In this paper I develop an argument to the effect that humanitarian moral interventions, far from being inconsistent with the normative framework of just war, fit in very well with the justifying conditions of this framework. The argument develops by considering three objections against humanitarian military interventions, emanating from just war criteria. The criteria in question are just authority, just cause, and non-combatant immunity. It will be argued that while just authority logically depends on just cause and has no independent argumentative force of its own, the criterion of just cause should be understood to include a defence of human rights or vital human interests and not only of national sovereignty. As for the criterion of non-combatant immunity, it will be argued that the unintended killing or injuring of innocent non-combatants can be dealt with by means of a modified version of the doctrine of double effect. Moreover, the moral responsibility for unintended innocent victims of an intervention should rest with the repressive regimes that made the intervention necessary in the first place. By relating humanitarian military interventions to the criteria of just war and to human rights, the argument developed here places the justification of such interventions at the centre of contemporary moral discourse.


Bank credit availability in the agricultural sector empowers farmers to adopt modern technologies and inputs that are vital for breaking poverty in developing economies like Zimbabwe. This study sought to establish the determinants of credit demand among farmers in Hurungwe District of Mashonaland West Province in Zimbabwe. A questionnaire survey was conducted on a sample of 354 farmers selected by stratified random sampling. The Direct Elicitation Approach was applied to comprehend the credit demand constraints faced by farmers using frequency statistics. Logistic Regression Analysis and Thematic Analysis were also used for analysing data. Farmers in Hurungwe District face price (95%), risk (79%) and transaction cost (58%) constraints. Interest rates, collateral and fear of debt have a negative and significant (p<0.05) effect on credit demand. Loan processing time emerged as another key determinant of credit demand among farmers. Policy should curb hyperinflation to ensure the affordability of loans and production inputs by farmers. Interest rate ceilings must also be restored, and financial markets literacy campaigns intensified to shield farmers from predatory lenders. Banks are challenged to improve communication with farmers, swiftly address their needs and relax collateral demands to enhance credit demand among farmers. Investments in irrigation and other weather resilience technologies should be prioritized to enhance agricultural sector performance and reduce credit uptake fears among farmers.


We have prepared nanosheets and nanodots of 2D arsenene by the ultrasonication of grey arsenic in appropriate solvents. The nanosheets have been characterized by various microscopies as well as Raman and optical spectroscopy. Arsenene exhibits a band gap of ∼2.3 eV which agrees with the calculated value. The nanodots show blue emission in the 400–460 nm range. Results from theoretical calculations on arsenene are consistent with the experimental results.


The results of molecular dynamics computer simulations of water laminae confined between two (9-3) Lennard-Jones walls are reported. The interaction potential is identical to the one used in a recent singlet integral equation study [M. J. Booth, D.-M. Duh, and A. D. J. Haymet, J. Chem. Phys. 101, 7925 (1994)]. In the simulation studies the internal pressure, system size, and the treatment of long-range Coulomb interactions has been varied. Large density oscillations similar to the integral equation results have not been observed. Simulated pair correlation functions are found to exhibit only little anisotropy near the interface.


Objective: Some studies have shown that keto amino acids (KA) reduce proteinuria and improve renal function as well as nutritional status in patients with diabetic nephropathy. We aimed to compare the pathologic findings of kidneys of rats that were given protein-restricted diets enriched with KA with those of rats given protein-restricted diet alone. Materials and Methods: The study included 22 16-week-old Sprague–Dawley rats and was conducted at the research cen-ter. The rats were randomly divided into two equal groups. Group I (study) received KA (35-70 mg/kg) with gavage along with low-protein diet (10% protein), and Group II (control group) received low-protein diet alone. The treatment was continued for 2 weeks, after which the study ended. Blood samples were obtained in the 5th and 7th weeks of treatment for measuring albumin and creatinine levels; bilateral nephrectomy was performed at the end of the study. Results: All rats had minimal thickness of the basement membrane. The serum albumin levels were significantly higher in the study group (p<0.05). The study group rats had greater thickness of the basement membranes. Conclusion: Our study may inspire further studies in this particular field with the question whether KA can slow the progression of diabetic nephropathy.


For a library to be able provide information services and fulfill its function as a knowledge convergence center capable of responding to various information demands, the development of next-generation information systems based on the latest information and communication technology is needed. The development of mobile information services using portable devices such smart phones and tablet PCs and information systems which incorporate the concepts of cloud computing, SaaS (Software as a Service), annotation and Library2.0 is also required. This paper describes a library information system that utilizes collective intelligence and cloud computing. The information system developed for this study adopts the SaaS-based cloud computing service concept to cope with the shift in the mobile service paradigm in libraries and the explosion of electronic data. The strengths of such a conceptual model include the sharing of resources, support of multi-tenants, and the configuration and support of metadata. The user services are provided in the form of software on-demand. To test the performance of the developed system, the efficiency analysis and TTA certification test were conducted. The results of performance tests, It is encouraging that, at least up to 100MB, the job time is approximately linear and with only a moderate overhead of less than one second. The system also passed the level-3 or higher criteria in the certification test, which includes the SaaS maturity, performance and application program functions.


Jellife's conversion to ps requires interpretation but Prc ham is reticent in this resp absent from the book is an a the real effect that his psychoa livities had on American neu Nothing is said either on Jel version of the psychosomatic how it relates to the demise o can psychosomatic school of Wars. Professor Burnham manag( masterly to depict the chil behind the medical journal period. The history of the oi Chicago "Archives of Net Psychiatry" is however ur reminiscent of that of some ( counterparts. This book shoul ory reading for editors of joui to serve, like the "Journal of Mental Diseases" under Jelli different specialisms at the sat The second part of the b( about 77 letters, of varied lenj vance, from the Freud, Jung Correspondence. They corrol insights into the personalities ( Jung but say a great deal more himself. The book ends with and useful list of Jellife's writi The central contributioi restrained biography is to th early 20th century Americai chiatry and psychoanalysis. It quate on the history of the Eur which Jellife is supposed to ha ingly translated for his contem that as it may, it has preparec for later researchers who will with the question of the exten contribution (or lack of it) t neuropsychiatry.


In France, the COVID-19 pandemic was experienced as a cascading crisis, with its effects rippling out beyond its initial health domain. Due to the lockdown and ban on travel, the closure of borders, and the slowdown of administrative services, the pandemic had an unanticipated effect on transnational French/foreign couples lacking formal legal relationship status, causing separation and uncertainty. Overlapping health and migration concerns generated a new specific border regime, which reinforced the already existing 'deservingness' criteria for seeking to move to and integrate into the nation. The imposed geographical and administrative immobilisation led to some couples creating online self-help communities, which offered emotional support and shared coping strategies for couples caught in the deadlock. These communities have given the challenges faced by mixed-status couples fresh visibility. Drawing on an ethnography conducted in four online communities, in-depth interviews with transnational couples, and an analysis of politico-juridical materials and grey literature, this article focuses on marriage becoming the option for French/foreign couples seeking the right to reunite in France during an uncertain period. More precisely, by using crisis studies to frame the impact of the pandemic and articulating the scholarship on socio-legal and intimate citizenship, the experiences of such couples can be understood as specific processes in legal consciousness, producing acts of intimate citizenship. This perspective helps demonstrate how the pandemic emphasised the policing of migrant couples, and how institutional and legal opportunities narrowed the choices available to such couples, reducing the potential of change that is generally inherent in crises.


ABSTRACT Roche's article discusses 'language oppression' as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of 'race', nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the 'enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion'. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language discrimination, or 'linguicism'. Roche explores one aspect of linguicism—language erasure—and how it relates to language oppression, focusing on Tibetans in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He examines how language oppression is produced through practices of erasure: the ways in which certain populations and their languages are systematically rendered discursively invisible. He argues that the erasure of certain languages in the Tibetan context is systematically reproduced by two otherwise opposed political projects: the colonial project of the PRC state; and the international Tibet movement that seeks to resist it. He refers to the contingent cooperation between these two opposed projects as 'articulated oppression'. In concluding the article he examines how the disarticulation of this oppression is a necessary condition for the emancipation of Tibet's minority languages, and discusses the broader significance of this study for understanding language oppression, and its relation to other forms of oppression.


WaveNet, which learns directly from speech waveform samples, has been used as an alternative to vocoders and achieved very high-quality synthetic speech in terms of both naturalness and speaker similarity even in multi-speaker text-to-speech synthesis systems. However, the WaveNet vocoder uses acoustic features as local condition parameters, and these parameters need to be accurately predicted by another acoustic model. So far, it is not yet clear how to train this acoustic model, which is problematic because the final quality of synthetic speech is significantly affected by the performance of the acoustic model. Significant degradation occurs, especially when predicted acoustic features have mismatched characteristics compared to natural ones. In order to reduce the mismatched characteristics between natural and generated acoustic features, we propose new frameworks that incorporate either a conditional generative adversarial network (GAN) or its variant, Wasserstein GAN with gradient penalty (WGAN-GP), into multi-speaker speech synthesis that uses the WaveNet vocoder. The GAN generator performs as an acoustic model and its outputs are used as the local condition parameters of the WaveNet. We also extend the GAN frameworks and use the discretized-mixture-of-logistics (DML) loss of a well-trained WaveNet in addition to mean squared error and adversarial losses as parts of objective functions. Experimental results show that acoustic models trained using the WGAN-GP framework using back-propagated DML loss achieves the highest subjective evaluation scores in terms of both quality and speaker similarity.


Three standardized forms used to write the self in Vietnam structure ways of thinking about the relationship between the individual, family, and state; legitimize technical expertise and tools of self-improvement; and promote specific configurations of political economy. Two of the forms (the lý lịch autobiographical statement and the "Cultured Family" self-assessment checklist) are closely associated with socialist practices. The third (social work case file) is best classified as neoliberal. Tracing the genealogy of these forms and their ethnographic contexts reveals, however, underlying continuities in logics of individual assessment and faith in the application of technical expertise to achieve desired development outcomes. It also demonstrates that the ostensibly more coercive socialist technologies of documentation have provided narrative frameworks that enable individuals to represent themselves in other contexts, whereas the social work case file that aims to empower individuals may ultimately render them passive subjects of transnational expertise.


One of the impediments to large-scale use of wind generation within power systems is its nondispatchability and variable and uncertain real-time availability. Operating constraints on conventional generators such as minimum generation points, forbidden zones, and ramping limits as well as system constraints such as power flow limits and ancillary service requirements may force a system operator to curtail wind generation in order to ensure feasibility. Furthermore, the pattern of wind availability and electricity demand may not allow wind generation to be fully utilized in all hours. One solution to these issues, which could reduce these inflexibilities, is the use of real-time pricing (RTP) tariffs which can both smooth-out the diurnal load pattern in order to reduce the impact of binding unit operating and system constraints on wind utilization, and allow demand to increase in response to the availability of costless wind generation. We use and analyze a detailed unit commitment model of the Texas power system with different estimates of demand elasticities to demonstrate the potential increases in wind generation from implementing RTP.


OBJECTIVE
Medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ) is a rare complication of antiresorptive or antiangiogenetic therapy that manifests as an exposed bone with clinical signs of infection, persisting for more than 8 weeks, without history of radiation therapy or metastases to the jaws. The aim of the study was to describe the incidence, risk factors, staging process and clinical course of MRONJ in patients with multiple myeloma (MM).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We retrospectively analyzed all (126) newly diagnosed MM patients at Riga East Clinical University Hospital (Riga. Latvia) from June 2014 to June 2017.

RESULTS
Among 88 MM patients treated with bisphosphonates (BP), 6 (6.8%) patients developed MRONJ. All six patients received intravenous nitrogen-containing BPs. The average time until MRONJ manifestation was under two years. For our patients the severity of MRONJ was stage I in two, stage II in three, and stage III in one patient. Five patients had MRONJ of mandibula and one of maxilla. All patients with MRONJ had undergone a dental extraction or a trauma before the development of MRONJ.

CONCLUSION
We found that MRONJ correlated with the patient's age. The average time until MRONJ manifestation in reserach group is 2 years. One of triggerring MRONJ factors are tooth extraction or trauma.


Relationships of the adolescent who experiences group pressure. The aim of the investigation was to determine how group pressure is related to the relationships of the adolescent. The relationships of adolescents are mainly those with parents, friends and with themselves (self-concept). An empirical investigation was carried out involving 462 learners from Grades 8 to 12. A questionnaire was developed measuring parent-child relationship, relationship with friends, self-concept and group pressure. The results of the investigation showed significant negative correlations between all the social relationships and group pressure. From the regression analysis it could be concluded that self-concept was the most important variable accounting for 35% of the variance of group pressure. Group pressure seems to decrease from Grade 8 to Grade12, but self-concept does not show an increase during this period.


The goal of this dissertation is to formulate statistically appropriate estimators for the seed dispersal distribution function when data are collected in traps from multiple sources, both with and without genotyping, after accounting for other relevant factors, such as tree fecundity. Work along these lines has been attempted previously, under idealistic assumptions, for non-genotyped data, but this dissertation will give more general and practical results for this case. There has been almost no statistical work done on the genotyped case, so such results will be new and useful. Finally, and most important for ecologists who will in coming years have much data of these types, we propose to find a statistically appropriate estimator for the seed dispersal distribution function when the data consist of a combination of non-genotyped and genotyped seeds.


Modeling is one of the most important activities throughout any software development life cycle. Within object-oriented modeling, class generalization is a powerful, yet simple concept for abstracting commonalities between classes. Although, as classes evolved in the model, their semantics may become inconsistent with previous generalization relationships. Automated tools are necessary in order to preserve model coherence. In this paper we present a logic programming translation of several kinds of class hierarchies, in order to be used in the process of automated model checking. This representation includes positive and negative information, and preserves individual class properties. Thus, the resulting program is not affected with changes in class semantics or in the hierarchies.


To the Editor. —We read with interest the paper in the September issue1 on αheavy chain disease in which the pathological immunoglobulin disappeared with chemotherapy. The authors state that up to the time of acceptance of their paper all cases of so-called Mediterranean lymphoma and α-chain disease have occurred either in Arabs or oriental Jews in the Mediterranean basin. We have since then2 described 23 cases of abdominal lymphoma presenting with malabsorption and have subsequently had a further four cases in two of whom an α-heavy chain was demonstrated on immunological testing of the serum by B. Ramot in Tel Aviv. In one of these the pathological immunoglobulin disappeared on therapy. The patient, a 29-year-old mulatto man presented with a nine month history of steatorrhoea and abdominal pain. Investigations confirmed severe intestinal malab-sorption and a peroral jejunal biopsy showed villous atrophy with marked infiltration of the lamina propria by


In 2014, the United Nations published the first International Standard for environmentaleconomic statistics, known as the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA).. As more countries adopt and implement the SEEA, the availability of consistent environmental and economic information increases the need for analytical tools that can use this data to respond to policy relevant questions. In this paper, we present a workflow to develop an environmentallyextended social accounting matrix, which can serve as the basic database for the development of environmentally-extended computable general equilibrium models. To illustrate, and given its comprehensive implementation of the SEEA, we apply this workflow to the Guatemalan case and the Integrated Economic-Environmental Modeling (IEEM) Platform.


Abstract The significant assortative mating for the sensation-seeking motive in (married) American students reported by Farley and Davis1 was significantly cross-validated on American (N = 160) and German (N = 160) samples randomly selected from two comparable cities in the Federal German Republic and the United States. A control condition of age-matched unmarried pairs was included. Spouses were found to have 19% and 29% of sensation-seeking variance in common in the American and German samples, respectively. The later figure is exceptionally high for the literature on assortarive mating (exceeding or approximating some of the relationships found for intellectual measures). No significant variance was in common for the unmarried pairs. When a simple and easily measured construct with such wide implications as the sensation-seeking motive can be shown to be so significantly involved in marital partner similarity, then its consequences for successful and unsuccessful marriage should be pursued with vigor. ...


IMPORTANCE
The ability of patients with unilateral facial paralysis to recognize and appropriately judge facial expressions remains underexplored.

OBJECTIVE
To test the effects of unilateral facial paralysis on the recognition of and judgments about facial expressions of emotion and to evaluate the asymmetry of facial mimicry.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Patients with left or right unilateral facial paralysis at a university facial plastic surgery unit completed 2 computer tasks involving video facial expression recognition. Side of facial paralysis was used as a between-participant factor. Facial function and symmetry were verified electronically with the eFACE facial function scale.

EXPOSURES
Across 2 tasks, short videos were shown on which facial expressions of happiness and anger unfolded earlier on one side of the face or morphed into each other. Patients indicated the moment or side of change between facial expressions and judged their authenticity.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Type, time, and accuracy of responses on a keyboard were analyzed.

RESULTS
A total of 57 participants (36 women and 21 men) aged 20 to 76 years (mean age, 50.2 years) and with mild left or right unilateral facial paralysis were included in the study. Patients with right facial paralysis were faster (by about 150 milliseconds) and more accurate (mean number of errors, 1.9 vs 2.5) to detect expression onsets on the left side of the stimulus face, suggesting anatomical asymmetry of facial mimicry. Patients with left paralysis, however, showed more anomalous responses, which partly differed by emotion.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The findings favor the hypothesis of an anatomical asymmetry of facial mimicry and suggest that patients with a left hemiparalysis could be more at risk of developing a cluster of disabilities and psychological conditions including emotion-recognition impairments.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
3.


I Apparent analyte concentration (equivalent of 11-nor-~% tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (9-THC-COOH)) obtained by radioimmunoassay (RIA) for cannabinoids using reagents manufactured at four different periods (from the same manufacturer) and specific 9-THC-COOH concentration as determined by GC/MS are examined for the significance of their correlation. The resulting regression equations are then used to estimate the apparent RIA analyte concentrations of reagents manufactured at different time periods that are equivalent to a specific 9-THC-COOH concentration. Correlation coefficients of the regression analysis improve from approximately 0.4 to 0.7 in parallel with the increasing reagent specificity. The apparent RIA analyte concentrations that correspond to 15 ng/mL 9-THC-COOH decrease from about 110 to 50 ng/mL again in parallel with the increasing reagent specificity. These findings empirically demonstrate that reagent specificity is the determining factor of the resulting apparent RIA analyte concentration when testing samples that contain 9- THC-COOH and other metabolites (derived from marijuana exposure). Thus, if the 9-THC-COOH concentration as determined by GC/MS is of primary concern, the initial test cutoff concentration should be adjusted in accordance with the specificity of the reagent used.


Property relations and financial markets are key aspects of the transition to a market economy. This paper reviews conceptual analysis and recent experience in these areas under five broad headings: (1) property rights and the legal framework; (2) privatisation; (3) the management and regulation of state-owned firms; (4) banking and finance; and (5) restructuring. The emphasis of the paper is on the view that these apparently different dimensions of the transition are actually closely inter-related, with the result that good policies in one area are necessarily highly dependent on progress with the others. Some of these issues turned out to be more difficult and complicated than appeared at the start of transition, but considerable learning has taken place and better policies can now be designed.


It is well-known that standard neural networks, even with a high classification accuracy, are vulnerable to small $\ell_\infty$-norm bounded adversarial perturbations. Although many attempts have been made, most previous works either can only provide empirical verification of the defense to a particular attack method, or can only develop a certified guarantee of the model robustness in limited scenarios. In this paper, we seek for a new approach to develop a theoretically principled neural network that inherently resists $\ell_\infty$ perturbations. In particular, we design a novel neuron that uses $\ell_\infty$-distance as its basic operation (which we call $\ell_\infty$-dist neuron), and show that any neural network constructed with $\ell_\infty$-dist neurons (called $\ell_{\infty}$-dist net) is naturally a 1-Lipschitz function with respect to $\ell_\infty$-norm. This directly provides a rigorous guarantee of the certified robustness based on the margin of prediction outputs. We then prove that such networks have enough expressive power to approximate any 1-Lipschitz function with robust generalization guarantee. We further provide a holistic training strategy that can greatly alleviate optimization difficulties. Experimental results show that using $\ell_{\infty}$-dist nets as basic building blocks, we consistently achieve state-of-the-art performance on commonly used datasets: 93.09% certified accuracy on MNIST ($\epsilon=0.3$), 35.42% on CIFAR-10 ($\epsilon=8/255$) and 16.31% on TinyImageNet ($\epsilon=1/255$).


The differences between management in government organisations and private ones are well recognised in the literature, and these variances reflect in how project management is practiced in both organisations. Consequently, the difficulties of developing Project Management in government organisations have been acknowledged. Specifically, in African developing countries where socio-economic and political nuisance prevails, these difficulties are far from being resolved. Although a number of challenges confronting management of government projects in developing countries have been identified in the literature, no significant solution or initiative has been implemented by way of resolving the problem. In Nigeria, public sector projects are activities or projects administered by government in order to provide amenities to the general public. The Nigerian government has positioned itself to advance the nation's economy, by increasing the country's GDP through the execution of adequate and enduring building construction projects. A key component of this positioning is the intervention Vision 20:20, with one of its objectives being to provide housing facilities that will meet the demands of the increasing population and urbanization. Vision 20:20 introduced the project management concept to government organisations so as to improve management capabilities, with the purpose of enabling the public sector to efficiently manage projects and realise developmental objectives. However, the inadequate management and administration of government projects in Nigeria have resulted in a pool of abandoned, poorly developed and failed projects. From a review of previous studies, it was observed that various components have been identified as hindrances to the development of project management practice in African developing countries. However, the reductionist approach applied in these investigations means that components were defined in terms of a singular aspect in relation to the organisation. Such a singular focus on the challenges of developing project management practice has not been sufficient to guarantee a properly developed project management system in these contexts. Consequently, systems thinking theory is used as the basis for this study, in order to explore and explain the causal relationship of components impacting on project management practice in construction government organisations. A critical realism methodology is the philosophical approach adopted for this research, which is underpinned by the use of qualitative methods to explore existing mechanisms. Semi-structured interviews were the primary source of data, while secondary methods (literature review) served a crucial role in verifying the findings from the interview data. The study uncovered the significance of structure and agency on project management practice development in Nigerian government construction organisations. It reveals how the external environment, governance, middle management and project execution systems interact to influence project management practice. Another significant finding is the autopoietic nature of the middle management system, which demonstrates the capability of organising, reproducing and maintaining itself. Identification of this feature indicates that the middle managers in Nigerian government construction organisations have a relatively important role to play in influencing the development of project management practice. The developed framework highlights the relevance of the different systems towards the development of project management practice in Nigerian government construction organisations. It reveals that the project execution system is impacted by several elements within the external environment, middle management system and the governance system; the middle management system is influenced only by elements within the governance system; the governance system is influenced only by elements within the external environment, and the external environment is influenced by elements within the governance and project execution systems.


This paper describes a new method for the simulations of signals noised by the presence of other materials except for test articles in eddy current testing (ECT). In the inspection of steam generator tubes in nuclear power plants, the sensor detects structures, for example support plates to fix the tubes, and deposits adhering to their outside, as well as tube defects. The signals from the structures are thought to be noises when finding the defects. The method developed here is based on a set of governing equations constructed with magnetic vector potentials, introducing a precondition that a small part of the inverse matrix of the coefficient matrix in an algebraic equation from finite elements and the potentials for the unflawed conductor model are stored. Following the reciprocity theorem, an impedance change due to a flaw, as an eddy current signal, can be computed through integration in the flaw region, and unknowns corresponding to the flaw region only are considered. It results in much smaller degrees of freedom than typical finite element approaches require, and the method provides a fast forward simulator. The fast forward simulator is tested with experimental measurements of ECT benchmark problems with noise factors mentioned above, and is compared with a conventional approach from the point of view of computational costs.


Here we describe a new study of the supernova remnants (SNRs) and SNR candidates in nearby face-on spiral galaxy M83, based primarily on MUSE integral field spectroscopy. Our revised catalog of SNR candidates in M83 has 366 objects, 81 of which are reported here for the first time. Of these, 229 lie within the MUSE observation region, 160 of which have spectra with [S ii]:Hα ratios exceeding 0.4, the value generally accepted as confirmation that an emission nebula is shock-heated. Combined with 51 SNR candidates outside the MUSE region with high [S ii]:Hα ratios, there are 211 spectroscopically confirmed SNRs in M83, the largest number of confirmed SNRs in any external galaxy. MUSE's combination of relatively high spectral resolution and broad wavelength coverage has allowed us to explore two other properties of SNRs that could serve as the basis of future SNR searches. Specifically, most of the objects identified as SNRs on the basis of [S ii]:Hα ratios exhibit more velocity broadening and lower ratios of [S iii]:[S ii] emission than H ii regions. A search for nebulae with the very broad emission lines expected from young, rapidly expanding remnants revealed none, except for the previously identified B12-174a. The SNRs identified in M83 are, with few exceptions, middle-aged interstellar medium (ISM) dominated ones. Smaller-diameter candidates show a larger range of velocity broadening and a larger range of gas densities than the larger-diameter objects, as expected if the SNRs expanding into denser gas brighten and then fade from view at smaller diameters than those expanding into a more tenuous ISM.


A Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) incorporating a graphene-oxide-based saturable absorber (SA) is proposed and demonstrated. The SA is fabricated by first dissolving graphene oxide nanopowder in water and subsequently using the thermophoresis effect to deposit it onto the fiber ferrule. The SA is integrated into a ring cavity EDFL, which uses a 3-m-long MetroGain Type-12 erbium-doped fiber (EDF) as the gain medium. The EDFL has a continuous-wave (CW) lasing threshold at a pump power of ~9 mW, with Q-switching behavior observed at pump powers ~18 mW and above. At the maximum pump power of ~100 mW, the Q-switched pulses generated by the EDFL have a repetition rate and pulsewidth of 61 kHz and 6.6 μs, respectively, along with an average output power of about 3.7 mW. Additionally, at the maximum power, the energy per pulse and peak power of the generated pulses are 61.3 nJ and 9.3 mW, respectively.


In the paper, the possibility of detection the hidden defects or damage applying the models of dynamic (active) infrared thermography and the 2D discrete wavelet transform of data measured in thermal processes has been described. The possibility to examine the defects of the material structure with the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) of the spatial function registering the disturbance underwent analysis. Besides of theoretical information about application of these transforms, the results of MES digital simulations as well as qualitative experimental have been presented. The performed digital simulations proved that the 2D discrete wavelet transform could be effective tool for non-destructive identification of the structural defects. High level of the noise compared to the disturbances generated by the structural defect causes some limitations of this method.


Electrophoresis of a cylinder suspended in a cylindrical tube is analytically studied in the limit of thin electric double layer approximation. The electric and fluid flow fields within the annulus, and the cylinder velocities are analytically obtained in bipolar coordinates. The results are analyzed with various values of dimensionless parameters: eccentricity, cylinder-to-tube radius ratio and tube-to-cylinder zeta potential ratio (i.e., tube-to-cylinder velocity scale ratio). The analysis shows that microvortices are generated within the annulus. By changing the parameters, different flow patterns can be created, which shows potential for mixing enhancement in micro/nanofluidics. Moreover, the cylinder not only translates but also rotates when the cylinder and tube are eccentric. The cylinder rotation might be utilized as a micromotor or an electric field detector. The cylinder trajectories show that the cylinder may approach the tube wall or rest within the tube depending on the zeta potential ratio.


ABSTRACT We have evaluated the in vitro activity of posaconazole (PSC) against 50 clinical strains of Rhizopus oryzae using a broth microdilution method, the Neo-Sensitabs tablet diffusion method, and minimal fungicidal concentration (MFC) determination. In general, PSC showed low MICs against this fungus, and the MICs correlated with the inhibition zone diameters. Most of the MFCs, however, were from 1 to 4 dilutions higher than their corresponding MICs. We then investigated the efficacies of several different doses of PSC in a murine model. All treatments began 24 h after challenge and lasted for 7 days. The drug was administered twice a day to mice infected with three strains that showed intermediate PSC susceptibility (MIC = 2 μg/ml) and three PSC-susceptible strains (MIC = 0.25 μg/ml). A dose of 10 mg/kg of body weight was ineffective, while doses of 20 and 30 mg/kg prolonged the survival of the mice. The 50 strains tested were segregated into two groups on the basis of the in vitro data. For the group with the most strains (85%), the strains had low PSC MICs, mice infected with the strains showed higher rates of survival (30 to 40%), and PSC was able to reduce the fungal load in the kidney and less regularly in the brain. For the second group (15% of the strains), the strains had intermediate PSC MICs, mice infected with the strains had lower survival rates (10 to 20%), and PSC treatment resulted in variable and no reductions in the fungal loads in the kidneys and brains, respectively.


Taiwan is currently attempting to develop itself into a twenty-first century tourist hub to take advantage of today's thriving global tourism economy. In the coming years, Taiwan anticipates an urgent demand for tour guides, and there is a clear need for training solutions that can serve a rapidly growing population. Computer-mediated virtual 3D situated tourist sites (3D-STS) may provide an efficient solution. This study investigates users' perspectives on a specially developed tour-guide training course employing 3D-STS technology. After participants completed the course, their responses to a survey questionnaire and follow-up interviews were compiled for statistical analysis. The results indicated that the overall experience of 3D-STS was satisfactory for trainees and showed a significant difference in the perspectives on 3D-STS of male and female trainees. However, one essential limitation of the study, that is, insufficient familiarity with the multiple advanced technologies, must be acknowledged. This could be a major obstacle for some users, interfering with their ability to access and process e-learning content. For more effective training outcomes for tour guides, the dynamic nature of 3D-STS as well as the characteristics of course content for tour guides should be considered carefully.


Germline pathogenic variants (PVs) in DNA-repair genes have garnered increasing attention in metastatic prostate cancer, and more patients are having somatic and germline DNA testing performed. Interpretation of germline DNA testing is a novel challenge for many clinicians, and the results of germline DNA-repair gene testing have significant implications for men with advanced prostate cancer and their children and siblings. Here, we report the case of a man with metastatic castration-refractory prostate cancer and a pathogenic, germline BRCA2 variant. We discuss the significance of his referral to a high-risk genetics clinic and the unique targeted therapy that he responded to.


Abstract Objectives: Informal caregivers who recognize patients' depressive symptoms can better support self-care and encourage patients to seek treatment. We examined patient-caregiver agreement among patients with heart failure (HF). Our objectives were to (1) identify distinct groups of HF patients and their out-of-home informal caregivers (CarePartners) based on their relationship and communication characteristics, and (2) compare how these groups agree on the patients' depressive symptoms. Method: We used baseline data from a comparative effectiveness trial of a self-care support program for veterans with HF treated in outpatient clinics from 2009-2012. We used a cross-sectional design and latent class analysis (LCA) approach to identify distinct groups of patient-CarePartner dyads (n = 201) based on relationship and communication characteristics then evaluated agreement on patients' depressive symptoms within these groups. Results: The LCA analysis identified four groups: Collaborative (n = 102 dyads, 51%), Avoidant (n = 33 dyads, 16%), Distant (n = 35 dyads, 17%), and Antagonistic (n = 31 dyads, 15%). Dyadic agreement on the patients' depressive symptoms was highest in the Distant (Kappa (κ) = 0.44, r = 0.39) and Collaborative groups (κ = 0.19, r = 0.32), and relatively poor in the Avoidant (κ = –0.20, r = 0.17) and Antagonistic (κ =–0.01, r = 0.004) groups. Patients in Avoidant (61%) and Antagonistic groups (74%) more frequently had depression based on self-report than patients in Collaborative (46%) and Distant (34%) groups. Conclusion: Caregiver relationships in HF tend to be either Collaborative, Avoidant, Distant, or Antagonistic. Patients' depressive symptoms may negatively affect how they communicate with their caregivers. At the same time, improved patient-caregiver communication could enhance dyadic consensus about the patient's depressive symptoms.


Although the history of the 16th -18th centuries fails to offer comprehensive information about the contemporary interest in adult education, there is evidence of initiatives to provide adult instruction, undifferentiated, yet concurrent with the education provided to children and young people. This paper gives insight into the old Romanian literature on the territory of Moldavia and Wallachia, in order to identify and analyze ideas, reflections and pedagogical solutions relevant for the continuing and adult education. While the religious educational aims and contents prevailed during the 16th century, being in close connection with the cultural activity of the time, mainly carried out within the churches and monastic schools, and intended to educate the upper class, the period between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century showed the tendency to diversify the content, for reasons related to the need of population, regardless their social class, to access the scientific and practical knowledge of that time. The historical research will consider both texts that capture the general movement of ideas of the time, and the criticism accumulated in the Romanian cultural space, structured in a distinct direction of historical research on education, the history of education. We will resort to historical arguments in order to establish the main directions relevant to the specificity of continuing and adult education that stand out within this period: a. elements of religious education for adults in the Slavonic literature (16th-17th centuries) ; b. diversifying the ideas of adult education in the content of religious texts in order to disseminate moral and social cohabitation norms with educational value, through multiplication of translations into Romanian of biblical writings (end of 17th century - first half of the 18th century); c. the appearance of the first instructional and practical textbooks for adults (second half of the 18th century).
Keywords: religious education for adults, moral education for adults, practical textbooks


The authors discuss the demands and constraints on a user interface management system for a software environment, and the relation between the architecture of the environment and the user interface management system. A model for designing user interface management systems for large extensible environments is presented. This model synthesizes several recent advances in user interfaces and specializes them to the domain of software environments. The model can be applied to a wide variety of environment contexts. A prototype implementation is described. >


In this study, the phenomenon of heroism seen in the works of Jacques Louis David, one of the important representatives of French painting and Neoclassicism in the history of Western art, has been examined. The foundations of the neoclassical understanding began to be laid before the middle of the eighteenth century, and the reason for the reactivity was the excessive ornamentation and artificiality of the Baroque and Rococo before it. In the century it emerged, important developments in various fields laid the groundwork for Neoclassicism, and especially the effects of ancient cities unearthed in the archaeological area on artists formed the mainstay of the style. In this way, the artistic qualities of antiquity were brought to the fore. Ancient Greek and Roman works have shown their existence as a version of the updated worldview and a new aesthetic understanding. Its effects are seen in many branches of art, including the field of painting. By praising the noble simplicity and quiet splendor created by antiquity, pure and clear works, technically isolated from the effects of light, in which linearity comes to the fore, were produced. In the works of David, who is the most prominent artist of this style, which adopts order and limitations as its rules, dignified examples of a rational, moral and noble spirit are selected. In the artist's productions, symbolic images have served as elements that contribute to the semantic dimension of the expression. With the stable stance of Jacques Louis David, who was the official artist of the French Revolution as an extension of the Age of Enlightenment, the patriotism, self-sacrifice, and heroism ideals of the new classicism were articulated with the identity of the Romans formed with the ideas of virtue and pro-republic freedom in an original and updated aestheticized form. The transfer of heroic stories, which is an important feature of the movement, has taken its place in David's hands at a high level of maturity.


An investigation is made of the effects of initial or dynamically induced chirping on the linear propagation characteristics of pulses in optical fibers. It is shown that under certain conditions the chirping will give rise to a splitting of the initial pulse into two separating subpulses. The necessary conditions for pulse splitting to occur are established analytically and corroborated by numerical computations.


There has been explosive demand for supporting multi-class traffic, especially bandwidth-intensive multimedia traffic in wireless networks. The ability to manage bandwidth to cope with wireless network resource fluctuations is becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we propose an efficient Call Admission Control (CAC) scheme that relies on adaptive and dynamic resource reservation strategy for multi-class service wireless networks. Extensive simulation experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Results show that our proposed adaptive scheme is effective in guaranteeing QoS requirements by keeping the call blocking and handoff dropping probabilities substantially low.


The work is focused on the vakfs in Bosanska Posavina, in Modrica, Odzak and Bosanski Samac. It deals with the issue of the area / size of the vakfs, and in particular shows the nationalization of the vakfs according to the Law on Nationalization of Leased Buildings and Construction Land of 1958. Vakfs property consisted of land plots and vakf utility and educational buildings (shops, inns, mosques, maktabs, and madrasas). Vakfs were at the heart of the emergence and development of these three places and they made outstanding contributions to religious-educational and social life of the time. Total area of the vakf in Modrica was 159.932 m2, in Odžak 163.122 m2, and in Bosanski Samac 16.745 m2. After the nationalization law, the vakfs were taken from the Islamic community, their original purpose was changed, and eventually they were gradually destroyed. Indemnities have never been paid. In Modrica, Odžak and Bosanski Samac, according to the Nationalization Act of 1958, three residential and commercial buildings with a total area of 450 m2 were nationalized; in Odžak, six residential and business buildings with a total area of 673 m2, and in Bosanski Samac, six residential and business buildings with a total area of 718 m2. Altogether, fifteen residential and busi- ness buildings with an area of 1,841 m2 were nationalized.


ABSTRACT Glyphs are small geometric shapes that in geovisualization are often used to represent multidimensional spatial data. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of their two types – star and polyline glyphs, as they can encode the same message and can provide similar functionality. Thus, if the two glyph types are similar and can be used for the same data, the question arises as to which of them better facilitates various user tasks. To address this question, an empirical study of 26 individual users is conducted to investigate differences in user performance for polyline and star glyphs shown either in a grid plot or on a map display. In this study, a task-based approach with eye-tracking is applied, as well as a subjective questionnaire and a psychological test of cognitive style. The finding is that polyline glyphs better facilitate tasks when datapoint values in glyphs are to be read, whereas star glyphs are better when a visual search among glyphs is to be done. Moreover, the results reveal that the map display works better than the grid plot. If star glyphs are to be used, the key (legend) needs to be better incorporated into a visual interface.


Selecting the best product concept is one of the most critical tasks in a new product development (NPD) environment. Making decisions at this stage becomes very difficult due to imprecise and uncertain product requirements. So, the evaluation process of determining the most satisfying conceptual design has been a very vital issue for companies to survive in fast-growing markets for a long time. Therefore, most companies have used various methods to successfully carry out this difficult and time-consuming process. Of these methods, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been widely used in multiple-criteria decision-making problems (i.e. concept selection, equipment evaluation). In this study, however, we use an analytic network process (ANP), a more general form of AHP, due to the fact that AHP cannot accommodate the variety of interactions, dependencies and feedback between higher and lower level elements. Briefly, in this paper, an ANP-based approach is presented to evaluate a set of conceptual design alternatives in order to reach to the best concept satisfying the needs and expectations of both customers and company. In addition, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.


Abstract Background Being bullied by a sibling has been recently identified as a potential risk factor for developing depression and self-harm. It is unknown whether this risk extends to other serious mental health problems such as psychosis. We investigated whether sibling bullying victimization or perpetration in middle childhood was prospectively associated with psychotic disorder in early adulthood. Methods The current study investigated 6988 participants of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a UK community-based birth cohort. Sibling bullying was reported at 12 years and psychotic disorder was assessed via a semi-structured interview at 18 years. Results Involvement in sibling bullying was associated with psychotic disorder in a dose-response fashion, even after controlling for a range of confounders. Those involved several times a week were 2–3 times more likely to meet criteria for a psychotic disorder [odds ratio (OR); 95% confidence interval (CI)]: victimization (OR 2.74; CI 1.28–5.87); perpetration (OR 3.16; CI 1.35–7.41). Categorical analysis indicated that particularly victims (OR 3.10; CI 1.48–6.50) and bully-victims (OR 2.66; CI 1.24–5.69) were at increased risk of psychotic disorder. Involvement in both sibling and peer bullying had a dose-effect relationship with a psychotic disorder, with those victimized in both contexts having more than four times the odds for a psychotic disorder (OR 4.57; CI 1.73–12.07). Conclusion Parents and health professionals should be aware of the adverse long-term effects of sibling bullying.


Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is generally associated with a withdrawal of parasympathetic activity and heart rate increases; however, episodic vagally mediated heart rate decelerations also occur during REM sleep. This alternating pattern of autonomic activation provides a physiological basis for REM sleep-induced cardiac arrhythmias. Medullary neurons within the lateral paragigantocellular nucleus (LPGi) are thought to be active after REM sleep recovery and play a role in REM sleep control. In proximity to the LPGi are parasympathetic cardiac vagal neurons (CVNs) within the nucleus ambiguus (NA), which are critical for controlling heart rate. This study examined brain stem pathways that may mediate REM sleep-related reductions in parasympathetic cardiac activity. Electrical stimulation of the LPGi evoked inhibitory GABAergic postsynaptic currents in CVNs in an in vitro brain stem slice preparation in rats. Because brain stem cholinergic mechanisms are involved in REM sleep regulation, we also studied the role of nicotinic neurotransmission in modulation of GABAergic pathway from the LGPi to CVNs. Application of nicotine diminished the GABAergic responses evoked by electrical stimulation. This inhibitory effect of nicotine was prevented by the alpha7 nicotinic receptor antagonist alpha-bungarotoxin. Moreover, hypoxia/hypercapnia (H/H) diminished LPGi-evoked GABAergic current in CVNs, and this inhibitory effect was also prevented by alpha-bungarotoxin. In conclusion, stimulation of the LPGi evokes an inhibitory pathway to CVNs, which may constitute a mechanism for the reduced parasympathetic cardiac activity and increase in heart rate during REM sleep. Inhibition of this pathway by nicotinic receptor activation and H/H may play a role in REM sleep-related and apnea-associated bradyarrhythmias.


The main abjectives of this work were to evaluate the extent to which extractives in wood chips for mechanical pulping are released into process water during compressive pre-treatment before refining and to develop a method to remove the released extractives from the process water. In thermomechanical pulping, pre-treatments based on a high compression ratio and high temperature, are used to reduce the amount of extractives in wood chips of different raw materials before refining. One objective of this study was to evaluate the removal of extractives from the wood chips during compressive pre-treatment, in an Impressafiner by determining mass balance of extractives around a mill scale Impressafiner installation. The mass balance showed that it was possible to remove up to 15% of extractives before the refining process. Thus one advantage of using an Impressafiner is that removal of dispersed extractives can be done with little loss of fibres, from a small concentrated water stream. Handling of this water is important in order to avoid that the extractives enter the effluent treatment or reach undesirable levels in the process water. Thus the solubility, colloidal stability and flocculation of the extractives in the pressate water was studied. The objective was to obtain a better understanding of the effects of cationic polyelectrolytes on the stability of colloidal extractives in the pressate water from Impressafiner. A high charge density and low molecular mass polymer (poly-DADMAC), a high molecular mass and low charge density polymer (C-PAM) and combination of the polymers (mass ratio 1:1) were used. It was found that these polymers efficiently flocculate colloidal extractives present in the process water via two different flocculation mechanisms: charge neutralization and bridging flocculation. Extractives which are removed from the process water have to be taken care of in an economical way. They have to be brought into a form making it possible to remove them from the process water before the water is sent to the effluent treatment or before the water is reused in the mill. In that respect, the extent to which the extractives are present in either dissolved, colloidal or bound to fibres is important. In this work, Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) was used to remove the flocculated extractives from Impressafiner process water. For comparison, laboratory experiments were also conducted on water from chip washer. It was shown in both laboratory and pilot scale that by using DAF in combination with flocculation of the extractives with polyelectrolyte the colloidal and fibre bound extractives could be removed from the process water with a removal efficiency of 80-90%, with equal efficiency for the Impressafiner and chip washer waters. The results attained in the thesis strongly suggest that by using a compressive pretreatment method of the wood chips is possible to remove a substantial fraction of extractives before the refining process. A larger fraction of the more toxic extractive components, resin acids, than of fatty acids were removed. Further, this study emphasizes the importance of the polymer properties for their floccculation efficiency of colloidal extractives present in process water. The results also show that Dissolved Air Flotation is a convenient method to remove flocculated extractives from process water.


A Psychologically based literature review that explores the dependence of mental health status upon visualperceptual dysfunction. The visual-perceptual system is reviewed. Associations are discussed concerning schizophrenia, affective disorders, depression, personality disorders, dyslexia, attention deficits, psychosis, neurosis, low self esteem, emotional immaturity.


The purpose of this study was to improve the learning outcomes of students in the Indonesian language muple in grade II elementary schools with a cooperative talking stick learning model. The research carried out was to use two cycles of Classroom Action Research (CAR), with each cycle consisting of one meeting. The stages of each cycle are planning, implementing, observing and reflecting. Each meeting was conducted a knowledge test using formative tests and summative tests to determine the development of students. In the first cycle, the students who completed after carrying out the summative test were 62%. In cycle II, students completed after carrying out summative tests of 86%. These results indicate that the cooperative talking stick type learning model can improve student learning outcomes, especially the Class II Indonesian language muple at SD N TIMBULSOKO 1.


In general, scholars have viewed the mathematical detail of Plato's Divided Line discussion in Republic VI-VII as irrelevant to the substance of his epistemology. Against this stance this essay argues that this detail serves a serious and instructive purpose and makes manifest some central features of Plato's account of human knowledge.


Abstract This study draws on drainage basin hydrography, numerical modeling and geographic information system (GIS) techniques in concert with dual frequency echo sounder data to estimate sediment thickness when initial surveys are unavailable or inaccurate. Tahtali Reservoir (Turkey), which provides 40% of water supply to the city of Izmir, was selected as the study site. Deposition patterns within the whole lake were estimated with a 3-D hydrodynamic and sediment transport model applied to Tahtali Reservoir. The numerical model simulated lake response to wind forcing and inflows and/or outflows and was used to describe sediment deposition patterns resulting from the erosion of soils quantified by the implementation of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) to the whole watershed. Surveying of the lake via dual frequency (28/200 kHz) echo sounder system revealed the current bathymetry, and sediment thickness was estimated from the difference of depths measured by the dual frequency sounder along surveyed transects. These results were compared to the modeled sedimentation thicknesses and to preliminary estimates of watershed sediment yield estimated by USLE. Results of this study can be used for further water quality studies and for long term management plans.


The Hong Kong government recently announced its intention to introduce a lump sum levy of HK$9,600 on employers of foreign domestic helpers at the time the employment contract is approved, effective from October 1st. It further announced that it would reduce the minimum salary level of the helpers by HK$400 per month from April 1st. Over a standard two-year employment contract, this means that the lump sum employers' levy is exactly equal to the total salary reduction. On the reasonable assumption that employers would reduce their employees' wages to the new minimum, employers would thus carry no extra financial burden as a result of the new measures. This would fall entirely on the shoulders of the domestic helpers themselves.


This list acknowledges receipt of recent works bearing on the scientific s tudy of language. Receipt of individual books cannot be individually acknowledged, nor can books be returned to the publisher. Acceptance of a book does not imply tha t it will be reviewed in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics. Reviews are solicited regularly and printed as circumstances permit; copies of reviews are sent to the publishers of the works in question.


This article deals with the subject of race performativity, and has Sweden as its case study and national context. In 2011, an academic scandal erupted at Lund University when a group of white students in blackface, chained and half-naked, performed a slave auction at a dinner party. In the debate that followed, many of the white Swedish voices that were raised defended the scandal as an expression of an apolitical and liberated humour, while on the other hand several non-white Swedes pointed out that such an event can only take place in a country which is deeply segregated and which refuses to see itself as racist. With this event as the point of departure and with other contemporary cases of race performativity as empirical examples such as a blackface performance with the artist Makode Linde, this article tries to understand and analyse the needs and desires behind this phenomenon. Race performativity is here limited to when whites temporarily perform as non-whites by the way of, for example, make-up, clothes, body language and facial expression on stage, on television, in photography, in film and at various cultural and social events. Why do whites want to dress up and perform as non-whites? And what are the needs and desires behind this social and cultural phenomenon?


We propose a model called a pairwise Markov chain (PMC), which generalizes the classical hidden Markov chain (HMC) model. The generalization, which allows one to model more complex situations, in particular implies that in PMC the hidden process is not necessarily a Markov process. However, PMC allows one to use the classical Bayesian restoration methods like maximum a posteriori (MAP), or maximal posterior mode (MPM). So, akin to HMC, PMC allows one to restore hidden stochastic processes, with numerous applications to signal and image processing, such as speech recognition, image segmentation, and symbol detection or classification, among others. Furthermore, we propose an original method of parameter estimation, which generalizes the classical iterative conditional estimation (ICE) valid for a classical hidden Markov chain model, and whose extension to possibly non-Gaussian and correlated noise is briefly treated. Some preliminary experiments validate the interest of the new model.


There are over 200 cell types in the human body, each with a unique gene expression program precisely controlled by regulatory elements encoded in the genome such as promoters, enhancers, and insulators. Methods to identify functional genomic elements have widely focused on sequence. While these methods have been successful in finding promoters and insulators, identifying other regulatory elements, namely enhancers, is still an open problem. Our understanding of human transcription is incomplete because we do not have a complete catalog of enhancers. Recently, it has become increasingly clear that an epigenetic layer of information, especially in the form of post-translational histone modifications, marks different functional regions of the genome. In Chapter 1, I use high-resolution maps of histone modifications in 1% of the human genome to show that active enhancers are marked by a chromatin signature distinct from promoters, and that this signature can be used to predict other active enhancers. In Chapter 2, I extend this method to predict active enhancers genome-wide in HeLa cells, showing that enhancers are epigenetically more dynamic than promoters or insulators. Marked enhancers are highly enriched near cell-type specifically expressed genes. This key positioning of active enhancers suggests they likely drive cell-type specific gene expression. In Chapter 3, to study a biological system more relevant to human development, I then apply this technique to embryonic stem cells before and after differentiation. Most enhancers display marked changes in chromatin states in a manner that correlates with differential expression of their predicted target genes. In addition, a set of poised enhancers are marked by a distinct chromatin signature near genes important for cell fate determination, underscoring the importance of these regulatory elements in regulating differentiation. Finally, in Chapters 4 and 5, I address the problem of what other chromatin signatures exist besides those at promoters and enhancers. I develop an unbiased de novo pattern-finding method called ChromaSig to find commonly occurring chromatin signatures. Applying ChromaSig to genome-wide maps of histone modifications, I find a novel chromatin signature marking exons and other marking distinct classes of repeat elements associated with distinct modes of gene repression.


The reconstruction of ancient diets using isotopic measurements of bone collagen, and other tissues, which survive in archaeological contexts, relies on known isotopic relationships between diet and body tissues. Examination of these relationships often requires the study of modern human and animal subjects. While hair keratin can act as a useful proxy for bone collagen in isotopic studies on living humans, where it is inappropriate to sample tissues such as collagen, it can, in addition, act as a chronological indicator of dietary change. This study investigates hair keratin delta13C values from current residents of the UK and the USA. Residents in the USA showed a clear bulk hair delta13C enrichment of approximately 3 per thousand over UK individuals, attributed to an elevated C4 dietary input from maize fed to livestock in North America. The keratin delta13C of subjects who moved between the UK and USA showed a pronounced change after relocation, taking approximately 4 months to reach isotopic equilibrium. To investigate these differences further, we measured delta13C values of dispensable and indispensable amino acids as a group, and selected individual amino acids. As a group, enrichment of dispensable amino acids compared with indispensable amino acids occurred in samples from both continents, averaging 7.2 per thousand in the UK and 7.9 per thousand in the USA. Dispensable and indispensable amino acids, as well as all individual amino acids measured, were enriched in samples from the USA compared with those from the UK.


In the literary world, there is little that can match the excitement of opening a new book by David Markson. From Wittgenstein's Mistress to Reader's Block to Springer's Progress to This Is Not a Novel, he has delighted and amazed readers for decades. And now comes his latest masterwork, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel--and in so doing will dazzle us with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life--and all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale. Naturally he will fail to do the latter, frequently managing to stand aside and yet remaining undeniably central throughout--until he is swept inevitably into the narrative's starting and shattering climax. A novel of death and laughter both--and of extraordinary intellectual richness.


The method of treatment of varicose and hypertensive trophic ulcers with dura mater of cattle and pigs is developed. It is demonstrated that the method is effective and has advantages over known methods of local treatment.


Background

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is promising for improving motor and cognitive performance. Nevertheless, its mechanisms of action are unclear and need to be better characterised according to the stimulated brain area and the type of exercise performed.

Methods/design

This is a double-blind cross-over study, organised into two parts: the first is to assess the effects of tDCS on explosive performance (jump task) and the second is to assess the effects on endurance performance (cycling time trial task). Participants, who are recreationally active or athletes (cyclists, parkour practitioners), will receive two active tDCS sessions (over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right motor cortex) and one sham tDCS session (part A) or two daily tDCS sessions (one active sequence and one sham) over five days (part B). Motor and cognitive performance will be compared before and after the tDCS sessions (part A) and before and after the first session, after the last session and at day 12 and day 30 of each tDCS sequence (part B).

Discussion

This study investigates the acute and long-term effects of tDCS on the motor and cognitive performance in healthy subjects. It will try to evaluate if tDCS could be considered as a neuroenhancement technology according to the physical task investigated (endurance versus explosive).


Parkinson's disease is a complex disorder characterized by degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra in the brain. Stem cell transplantation is aimed at replacing dopaminergic neurons because the most successful drug therapies affect these neurons and their synaptic targets. We show here that neural progenitors can be grown from the olfactory organ of humans, including those with Parkinson's disease. These neural progenitors proliferated and generated dopaminergic cells in vitro. They also generated dopaminergic cells when transplanted into the brain and reduced the behavioral asymmetry induced by ablation of the dopaminergic neurons in the rat model of Parkinson's disease. Our results indicate that Parkinson's patients could provide their own source of neuronal progenitors for cell transplantation therapies and for direct investigation of the biology and treatments of Parkinson's disease.


This thesis describes techniques for the design of parallel programs that solve well-structured problems with inherent symmetry.
Part I demonstrates the reduction of such problems to generalized matrix multiplication by a group-equivariant matrix. Fast techniques for this multiplication are described, including factorization, orbit decomposition, and Fourier transforms over finite groups. Our algorithms entail interaction between two symmetry groups: one arising at the software level from the problem's symmetry and the other arising at the hardware level from the processors' communication network.
Part II illustrates the applicability of our symmetry-exploitation techniques by presenting a series of case studies of the design and implementation of parallel programs.
First, a parallel program that solves chess endgames by factorization of an associated dihedral group-equivariant matrix is described. This code runs faster than previous serial programs, and discovered it a number of results.
Second, parallel algorithms for Fourier transforms for finite groups are developed, and preliminary parallel implementations for group transforms of dihedral and of symmetric groups are described. Applications in learning, vision, pattern recognition, and statistics are proposed.
Third, parallel implementations solving several computational science problems are described, including the direct n-body problem, convolutions arising from molecular biology, and some communication primitives such as broadcast and reduce. Some of our implementations ran orders of magnitude faster than previous techniques, and were used in the investigation of various physical phenomena.


I. This Article will focus on how one should think about the rule of law in the international arena. Asking about the rule of law in the international arena is not just asking whether there is such a thing as international law, or what it is, or what we think of particular treaties (such as human rights covenants), or of the value of customary international law, or of the enforceability of international law in our own courts. The phrase "the rule of law" brings to mind a particular set of values and principles associated with the idea of legality. (1) These values and principles are the ancient focus of our allegiance as lawyers. The rule of law is one of the most important sources of the dignity and honor of the legal profession, and an awareness of the principles and values that it comprises ought to be part of all lawyers' professional ethos, something that disciplines the spirit and attitude that lawyers bring to their work. True, the rule of law is not the only value that lawyers serve. Lawyers must serve justice too, for justice is part of law's promise. (2) And, of course, lawyers serve the interests of their clients and of society generally. But the rule of law constrains lawyers in their pursuit of these other goals: they pursue justice and the social good through the rule of law, not around it or in spite of it. This Article will talk particularly about the obligations the rule of law imposes upon lawyers as they act in various capacities. Is it clear what the rule of law demands of lawyers in the international arena? Many people think it demands less in the international arena--that it demands less of a national government in the international arena, for example, than in the domestic arena--not just because there is less international law but also because a different attitude toward the rule of law is appropriate in international affairs. This Article is skeptical about that suggestion, and I shall present a number of reasons for rejecting it. II. To begin with, what does the rule of law require of lawyers in the municipal arena? (3) Usually one thinks of the rule of law as a requirement placed on governments: the government must exercise its power through the application of general rules; it must make those rules public; it must limit the discretion of its officials; it must not impose penalties on people without due process; and so on. But the rule of law applies to the individual, too. So, what does the rule of law require of the ordinary citizen? Well, it requires that she obey the laws that apply to her. She should be alert to changes in the law; she should arrange for her legal advisors to keep her informed of her legal obligations; she should refrain from taking the law into her own hands; and she should not act in any way that impedes, harms, or undermines the operation of the legal system. Every ordinary citizen has these obligations and can properly expect the assistance of her legal advisors. As the ordinary citizen goes about her business, she may find that there are areas where the law imposes minimal demands. on her or no demands at all, instead leaving her free to her own devices. This is not a matter of regret. Allegiance to the rule of law does not mean that the citizen must wish for more law--or less freedom--than there is. Neither does it require that she play any part in bringing fresh law into existence if she does not want it. She must obey the law where it does exist, but she has no particular obligation where it does not. It is not up to individual citizens or businessmen to do the lawmakers' job for them. For example, they have no duty to extend the scope of the law's constraint (in accordance with common sense, morality, the spirit of the law, social purposes, or anything else), if the sources of law do not disclose an unambiguous enactment to that effect. We can take this point even further. According to most conceptions of the rule of law, individual citizens are entitled to laws that are neither murky nor uncertain but are instead publicly and clearly stated in a text that is not buried in doctrine. …


Abstract Performance evaluation systems fundamentally shape the behaviour of Chinese judges, but scholarship on the concrete implementation of these institutions is scarce. Relying on nearly 15 months of fieldwork in six cities in China, we explain how the judicial cadre evaluation system, as unified by the 2011 "Guiding opinion of the Supreme People's Court," has been implemented. Over 30 indices quantitatively measure Chinese courts' "fairness" (gongzheng 公正), "efficiency" (xiaolü 效率) and "impact" (xiaoguo 效果), incentivizing court leaders to pressure their subordinate judges to resolve disputes as quickly as possible without unduly angering litigants or other actors. Under the hyper-quantified conditions of cadre evaluation, systemic praising and shaming bring about what we call "intra-state legibility," which leads to a variety of informal worker reactions to these tactics. This study not only uses interviews and new documentary evidence to add necessary detail to our understanding of cadre evaluation systems, it also engages debates in comparative law and politics regarding bureaucratic influence on authoritarian judicial behaviour. 摘要 干部考核制度对中华人民共和国法官的行为的影响很重要, 而关于这两方面的社会科学研究到现在并不多。本文章根据所在中国六个城市、将近十五个月的实证调研说明 "案件质量评估体系" 在 2011 年最高人民法院指导意见下实践中的过程。在中国法院定量分析 "公正" 、 "效率" 和 "效果" 的程度时, 有超过 30 个指标激励法院领导和压力下级官员在解决纠纷时尽快判决、不过分激怒当事人或其他公民。干部考核制度也利用赞扬和批评方法激励下级法官, 同时从超定量 (hyper-quantified) 条件带来所谓的 "政府内部的易读性" (intra-state legibility), 该导致各种非正式的反应和工人战术。这项研究不仅采用访谈和新的书面证据提高我们干部考核体系的意识, 同时其对专政下的法官行为、官僚主义和政法的动态也有所涉及。


With the rising popularity of social media in the past few years, several researches ratiocinate that this type of interactive and collaborative technology could be a beneficial tool for the sharing of tacit knowledge. Nevertheless, very few literatures have tackled the subject of how social media could facilitate tacit knowledge sharing among medical practitioners, and what are its contributions in the area. Thus, the factors that drive individuals to share tacit knowledge need to be investigated further and included in literature. Through a systematic literature review, this study proposes seven enabling conditions which could potentially facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge. TAM was applied as a novelty in this study in investigating the factors influencing knowledge sharing via social media, whilst taking into account the mediation effects of Attitude in social media usage. This study uncovered an important correlation between virtual settings and the conversion of tacit knowledge, which affects organizational members who are not co-located physically but have a crucial need for sharing information.


The system of differential equations describing the plasticity of the hippocampal pyramidal neuron CA3, developed before, was analyzed. The system was divided into two groups according to magnitudes of the biochemical reaction constants. The first group with large values of the constants was transformed into quasi stationary algebraic equations. This allowed one to transform the system of 32 differential equations to a system containing only 4 differential equations, which can be used for modeling of learning processes in various parts of the brain.


Linked Open Data has been recognized as a valuable source for background information in data mining. However, most data mining tools require features in propositional form, i.e., binary, nominal or numerical features associated with an instance, while Linked Open Data sources are usually graphs by nature. In this paper, we compare different strategies for creating propositional features from Linked Open Data (a process called propositionalization), and present experiments on different tasks, i.e., classification, regression, and outlier detection. We show that the choice of the strategy can have a strong influence on the results.


We investigated how an integrated model of often under- or un-employed immigrants' (a) job-hunting behaviours pre-interview, (b) positive behaviours used at interview, (c) cognitive flexibility, (d) acculturation style, and (e) acculturation 'fit' between (d) and employers' preferred style of acculturation for immigrants to adopt, predict how close immigrants come to finding full employment; and how this proximity to full employment may relate to broader feelings about occupational life. Seventy predominantly skilled immigrants to New Zealand provided indices of (a) to (d) through a sample survey, whilst (e) was measured with the added assistance of 20 experienced recruitment agencies, interviewed by telephone. Path analysis suggested that feelings about occupational life are related to proximity to full employment, which is itself predicted by a combination of (a) and (d), but not (b), (c) or (e). Links between proximity to employment and feelings about occupational life in New Zealand were unexpectedly negative, but only moderately stable. Our findings may challenge some of the received wisdom in the vocational literature, but are nonetheless consistent with implicit prejudice from prospective employers, and with a lived vocational experience of relative deprivation amongst immigrants themselves. ********** The world today is increasingly characterised by movement of people and skill, via professionally skilled emigrants and immigrants, from one economy to another (Carmon, 1996). New Zealand is, hypothetically, part of this knowledge exchange, in that skilled immigrants are encouraged to enter the country through a system of points awarded for qualifications, years of on-job experience, and professional qualifications (New Zealand Immigration Service, 2002). Yet such initiatives lose their value if the same immigrants face barriers to full (i.e., appropriate) employment, for instance through prejudice and discrimination, once they arrive here and as such cannot fully use their skills (Carr, 2004). Our research explores such challenges in the employment market psychologically, through the eyes of immigrants themselves. We also include observations from the perspective of potential employers. Principally however, we seek to identify (i) subjective barriers and facilitators to full employment, and (ii) how the human factors and perceptions in (i) may relate to feelings about occupational life in New Zealand. Highly Skilled Immigrants Globally, under-employment and unemployment of immigrants is relatively common, even when they are highly skilled (International Labour Organization, 2004). Immigrant underemployment and unemployment like this is now widely recognised in the global context, and in the substantial literature on migration and development economics, where it is termed "brain waste" (Mahroum, 2000). In Canada for example, Aycan & Berry (1996) found that only 30.9% of their skilled immigrants from Turkey had found satisfactory work, with 36.4% being unemployed and 32.7% currently underemployed. In New Zealand, Oliver (2000) found over half of a sample of 39 professional immigrants had lowered their occupational status after moving to New Zealand, even after undertaking further occupational training. In a further New Zealand study, only 35% of skilled immigrants from Asia were in full time employment, 13% were in part time employment, 10% were in self-employment, and 42% were unemployed, after 2 years in the country (Chart, 2001). Even after a skilled job is found, New Zealand research by Winkelmann (1998) has found income differentials remain between immigrant workers and their New Zealand born counterparts. Census data in New Zealand also reveals that immigrants often (a) have lower labour force participation than the New Zealand born population (particularly amongst immigrants from Asia and the Pacific), and also (b) tend to earn less income than New Zealand born employees (New Zealand Immigration Service, 2003). …


The objective of this study was to explore the impact of decentralization of central government functions to local authorities in Tanzania. The study involved a sample population of 50 people and data were collected from primary and secondary source of data. The objective of this research was to explore the impact of decentralization of Central Government functions to Local authorities in Tanzania. There are four Specific Objectives to this study. This study used the descriptive type of research and the findings addressed the research questions. The study came with the following findings; the decentralized functions have good impact on decision-making through structured meetings, people are involved in planning and budgeting process by 75%. Resources such as finance and manpower are managed by people at grass root and revenue collection is done by the local authorities. The study concludes that the decentralized functions have impacts on autonomy of local authorities, increased control of financial and human capital by local authorities hence increase of performance, transparency and good governance in local authorities. The study came with recommendations for improvements as follows; the capacity building should be strengthened to extension officers and local leaders. Local leaders should identify their roles and obligations. Also they should provide full autonomy and authority without interference to local authorities in areas of plans and budgets. The central government should leave some revenue sources to local authorities which are collected by central government. There should be non-interference of central government in decision-making to local authorities by District Commissioners' office and Regional Secretariat. There should be harmony between councillors and management to avoid unnecessary conflicts.


The wild silkworm Antheraea mylitta is grown and cultivated in several parts of India ranging from Bihar to West Bengal and several parts of Telangana. The wild silkworm rearing has been a source of income for the tribal populations who rely on it as income source; the intervention of government agencies has increased the cultivation. Our research involves understanding the secondary metabolites in the silkworm Cocoons and elucidating how the pupa survives the harsh environment during pupal diapause of the insect. We have realized the role of insect repellent compounds and other metabolites and their interaction with the insect. Wild silkworm Cocoons are the specialized natural structures constructed by Antheraea mylitta silkworms. They are the protein composites of sericin and fibroin as a structural material. The silkworm cocoons are presumed to be evolved structures through the course of evolution over millions of years. This chapter focuses on Biophysical analysis of chemical compounds, proteins and other secondary metabolites traced in the Wild Antheraea mylitta Tasar cocoons which are predicted to be the key factors to achieve the unique structural and chemical barriers to protect the pupa within the cocoons.


Studies for developing diagnostics and treatments for infectious diseases usually require observing the onset of infection during the study period. However, when the infection base rate incidence is low, the cohort size required to measure an effect becomes large, and recruitment becomes costly and prolonged. We describe an approach for reducing recruiting time and resources in a COVID-19 study by targeting recruitment to high-risk individuals. Our approach is based on direct and longitudinal connection with research participants and computes individual risk scores from individually permissioned data about socioeconomic and behavioural data, in combination with predicted local prevalence data. When we used these scores to recruit a balanced cohort of participants for a COVID-19 detection study, we obtained a 4- to 7-fold greater COVID-19 infection incidence compared with similar real-world study cohorts.


Considered is the statistical ground of the certainty of cosmophysical effects on the fine structure of distributions governing the results of measurements in various physical processes. We show that the previously discussed effects of synchronous variations of histogram shapes in independent processes, and the periodical occurrence of histograms of a particular shape, do not depend on the form of the integral distribution. The adequacy of visual (expert) estimation when comparing the shapes of histograms as an alternative to the standard statistical methods is justified.


: A region control scheme is proposed for underwater vehicle with onboard manipulator. In the proposed control concept, the desired objective can be specified as a region instead of a point. The region control concept is a generalisation of setpoint control problem because when the desired region is specified arbitrarily small, the control objective reduces to a point. Lyapunov-like functions are proposed for the stability analysis. Simulation studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.


The paper deals with the enhancement of the robotic arm calibration using corrections based on local linear neuro-fuzzy models. After the standard calibration of the geometric parameters in the robot's kinematic model, there are still residual errors between the measured positions and the positions predicted by the model. The source of these errors are various non-geometric parameters and nonlinear phenomena that traditional kinematic calibration models do not include. The neuro-fuzzy model based on a locally linear model tree can approximate the residual error as a function of the robot's joint angles. Adding this approximation to the output of the calibrated robot model significantly increases the accuracy of the endeffector position. The results of the described method were verified and compared with other approaches on a simulation model of a flexible planar two-link mechanism. Experimental verification was performed on an industrial robot Stäubli TX200 with data measured by Leica laser tracking device.


This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers' preferences vary when reference is made to one single individual or to two disjoint referents. In the former case, Catalan speakers chose (in)definite NPs depending on their accessibility to contextual information that guarantees a unique interpretation (or the lack of it) for the entity referred to. Russian speakers chose bare nominals as a default form. When reference is made to two disjoint referents (as encoded by the presence of an additional altre/drugoj "other" NP), speakers prefer an optimal combination of two indefinite NPs (i.e., un NP followed by un altre NP in Catalan; odin "some/a" NP followed by drugoj NP in Russian). This study shows how speakers of the two languages manage to combine grammatical knowledge (related to the meaning of the definite and the indefinite articles and altre in Catalan; and the meaning of bare nominals, odin and drugoj in Russian) with world knowledge activation and accessibility to discourse information.


Despite peer-reviewing being an essential component of academia since the 1600s, it has repeatedly received criticisms for lack of transparency and consistency. We posit that recent work in machine learning and explainable AI provide tools that enable insights into the decisions from a given peer-review process. We start by simulating the peer-review process using an ML classifier and extracting global explanations in the form of linguistic features that affect the acceptance of a scientific paper for publication on an open peer-review dataset. Second, since such global explanations do not justify causal interpretations, we propose a methodology for detecting confounding effects in natural language and generating explanations, disentangled from textual confounders, in the form of lexicons. Our proposed linguistic explanation methodology indicates the following on a case dataset of ICLR submissions: a) the organising committee follows, for the most part, the recommendations of reviewers, and b) the paper's main characteristics that led to reviewers recommending acceptance for publication are originality, clarity and substance.


Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in particular their writing on Franz Kafka, this article stakes out the ground for a creative critical writing practice beyond the confines of literature. Exploring the notion of writing in relation to affect constellations, what causes one to write, and expressions without content, how one begins to write, the argument put forth is that in rethinking the distinction Deleuze and Guattari tend to make between artistic practice and philosophical thought, a space is opened up for transversal lines that may cross between these fields in practices that are creative and critical and involve what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as aesthetic figures as well as conceptual personae. These practices, it is argued, provide a potential link between aesthetics, on the one hand, and ethics and politics, on the other.


Abstract Variability in feed prices and crop yields are important sources of risk to dairy farmers. A simulation model of a representative dairy farm was used to evaluate crop insurance and hedging as risk management strategies. These strategies lowered expected net returns but also reduced risk. The preferred set of strategies at lower levels of risk aversion included hedging and crop insurance, although a base scenario in which no risk management strategies were employed was also efficient. The preferred strategy at higher levels of risk aversion was a combination of crop insurance and hedging.


Fault detection approach based on principal component analysis (PCA) may perform not well when the process is time-varying, because it can cause unfavorable influence on feature extraction. To solve this problem, a modified PCA which considering variance maximization is proposed, referred to as weighted PCA (WPCA). WPCA can obtain the slow features information of observed data in time-varying system. The monitoring statistical indices are based on WPCA model and their confidence limits are computed by kernel density estimation (KDE). A simulation example on continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) show that the proposed method achieves better performance from the perspective of both fault detection rate and fault detection time than conventional PCA model.


The development of formal theoretical frameworks and the creation of new visual representations of error and uncertainty will be fundamental to a better understanding of 3D experimental and simulation data. Such improved understanding will validate new theoretical models, enable better understanding of data, and facilitate better decision making. We urge the scientific visualization research community to take the next step and make visually representing errors and uncertainties the norm rather than the exception.


Heavy metals concentration in the soils and sediments has increased worldwide during the last century as a result of the rapid increase in population which combined by an increase in human activity as agriculture,  industrial and many other activities. Ten soil and three river sediment samples were collected from 10 main sampling stations at Shatt Al-Hilla River from Sada area to Dora Bridge in Babylon province. The chemical analysis of the sedimentation sample in the laboratory included pH calculation, electrical conductivity (EC) (Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), organic matter (OM), and heavy metals as (Mn, Ni, Cr, Zn, Cu, Co, Pb, Cd, As and Fe). Indirect geochemical background (IGB) of heavy metal was calculated by the iterative 2 standard deviations (SD) method.
The results of enrichment factor for heavy metals of the soil and sediment show that the all heavy metals in the studied samples were within Ef<2 indicate to depletion to minimal enrichment (i.e. no or minimal pollution). While Cd in the sample (5), Co in the sample (7), Cr in the sample (8) and Mn in the sample (1S) are within 2 ≤ EF < 5 indicate to Moderate enrichment. Contamination factor (Cf) for heavy metals of soil and sediment show that the all heavy metals in the studied samples were within Cf < 1 -Low contamination. While Sample "2" (Cd, Fe), sample "3" (Ni, Cr, Pb, and Cd), sample "4" (Mn, Fe) and sample "8" (Cr) are within 1 ≤ Cf < 3 moderate contamination.
Pollution load index result of all the soil and sediment samples are less than one indicate that  "no pollution" are present, except sample 3 where the PLI value higher than 1 indicates the samples have been "polluted ". The modified degree of contamination (mCd) data indicate nil to a low degree of contamination for all of the soil and sediments samples.