Oil revenues play a vital and central role in the economies of developing countries and African countries are among the countries whose macroeconomic variables are affected by oil revenues. The objective of this study is to analyze and investigate the role of oil revenues on the macroeconomic variables in most of the oil-producing African countries.
The Econometric method Pooled Ols model was employed in the study and the fixed and random technique data used was time sires cross panel data in the period (2000-2018). Based on the literature review, the selectedn sample study was on countries such as (Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Gabon, Egypt, Congo, Egypt, Congo, Sudan, Chad, Ghana) and we employed the Gross Domestic Product as the target variable and Oil Revenues (Oiler), inflation (CPI), Exchange rate (Ex), export (Exp), Foreign Direct Invest (FDI), money supply (M2), as independent variables. The study result and analysis of the data indicated that oil revenue has an impact on most the macroeconomic variables in the study except CPI and money supply. The study also indicated a strong positive correlation between oil revenue and GDP growth rate on the countries samples study. The study concluded that one of the most important macroeconomic variables is oil revenues. It also recommended that African countries need support and need to put more effort in building strong economies that are not dependent on oil revenues; to work on diversifying the revenues of the states and work to preserve the right of the next generation to exploit natural and oil resources.


By the end of this year visitors to the Flemish town of Mechelen can discover the city with the help of the new CityInMyPocket walking guide. Instead of following a person or a book, people can pick up a CityInMyPocket digital walking guide and go sightseeing at their own speed. So, leave your heavy guide books and many flyers at home. CityInMyPocket will tell you just as much, and even more. CityInMyPocket is like having a friend who lives in the neighbourhood showing you around. The goals are formulated, but how did we manage? In order to succeed, we started investigating how people usually visit a city. Are people just strolling around the city or do they strictly follow the walk mentioned in their walking guide? What are the information needs during their stay? In parallel with the user analysis, we looked at similar projects and applications to see how they approached the problem. Based on the results of the user needs and the tests of existing applications, we defined the concepts of the CityInMyPocket walking guide. Here, we can distinguish three main building blocks: the map application, the search engine and the route planner. When the overall concept was ready and the information needs where specified, we started building the information model based on the Topic Map standard. For the map information we explored the power of the SVG standard. The moment the first data set was prepared, we implemented the map application. The remaining concepts were built around the central map application. This paper describes in more detail how we managed to build the CityInMyPocket walking guide.


The spectrum resolution of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) room temperature nuclear radiation detectors is often limited by the presence of conducting surface species that increase the surface leakage current. Surface passivation plays a dominant role in reducing the surface leakage current and therefore decreasing the noise and improving the spectral energy resolution of the detectors. In this paper, a novel two-step chemical passivation process for CZT detectors, in which the mixed solution of bromine–methanol and lactic acid in ethylene glycol (BMLB) treated CZT wafer was first etched by using a KOH aqueous solution, and then by using a NH4F/H2O2 mixed solution, is presented. The Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) results show that the first-step KOH process consumed the Te-rich layer caused by BMLB and left a more stoichiometric surface and the second-step NH4F/H2O2 process oxidized the elemental constituents of the CZT surface obtained by the KOH etching and formed an oxide layer on the surface. The I–V characteristics show that the novel process leads to a lower surface leakage current compared to the processing by using either a KOH or NH4F/H2O2 agent. The results indicate that this two-step passivation process has a promising potential in the fabrication of CZT detectors.


A framework is presented to deploy a smartphone-based measurement system for road vehicle traffic monitoring and usage-based insurance (UBI). Through the aid of a hierarchical model to modularize the description, the functionality is described as spanning from sensor-level functionality and technical specification to the topmost business model. The designer of a complex measurement system has to consider the full picture from low-level sensing, actuating, and wireless data transfer to the topmost level, including enticements for the individual smartphone owners, i.e., the end users who are the actual measurement probes. The measurement system provides two data streams: a primary stream to support road vehicle traffic monitoring and a secondary stream to support the UBI program. The former activity has a clear value for a society and its inhabitants, as it may reduce congestion and environmental impacts. The latter data stream drives the business model and parts of the revenue streams, which ensure the funding of the total measurement system and create value for the end users, the service provider, and the insurance company. In addition to the presented framework, outcome from a measurement campaign is presented, including road vehicle traffic monitoring (primary data stream) and a commercial pilot of UBI based on the driver profiles (secondary data stream). The measurement system is believed to be sustainable due to the incitements offered to the individual end users, in terms of favorable pricing for the insurance premium. The measurement campaign itself is believed to have an interest in its own right, as it includes smartphone probing of road traffic with a number of probes in the vicinity of the current state of the art, given by the Berkeley Mobile Millennium Project. During the ten-month run of the project, some 4500 driving h/250 000 km of road vehicle traffic data were collected.


BACKGROUND:We tested the hypothesis that the difference between indirect and direct sodium assays would be related to the plasma albumin concentration. Further, we proposed that differences between indirect and direct chloride assays might be explained by interference from other plasma constituents, particularly bicarbonate, and possibly albumin. METHODS:We studied 300 critically ill patients at the time of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) and compared each patient's plasma sodium and chloride measurements from a central laboratory assay (indirect electrode) and an ICU blood gas machine assay (direct electrode). RESULTS:The central laboratory sodium measurement was, on average, 2.1 mmol/L more than the ICU assay, limits of agreement 1.8–2.4 mmol/L greater, P < 0.001. The central laboratory chloride measurement was, on average, 1 mmol/L less than the ICU assay (limits of agreement 1.3–0.7 mmol/L less, P < 0.001). All correlations between the assay differences and plasma constituents were weak except for a moderately strong correlation between differences in sodium measurements and albumin. The difference in plasma sodium concentration between the assays (central laboratory – ICU) increased as the plasma concentration albumin decreased (difference = 6.2–0.16 albumin (g/L); P < 0.001, r = −0.46, r2 = 0.22). CONCLUSIONS:The central laboratory and ICUs assays are analytically, statistically, and clinically different for both sodium and chloride. Unless taken into account, the differences could be large enough in hypoalbuminemic populations (such as critically ill patients) to affect clinical diagnosis and decision making.


Background and purpose: Isodense swelling is a known early ischaemic change, and it is most likely to represent penumbra tissue on acute non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) scan. However, in general, its detection by observers showed very poor interobserver agreement, which has been attributed to a lack of defining criteria that differentiate it from hypodensity. The aim of this study is to assess the reliability of detecting isodense swelling within the first six hours post stroke onset.

Methods: A three-stage study was designed to test the effect of defining criteria and training on the reliability of detection of isodense swelling on acute NCCT. NCCT and perfusion computed tomography (PCT) scans of patients with acute stroke of less than six hours' duration were reviewed retrospectively. A web-based tool was used to present NCCT scans to readers of different backgrounds (expert and trainee stroke neurologists and neuroradiologists), who evaluated the scans independently by the Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS). In the pre-training stage, nine readers assessed 19 repeated scans (a total of 40 scans) obtained at different slice thicknesses (0.9 mm and 5 mm) and both with and without clinical information. In the consensus stage, definitions for isodense swelling and hypodensity were extracted from simultaneous analysis of NCCT and PCT scans used in the pre-training stage, and potential definitions were circulated to participants for agreement. In the post-training stage, 11 readers assessed 32 scans (5 mm slice thickness) with clinical data after training using the consensus definitions and reviewing examples. Cerebral blood volume (CBV), cerebral blood flow (CBF) and mean transient time (MTT) in each ASPECTS region on all PCT scans were calculated and compared across the three NCCT appearances (normal, hypodense or isodense swelling, and the fate of each ASPECTS region was determined on follow-up NCCT scans.

Results: Training increased detection of isodense swelling from 29.4% to 46.8%; significantly (P = 0.0001) improved interobserver agreement from very poor (k = 0.09) to fair (k = 0.30); and ameliorated the predictive power of isodense swelling for penumbra as classified by ASPECTS regions of interest (ROIs) from [sensitivity 9% (confidence interval (CI): 1.9%–24.3%); likelihood ratios positive and negative, 2.5 (CI: 0.6–10) and 0.95 (CI: 0.84–1.06), respectively] to [sensitivity 41% (CI: 30.3%–52.8%); likelihood ratios positive and negative, 5.5 (CI: 3.3–11) and 0.64 (CI: 0.53–0.77), respectively]. Detection of hypodensity did not change significantly with training. Exclusion of outliers improved interobserver agreement for isodense swelling to moderate (k = 0.50). Experience, speciality and clinical information had no significant effect on agreement; however, 5 mm slices increased interobserver agreement on hypodensity significantly (k = 0.34 to k = 0.46, P = 0.01). Intraobserver agreement on both hypodensity and isodense swelling was almost perfect. Hypodensity had low sensitivity for core (41.6% (CI: 33% - 50.7%)) but good likelihood ratios positive and negative (13.7 (CI: 7.5–24.8) and 0.6 (CI: 0.50–0.70), respectively). Both isodense swelling and hypodensity were highly specific (93.8% and 96.9% for penumbra and core, respectively). CBV was increased significantly in isodense swollen areas compared with hypodense areas (P < 0.05). Only 38.3% of isodense swollen ROIs ended in infarction and absence of recanalisation increased odds of infarction four-fold, whereas 90% of hypodense ROIs infarcted with odds of infarction 11 times greater than those of ROIs with isodense swelling.

Conclusion: Penumbral tissue in acute stroke patients appears on NCCT as isodense swollen areas that are distinguishable from hypodense regions' appearance. The detection of penumbral tissue can be improved significantly by training. Isodense swelling most frequently returns normal, particularly in evident recanalisation, and its prognostic value might differ from that of hypodensity.


This paper presents the preparation and spectroscopic characterization of Dydoped sodium fluoroborate (SFB) glasses of the type (50-x) B2O3 + 25 Na2O + 10 CaF2 + 10 AlF3 + 5 LaF3 + x DyF3 (x = 0.01, 0.1, 0.5,1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 mol%). By measuring the area under absorption bands, the experimental oscillator strengths are determined. The Judd-Ofelt (J-O) intensity parameters Ωλ (λ = 2, 4, 6) are evaluated by the least square fit method. These phenomenological parameters are used to predict luminescence properties of the lanthanide ions in SFB glasses. Photoluminescence spectra and lifetimes of F9/2 level of Dy ions in these glasses have been measured by exciting with 348 nm line of xenon flash lamp. The measured decay curves exhibit single exponential at lower concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 mol% and non-exponential at higher concentrations of 2.0 and 4.0 mol%. The predicted τR and R values of F9/2 transition are compared with the experimentally measured values. From the magnitude of stimulated emission cross sections ( e), branching ratios ( m), multiphonon relaxation rates (WMP), the most potential laser transitions are identified and the utility of these glasses as laser active material is discussed.


This study examines the relationship between land use/land cover (LULC) changes and surface runoff generation empirically to reveal how urbanization has altered the hydrologic characteristics of a watershed. A hydrological model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), is employed to estimate the watershed runoff generation for two LULC scenarios from 2002 to 2010. The Cypress Creek watershed was chosen for the investigation because of its recent development pressure resulting from the rapid growth of Houston, Texas. This watershed is located within Harris County, 37 km from Houston. Results indicate that the mean annual runoff change was high for most sub-basins that experienced significant urbanization. The correlation coefficients between low, medium, and high intensity developed lands and the amount of surface runoff were significantly positive with values ranging from 0.5 to 0.8, while the correlation coefficient of greenspaces with surface runoff was -0.6. These findings reveal the importance of land use changes and development densities in managing stormwater and suggest local planners and decision-makers on where and how to limit the future residential developments in rapidly growing suburbs.


The origins of East Polynesian culture are traced to a regional homeland that was centered on the Society Islands but which also included neighboring archipelagoes. Archaeological evidence suggests a fall-off through time in the frequency of opensea voyaging within this homeland, with marked declines in voyaging and interaction after a.d. 1450. A range of social and environmental factors may have contributed to these declines. The regional distribution of terrestrial resources is significant because the smallest islands often suffered the most acute consequences of human-induced environmental change. Tahiti, in the Society Islands, is unique in terms of the unparalleled scale of its resource base and its high degree of voyaging accessibility. If Tahiti and the Societies played the role of a regional hub in early interaction spheres, developments in Tahiti may have influenced inhabitants of the outer archipelagoes. Specifically, if circumstances restricted the flow of timber and canoes from the Societies to outlyingar chipelagoes, and this coincided with the depletion of forest reserves on the smaller outlyingislands, these developments could help explain the contraction of early central East Polynesian interaction spheres. It is likely that voyaging patterns in the Marquesas and the Pitcairn Islands, comparatively isolated archipelagoes, were little affected by internal developments in the Societies.


The cerebral influx rates of fifteen amino acids were measured directly in living rats by means of a new technique which makes it possible to maintain a constant specific activity of a radioactively labelled amino acid in the bloodstream. A wide variation in the influx rates of the amino acids was found. These rates differed from those found by other workers using in vitropreparations, but are consistent with the theory that amino acids enter the brain mainly by carrier mediated transport processes with a high degree of specificity. There are a number of important differences between the behaviour of the transport processes in vivo and in vitro. The influx rates of the various amino acids were directly proportional to their concentrations in blood plasma (over the range of concentrations studied). All the nutritionally essential amino acids had relatively high influx rates as did other amino acids which the brain does not seem to be able to synthesize. On the other hand, amino acids that the brain can readily synthesize and two amino acids which are not normally found in mammalian tissues had low influx rates.


In ancient times, Ashwani Kumars (Ayurvedic wonder healers) have been said to see the old, frail and emaciated body of Rishi Chyawan and decided to rejuvenate his body through medication by incorporating Ashtawarga, a group of eight medicinal plants in a "Leham" (a semi solid formulation) and did the miracle of rejuvenating the body of Rishi Chyawan as youthful. Since then after the name of Rishi Chyawan, the preparation was called as Chyawanprash and has been a favorite and most demanded medicine for Kings and rich people. Microstylis muscifera is one of the important plants of Ashtawarga group. Department of AYUSH has suggested use of substitutes in formulations in absence of original plants however this option is being exploited by manufacturers rendering this precious plant in ignored condition. Hence it becomes important to highlight the therapeutic potentials of this plant in front of scientists so that a justified research is carried out on an important but ignored plant. A limited data with scientific evidences are available in modern literature/internet sources; whereas old texts show valuable evidences in regional languages or in Sanskrit. Hence real uses of the plant are not well understood by scientific fraternity.  Purpose of this compilation is to bring all the therapeutic potentials at a single platform so as to enable scientists working on these plants to know the scientific clues available in ancient literature. The compilation reflects multiple uses of plant active components in a number of Ayurvedic formulations useful in plethora of disorders.
Keywords: Jeevaka, Ashtawarga, Anti-aging, Rejuvenative


A positive correlation exists between seed weight and seedling vigor. The objective of this study was to determine genetic and environmental effects on seed weight and seed yield within two switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) cultivars. Thirty half-sib families of 'Sunburst' (large seeded) and 'Summer' (small seeded) were evaluated for 3 yr in Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) sod (competitive) and tilled (noncompetitive) spaced-plant nurseries at Brookings, SD, and in a tilled spaced-plant nursery at Highmore, SD. Parents were evaluated in a separate nursery. Significant differences were found among families within both cultivars for 100-seed weight, but significant family × environment interactions indicated nonuniformity in responses of families to environmental variability. Narrow-sense heritability estimates for 100-seed weight were 0.88 for Sunburst and 0.58 for Summer. Seed weight increased in response to increased ambient moisture, but was similar for competitive and noncompetitive environments (grand means were 101 and 175 mg 100 seeds -1 for Summer and Sunburst, respectively) at Brookings. However, mean plasticity for seed weight was evident from markedly reduced seed weights for both cultivars at Highmore. Magnitude and direction of plasticity for seed weight differed for the two cultivars. Plastic families of Summer generally had heavier seeds in the competitive environment, whereas those of Sunburst had heavier seeds in the noncompetitive environment. Significant differences were found among families within both cultivars for seed yield. Summer had 70% higher mean seed yields than Sunburst, and annual seed-yield means varied by greater than 80%. Seed weight was highly responsive to temporal and spatial environmental variation, but genetic variation was adequate to expect progress from selection within both cultivars.


Should monetary policy lean against financial stability risks? This has been a subject of fierce debate over the last decades. We contribute to the debate about "leaning against the wind" (LAW) along three lines. First, we evaluate the cost and benefits of LAW using the Svensson (2017) framework for the euro area and find that the costs outweigh the benefits. Second, we extend the framework to address a critique that Svensson does not consider the lower frequency financial cycle. Third, we use this extended framework to assess the costs and benefits of monetary and macroprudential policy. We find that macroprudential policy has net marginal benefits in addressing risks to financial stability in the euro area, whereas monetary policy has net marginal costs. This would suggest that an active use of macroprudential policies targeting financial stability risks would alleviate the burden on monetary policy to "lean against the wind". JEL Classification: E58, G01


Air tightness of Australian buildings is a great unknown. Despite testing methods being developed and implemented in many advanced European and North American countries, this has not happened in Australia. This paper notes energy efficiency gains that can be achieved through tighter construction, and follows on from the investigation into testing methodology and literature discussed in TEC 23: Air Leakage in Buildings – Review of International Literature and Standards. Several domestic case studies are used to implement two accepted testing methods and aid to build the case for increased awareness of airtight housing in Australia.


Objectives: We aimed to investigate antidepressant effect of low-dose naltrexone (LDN) and to explore its potential mechanism of action using a rat model induced by chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS). Methods: The CUMS-induced rat model was established, and the antidepressant effect of LDN (0.1 mg/kg/day, given by intraperitoneal injection for 5 weeks) was investigated using sucrose preference test, open field test, forced swimming test, and novelty-induced hyponeophagia test. Moreover, the molecular biological changes including beta-endorphin (BEP), interleukin (IL)-1β, 5-hydroxy-tryptamine (5-HT), corticosterone, monoamine neurotransmitter and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) were also identified. Results: Behavioral changes were observed following 5 weeks of CUMS, including decreased sucrose preference, reduced locomotor activity, increased immobility time and elevated latency of feeding. However, after LDN treatment, these behavioral changes were significantly improved. In addition, LDN could inversed reduced BEP level in hypophysis, 5-HT level and BDNF expression level in hippocampus caused by CUMS. Moreover, LDN also could inversed increased levels of IL-1β and corticosterone induced by CUMS. Conclusion: The results suggest that LDN may have therapeutic actions on depression-like behavior induced by CUMS in rats by decreasing IL-1β in spleen and hippocampus tissue and plasma corticosterone levels and upregulating the BEP level in hypophysis tissue and plasma and the 5-HT, BDNF level in hippocampus tissue.


Abstract We study the incentives that agents have to invest in costly protection against cascading failures in networked systems. Applications include vaccination, computer security, and airport security. Agents are connected through a network and can fail either intrinsically or as a result of the failure of a subset of their neighbors. We characterize the equilibrium based on an agent's failure probability and derive conditions under which equilibrium strategies are monotone in degree (i.e. in how connected an agent is on the network). We show that different kinds of applications (e.g. vaccination, malware, airport/EU security) lead to very different equilibrium patterns of investments in protection, with important welfare and risk implications. Our equilibrium concept is flexible enough to allow for comparative statics in terms of network properties, and we show that it is also robust to the introduction of global externalities (e.g. price feedback, congestion).


Author(s): Der, Matthew Francis | Advisor(s): Saul, Lawrence K; Voelker, Geoffrey M | Abstract: The Internet is rife with abuse: examples include spam, phishing, malicious advertising, DNS abuse, search poisoning, click fraud, and so on. To detect, investigate, and defend against such abuse, security efforts frequently crawl large sets of Web sites that need to be classified into categories, e.g., the attacker behind the abuse or the type of abuse.Domain expertise is often required at first, but classifying thousands to even millions of Web pages manually is infeasible. In this dissertation, I develop machine learning tools to help security practitioners classify Web pages at scale. These automated, data-driven methods are made possible by the efforts of miscreants to operate at scale. Crafting every scam from scratch is too expensive, so miscreants use some degree of automation and replication to recreate their attacks. As a result, underlying similarities in both Web site content and structure can link related pages together. In the end, this automated classification of ``big data'' collected from the Web has significant impact, as it enables large-scale measurement and informs potential defensive interventions.This dissertation focuses on three applications. First, I present a system for monitoring Web sites that serve as online storefronts for spam-advertised goods. The system is highly accurate, even when training data is very limited. Second, I describe a system for identifying the black hat SEO campaigns that promote online stores selling counterfeit luxury goods. This system was used to nearly double the number of known campaigns to track, and increase the number of associated stores by 69%. Third, I discuss a system for categorizing the Web content hosted in new top-level domains. In total, this system was used to classify 4.1 million domains in 480 new TLDs.Overall, today's scale of well-organized cybercrime demands the use of scalable defensive analysis. This setting is where the data-driven techniques of machine learning prove especially useful. Furthermore, large-scale classification has become a frequent need in security, and our methods are more generally applicable to problems beyond just the ones documented in this dissertation.


Introduction : The source and deployment of finance are central issues in economic development. Since 1966, when the Soeharto Administration was inaugurated, Indonesian economic development has relied on funds in the form of aid from international organizations and foreign countries. After the 1990s, a further abundant inflow of capital sustained a rapid economic development. Foreign funding was the basis of Indonesian economic growth. This paper will describe the mechanism for allocating funds in the Indonesian economy. It will identify the problems this mechanism generated in the Indonesian experience, and it will attempt to explain why there was a collapse of the financial system in the wake of the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997. History of the Indonesian Financial system The year 1966 saw the emergence of commercial banks in Indonesia. It can be said that before 1966 a financial system hardly existed, a fact commonly attributed to economic disruptions like the consecutive runs of fiscal deficit and hyperinflation under the Soekarno Administration. After 1996, with the inauguration of Soeharto, a regulatory system of financial legislation, e.g. central banking law and banking regulation, was introduced and implemented, and the banking sector that is the basis of the current financial system in Indonesia was built up. The Indonesian financial structure was significantly altered at the first financial reform of 1983. Between 1966 and 1982, the banking sector consisted of Bank Indonesia (the Central Bank) and the state-owned banks. There was also a system for distributing the abundant public revenue derived from the soaring oil price of the 1970s. The public finance distribution function, incorporated in Indonesian financial system, changed after the successive financial reforms of 1983 and 1988, when there was a move away from the monopoly-market style dominated by state-owned banks (which was a system of public finance distribution that operated at the discretion of the government) towards a modern market mechanism. The five phases of development The Indonesian financial system developed in five phases between 1966 and the present time. The first period (1966-72) was its formative period, the second (1973-82) its policy based finance period under soaring oil prices, the third (1983-91) its financial-reform period, the fourth (1992-97) its period of expansion, and the fifth (1998-) its period of financial restructuring. The first section of this paper summarizes the financial policies operative during each of the periods identified above. In the second section changes to the financial sector in response to policies are examined, and an analysis of these changes shows that an important development of the financial sector occurred during the financial reform period. In the third section the focus of analysis shifts from the general financial sector to particular commercial banks' performances. In the third section changes in commercial banks' lending and fund-raising behaviour after the 1990s are analysed by comparing several banking groups in terms of their ownership and foundation time. The last section summarizes the foregoing analyses and examines the problems that remain in the Indonesian financial sector, which is still undergoing restructuring.


Objective To assess unmet needs at hospital pharmacies and treatment adherence of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) treated with disease-modifying therapies (DMTs). Methods A non-interventional and multicentre study involving 24 pharmacies that included 237 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) or secondary progressive MS (SPMS) treated with DMTs. Pharmacists completed a questionnaire on management and needs. Adherence was assessed using the Morisky-Green test. Results The mean age of patients was 40.1±9.4 years (65.8% women). The average time from diagnosis was 7.5±5.6 years, 95.4% had RRMS and 61.2% had no relapses during the last year. Most patients (62.4%) had Expanded Disability Status Scale grade 0–2.5. Overall adherence was 77.1%. Treatment adherence was significantly higher among patients with no relapses (82.9% vs 67.4%, p<0.05) and among those ≥40 years old (85.1% vs 68.3%, p<0.05). 21.1% of pharmacies did not have adequate educational materials and in 16% of cases there was no proper space to assure confidentiality. A specific protocol to monitor adverse events only existed in 21% of pharmacies and to monitor adherence in 32%. Major unmet needs for pharmacists were educational materials, adherence training, staff shortages and increased workload. There was a trend towards lower adherence at hospitals with a higher workload (68.6% vs 80.2%) and with a lack of educational materials (75.2% vs 84.6%). In 19.8% of cases there was a discrepancy between pharmacist perception of adherence and the Morisky-Green test. Conclusions It is necessary to improve educational materials and operational protocols regarding workload at hospital pharmacies to provide adequate follow-up and to ensure adherence by Spanish patients with MS.


Spoilage of food due to contamination by bacteria present in the environment is a major problem which affects human health and efforts to identify antibacterial components from natural sources has gained momentum. In this regard we isolated a new strain of Bacillus licheniformis IITRHR2 (accession number FJ447354) which produced bacteriocin like inhibitory substance (BLIS). Partially purified BLIS showed a major peak on HPLC with antimicrobial activity. This proteinaceous substance (~1.2 kDa) was thermostable and pH resistant but lost activity when subjected to proteinase treatment. BLIS inhibited growth of 16 bacteria including environmental and clinical contaminants of food products and potentiated the activity of nisin. In conclusion, the proteinaceous substance isolated from B. licheniformis IITRHR2 showed potential to combat contamination of food products by bacteria present in the environment.


This paper explores the social and cultural factors that influence how students present themselves publicly and privately in terms of mental health at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). It represents a case study of a specific time and place – this particular university during the spring of 2016. Recently, Penn culture has been criticized for causing or exacerbating issues related to students' mental health in the wake of renewed fervor and passion for issues of student mental wellness. In this study I heard about the idea of the Penn Face, about sources of stress stemming from academics and other structures, and about the deep and profound fear of showing any sort of vulnerability. Penn culture exists in a series of tensions – between problematizing / vilifying the Penn culture in regard to treatment of mental health issues and acknowledging a more complicated notion of causality of mental health; between personal vulnerability versus a desire to have it all together (or to appear as though one does); and between acknowledging issues of mental health versus effecting real change. Through the use of qualitative data analysis and over the course of twenty-two semistructured interviews, I have attempted to understand what is influencing how my fellow students are negotiating structures of mental health at present. Trigger Warning: mental health, suicide, depression, anxiety, self-harm, sexual abuse, and sexual assault Disciplines Anthropology This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_seniortheses/167 THE PENN FACE: DECONSTRUCTING MENTAL HEALTH AT PENN


The taxonomic study of ants is neglected and poorly investigated from Pakistan but has rich ant fauna, most of the part has been studied before the creation of Pakistan during British Rule including; Bingham (1897), Forel, 1904, Manozi 1939, Eidmann, 1942, Later an expedition undertaken by Brown, (1955) in Baluchistan and Sindh Provinces. Haji (2008) worked on house hold ants of Karachi, Pakistan. More recently Umair et al. 2010 described the ants from Potohar plateau of Punjab Pakistan and Ahmed et al. (2013) provided description on ants of Quetta, Baluchistan. Further, The study is based on comprehensive review of literature, collection and study from throughout country, Author prepare first checklist of ants of Pakistan it is updated with Eight_subfamilies; Dolichoderinae, Dorylinae, Formicinae, Myrmicinae, Proceratiinae Pseudomyrmecinae, Leptanillinae , Ponerinae 43 genera and 134 species.


Forty-eight Charolais bulls (n=24) and steers (n=24) were commercially fed, slaughtered and subprimals were distributed to three retail stores. Consumers were able to detect differences in tenderness for steaks from the rib, loin and top sirloin of bulls and steers, but not for steaks or roasts from the round (except for the eye of round steak) and chuck of bulls and steers. However, 91.7% and 86.8% of the consumers of steaks from steers and bulls, respectively, indicated that they would purchase similar steaks again while 92.3% and 93.2% of the consumers of roasts indicated they would purchase similar roasts from steers and bulls, respectively.


An important tool packaging engineers use when designing cushions to protect products from shock is the cushion curve. Cushion curves show deceleration values along the vertical axis versus the static loading (weight divided by bearing area) along the horizontal axis for a given thickness of cushion material and given drop height. Commercially available cushion curves display a thickness of one inch and greater. However, many times packaging engineers design packages with cushions less than one inch thick. This leaves the packaging engineer to either guess deceleration levels below one inch thick by trial and error, or to extrapolate from existing cushion curve data. The purpose of this study was to determine if using existing cushion curve information would accurately predict deceleration values below one inch thick. To do this, a procedure was developed comparing information collected from expanded polystyrene cushion samples greater than one inch thick (correlating to existing cushion curves) compared to information collected from samples less than one inch thick. The comparison looked for difference between the datasets. It was found that in fact there was a statistical difference, meaning existing cushion curves should not be used to predict deceleration values for cushion thicknesses below one inch.


Background: Futures study is a science that, given changes in society, identifies future trends for making appropriate and practical decisions. Universities benefit from futures study research to improve their efficiency and make effective decisions. This is increasingly seen in medical sciences universities, which are responsible for public and specialized health education, and their quality development should be addressed. The purpose of this study was to identify components and key indicators of the qualitative development of medical sciences education and writing scenarios based on these. Methods: The present study is a mixed methods study carried out in the medical universities of Iran in 2018-2019. In this qualitative approach, the components and indicators of qualitative development of medical sciences education were identified by the classical Delphi method according to targeted sampling from 10 experts with content analysis that was identified and coded. Following the qualitative portion, a quantitative approach using Scenario Wizards software was used to design robust scenarios. Results: In all, 13 components and 48 indicators were identified in the qualitative development of medical sciences education from which robust scenarios can be considered for futures study,including optimistic, intermediary, and pessimistic scenarios. Conclusion: These results indicate how using each of the medical sciences education's qualitative development components and indicators can lead medical sciences universities to consider favorable and unfavorable futures for planning and direction. Recognizing correct components and drawing scenarios for desired futures is essential.


Chronic pain has various forms such as inflammatory pain, visceral pain, headache, disk-related pain, neuropathic pain, cancer pain. Although the biological basis of chronic pain is related to vulnerability, it continues with behavioral and psychological components. In the context of multimodal interventions, interventions other than systemic pharmacologic treatments for chronic pain are also present. Besides interventional approaches; there are several noninvasive options including cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback, relaxation therapy, physical therapy, thermal applications, spinal cord stimulation and transcutaneous electrical stimulation. The neuroscientific approach to pain can only be achieved by combining physical and mental components of the pain with neuroscience


Background Psoriasis (PsO) is a common inflammatory skin disease that is characterised by acanthosis, impaired immune cell migration, and remodelling of the vascular and lymphatic system. Up to ~30% of PsO patients develop psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The factors that determine the transition from PsO to PsA or vice versa are poorly understood. The lymphatic system may regulate the homing capabilities of disease- associated T-cells and control their migration to skin and extra-cutaneous sites like synovial joints and entheses. Methods Human dermal lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC; 0.5 × 104), and fibroblast-like synoviocytes of a patient with PsA (PsA-FLS; 1.0 × 104) were pre-incubated for 3 days with PsA synovial fluid (PsA-SF; 0/10/20% v/v). Then, LEC or PsA-FLS were co-cultured with 2.5 × 104 allogeneic CD4+CD45RO+CD25- T-cells that were sorted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of 3 healthy donors with or without stimulation with αCD3 (0.3 µg/ml) and αCD28 (0.4 µg/ml). After 72 hour, T-cells from duplicate wells were pooled and immunophenotyped by flow cytometry on a 4-laser LSR-II analyzer using antibodies directed to CD25, CD4, CD45, CD45RO, CXCR3, CCR4, CCR6, and CCR10. Based on the latter four, the most relevant T-helper (Th) subsets were characterised, including the CCR6+ subsets Th17.1 (CCR4-/CXCR3+), Th17/Th22 (CCR4+/CXCR3-), Th17 (CCR4+/CXCR3-/CCR10-) and Th22 (CCR4+/CXCR3-/CCR10+), and CCR6- subsets Th1 (CCR4-/CXCR3+), and Th2 (CCR4+/CXCR3-). We also looked at cutaneous lymphocyte- associated antigen (CLA), a skin homing receptor. IL-17A, IL-22, and TNF protein levels in the co-cultures were determined by ELISA. Statistical analysis included unpaired t-test (two-sided) for comparison between two groups or one-way ANOVA with the Tukey-Kramer post hoc test for multi-group comparisons. Results Stimulation of CD4+CD45RO+ T-cells in co-culture with PsA-FLS skewed towards the CCR6+ subset Th17/Th22, which were predominantly Th17 cells. Th17 differentiation upon stimulation was suppressed in co-culture with LEC even when the LECs were pre-incubated with PsA-SF. Stimulation of CD4+CD45RO+ T-cells in co-culture with LEC, as compared to PsA-FLS, promoted the generation of the Th22 subpopulation. Upon co-culture with untreated LEC, stimulated CD4+CD45RO+ T-cells showed higher expression of the skin homing receptor CLA than those that were co-cultured with PsA-FLS. The proportional reduction in CLA expression on CD4+CD45RO+ T-cells in the co-cultures with LEC pre-incubated with PsA-SF 20% was equal to that in the co-cultures with PsA-FLS. However, these activated LEC conserved CLA expression at a higher level than PsA-FLS. This phenomenon that activated LEC conserved CLA expression on CD4+CD45RO+ T-cells particularly affected the CCR6+ T-cell subset. In line with FACS results, a trend towards lower IL-17A and higher IL-22 levels were observed in the co-cultures with LEC that were pretreated with PsA-SF 20%, as compared to the co-culture with PsA-FLS. No differences were seen for TNF protein levels. Conclusion LECs are directly involved in T-cell differentiation, and homing capabilities, as shown by suppression of Th17 differentiation upon CD3/CD28 stimulation in co-culture experiments, as compared to PsA-FLS. In addition, LEC promoted Th22 generation, and conserved CLA expression in the CCR6+ T-cells subset, when LEC were preincubated with PsA-SF. Future studies Studies are underway to show that LECs derived from other relevant biological tissues, including synovium, lymph nodes, and entheses are critical for inducing tissue-imprinting (chemokine) receptors at the time of T-cell activation, and for tissue-restricted migration to skin, synovial joints and entheses in PsO and PsA. A direct effect of LECs on the functional homing properties of these T-cells will be studied in 3D T-cell migration assays, including the crawl-in assay where increased entry into the lymphatic system can be studied


Cuprous oxide (Cu2O) is expected to be one of the most promising materials for utilizing solar energy. One strategy comprises using Cu2O as a photocathode to obtain hydrogen by the reduction of water. However, the instability of Cu2O in solution hinders its employment to a great extent. Here, we fabricated a multilayer photocathode with the structure of Cu2O/Ga2O3/AZO/TiO2 by the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The highest photocurrent density was increased to 6.5 mA cm−2 in comparison to 4.5 mA cm−2 for bare Cu2O at 0 V versus a reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), and the stability was also improved to some extent. The properties of Ga2O3 were affected to a great extent by the oxygen pressure, which thereby changed the photovoltage and stability of the photocathode. Alignment of band energies is introduced to explain this phenomenon. In a sample containing Ga2O3 under a low oxygen pressure, the relatively lower Fermi level and conduction band edge in the Ga2O3 layer formed a region of electron accumulation near the interface, which impaired its performance. In addition, the interfacial chemical state of copper element was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in combination with Ar ion etching. It was revealed that for both samples Cu+ was reduced to Cu0 during the fabrication process near the Cu2O/Ga2O3 interface, which is harmful for stability. These factors resulted in the relatively unstable performance of the photocathode. This work reveals the performance of a multilayer photocathode grown by PLD and points out possible ways of improving it.


We address the design of distributed cognitive medium access control (MAC) protocols for opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) under an energy constraint on the secondary users. The objective is to maximize the expected number of information bits that can be delivered by a secondary user during its battery lifetime without causing interference to primary users. By absorbing the residual energy level of the secondary user into the state space, we formulate the energy-constrained OSA problem as an unconstrained partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) and obtain the optimal spectrum sensing and access policy. We analyze and reduce the computational complexity of the optimal policy. We also propose a suboptimal solution to energy-constrained OSA, whose computational complexity can be systematically traded off with its performance. Numerical examples are provided to study the impact of spectrum occupancy dynamics, channel fading statistics, and energy consumption characteristics of the secondary user on the optimal sensing and access decisions


The 2D numerical model to simulate the pollutant dispersion over complex terrain was proposed. The results of numerical experiment are presented.


As a focus of its exploration of desktop 3-D environments for science outreach, the Cornell Theory Center (CTC), Cornell University's high-performance computing center, has been exploring the use of the Active Worlds client/server technology for implementation of a 3-D multiuser virtual science museum, SciCentr, that incorporates interactive simulation-based exhibits. We present here early lessons in accommodating the needs of several interconnected user groups as we move forward with establishing the SciCentr community within the greater educational community of Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU) and the Contact Consortium's VLearn3D initiative. We learned that we must provide the user communities with both social and spatial frameworks within which to work and play. Social support ranges from one-on-one, over-the-shoulder help, to guidance and training within the environment, to coordination of inworld activities and inperson pizza parties. Spatial design requirements depend on the activities of the user group and benefit from study of real and virtual world examples. Our experience to date with a pilot group of teenaged participants is encouraging, and we believe that this medium has potential as a resource for constructivist informal science and technology education.


Alveolar bone destruction in periodontitis causes subsequent pathological conditions, such as tooth mobility and loss; thus, the treatment to prevent and overcome this condition is indispensable. The naturally occurring medicinal plant Hibiscus sabdariffa (roselle) contains anti-bacterial and antiinflammatory compounds; it is expected to be effective in inhibiting bone damage in periodontitis caused by excessive osteoclast activity. This study investigates the inhibitory effect that roselle extract has on bone destruction in periodontitis and in calvaria bone damage. Alveolar and calvaria bone damage was induced either via ligature wire or lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection in mice (Mus musculus). Roselle extracts in concentrations of 5% and 10% were applied before and after bone destruction. Then, the extent of the bone damage was measured using microCT and histological analysis. Roselle extract 10% attenuated alveolar bone destruction in the periodontitis and calvaria bone destruction models. The provision of 10% roselle extract before inducing alveolar bone damage also showed inhibitory activity. Roselle extract 10% effectively diminished alveolar bone destruction. Its inhibitory mechanism may be accomplished through its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial activity. These findings demonstrate the potential use of roselle extract as a therapeutic product for periodontitis treatment. Experimental article(J Int Dent Med Res 2020; 13(3): 830-835)


One hundred forty-four of 166 adults with acute viral hepatitis (AVH) admitted to an Egyptian fever hospital were followed for 12 months. The hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) carrier rate in 95 with hepatitis B virus (HBV) hepatitis decreased from 53% at three months to 13% at 12 months. At 12 months, 22% of the male patients had persistent HBsAg compared with only 7% of the female patients. The HBsAg carrier rate was 25% at 12 months in those with schistosomiasis compared with 9% in those with only acute HBV infection. Splenomegaly persisted in those with palpable spleens at the initial examination and others developed splenomegaly. The prevalence of splenomegaly increased from 11% on admission to 20% at 12 months in those with only AVH, and from 40% to 69% in those with concomitant schistosomiasis. Patients with concomitant schistosomiasis had higher mean values for liver function test results and a greater proportion had abnormal liver function test results during hospitalization and follow-up than those with AVH only. Concomitant schistosomiasis increased the prevalence and prolonged splenomegaly and morbidity due to AVH. Both male sex and concomitant schistosomiasis prolonged the HBsAg carrier state. We propose that AVH frequently converts uncomplicated intestinal schistosomiasis to hepatosplenic schistosomiasis.


We construct a holographic model of heavy-light mesons by extending the AdS/QCD to incorporate the behavior of the heavy quark limit. In that limit, the QCD dynamics is governed by the light quark and the heavy quark simply plays the role of a static color source. The heavy quark spin symmetry can be treated as a global symmetry in the AdS bulk. As a consequence, the heavy-light mesons are mapped to "fermions" in the AdS theory. The light flavor chiral symmetry is naturally built in by this construction, and its breaking produces the splitting of the parity-doubled heavy-light meson states. The scaling dependences of physical quantities on the heavy quark mass in the heavy quark effective theory are reproduced. The mass spectra and decay constants of the B and D mesons can be well fit by suitable choices of model parameters. The couplings between the heavy-light mesons and the pions are also calculated. The holographic model may capture the essence of the long distance effects of QCD and can serve as a useful tool for studying the non-perturbative hadronic matrix elements involving heavy-light mesons.


Knowledge about the dynamic properties of concrete is vital to the design and safety evaluation of large-scale concrete structures subjected to seismic excitation. There are many factors affecting the dynamic properties of concrete such as moisture content and temperature. Though a lot of concrete structures have been designed to withstand low temperature, research on the strain-rate sensitivity of concrete under low temperature condition is still very limited so far. In this study, both tensile and compressive experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of temperature on the rate-dependent characteristics of concrete. Tensile experiments of dumbbell-shaped specimens were carried out on a MTS810 testing machine and compressive tests on cubic specimens were performed using a servo-hydraulic testing machine. Specimens at two types of temperature, room temperature 20oC and low temperature -30oC, were characterized. The strain rate varied over a wide range. It was concluded from the test data that the strengths of specimens at both types of temperature tended to increase as strain rate increased. Temperature had slight influence on the rate-sensitive behavior of concrete when concrete specimens were dry; however, test on saturated specimens indicated that the role of temperature on the mechanical behavior of concrete subject to dynamic loading was very significant. This phenomenon may be attributed to the state of free water in concrete.


The objective of this study is to measure the impact of proposed Doha Round tariff reductions on the global dairy industry and dairy policy. We examine how proposed tariff reductions affect global trade and prices, and the implications for the European Union and the United States. Since international market conditions can vary, we examine the implications of liberalization under two sets of market conditions. The first corresponds to the year 2004 in which there was a global surplus of dairy products. In that year import protection ensured that U.S prices of dairy products were above world prices. The second corresponds to 2007, when dairy products globally were in short supply and U.S. domestic prices were at or below world prices. We show that proposed tariff reductions have different implications for dairy commodities depending on policy assumptions. For cheese and dry whole milk, tariff reductions reduce supplies and raise world prices due to reduced production in the EU. However, without a change in EU policies global butter prices would decline due an increase in EU supplies. Production shifts away from cheese into butter production, increasing the supply of butter on the world market. We conclude that with trade liberalization EU intervention prices or milk quotas would have to be reduced in order to counteract an increase in butter production and increased use of export restitution payments for that commodity.


Mechanical assistance to the failing circulation is a controversial subject, with a number of unanswered physical, biological, and philosophic questions. The author of this monograph gives the reader the benefit of 2½ years of personal experience with experimental and clinical observations of the effects of the circulatory bypass techniques and their applications. He defines the physiological problem of the failing circulation clearly and provides detailed observations on 13 patients undergoing either open-chest (left atrioarterial) or peripheral (venoarterial with oxygenation) bypass. Six of these patients were undergoing cardiac surgery and required support either prior to definitive surgery or intraoperatively, because of severe failure. The remaining seven were "medical" patients with a variety of essentially inoperable conditions. His chapter on selection of patients outlines the important factors. He also describes his method of bedside hemodynamic appraisal of the patient with failing circulation and makes the point that intervention at the right time


Ferroelectrets are thin films of polymer foams, exhibiting piezoelectric properties after electrical charging. Ferroelectret foams usually consist of a cellular polymer structure filled with air. Polymer-air composites are elastically soft due to their high air content as well as due to the size and shape of the polymer walls. Their elastically soft composite structure is one essential key for the working principle of ferroelectrets, besides the permanent trapping of electric charges inside the polymer voids. The elastic properties allow large deformations of the electrically charged voids. However, the composite structure can also possibly limit the stability and consequently the range of applications because of, e. g., penetration of gas and liquids accompanied by discharge phenomena or because of a mechanical pre-load which may be required during the application. Here, we discuss various stability aspects related to the piezoelectric properties of polypropylene ferroelectrets. Near and below room temperature, the piezoelectric effect and the stability of the trapped charges are practically independent from humidity during long-time storage in a humid atmosphere or water, or from operating conditions, such as continuous mechanical excitation. Thermal treatment of cellular polypropylene above −10°C leads to a softening of the voided structure which is apparent from the decreasing values of the elastic modulus. This decrease results in an increase of the piezoelectric activity. Heating above 60°C, however, leads to a decrease in piezoelectricity.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common chronic inflammatory joint disease, which leads to cartilage and bone damage as well as disability. To date, the complex aetiology of the disease is not completely understood. RA is characterized by swelling of the joints and infiltration of a variety of immune cells. The inflammation is mainly mediated by the communication of the cells within the affected joints via cytokines and other proinflammatory mediators. The discovery of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) and their ability to mediate cell-to-cell communication has gained the interest of many research groups in the last decade. sEVs transport their cargo from delivering to recipient cells which has been demonstrated to play major roles in the pathogenesis of several diseases. The focus of sEV research was thereby mainly their involvement in cancer progression and the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases such as RA.
Progressive bone destruction by osteoclasts in the joints affected by RA may be the most severe alteration, as it is irreversible and can lead to complete loss of joint function. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to reveal new insights on the impact of sEV-delivered micro RNAs (miRs) in the context of osteoclast differentiation. MiRs are small non-coding RNAs which are one of the most important post-transcriptional repressors. However, alternative functions of miRs as post-transcriptional activators of gene expression and as ligands for endosomal ssRNA receptors like Toll-like receptor (TLR) 7 or TLR8 have been demonstrated recently. TLRs are receptors of the innate immune system. Their signalling leads to the translocation of the transcription factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B-cells (NF-κB) and increased transcription of target genes.

In this thesis it was revealed that sEVs isolated from the synovial fluid of RA patients induce osteoclast differentiation in vitro in a time- and concentration dependent manner. Analysis of miR content revealed a high abundance of miR-574-5p in these sEVs in comparison to other miRs, such as miR-146a-5p or miR-155-5p. Synovial fibroblasts (SFs), which represent cells in synovial joints that play a major role in the progression of the disease, were identified as one of the sources of extracellular miR 574-5p present in the synovial fluid.
In order to study the role of sEV-delivered miR-574 5p on osteoclastogenesis an overexpression (oe) tool was created, which provides an enrichment of miR-574-5p in sEVs. Stimulation of monocytic osteoclast precursor cells revealed that miR-574-5p oe sEVs induced osteoclast differentiation in a time dependent manner. This effect could be addressed to an activation of TLR7 and TLR8. To proof the binding of miR-574-5p to TLR8 a microscale thermophoresis assay (MST) was performed, which revealed a strong binding with a KD of 30.8 ± 5.2 nM. Furthermore, the inhibition of TLR7 and TLR8 abrogated the impact of miR 574 5p on osteoclast formation, indicating that this effect is mediated by TLR7/8 activation. Comparable results to those of the miR-574-5p oe sEVs were obtained with the synthetic TLR7/8 ligand Resiqiumod (R848). Here also a concentration- and time dependent effect on osteoclastogenesis was observed, supporting the general hypothesis that TLR7/8 activation can lead to an enhanced osteoclastogenesis. In addition, it was shown that the mRNA levels of several TLR7/8 target genes, such as interleukin 23 (IL-23), interferon alpha (IFNα) and microsomal prostaglandin E synthase-1 (mPGES-1) were upregulated in response to miR-574-5p oe sEVs. These effects could also be prevented by the inhibition of TLR7 and TLR8.
Overall, it was demonstrated in this thesis that sEV-delivered miR-574-5p enhances osteoclastogenesis by activating TLR7 and TLR8 in the context of RA. These findings provide the opportunity for novel treatment approaches for RA in patients in the future by targeting this mechanism.


This paper presents the real time FPGA prototyping of energy dispersal technique i.e. Scrambler/De-Scrambler and improved error efficiency technique i.e. Interleaver/De-Interleaver of the digital video broadcasting satellite standard. These modules are designed using verilog HDL and integrated back-to-back i.e. scrambler and interleaver for transmitter and de-scrambler and de-interleaver for receiver. These integrated blocks are prototyped on commercially available Xilinx virtex xc5vlx110t-1 FPGA device. Further synthesis results are reported and experimented results are validated using logic analyzer.


Hanover Project Research Group has been recently formed by Fine Art staff from the University of Central Lancashire: academics and artists who have both taught together and jointly ran the University's art gallery, Hanover Project. This show marks the beginning of a conversation amongst the group about relationships be- tween their research, art practice and teaching; they hope, too, that it will allow them to develop connections and potential collaborations with the wider artistic community here in Sheffield, as well as in their Preston base and further afield, and, of course, to make their work available to the public.

The works on show include photography, painting, sculpture, and video.


This paper develops a model that addresses sentence embedding, a hot topic in current natural language processing research, using recurrent neural networks (RNN) with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) cells. The proposed LSTM-RNN model sequentially takes each word in a sentence, extracts its information, and embeds it into a semantic vector. Due to its ability to capture long term memory, the LSTM-RNN accumulates increasingly richer information as it goes through the sentence, and when it reaches the last word, the hidden layer of the network provides a semantic representation of the whole sentence. In this paper, the LSTM-RNN is trained in a weakly supervised manner on user click-through data logged by a commercial web search engine. Visualization and analysis are performed to understand how the embedding process works. The model is found to automatically attenuate the unimportant words and detect the salient keywords in the sentence. Furthermore, these detected keywords are found to automatically activate different cells of the LSTM-RNN, where words belonging to a similar topic activate the same cell. As a semantic representation of the sentence, the embedding vector can be used in many different applications. These automatic keyword detection and topic allocation abilities enabled by the LSTM-RNN allow the network to perform document retrieval, a difficult language processing task, where the similarity between the query and documents can be measured by the distance between their corresponding sentence embedding vectors computed by the LSTM-RNN. On a web search task, the LSTM-RNN embedding is shown to significantly outperform several existing state of the art methods. We emphasize that the proposed model generates sentence embedding vectors that are specially useful for web document retrieval tasks. A comparison with a well known general sentence embedding method, the Paragraph Vector, is performed. The results show that the proposed method in this paper significantly outperforms Paragraph Vector method for web document retrieval task.


The Background: Williams syndrome is a neurodevelopmental multisystem genetic disorder characterized by dysmorphic features and a wide range of congenital cardiac, renal, musculoskeletal anomalies. Presence of cleft palate in these patients is an unusual condition. More than 22 cases of sudden cardiac death reported in literature especially during anesthetic management in the patients of Williams syndrome. So these patients present major perioperative challenges to anesthesiologist. The authors report successful anesthetic care for repair of cleft palate in presence of uncorrected patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) and mild supraventricular aortic stenosis (SVAS) in a 3.5-year-old female child diagnosed with Williams syndrome. Case report: Diagnosed case of Williams syndrome with characteristic facial dysmorphic features, SVAS and rare malformation of PDA, was scheduled for cleft palate repair. After keen preoperative assessment, general anesthesia was administered for the procedure with continuous monitoring for vital parameters. Because of dysmorphic features, difficulty was faced during intubation. Otherwise intraoperative procedure was uneventful. Postoperative analgesia was managed with intravenous paracetamol. Conclusion: Being a multisystem disorder, each patient of WS requires meticulous preoperative evaluation and high level of intraoperative and postoperative continuous monitoring regardless of any surgical procedure. Surgical correction of cleft palate in such patients demands very high anesthetic and surgical skills as both share common airway. Present case report highlights the significance of aggressive perioperative management in WS which can result in successful outcome.


As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad celebrating both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the BBC launched a season of programs, entitled Shakespeare Unlocked, most notably presenting the plays of the second tetralogy in four feature-length adaptations released under the unifying title The Hollow Crown. These plays so obviously engaged with the question of English nationalism suited a year in which the United Kingdom wrestled with British identity in a post-colonial and post-Great Recession world. Through its adaptative and filmic vocabularies, however, The Hollow Crown advances a British nationalism unresponsive to the casualties — often women and ethnic minorities — incurred over the course of Britain's self-formation and acts of self-defining. While the adaptation of Richard II strives to preserve a complex understanding of woman's role in British history, both parts of Henry IV and Henry V sacrifice such depiction to the manifest destiny of Henry V's apotheosis. The Hollow Crown admits little room for questioning a construction of British nationalism as essentially white, male, and validated by the cultural iconicity of Shakespeare's canon.


In Dylan Thomas's 18 Poems (1934), Twenty-five Poems (1936) and The Map of Love (1939) the traumas of birth, love, sex, death, mourning, war and history, are also traumas of writing and symbolisation. The experimental modernist practices of these poems disrupt the notion of a stable, straightforward correspondence between language and reference, exposing a wound which exists at the core of social and linguistic being. For this reason Thomas's challenging youthful writing is not only full of images of trauma, it is itself traumatic for readers with commonsensical or 'ordinary language' assumptions about the nature of successful poetry. Over the years, those readers have included Thomas's politically-conscious fellow poets of the 1930s, the writers and critics associated with the Movement in the 1950s, and contemporary scholars of Welsh writing in English.

For many of these critics, Thomas has been a subject they seek to ignore and yet one to which they constantly return. His work might thus be said to possess the traumatic latency described by Cathy Caruth: 'it is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all'. Furthermore, that latency might, like the nagging awareness of the Real as anomaly or rupture described by Slavoj Žižek, be considered to expose the constructedness of the ideological fantasies underpinning our own exploitative social order. As the research of Victor Golightly and Victor Panaanen has shown, Thomas saw himself as a socialist artist, despite the opacity of his style. The article concludes by exploring the usefulness, for human liberation, and for an understanding of Thomas's early poems, of Geoffrey Hartman's suggestion that the inherently wounded and wounding nature of language might also be the key or 'password' making possible an ethical relation to the other.


For the classic three-node multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay channel, a capacity enhanced transmission is proposed, using simple half-duplex tow-hop relaying based on symbol level decode-and-forward (DF) mode. For higher capacity to the destination, we assume the source node equipped with more antennas and propose the transmission strategy, where using channel precoding, the source transmits the data to the relay and destination respectively in the first hop and retransmits part of data to destination jointly with relay in the second hop. Additionally, the power allocation is designed to maximize the system capacity. Simulation results are then presented for illustration of the capacity enhancement.


There is a growing problem in today's society of children growing up in fatherless households. One demographic at risk is young developing males who grow up without their biological father due to incarceration, divorce, separation, and death. This can affect the cognitive development of child which can lead to the decline of social, academic, and self regulation capacities. Once this young man enters college, he must exercise these capacities to the best of his abilities in order to succeed. This research study provided an overview of the issue of absent fathers on their sons and their longterm effect on their cognitive development. This research attempted to find a correlation between the absenteeism of one's biological father and the decline of one's ability to thrive in a highly stressful environment that requires one to live autonomously away from home. Sixty seven participants completed the survey. The data was then analyzed by comparing the results based on the comparison of the two populations of young males and the presence of their fathers. The results did not support the hypothesis but did reveal that more knowledge be done on the stress levels and professional help used by collegian males who grew up with an absent father.


This paper proposes various double unit root tests for cross-sectionally dependent panel data. The cross-sectional correlation is handled by the projection method [P.C.B. Phillips and D. Sul, Dynamic panel estimation and homogeneity testing under cross section dependence, Econom. J. 6 (2003), pp. 217–259; H.R. Moon and B. Perron, Testing for a unit root in panels with dynamic factors, J. Econom. 122 (2004), pp. 81–126] or the subtraction method [J. Bai and S. Ng, A PANIC attack on unit roots and cointegration, Econometrica 72 (2004), pp. 1127–1177]. Pooling or averaging is applied to combine results from different panel units. Also, to estimate autoregressive parameters the ordinary least squares estimation [D.P. Hasza and W.A. Fuller, Estimation for autoregressive processes with unit roots, Ann. Stat. 7 (1979), pp. 1106–1120] or the symmetric estimation [D.L. Sen and D.A. Dickey, Symmetric test for second differencing in univariate time series, J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 5 (1987), pp. 463–473] are used, and to adjust mean functions the ordinary mean adjustment or the recursive mean adjustment are used. Combinations of different methods in defactoring to eliminate the cross-sectional dependency, integrating results from panel units, estimating the parameters, and adjusting mean functions yields various available tests for double unit roots in panel data. Simple asymptotic distributions of the proposed test statistics are derived, which can be used to find critical values of the test statistics. We perform a Monte Carlo experiment to compare the performance of these tests and to suggest optimal tests for a given panel data. Application of the proposed tests to a real data, the yearly export panel data sets of several Latin–American countries for the past 50 years, illustrates the usefulness of the proposed tests for panel data, in that they reveal stronger evidence of double unit roots than the componentwise double unit root tests of Hasza and Fuller [Estimation for autoregressive processes with unit roots, Ann. Stat. 7 (1979), pp. 1106–1120] or Sen and Dickey [Symmetric test for second differencing in univariate time series, J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 5 (1987), pp. 463–473].


The reporting and understanding of materials spending is essential for a cost-effective manufacturing facility. At IBM in Essex Junction, Vermont, a Spare Parts Expense Management System is being used to manage and control spending. The system goes beyond simply reporting spare parts spending. Combined with a cost model developed by the same team, this system results in an integrated approach that provides firstorder analysis and metrics of spending by part number and tool. The system also provides aggregate analysis and metrics showing spending by tool group and process type. Second-order analysis of spending provides an understanding of spending by wafer type or "technology". This second-order data also enables dynamic target setting. Data is communicated via daily meetings, e-mail reports, and a web-based reporting tool. This approach ensures active engagement of the entire maintenance team, from technician through senior management, and provides the team with the analytical tools necessary to isolate opportunities for spending reduction.


Due to increase of the population affected by Coeliac disease and awareness of consumers about the relationship between food and health, the production of cereal products from raw materials other than wheat is of interest. The aim of the work was to produce good quality gluten-free spaghettis, based on sorghum, amaranth and maize flour. Response surface methodology was applied to determine optimal formulation for the production of pasta. The resulting products of the experimental design were characterized regarding humidity, color, density, water activity, texture (firmness and elasticity), optimal cooking time, cooking weight, and cooking loss. The main trials were compared to two industrials gluten-free spaghetti. The results showed that water activity and cooking weight of the main trials were similar to the industrials pasta, but were really different for the other studied parameters. The optimal formulation was determined in order to obtain pasta with low cooking loss and optimal color and texture firmness. It utilized 12% egg white, 60% maize flour, 30% sorghum flour, 10% amaranth flour, 2.4% guar gum and 36% water. The optimal formulated pasta was evaluated by an untrained consumer panel in a sensorial analysis to show the consumer acceptance. The product presents nutritional benefits, the color was appreciated, but the texture was granular and crumbly which was not liked by the consumers.


Background Anorexia nervosa is a serious health problem worldwide. The literature widely recognises the roles of the family and caregivers in modulating the onset, development, maintenance and treatment of this disorder. However, few studies have addressed the problem from the perspective of maternal caregivers. Aims This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how the meaning given to the term 'eating disorder' influences how mothers communicate with each other about a family member's health problems, how they present symptoms and how this problem is managed. Method A narrative research project was conducted to capture the mothers' experiences of living with a daughter diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. In particular, four semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the ways in which they made sense of the disorder, their roles in treatment and their daughters' treatment experiences. Results The results show that the ways in which mothers characterise the disease guide their method of tackling it and the relationship they have with their daughter, as well as how they see their role in the care and treatment process. Conclusions Anorexia is experienced as something that is uncontainable, and a dimension of its accommodation characterises the relationship between mothers and daughters receiving treatment for the disorder. Treatment is accompanied by a delegating dimension, and the clinical implications are discussed in this study.


Inspired by coarea formula in geometric measure theory, an occupation time formula for continuous semimartingales in R is proven. The occupation measure of a semimartingale, for N ≥ 2, is singular with respect to Lebesgue measure but it has a bounded density "transversal" to a foliation, under proper assumptions. In the particular case of the foliation given locally by the distance function from a manifold, the transversal density is related to a geometric local time of the semimartingale at the manifolds of the foliation.


Abstract : By December of 2012 approximately 2.2 million US military personnel will have served one or more times in Iraq or Afghanistan in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF), and New Dawn (Institute of Medicine/IOM 2013). Stress associated with family separation, combat, and reintegration is extremely disruptive for parents and children. Returning service members and their families are particularly vulnerable during the reintegration period post-deployment. Risks include increases in stress, anxiety and depression, PTSD, and substance use and abuse. These outcomes lead to disruptions in interactions between parents, children, and spouses, increasing risk for children s emotional, behavior problems, and substance use. The overarching goal of our study is to address existing gaps and identified National Guard Reserve (NGR) needs that will inform the portability and access of NGR families to evidence-based programs by conducting a three-group, two-site randomized trial to test the comparative effectiveness of three ADAPT delivery approaches for 360 reintegrating NGR families randomly assigned to: (i) ADAPT group- based; (ii) ADAPT individualized web-facilitated; or (iii) ADAPT self-directed online. Families will complete pre-intervention baseline (BL) assessment (pre-test) and three post-test assessments at 6, 12- and 24 months. We hypothesize that NGR families in both the ADAPT group-based condition and the ADAPT individualized web-facilitated condition will show greater pre-post improvements in observed parenting, and parent, child, and couple functioning relative to the self-directed online condition and the ADAPT group-based condition will be equally effective as the individualized ADAPT web-facilitated condition.


OBJECTIVES
Age-related memory decrements correlate with metacognitive declines, including knowledge and deployment of effective mnemonic encoding strategies. However, whether imparting such strategy suffices for mitigating memory differences is unclear.

METHODS
In a longitudinal study of 276 healthy adults aged 18-79 years, we tested associative and working memory, and assessed beliefs regarding mnemonic strategies. Testing was repeated every two years, 5 times. Starting with the third occasion, we instructed participants to use an effective mnemonic strategy (sentence generation). Using continuous-time dynamic modelling, we assessed change in item and associative recognition, intervention effects, and their relations with age, sex, meta-memory beliefs, working memory, and metabolic health.

RESULTS
Younger age, better working memory, and stronger belief in effective mnemonic strategies predicted better recognition, whereas instructional intervention attenuated associative memory deficits, with some persistence over time.

DISCUSSION
The present findings show merely imparting effective strategies holds promise for mitigating age-related associative memory deficits.


Pure titanium TA2 and 1Cr18Ni9Ti stainless steel were vacuum diffusion bonded using Nb + Ni foils as interlayers, where Nb foil was adjacent to TA2 and Ni foil adjacent to 1Cr18Ni9Ti. The samples were heated to a temperature of 800°C at a pressure of 10 MPa and kept for 60 min, and then to a temperature of 900°C at a pressure of 1 MPa and kept for 30 min. The mechanical properties of the joint were characterized by the tensile strength test. The average tensile strength of the joints was about 398 MPa. The fracture characteristics of the joint were investigated using scanning electron microscope. The fracture of tensile test samples occurred in the Ni3Nb intermetallic compound formed in the interlayers.


of the aorta was found but no atheroma of the coronary arteries. Another of the eight patients, a woman aged 44, had a serum cholesterol concentration of 7 mmol/l (273 mg/ 100 ml) before thyroidectomy and a concentration of 6 mmol/l (230 mg/100 ml) before she died four years later. These eight patients are as relevant to the debate on fat and atheroma as the flowers that bloom in the spring. It is time that this outworn reference was given a well-deserved rest.


This article argues critically that the consequences of a binary system of gender norms is experienced as a kind of gender tyranny both for those who transgress gender in their daily lives, but also for those whose lives are lived within such constraints. Feminist geographers and urban theorists have argued that space is gendered and that gendering has profound consequences for women. This article extends this analysis and shows how rigid categorizations of gender fail to include the intersexed and transgendered populations, a small and highly marginalized segment of the wider population. This article uses autoethnographic methods to illustrate the ways that those who transgress gender norms experience a tyranny of gender that shapes nearly every aspect of their public and private lives. The nature of these consequences is explored using citations from the transgender and queer literature as well as the lived experience of this tyranny by the author in a continuum of public to private spaces, including: parking lots, public restrooms, shopping malls, the workplace and the home.


Fuel rich explosive charges consisting of excess metal in the formulations are designed to create enhanced blast effects through the post detonation reactions in anaerobic and aerobic phases. For metallised explosives, the nature of confinement can significantly affect the casing rupture time and the expansion of detonation products. The confinement is likely to increase the residence time of heated metal particles in the detonation product zone thereby improving the ignition and combustion efficiency. In the present study, the effect of casing on the performance of a fuel rich explosive composition based on RDX, Al and HTPB was studied in field experiments. The results are correlated to the observations from numerical modeling of the detonation, case rupture and blast phenomena modeled using thermochemical equilibrium code and eulerian hydrocode SPEED. The results suggest that the confinement helps in enhancing the blast and thermal impulses which are the primary performance parameters for this class of explosives.


At the present time staged carotid reconstruction several days before elective coronary artery bypass surgery seems to be the safest and most logical approach for patients with neurological symptoms, stable cardiac symptoms, and acceptable coronary anatomy. Combined procedures may well be necessary for those who have active neurological symptoms or bilateral carotid lesions in conjunction with diffuse or unstable coronary artery disease, but the incidence of neurological complications at the time of simultaneous operations could exceed the stroke risk for either carotid endarterectomy or coronary bypass alone. The asymptomatic patient with unilateral carotid stenosis who presents for coronary artery bypass might be best managed by myocardial revascularization followed by medical or surgical management of the carotid disease. In order to obtain optimal long-term results, both coronary disease and associated carotid disease require appropriate evaluation and medical and surgical management.


Firearms play a critical role in the murder of intimate partner violence (IPV) victims and there is evidence that laws prohibiting protective order (PO) respondents from possessing a firearm reduce IPV fatalities. However, little research has compared specific abuse tactics involving firearms among victims who have and have not sought a PO against an abuser. This study investigates IPV victims' experiences with a range of firearm-related abuse tactics across victim race/ethnicity, in addition to the relationship between firearm IPV and PO requests, above and beyond IPV not involving firearms. Questionnaires were administered to 215 female victims recruited from six domestic violence shelters in Texas. Over one-half of victims who sought a PO were threatened to be shot by their abuser and victims who experienced high levels of firearm abuse incurred a 302% increase in the odds of requesting a PO. There were no significant differences between White, Black, and Hispanic victims regarding firearm IPV tactics. The results shed light on the magnitude of risk IPV victims can experience when seeking a PO against an abusive partner.


The prolonged Boko Haram crises in North-East Nigeria caused serious displacement and left the survivors with multiple psychological consequences such as Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A high prevalence rate of PTSD among Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has been reported across literatures. This study aimed to determine the factors that are associated with PTSD and its relationship with functional disability among IDPs in Yobe State, Nigeria. This was a cross sectional study of 450 respondents, recruited using a systematic sampling method. We used Harvard Trauma Questionnaire to screen for symptoms of PTSD and definite diagnosis made with WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), PTSD Module. Hopkins Symptom Checklist was used for symptoms of depression and definite diagnosis made with CIDI Depression Module. The WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 was used to measure functional disability. There were 192 (45.5%) males and 230(54.5%) female respondents. The mean age of respondents was 39.4±18.50 years with range of 18-80 years. Significant PTSD symptoms were found among 159(37.7%) of the IDPs while Clinical interview gave a definite prevalence of 18.5%. Two hundred and forty-four (57.8%) of the respondents had disability scores in the mild range, 17.5% in the moderate range while 20.7% were in the severe range. Majority of those with disability scores in the severe range had PTSD. Factors significantly associated with PTSD were age, marital status, duration of displacement, type of abode, general living condition, self-reported general health, and disability score. A High prevalence rate of PTSD was found among IDPs and the severity of disability correlated well with having diagnosis of PTSD in the study.


The resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is a classic and important problem in project management and has gotten much attention from researchers. In this paper, we consider the case in which the cost of activities has to be minimized. This variant of the problem can be found mainly in construction management supply chains. Its characteristics show that this objective function is non-regular and that the problem is NP-hard. This paper presents a memetic algorithm to solve this problem. Computational experiments are carried out using well-known instances from the PSPLIB. Results obtained validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and allow us to understand the algorithm's behavior.


The growing variety of data storage and retrieval needs is driving the design and development of an increasing number of distributed storage applications such as key-value stores, distributed file systems, object stores, and databases. We observe that, to a large extent, such applications would implement their own way of handling features of data replication, failover, consistency, cluster topology, leadership election, etc. We found that 45- 82% of the code in six popular distributed storage applications can be classified as implementations of such common features. While such implementations allow for deeper optimizations tailored for a specific application, writing new applications to satisfy the ever-changing requirements of new types of data or I/O patterns is challenging, as it is notoriously hard to get all the features right in a distributed setting.

In this paper, we argue that for most modern storage applications, the common feature implementation (i.e., the distributed part) can be automated and offloaded, so developers can focus on the core application functions. We are designing a framework, ClusterOn, which aims to take care of the messy plumbing of distributed storage applications. The envisioned goal is that a developer simply "drops" a non-distributed application into ClusterOn, which will convert it into a scalable and highly configurable distributed application.


The ability to measure the radiocarbon content of compounds isolated from complex mixtures has begun to revolutionize our understanding of carbon transformations on earth. Because samples are often small, each new compound isolation method must be tested for background carbon contamination (C(ex)). Here, we present a new method for compound-specific radiocarbon analysis (CSRA) of higher plant-derived lignin phenols. To test for C(ex), we compared the Δ(14)C values of unprocessed lignin phenol containing standard materials (woods, leaves, natural vanillin, and synthetic vanillin) with those of lignin phenols liberated by CuO oxidation and purified by two-dimensional high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) and UV detection. We assessed C(ex) associated with (1) microwave assisted CuO oxidation of bulk samples to lignin phenol monomers, (2) HPLC purification, and (3) accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) sample preparation. The Δ(14)C of purified compounds (corrected for C(ex)) agreed, within error, with those of bulk materials for samples that were >10 μg C. This method will allow routine analysis of the Δ(14)C of lignin phenols isolated from terrestrial, aquatic, and marine settings, revealing the time scale for the processing of one of the single largest components of active organic carbon reservoirs on earth.


This volume, SEG Course Notes Series No. 13, is designed to give the practicing geophysicist an understanding of the principles of poststack migration, presented with intuitive reasoning rather than laborious math. Modeling is introduced as a natural process that starts with a geologic model and then builds seismic data. Migration is then described as the reverse process that uses seismic data to find the geologic model. Many other topics are covered relating to the quality of the migrated section, such as aliasing, rugged topography, or use of the correct velocity. Significant new material has been added in this revised edition of the original 1997 book, especially algorithms based on the phase-shift method, such as PSPI and the omegaX method.


In this paper we describe an approach to cooperative negotiation that uses a combination of techniques to allow our distributed resource allocation negotiation protocol to conform to soft real time constraints while obtaining reasonable solution quality. Amongst these techniques are the ability to resolve conflict in the allocation of resources on multiple levels, temporarily binding and incrementally improving the quality of the solution (a form of distributed hill climbing) given time constraints providing for an anytime characteristic, and restricting the context of negotiations to only use local information with extended meta-level information to generate and propose possible solutions to the problem. We describe the implementation of a simulator for the protocol and experimental results.


Background: Low health literacy is associated with poorer health. Research has shown that predictive models of health literacy can be developed; however, key variables may be missing from systems where predictive models might be applied, such as health service data. This paper describes an approach to developing predictive health literacy models using variables common to both "source" health literacy data and "target" systems such as health services. Methods: A multilevel synthetic estimation was undertaken on a national (England) dataset containing health literacy, socio-demographic data and geographical (Lower Super Output Area: LSOA) indicators. Predictive models, using variables commonly present in health service data, were produced. An algorithm was written to pilot the calculations in a Family Physician Clinical System in one inner-city area. The minimum data required were age, sex and ethnicity; other missing data were imputed using model values. Results: There are 32,845 LSOAs in England, with a population aged 16 to 65 years of 34,329,091. The mean proportion of the national population below the health literacy threshold in LSOAs was 61.87% (SD 12.26). The algorithm was run on the 275,706 adult working-age people in Lambeth, South London. The algorithm could be calculated for 228,610 people (82.92%). When compared with people for whom there were sufficient data to calculate the risk score, people with insufficient data were more likely to be older, male, and living in a deprived area, although the strength of these associations was weak. Conclusions: Logistic regression using key socio-demographic data and area of residence can produce predictive models to calculate individual- and area-level risk of low health literacy, but requires high levels of ethnicity recording. While the models produced will be specific to the settings in which they are developed, it is likely that the method can be applied wherever relevant health literacy data are available. Further work is required to assess the feasibility, accuracy and acceptability of the method. If feasible, accurate and acceptable, this method could identify people requiring additional resources and support in areas such as medical practice.


OBJECTIVE
To examine whether adolescents' and parents' perceptions of patient-centered communication (PCC) with the physician may be associated with aspects of patient empowerment (e.g., perceptions of competence) and diabetes management (i.e., adherence and HbA1c).

METHODS
One hundred and ninety adolescents with type 1 diabetes and their parents rated perceptions of PCC following a clinic visit and completed measures of competence, illness perceptions, self-efficacy, and adherence in the weeks following their clinic visit, and again 6 months later. Metabolic control was indexed from medical records.

RESULTS
Higher levels of PCC with physicians were associated cross-sectionally and longitudinally with greater perceptions of control and competence for both adolescents and parents. Mediation analyses indicated that PCC was indirectly related to subsequent adherence and metabolic control through perceptions of the adolescent's competence in diabetes management.

CONCLUSIONS
Perceptions of PCC with healthcare providers may empower adolescents and parents in their diabetes management.