targets are improving outcomes and changing attitudes. Jacqueline Morris and colleagues give a cautious welcome to the latest report on the standards of health, treatment, and social care of older people in England (the National Service Framework (NSF)), but they think good care is still too patchy in the NHS (p 1166). Too many elderly people in hospitals suffer routine indignities, such as having to use commodes in mixed sex wards behind wholly inadequate curtains. Too often old people become, in Colin Douglas' words, "souls in cages" (p 1221). "In the rush and glamour of acute care, in the busy system that is designed to cure and doesn't like to lose, there are priorities that may take insufficient account of the worse-than-death outcome that so many of us dread." And we have clearly lost the plot when elderly people in long term care are asked to order their meals as much as two weeks in advance. Kristel Nijs and colleagues compared these long range forecast meals served on a tray at the bedside with more sociable meals, sitting at a table with a choice of foods and members of staff to talk to and provide help (p 1180). Their randomised trial found significant improvements in quality of life, health, and body weight. Anne Milne and colleagues highlight limitations in the study but confirm the need to tackle social factors such as isolation that can contribute to the "anorexia of ageing" (p 1165). Both the NSF report and our editorial (p 1166) acknowledge that real transformation won't be achieved by simplistic targets. But targets can bring better priorities. Diana Jelley questions even that (p 1221). By the time her 90 year old patient died her care fell short of many of the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) targets against which GPs are paid. But, says Jelley, other things, such as continuity of care from a practice where everyone knew her, were highly valued but are harder to measure. She says these aspects of care may suffer in the new patient led NHS, where priorities are set by middle aged, middle class people living in middle England. As someone once told me, old age is not for wimps. We can hope things will be OK when our time comes. Or we can work towards better attitudes, provision, and priorities for elderly people now. Call it enlightened self interest, or just the right values for a civilised society.


Food classification from images is a fine-grained classification problem. Manual curation of food images is cost, time and scalability prohibitive. On the other hand, web data is available freely but contains noise. In this paper, we address the problem of classifying food images with minimal data curation. We also tackle a key problems with food images from the web where they often have multiple cooccuring food types but are weakly labeled with a single label. We first demonstrate that by sequentially adding a few manually curated samples to a larger uncurated dataset from two web sources, the top-1 classification accuracy increases from 50.3% to 72.8%. To tackle the issue of weak labels, we augment the deep model with Weakly Supervised learning (WSL) that results in an increase in performance to 76.2%. Finally, we show some qualitative results to provide insights into the performance improvements using the proposed ideas.


The Immigrant Access to Health and Human Services project describes the legal and policy contexts that govern and affect immigrant access to health and human services. The study aims to identify and describe federal, state, and local program eligibility provisions related to immigrants, major barriers to immigrants? access to health and human services for which they are legally eligible, and innovative or promising practices that can help states manage their programs. This brief describes promising practices from four states (Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Texas) for overcoming immigrants? barriers to accessing health and human services.


Algorithm configuration tools have been successfully used to speed up local search satisfiability (SAT) solvers and other search algorithms by orders of magnitude. In this paper, we show that such tools are also very useful for generating hard SAT formulas with a planted solution, which is useful for benchmarking SAT solving algorithms and also has cryptographic applications. Our experiments with state-of-the-art local search SAT solvers show that by using this approach we can randomly generate satisfiable formulas that are considerably harder than uniform random formulas of the same size from the phase-transition region or formulas generated by state-of-the-art approaches. Additionally, we show how to generate small satisfiable formulas that are hard to solve by CDCL solvers.


The mixing-induced CP asymmetries in $B_d \to J/\psi K_S$ and $B_s \to J/\psi \phi$ are essential to detect or constrain new physics in the $B_d\! - \overline{\!B}{}_d$ and $B_s\! - \overline{\!B}{}_s$ mixing amplitudes, respectively. To this end one must control the penguin contributions to the decay amplitudes, which affect the extraction of fundamental CP phases from the measured CP asymmetries. Although the "penguin pollution" is doubly Cabibbo-suppressed, it could compete in size with current experimental errors. In this talk I present a calculation of the penguin contributions treating QCD effects with soft-collinear factorisation and compare method and results with the alternative approach employing flavour-SU(3) symmetry. As a novel feature, I present results for the penguin pollution in $b\to c\overline c d$ modes.


The decomposition and coordination of decisions in the design of complex engineering systems is a great challenge. Companies who design these systems routinely allocate design responsibility of the various subsystems and components to different people, teams or even suppliers. The mechanisms behind this network of decentralized design decisions create difficult management and coordination issues. However, developing efficient design processes is paramount, especially with market pressures and customer expectations. Standard techniques to modeling and solving decentralized design problems typically fail to understand the underlying dynamics of the decentralized processes and therefore result in suboptimal solutions. This paper aims to model and understand the mechanisms and dynamics behind a decentralized set of decisions within a complex design process. By using concepts from the fields of mathematics and economics, including Game Theory and the Cobweb Model, we model a simple decentralized design problem and provide efficient solutions. This new approach uses numerical series and linear algebra as tools to determine conditions for convergence of such decentralized design problems. The goal of this paper is to establish the first steps towards understanding the mechanisms of decentralized decision processes. This includes two major steps: studying the convergence characteristics, and finding the final equilibrium solution of a decentralized problem. Illustrations of the developments are provided in the form of two decentralized design problems with different underlying behavior.Copyright © 2003 by ASME


'An exciting story that transports the reader to another time and place...Anyone interested in American Indian history, culture, religion, and literature should read this informative volume that was produced at such great cost. Mourning Dove literally gave her life to do this work, and Jay Miller has painstakingly edited it to share the words and wisdom of Humishuma with the non-Salish world' - "American Indian Culture and Research Journal". '"Mourning Dove's" evocation of the complexities of tribal life is irresistible, full of acutely remembered conversations, ceremonies, and events' - "Library Journal". 'The accounts of guardian spirit quest, of seeking medicinal power, of winter dancing, seancind rite, and the sweatlodge unite cultural knowledge and personal experience in a compelling way. The perspective on history through the experience of her family is immensely valuable as well' - Dell Hymes, "Canadian Journal of Native Studies".'This autobiography artfully weaves tribal history, Salishan traditions, and a wealth of information of the female life cycle with the story of Christine Quintasket's own childhood and coming of age on the Colville Reservation in Washington. "Mourning Dove" is a rare and important study of the Interior Salish people during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Miller, by providing thoughtful editing and constructive footnotes, have given new life to "Mourning Dove's" narrative' - "Western Historical Quarterly".Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, a member of the Colville Federated Tribes of eastern Washington State. She was the author of "Cogewea", "The Half-Blood" (one of the first novels to be published by a Native American woman) and "Coyote Stories", both reprinted as Bison Books. Jay Miller, formerly assistant director and editor at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, Newberry Library, Chicago, now is an independent scholar and writer in Seattle. He is the compiler of "Earthmaker: Tribal Stories from Native North America".


The definition of correlates of protection is critical for the development of next-generation SARS-CoV-2 vaccine platforms. Here, we propose a model-based approach for identifying mechanistic correlates of protection based on mathematical modelling of viral dynamics and data mining of immunological markers. The application to three different studies in non-human primates evaluating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines based on CD40-targeting, two-component spike nanoparticle and mRNA 1273 identifies and quantifies two main mechanisms that are a decrease of rate of cell infection and an increase in clearance of infected cells. Inhibition of RBD binding to ACE2 appears to be a robust mechanistic correlate of protection across the three vaccine platforms although not capturing the whole biological vaccine effect. The model shows that RBD/ACE2 binding inhibition represents a strong mechanism of protection which required significant reduction in blocking potency to effectively compromise the control of viral replication.


Increased plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) levels are a known risk factor for vascular disease and have been reported in association with cognitive impairment of old age. Alternatively, however, increased tHcy levels may simply be an indicator of B vitamin deficiency. We evaluated the relationship between plasma tHcy levels, serum vitamin B12 and folate levels, and the scores at a battery of neuropsychological tests in 54 healthy cognitively normal subjects aged 65 years and over. Hyperhomocysteinemia prevalence (plasma tHcy>15 micromol/L) was about 24%. In univariate analysis, vitamin B12 levels were associated with both verbal memory and visuo-spatial skills, whereas no association was found between psychometric test scores and folate levels or tHcy levels. However, none of the univariate associations of neuropsychological test scores and serum B12 vitamin levels was confirmed when adjusting for age, education and other confounding variables. In conclusion, although a relationship between homocysteine, B vitamins and poor cognitive skills in the elderly is plausible, this study does not suggests that such relationship is biologically important.


ABSTRACT We have reported that the papillomavirus E2 protein binds the nuclear factor AMF1 (also called G-protein pathway suppressor 2 or GPS2) and that their interaction is necessary for transcriptional activation by E2. It has also been shown that AMF1 can influence the activity of cellular transcription factors. These observations led us to test whether AMF1 regulates the functions of p53, a critical transcriptional activator that integrates stress signals and regulates cell cycle and programmed cell death. We report that AMF1 associates with p53 in vivo and in vitro and facilitates the p53 response by augmenting p53-dependent transcription. Overexpression of AMF1 in U2OS cells increases basal level p21WAF1/CIP1 expression and causes a G1 arrest. U2OS cells stably overexpressing AMF1 show increased apoptosis upon exposure to UV irradiation. These data demonstrate that AMF1 modulates p53 activities.


This paper discusses the design and analysis of an experiment performed in a continuous process (CP). A full factorial design with replicates is used to test three types of pellets on two levels of a process variable in an experimental blast furnace process. Issues and considerations concerning the experimental design and analysis are discussed. For example, an adaptive experimental design is used. We propose a multivariate approach to the analysis of the experiment, in form of principal component analysis combined with analysis of variance. The factorial design in CPs is found to have a promising potential. However, CPs also demand special considerations when planning, performing and analyzing experiments, and therefore further development of experimental strategies and connected methods of analysis for CPs is needed.


We report a case of a 61-year-old male patient who presented with reduced exercise capacity, dyspnea, lower limbs oedema,irregular heart rhythm, loud, irregular snoring, history of poorly controlled hypertension, nocturnal hypertension spikes, andmorning headaches. Patient underwent ECG Holter monitoring and polygraphy, which revealed severe obstructive sleepapnea. In ECG Holter monitoring atrial fibrillation with pauses to 6.5 s were observed. Patient was referred for continuouspositive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. Three-months of CPAP therapy resulted in significant decrease in apnea-hypopneaindex (31.6/h vs. 5.1/h) and better control of hypertension and heart failure. CPAP treatment allowed us to reduce patient's cardiovascular risk. Cardiologist should routinely screen and evaluate patients for sleep disordered breathing, especially when patients are obese, have hypertension and/or arrhythmias.


Over the past 25 years animal retroviruses have been favoured subjects of research by virologists, oncologists, and molecular biologists. Retroviruses have given us reverse transcriptase, oncogenes, and cloning vectors that may one day be exploited for human gene therapy. They have also given us leukaemia and the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Kawasaki disease and tropical spastic paraparesis are thought to be associated with retrovirus infection, and other diseases such as de Quervain's thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, acquired hypogammaglobulinaemia, and certain forms of non-A, non-B hepatitis have come under passing suspicion of a retroviral aetiology. With AIDS threatening to become pandemic, and a second AIDS virus appearing in West Africa, human retroviruses are under intensive study for new antiviral drugs targeted to their unique mode of replication, and for the development of vaccines.


Based on the combined toughening principle, pure Al2O3/AlB12/Al composite ceramic powders have been synthesized using a new laser-induction complex heating method. This method starts from Al and B2O3 powder mixtures, after which Al2O3/AlB12/AlN composite ceramics were fabricated by hot-press sintering at 1600°C for 2h under the protection of a N2 atmosphere. XRD and SEM techniques were used to characterize the phases and morphologies of the powders and the ceramics. The bending strength and the fracture toughness of the ceramics were measured by the three-point bending method and the indentation fracture method, respectively. The results show that the pure Al2O3/AlB12/Al composite ceramic powders can be successfully synthesized by this new laser-induction complex heating method because the adiabatic temperature of Al-B2O3 system is more than 1800K. Al2O3 and AlB12 phases were formed by the liquid-liquid reaction mechanism and the liquid-solid reaction mechanism, respectively. The bending strength and the fracture toughness of the Al2O3/AlB12/AlN composite ceramics were 551.44MPa and 6.04MPa.m1/2, respectively. These values are 57.55% and 51% greater than those of the pure Al2O3 ceramic (350MPa and 4MPa.m1/2) due to the reinforcing and toughening in-situ formation of small AlN particles.


This paper presents ComDeX, a context-aware federated architecture and IoT platform for enabling data exchange between IoT-enhanced communities. Today, such smart communities are highly heterogeneous and siloed as they can offer IoT applications and services only to their local community inhabitants. ComDeX uses property graphs to represent smart community entities and automatically maps them to context-aware publish/subscribe messages. Such messages can be discovered and exchanged between communities via a hierarchical federated topology and an advertisement-based mechanism. The ComDeX prototype is implemented using well-known IoT technologies such as MQTT and NGSI-LD. ComDeX is evaluated using a realistic smart port scenario and compared against different federation topologies. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms existing NGSI-LD solutions in realistic IoT scenarios with synthetically generated workloads, with low impact in larger deployments where the number of hops between brokers of the federation increases.


The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) is an international organisation that brings together 27 mining and metal companies and over 30 regional and commodities associations to strengthen environmental and social performance and enhance mining's contribution to society.
The Integrated Mine Closure: Good Practice Guide (2019a) presents a major update to ICMM's Planning for Integrated Mine Closure: Toolkit (2008). The guide is intended to support the goal of ICMM members, other responsible mining companies, and regulators in delivering a positive legacy while balancing environmental protection and social wellbeing with financial performance.
The document provides mining companies with guidance intended to promote a disciplined approach to integrated closure planning and to increase the uniformity of good practices across the sector. Like the earlier version, guidance is provided on the key aspects of mine closure focused on an iterative process, from the earliest stages of knowledge gathering, engagement and planning. The updated guide reflects modern leading practice, with additional emphasis on the importance of social transitioning, progressive closure, and strategies for relinquishment and closure governance. The guide also includes a range of tools that can be utilised in formulating well-considered decisions when planning and executing closure.
Successful integrated mine closure utilises a dynamic and iterative process that takes into account environmental, social and economic considerations at an early stage of mine development and runs through to closure.
Fundamental to this process is the need to consider closure as an integral part of the mine operations' core business. The structure of the guide reflects this process, providing good practice guidance in delivering key elements of mine closure planning and implementation.
This paper provides an overview of how the guide was developed and its contents. The guide was developed over an 18-month period by the ICMM Closure Working Group, which is made up of mine closure practitioners from leading global mining companies. As the guide was developed, further input and review was contributed by industry specialists, academia, and government representatives.


The intent of the following project is to highlight information about the stress response, resilience, and executive function development and to apply it to first-year postsecondary student populations in a workshop format. The first part of the project presents three comprehensive literature reviews of academic research available on these subjects. The second part offers a workshop guide broken down into four detailed lesson plans for potential facilitators to carry out four 50-minute workshops. These workshops are intended to be psychoeducational and address the information presented in the report. The workshops may be presented individually or as a series to enable appropriate application to students. The focus of this project is to address the significance of the unique stressors experienced by first-year students with the aim of promoting resilience by developing executive function abilities. The proposed workshop may be instrumental in assisting students to develop these abilities, which may reduce student attrition rates and assist students in accomplishing goals and responding resiliently to stress during their postsecondary education and throughout their lives.


Antepartum occiput posterior position was compared with other fetal head positions. The time to delivery was tested in a Cox regression analysis with ultrasound measurements, parity, maternal age, BMI, gestational age, birth weight and head circumference as possible predictive factors. Results: 85% of fetuses with antepartum occiput posterior rotated to anterior position, but six of ten with occiput posterior position at delivery was in occiput posterior before start of labor. Only multiparity was a statistically significantly contributing factor for prediction of the time from PROM to delivery. There were no significant correlations between head position before the start of labor and inductions of labor, use of epidural analgesia, augmentation with oxytocin, operative deliveries, perineal tears, Apgar scores, pH or base excess in the umbilical artery. Conclusion: Most fetuses with the fetal head in occiput posterior position after PROM rotated to anterior position during labor, and the results of the transabdominal ultrasound examination did not predict duration of labor or labor complications.


OF DISSERTATION HOW UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT HEADS HAVE ENCOUNTERED AND OVERCOME ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES IN STUDENT PERSISTENCE: AN APPLICATION OF CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE In the United States, the average attrition rate from freshmen to sophomore year for a 4-year university is 21.7%. After freshmen year, the dropout rate raises to 41% before graduation (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2014). As an administrative appointment, the department head is in a unique position to work with the university and college-level executives to lead faculty in better student persistence efforts. However scholarly inquiry on the relation of student persistence and department heads is lacking. Gmelch (2004) says "academic leaders may be the least studied and most misunderstood management position in the world" (p. 74). The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the university department head position in relation to student persistence. A secondary purpose is to understand how each department head is able to adapt, or is currently adapting, to the challenges they identify. By identifying and learning from such challenges, this research will contribute to more intentional efforts for higher education leaders when dealing with student persistence. A group of 20 department heads across multiple fields underwent an open-ended interview, resulting in 138 incidents of student persistence challenges and outcomes. The department heads were drawn from three universities and worked within one of five undergraduate colleges. This research uses Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to identify individual occurrences of department heads leading undergraduate student persistence efforts. The results are conceptualized through the lens of Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT), where the complex nature of a department head's role is related to the student persistence efforts.


One of a firm's major financial decisions that lies in the hands of the board of directors is dividend policy which has long been linked to the firm's profitability and performance. From the shareholders' viewpoint, profitability does not necessarily add value to their wealth unless and until it translates into dividend payment and price appreciation.Therefore, how corporate governance via board structure influences the use of free cash flow and how  this interaction affects dividend payment are crucial. This study examined the interaction effects of firm's characteristics such as board structure and free cash flow on divided per share as a proxy of firm's performance.  The fixed effect regression with a sample of 361 non-financial Malaysian listed firms over the period of 2002 to 2007 were employed in the analysis. The interaction between board structure, independent directors ,  board size and free cash flow revealed that duality weakens the positive effect of free cash flow on dividend, while independent directors strengthen the positive effect of free cash flow on dividend payment. Overall, the results of this study may be surmised to suggest that large number of independent directors in the board of directors benefits the firms in the use of free cash flow, leading to an increase in distributable income to shareholders; but the existence of duality role does not benefit firms in the use of free cash flow, leading to a decrease in distributable income to shareholders. However, board size does not have an effect on the use of free cash flow and performance. Keywords: board structure, dividend policy, free cash flow, Malaysian listed firms, performance, profitability


The network information system is a military
information network system with evolution characteristics. Evolution is a
process of replacement between disorder and order, chaos and equilibrium. Given
that the concept of evolution originates from biological systems, in this
article, the evolution of network information architecture is analyzed by
genetic algorithms, and the network information architecture is represented by
chromosomes. Besides, the genetic algorithm is also applied to find the optimal
chromosome in the architecture space. The evolutionary simulation is used to
predict the optimal scheme of the network information architecture and provide
a reference for system construction.


Background & Aims No specific microbiome in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been reported to date. Our aim was to compare gut microbiome found in cirrhotic patients with and without HCC. Methods From 407 patients with Child Pugh A/B cirrhosis prospectively followed, 25 with HCC (cases) were matched with 25 without HCC (wo-HCC) in a 1:1 ratio according to age, gender, etiology, Child Pugh and severity of portal hypertension. In addition 25 healthy subjects were also compared. Faecal stool samples were collected noninvasively, aliquoted for DNA extraction and sequenced for the V3-V4 region of the microbial 16S rRNA (Illumina MiSeq Platform). Results Cases and control's baseline characteristics were: age 64 ± 8 years, 88% males, body mass index (BMI) 28 ± 4 kg/m2, hepatitis C virus infection 26%, Child Pugh A/B 74% and 26%, respectively. Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer stages in HCC patients were 0 (n=2), A (n=12), B (n=5) and C (n=6). A significant different microbiome was observed in HCC cases vs controls. Patients with HCC had lower quantities of genus Prevotella, Fusobacterium and family Leuconostocaccaceae among others and an elevated proportion of genus Bifidobacterium, Eggerthella, Haemophilus, family Erysipelotrichaceae and phylum Tenericutes when compared to controls without HCC. This pattern has been associated with an inflammatory milieu with a putative increased activation of NOD-like receptor signalling pathways. Conclusions A different pattern of microbiome in cirrhotic patients with HCC was observed. This pattern previously linked to inflammation, should be further explored as a novel risk factor for HCC development.


• Harvest of Primera (main season) maize and beans completed in September across Central America. • While national production was generally average across the region, with exception of Honduras, due to an increase in area planted, final yields were reduced due to irregular weather conditions during the start of the season including high temperatures, below-average and irregular rainfall, and extended dry spells, which resulted in severe soil moisture deficits. • In particular, subsistence and some larger-scale farmers along the Dry Corridor of Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua without access to irrigation systems or riverine areas experienced significant crop losses ranging from 50 to 75 percent. • This is the second consecutive year of poor and failure Primera season harvests across the Dry Corridor, after the severe drought of 2018, and food security is of increasing concern for subsistence farmers. • Postrera (second maize season) planting, was delayed in some regions with rainfall deficits during late-August and was resumed in mid-September with increased rainfall amounts.


There is a controversy: while information literacy (IL) has been recognized to have a central role in operating efficiently in the information society, previous studies have noted that in the European political agenda, the actual wording of IL is rarely used. This study pays a close visit to 15 Estonian information policy–related national strategic documents from 1998 to 2014 to understand the emerging role of IL in these documents. Qualitative text analysis and critical discourse analysis are employed to analyse both explicit representations and implicit conceptualizations of IL, linked to social determinants, ideologies, and effects from the dominating discourse. Considering the differ-ent "faces" of IL (Bruce, 1997), one can see that while the dominant approach to IL is technologically oriented, few other concepts of IL can be detected. Discursively, the information society is defined through economic and technological fields, on the wave of technological determinism and neoliberal-ism, with some social equality.


Offset curves have diverse engineering applications, spurring extensive research on various offset techniques. In a paper on offset curve approximation (Lee et al., 1996), we suggested a new approach based on approximating the offset circle instead of the offset curve itself. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, we compared it extensively with previous methods. To our surprise, Tiller and Hanson's (1984) simple method outperforms other methods for offsetting (piecewise) quadratic curves, even though its performance is not as good for high degree curves. The experimental results revealed other interesting facts, too. Had these details been reported several years ago, we believe offset approximation research might have developed somewhat differently. This article is intended to fill an important gap in the literature. We conducted qualitative as well as quantitative comparisons employing various contemporary offset approximation methods for freeform curves in the plane. We measured the efficiency of the offset approximation in terms of the number of control points generated while making the approximations within a prescribed tolerance.


Three dimensional finite element model of roller and sheet rolling process was first built according to roller and flattening sheet rolling wear characteristics by using ANSYS/LS-DYNA software. Total 10 rolling models including 1 smooth surface and 9 non-smooth surfaces were established to compare with wear resistance characteristics difference. Simulation results showed that comparing with smooth surface roll sample, the non-smooth roller surface with concaves possessed had higher Von Mises stress value with non-uniform fluctuation at mean value in favor of enforcing rolling sheet fluidity. On the other hand, some air concentrated on concave circumjacent area will low adhesion wear appearance between plate and roller. Thirdly, Concave on the roller surface was also able to protect from sliding at friction interfaces. It was these factors above that were in favor of improving wear resistance capability of the rollers. The result of the model tests and the simulation are identical.


Precedence tests are simple yet useful nonparametric tests based on two specified order statistics from independent random samples or, equivalently, on the count of the number of observations from one of the samples preceding some order statistic of the other sample. The probability that an order statistic from the second sample exceeds an order statistic from the first sample is termed the precedence probability. When the distributions are the same, this probability can be calculated exactly, without any specific knowledge of the underlying common continuous distribution. This fact can be utilized to set up nonparametric prediction intervals in a number of situations. In this paper, prediction intervals are considered for the number of second sample observations that exceed a particular order statistic of the first sample. To aid the user, tables are provided for small sample sizes, where exact calculations are most necessary. The same tables can be used to implement a precedence test for small sample sizes. Finally, a combinatorial identity is proved. Keywords: Distribution-free; Extremes; Exceedance and Precedence; Nonparametric; Order statistics.


Purpose: This article is dedicated to introduce an Automatic Trocar for LAparoscopic Surgery (ATLAS). The first step in laparoscopic surgery is the port insertion which is known as the most important and potentially dangerous step. An inaccurate Veress needle placement or uncontrolled overshoot of a sharp, blind trocar toward the viscera are the common causes of an unsuccessful procedure. Therefore, a mechatronic device was designed and developed to overcome the shortcomings of the current port insertion techniques. Methods: The system incorporates an automatic insertion apparatus and an automatic stop mechanism to halt the procedure upon reaching the abdominal cavity. A motor was provided to pass the needle through the abdominal layers and a pressure sensor was provided to detect reaching peritoneum and stop the entry mechanism. Results: The system was tested on an anesthetized canine. ATLAS system stopped upon reaching its peritoneum and avoided injury to intra-abdominal organs. Subsequently, the position of the needle tip was evaluated using another endoscope. Conclusion : The animal test of the system was promising and showed the potential of this system and its improved version in laparoscopic surgeries.


In as much as entrepreneurial action fosters job creation and economic growth, entrepreneurs encounter the significant risk of failure, and community bears the brunt. Though business incubators were designed to provide support and hope to ailing businesses, evidence suggests that not all on these programs succeed. Going on the assumption that even businesses on incubation programs do not seem to be immune to failure, this study sought to determine the key factors that hinder the growth of incubatees in South Africa. Adopting a quantitative approach, the questionnaire was utilized as the primary data collection tool, and the snowball sampling method was employed resulting in a sample size of 93 respondents. The research participants for this study were limited to firms that were registered on the databases of two business incubators who promote small business development strategy and programs in Cape Town and Johannesburg, respectively. The findings indicated that lack of funding, lack of credit facility, competition, crime, lack of access to external market, lack of business skills and lack of product selection and design were the key factors that hinder the growth of incubatees. Given the substantial resources invested in business incubation programs, the fact that business incubators are entrepreneurial ventures in themselves, understanding and finding sustainable solutions to the factors that hinder the growth of their clients (incubatees) would be a win-win solution for the relevant stakeholders.


This paper presents a model for identifying general goals of anonymous consumers visiting a retail website. When visiting a transactional website, consumers have various goals such as browsing or purchasing a particular product during their current visit. By predicting these goals early in the visit, online merchants could personalise their offer to better fulfil the needs of consumers. Most visitors remain anonymous to the website, however personalisation systems require demographic and transaction history data which is available only for registered and logged-on users. We propose a simple model which enables classifying anonymous visitors according to their goals after only a few clicks. The model is based solely on navigational patterns which can be automatically extracted from clickstream. Theoretical and managerial implications are presented.


Hyperosmolarity has been used as a means to improve yields in various processes such as antibody production in hybridoma cells and retroviral and adenoviral production systems. In this study we demonstrate that treatment of AAVpro 293T packaging cells with the sugars sucrose or sorbitol during adeno-associated virus (AAV) production improves the yields of AAV2 and rAAV2-retro serotypes 1.8-fold and 1.5-fold, respectively. Using an iodixanol gradient centrifugation strategy followed by a column-based buffer exchange, we show that the sugar supplements are not carried over to the final viral preparation and have no effect on the purity or infectivity of the virus. Given the wide availability, low cost, and ease of use of these sugars, we believe that this strategy can be easily adopted by vector cores and laboratories to improve yields of their AAV preparations.


Recently, we reported that a chimeric capsid protein assembled into a macromolecular container-like structure with capsid shell and the resulting siRNA/capsid nanocarrier complexes efficiently suppressed RFP gene expression in the cell culture system. To extend RNAi to the in vivo applications, we here demonstrated that the siRNA/capsid nanocarrier complexes could have tumor-specific targeting ability in vivo as well as the increased stability of siRNA during body circulation. When systemically administered, our siRNA/capsid nanocarrier complexes delivered siRNA to tumor tissues and efficiently suppressed RFP gene expression in tumor-bearing mice. The enhanced longevity of siRNA in vivo could be explained by shielding effect derived from the capsid shell, where the encapsulated siRNAs are protected from nucleases in plasma. The multivalent RGD peptides on shell surface, as a result of self-assembling of capsid protein subunits, showed efficient delivery of siRNA to the tumor tissues in vivo, due to the RGD-mediated binding to integrin receptors overexpressed on tumor cells. Moreover, the prolonged in vivo circulation time of our siRNA/capsid nanocarrier complexes increased the potential to serve as siRNA carriers for optimal in vivo RNAi. These results provide an alternative approach to systemically deliver siRNA to the tumor sites as well as to enhance the stability of siRNA in vivo. Therefore, our results revealed the promising potential of our capsid nanocarrier system as a therapeutic siRNA carrier for cancer treatment.


Previous studies have indicated that respiratory sound signals may contain information useful in the detection of lung diseases. In this study, measurement and recordings of respiratory sound signal segments were obtained in normal subjects (non-smokers) and smokers in both inspiration and expiration phases. By using the autoregressive (AR) method, it is possible to produce power spectra of respiratory sound signals in inspiration and expiration phases for smokers and non-smokers of each group. The selection of the AR model order of the respiratory sound signals is achieved using Akaike criterion. The AR model order of 9 is required for completely described respiration sound signal segments in inspiration and expiration phases for both groups. The power spectra in the smoker group show larger distinct peaks at lower frequencies as well as more harmonics in both inspiration and expiration phases compared to the power spectra of the non-smoker group. Another diagnostic indicator was derived from the relative position of poles of the AR model of respiratory sound signals. In all smokers it was found that the first, third and fourth poles were closer to a unit circle than those in non-smokers (P < 0.01). It seems that the use of these indicators may be useful as early diagnostic tool for lung diseases.


A uniform endometrium was recorded in 572/1055 polyp cases (54.2%). In those with a non-uniform endometrium, 136/483 (28.2%) had regular, and 41/483 (8.5%) irregular cystic areas and 183 (37.9%) had a heterogeneous endometrial echogenicity. Cystic areas were present in 254/480 (52.9%) polyps of postmenopausal as opposed to 29/575 (5%) in premenopausal patients. Flow was detectable in 890 cases (84%): 527 (59.2%) had a single dominant vessel without branching and 78 (8.8%) with branching, 55 (6.2%) cases had multiple dominant vessels of unifocal and multifocal origin in 23/55 and 32/55 respectively, and 29 (3.3%) of polyps presented with scattered vessels. Conclusions: Endometrial polyps are common in women without abnormal bleeding undergoing an ultrasound scan for reasons unrelated with bleeding problems. The majority had visible vascularisation on colour Doppler imaging.


Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine
how the slice thickness reconstruction influences quantitative perfusion CT
parameters. Materials and Methods: Eighteen patients with cancer (15 non-small-cell
lung cancer, 2 rectal cancer and 1 renal cancer) were examined prospectively
with multidetector row CT. A 90-second perfusion study was performed after
intravenous bolus injection of contrast material. Blood flow, blood volume,
mean transit time and permeability-surface area product were determined at
three different slice thickness reconstruction (1.25, 2.5 and 5 mms) both in
tumors and in paraspinal muscle. Mean values, limits of agreement between
measurements and within-subject coefficient of correlation were obtained for
these thicknesses. Results: Mean ± standard deviation BF, BV, MTT and PS in
lesions were 118.7 ± 117.9 mL/min/100g tissue, 8.2 ± 8.2 mL/100g tissue, 7.5 ±
5.4 seconds and 10.3 ± 7.2 mL/min/100g tissue respectively at1.25 mmslice thickness;
116.1 ± 115.7 mL/min/100g tissue, 7.8 ± 8.7 mL/100g tissue, 7 ± 4.5 seconds and
10.4 ± 7.5 mL/min/100g tissue at 2.5 mms; and 119.6 ± 115.7 mL/min/100g tissue,
7.8 ± 8.8 mL/100g tissue, 5.4 ± 3.4 seconds and 9.6 ± 7.5 mL/min/100g tissue at
5 mms. Differences between means for different slice thickness where relatively
small in all parameters (<15%) except in MTT where difference was up to 37%.
95% limits of agreement were worse when comparing more different slice
thicknesses (e.g. 1.25 vs 5 mms) than when comparing more close slice
thicknesses (1.25 vs 2.5 mms or 2.5 vs 5 mms). Conclusions: There is a
significant variability in perfusion parameter measurements at different slice
thickness reconstruction, particularly in MTT. The more close together the
slice thicknesses were, the smaller was the variability.


Most machine elements, such as gears and bearings, are operated in the mixed lubrication region. To evaluate lubrication performance for these tribological components, a contact model in mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication is presented. This model deals with the EHL problem in the very thin film region where the film is not thick enough to separate the asperity contact of rough surface. The macro contact area is then divided into the lubricated area and the micro asperity contact areas by the contacted rough surfaces. In the case when asperity to asperity contact is present, Reynolds equation is only valid in the lubricated areas. Asperity contact pressure is determined by the interaction of two mating surfaces. The applied load is carried out by the lubricant film and the contacted asperities. FFT techniques are utilized to calculate the surface displacement (forward problem) by convolution and the asperity contact pressure (inverse problem) by deconvolution for non-periodic surfaces. With the successful implementation of FFT and multigrid methods, the lubricated contact problem can be solved within hours on a PC for the grids as large as one million nodes. This capability enables us to simulate random rough surfaces in a dense mesh. The load ratio, contact area ratio and average gap are introduced to characterize the performance of mixed lubrication with asperity contacts. Discussions are given regarding the asperity orientation as well as the effect of rolling-sliding condition. Numerical results of real rough topography are illustrated with effects of velocity parameter on load ratio, contact ratio, and average gap.


The collaboration between the states and the DOE's Energy Storage Research Program is proving to be an outstanding success. The selected projects show a good portfolio of advanced energy storage media: a ZnBr flow battery, the NaS battery, supercapacitors, and flywheels. The applications are equally varied: mitigation of substation congestion, grid frequency control, load management, and stabilization of a microgrid. The goal of these partnerships with the states is to demonstrate electric energy storage as a technically viable, cost-effective, and broadly applicable option for increasing the reliability of the electricity system and for electric energy management.


Salmonella enterica serotype 4,[5],12,i:- (Typhimurium monophasic variant) of sequence type (ST) 34 has emerged as the predominant pandemic genotype in recent decades. Despite increasing reports of resistance to antimicrobials in Southeast Asia, Salmonella ST34 population structure and evolution remained understudied in the region. Here we performed detailed genomic investigations on 454 ST34 genomes collected from Vietnam and diverse geographical sources to elucidate the pathogen's epidemiology, evolution and antimicrobial resistance. We showed that ST34 has been introduced into Vietnam in at least nine occasions since 2000, forming five co-circulating major clones responsible for paediatric diarrhoea and bloodstream infection. Most expansion events were associated with acquisitions of large multidrug resistance plasmids of IncHI2 or IncA/C2. Particularly, the self-conjugative IncA/C2 pST34VN2 (co-transferring blaCTX-M-55, mcr-3.1, and qnrS1) underlies local expansion and intercontinental spread in two separate ST34 clones. At the global scale, Southeast Asia was identified as a hotspot for the emergence and dissemination of multidrug resistant Salmonella ST34, and mutation analysis suggests of selection in antimicrobial responses and key virulence factors. Our work enriches the understanding on epidemiology and evolution of this variant in Southeast Asia, and determines that multidrug resistance plasmids have driven its local and potentially global success.


The top accuracy of object detection to date is led by region-based approaches, where the per-region stage is responsible for recognizing proposals generated by the region proposal network. In that stage, sampling heuristics (e.g., OHEM, IoU-balanced sampling) is always applied to select a part of examples during training. But nowadays, existing samplers ignore the overlaps among examples, which may result in some low-quality predictions preserved. To mitigate the issue, we propose Overlap Sampler that selects examples according to the overlaps among examples, which enables the training to focus on the important examples. Benefitted from it, the Faster R-CNN could obtain impressively 1.5 points higher Average Precision (AP) on the challenging COCO benchmark, a state-of-the-art result among existing samplers for region-based detectors. Moreover, the proposed sampler also yields considerable improvements for the instance segmentation task. Our code is released at https://github.com/ChenJoya/overlap-sampler.


Automatically generating compilable programs with (or without) natural language descriptions has always been a touchstone problem for computational linguistics and automated software engineering. Existing deep-learning approaches model code generation as text generation, either constrained by grammar structures in decoder, or driven by pre-trained language models on large-scale code corpus (e.g., CodeGPT, PLBART, and CodeT5). However, few of them account for compilability of the generated programs. To improve compilability of the generated programs, this paper proposes COMPCODER, a three-stage pipeline utilizing compiler feedback for compilable code generation, including language model fine-tuning, compilability reinforcement, and compilability discrimination. Comprehensive experiments on two code generation tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach, improving the success rate of compilation from 44.18 to 89.18 in code completion on average and from 70.3 to 96.2 in text-to-code generation, respectively, when comparing with the state-of-the-art CodeGPT.


The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental flaws in the current system of medical innovation and access to medicines, which require urgent attention from the global community. This is prompted by the experience of the past decades, which has proven that this system was ineffective in securing adequate access to medicines for all. The understanding of the deficiencies of the existing system is crucial today, as it may help to design effective approaches for improving access. This article will also consider mechanisms that may be implemented by governments for the protection of public health. These include short-term mechanisms, such as compulsory licensing and government use, as well as the long-term design of a new innovation model, including state-coordinated research of medicines and open innovation. The current system should be reconsidered to ensure the prompt development of COVID-19 therapy accessible to everyone and full preparedness for the pandemics of the future.


Effective occupational health care at the workplace requires collaboration, partnerships and alliances with internal, interface and external stakeholders. Essential steps for solid work with various stakeholders are identification of key stakeholders, systematic analysis of their views and positions, and development of stakeholder participation and involvement. Stakeholder analysis aims to evaluate and understand stakeholders from the perspective of an organization. Stakeholder analysis starts with identifying and classifying the key stakeholders. After their identification, questions are asked about their position, interest, influence, inter-relations, networks and other characteristics of stakeholders, with reference to their past and present positions, and future potential. The results are presented as stakeholder maps as well as by the power-interest matrix of the stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis serves an organization and its various actors as a guideline in identifying, planning and implementing strategies for managing stakeholder relationships and utilizing the full potential of various stakeholders in developing occupational health care.