Membranous Nephropathy (MN) is a common cause of nephrotic syndrome in adults that can also occur in children, albeit less frequently. Recently, the M-type phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R) was identified as the target antigen in idiopathic membranous nephropathy (IMN), making it a useful marker for diagnosis. However, there are few studies describing the potential role of PLA2R in children with IMN. The aim of this study was to clarify the involvement of PLA2R in childhood IMN.

 We enrolled 11 patients diagnosed with IMN from January 1998 to March 2017. We performed PLA2R staining in paraffin-embedded renal biopsy sections. The clinical data were collected from the patients' medical records.

 The median age at biopsy was 6 years (range, 4 to 14 years). A single 6-year-old boy among all pediatric patients with IMN had granular PLA2R staining along his glomerular capillary loops and the prevalence of PLA2R-positivity was 9%. He also showed IgG4 co-dominant staining in terms of IgG subclass. There were no apparent differences in his clinical features such as clinical data at the time of renal biopsy, the time from the treatment initiation to remission, and relapse or renal dysfunction during the follow-up period.

 We suggest that PLA2R staining can be a diagnostic tool for patients with IMN of any age, though pediatric patients with IMN have lower prevalence of PLA2R-positive staining than adult patients.


.............................................................................................................................. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .......................................................................................... v GLOSSARY OF TERMS ......................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ....................................................................................................... vii


1,052 medical records of patients discharged from "Pedro Borrás Astorga" Pediatric Teaching Hospital, with a diagnosis of non-urlean viral meningoencephalitis in the period ranging from October 1, 1985 to March 31, 1986, were reviewed. In this study the medical records of three deaths were particularly analyzed by means of the data of highest interest such as: age, sex, color of skin, length of stay, diagnostic impression at admission, motive of admission, course of the disease, physical examination and complementary procedures, and particularly anatomopathologic results. Conclusions are provided.


The efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells decreases linearly with increasing temperature, fundamentally due to the increase in the concentrations of the charge carriers, causing fluctuations in the operating temperature and consequently in the photovoltaic conversion process, affecting the efficiency of the cell. In this paper, a study is presented on the phenomenon of temperature decrease applied in integrated photovoltaic cells also called Building Integrate Photovoltaics dimensioned on a photovoltaic solar tile with an superimposed photovoltaic arrangement model, in conditions of simulation of Standard Test Conditions for 1000 W/m irradiation, for maximum and minimum Summer temperatures of Foz do Iguaçu during 20172018. The simulation was performed with Comsol Multiphysics® software and used as a constituent material of the photovoltaic solar tiles Concrete, Polypropylene and PVC. The study compares the effect of varying efficiency with varying temperatures and tile designs for a 16% efficiency value of the datasheet, resulting in a maximum decrease of 12.53% in the cell at 30.6°C, and reduction of linear efficiency of approximately 0.05%/°C for the proposed models. Also, a comparison was made to verify how they influence the materials in the civil-structural characteristics of the roof. Hereafter, the simulated system is compared with the polycrystalline, monocrystalline and CIS photovoltaic systems in some cases with the literature, comparing the decrease of efficiency and power with the temperature in the same conditions of the study, obtaining a divergence between 0.05%/°C and 0.24%/°C. Keywords— Building Integrate Photovoltaics, Efficiency, Solar Tile, Heat Transfer.


Resolving pronominal anaphors in English has been a focus of research in natural language processing for decades. Methods ranging from linguistics-oriented, rule-based approaches to data-oriented, machine-learning approaches have been applied to the problem of finding the antecedents of pronouns.
In contrast to the abundance of research in English, there is almost no work on the problem in Chinese. This thesis addresses that gap.
Both a rule-based and a machine-learning anaphora resolution approach are presented in this work. An important difference between Chinese and English is that Chinese, unlike English, is a pro-drop language, and has null (zero) pronouns. The rule-based approach is applied to resolving these null pronouns as well as to the overt, third-person pronouns.
The Hobbs algorithm is used for the rule-based method of anaphora resolution. Three versions of the algorithm are presented. The first uses only syntactic structure to select an antecedent. The second uses limited number and gender agreement, while the third incorporates semantic constraints on the proposed antecedents.
For the machine-learning method, maximum entropy, supervised machine-learning models are used. Different models were trained using sets of features that paralleled the information sources used by the different versions of the Hobbs algorithm.
Two sets of data were used. The Penn Chinese Treebank provided the test data for resolution of both overt, third-person pronouns and of zero pronouns. The CTB parses were annotated for coreference using guidelines that were drawn up for the work presented here. Data annotated for the 2004 Chinese ACE program were used for training and testing the maximum entropy models to find the antecedents for overt, third-person pronouns.
The results from experiments with the two basic methods using the different levels of linguistic information will be presented and discussed.


The 14th edition continues the tradition of careful scholarship and attention to educational objectives begun with the first edition in 1936. The conflict of laws has experienced vast changes in the seventy seven years since the first edition of this book. The new edition joins its predecessors' attention to the needs of both teacher and student. Foreign law not only is of growing importance in a global economy but also holds important lessons for us as we reconsider our own law. With its extensive comparative materials the book facilitates appraisal of both domestic and foreign approaches. The new edition retains the order of presentation in the 13th edition, which has proven to be an important aid in mastering the materials. Choice-of-law issues take on added meaning after the student understands when and why a court may proceed against a nonresident defendant, appreciates that a court with jurisdiction over the defendant may nevertheless defer to a more appropriate forum, and has studied the requirements imposed by the United States Constitution on interstate recognition of judgments and on choice of law. Important features include an emphasis on comparative coverage and extensive notes and comments to guide study and provide background for class discussion. The Documentary Appendix greatly facilitates comparative study. The Appendix contains the major European Union Council Regulations on procedural and substantive issues that are the focus of the book. Detailed commentary accompanies each Regulation. The choice of-law materials contain many excerpts from and references to the laws of other countries. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the student to the major issues that subsequent chapters explore in detail. Chapter 3 explores judicial jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 decisions in J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro and Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown are both included as principal cases. A new state case on Internet libel is also included as a way to introduce the growing issues presented by bringing the ""minimum contacts"" test into the virtual world. At an early point in the choice-of-law materials (chapter 7), the book explores the meaning of "procedural" in the context of the conflict of laws. This prepares the student for discussion of court opinions throughout the choice-of-law chapters that affix the procedural label to an issue. Chapter 8 then focuses on development of choice-of-law theory and its application, with attention to issues of great current importance, such as choice of law in national class actions. Chapter 8 includes an easily-accessible discussion of the rising influence of law and economics in choice of law. Chapter 8 also includes as a principal case the New York Court of Appeals' decision in Edwards v. Erie Coach Lines Co., in which New York's high court attempted to clarify the implications of its controversial decision in Schultz v. Boy Scouts of America. Chapter 9 covers the special problems of conflicts in federal and international settings and contains a section on the extraterritorial application of constitutional rights and includes as a principal case the Supreme Court's decision extending habeas corpus rights to the Guantanamo detainees. This chapter also includes as a principal case the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, in which the Court held, in a major break with a long line of lower court cases, that the Securities Exchange Act did not apply to securities traded on foreign exchanges. The fast evolving area of same-sex marriage and the conflicts problems presented are covered extensively in Chapter 11, which surveys the multitude of conflicts problems in family law.


Topic models jointly learn topics and document-level topic distribution. Extrinsic evaluation of topic models tends to focus exclusively on topic-level evaluation, e.g. by assessing the coherence of topics. We demonstrate that there can be large discrepancies between topic- and document-level model quality, and that basing model evaluation on topic-level analysis can be highly misleading. We propose a method for automatically predicting topic model quality based on analysis of document-level topic allocations, and provide empirical evidence for its robustness.


Early literature on peanut [Arachis hypogcrea (L.)] indicates the existence of two forms of root hairs: (i) a rosette form of root hair (4 mm long) occurring; radially where a lateral root initiates from a primary root, and (ii) shorter (0.30 mm), more profuse root hairs occurring along root lengths usually behind the root tip. Since little is known about the factors ithat influence peanut root hair formation, the purpose of this study was to quantify root hair formation under various soils and water strless conditions. Separate rhizotron, field, and greenhouse studies were conducted. The rhizotron study showed no dBerences in the percentage of roots having root hairs regardless of water stress treatments imposed 20 to 50 and 50 to 80 days after planting (DAP). Thirty-seven to 43% of the roots had root hairs. In the field, peanut root systems growing within dialysis root bags in a Tifton loamy sand (fine-loamy, siliceous, thermic Plinthic Kandiudults) showed a significant increase in root hair formation from7% at 70 DAP to 31% at harvest. In the greenhouse using three soil types, Greenville fine sandy loam (clayey, kaolinitic, thermic Rhodic Kandiudults), Tifton loamy sand, and a 4 1 coarse sandfritted clay mixture (rhizotron), soil type was found to affect the percentage of roots having root hairs. Roots growing in the Tifton, sand:fritted clay mixture, and Greenville soils had 47, 17, and 14% root hairs, respectively. In all studies, the rosette form of root hair around lateral initiates was observed. Approximately 66% of the lateral initiatesexpressed rosette-type root hairs. Mycorrhizal infection, though insufficient to significantly affect nutrient uptake, was greater with the rhizotron (18%) than the Greenville (6%) and Tifton soils (3%). There may be a possible interaction between root hair occurrence and mycorrhizae infection.


The CRISPR-Cas9 system provides unprecedented genome editing capabilities. However, off-target effects lead to sub-optimal usage and additionally are a bottleneck in development of therapeutic uses. Herein, we introduce the first machine learning-based approach to this problem, yielding a state-of-the-art predictive model for CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effects which outperforms all other guide design services. Our approach, Elevation, consists of two inter-related machine learning models—one for scoring individual guide-target pairs and another which aggregates guide-target scores into a single, overall guide summary score. Through systematic investigation, we demonstrate that Elevation performs substantially better than competing approaches on both of these tasks. Additionally, we are the first to systematically evaluate approaches on the guide summary score problem; we show that the most widely-used method (and one re-implemented by several other servers) performs no better than random at times, whereas Elevation consistently outperformed it, sometimes by an order of magnitude. In our analyses, we also introduce a method to balance errors on truly active guides with those which are truly inactive, encapsulating a range of practical use cases, thereby showing that Elevation is consistently superior across the entire range. We thus contribute a new evaluation metric for benchmarking off-target modeling. Finally, because of the large computational demands of our tasks, we have developed a cloud-based service for end-to-end guide design which incorporates our previously reported on-target model, Azimuth, as well as our new off-target model, Elevation.


Abstract In the current French popular cinema industry, stars no longer guarantee a film's success. However, the recent success story of Jamel Debbouze as a comedian and actor is exceptional, and hardly fits the archetype of traditional male French stardom. Debbouze was brought up in the Paris banlieue, and started out as a stand-up comedian. In 1998, he featured in two films, Le Ciel, les oiseaux… et ta mère (Bensalah) and Zonzon (Bouhnik). With Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jeunet, 2001), he gained greater international recognition, which was confirmed by the huge success of Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (Chabat, 2002). This article seeks to determine the extent to which Jamel Debbouze stands as an obvious candidate for popular stardom, by analysing his 'successful Beur' star persona and comic screen image. It discusses his career in terms of it being representative of a new generation of popular stars imported from the worlds of television and show business, who have recently begun to take over French cinema screens and the celebrity magazines. It suggests that a redefinition of the status of the French film star in the 2000s is taking place, changing cultural patterns for popular stardom.


This empirical study analyzes the spread over Wuhan city urban expansion from the current decades (1990-2010) and specifically sheds light on its sprawl issue.To give our study a concrete form, we need specific materials for monitoring the sprawling phenomenon in this Chinese middle size city, and its consequences on the future for a well sustainable development.Finally, the result we want to reach is to obtain the impact of several and main features of spreading over the core city of Wuhan, and by the same token, indicate its future urban boundaries. The reason is that urban growth control is a great duty for local authorities for offering a good lifestyle to every urban dweller. Inpractice, control and management of sprawl have relied on programs to regulate land uses and the timing of growth through mechanisms such as comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, and smart growth strategies (J. K. Lein, 2003).But urban expansion is different from urban sprawl, because sprawling is just a form of urban expansion. Nowadays, a broader consensus likely appears on that urban sprawl is recognized as a rapid and uncoordinated growth at the urban fringe. Several types of sprawl were identified in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration (WUA), such as continuous suburban growth, linear\ribbondevelopment, andscattered development\leapfrog development. To measure the sprawl pattern of this city we use qualitative and quantitative methods for our inquiry. This study challenges decision makers of Wuhan to take in consideration the current increase of urban sprawl, in order to control it. This is because urban sprawl varies in degrees between the developed and the developing world and consequently they have different consequences (M. O.Alabi, 2009)The main outcome of this study is to track the outward expansion and its sprawling urban pattern for better understanding its social, economic, and environmental consequences. And to analysis several challenges related to sprawl phenomenon in this mega-city. This paper aims to establish a correlation between land-use and population density in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration (WUA).The availability of satellite remote sensing data has increased significantly in the last two decades, and these data constitute a useful data source for mapping the composition of urban settings and analyzing changes over time (Jorge E.P, Juan C.D, 2012).


"Masters and Commanders" describes how four titanic figures shaped the grand strategy of the West during the Second World War. Why, when the most direct route from Britain to Germany was through north-western France, did the western allies first launch assaults on North Africa, Sicily and Rome? Why, if D-Day was intended to be the start of the Allies' great thrust into Germany, did four hundred thousand men land five hundred miles to the south, in southern France, two months later? Why did the Allies not take Berlin, Vienna or Prague, and allow the Iron Curtain to descend where it did?One of the aims of the book is to show the degree to which the answers to these and many other key riddles of the Second World War turned on the personalities and relationships between two political masters - Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt - and the military commanders of their armed forces - the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, and the US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. In reconstructing the debates between these four principals and many of the other leading senior Allied figures, Roberts draws upon the private papers of nearly seventy contemporaries and on verbatim accounts of Churchill's War Cabinet meetings never before reproduced in book form. The result is a strikingly intimate and enjoyable account, which recreates with dramatic immediacy the atmosphere, debates and manoeuvrings through which Allied grand strategy was forged, and shows clearly the impact of personality upon history.


Applications running on mobile devices are intensely context-aware and adaptive. Streams of context values continuously drive these applications, making them very powerful but, at the same time, susceptible to undesired configurations. Such configurations are not easily exposed by existing validation techniques, thereby leading to new analysis and testing challenges. In this paper, we address some of these challenges by defining and applying a new model of adaptive behavior called an Adaptation Finite-State Machine (A-FSM) to enable the detection of faults caused by both erroneous adaptation logic and asynchronous updating of context information, with the latter leading to inconsistencies between the external physical context and its internal representation within an application. We identify a number of adaptation fault patterns, each describing a class of faulty behaviors. Finally, we describe three classes of algorithms to detect such faults automatically via analysis of the A-FSM. We evaluate our approach and the trade-offs between the classes of algorithms on a set of synthetically generated Context-Aware Adaptive Applications (CAAAs) and on a simple but realistic application in which a cell phone's configuration profile changes automatically as a result of changes to the user's location, speed, and surrounding environment. Our evaluation describes the faults our algorithms are able to detect and compares the algorithms in terms of their performance and storage requirements.


We describe a fully-wireless prototype of distributed transmit beamforming on a software-defined radio platform. Distributed beamforming is a cooperative transmission technique that can achieve orders of magnitude increases in range or energy efficiency of wireless communication systems. However, this technique requires precise synchronization of the radio frequency signal from each transmitter. The significance of our prototype is in demonstrating that this requirement can be satisfied using digital signal processing methods on commodity hardware with low-quality oscillators. Our synchronization approach scales to large numbers of transmitters: each transmitter runs independent algorithms based on periodically transmitted feedback packets from the receiver. A key simplification is the decoupling of the algorithms for frequency locking and beamsteering at each transmitter, even though both processes use the same feedback packets. Frequency locking employs an Extended Kalman filter to track the local oscillator offset between a transmitter and the receiver, using frequency offset measurements based on the feedback packet waveform, while the phase adjustments for beamsteering are determined using a one-bit feedback algorithm based on the feedback packet it payload. Our prototype demonstrates that distributed transmit beamforming can be incorporated into wireless networks without requiring hardware innovations, and provides open-source building blocks for future research and development.


Studies on biodiversity in Africa show its rapid loss and degradation. This is commonly explained with non-sustainable use by local people. Across  Africa, extensive systems of protected areas (PAs) have been established to mitigate this trend. Creation of PAs, however, resulted in manifold conflicts with people who depend on the use of the PAs' natural resources  for their livelihoods. This study empirically analyzes gaps in knowledge and perceptions between conservationists 2 and pastoralists in Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia, and suggests ways of integrating the knowledge systems into practices. Research techniques used are key informant interviews, focus group discussions and interviews with 60 sample ouseholds conducted between May 2010 and March 2011. Pastoralists who live inside the park describe changes in biodiversity by observing trends of important trees, grasses, and larger wild animals based on traditional  cological knowledge. Conservationists tend to rely on standard scientific methods and "expert" observations to evaluate temporal and spatial changes of biodiversity. The pastoralists relate biodiversity loss to the  rohibition of their traditional land management practices by the park authorities. Conservationists rather take the local people's increased and non-sustainable resource utilization as a cause. We argue that improved knowledge exchange and understanding can be generated through more participatory and transdisciplinary research which can contribute to the development of innovative management approaches for the park that  etter integrates local peoples' livelihood needs. Key words : Biodiversity conservation, Nech Sar, protected areas, traditional ecological knowledge


Abstract. We present a surface completeness algorithm that is capable of denoising, removing outliers, and filling in missing patches on point clouds or surfaces. The main advantages of the proposed algorithm include its ability to remove outliers while preserving the details and ability to recover large missing patches. Additionally, our algorithm is a global method, whereby linear programming results are applied to a global optimization problem. This is advantageous because it yields a sparse solution and avoids local minima. Experiments further demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm through applications to point clouds where noise, outliers, and large missing patches exist.


Abstract Thirteen field experiments were conducted in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Ontario from 2005 to 2007 to determine the effects of simulated glyphosate drift followed by in-crop applications of nicosulfuron/rimsulfuron plus dicamba/diflufenzopyr or foramsulfuron plus bromoxynil plus atrazine on nontransgenic corn injury, height, stand count, shoot dry weight, and yield. Simulated glyphosate drift at 100 and 200 g/ha, resulted in 11 to 61% visual crop injury and a 19 to 45% decrease in corn height. Simulated glyphosate drift at 200 g/ha caused a reduction in shoot dry weight by 46%, stand count by 28% and yield by 49 to 56%. Generally, simulated glyphosate drift followed by the in-crop herbicides resulted in an additive response with respect to visual crop injury, height, stand count, shoot dry weight, and yield. Nomenclature: Atrazine; bromoxynil; dicamba/diflufenzopyr; foramsulfuron; glyphosate; nicosulfuron/rimsulfuron; corn, Zea mays L


The Central Governor Model (CGM) ignited a paradigm shift from concepts of catastrophic failure towards central regulation of exercise performance. However, the CGM has focused on the central integration of afferent feedback in homeostatic control. Accordingly, it neglected the important role of volitional self-regulatory control and the integration of affective components inherently attached to all physiological cues. Another limitation is the large reliance on the Gestalt phenomenon of perceived exertion. Thus, progress towards a comprehensive multidimensional model of perceived fatigability and exercise regulation is needed. Drawing on Gate Control Theory of pain, we propose a three-dimensional framework of centrally regulated and goal-directed exercise behaviour, which differentiates between sensory, affective and cognitive processes shaping the perceptual milieu during exercise. We propose that: (A) perceived mental strain and perceived physical strain are primary determinants of pacing behaviour reflecting sensory-discriminatory processes necessary to align planned behaviour with current physiological state, (B) core affect plays a primary and mediatory role in exercise and performance regulation, and its underlying two dimensions hedonicity and arousal reflect affective-motivational processes triggering approach and avoidance behaviour, and (C) the mindset-shift associated with an action crisis plays a primary role in volitional self-regulatory control reflecting cognitive-evaluative processes between further goal-pursuit and goal-disengagement. The proposed framework has the potential to enrich theory development in centrally regulated and goal-directed exercise behaviour by emphasising the multidimensional dynamic processes underpinning perceived fatigability and provides a practical outline for investigating the complex interplay between the psychophysiological determinants of pacing and performance during prolonged endurance exercise.


This paper explores the viability and development of the first edition of the researcher's mathematical card game, Groups , as a learning tool for elementary group theory, a topic in abstract algebra. Groups was play-tested by six undergraduate students in late 2016 who provided feedback on Groups from both utility-centric and design-centric perspectives. This paper addresses how well undergraduates with no prior group theory experience understand the fundamentals of group theory after playing several games of Groups , and how well undergraduates with prior knowledge of group theory related the Groups game play and mechanics to the fundamentals of group theory. Based on interview and questionnaire data, players found Groups to be an engaging and effective learning tool with both strengths and weaknesses in the tested iteration.


The study inspects the Information needs and seeking behavior of research scholars of Gujarat University in Social science and Linguistics disciplines. Sample constituted the population of total 80 research scholars from social science and linguistic disciplines. The study conducted through survey methodology with questionnaire developed basis on the core compounds of information seeking behaviour and collected the research data from the registered research scholars of Gujarat University. The results revealed that female little dominated in research work and the major purpose of seeking behaviour is for research work, knowledge enrichment and writing research and conference papers. Research scholars desired to use Gujarat university central library and their department library to pursue information. Study shows that research scholars have initiated to use various e-resources and internet based services but still they are not aware about remote login and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Majority of research scholar's consults print resources mainly reference collection, subject books and periodicals followed by digital resources for their on-going research work. Research scholars desired to discuss with subject experts and participates workshops and conferences on their areas for updating with current trends. Study also explored the difficulty faced by the scholars in information seeking activities. Study found that majority of scholars reported problem to access e-resources of university library and due to the information overload facing difficulty to identify appropriated sources. Study concluded with the recommendations to the university library authority to understand the research scholar's needs and reframe the library management system based on the social scientists requirement and provide batter quality library services to this important community.


Noticeably in casting and heat treatment process, computational methods are commonly engaged to predict process and mechanical characteristics such as solidification time, cooling speed, hardness and residual stress, in which analyzing thermo-mechanical coupled process necessitates such heat transfer, microstructure transformation, and stress. This paper proposes a FDM/FEM hybrid method for thermal stress analysis in casting process; taking advantage of each computational method, we use both FDM and FEM to analyze thermal stress. We use FDM to predict temperature distribution and microstructure and then transfer the result data to FEM to calculate thermal stress distribution. In this process, a systematic field data conversion procedure is developed for a successful data transfer. For the validation of this proposed method, numerical examples are presented and compared with antecedent experiment results. The interface data conversion program developed in this study can be used for any other program as well as FDM and FEM.


Titanium has limitations in its clinical performance in dental and orthopaedic applications. Over the last decade, numerous implant surface modifications have been developed and are currently used with the aim of enhancing bone integration. In the present study, we have experimented a bioactive titanium prepared by a simple chemical and moderate heat treatment that leads to the formation of a bone-like apatite layer on its surface in simulated body fluids. We haved used foetal rat calvaria cell cultures to investigate bone nodule formation on bioactive titanium. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that cells attached and spread on the bioactive surfaces. After 22 days of culture, bone nodules were detected on the material surface. Furthermore, the mineralized bone nodules remained attached to the bioactive titanium surface but not to untreated titanium. SEM observations and EDX microanalysis of sectioned squares showed that bone-like tissue directly bonded to bioactive titanium, but not pure titanium. These results indicated the importance of the implant surface composition in supporting differentiation of osteogenic cells and the subsequent apposition of bone matrix allowing a strong bond to bone. Furthermore, these findings may provide promising strategies for the development of biologically active implants.


Most standard descriptions of Type II migration state that massive, gap-opening planets must migrate at the viscous drift rate. This is based on the idea that the disk is separated into an inner and outer region and gas is considered unable to cross the gap. In fact, gas easily crosses the gap on horseshoe orbits, nullifying this necessary premise which would set the migration rate. In this work, it is demonstrated using highly accurate numerical calculations that the actual migration rate is dependent on disk and planet parameters, and can be significantly larger or smaller than the viscous drift rate. In the limiting case of a disk much more massive than the secondary, the migration rate saturates to a constant that is sensitive to disk parameters and is not necessarily of the order of the viscous rate. In the opposite limit of a low-mass disk, the migration rate decreases linearly with disk mass. Steady-state solutions in the low disk mass limit show no pile-up outside the secondary's orbit, and no corresponding drainage of the inner disk.


Techniques for information hiding (steganography) are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and widespread. With high-resolution digital images as carriers, detecting hidden messages is also becoming considerably more difficult. We describe a universal approach to steganalysis for detecting the presence of hidden messages embedded within digital images. We show that, within multiscale, multiorientation image decompositions (e.g., wavelets), first- and higher-order magnitude and phase statistics are relatively consistent across a broad range of images, but are disturbed by the presence of embedded hidden messages. We show the efficacy of our approach on a large collection of images, and on eight different steganographic embedding algorithms.


Author(s): Dron, Heather Armstrong | Advisor(s): Watkins, Elizabeth; Porter, Dorothy | Abstract: This dissertation traces the academic institutionalization and evolving concerns of teratologists, who studied environmental causes of birth defects in midcentury America. The Teratology Society officially formed in 1960, with funds and organizational support from philanthropies such as the National Foundation (Later known as The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation). Teratologists, including Virginia Apgar, the well-known obstetric anesthesiologist and inventor of the Apgar Score, were soon embroiled in public concerns about pharmaceutically mediated birth defects. Teratologists acted as consultants to industry and government on pre-market reproductive toxicology testing for pharmaceuticals. However, animal tests seemed unable to clearly predict results in humans and required careful interpretation of dosage and animal species and strain responses. By the late 1960s, amidst the popular environmental movement, teratologists grappled with public claims that birth defects resulted from exposure to industrial pollutants in water or air, or from food additives, pesticides, and industrial waste or effluent. In a crowded field of professionals concerned with pharmaceutical or chemical exposures during pregnancy, teratologists proved adaptive and resilient. Despite influences from the environmental movement, teratologists at times tried to contain the substances and outcomes considered relevant and called for greater vetting of chemical claims, amidst rampant journalistic and public accusations about iatrogenic or industrial harm. Both experimental teratology and epidemiology informed these debates but each faced explanatory insecurities in causal inference that left room for parental anxiety and considerable speculation about uncertain harms to susceptible fetuses. Concomitantly, environmental scientists and activist geneticists wanted to expand the definition of a teratogen to include more subtle or long-term outcomes and raising concerns about the as-yet-undetected reproductive hazards associated with chemical profligacy. Thus, by the 1960s and 1970s, a more general definition of non-genetic factors influencing mechanisms of developmental defect was overwhelmed by a vision of toxic chemical hazards, often pharmaceuticals, affecting development (particularly cognitive or neurobehavioral effects). I argue that the protectionist experimental science of teratologists in the 1950s, the calculative science of epidemiological risk and environmentalist's neo-eugenic claims of damaged children resulting from corporate negligence and industrial pollution that gained ground in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to a late twentieth-century characterization of pregnancy as a risky state.


This work focuses on applying supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) for eliminating residues of pharmaceutical, endocrine-disruptor and pesticide species from the reject of reverse-osmosis-treated secondary municipal wastewater. SCWO, a well-known treatment method for organic sludge and highly concentrated wastewaters, has not yet been investigated with reverse osmosis (RO) retentates of municipal secondary effluents. The results shown here, focusing on batch SCWO of municipal effluent RO retentate spiked with emerging pollutants, demonstrate the potential of utilizing this single advanced-oxidation generic treatment to fully-mineralize the vast variety of organic species encountered in municipal wastewater effluents, while at the same time lowering its total organic carbon concentration by up to 99%. The chosen model pollutants (carbamazepine and 17β-Estradiol both in synthetic solution and within a real effluent RO retentate matrix) and the effluent's background organic matter, started to degrade already at subcritical conditions, however near-complete mineralization of the full matrix (including transformation products) was invariably attained only at fully-established supercritical conditions (450°C–540°C). The extreme hydrothermal oxidation conditions applied in this work allowed for simultaneous oxidation of target molecules and background organic species throughout the applied temperature range, while the phenomenon known as "radicals scavenging" by the background organic matter, was not observed. A new technique is introduced in this work for controlling the pressure within semi-batch SCWO experiments.


The prostaglandin derivatives are thought to lower intraocular pressure (IOP) primarily by increasing uveoscleral outflow. The ocular side effect, hyperemia, appears to occur via a secondary, unrelated mechanism. Variations in the IOP-lowering effect and incidence of hyperemia associated with these drugs are a function of their different chemical structures. Among the currently approved prostaglandin derivatives, hyperemia occurs in as many as 50% of patients treated with travoprost and as few as 5% of patients treated with latanoprost. The side effect of hyperemia may be of concern to the ophthalmologist for at least 2 reasons: hyperemia may compromise the outcome of filtration surgery, and it may represent a cosmetic problem to the patient thereby leading to non-compliance. The extent to which hyperemia may contribute to patient noncompliance and the effect of administration of the prostaglandin derivatives on outcome of filtration surgery remain to be determined. Until more definitive data are available, when selecting a prostaglandin analogue for ocular hypotensive therapy, it seems prudent to choose an agent with a low incidence of hyperemia.


Objectives Pediatric tuberculosis (TB) remains difficult to diagnose. The plasma kynurenine to tryptophan ratio (K/T ratio) is a potential biomarker for TB diagnosis and treatment response but has not been assessed in children. Methods We performed a targeted diagnostic accuracy analysis of four biomarkers: kynurenine abundance, tryptophan abundance, the K/T ratio, and IDO-1 gene expression. Data were obtained from transcriptome and metabolome profiling of children with confirmed tuberculosis and age- and sex-matched uninfected household contacts of pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Each biomarker was assessed as a baseline diagnostic and in response to successful TB treatment. Results Despite non-significant between-group differences in unbiased analysis, the K/T ratio achieved an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.667 and 81.5% sensitivity for TB diagnosis. Kynurenine, tryptophan, and IDO-1 demonstrated diagnostic AUCs of 0.667, 0.602, and 0.463, respectively. None of these biomarkers demonstrated high AUCs for treatment response. The AUC of the K/T ratio was lower than biomarkers identified in unbiased analysis, but improved sensitivity over existing commercial assays for pediatric TB diagnosis. Conclusions Plasma kynurenine and the K/T ratio may be useful biomarkers for pediatric TB. Ongoing studies in geographically diverse populations will determine optimal use of these biomarkers worldwide.


: Natural killer (NK) activity and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) of peripheral blood lymphocytes from untreated non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients were found to be depressed, when tested against the human erythroblastoid cell-line K562. The percentage of active killer (AK) cells and that of target binding cells (TBC) of the patients were also inhibited. Treatment of the patients lymphocytes with interferon (IFN) caused an augmentation in their NK activity which was comparable with that seen in the controls. Lymphocytes from some of the patients and controls were cocultured with K562 cells for production of natural killer cytotoxic factors (NKCF). The NKCF released by the patients lymphocytes showed a reduced lytic activity against K562 target cells. The depression in all the activities reported here showed a correlation with the clinical status of the patients except in the case of ADCC. These results indicate that further characterization of the properties of NKCF will contribute the understanding of the mechanism of NK cytotoxicity.


Recent discoveries in neuroscience imply that the basic computational elements are the dendrites that make up more than 50% of a cortical neuron's membrane. Neuroscientists now believe that the basic computation units are dendrites, capable of computing simple logic functions. This paper discusses two types of neural networks that take advantage of these new discoveries. The focus of this paper is on some learning algorithms in the two neural networks. Learning is in terms of lattice computations that take place in the dendritic structure as well as in the cell body of the neurons used in this model.


Nitromethane has a stoichiometric air–fuel ratio of 1.7, which is 8.5 times lower than gasoline. For the same amount of air being drawn by the engine, more amount of nitromethane blends and hence more energy can be added. Methanol was used as a medium to mix nitromethane and gasoline, which are normally immiscible. Engine performance tests were carried out to study the effect of nitromethane addition to the methanol-gasoline blend. A large rise in engine torque and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) was obtained during the investigation. However, the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) also increased for the nitromethane blends. The engine parameters like spark timing, equivalence ratio, and compression ratio were optimized to further increase the engine power and also bring down the BSFC. A net torque improvement of 42%, BTE improvement of 35%, and BSFC rise of 9% were obtained by adding nitromethane and methanol in small fractions to gasoline. Combustion analysis was carried out using the cylinder pressure trace. High heat release rate and shorter combustion duration with nitromethane addition were observed. Emission measurements showed decrease in HC and CO emissions with nitromethane addition. However, a drastic rise in NO emissions was observed. Hence, it can be concluded that the specific power of small two-stroke spark ignition (SI) engines can be enhanced using nitromethane as a fuel additive to increase the payload of the unmanned aerial vehicles.


This studio provides participants with an opportunity to engage in a hands-on exploration of the use of "design fictions" as a strategy for producing physical artifacts. The idea of design fictions blurs the boundaries between traditional design practices and narrative explorations of potential futures. If the goal of design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones, then the goal of design fiction is to use speculations, metaphors, and explorations of desired futurities to explicate and inform material design practices. Participants will have a chance to discuss these ideas, as well as to design and build their own "diegetic prototypes" out of materials sourced from local antique shops, thrift stores, and other nearby sources of inspiration. Through this hands-on exploration of the constraints and affordances of fictional scenarios and scavenged materials, we hope to collectively explore a compelling new design space for tangibles.


In this paper, we present a general review of hash functions in a cryptographic sense. We give special emphasis on some particular topics such as cipher block chaining message authentication code (CBC MAC) and its variants. This paper also broadens the information given in [1], by including more details on block-cipher based hash functions and security of different hash schemes.


The practice of adding salt to water to induce salting out of contaminants or to break emulsions and suspensions is generally avoided industrially because of the expense of the necessary treatment of the salty water afterwards. However, the use of switchable water, an aqueous solvent with switchable ionic strength, allows for reversible generation and elimination of salts in aqueous solution, through the introduction and removal of CO2. In the effort to improve the efficiency of these switchable salts, a physical study modeling their reactivity and solution behaviour has been performed, resulting in a set of design principles for future switchable water additives. The resulting polyamines synthesized using this template show the highest efficiency recorded for a switchable water additive.


The NIDCR-supported Practice-based Research Network initiative presents dentistry with an unprecedented opportunity by providing a pathway for modifying and advancing the profession. It encourages practitioner participation in the transfer of science into practice for the improvement of patient care. PBRNs vary in infrastructure and design, and sustaining themselves in the long term may involve clinical trial validation by regulatory agencies. This paper discusses the PBRN concept in general and uses the New York University College of Dentistry's Practitioners Engaged in Applied Research and Learning (PEARL) Network as a model to improve patient outcomes. The PEARL Network is structured to ensure generalizability of results, data integrity, and to provide an infrastructure in which scientists can address clinical practitioner research interests. PEARL evaluates new technologies, conducts comparative effectiveness research, participates in multidisciplinary clinical studies, helps evaluate alternative models of healthcare, educates and trains future clinical faculty for academic positions, expands continuing education to include "benchmarking" as a form of continuous feedback to practitioners, adds value to dental schools' educational programs, and collaborates with the oral health care and pharmaceutical industries and medical PBRNs to advance the dental profession and further the integration of dental research and practice into contemporary healthcare (NCT00867997, NCT01268605).


Background The control of blood pressure is one of the main objectives in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) management, as well as glycaemic control. Purpose The first objective of this study was to describe the practise in hypertensive drug management in a cohort of DT2 patients from a diabetology department of a university hospital and to compare this practise with the current guidelines for hypertension treatment (HGs). Materials and Methods This retrospective study examined T2D outpatients who came to the diabetology department between June and November 2010 for an annual cheque-up. Clinical and therapeutic data were extracted. Patients' blood pressure levels were measured by an automated procedure (Dynamap). Results The analysis was carried out on 803 patients (age: 64.9 ± 8.9 yrs; 38.6% women). The combination of T2D with confirmed hypertension was frequent (82.9%) and higher than the national results (80%). This situation was associated with cardiovascular and renal complications for 21% and 22.4% of the patients, respectively. The average systolic and diastolic blood pressures were 132.9 and 71.3 mmHg, respectively. Recommended objective for DT2 patients (<130/80 mmHg) was reached for 44.6% of the patients. Mono, dual and triple therapies were in accordance with the HGs in 100%, 95% and 85% of the patients, respectively. The effect of these different combinations, illustrated by the median of the blood pressure levels, was better for monotherapies (128.5/70.3 mmHg) than for dual and triple therapies (132.5/72 and 131/70.8 mmHg, respectively). 19% of patients had to take at least 4 anti-hypertensive drugs and the median of their systolic and diastolic blood pressures were 135.5 and 71 mmHg, respectively. Conclusions In DT2 patients, blood pressure control should be improved, with for example earlier detection of hypertension and/or therapeutic reinforcement. However, antihypertensive drug management seems to be in accordance with the French official guidelines. The development of new drugs and patient education programmes may improve patient adherence. No conflict of interest.


Abstract Intraoperative brain deformation, so-called brain shift, affects the applicability of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to assist the procedures of intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) guidance during neurosurgery. This paper proposes a deep learning-based approach for fast and accurate deformable registration of preoperative MRI to iUS images to correct brain shift. Based on the architecture of 3D convolutional neural networks, the proposed deep MRI-iUS registration method has been successfully tested and evaluated on the retrospective evaluation of cerebral tumors (RESECT) dataset. This study showed that our proposed method outperforms other registration methods in previous studies with an average mean squared error (MSE) of 85. Moreover, this method can register three 3D MRI-US pair in less than a second, improving the expected outcomes of brain surgery.


Previous research on coercion has neglected the fact that agents under authoritative pressure may also suffer from coercive power, which can trigger anxiety-like emotional negativity on its victims. Furthermore, high levels of neuroticism and/or anxiety have been found to be associated with the compliance of various forms of social pressure. In this study, we investigate the effects of the anxiolytic GABAA (gamma-Aminobutyric acid) modulator, lorazepam, on behavioral and neural responses to coercive power. Here, we applied a virtual obedience to authority paradigm alongside lorazepam administration (versus placebo), and during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Our results show that lorazepam administration exerted differential effects on the reaction times (RTs) when initiating harming versus helping behaviors, with longer harming RTs compared to helping RTs, despite comparable subjective ratings regarding perceived coercion. Coercive harming significantly increased activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Lorazepam administration decreased amygdala and hippocampus activity, but increased dlPFC and right temporoparietal junction activations. The lower activity in the hippocampus predicted higher ratings for perceived coercion. Furthermore, lorazepam significantly decreased the functional connectivity of the hippocampus with the dlPFC during coercive harming. In conclusion, we provide evidence –by incorporating multimodal indices, including neuroimaging, neuropharmacological interventions, and behavioral assessments– to posit that the GABAA agonist, lorazepam, might aid as a possible intervention in service of coping strategies against coercion.


OBJECT
The authors' goal was to better define the relationship between biomechanical parameters of a helmeted collision and the likelihood of concussion.

METHODS
The English-language literature was reviewed in search of scholarly articles describing the rotational and translational accelerations observed during all monitored impact conditions that resulted in concussion at all levels of American football.

RESULTS
High school players who suffer concussion experience an average of 93.9g of translational acceleration (TA) and 6505.2 rad/s(2) of rotational acceleration (RA). College athletes experience an average of 118.4g of TA and 5311.6 rad/s(2) of RA. While approximately 3% of collisions are associated with TAs greater than the mean TA associated with concussion, only about 0.02% of collisions actually result in a concussion. Associated variables that determine whether a player who experiences a severe collision also experiences a concussion remain hypothetical at present.

CONCLUSIONS
The ability to reliably predict the incidence of concussion based purely on biomechanical data remains elusive. This study provides novel, important information that helps to quantify the relative insignificance of biomechanical parameters in prediction of concussion risk. Further research will be necessary to better define other factors that predispose to concussion.


The data covers US Congressional districts. Data is available in .csv and .dta format with a codebook. Within these datasets there are three broad categories of variables: (a) political outcomes, (b) policy outcomes, and (c) demographic variables.


An attempt was made to assess the level of heavy metal transfer from forage plants to reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L.) in an area in northern Lapland affected from dust from an open pit copper mine. Botanical analyses of rumen contents from reindeer provided information about the main plant species in the diet. Representative plant material was collected from sample plots within an 8 km radius from the central part of the mine and from a reference area situated about 200 km upwind of the mining site. The following plant species were analysed: Bryoria jremontii, Br. juscescens, Cladina rangiferina, Equisetum fluviatile, Descbampsiaflexuosa, Eriopborum vaginatum, Salix glauca, Salix pbylicifolia, Betula nana, and Vaccini-um myrtillus. The greatest difference between metal concentrations in the plants collected from dust contaminated area and from the reference area was found in lichens. Copper is the main metallic component of the ore and was found in higher concentrations in lichens coming from the area around the mine than in lichens from the reference area. Smaller differences were found in vascular plants. Dust particles, remaining on outer surfaces after snow smelt contributed to a limited extent to the metal contents. Species—specific accumulation of metals was observed in some plants. The uptake of lead and cadmium in some vascular plants was somewhat higher in the reference area compared with plants growing in the perifery of the mining center, probably due to the metal concentrations in the bedrock. Organ material (liver and kidney) was collected from reindeer in both areas. No noticable effect on metal concentrations in the liver of the reindeer were found. Although the lead, cadmium and copper concentrations were higher in the organs collected from animals in the reference area than in those from the mining area, the levels were still below the concentrations regarded as harmful for the animals from toxicological point of view. The material collected during this study would also lend itself to research into the trace element nutrition of the reindeer.


Decisions relating to the orientation of movement by animals and how this translates into movement patterns can occur at multiple spatial scales simultaneously, but this interaction is poorly understood for many groups of animals. Using the tracks left by moving snakes in their sandy habitat, we studied the movement paths of the African snake Bitis schneideri (Namaqua dwarf adder) for evidence of broad-scale directional persistence and short-range avoidance of exposure. Although snakes clearly displayed directional persistence, they preferentially moved to nearby shrubs, thereby minimizing exposure to solar and thermal radiation and/or predation. Thus, snakes made decisions relating to orientation at a minimum of two scales, the interaction of which resulted in snakes moving ≈17% (mean straightness index = 0.85) further than the simple broad-scale straight-line distance. We assert that the actual path chosen by moving snakes represents a trade-off of various costs and risks that include risk of predation, exposure to the elements, time and energy expenditure. Our study highlights the need for cognizance of the possibility of the scale dependence of orientation and movement in studies of snake movement, and adds to a growing literature demonstrating previously unrecognized behavioural complexity in snakes.


Stress is an inevitable part of modern life. While stress can negatively impact a person's life and health, positive and under-controlled stress can also enable people to generate creative solutions to problems encountered in their daily lives. Although it is hard to eliminate stress, we can learn to monitor and control its physical and psychological effects. It is essential to provide feasible and immediate solutions for more mental health counselling and support programs to help people relieve stress and improve their mental health. Popular wearable devices, such as smartwatches with several sensing capabilities, including physiological signal monitoring, can alleviate the problem. This work investigates the feasibility of using wrist-based electrodermal activity (EDA) signals collected from wearable devices to predict people's stress status and identify possible factors impacting stress classification accuracy. We use data collected from wrist-worn devices to examine the binary classification discriminating stress from non-stress. For efficient classification, five machine learning-based classifiers were examined. We explore the classification performance on four available EDA databases under different feature selections. According to the results, Support Vector Machine (SVM) outperforms the other machine learning approaches with an accuracy of 92.9 for stress prediction. Additionally, when the subject classification included gender information, the performance analysis showed significant differences between males and females. We further examine a multimodal approach for stress classifications. The results indicate that wearable devices with EDA sensors have a great potential to provide helpful insight for improved mental health monitoring.


Romantic wanderings of Poles across Saxon SwitzerlandThe history of Polish tourism in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains as well as the literary and artistic reception of the landscape and culture of Saxon Switzerland have never been discussed in detail. The present article is a research reconnaissance. The beginnings and development of tourism in the region came in the late 18th and early 19th century. The 1800s were marked by the emergence of the first German-language descriptions of Saxon Switzerland, which served as guidebooks at the time. From the very beginning Poles, too, participated in the tourist movement in the area. The author of the article seeks to follow the increasing interest in Saxon Switzerland and the appearance of the first descriptions of the region in Polish literature and culture. She provides a detailed analysis of Polish-language accounts of micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains by Andrzej Edward Koźmian, Stanisław Deszert, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Klementyna Hoffman née Tańska and a poem by Maciej Bogusz Stęczyński. As the analysis demonstrates, in the first half of the 19th century Poles liked to visit these relatively low mountains in Central Europe and tourism in the region is clearly part of the history of Polish mountain tourism. Thanks to unique aesthetic and natural values of the mountains, full of varied rocky formations, reception of their landscape had an impact of the development of the aesthetic sensibility of Polish Romantics. Direct contact with nature and the landscape of Saxon Switzerland also served an important role in the shaping of spatial imagination of Polish tourists, encouraging them to explore other mountains in Europe and the world, including the Alps. On the other hand thanks to the development of tourist infrastructure in Saxon Switzerland, facilitating trips in the region and making the most attractive spots available to inexperienced tourists, micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains marked an important stage in the development of mountain tourism on a popular-recreational level. Polish-language accounts of trips to Saxon Switzerland from the first half of the 20th century are a noteworthy manifestation of the beginnings of Polish travel literature.


The aim of this study was to explore the role of body image concern in the relationship between physical activity and physical self-concept. A total of 441 Spanish adolescent college females aged 12 to 17 completed the Physical Self-Concept Questionnaire (CAF), the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) and Gardner´s Scale for the Assessment of Body Image. Data on body mass index (BMI) and participation in physical activity were also collected. The results showed a positive relationship between physical activity and physical self-concept with all its subdimensions, as well as general self-concept. This relationship was notably higher in the absence of body image concern. However, no relationship was found between exercise and the subdimension of body attractiveness in the case of adolescents who were dissatisfied with their bodies. This emphasizes the importance of a healthy body image in shaping an adolescent female's self-concept.


Objectives Over the coming decades, China is expected to face the largest worldwide increase in dementia incidence. Mobile health (mHealth) may improve the accessibility of dementia prevention strategies, targeting lifestyle-related risk factors. Our aim is to explore the needs and views of Chinese older adults regarding healthy lifestyles to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) and dementia through mHealth, supporting the Prevention of Dementia using Mobile Phone Applications (PRODEMOS) study. Design Qualitative semi-structured interview study, using thematic analysis. Setting Primary and secondary care in Beijing and Tai'an, China. Participants Older adults aged 55 and over without dementia with an increased dementia risk, possessing a smartphone. Participants were recruited through seven hospitals participating in the PRODEMOS study, purposively sampled on age, sex, living area and history of CVD and diabetes. Results We performed 26 interviews with participants aged 55–86 years. Three main themes were identified: valuing a healthy lifestyle, sociocultural expectations and need for guidance. First, following a healthy lifestyle was generally deemed important. In addition to generic healthy behaviours, participants regarded certain specific Chinese lifestyle practices as important to prevent disease. Second, the sociocultural context played a crucial role, as an important motive to avoid disease was to limit the care burden put on family members. However, time-consuming family obligations and other social values could also impede healthy behaviours such as regular physical activity. Finally, there seemed to be a need for reliable and personalised lifestyle advice and for guidance from a health professional. Conclusions The Chinese older adults included in this study highly value a healthy lifestyle. They express a need for personalised lifestyle support in order to adopt healthy behaviours. Potentially, the PRODEMOS mHealth intervention can meet these needs through blended lifestyle support to improve risk factors for dementia and CVD. Trial registration number ISRCTN15986016; Pre-results.


We live in a society marked both by high rates of relationship breakdowns and geographical mobility. Judges and federal magistrates are therefore often placed in the untenable position of having to determine questions that have the potential to place a parent's right to freedom of movement against the best interests of children, who in many cases are too young to adequately express their view on the matter. Given that the 1995 amendments may have impacted on relocation decisions, we were interested in looking at what further impact the 2006 changes might effectuate. Some have presumed the 2006 amendments would heavily impinge upon the primary care giver's right to relocate. Given the statutory changes outlined further below in which the child's right to have a relationship with both parents was given greater emphasis we predicted that such an effect was indeed likely. To test the prediction we chose 50 judgments at random from the Family Court website/AUSTLII. Fifteen of the cases were heard in the Family Court of Australia, 29 at Federal Magistrates Courts and six in the Family Court of Western Australia. The current paper does not explore the vast majority whose journey follows the non-litigious path described by Dewar and Parker. Indeed, we are neither claiming nor aiming to produce a comprehensive overview of the nature of relocation cases that occur and acknowledge the limitations of any findings due to the small sample size. Any results must be regarded as preliminary.


We argue the need for effective resource management mechanisms for sharing resources in commodity clusters. To address this issue, we present the design of Sharc-a system that enables resource sharing among applications in such clusters. Sharc depends on single node resource management mechanisms such as reservations or shares, and extends the benefits of such mechanisms to clustered environments. We present techniques for managing two important resources-CPU and network interface bandwidth-on a cluster-wide basis. Our techniques allow Sharc to 1) support reservation of CPU and network interface bandwidth for distributed applications, 2) dynamically allocate resources based on past usage, and 3) provide performance isolation to applications. Our experimental evaluation has shown that Sharc can scale to 256 node clusters running 100,000 applications. These results demonstrate that Sharc can be an effective approach for sharing resources among competing applications in moderate size clusters.


Abstract : The mechanical response of BMI 5250-4 neat resin at 191 degrees C was studied using both creep and recovery tests where several variables were allowed to change. In these tests, the effect of stress rate, prior history, and panel variability were all taken into account. During the creep test, the material showed both primary and secondary creep over 20 h. The recovery tests showed full recovery after it was subjected to 80% UTS. The higher stress rate caused a much greater response in both creep and recovery tests. The prior history was studied by allowing the specimens to go through a stepwise creep test. They behaved similar to the single step creep test when preceded by a loading segment. During creep tests preceded by unloading, the material showed a decrease in creep strain. This decrease grew as the creep stress approached zero. The only difference that could be seen with panel variability was that the UTS dropped dramatically between the panels. A nonlinear viscoelastic model was created that was based on the work by Schapery. This model included four constants that were material specific and stress dependant. These constants were obtained by viewing the response during a two- step program including creep and recovery. The model was verified by comparing the predictions to previous tests including the creep and stepwise creep tests. The model predicted the creep strain preceded by load up well. It was capable of showing the response of the negative creep but the error grew as more steps were introduced. The model could not take into account stress rate. Therefore it could only predict the results at the higher stress rate.


Significance of the temporal (AI, AII, Ep, IT) cortical areas for localization of acoustic stimuli sources of various parameters (tones 0.25-5 kHz, polytonal signals, clicks) was studied in acute and chronic experiments on kittens in the age of 15-90 days and on adult cats. The temporal areas were shown to take part in localization of tones beginning from third week, in that of polytonal signals from the second month, and in that of clicks from the third month of life. The degree of the corticalization of the mechanisms of stimuli localization is not the same in adult animals as well, the most corticalized being the mechanisms of tone localization, the least corticalized--that of clicks. Heterofunctionality of the right and the left temporal areas in the mechanisms of the spatial hearing has been revealed. In ontogeny the right temporal area functionally forestalls the left one. The role of the callosal body in the spatial orientation becomes apparent from the second month of life and consists mainly in ability to localize the sources of monotonal signals.


A HIGHLY SENSITIVE AND SPECIFIC SYSTEM FOR LARGE-SCALE GENE EXPRESSION PROFILING. G. Hu, Q. Yang, H. Li, Princeton University, Princeton and Piscataway, NJ. Gene expression profiling of very few or even single cells is of particular interest in many applications, including molecular diagnosis. However, detection of a large number of mRNA sequences from a small number of cells is limited by the sensitivity of available methods. High-throughput multiplex reverse transcription followed by PCR amplification (RT-PCR) has much to offer these studies owing to its inherent sensitivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. A multiplex RT-PCR-based high-throughput gene profiling system is described in this communication. With this system, a breast cancer–specific microarray is developed. More than 1,000 different mRNA species can be amplified in a single tube to a detectable amount. By using specially designed PCR primers, the long-standing low-specificity problem associated with high-throughput gene expression profiling has been solved. Amplified sequences are then resolved by microarray with probes that only hybridize to sequences amplified from mRNA. The method is so sensitive that mRNA in single cells can be reliably detected. Differentially expressed genes identified with the high-throughput approach in the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 and its drugresistant variant MCF-7/AdrR could be validated by a different method. The approach may greatly facilitate the analysis of combinatorial expression of known genes in many important applications with a limited amount of RNA, such as molecular diagnosis of cancer patient with samples of fine-needle aspiration prior to surgery.


We introduce a new task that takes the output of semantic role labeling and associates each of the argument slots for a predicate with a verbose description such as buyer or thing bought to semantic role labels such as 'Arg0' and 'Arg1' for predicate like "buy". Ambiguous verb senses and syntactic alternations make this a challenging task. We adapt the frame information for each verb in the PropBank to create our training data. We propose various baseline methods and more informed models which can identify such verbose labels with 95.2% accuracy if the semantic roles have already been correctly identified. We extend our work to text visualization to illustrate the importance of verbose labeling. As a proof of concept, we built an interactive browser for human history articles from Wikipedia, called lensingWikipedia.


There is a great need in schools today for school staff to be trauma informed. Many students are coming into the classroom after having dealt with traumatic experiences. Many people assume that the only trauma they are experiencing comes from abuse. However, that is not the case. Students are experiencing a variety of trauma in their lives such as death, neglect, community disasters and nation-wide disasters. All these factors change the way that children respond to others, their behaviors in the classroom and their academic success. Because of this trend, school staff are becoming trauma informed. Staff is trained to identify trauma in students and how to help the students navigate their emotions. Rather than disciplining the students for their actions, schools are working towards teaching the students how to respond and act. Trauma informed schools and staff members create a safer environment for all students and promote teaching techniques rather than discipline to support their students.


OBJECTIVE The increased cardiovascular risk in diabetes has been linked to endothelial and renal dysfunction. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of stable fragments of the precursors of adrenomedullin, endothelin-1, vasopressin, and atrial natriuretic peptide in progression of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This was a prospective, observational study design with a composite end point (death or unexpected admission to hospital due to a cardiovascular event) on 781 patients with type 2 diabetes (54 events, median duration of observation 15 months). The four stable precursor peptides midregional adrenomedullin (MR-proADM), midregional proatrial natriuretic peptide (MR-proANP), COOH-terminal proendothelin-1 (CT-proET-1), and COOH-terminal provasopressin or copeptin (CT-proAVP) were determined at baseline, and their association to renal function and cardiovascular events was studied using stepwise linear and Cox logistic regression analysis and receiver operating characteristic analysis, respectively. RESULTS MR-proADM, CT-proET-1, CT-proAVP, and MR-proANP were all elevated in patients with future cardiovascular events and independently correlated to serum creatinine. MR-proADM and MR-proANP were significant predictors of a future cardiovascular event, with MR-proANP being the stronger (area under the curve 0.802 ± 0.034, sensitivity 0.833, specificity 0.576, positive predictive value 0.132, and negative predictive value 0.978 with a cutoff value of 75 pmol/l). CONCLUSIONS The four serum markers of vasoactive and natriuretic peptides are related to both kidney function and cardiovascular events, thus linking two major complications of diabetes, diabetic nephropathy and cardiovascular disease.


This report has been compiled as an exploratory review of specialty court programs operating in Australia. It aims to document the establishment, operation and effectiveness of these programs in an effort to improve understanding about where they exist, how they function and whether they are successful. This review was supported by a national audit of specialty court programs conducted in conjunction with each Australian state and territory and the Criminology Research Council. The audit identified 19 programs operating across Australian as at 31 December 2004. Of these: nine were developed for dealing with drug-dependent offenders; six were developed as alternative sentencing options for Indigenous offenders; three were established for dealing with the incidence and perpetrators of family and domestic violence; and one program targeted offenders with a mental impairment. The report is presented in five sections. The first section explores and discusses the establishment of Australian specialty court programs identified in the national audit. It examines the chronological development, location, objectives and eligibility criteria that predominate amongst specialty courts in general. Section two discusses access and eligibility issues. It analyses demographic issues, offence and offender profiles, the legal and judicial environment in which the courts are located and other factors which affect access to specialty courts. These include whether participation is voluntary, and the effect of drugs and mental health issues on an offender's access to, and eligibility for, specialty court programs. Section three presents a typology of specialty courts in Australia. Section four presents a case study exploration of the methods and procedures which characterise a generalised model of speciality courts. Finally, section five describes the evaluation of specialty courts. It includes an examination of how evaluations were done and a discussion about the results.


In clustering problems, a central decision-maker is given a complete metric graph over vertices and must provide a clustering of vertices that minimizes some objective function. In fair clustering problems, vertices are endowed with a color (e.g., membership in a group), and the features of a valid clustering might also include the representation of colors in that clustering. Prior work in fair clustering assumes complete knowledge of group membership. In this paper, we generalize prior work by assuming imperfect knowledge of group membership through probabilistic assignments. We present clustering algorithms in this more general setting with approximation ratio guarantees. We also address the problem of "metric membership", where different groups have a notion of order and distance. Experiments are conducted using our proposed algorithms as well as baselines to validate our approach and also surface nuanced concerns when group membership is not known deterministically.


In slope stability research a ground water level increase is often the
critical factor for failure. High ground water levels (or more properly
stated: high pore water pressures) reduce the internal strength of the
slope. It is recognised for quite some time that fast infiltration of
precipitation towards the (perched) ground water table can induce high pore
pressures and thus instability within formerly stable slopes. However,
deeper located landslides are affected on the long term by a slow but
distinct ground water table rise, which may take place a significant time
after the occurrence of rainfall. From the above it is clear that
hydrological insight in natural slopes susceptible to landsliding, is more
than appropriate for the long-term risk assessment in case of land use or
climate change.
The objective of this thesis is to analyse and quantify the hydrological
processes that play a role in landslides within clayey slopes. The following
questions are addressed:
- What can hydro- and geochemistry add to our knowledge of a
hydrological system in a clayey slope?
- What processes dominate the ground water recharge in unstable clayey
slopes and how can the ground water recharge be quantified?
- What is the consequence of a land use or climatic change with
respect to unstable clayey slopes?

The study of the potential use of hydro- and geochemistry in refining the
hydrological knowledge of a site is described in the second part (chapter
3). Analyses have been made to cation exchange capacity and exchangeable
cation compostion with NH4Ac and NaCl method. It is concluded that
geochemistry is a potentially valuable technique for e.g. landslide
reserarch, but is recognised that still a lot of work has to be done before
this technique can be applied in engineering practice.
The hydrological analyses of the Beline study area at Salins-les-Bains shows
the importance of the role of the unsaturated zone in deep-seated
landslides. A methodology is presented to model state-dependent ground water
recharge. This is basically a precipitation time series that is rescaled as
a function of the state of the unsaturated zone. The latter can be
calculated on basis of the results of an unsaturated zone model, soil
moisture content or even be approximated using a sinusoidal function. The
results of the Beline case study showed that clear improvement of the
modelling of ground water level fluctuations can be obtained with this focus
on the input series.
It was made plausible that the Beline slope suffers from creep displacement
process. The changing ground water conditions as a result of changes in
climate or land use have two important consequences for the creep
displacement at the Beline slope. Acceleration of the displacement will
occur because of an increased ground water level. Probably more significant
is the impact of prolonged periods of high ground water level. This
prolonged period of movement is for slopes, which encounter creep features,
probably the most important factor for catastrophic failure. In that respect
a long-term change in vegetation pattern has much more influence on a clayey
slope system than a short-term change in climate input.


Cordyceps cicadae (Cc), a traditional Chinese medicine, has been shown to possess immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory activities, and is regarded as having effects in vision improvement, but with no reported evidence. This study investigated the effects of Cordyceps cicadae fermented mycelia extracts (Cc extracts) in a benzalkonium chloride (BAC)-induced mouse dry eye model. Female ICR mice aged 6 weeks were randomly divided into four groups: blank, BAC-damaged without Cc extracts, BAC-damaged with 10 mg/kg bodyweight of Cc extracts, BAC-damaged with 100 mg/kg bodyweight of Cc extracts. The results showed that tear volume, tear film breakup time, and cornea surface indexes, including smoothness, opacity, topography, and the extent of lissamine green staining, were all improved with intake of Cc extracts intake, when compared to the status of the BAC-damaged group without Cc extracts. Immunohistochemical assays showed moderate change of Ki-67+ and Np63+ epithelial cell populations, while apoptotic epithelial cells, as detected by TUNEL assay, were decreased. PAS stain showed that the conjunctival goblet cell number and total cell area were decreased in the BAC-damaged group with Cc extracts at 10 mg/kg bodyweight. This study demonstrated that Cc extracts effectively ameliorate BAC-induced dry eye symptoms through enhancement of cornea resilience against BAC-induced damages and maintenance of conjunctival goblet cells.


Motivated by the theory of Coleman power series (reinterpreted via fields of norms by Fontaine) we construct a splitting of the natural map of K_1 groups arising from the mod p reduction map of the Iwasawa algebra of a pro-p Lie group. We also show the vanishing of SK_1 for certain unipotent groups.


Cross-module inter-procedural compiler optimization (IPO) and Feedback-Directed Optimization (FDO) are two important compiler techniques delivering solid performance gains. The combination of IPO and FDO delivers peak performance, but also multiplies both techniques' usability problems. In this paper, we present LIPO, a novel static IPO framework, which integrates IPO and FDO. Compared to existing approaches, LIPO no longer requires writing of the compiler's intermediate representation, eliminates the link-time inter-procedural optimization phase entirely, and minimizes code re-generation overhead, thus improving scalability by an order of magnitude. Compared to an FDO baseline, and without further specific tuning, LIPO improves performance of SPEC2006 INT by 2.5%, and of SPEC2000 INT by 4.4%, with up to 23% for one benchmarks. We confirm our scalability results on a set of large industrial applications, demonstrating 2.9% performance improvements on average. Compile time overhead for full builds is less than 30%, incremental builds take a few seconds on average, and storage requirements increase by only 24%, all compared to the FDO baseline.


The Medical Geography of Cannabinoid Botanicals in Washington State: Access, Delivery, and Distress Sunil Kumar Aggarwal Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Jonathan Mayer Geography Though rendered dormant by a post-1937 Cannabis sativa L. prohibition, the emerging field of cannabinoid medicine is growing in the United States as ever greater numbers of physicians become educated about the physiologic importance of the endogenous cannabinoid system and about the wide safety margins and broad clinical efficacies of cannabinoid drugs, available in both purely botanical and purely chemical varieties and useful for managing pain and other conditions in the growing chronically and critically ill patient population. Research presented here is focused on medical access and delivery of cannabinoid botanicals in Washington State and seeks to map the geography of this developing cannabinoid medical care system by taking medical geographic "snapshots" of two purposefully chosen locations: a rural clinic site in Washington State where patients currently access cannabinoid botanicals for medical use in the treatment of chronic pain syndromes with acceptable safety under medical supervision and another site where qualifying patients are delivered environmentallyculled cannabinoid botanicals. At the former site, retrospective chart reviews were conducted with 139 patients with chronic pain, and at the latter site, a convenience sample of 37 qualifying patients delivered a monoclonal lot of cannabinoid botanical medicine were prospectively studied using standard and tailored survey instruments. A political ecology of disease approach was employed to rationalize and depathologize patients' mental distress at potentially facing possession-related legal problems due to their consumption of the still-contraband biota. Results provide quantitative and qualitative insight into the frail health status in both samples of qualifying patients and give a grounded understanding of the lengths that patients and care providers go, despite multiple hurdles, to access and deliver treatment with cannabinoid botanicals that relieves patients' diverse symptoms and improves their health-related quality-of-


We report on a new kind of group conversation on Twitter that we call a group chat. These chats are periodic, synchronized group conversations focused on specific topics and they exist at a massive scale. The groups and the members of these groups are not explicitly known. Rather, members agree on a hashtag and a meeting time (e.g, 3pm Pacific Time every Wednesday) to discuss a subject of interest. Topics of these chats are numerous and varied. Some are support groups, for example, post-partum depression and mood disorder groups. Others are about a passionate interest: topics include skiing, photography, movies, wine and foodie communities. We develop a definition of a group that is inspired by how sociologists define groups and present an algorithm for discovering groups. We prove that our algorithms find all groups under certain assumptions. While these groups are of course known to the people who participate in the discussions, what we do not believe is known is the scale and variety of groups. We provide some insight into the nature of these groups based on over two years of tweets. Finally, we show that group chats are a growing phenomenon on Twitter and hope that reporting their existence propels their growth even further.


Neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) is a cell surface adhesion glycoprotein that plays an important role in the development and stability of nervous tissue. The homophilic binding mechanism of NCAM is still a subject of debate on account of findings that appear to support different mechanisms. This paper describes single molecule force measurements with both full-length NCAM and NCAM mutants that lack different immunoglobulin (Ig) domains. By systematically applying an external, time-dependent force to the bond, we obtained parameters that describe the energy landscape of NCAM-NCAM bonds. Histograms of the rupture forces between the full-length NCAM extracellular domains revealed two binding events, one rupturing at higher forces than the other. These bond rupture data show that the two bonds have the same dissociation rates. Despite the energetic and kinetic similarities, the bond strengths differ significantly, and are mechanically distinct. Measurements with NCAM domain deletion mutants mapped the weaker bond to the Ig1-2 segment, and the stronger bond to the Ig3 domain. Finally, the quantitative agreement between the fragment adhesion and the strengths of both NCAM bonds shows that the domain deletions considered in this study do not alter the intrinsic strengths of either of the two bonds.


Information Communication Technology (ICT) integration in the classroom is often viewed as a panacea towards resolving South Africa's education challenges. However, ICT integration in education in South Africa has been severely limited by operational, strategic and pedagogic challenges. In part, addressing the strategic and operational challenges involves understanding the current landscape of ICT integration in schools. There is scant information on the practical enforcement of ICTs in the classroom. The aim of this research is to determine the extent of ICT usage in South African schools in order to obtain an understanding of the practical enforcement of ICTs at the school level. This study combines both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods in order to provide a rich nuanced perspective of ICT integration in South African schools. The study found that the uptake of technology remains low, on average the frequency of usage per tool type was as follows: contextual tools (41%), sharing information and ideas tools (29%), experiential tools (26%) and reflective dialogue tools (18%). It was found that teachers are uncertain with respect to the enforcement of e-education while being encumbered by poor infrastructure and lack of skills.


This paper explores Van Hiele's Model's use in planning the tasks to identify the properties of quadrilaterals. Lesson study, a professional development program that enables teachers to collaborate to improve teaching and learning quality, was utilized to get necessary data needed for the study. The authors aimed to see to what extent Van Hiele's Model affects the students' engagement and development of knowledge in the learning of the research topic. Some observations during the research lesson were as follows: 1) retention of prior knowledge on quadrilaterals was little to non-evident to the students 2) most students still use jargons in order to describe the properties of quadrilaterals and 3) most students were not able to showcase skills in measuring lengths and angles in identifying properties of the quadrilaterals. Given these observations, the following recommendations were as follows: 1) continuous integration and use of mathematical tools such as ruler and protractor in teaching different concepts and processes in Mathematics 2) identifying the level of the learners' readiness based on the Van Hiele's model to provide appropriate examples and activities in the context of the students 3) providing hands-on activities such as geometric construction and measuring activities that would enhance students' capabilities in reasoning and proving. Lesson study served as a powerful tool to reflect on the researchers' processes and activities in conducting the study.


This thesis examines the empirical evidence for the transferability of Japanese soft technology (JST) or Japanese work organisation within two government-initiated, Malaysian-Japanese strategic alliances: PROTON and PERNEC. The government, through its Look East Policy (LEP) began in 1982, taking Japan (and South Korea) as models and partners in Malaysian economic and industrial development process, and expected these alliances to learn the good aspects of Japanese work organisations and management styles in order for them to become independent companies, both technologically and economically. The thesis found that the alliances have been successfully taking and utilising Japanese parts, components, tools, robots and machines; i.e. the 'ready-made hard technology'. [Whereas the important element of soft technology has been ignored]. The soft technology has been slowly and marginally transferred because neither local parties nor their Japanese counterparts within the alliances consider the acquisition or transfer of soft technology to be the main concern or a part of business plan. Although many factors influence management transfer, the thesis has focused on the eagerness and the capability of Malaysian managerial teams to acquire and, to a lesser extent, the readiness of the Japanese to transfer the technology. It was found that there is a lack of demand on technology acquisition by Malaysian managers and lack of responsibility to transfer the technology among Japanese experts. However, the political and social pressures on these alliances, the industrial climate and labour market, leaderships and management system of alliances, and Japanese MNCs regional and global corporate strategies have contributed to the high level of transfer of JST at PROTON compared to PERNEC. The research also found that Malaysian industrial and investment policies have favoured foreign investment but there is a lack of strategies for nurturing indigenous technological development.On the other hand the Japanese MNCs and public agencies have been operating in Malaysia and guided by their regional and global corporate strategies and less concerned with Malaysian technological development. In conclusion, empirically, the JST transfer is minimal. The transfer has been influenced by internal contingency factors of organisation; external industrial, political and cultural environmental factors; and last but not least the Japanese MNCs' global and regional corporate strategies. The transfer of Japanese management in this research is inclined towards core-periphery transfer model, it is also related to organisational and national technological capability.


Introduction: Circulating microRNAs are generally believed to have biomarker potential for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of treatment response in multiple diseases, including cancer. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are actively secreted by tumour cells and normal cells, and they encapsulate miRNAs, protecting them from degradation by RNases. Circulating miRNAs can also be associated with and protected by proteins and HDL; moreover, dying cells release biomolecules (i.e. RNA, DNA, protein) into circulation. The use of tumour-derived EV as biomarker has many advantages: 1) they reflect living tumour cells, 2) EV-associated miRNAs are stable in archived material, 3) EV-secreted miRNAs outnumber other types, 4) EV-associated miRNAs promote tumourigenic processes, 5) tumour vesicles carry proteins on their surface that trace them back to the tumour cells. Thus for circulating miRNA biomarker research it maybe of critical importance to isolate (tumour) EV from circulation. Methods: We performed size exclusion chromatography using sepharose CL-2B and commercially available qEV columns (iZON™) on 1.5 ml plasma to separate EV from protein/HDL. Results: Electron Microscopy showed the presence of EV in the vesicle fractions but not in the protein/HDL fractions. Particle analysis using qNano (iZON™) showed that the vesicle fractions are highly enriched in particles with a size-distribution that corresponds to the EM images. Moreover, western analysis showed the presenceof exosome-marker CD63in the vesicle fractions, but not the protein/HDL fractions. RNA was isolated using TRIzol from the EV and protein/HDL fractions separated by SEC, followed by RT-PCR. The EV fractions were highly enriched for vtRNA1-1, let7a and miR142-3p, whereas protein/HDL fractions are enriched for miR92a, miR21 and miR451. EV isolated using SEC contained sufficient RNA of suitable quality for screening using RNAseq. Classical Hodgkin lymphoma plasma EVs had a distinct smallRNA profile compared to healthy donor plasma EVs. We validated potential miRNA biomarker candidates by RT-PCR. Summary/conclusion: All together these results indicate that EVs isolated using SEC are useful for miRNA biomarker discovery in cancer patients.


Abstract This study aimed to explore therapists' perceptions and acceptability of providing internet-delivered, therapist-guided, self-help acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for family carers of people with dementia (iACT4CARERS). To achieve this, a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews was employed with eight novice therapists recruited from primary and secondary care services taking part in a feasibility study of iACT4CARERS. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using thematic analysis. Four over-arching themes were identified: (1) positive attitudes towards the intervention, (2) therapists' workload, (3) therapists' confidence to perform their role, and (4) connecting with family carers in a virtual context. Theme 1 included seeing their involvement as an opportunity for personal growth and perceiving benefits to the family carers, which contributed to greater acceptability. Theme 2 reflected that while workload and the user-friendliness of the online platform were highly acceptable among the therapists, there were also time-consuming cases that increased therapists' burden. Theme 3 revealed that practical resources provided during the training, continued supervision, and opportunities to learn from other therapists, increased therapist confidence and facilitated greater acceptability. Finally, Theme 4 highlighted that improving the connection between therapists and carers was critical in a virtual context and strategies to improve the therapist–carer relationship were recommended. The implementation of iACT4CARERS was largely acceptable for the therapists involved in the trial. Ways to strengthen the therapeutic relationship in the virtual context and practical strategies to deal with common problems may enhance therapist experience and delivery in a full-scale effectiveness trial. Key learning aims (1) To understand which factors facilitated therapists' positive perceptions and acceptability of providing internet-delivered guided self-help ACT (iACT4CARERS). (2) To understand what challenges acted as barriers to therapists' positive perceptions and acceptability of providing iACT4CARERS. (3) To learn what aspects of the training and the intervention can be refined to improve the acceptability to therapists in trials involving internet-delivered guided self-help interventions for family carers.