Metastases are the primary cause of death among cancer patients and efficacious new treatments are sorely needed. Targeted alpha-emitting radiopharmaceuticals that are highly cytotoxic may fulfill this critical need. The focus of this paper is to describe and explore a novel technology that may improve the therapeutic effect of targeted alpha therapy by combining two radionuclides from the same decay chain in the same solution. We hypothesize that the dual targeting solution containing bone-seeking 224Ra and cell-directed complexes of progeny 212Pb is a promising approach to treat metastatic cancers with bone and soft tissue lesions as well as skeletal metastases of mixed lytic/osteoblastic nature. A novel liquid 224Ra/212Pb-generator for rapid preparation of a dual targeting solution is described. Cancer cell targeting monoclonal antibodies, their fragments, synthetic proteins or peptides can all be radiolabeled with 212Pb in the 224Ra-solution in transient equilibrium with daughter nuclides. Thus, 224Ra targets stromal elements in sclerotic bone metastases and 212Pb-chelated-conjugate targets tumor cells of metastatic prostate cancer or osteosarcoma. The dual targeting solution may also be explored to treat metastatic breast cancer or multiple myeloma after manipulation of bone metastases to a more osteoblastic phenotype by the use of bisphosphonates, denosumab, bortezomib or hormone therapy prior to treatment. This may improve targeting of bone-seeking 224Ra and render an augmented radiation dose deposited within metastases. Our preliminary preclinical studies provide conceptual evidence that the dual 224Ra-solution with bone or tumor-targeted delivery of 212Pb has potential to inhibit cancer metastases without significant toxicity. In some settings, the use of a booster dose of purified 212Pb-conjugate alone could be required to elevate the effect of this tumor cell directed component, if needed, e.g., in a fractionated treatment regimen, where the dual targeting solution will act as maintenance treatment.


Anthopleurin-B (AP-B), a new polypeptide from sea anemone (Anthopleura xanthogrammica), markedly increased the amount of norepinephrine (NA) released from the guinea pig isolated vas deferens. The AP-B-induced release of NA was inhibited or abolished by pretreatment with reserpine and by guanethidine or procaine but remained almost unaffected by mecamylamine. D 600, nifedipine, diltiazem, Mn2+, and Mg2+ markedly inhibited the NA releasing action of AP-B. The AP-B-induced release of NA increased in a linear fashion with increasing Na+ concentrations (85-150 mM). Also the NA release by AP-B increased with an increase in the concentration of external Ca2+ from 0 to 0.8 mM but decreased with an increase in the Ca2+ concentration from 0.8 to 2.0 mM. These results suggest that AP-B increases the permeability across the nerve cell membrane to both Na+ and Ca2+ and that this plays an important role in the NA release from the adrenergic nerve.


In distributed lightpath restoration in wavelength-routed networks, different restoration operations may compete for the same wavelength on the same link and get blocked though there are still plenty of idle capacities on the link. In this paper, we propose two different wavelength assignment methods within the same framework for lowering such type of blocking. Simulation results show that the proposed methods significantly outperform the existing ones. Theoretical analysis confirms the optimality of the proposed methods for a special case; while for a few most important more general cases, it is shown that the optimal performance cannot be guaranteed by any distributed wavelength assignment method with a predefined wavelength searching sequence. For different cases where the original lightpath establishment has adopted random and first-fit wavelength assignments respectively, we discuss the different concerns in developing efficient distributed restoration schemes.


Several software projects start from an existing project. This practice, in the VCS ecosystem, is called fork. For instance, the Bootstrap project, initially developed on Twitter, today has more than 68,000 forks, which indicates that several projects started from the Bootstrap source code at a certain moment and are being customized. The problem occurs when customized projects want to obtain updates from the original project, i.e., new features, bug fixes, etc. The merge of the source code between the original and the customized projects usually generates conflicts that need human resolution. More important, the resolution of those conflicts might not be trivial and poses an arduous task for developers. This article, therefore, proposes an approach for updating forks against the original project where features are modularized, documented, traceable, and can be reused. We claim that the such task can no longer be carried out on an ad hoc basis. In a nutshell, instead of modify the method foo from the original project, the developer implements it locally and specifies, using one of the nine instructions of the proposed DSL, something like "replace the foo method with local implementation". We have developed a tool that automates our approach and conducted an evaluation on a large-scale real-world project that is regularly updated against your original project.


Research in Mediterranean-climate shrublands in both South Africa and Australia shows that recruit- ment of proteoid shrubs (non-sprouting, serotinous Proteaceae) is best after warm-season (summer and autumn) fires and worst after cool-season (winter and spring) ones. This pattern has been attributed to post-dispersal seed attrition as well as size of pre-dispersal seed reserves. Here we investigate patterns of post-fire recruitment for four proteoid species in the eastern part of South Africa's fynbos biome, which has a bimodal (spring and autumn) rainfall regime. Despite the lack of significant differences in recruitment between cool- and warm-season burns, we find some evidence for favourable recruitment periods following fires in spring and autumn, immediately before, and coinciding with, the bimodal rainfall peaks. This suggests that enhanced recruitment is associated with conditions of high soil moisture immediately after the fire, and that rapid germination may minimize post-dispersal seed attrition. In two of the species, we also find a shift from peak flowering in winter and spring in the Mediterranean-climate part of the fynbos biome, to summer and autumn flowering in the eastern part. Because these two species are only weakly serotinous, warm-season flowering would result in maximal seed banks in spring, which could explain the spring recruitment peak, but not the autumn one. We conclude that eastern recruitment patterns differ significantly from those observed in the western and central parts of the biome, and that fire management protocols for the east, which are currently based on data and experience from the winter-rainfall fynbos biome, need to be adjusted accordingly. Fire managers in the eastern fynbos biome should be less constrained by requirements to burn within a narrow seasonal range, and should therefore be in a better position to apply the required management burns.


A new wire detection algorithm for power line inspection by a mobile robot has been proposed in this paper. There have been a lot of studies in order to support the high-quality electric power. For the high-quality power supply, it is necessary to investigate the power lines and insulators before the lines or insulators were disconnected or damaged. Although Korea Electric power Corp. has made many efforts for the quality improvement, it is not enough to inspect all the power lines by human inspectors. According to this problem, it is decided to replace the human operators by the power line inspection robot. When the robots are used for the inspection, there could be several advantages, for example, the working efficiency and the prevention of accident. And also the shortage of human power for dangerous jobs can be resolved. In this paper, as a part of the development of power line inspection robot, DECRO, the sensor fusion and fuzzy control algorithms are developed to detect the wire and slope of the wire. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is proved by the real experiments with DECRO which is under development so far.


This paper investigates the economic impact of the government's proposed new UK R&D tax credit. We measure the benefit of the credit by the effect on value added in the short and long_run. This is simulated from existing econometric estimates of the tax_price elasticity of R&D and the effect of R&D on productivity. For the latter we allow R&D to have an effect on technology transfer (catching up with the technological frontier) as well as innovation (pushing the frontier forward). We then compare the increase in value added to the likely exchequor costs of the program under a number of scenarios. In the long run the increase in GDP far outweighs the costs of the tax credit. The short run effect is far smaller with valueadded only exceeding cost if R&D grows at or below the rate of inflation.


Spanish adaptation and factor structure of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey. This article presents a Spanish adaptation of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey, a questionnaire designed to evaluate organizational culture. This survey consists of 60 items, grouped in 12 subscales, which identify 4 cultural dimensions. These dimensions have been widely studied and their influence in organizational effectiveness has been accepted. This adaptation was applied to 488 participants, and analysed with confirmatory factor analysis. Results show adequate psychometric properties, so it can be concluded that the Spanish adaptation almost completely replicates the structure of the original version in English.


Two simple algorithms for supraventricular (SVEB) and ventricular ectopic beat (VEB) detection using the electrocardiogram (ECG) are presented. Both algorithms use time-domain features and a linear classifier. The first algorithm requires QRS detection only and the second algorithm requires P, QRS and T wave segmentation. Data was obtained from the 44 non-pacemaker recordings of the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and contained approximately 100,000 beats. Performance assessment of the best system resulted in an accuracy of 94.4% when discriminating SVEB from non-SVEBs and 97.8% in discriminating VEB from non-VEBs.


This paper proposes a novel analysis, called cardinality analysis, to approximate the number of solutions to a goal. The analysis is an instantiation of a new abstract interpretation framework for full Prolog (without dynamic predicates) based on sequences of substitutions. The abstract domain captures not only modes and types but also lower and upper bounds on the number of solutions and information about arithmetic and meta predicates, the cut, and termination. Experimental results show that the approach has a number of desirable properties wrt eeciency, accuracy, and simplicity not available in previous work. In particular, all aspects of the analysis are captured in a single framework, the mode/type analysis and the cardinality analysis are performed simultaneously and improve each other's accuracy, input/output patterns, cut, termination, and abstractions of arithmetic and meta-predicates are used to achieve great precision, and the overhead of the approach is small compared to traditional mode/type analyses.


A comparison was made between four methods of ripening the unfavourable cervix (extra-amniotic prostaglandin E2 gel, oral prostaglandin E2, intravaginal prostaglandin E2 and intravenous oxytocin) in a clinical trial involving 60 primigravidae. In all groups there was an improvement in cervical status. This was significantly greater in those patients who received extra-amniotic prostaglandin gel and they also showed significant decreases in the mean induction-delivery interval and in the incidence of Caesarean section.


Artists often take advantage of the limitations of the human visual system to create art that provides new experiences for the observers. Similarly, in this thesis, we explore new computational artistic compositions that create new visual experiences by relying on the limitations of the human visual system. We focus on two characteristics of the human visual system: One is the ambiguity that arises due to the differences between the eye projection space and the real physical space, and the second is the property of the integration of temporal information. For the projection-space ambiguity, we propose two frameworks that enable two different artistic representations. First, we show how to create high reliefs that represent full 3D forms in a very limited space. The main challenges are to preserve the relationships of scene parts and the fine details of the shape. Second, we develop an approach for creating sculpture paintings where paintings and sculptures are blended within the same compositions. The main challenge is to ensure continuity between the 2D and 3D parts of the scene geometry. They create plausible effects for the viewer by showing a new relationship of 2D and 3D parts at each different angle. For the temporal-space ambiguity, we propose a new stream of frames called tempocode that encodes the hidden information in video frames that show artistic dither matrices. In order to achieve this, we develop a visual-masking method that hides an input image, both spatially and temporally. Our masking function creates temporal and spatial variations on the frequency bands of the original input signal, with the constraint that the integrations of the final signal and the original signal are the same. The hidden information cannot be perceived by the human eye but it can be easily decoded by a long exposure photograph with a camera.


Antiplatelet therapy is widely performed for arteriosclerosis obliterans (ASO) to relieve ischemic symptoms and prevent cardiovascular events. However, the overall rate of cardiovascular events in patients with ASO under treatment with antiplatelet agents has not been fully investigated in Japan. The SEASON registry is a nationwide observational prospective cohort study designed to compile data from over 2,000 institutions across Japan, whose aims are to (1) understand the current status for the management of ASO and clarify the incidence of cardiovascular events in patients with ASO undergoing antiplatelet therapy, and (2) compare the effectiveness of sarpogrelate, a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist, in decreasing the event rate with those of other antiplatelet agents [UMIN ID: UMIN000003385]. The registry will recruit approximately 10,000 patients receiving antiplatelet therapy (8,000 patients for sarpogrelate and 2,000 for other antiplatelet agents), and the patients will be followed every 6 months during a two-year follow-up period. The investigators plan to report all cardiovascular events and exacerbations of ASO. Analysis focusing on the sarpogrelate-treated subgroup will also be performed. Exploratory analysis will be performed to determine the clinical characteristics of the patients and to elucidate the relationships between risk factors and cardiovascular events. The SEASON registry is the first attempt to create a nationwide database regarding the incidence of cardiovascular events in 10,000 ASO patients in Japan. In addition, it ultimately may enable us to conclude that sarpogrelate prevents cardiovascular events. Information on the severity and risk factors in ASO patients in the clinical settings will be applicable to epidemiological analysis.


: The socio-economic development of the territory is determined by many parameters of both economic and social nature. Some of them may indicate positive trends, whereas others point at negative ones. This situation makes it impossible to draw an unambiguous conclusion about the vector of changes in the region or municipality. In such conditions, it is important to define integrated indicators that would comprehensively assess the situation on the territory in question. One of these indicators is the living standards. In single-industry towns, which are special objects of attention and management, monitoring the state and changes in the quality of life should become an important tool and a parameter of monitoring the socio-economic situation. It is important to analyze not only the objective, but also the subjective components of the living standards in the community. The paper substantiates the approach to living standard assessment with the help of statistical and sociological markers. It features specific indicators of the living standards and conditions, the integration of which makes it possible to obtain an adequate assessment of the quality of life in a municipal formation, including a monoprofile one.


Activating the protein-tyrosine kinase of v-Src in BALB/c 3T3 cells results in rapid increases in the intracellular second messenger, diacylglycerol (DAG). v-Src-induced increases in radiolabeled DAG were most readily detected when phospholipids were prelabeled with myristic acid, which is incorporated predominantly into phosphatidylcholine. Consistent with this observation, v-Src increased the level of intracellular choline. No increase in DAG was observed when cells were prelabeled with arachidonic acid, which is incorporated predominantly into phosphatidylinositol. Inhibiting phosphatidic acid (PA) phosphatase, which hydrolyzes PA to DAG, blocked v-Src-induced DAG production and enhanced PA production, implicating a type D phospholipase. Consistent with the involvement of a type D phospholipase, v-Src increased transphosphatidylation activity, which is characteristic of type D phospholipases. Thus, v-Src-induced increases in DAG most likely result from the activation of a type D phospholipase/PA phosphatase-mediated signaling pathway.


Abstract Research of a modular stabilizing control law for uncertain, nonholonomic mobile systems with actuators limitation has been investigated. Modular design allows the definition of a stabilizing control law for the kinematic model. The presence of uncertainties in the actuators parameters or in the vehicle dynamics has been treated both adding suitable components to the Lyapunov function and using parameters adaptation laws (e.g. adaptive control and backstepping techniques). Simulations are reported for the set point stabilization of a unicycle like vehicle showing the feasibility of the proposed approach. Torque limitations for a unicycle like vehicle has been investigated using backstepping techniques for the vehicle tracking problem. Simulations are reported.


The water industry is facing increased pressure to produce higher quality treated water at a lower cost. The efficiency of a treatment process closely is related to the operation of the plant. To improve the operating performance, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) paradigm has been applied to a water treatment plant. An ANN which is able to learn the non-linear performance relationships of historical data of a plant has been proved to be capable of providing operational guidance for plant operators. A back-propagation network is used to determine the alum and polymer dosages. The results showed that the ANN model was most promising. The correlation coefficients (r) between the actual and predicted values for the alum and polymer dosages were both 0.97 and the average absolute percentage errors were 4.09% and 8.76% for the alum and polymer dosages, respectively. The application of the ANN model was illustrated using data from Wyong Shire Council's Mardi Water Treatment Plant on the Central Coast of NSW.


In a patient with Fabry's disease who had undergone kidney transplantation to correct uremia, the neutral glycosphingolipids and alpha-galactosidase activity have been measured in plasma and urine and, 9 months later, after the death of the patient, in autopsy material. After transplantation, there was no significant increase in alpha-galactosidase activity in plasma; the activity found never exceeded 3% of the mean control value. A striking parallelism was found during the follow-up period in the increase and decrease of trihexosylceramide and globoside and also of glucosylceramide and dihexosylceramide. The alpha-galactosidase activity in spleen and liver was as low as that observed in untreated Fabry hemizygotes. These data and those obtained from autopsy material provide evidence that renal transplantation does not lead to a specific enzymic breakdown of trihexosylceramide in Fabry patients. However, no trihexosylceramide accumulation was observed in the transplanted kidney.


Wireless sensors are battery-limited sensing and computing devices. How to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensors becomes an important issue. In order to reduce the energy consumptions when nodes are in idle listening, duty-cycle-based MAC protocols are introduced to let node go into sleep mode periodically or aperiodically. The long duty cycle makes sensors increase the transmission throughput but consumes more energy. The short duty cycle makes sensors have low energy consumption rate but increases the transmission delay. In this paper, a dynamic traffic-aware MAC protocol for energy conserving in wireless sensor networks is proposed. The proposed MAC protocol can provide better data transmission rate when sensors are with high traffic loading. On the other hand, the proposed MAC protocol can save energy when sensors are with low traffic loading. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol has better data throughput than other duty-cycle-based MAC protocols, for example, S-MAC and U-MAC. We also developed a set of comprehensive experiments based on the well-known OMNET++ simulator and revealed that our proposed TA-MAC performs significantly outstanding than related schemes under various situations.


The present study proposed a computer-aided diagnosis system based on radiomic features extracted through magnetic resonance imaging to determine the isocitrate dehydrogenase status in glioblastomas. Magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained from 32 patients with wild-typeisocitrate dehydrogenase and 7 patients with mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase in glioblastomas. Radiomic features, namely morphological, intensity, and textural features, were extracted from the tumor area of each patient. The feature sets were evaluated using a logistic regression classifier to develop a prediction model. The accuracy of the global morphological and intensity features was 51% (20/39) and 59% (23/39), respectively. The textural features describing local patterns yielded an accuracy of 85% (33/39), which is significantly higher than that yielded by the morphological and intensity features. The agreement level (κ) between the prediction results and biopsy-proven pathology was 0.60. The proposed diagnosis system based on radiomic textural features shows promise for application in providing suggestions to radiologists for distinguishing isocitrate dehydrogenase mutations in glioblastomas.


In mammals, ceramide kinase (CerK)-mediated phosphorylation of ceramide is the only known pathway to ceramide-1-phosphate (C1P), a recently identified signaling sphingolipid metabolite. To help delineate the roles of CerK and C1P, we knocked out the gene of CerK in BALB/c mice by homologous recombination. All in vitro as well as cell-based assays indicated that CerK activity is completely abolished in Cerk (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice. Labeling with radioactive orthophosphate showed a profound reduction in the levels of de novo C1P formed in Cerk (cid:1) / (cid:1) macrophages. Consistently, mass spectrometry analysis revealed a major contribution of CerK to the formation of C16-C1P. However, the significant residual C1P levels in Cerk (cid:1) / (cid:1) animals indicate that alternative routes to C1P exist. Furthermore, serum levels of proapoptotic ceramide in these animals were significantly increased while levels of dihydroceramide as the biosynthetic precursor were reduced. Previous literature pointed to a role of CerK or C1P in innate immune cell function. Using a variety of mechanistic and disease models, as well as primary cells, we found that macrophage- and mast cell-dependent readouts are barely affected in the absence of CerK. However, the number of neutrophils was strikingly reduced in blood and spleen of Cerk (cid:1) / (cid:1) animals. When tested in a model of fulminant pneumonia, Cerk (cid:1) / (cid:1) animals developed a more severe disease, lending support to a defect in neutrophil homeostasis following CerK ablation. These results identify ceramide kinase as a key regulator of C1P, dihydroceramide and ceramide levels, with important implications for neutrophil homeostasis and innate immunity regulation. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 180: 3457–3466.


The effect of advances in cardiac arrest management over the last five decades on in-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates is not clear. Data on 212 arrests between January 2010 and May 2013 were retrospectively analyzed by means of an audit form based upon the Utstein template for in-hospital cardiac arrest, with a view to identifying significant associations between arrest characteristics and return of spontaneous circulation or survival to discharge. Significant associations were identified between return of spontaneous circulation and location (ward, 36 patients (38%) vs. ICU, 33 Patients (56%); P = 0.032), whether an arrest was witnessed or not (82 patients (52%) vs. 9 patients (30%); P = 0.029), whether the initial rhythm was shockable or non-shockable (28 patients (85%) vs. 38 patients (31%); P < 0.001), whether the first dose of adrenaline was administered within 2 minutes of arrest onset or later (13 patients (54%) vs. 12 patients (28%); P = 0.04).


Following a review of the literature to identify core principles of schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS), this study employed coding methods to examine teacher concerns as expressed in their responses to an open-ended probe in five middle schools. Teachers in all schools expressed concerns for their colleagues' support for implementation, Tier 2 and 3 supports, use of reinforcement and consequences, and student investment. Fewer teachers expressed concerns for prevention, structuring the environment to support positive behavior, using data to make decisions, teaching expectations, and the need to understand the function of behavior. Within and across schools, teachers expressed diverse views as they affirmed their support, expressed concerns for their colleagues' non-support, and, in fewer cases, expressed misunderstandings or beliefs in opposition to the principles of SWPBIS. Overall, tensions seemed to stem not from opposition or resistance to SWPBIS but from poor application of the SWPBIS principles in their building—by the team, the administrators, and/or colleagues. Limitations, recommendations for practice, and future research are discussed.


We describe the development of a vision system to detect natural events in a low-resolution image stream. The work involved the assessment of algorithmic design decisions to maximise detection reliability. This assessment was carried out by comparing measures and estimates made by the system under development with measures obtained independently. We show that even when these independent measures are themselves noisy, their independence can serve to guide rational design decisions and allow performance estimates to be made. Although presented here for one particular system design, we believe that such an approach will be applicable to other situations when an image-based system is to be used in the analysis of natural scenes, in the absence of a precise ground truth.


A 37-year-old woman presented with congenital loss of all peripheral sensory modalities, sparing only her face, paraspinal area and proximal limbs. She was otherwise neurologically normal. Her sensory neuropathy was complicated by autoamputation of phalanges, pathologic fractures, failed total hip replacement, burns, pressure ulcers, and a painless peptic ulcer. An unusual cluster of functional deficits occurred when she was unable to substitute vision for peripheral sensibility. In the sudden darkness of a power failure she would fall to the floor; we advised the installation of battery-operated safety lights activated by a drop in line voltage. Voice-activated lights overcame difficulty in finding light switches in darkened rooms. She was unable to drive at night until she had a light placed under the dashboard of her car so she could see the foot pedals. She was unable to wash her hair, as shampoo irritation made her close her eyes and lose balance; swimming goggles and a nonfogging mirror permitted independence in her hair care. The solution of these functional difficulties provides a fresh perspective on the rehabilitation of patients with severe sensory impairments, especially with a cooperative family.


The relay-based wireless access networks are envisioned as one of the most promising "green" network architectures, in which Relay Stations (RSs) are incorporated to meet the fast-growing throughput requirement of Subscriber Stations (SSs) by exploiting the performance benefits of cooperative relay technology. Due to the lower cost, less energy consumption and CO2 emission of RSs comparing with those of Base Stations (BSs), the relay-based wireless access networks are also appealing to infrastructure operators. In this paper, we focus on the problem of RS site planning, which is a critical task of network planning and deployment to achieve an efficient and scalable network environment. An optimization framework is developed to minimize the total cost of RSs as well as meet the minimal traffic demand for each SS. The problem of joint RS placement and bandwidth allocation is formulated into an mixed integer nonlinear program. We resort to an improved Genetic Algorithm (GA) in order to yield optimal or near-optimal solutions. Simulation results show that our approach is fairly effective and robust to different scenarios of the RS site planning problem.


Objective: To validate a scale that measures patients' expectations when seeking advice for health problems of different types. Methods: 360 patients who had consulted their general practitioner (GP) during the previous 12 months were randomly selected from the lists of 30 GPs. A questionnaire, including a 13-item expectation scale, was administered by interview in the patient's home to assess expectations in relation to five health problems, three biomedical (strong chest pain, genital discharge and the common cold) and two psychosocial (depression/sadness and serious family problem), repeating the expectation scale for each one. The frequency distribution of items was analysed, multi-level factorial analysis was performed and the reliability of the expectation scale was tested for each hypothetical clinical condition. Results: The response rate was 90%. Mean age of patients was 47.3 years (SD 16.5); 51% were women. Expectations were high but varied according to the nature and severity of the condition. The percentage of patients wanting the doctor alone to make decisions ranged from 50% for "family problem" to 68% for "chest pain". The five factorial structures differed and explained 49.3–63.9% of the variance. Similarities were observed depending on the type of problem. "Communication" and "Experience of disease" were thus separate dimensions for the biomedical diseases but mixed for the psychosocial conditions. Conclusions: The factorial structure of expectations varied, indicating that expectations are not homogeneous in all clinical situations. The desire of the patient to participate in decision-making also differs according to the type of health problem.


Back-arc extension takes place in the overriding plate in an overall convergent setting during retreat of the hinge-line of the subducting slab. A large number of back-arc basins display a geometry and internal structure that is asymmetric, i.e. where the amount of extension increases from one end of the arc to the other. We present the results of 3-dimensional analogue modelling of asymmetric back-arc extension of an overriding lithosphere with a varying initial rheology. The results show that with increasing lithospheric brittle to viscous strength (BS/VS), the fault density decreases in magnitude, while the asymmetry in deformation pattern in the back-arc region increases. The area extent of deformation is mainly dependent on the ratio of brittle strength to buoyancy force (BS/BF), i.e. the larger the ratio, the smaller the area of deformation. The experimental results have been compared with several arc - back-arc systems, which display a relatively large amount of structural asymmetry (Tonga Arc, Kuril Arc, New Hebrides Arc, Ryukyu arc) but a varying style of tectonic deformation. These differences are mainly the result of the stage of opening up of the back-arc basin, the subduction setting (ocean-ocean or ocean-continent) and difference in rheology of the overriding lithosphere.


This 9-page fact sheet written by Tatiana Borisova, Xiang Bi, Tara Wade, and Kurt Oehlbeck and published by the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department explores the relationship between water quality and sale prices of waterfront properties, that is, the amenity value provided by water resources to waterfront communities. Being near to water to water generally increases the value of a residential property. However, poor water quality may decrease waterfront property prices. In other words, investments in restoring water quality can translate into increases in property value and tax collection. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe1062
This paper is a part of a series "Economic Value of Florida Water Resources".


Cancer Immunology
Cancer metastasis, when tumors spread from their primary location, is almost always deadly, so patients need anti-metastatic therapies. Cancer stem cells (cells within the tumors that can renew themselves) may drive metastasis. Kryczek et al. now report that CD4+ T cells within human colorectal cancer tissues produce the protein interleukin-22 (IL-22), which helps to maintain colorectal cancer stem cells. IL-22 blockade slowed down colon cancer in mice, whereas IL-22 made the cancer grow. And IL-22 helped tumor cells express stem-cell genes through epigenetic changes to these genes. Colon-cancer patients with these epigenetic modifications also had worse prognoses, which suggests that blocking IL-22 may provide therapeutic benefit.

Immunity 40 , 772 (2014).


This paper analyses the turnover of board of directors members on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in the period 1988-1996. Our aim is to investigate if board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, if this relationship is similar for C.E.O.s and other board members, and if and how the ownership structure of Italian companies affects these relationships. We use three different measures of board of directors turnovers: turnover A is the turnover of all board members; turnover B is the turnover of the President, Vice-President, C.E.O. and General Manager; finally turnover C is the turnover of C.E.O.s only. We find that changes in ownership affect turnover and that the relationship between turnover and performance is stronger in companies that have experienced a change in the controlling shareholder.


The experiment-based droplet impinging breakup model was applied to a fan shaped spray and the impinging behavior was analyzed quantitatively. Evaluation of the quantitative results with validation tests verified the following. The model enables prediction of fan shaped spray thickness after Impingement caused by the breakup of fuel droplets, which could not be represented with the Wall-Jet model, widely used at present. Fuel film movement on a wall is negligible when the injection pressure of the fan shaped spray is high and the spray travelling length is not too short. The proposed heat transfer coefficient between fuel film and the wall is too small to represent the vaporizing rate of the fuel film.


Baitfish grown in many states in the North Central Region (NCR) contribute significantly to aquaculture in the region. Each year priority research areas are identified by the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center (NCRAC) Industry Advisory Council and presented in consultation with the Technical Committee to the NCRAC Board of Directors. Concern has emanated from among the various NCRAC constituencies that network plans could potentially lose focus over time and not always address the most critical factors limiting the economical and sustainable production of important species in the region. After discussions were held among members of the various committees and the Board at its 1999 annual meeting, it was decided that a white paper should be developed on baitfish. The Board directed that the paper not be an exhaustive literature review, but rather a working document that clearly defines the current status of baitfish aquaculture, critical factors limiting its economical and sustainable commercial production, and recommendations concerning the research that should be considered in future work plans. It is recognized that this will be a "living document" in that priorities may change based on new developments, new problems encountered, or other externalities. Industry participation and peer reviews are critical components of the process. Disciplines Aquaculture and Fisheries Comments This article is from NRCAC White Paper series, March 2000. Used with permission. This report is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ncrac_whitepapers/5


Statutes shifting responsibility for plaintiffs' attorneys' fees to unsuccessful defendants are central to ensuring access to justice for people of limited means in civil rights, environmental, and other public interest cases. In these classes of cases, the fee-shifting strategy offers a number of distinct advantages over access-to-justice strategies that involve public funding or public employment of lawyers for those who are less well off. Unlike those strategies, fee shifting incorporates a substantial market element: Because lawyers in fee-shifting cases get paid only when they win, they have an incentive to find and bring cases in which a court is likely to conclude that someone's legal rights were actually violated. Fee shifting is also usefully decentralized. A fee-shifting system equally subsidizes litigation for any violation of legal rights covered by a fee-shifting statute - whether or not the particular client or case is likely to be politically popular. And unlike systems of public financing of litigation - whose costs are borne by taxpayers generally - fee-shifting statutes place the burden of financing access to justice squarely on those entities that have actually violated the law (at least in the first instance). The fee-shifting system thus seems to allocate its costs more fairly than the alternatives, and it gives potential defendants an additional incentive to comply with the law. It is a familiar point, traceable to Adam Smith, that markets work not by fighting against private interests but by harnessing the pursuit of those interests in a way that achieves important public goods. When it comes to fee-shifting statutes, however, many judges - perhaps, especially, conservative judges - seem to forget the point. Judicial discourse in fee-shifting cases focuses, to a great extent, on assessments of the pecuniary motivations of plaintiffs' lawyers. Driven by the view that civil rights litigation is in the nature of charity or volunteer work, judges have elaborated doctrinal rules that presume that civil rights lawyers ought not care whether or how much they get paid, and they often vigorously police fee requests for signs that plaintiffs' counsel is getting greedy. Both of these tendencies were prominently on display in a major recent case decided by the Eleventh Circuit - Kenny A. v. Perdue - a case in which the Supreme Court has granted certiorari. In that case, the court of appeals upheld a substantial fee award to plaintiffs who obtained a very favorable consent decree in a large class action challenging inadequate foster child services in two Georgia counties. But the judge who wrote the panel's opinion (Judge Edward Carnes) and another judge who joined him in dissenting from the court's denial of en banc rehearing (Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat) expressed powerful doubts that the law should properly be read to authorize the fee award. Judge Carnes went so far as to write what was essentially a petition for certiorari as his dissent from denial of rehearing en banc. Informed observers were not surprised when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Both Judge Tjoflat's and Judge Carnes's Kenny A. opinions seemed to rest on the view that the plaintiffs' lawyers in that case were greedy people who sought to line their pockets by stretching the bounds of the law. This brief essay, prepared for an ABA symposium on access to justice, examines the arguments of Judges Tjoflat and Carnes as an example of the widespread judicial view that civil rights law should properly be a charitable, not a fully remunerative, endeavor. The essay critically examines the two key arguments that underlay both Judge Tjoflat's and Judge Carnes's opinions in the Kenny A. case and shows that they can make sense only if we view civil rights litigation as essentially charitable work - a view that would substantially diminish the enforcement of civil rights laws.


GAPDH is a conserved enzyme that binds diverse proteins, such as Siah during apoptotic nuclear translocation. There is one somatic GAPDH gene, but over 60 pseudogenes, the expression of which is nebulous. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the GAPDHP44 pseudogene exhibits a beneficial allele in AD. The objective of this study was to examine the P44 gene and to propose a mechanism for the putative protein and its impact on AD. We examined the sequences in the putative coding region of the human GAPDHP44 gene and the upstream genetic elements usinga bioinformatics approach. We compared the amino acid sequences of the putative gene product with that of the parent GAPDH protein. There is a TATA box 24 nt upstream from, and a Kozak sequence at, putative transcription and translation start sites, respecttively. The upstream region also has sequences (7 - 16 nt) paralogous to those in parent gene introns; one shows homology to a known enhancer element. The resulting protein would contain 139 aa due to a stop codon, roughly the same size as the dinucleotide domain (151 aa) of the parent protein. The SNP is in a region (residues 80 - 120) that binds to the protein GOSPEL. We propose that the beneficial SNP may cause a glutamine to glutamate substitution. NMDA-stmulated neurons undergo GAPDH nitrosylation, Siah translocation, but can be rescued by GOSPEL binding to GAPDH. Our model suggests that the putative P44 protein may regulate GAPDH-GO-SPEL interaction and the beneficial SNPmay ameliorate AD.


Cross-border trade plays a prominent role in economic, social, and political life in Sub-Saharan Africa, contributing significantly to development, poverty reduction, and job creation. Across the continent, cross-border trade accounts for 43 percent of the entire population's income. As actors embedded in licit and illicit networks at local and regional levels, cross-border traders have the potential to fuel conflict or mitigate it. They can act as spoilers, supporting armed groups and war economies, or as peace intermediaries, negotiating peace deals and bridging conflict divides across communities. Given that most armed conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa are shaped by cross-border dynamics, cross-border traders present an underexamined yet critical point of entry for analyzing and addressing conflicts and should be included in new and ongoing peacebuilding programming. This policy note provides recommendations on how policymakers can leverage the untapped peacebuilding potential of cross-border traders and decrease their spoiling power.


This study was aimed to assess the suitability of four fungal species for operating in the residues of three crops in Golestan province, Iran. For this, four experiments were conducted to analyze their ability to grow on five culture media (Experiment I) and on the residues (Experiment II) and their growth responses to different pHs (Experiment III) and temperature levels (Experiment IV). Then, the possibility of establishing these fungi in the cultivated lands of studied crops was examined. Fungal growth was high on soybean and cotton residues and low on those of rice, and all the fungi produced a significant reduction in the carbon to nitrogen ratios in relation to noninoculated residues. The amount of nitrogen in fungal‐treated cotton residues increased about four times compared with the control and in other studied residues increased twice as much as the control. The lowest C:N values for cotton and rice residues were found for Pleurotus ostreatus while Aspergillus niger was the most efficient for those of soybean. The results also showed that these fungi will not show the best performance in respect to temperature and pH, but will not be ineffective. The results could be the basis for further studies on the use of these fungi to improve nutrient cycling, focusing on multicriteria zoning on climatic and soil‐related components.


Shape discretization through union of weighted points or balls appears as a common representation in different fields of computer graphics and geometric modeling. Among others, it has been very successful for implicit surface reconstruction with radial basis functions, molecular atomic models, fluid simulation from particle systems and deformation tracking with particle filters. These representations are commonly generated from real measurements or numerical computations, which may require filtering and smoothing operations.This work proposes a smoothing mechanism for union of balls that tries to inherit from the scale-space properties of bi-dimensional curvature motion: it avoids disconnecting the shape, prevents self-intersection, regularly decreases the area and convexifies the shape. The smoothing is computed iteratively by moving each ball of the union according to a combination of projected planar curvature motions. Experiments exhibits nice properties of this scale-space.


To successfully interact with and learn from humans in cooperative modes, robots need a mechanism for recognizing, characterizing, and emulating human skills. In particular, it is our interest to develop the mechanism for recognizing and emulating simple human actions, i.e., a simple activity in a manual operation where no sensory feedback is available. To this end, we have developed a method to model such actions using a hidden Markov model (HMM) representation. We proposed an approach to address two critical problems in action modeling: classifying human action-intent, and learning human skill, for which we elaborated on the method, procedure, and implementation issues in this paper. This work provides a framework for modeling and learning human actions from observations. The approach can be applied to intelligent recognition of manual actions and high-level programming of control input within a supervisory control paradigm, as well as automatic transfer of human skills to robotic systems.


An improved cepstrum-based voicing detection and pitch determination algorithm is presented. Voicing decisions are made using a multifeature voiced/unvoiced classification algorithm based on statistical analysis of cepstral peak, zero-crossing rate, and energy of short-time segments of the speech signal. Pitch frequency information is extracted by a modified cepstrum-based method and then carefully refined using pitch tracking, correction, and smoothing algorithms. Performance analysis on a large database indicates considerable improvement relative to the conventional cepstrum method. The proposed algorithm is also shown to be robust to additive noise.


This paper analyses the effects of privatisation and deregulation of the Dar es Salaam transport system. It starts with an account of the decline of the government-owned transport company and the first opening of the market to private buses in 1983. The analysis then moves to the progressive deregulation of the sector and its impact on transport supply. Competition between private operators in the oversupplied market manifests itself in non-compliance with safety rules, and inefficiencies in the fare structures. Labour relations with the private sector are then examined to illustrate the logic of the market. The results of a questionnaire answered by 668 workers suggest that the reaction of casual workers to exploitative conditions of employment characterises many aspects of the operation of the transport system. The impact of deregulation is therefore most clearly to be seen in the nature of labour relations within the sector, and it is argued that there is a need for state regulation to monitor and enforce conditions of employment within the private sector if service provision is to be improved.


This paper aims at applying advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to functional materials, such as ultra-soft magnetic films for high-frequency inductors, to reveal the structure-property relationship. The ultimate goal is to delineate a more quantitative way to obtain information of the magnetic induction and local magnetization. Nano-crystalline Fe-Zr-N films have been prepared by DC magnetron reactive sputtering with a thickness between 50 and 500 nm. Conventional TEM and selected area diffraction (SAD), reveal crystallites of sizes ranging between 2 and 30 nm. The films showed a granular or hillock type of roughness with an rms amplitude of 5 nm. In particular this paper concentrates on an analysis of phase maps in electron holography and intensity maps in Lorentz transmission electron microscopy including the thickness variation over the sample. For a particular statistical description of the roughness and values for the roughness it is shown that analytical expressions can be obtained. We demonstrate that starting from the concept of the vector potential in classical electrodynamics these results can be achieved assuming independent stationary Gaussian distributions for the height correlation functions.


Visualization tools for supervised learning (SL) allow users to interpret, introspect, and gain an intuition for the successes and failures of their models. While reinforcement learning (RL) practitioners ask many of the same questions while debugging agent policies, existing tools are not a good fit for the RL setting as these tools address challenges typically found in the SL regime. Whereas SL involves a static dataset, RL often entails collecting new data in challenging environments with partial observability, stochasticity, and non-stationary data distributions. These unique characteristic of the RL framework necessitate the creation of alternate visual interfaces to help us better understand agent policies trained using RL. In this work, we design and implement an interactive visualization tool for debugging and interpreting RL. Our system identifies and addresses important aspects missing from existing tools and we provide an example workflow of how this system could be used, along with ideas for future extensions. We explain one such extension under development to increase insight into the learning dynamics of actor-critic learning algorithms by visualizing optimization landscapes.


Context: A rare case of adult hairy cell leukemia (HCL) with duodenal involvement is presented. Case Report: The patient was a 48-year-old man, who had a history of hairy cell leukemia. Three days after completion of 2-chlorodeoxyadenosine (CDA) chemotherapy, the patient started experiencing abdominal pain. An extensive gastroenterological workup culminated in the patient getting an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) that revealed duodenal infl ammation and biopsies were taken. The duodenal biopsy was positive for chronic inflammatory infiltrate, primarily consisting of atypical lymphocytes and plasma cells with tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) positivity, and hence a diagnosis of duodenal involvement with HCL was made. Repeat bone marrow biopsy done 2 weeks after finishing chemotherapy revealed residual disease. At the 3-month follow-up, the patient was asymptomatic with a normocellular marrow and no residual disease. Repeat abdomen computerized tomography (CT) scan at completion of therapy showed resolution of duodenal thickening and spleen size of 12 cm. Currently, patient is in clinical remission for 6 years with 4-6 monthly follow-up visits and continues to do well. Conclusion: This case is presented to highlight the first case report of HCL with duodenal involvement that was successfully treated with CDA.


Abstract Disaster management requires not only efficient technical, administrative, financial and legal systems within the affected community but also a strong political, socio-cultural and ethical framework. Although it is possible to improve the systems through the implementation of guidelines, plans, procedures, codes and other regulatory measures, it is difficult to change the attitude of the individuals, community, executives and the political leaders that affects the working environment and functional capabilities of these systems. In such situations, ethical practices and moral values play an important role in positively nurturing the environment. The experiences often reveal a lack of good cooperation, coordination and team spirit among different stakeholders, leading to unnecessary delays and inaction or wrong actions for disaster management. The approach is mostly ad-hoc, isolated and uncoordinated. There is hardly any networking, linkage and coordination to work in a multidisciplinary and integrated manner. However, the recent policies and strategies related to disaster risk reduction are now focusing on a systematic way of coordination, linkage and networking for sharing information on resources, knowledge and practices. This paper illustrates the relevant issues with examples from some popular stories/poems that will help the reader to understand the significance of these issues.


A dual-gate CMOS structure has been developed which features an overlap LDD (lightly doped drain) NMOS with n/sup +/ poly gate and a surface channel PMOS with p/sup +/ poly gate whose source/drain and gate were salicided with low-resistance TiSi/sub 2/. The gate/n/sup -/ overlapped structure was fabricated by rotational oblique ion implantation. This CMOS structure can realize low-supply-voltage operation due to the small absolute value of threshold voltage without punchthrough. It is demonstrated that, using the overlap LDD NMOS, the circuit speed and the reliability can be improved, compared with the single and the conventional LDD NMOS. The cryogenic operation of the structure is examined.<<ETX>>


When analyzing and optimizing the performance of thermoelectric (TE) devices in theory, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and electrical resistivity are indispensable TE properties. However, most manufacturers do not provide or overestimate these data. Under the consideration of temperature dependence, this paper discloses an experimental measurement approach to estimate the equivalent Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and electrical resistivity of a TE module. A thermal resistance network is also established to work out the hot and cold side temperatures of TE legs. Based on a designed test bench, required temperature and electrical parameters in both open circuit and closed circuit are measured and recorded, where the data of open circuit are used to calculate the equivalent Seebeck coefficient and thermal conductivity, and the data of closed circuit are used to calculate the equivalent electrical resistivity. To eliminate the error of parasitic internal resistance, a thermal-electric finite element model is adopted to modify the equivalent electrical resistivity. The modification results indicate that the equivalent internal resistance is about 1.033 times the real internal resistance, and the ratio is related to the working temperature. This work provides a new idea to obtain the TE material properties via an experimental test.


The studies about multiple mobile robots have been developed. Formation control is an important theme since it is applicable in various themes. "Leader-following" strategy is a suitable method for controlling multiple mobile robots in formation. It is because it is easy to control robots and to express a formation of robots. But in this strategy, it is difficult to consider the ability gap of a robot like human being. In respect of autonomous decentralized control, it is important to control robots in most suitable formation considering the ability of a robot. Each robot has to be controlled by each controller according to the ability. The purpose of this study is to control multiple mobile robots in formation considering the ability of a robot using "leader-following" strategy. At first, new idea which is called performance index is defined and new controller is proposed based on performance index. Second, compliance controller using a virtual repulsion is suggested in this paper, so that each robot can avoid collision. Finally simulation results show the validity of the proposed method.


OBJECT
The authors studied patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) to determine whether the incidence of symptomatic vasospasm or overall clinical outcomes differed between patients treated with craniotomy and clip application and those treated by endovascular coil occlusion.

METHODS
The authors reviewed 415 consecutive patients with aneurysmal SAH who had been treated with either craniotomy and clip application or endovascular coil occlusion at a single institution between 1990 and 2000. Three hundred thirty-nine patients underwent surgical clip application procedures, whereas 76 patients underwent endovascular coil occlusion. Symptomatic vasospasm occurred in 39% of patients treated with clip application, 30% of patients treated with endovascular coil occlusion, and 37% of patients overall. Compared with patients treated with clip application, patients treated with endovascular coil occlusion were more likely to suffer acute hydrocephalus (50 compared with 34%, p = 0.008) and were more likely to harbor aneurysms in the posterior circulation (53 compared with 20%, p < 0.001). Logistic regression models controlling for patient age, admission World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) grade, acute hydrocephalus, aneurysm location, and day of treatment revealed that, among patients with an admission WFNS grade of I to III, endovascular coil occlusion carried a lower risk of symptomatic vasospasm (odds ratio [OR] 0.34, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.14-0.8) and death or permanent neurological deficit due to vasospasm (OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.08-1) compared with craniotomy and clip application. Similar models revealed no difference in the likelihood of a Glasgow Outcome Scale score of 3 or less at the longest follow-up review (median 6 months) between treatment groups (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.28-1.21).

CONCLUSIONS
Patients with better clinical grades (WFNS Grades I-III) at hospital admission were less likely to suffer symptomatic vasospasm when treated by endovascular coil occlusion, compared with craniotomy and clip application. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in overall outcome at the longest follow-up examination between the two treatment groups.


Peatlands are important archives for the reconstruction of past environmental changes because of their high rates of peat accumulation due to the low rate of plant litter decomposition. Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) are complex lipids of high molecular weight, recently discovered in soils and suggested to be produced by anaerobic bacteria. The relative distribution of branched GDGTs in soils correlates with environmental variables: the degree of methylation, expressed in the methylation index of branched tetraethers (MBT), depends on mean annual air temperature (MAAT) and to a lesser extent on soil pH, whereas the relative abundance of cyclopentyl rings of branched GDGTs, expressed in the cyclisation ratio of branched tetraethers (CBT), is related to soil pH. The MBT/CBT proxies are increasingly used for the reconstruction of past air temperatures, but have rarely been applied in peatlands. Testate amoebae are common and diverse unicellular eukaryotes in peatlands. They build shells that are preserved in peat. They are good indicators of changing environmental conditions in peatlands and are thus used in both ecological and paleoecological studies, especially for reconstructing surface moisture. The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of branched GDGTs and testate amoebae as indicators of environmental changes (temperature and moisture) in temperate peatlands. Within the PEATWARM project, both GDGTs and testate amoebae were studied at high resolution in a 4 m peat core collected in Frasne mire (French Jura Mountains) and covering the last 7,400 years BP. GDGT-inferred temperatures ranged between 8 and 12 °C until 250 cm depth and were higher than present measured mean annual air temperature (ca. 6 °C). Temperature estimates in the top part of the bog were most consistent with spring and summer mean air temperatures recorded in the peatland (ca. 11.5 °C), suggesting that branched GDGT-producing bacteria might be more active during the warmest months of the year. At 250 cm depth, reconstructed temperature showed a pronounced shift, likely reflecting both a change in climatic conditions but also in the composition of the peat. Indeed, drier conditions were indicated by testate amoebae at the bottom of the peat core, whereas wetter conditions occurred at the top. Interestingly, temperature variations inferred from MBT/CBT proxies were weakly linked with moisture variations inferred from testate amoebae until 150 cm depth (r = -0.41, p = 0.06). Therefore, the distribution of branched GDGTs might also depend on peat moisture level, in addition to air temperature and pH. Our data suggest that the joint use of MBT/CBT and testate amoebae is a promising approach to estimate past climate change, but that more research is required to calibrate and apply with confidence these proxies in peatlands.


In recent years, studies of long-range interacting (LRI) systems have taken center stage in the arena of statistical mechanics and dynamical system studies, due to new theoretical developments involving tools from as diverse a field as kinetic theory, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and large deviation theory, but also due to new and exciting experimental realizations of LRI systems. In the first, introductory, Section 1, we discuss the general features of long-range interactions, emphasizing in particular the main physical phenomenon of non-additivity, which leads to a plethora of distinct effects, both thermodynamic and dynamic, that are not observed with short-range interactions: Ensemble inequivalence, slow relaxation, broken ergodicity. In Section 2, we discuss several physical systems with long-range interactions: mean-field spin systems, self-gravitating systems, Euler equations in two dimensions, Coulomb systems, one-component electron plasma, dipolar systems, free-electron lasers. In Section 3, we discuss the general scenario of dynamical evolution of generic LRI systems. In Section 4, we discuss an illustrative example of LRI systems, the Kardar–Nagel spin system, which involves discrete degrees of freedom, while in Section 5, we discuss a paradigmatic example involving continuous degrees of freedom, the so-called Hamiltonian mean-field (HMF) model. For the former, we demonstrate the effects of ensemble inequivalence and slow relaxation, while for the HMF model, we emphasize in particular the occurrence of the so-called quasistationary states (QSSs) during relaxation towards the Boltzmann–Gibbs equilibrium state. The QSSs are non-equilibrium states with lifetimes that diverge with the system size, so that in the thermodynamic limit, the systems remain trapped in the QSSs, thereby making the latter the effective stationary states. In Section 5, we also discuss an experimental system involving atoms trapped in optical cavities, which may be modelled by the HMF system. In Section 6, we address the issue of ubiquity of the quasistationary behavior by considering a variety of models and dynamics, discussing in each case the conditions to observe QSSs. In Section 7, we investigate the issue of what happens when a long-range system is driven out of thermal equilibrium. Conclusions are drawn in Section 8.


The initial development and growth of defects from 'engineered' surfaces, i.e. fine abraded, polished, shot peened etc., often dominates the resulting component lifetime, particularly for materials of high strength and limited ductility. When subject to the conjoint action of stress and environment this lifetime is impaired and reductions in fatigue strength are often observed resulting from a reduction in defect development time, often termed 'initiation', and enhancement in defect growth rate. A number of factors exist which influence the rate at which defects, such as pits/cracks, develop. Included in these are; physical and chemical material surface condition, the nature of the loading mode, test frequency and electrochemical micro-climate at the metal/solution interface. Based upon corrosion experiments conducted under cyclic and static stress, using low and high strength steels and stainless steels in chloride environments, the following events; surface film breakdown, pit development and growth, pit/crack transition and environment-assisted stage I and stage II crack growth have been observed. Included in these experiments is that of the Scanning Reference Electrode a technique adapted to evaluate stress-assisted localised corrosion, a process considered to be of primary importance during the early stages of stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue cracking; particularly for actively corroding systems.


ABSTRACT Focusing on the work of the Japanese sociologist Koyama Eizō, this paper critically explores the development of Japanese race studies from the late 1920s to the 1940s. During this period, Japanese intellectual discourses on race developed in the context of the need to manage heterogeneous populations within the Japanese empire and contain the growing mobility of populations in and outside of the territory. Reflecting Koyama's keen interest in racial/ethnic contacts and interdisciplinary perspectives, his intellectual work symptomatically exemplifies not only the convergence of knowledge production and the dominant imperial regime but also the transpacific implications of Japanese race studies. On the one hand, my study examines Koyama's preoccupation with racial/ethnic contacts in relation to imperial security and also traces how his study intersected with the discourse of American social scientists who were also interested in Japanese migrations. On the other hand, the study examines how the development of the idea of minzoku in Koyama's discourse coincided with contemporaneous attempts to mobilize diverse populations in the empire. Thus, my research reveals a complex dynamic of integration and differentiation in discourse on Japanese race studies in the interwar era.


Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is one alternative lithography solution that is being pursued by the industry. A metrology-related problem specific to NIL is the measurement of the residual layer thickness (RLT), as knowledge of this is key to the monitoring and control of the NIL process and subsequent patterning. Scatterometry is used to measure the RLT due to its ability to measure profile features non-destructively with high throughput. But because scatterometry is sensitive to features unrelated to the parameter of interest, complex geometries throughout the film stack can make the measurement challenging. New methods to reduce the impact of such complex geometries on the measurement parameters of interest are therefore needed. Because of the use of NIL for 3DNAND development, the measurement of the RLT with complex structures underneath becomes necessary. This paper describes the results from a new hybrid metrology method that can combine key information from these complex geometries with scatterometry measurements to reduce the impact on the RLT measurement due to the layers beneath the resist. By reducing this impact, scatterometry measurement noise and cross-correlation of parameters are reduced, resulting in better precision and accuracy in the RLT measurement.


A challenging problem in decentralized systems is encouraging long-term cooperative behaviour between strangers. It is often not immediately bene_cial to cooperate without the guarantee of direct reciprocity. Cooperation among entities in the long term results in sustainability while sel_sh behaviour can lead to the collapse and distrust of such communities. This collapse is also referred to as the tragedy-of-the-commons phenomena and is notoriously hard to prevent when considering mutual access to resources [2]. Our aim is to incentivize network participants in _le-sharing communities to cooperate with each other by introducing monetary rewards for good behaviour. We explore whether a _le-sharing ecosystem based on band- width tokens is capable of addressing the tragedy-of-the-commons and increase cooperation and sustainability in general. Blockchain technology is used to achieve tamper-proof accounting of such bandwidth tokens. While blockchain is often used to securely maintain digital currencies without _nancial institutions, our goal is to deploy a distributed ledger to promote cooperation amongst content providers and consumers. Based on this goal, we designed a blockchain with superior scalability, compared to existing blockchain solutions [4]. A high-level system architecture of our micro-economy is presented in Figure 1. The key component of our design is a bandwidth token, irrefutably stored and tracked on our deployed blockchain fabric: TrustChain [4]. TrustChain is speci_cally designed to build trust between interacting strangers and has no hard requirement for global consensus, in comparison to popular blockchain applications. Instead, consensus is reached between transacting parties and fraud is guaranteed to be eventually detected by the means of network gossiping. In contrast to existing blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum, each user creates and grows their own chain of transactions [3]. Every transaction in TrustChain is dual-signed and stored in the chains of both transacting parties. Our approach yields superior scalability while signi_cantly reducing storage requirements. Content providers are able to mine or earn bandwidth tokens by uploading content to others using our decentralized _le sharing client Tribler [1]. Token mining is an autonomous process that attempts to optimize the amount of uploaded data by _rst downloading and then uploading a subset of available content. Mining is both bene_cial for the provider, who earns spendable tokens, and the community, where contributed bandwidth results in faster downloads and increased availability of content. Content consumers pay providers for their provided resources with bandwidth tokens. When the di_erence between the amount of uploaded and downloaded bytes (the token balance) of a speci_c user is below a certain threshold, content providers refuse to upload content to these peers, until they contributed a su_cient amount of bandwidth back to the community. This basic but e_ective free-riding policy makes bandwidth tokens usable and ensures that there is a basic demand for them. We address privacy issues arising from sharing content with a deployed and tested Tor-like communication overlay. When this overlay is enabled, an end-to-end encrypted path is constructed with other nodes and tra_c is routed through these nodes. This allows peers to interact with the community in an anonymous way. In contrast to Tor, the anonymous layer as implemented in Tribler is fully decentralized and does not rely on centralized (directory) servers. The system o_ers anonymity at the cost of increased bandwidth requirements


Estimating an occupant's location is arguably the most fundamental sensing task in smart buildings. Existing indoor tracking systems require occupants to carry specialized devices or install programs on their smartphones to collect inertial sensing data. In this paper, we propose MapSentinel, which performs non-intrusive location sensing based on WiFi access points and ultrasonic sensors. MapSentinel also combines the noisy sensor readings with the floormap information. Instead of using floormap merely to conduct sanity check of walking trajectories, we exploit the motion characteristics of occupants available from the floormap to enhance our location estimation. The fusion of heterogeneous information is theoretically formulated within the Factor Graph framework and the inference algorithm based on Particle Filtering is developed to efficiently solve real-time walking trajectories. Our evaluation in a large office space shows that the MapSentinel can achieve significant accuracy improvements compared with the purely WiFi-based tracking system.


AIM
This study evaluated the application of the Comprehensive Conflict Coaching model in a hospital environment.

BACKGROUND
Conflict coaching involves a coach working with a client to improve the client's conflict understanding, interaction strategies and/or interaction skills. The training of nurse managers as conflict coaches is an innovative continuing education programme that partially addresses conflict-related concerns in nursing.

METHOD
Twenty nurse managers trained as conflict coaches and each coached a supervisee. Qualitative data were gathered from nurse managers, supervisees and senior nursing leaders over an 8-month period and organized using standard programme evaluation themes.

RESULTS
Benefits included supervisor conflict coaching competency and enhanced conflict communication competency for nurse managers and supervisees facing specific conflict situations. Challenges included the management of programme tensions. Additional benefits and challenges are discussed, along with study limitations.

CONCLUSION
Conflict coaching was a practical and effective means of developing the conflict communication competencies of nurse managers and supervisees. Additional research is needed.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT
Conflict is common in nursing. Conflict coaching is a new conflict communication and supervision intervention that demonstrates initial promise. Conflict coaching seems to work best when supported by a positive conflict culture and integrated with other conflict intervention processes.


MNC Licensing International sees the opportunity of expanding the target market of their brand animation SpongeBob. In its current state, SpongeBob has reached the maturity stage. SpongeBob feels the importance to extend the target market to millennials. Regarding this, SpongeBob created a global campaign called SpongeBob Gold. SpongeBob Gold's global campaign is a marketing public relations activity created through nine steps of strategic public relations planning to support brand awareness. This campaign uses a fashion show collaboration strategy that collaborates with the local designers from every country. For Indonesia, SpongeBob Gold collaborate with Indonesian local designer Tities Sapoetra. This fashion show collaboration gives the experience to the fans and uses an influencer to deliver its message. This research uses communication theory, marketing public relations, special event and nine steps of strategic public relations planning in analyzing the implementation of SpongeBob Gold. The methodology that is being used in this research is called qualitative methods by conducting in-depth interviews. The results show that the implementation has had a good outcome. Using the nine steps of strategic public relations planning, the author can understand the implementation of a good strategy in establishing the increasing awareness of the SpongeBob Gold that has resulted in the increasing demand of the licensed of SpongeBob.

Keywords: marketing public relations, brand repositioning, special event, brand awareness, fashion show collaboration


The one-to-one correspondence between co-occurrence image patches of two different resolutions is extensively used in example-based super-resolution (SR). Due to the dimensionality gap between low resolution (LR) and high resolution (HR) spaces, however, an LR patch may correspond to a number of HR patches in practice. This ambiguity is difficult to be overcome with examples representing a deterministic mapping. In this paper, we propose a statistical method for exploiting the one-to-many correspondence between LR and HR patches, which we call soft information and decision. Soft information means an LR patch is mapped to a pixel-wise distribution of all its possible HR counterparts, rather than a single or a limited set of HR candidates. Relying on the soft information, example-based SR is then regarded as an optimization problem to best preserve the local consistency in the recovered HR image. This problem is solved with an efficient message passing algorithm with a factor graph model. The final decision on the HR pixel value is made upon the maximum a posteriori estimation and is called a soft decision. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art methods, in terms of both the subjective and objective quality of synthesized HR images.


Phononic band–gap materials prevent elastic waves in certain frequency ranges from propagating, and they may therefore be used to generate frequency filters, as beam splitters, as sound or vibration protection devices, or as waveguides. In this work we show how topology optimization can be used to design and optimize periodic materials and structures exhibiting phononic band gaps. Firstly, we optimize infinitely periodic band–gap materials by maximizing the relative size of the band gaps. Then, finite structures subjected to periodic loading are optimized in order to either minimize the structural response along boundaries (wave damping) or maximize the response at certain boundary locations (waveguiding).


The LHC has observed, so far, 3 deviations from the Standard Model (SM) predictions in flavor observables: LHCb reported anomalies in B→K∗μ+μ- and R(K)=B→Kμ+μ-/B→Ke+e-, while CMS found an excess in h→μτ. We show, for the first time, how these deviations from the SM can be explained within a single well-motivated model: a two-Higgs-doublet model with gauged Lμ-Lτ symmetry. We find that, despite the constraints from τ→μμμ and Bs-B¯s mixing, one can explain h→μτ, B→K∗μ+μ- and R(K) simultaneously, obtaining interesting correlations among the observables.


This explorative research paper draws evidence from a database of small to medium-size unquoted private companies (n = 240) in the UK and reports on the family business and venture capital relationship from the demand side. Following the review of literature relating to financial affairs of private companies, the main research inquiries are outlined and a set of generic hypotheses is elicited based on the pecking order theory—that is, private companies, including family-controlled ventures, have a propensity to finance their operations in a hierarchical fashion, first using internally available funds, followed by debt and, finally, external equity (Petitt & Singer, 1985). Univariate statistical analyses confirm that family companies adhere strongly to the pecking order principles of financial development. The paper explores factors governing the rationale of owner-managing directors of private and family companies for considering venture capital dealings as well as main areas of concern about the deal structures. The paper then concludes with a discussion of the policy implications from the perspective of the owner-manager, financier, and enterprise policy maker. To encourage equity development of smaller privately held companies, particularly family firms, there is room for policy initiatives that respect the financial philosophy of private companies.


The Indian health care system is typical in nature and the Government has invested in building a strong public healthcare infrastructure. The pivotal role is played by the evolution of foremost non-public sector facilities created by the Government as healthcare emerges as the priority sector of the Government of India. However, with a population of virtually 1.35 Billion, with a majority living within the rural hinterlands, there is a scope to enhance the healthcare facilities to improve the health of individuals. It is noteworthy to mention that approximately about 70 per cent of the disbursal on health expenditure is borne by the individual, a steep value that pushes several families into debt. The recently proclaimed "Ayushman Bharat" scheme in India, that will cowl a minimum of 40 per cent of the population, envisages a holistic approach. It seeks to deal with the inherent issues of accessibility and affordability and supply an all-around answer to healthcare needs for the masses. The bottom line of the scheme entails enhancing accessibility, and providing cost- effective insurance to the people at the bottom of pyramid. It leverages the strengths of the general public sector and private players to redefine the health care delivery system. An attempt is made in this research article is made to review in brief the current status of healthcare in India and components of healthcare sector. This article also provides brief discussion on the challenges and opportunities faced by India's Healthcare sector in delivering healthcare services.


The interaction of salphen-type NiII, CuII and ZnII complexes with native DNA was investigated by exploiting linear dichroism experiments. The NiII complex behaves as a typical intercalator, binding strongly and stiffening and unwinding the DNA. The strength of the DNA interaction is slightly weaker for the copper complex and much weaker for the zinc complex. Plasmid-DNA gel electrophoresis experiments indicated that while CuII and ZnII complexes do not induce the unwinding of supercoiled DNA, the NiII complex has a nuclease activity without the addition of external agents. On the other hand, as shown in the PCR assays, we demonstrate that, at the used concentrations, only the CuII complex is able to inhibit the DNA amplification mediated by Taq DNA polymerase. In this paper we have also reported a detailed characterization of the three compounds including 2D-NMR and ESI-mass experiments and X-ray single crystal structure of the copper and nickel compounds.


This study conducted at College of Agriculture in collaboration with Animal Production Department; Directorate of Agricultural Research–Erbil during the period from Sept. 2013 to the end of May 2014. Four hundred and twenty one chicks belong to three local genetic groups and their crosses with Isa Brown were resulted from hatching. They kept in replicates and their body weights recorded at 1-day of their age and weekly then the accumulative body weight, body weight gain, feed consumed and feed conversion ratio were calculated at the end of first (from1 day to 4 weeks) and second (from 5 to 9 weeks) of age. General Linear Model within the SAS program was used to analyze the collected data to study the effect of genetic group on the studied traits. Duncan Multiple Range Test was conducted to diagnosing the differences between the means of the levels of each factor. Heterosis percentages were calculated. The overall mean of chick's body weights at 1-day of age, 1st and 2nd ages were 38.48, 210.47 and 743.68 g, and body weight gain for the 1st and 2nd ages were 171.98 and 533.21 g, respectively. Genetic group was found to have a highly significant effect (P≤0.01) on body weights of chicks as well on body weight gains. Overall mean of feed consumed per bird at the 1 and 2nd ages were 610.20 and 1852.99 g, respectively. Although there were no significant effects of genetic group on feed consumption/bird at both ages, it showed that there were significant differences (P≤0.05) between them at the 1st age only. Feed conversion ratio of chicks belongs to different genetic groups at the 1st and 2nd ages averaged 3.513 and 3.505 kg/kg, respectively, and their effect by genetic group was not significant. However, the differences between the means of genetic groups were significant (P≤0.05) at the 2nd age using Duncan test. The higher percentage of heterosis (15.732) was recorded for the cross (L2 x L5) at 1-day old, while the lower percentage (-12.927) was recorded for the cross (L5 x L2) at the same age. It could be concluded that: The chicks resulted from local lines grow slower than those resulted from the mating between their males with Isa brown females. There were differences in the percentages of heterosis calculated for body weights of chicks resulted from local males and Isa brown females and their reciprocal.


When measured under midday fi eld conditions, modern varieties of maize (Zea mays L.) often have substomatal carbon dioxide concentration (C i ) values in excess of those required to saturate the photosynthetic carbon dioxide assimilation rate (A). This results in lower leaf transpiration effi ciency (TE), the ratio of photosynthesis to transpiration, than potentially achievable for a given rate of photosynthesis. In some other crops, breeding has indirectly resulted in a large increase in stomatal conductance (g s ), which would decrease TE. I tested whether this occurred in sweet corn by comparing fi ve open-pollinated varieties released before 1903 with four standard hybrid varieties released in the mid-1900s and four varieties released after 1990. Leaf gas exchange of each variety was measured under ambient midday fi eld conditions on eight sunny days over two seasons in Beltsville, MD. Although there were signifi cant differences among varieties in g s , A, C i , and TE, no effect of era was signifi cant for any variable except A. Of the four modern varieties tested, two had the highest g s and two had the lowest g s of any of the varieties compared, with high g s associated with low TE. These four varieties were further compared in a third year and were found to differ consistently in leaf TE but not in A. It is concluded that breeding over the last century has not increased g s or decreased leaf TE in sweet corn but that there is signifi cant variation in TE among modern sweet corn varieties.


Background: Unstructured and textual data is increasing rapidly and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling is a popular data analysis methods for it. Past work suggests that instability of LDA topics may lead to systematic errors. Aim: We propose a method that relies on replicated LDA runs, clustering, and providing a stability metric for the topics. Method: We generate k LDA topics and replicate this process n times resulting in n*k topics. Then we use K-medioids to cluster the n*k topics to k clusters. The k clusters now represent the original LDA topics and we present them like normal LDA topics showing the ten most probable words. For the clusters, we try multiple stability metrics, out of which we recommend Rank-Biased Overlap, showing the stability of the topics inside the clusters. Results: We provide an initial validation where our method is used for 270,000 Mozilla Firefox commit messages with k=20 and n=20. We show how our topic stability metrics are related to the contents of the topics. Conclusions: Advances in text mining enable us to analyze large masses of text in software engineering but non-deterministic algorithms, such as LDA, may lead to unreplicable conclusions. Our approach makes LDA stability transparent and is also complementary rather than alternative to many prior works that focus on LDA parameter tuning.


Dr. R. CRUICKSHANK thought that the crux of the situation was the chronic typhoid carrier. Recovery of typhoid and paratyphoid organisms, either in the acute stage of the disease or in convalescence, demanded selective media. This was true over the whole range of bowel infections. For example, their use had demonstrated that convalescent carriers occurred after salmonella infections-a thing never suspected in the past when MacConkey's medium was employed. Dr. A. L. K. RANKIN, describing the clinical features in the small borough outbreak mentioned by Dr. Bradley, said that in the adult cases the onset had been gradual, but two children had gastro-intestinal symptoms. A characteristic of all cases was their mildness. During the stage of advance the temperature had shown morning remissions which he regarded as a good prognostic sign. Leucopenia was present in all cases. The diazo test was consistently negative, but no case was admitted before the 14th day of disease. One woman developed the uncommon complication of mastitis. Col. G. W. M. FINDLAY asked whether it would be possible to treat typhoid by phage given intravenously. Dramatic results had been claimed in India from the combined use of phage and typhoid antitoxin to deal with lysed products. In experiments on mice he had found it necessary to give phage very early to obtain a therapeutic effect. Dr. BRADLEY, in reply, said that gastro-intestinal symptoms at the time of ingestion of typhoid bacilli were common: they had been encountered in both the Croydon water-borne and the Bournemouth milk-borne outbreaks. Intestinal symptoms consisting of the passage of blood and mucus were usual *o begin with; vomiting came later. The whole upset was usually over in 48 hours. He described a hotel outbreak in which 36 guests had gastro-intestinal symptoms within 48 hours of arrival and 17 subsequently developed typhoid. Dr. FELIX suggested that the gastro-intestinal symptoms were not necessarily due to typhoid or paratyphoid organisms. They might indicate only that the vehicle was heavily contaminated with other organisms, including preformed toxins. He agreed with Col. Findlay that in the phage treatment of experimentally infected mice the results were good in typhoid, whereas no effect could be seen in aertrycke infections. This was probably due to the fact that typhoid was not a usual infecting organism in mice, whereas aertrycke was. He had used phage in large intravenous doses in the treatment of chronic typhoid carriers, but the experiment was a complete failure. Yet the same phages had been tested in broth and up to 50% ox bile, where they produced complete stearilization. He thought that phage treatment might be tried on carriers of shorter duration where there was less heavy damage at the local focus of infection.


BACKGROUND
Human T lymphotropic virus types 1 (HTLV-1) and 2 (HTLV-2) are frequent copathogens among individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). The long-term effects of coinfection are unknown, and little information exists regarding how levels of HTLV-1/2 viral burden are affected by antiretroviral medications.

METHODS
Factors associated with HTLV-1/2 viral burden were examined in patients with HIV-HTLV-1/2 coinfection. A total of 72 subjects were evaluated. The variables analyzed included HTLV-1/2 proviral load, HTLV-1/2 tax/rex mRNA expression, HIV load, HTLV-1/2 viral antigen detection in peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) cultures, T cell subsets, demographic variables (age, race, sex, and reported use of injection drugs), and administration of highly active antiretroviral therapy.

RESULTS
An HTLV-1/2 proviral DNA copy number >20,000 copies/10(6) PBMCs was significantly associated with the following variables: (1) a positive HTLV-1 Western blot test result, (2) a positive HTLV-1/2 PBMC culture result, (3) a positive tax/rex mRNA result, (4) an HIV load <10,000 copies/mL, and (5) higher CD4 cell counts among subjects with HIV-HTLV-1 coinfection. There was no correlation between HTLV-1/2 proviral copy number or HTLV-1/2 tax/rex mRNA detection and administration of antiretroviral therapy.

CONCLUSIONS
HTLV-1/2 proviral burden was significantly higher among patients with HIV-HTLV-1 coinfection than among patients with HIV-HTLV-2 coinfection. Highly active antiretroviral therapy may be of limited value in controlling virus expression of HTLV-1/2 in patients with HIV-HTLV-1/2 coinfection.


A longitudinal study of plasma glucose and insulin concentrations in ad libitum fed and dietary restricted male F344 rats was carried out. The life span diurnal pattern of plasma glucose concentration was such that through most of the day dietary restricted rats have significantly lower plasma glucose levels than ad libitum fed rats. Throughout the life span, dietary restricted rats maintain mean 24-hour plasma glucose concentrations about 15% below those of ad libitum fed rats. Plasma insulin levels are maintained in dietary restricted rats at about 50% of the levels in ad libitum fed rats. Although plasma glucose and insulin levels are lower, dietary restricted rats use glucose fuel at the same rate per unit of metabolic mass per day as rats fed ad libitum. While these findings are consistent with the glycation hypothesis of aging and with our hypothesis that dietary restriction retards the aging processes by altering the characteristics of fuel use, they do not establish the validity of either. It is possible that this effect of dietary restriction on carbohydrate metabolism plays no role in its antiaging action. Further studies are required to define the role of these altered characteristics of carbohydrate metabolism in the aging processes.


STKE introduces a new feature called an "E-conference" within the Forums section of the site. The current E-conference is titled "Defining Calcium Entry Signals." With the outstanding assistance of conference chairs Don Gill and Randen Patterson, we have enlisted a group of leading experts on receptor-induced calcium entry signals to participate in a "virtual conference" at STKE. The E-conference is designed to focus upon current understanding on the function, control, and role of calcium entry signals in mammalian cells. One central question to be addressed is how calcium entry channels are activated in response to depletion of calcium from stores. Likewise, it is critical to know which channels contribute to such calcium entry. All STKE readers are encouraged to read the comments posted by the invited participants and to add their own comments and questions to the ongoing discussion.


Abstract Understanding the genesis of the very peculiar 600 km-wide Santos Basin–São Paulo Plateau system and its narrow conjugate Namibe Margin is a kinematic and structural problem. Several hypotheses have been proposed in order to explain the genesis of this system that imply the same amount of horizontal movement. We investigate the consequences of the horizontal movement in the Santos Basin, based in plate kinematic reconstructions. The kinematic history of this system that we present here, based on the interpretation of seismic profiles and kinematic constraints, has the following consequences: (1) there is no evidence of a ridge jump sensu stricto but, rather, a southwards propagation in the Central Segment of the South Atlantic that starts in the northern part, between the NE Brazilian and Gabonese margins; (2) the Namibe margin evolved as a transform passive margin; (3) the opening direction of the Santos Basin–São Paulo Plateau system is oblique to the general opening motions of the South American and African plates; and (4) this opening is younger (6 Ma) than those of the other basins of the Central Segment of the South Atlantic.


This image depicts an experiment that was conducted at the Rice University School of Architecture in 2016 in a studio that tested the potential of appropriation as a design methodology. The experiment was based on the following premises: First, the students had to use drawings—plans and sections—as the main technique of design. Second, they had to transform an existing pool of drawings in editable format for the generation of their own designs. Stretching, copying and pasting, erasing, juxtaposing, and/or scaling where some of the operations they could perform on the existing graphic material. Finally, all the drawings had to be shared, including the various versions of their projects. Following these premises, the studio was structured as a constant process of redrawing in which the progressive introduction of programmatic requirements, graphic material, and contextual constraints determined the evolution of each project. Duplicities and borrowings were employed as a trigger for multiple discussions on the architectural qualities of each version. This structure enhanced the students' ability to respond with agility to the questions posed in each step of the journey and to explore, through the language of the architectural project itself, the versatility of different formal, structural, and spatial systems vis-à-vis such questions.


A method for the calibration of an ultra-wideband microwave tomography system is presented. The objective for this measurement system is to calculate the spatial distribution of the dielectric parameters and thereby different materials. Scattering parameters are used to describe the setup and are given to the reconstruction algorithm for evaluation. The measured wave parameters of this system are influenced by the measurement instrument as well as by the setup itself. In addition, it is also necessary for the reconstruction to obtain the scattering parameters at a well defined reference plane. Both requirements can be achieved by the help of a multiport error correction algorithm used for the calibration of a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). In a first step, an error model for the tomographic system is presented. Secondly, this paper provides a concept for calibration standards which can be used for this application. Since a tomographic system do not offer the possibility for the use of classic reflection standards or a change in the mechanical length of the transmission other calibration standards have to be found. The idea of a homogeneous filling of the tomograph is presented. With the help of a simulation model the requirements for the system as well as the accuracy of the results are analyzed. In addition, measurement results are shown to validate the proposed approach.