Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) has been a contentious diagnosis for many years. Without definitive laboratory tests, specific etiology, or effective treatment, it has long been characterized as a functional disorder with a substantial psychological component. Despite the almost universal complaint that they awaken unrefreshed and experience debilitating daytime fatigue, little is known about the sleep characteristics of individuals with CFS. Although psychological maladjustment has generally been assumed in CFS, reports as to its nature and role in the illness have been inconsistent. The present study compares sleep characteristics, daytime functioning, general health and psychological adjustment in three samples: individuals with CFS, individuals with Narcolepsy and healthy Controls. Prevalence of physiologically based sleep disorder such as Sleep Apnea and Periodic Limb Movement Disorder was assessed by polysomnography. Sleep quality, daytime functioning, general health and psychological adjustment were evaluated by self-report measures. Results indicate that 58% of the CFS sample was diagnosed with a primary sleep disorder as compared with 48% of those with Narcolepsy and 13% in Controls. Insomnia problems were reported by 86% of the CFS sample, 55% of the Narcolepsy sample, and 8% of the Control sample. Individuals with CFS manifested some psychological distress relative to Controls. Individuals with Narcolepsy were generally similar to those with CFS in this respect. This pattern of findings raises some important questions regarding the role of sleep disorder and insomnia in CFS symptomatology and the assumed etiological role of psychological maladjustment in this condition. Implications of these findings to future research are discussed.


This study aimed to evaluate seed density and number of species in a weed seed bank collected from four different cassava family farms. The farms were located on highway AM-070 in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. Four plots were established in each cassava crop, from which 20 15 x 15 cm samples.(0.0225 m2) at 0-5 cm depth level and three samples at 5-10 and 10-30 depth levels were collected, totalizing 104 samples. For seed counting and identification, plantlet emergence technique under greenhouse conditions was used. The plantlets were initially identified by morphotype and when possible, even by species. Monitoring was conducted during 9 months. A significant difference in seed density was found among the plots (Kruskal Wallis, 5%; p<0.05) and an average of 5.113 seeds m-2 at 0-5 cm depth. At the depth of 5-10 cm, the cassava crops presented an average of 1.111 seeds m-2 , while at the 10-30 cm depth,the average was 285 seeds m-2 . The seed banks of the cassava crops were basically herbaceous species typical of agricultural lands and disturbed environments. Weed cut once a year was not sufficient to control weed plants and reduce negative weed interference intensity. Thus, therefore, greater care is necessary during the periods before flowering and seed production, according to labor availability.


Air pollution has become the world's single biggest environmental health risk of the past decade, causing millions of yearly deaths worldwide. One of the dominant air pollutants is fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which is a product of combustion. Exposure to PM2.5 has been associated with decreased lung function, impaired immunity, and exacerbations of lung disease. Accumulating evidence suggests that many of the adverse health effects of PM2.5 exposure are associated with lung inflammation and oxidative stress. While the physical structure and surface chemistry of PM2.5 are surrogate measures of particle oxidative potential, little is known about their contributions to negative health effects. In this study, we used functionalized carbon black particles as surrogates for atmospherically aged combustion-formed soot to assess the effects of PM2.5 surface chemistry in lung cells. We exposed the BEAS-2B lung epithelial cell line to different soot at a range of concentrations and assessed cell viability, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Our results indicate that exposure to soot with varying particle surface composition results in differential cell viability rates, the expression of pro-inflammatory and oxidative stress genes, and protein carbonylation. We conclude that particle surface chemistry, specifically oxygen content, in soot modulates lung cell inflammatory and oxidative stress responses.


SiO2 /Ni nanocomposite is directly prepared from the silica particle by a controllable method through electroless metallization, which is different from the sol-gel technique. Its fabrication procedure is as follows: first the formation of ligating monolayer by a silane agent coupling with silica, then, binding Pd catalyst with its ligating group, finally, nano-sized Ni deposition occurs on the template. The metallic Ni particles are uniformly deposited on the silica, and they have a net or chain-like structure, just as the silica particles do. The composite inherent coercivity (iHc), saturated magnetization (MS), and residual magnetization (Mr) are 16.5, 10.0 and 1.00 respectively in the as-plated Ni. The chain-like structure causes stronger static magnetization interactions between Ni particles, resulting in a magnetic crystalline anisotropy and the higher iHc value.


Although it is well-established that urban green infrastructure is essential to improve the population's wellbeing, in many developed countries, the availability of green spaces is limited or its distribution around the city is uneven. Some minority groups may have less access or are deprived of access to green spaces when compared with the rest of the population. The availability of public green spaces may also be directly related to the geographical location of the city within Europe. In addition, current planning for urban regeneration and the creation of new high-quality recreational public green spaces sometimes results in projects that reinforce the paradox of green gentrification. The aim of this study was to explore the concept of environmental justice in the distribution of the public green spaces in two contrasting cities, Tartu, Estonia; and Faro, Portugal. Quantitative indicators of public green space were calculated in districts in each city. The accessibility of those spaces was measured using the "walkability" distance and grid methods. The results revealed that there was more availability and accessibility to public green spaces in Tartu than in Faro. However, inequalities were observed in Soviet-era housing block districts in Tartu, where most of the Russian minority live, while Roma communities in Faro were located in districts without access to public green space. The availability of public green spaces varied from 1.22 to 31.44 m2/inhabitant in the districts of Faro, and 1.04 to 164.07 m2/inhabitant in the districts of Tartu. In both cities, 45% of the inhabitants had accessible public green spaces within 500 m of their residence. The development of targeted new green infrastructure could increase access to 88% of the population for the city of Faro and 86% for Tartu, delivering environmental justice without provoking green gentrification. The outcome of this study provides advice to urban planners on how to balance green space distribution within city neighbourhoods.


Immunoglobulin concentrations and lymphocyte counts were determined in bronchoalveolar fluid obtained from nine symptomless, healthy, non-smoking granite workers (mean age 45.6, range 22-56 years) and nine normal, non-smoking, non industrial controls (mean age 22.8, range 21-32 years). The proteins were measured in unconcentrated lavage fluid by means of a solid phase, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. IgG and IgA concentrations were three times greater in lavage fluid from granite workers than the samples from non-industrial controls (p less than 0.02). Eight of nine normal volunteers (89%) had no detectable IgM (less than 30 ng/ml) in the lavage fluid whereas eight of nine (89%) granite workers had detectable IgM (chi 2 = 8, p less than 0.01). Lymphocyte counts in lavage fluid from the workers were significantly greater (15.5%) than control counts (5.6%; p less than 0.05). The normal albumin concentration suggests that differences in permeability do not account for all of the increased immunoglobulin concentrations found in granite workers' lavage fluid and that some immunoglobulin is locally synthesised. It is concluded that occupational exposure to granite dust is associated with an increased proportion of lymphocytes and an increased concentration of immunoglobulin in lavage fluid that may reflect a subclinical immune inflammatory response.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS The mechanism of intraduodenal fat induced inhibition of food intake is still unclear. Therefore, we tested the ability of duodenal fatty acids to suppress food intake at a lunchtime meal; in addition, we were interested to test if these effects were mediated by cholecystokinin (CCK) A receptors. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Three sequential double blind, three period crossover studies were performed in 12 healthy males each: (1) subjects received intraduodenal fat with or without 120 mg of tetrahydrolipstatin, an inhibitor of gastrointestinal lipases, or saline; (2) volunteers received intraduodenal long chain fatty acids, medium chain fatty acids, or saline; (3) subjects received long chain fatty acids or saline together with concomitant intravenous infusions of saline or loxiglumide, a specific CCK-A receptor antagonist. The effect of these treatments on food intake and feelings of hunger was quantified. RESULTS Intraduodenal fat perfusion significantly (p<0.05) reduced calorie intake. Inhibition of fat hydrolysis abolished this effect. Only long chain fatty acids significantly (p<0.05) decreased calorie intake, whereas medium chain fatty acids were ineffective. Infusion of loxiglumide abolished the effect of long chain fatty acids. CONCLUSIONS Generation of long chain fatty acids through hydrolysis of fat is a critical step for fat induced inhibition of food intake; the signal is mediated via CCK-A receptors.


The collection presents articles on the problems of constructing sports training, theoretical, methodological, medical, biological, psychological and pedagogical problems of physical education and sports, rehabilitation and physical therapy, theoretical and methodological bases for the development and improvement of technologies for maintaining health by means of physical culture and sports and physical therapy.
For postgraduate students, doctoral students, masters, coaches, athletes, physical therapists, rehabilitologists, teachers of secondary schools, teachers of secondary schools.


Abstract This special issue uses the occasion of the centenary of the Whitley Commission Reports to illuminate the contemporary crisis in public service industrial relations from a historical perspective. In all six countries studied—Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the USA—public service employment is labour intensive and quantitatively significant in the overall economy. Public services have also been major targets of neoliberal reforms, starting in the UK and the USA at the turn of the 1980s and in the other countries about a decade later. In addition, the relatively high union density and the political dimension of public services and public union strategies have been major targets of new public management and more latterly austerity. However, the regressive period has had a differential impact in different countries. In the liberal market economies of the UK and the USA, the neoliberal turn has destabilised traditional patterns of public sector industrial relations to greatest effect. While in the more coordinated market economies, traditional arrangements and values have been more resistant to austerity and neoliberal reforms. We attempt to shed light on these differential impacts through a critical analysis of the historical evolution of public sector industrial relations in each country.


An inverse taper on silicon is proposed and designed to realize an efficient mode converter available for the connection between multimode silicon nanophotonic integrated circuits and few-mode fibers. The present mode converter has a silicon-on-insulator inverse taper buried in a 3 × 3μm(2) SiN strip waveguide to deal with not only for the fundamental mode but also for the higher-order modes. The designed inverse taper enables the conversion between the six modes (i.e., TE(11), TE(21), TE(31), TE(41), TM(11), TM(12)) in a 1.4 × 0.22μm(2) multimode SOI waveguide and the six modes (like the LP(01), LP(11a), LP(11b) modes in a few-mode fiber) in a 3 × 3μm(2) SiN strip waveguide. The conversion efficiency for any desired mode is higher than 95.6% while any undesired mode excitation ratio is lower than 0.5%. This is helpful to make multimode silicon nanophotonic integrated circuits (e.g., the on-chip mode (de)multiplexers developed well) available to work together with few-mode fibers in the future.


Hydrogen is a crucial and expensive resource for refineries. Hydrogen network integration is an effective way to conserve fresh hydrogen. On the basis of relative concentration analysis, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) mathematical model is established to synthesize refinery multi-impurity hydrogen networks. By correlating the hydrogen consumption of a sink with its oil processing throughputs, this model reveals the fresh hydrogen variation tendency caused by fluctuation of each capacity, and determines the key sink(s) of a hydrogen network with multiple impurities on the premise of minimum fresh hydrogen consumption. With a structure matrix variable, practical hydrogen networks can be analyzed through the proposed model. The results show that the novel method in this paper is superior to traditional absolute concentration-based methods in fresh hydrogen conservation under cases of static, fluctuant throughputs, and fluctuant throughputs with restricted network structure. Two cases are employed ...


Human infections with Taenia solium , the pork tapeworm, are rare in the United States. We recently encountered a patient infected with both the adult worm and the larval stage of T solium . The clinical presentation was that of a subcutaneous nodule, representing cysticercosis of the skin, known as Cysticercus cellulosae cutis. Report of a Case A 20-year-old Filipino woman had a nodule in her left calf. At the age of 15, she had had a similar mass removed from her left thigh. Although the current lesion had been present for two years, it had become more painful during the last six months. The patient also complained of abdominal cramping and a 9-kg weight loss. She readily admitted to having eaten raw pork frequently. On physical examination, a 1 × 2-cm subcutaneous nodule was evident on the left calf. Laboratory evaluation of several stool samples demonstrated the eggs of Taenia, Ascaris,


1. Clonally reproducing species are often assumed to lack sufficient genetic variability to evolve specific local adaptations to cope with environmental perturbation and competition from sexual species. Yet, many asexuals are extremely successful judged by abundance and wide range, suggesting high competitive abilities in resource exploitation.

2. In this study, food use and its effects on larval growth in a water frog system consisting of the two parental sexual species, Rana lessonae (Camerano 1882) and Rana ridibunda (Pallas 1771), and three different coexisting hemiclones of their hybrid, Rana esculenta (Linnaeus 1758) were investigated.

3.R. esculenta tadpoles spent 18·6% more time feeding than did tadpoles of either parental species, but feeding time was not affected by interspecific mixture.

4.R. esculenta tadpoles consumed 50·8% more food over the whole test period than did tadpoles of the two parental species.

5.R. esculenta tadpoles exhibited higher growth rates than did tadpoles of either parental species.

6.R. lessonae tadpoles had the highest and R. ridibunda tadpoles the lowest growth efficiencies with the R. esculenta tadpoles ranging between the two parentals.

7. The results obtained indicate that hemiclonal hybridogenetic R. esculenta tadpoles display significant phenotypic variation among coexisting hemiclones as well as out-perform tadpoles of the parental sexual species R. lessonae and R. ridibunda. The primary mechanism for success of the hybrid tadpoles is probably behavioural, through increased feeding time and food consumption, and not physiological via growth efficiency.


There are many instances where the use of weight saving composite materials for an entire structure is either; too complex, too expensive or unfeasible. In these circumstances the use of a hybrid structure can incorporate the benefits of traditional construction materials, for example steel, coupled with the advantages of composite materials in weight critical areas. In the present study, an investigation was undertaken into the fatigue life characterisation of a hybrid joint for marine application. In addition the residual strength of the joint, after a fixed number of fatigue cycles, was assessed under axial compression and bending loads. A progressive damage model was developed to predict the location of major stress concentrations, the path of damage and subsequent loss in stiffness of the joint under axial compression.


Accurate short-term power forecasts are crucial for the reliable and efficient integration of wind energy in power systems and electricity markets. Typically, forecasts for hours to days ahead are based on the output of numerical weather prediction models, and with the advance of computing power, the spatial and temporal resolutions of these models have increased substantially. However, high-resolution forecasts often exhibit spatial and/or temporal displacement errors, and when regarding typical average performance metrics, they often perform worse than smoother forecasts from lower-resolution models. Recent computational advances have enabled the use of large-eddy simulations (LESs) in the context of operational weather forecasting, yielding turbulence-resolving weather forecasts with a spatial resolution of 100 m or finer and a temporal resolution of 30 seconds or less. This paper is a proof-of-concept study on the prospect of leveraging these ultra high-resolution weather models for operational forecasting at Horns Rev I in Denmark. It is shown that temporal smoothing of the forecasts clearly improves their skill, even for the benchmark resolution forecast, although potentially valuable high-frequency information is lost. Therefore, a statistical post-processing approach is explored on the basis of smoothing and feature engineering from the high-frequency signal. The results indicate that for wind farm forecasting, using information content from both the standard and LES resolution models improves the forecast accuracy, especially with a feature selection stage, compared with using the information content solely from either source.


Objective To retrospectively assess a cohort of mothers for characteristics of injuries that they have suffered as a result of family and domestic violence (FDV) and which have required admission to a hospital during both the intrapartum and postpartum periods. Design and setting Retrospective, whole-population linked data study of FDV in Western Australia using the Western Australia birth registry from 1990 to 2009 and Hospital Morbidity Data System records from 1970 to 2013. Main outcome measures Number of hospitalisations, and mode, location and type of injuries recorded, with particular focus on the head and neck area. Results There were 11 546 hospitalisations for mothers due to FDV. 8193 hospitalisations recorded an injury code to the head and/or neck region. The upper and middle thirds of the face and scalp were areas most likely to receive superficial injuries (58.7% or 4158 admissions), followed by the mouth and oral cavity (9.7% or 687 admissions). Fracture to the mandible accounted for 479 (4.2%) admissions and was almost equal to the sum of the next three most common facial fractures (nasal, maxillary and orbital floor). Mothers more likely to be hospitalised due to a head injury from FDV included those with more than one child (OR=1.17, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.30) and those with infants (<1 year old) (OR=1.40, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.90) and young children (<7 years old) (OR=1.15, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.30). Conclusions FDV is a serious and ongoing problem and front-line clinicians are in need of evidence-based guidelines to recognise and assist victims of FDV. Mothers with children in their care are a particularly vulnerable group.


of the and of IZA. series on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. aims answers the of our time. Our key objective to between academic research, policymakers and ABSTRACT Further Education colleges are a key way in which 16-19 year olds acquire skills in the UK (much like US Community Colleges), especially those from low income backgrounds. Yet, little is known about what could improve performance in these institutions. We design and conduct the world's first management practices survey in these colleges (based on the World Management Survey) and match this to administrative longitudinal data on over 40,000 students. Value added regressions with rich controls suggest that structured management matters for educational outcomes (e.g. upper secondary qualifications), especially for students from low-income backgrounds. In a hypothetical scenario where a learner is moved from a college at the 10th percentile of management practices to the 90th, this would be associated with 8% higher probability of achieving a good high school qualification, which is nearly half of the educational gap between those from poor and non-poor backgrounds. Hence, improving management practices may be an important channel for reducing inequalities.


Urinary bladder cancer represents the seventh most common cancer worldwide; the most common type of bladder cancer is urothelial carcinoma (1). About 75% of patients are initially diagnosed with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), whose treatment includes a surveillance regimen based on risk stratification for recurrence and progression (1,2). The need for intensive and long-term follow-up, mainly represented by cystoscopic examinations with biopsies, makes bladder cancer the most expensive cancer to treat (3).


Whereas life expectancy continues to increase in most industrialized countries many developing and transition countries are today confronted with decreases in life expectancy. Usual measures employed to compare welfare over time and space fail to deal with such demographic change and may lead to the so-called 'repugnant' conclusion that lower life expectancy involves higher welfare per capita. We illustrate this type of transmission channel using various welfare criteria and reference populations. We also consider feed-back effects from the demography on the economy using a neo-classical growth model. We show that the 'repugnant' conclusion can be avoided if we choose a lifetime welfare measure instead of a period (or snapshot) welfare measure. All concepts are illustrated empirically using a small sample of developed and developing countries.


Previous studies using robotic devices that focus on the wrist/fingers following stroke provide an incomplete picture of movement dysfunction because they do not consider the abnormal joint torque coupling that occurs during progressive shoulder abduction loading in the paretic upper limb. This letter introduces a device designed to measure isometric flexion/extension forces generated by the fingers, wrist, and thumb during robot-mediated 3-D dynamic movements of the upper limb. Validation data collected from eight participants with chronic hemiparetic stroke are presented in this paper.


at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry -at which visiting Western psychiatrists were manipulated in an effort to whitewash Soviet psychiatry (see pp 303-320)-to gain an impression of the devious tactics resorted to by the core group. No informed Western psychiatrists could possibly be sympathetic to this group. We should, however, make every effo:7t to support those of our colleagues-the majority of Soviet psychiatrists-who find the political misuse of their profession as abhorrent as we do, and particularly the courageous few who are being punished for exercising their professional conscience. We are also puzzled by Dr Hare's comments on the dissenters. His suggestion that they seek martyrdom and obsessively persist in their campaigns demeans the whole human rights movement in the USSR. All the dissenters we have interviewed were more than aware of the risks they were taking, including, ironically, the possibility of internment in a mental hospital. Certainly none of them relished this possibility! We would entirely agree with Dr Hare's final comment that there is a need for British psychiatrists to look into their own backyard. However, ethical issues in medicine transcend geographical boundaries and a concern about our own practices and those of our colleagues elsewhere are not mutually exclusive.


The free and open availability of high-resolution satellite and airborne imagery after the 2010 Haiti earthquake provided a new opportunity to analyze earthquake-induced damage. Previous work has analyzed pre- and post-event remote sensing images using pixel-based change detection. The drawback of these methods is that they have difficulty differentiating earthquake-induced damage from other natural and manmade changes. An alternate method is to analyze damage in terms of objects rather than image pixels. The significant advantage of object-based analysis is its ability to effectively use the characteristics of the change such as shape, length/width ratio, asymmetry etc. to differentiate between damage types. However, to make effective use of object-based analysis for earthquake-induced damage evaluation, we need a comprehensive understanding of all potentially useful earthquake-induced damage characteristics, specifically from a segmentation-based perspective. In this study, we perform a case study on imagery from the Haiti earthquake that evaluates a novel object-based approach for characterizing earthquake induced surface effects of liquefaction against a traditional pixel based change technique. Our technique, which combines object-oriented change detection with discriminant/categorical functions, shows the power of distinguishing earthquakeinduced surface effects from changes in buildings using the object properties concavity, convexity, orthogonality and rectangularity. Our results suggest that object-based analysis holds promise in automatically extracting earthquake-induced damages from high-resolution aerial/satellite imagery.


In the decade following its passage, more than 200,000 employment discrimination complaints were filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This Article presents the findings of an empirical investigation of the implementation of the ADA by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and state and local fair employment practices agencies (FEPAs). Although not as well-covered in the press as ADA litigation, or as debated in the law reviews, these administrative agencies dispose of the vast majority of ADA employment discrimination cases, which must be filed with the agency as a precondition to any later court litigation. Because the EEOC also administers other basic federal antidiscrimination statutes B including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Equal Pay Act, and Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 B our findings shed important light on the entire enterprise of the enforcement of federal employment discrimination legislation. The article proceeds as follows. Part II is a brief history of the EEOC, describing the transformation of the agency from its creation in 1964 to the present. Our sources of data, and their major limitations, are described in Part III. We provide a basic statistical portrait of the ADA work of the EEOC and FEPAs in Part IV. In Part V, we discuss the factors that are influencing the outcomes of the EEOC process, using a model drawn from policy implementation studies and the results of statistical analyses of our data. Congress passed the ADA with grand promises about the employment of people with disabilities. We conclude that the EEOC simply cannot keep those promises without the resources to do a reasonable investigation of every charge that is not obviously groundless. The ultimate responsibility, and the onus for action, lie on Congress, which has given the EEOC a broad mandate to process employment cases and enforce fair employment laws without ever giving it the resources it would need to do the job properly. Simple fairness to workers and employers alike requires that Congress give the EEOC enough money to properly investigate its charges. Short of that, Congress needs to change the procedures under the Civil Rights Act to allow individuals to drop out of the administrative process sooner, or bypass it altogether.


Scholars in a variety of fields have recently begun to re-emphasize the centrality of matter in their exploration of the world. This "new materialism" seeks to traverse persistent analytical dichotomies between the ideal and the material. At the same time, copyright law has long rested upon a series of dualistic doctrinal structures, including the fundamental dichotomy between the immaterial "work" and its fixation in a physical "copy." This distinction, which was never entirely coherent even in traditional media, has broken down in the face of digital instantiations of creativity. New materialism might offer copyright a path out of such unsustainable distinctions, by providing a viewpoint that traverses the artificial opposition of work and copy, recognizing the primacy of matter in the development of creative expression.


The AmazonCoop—a cooperative that mediates trade between Brazilian Amazonian indigenous groups and the transnational cosmetics firm The Body Shop— seeks to use the market opportunities provided by neoliberal economic globalization to achieve sustainable development in indigenous villages, with mixed results. While the cooperative provides significant material benefits, it fails to achieve the social goals of democracy, participation, and self-development embodied in the cooperative principles. In this paper, I examine AmazonCoop in the context of historical globalizations on Brazil's "extractive frontier," demonstrating substantial continuity between contemporary and historical political economies. I use this historical anthropological analysis to discuss the potential contributions of cooperatives to development, the relationships between historical and contemporary globalizations, and the political-economic landscapes on which indigenous people can pursue their interests.


Fire regimes across the globe have great spatial and temporal variability, and these are influence by many factors including anthropogenic management, climate, and vegetation types. Here we utilize the satellite‐based "active fire" product, from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors, to statistically analyze variability and trends in fire activity from the global to regional scales. We split up the regions by economic development, region/geographical land use, clusters of fire‐abundant areas, or by religious/cultural influence. Weekly cycle tests are conducted to highlight and quantify part of the anthropogenic influence on fire regime across the world. We find that there is a strong statistically significant decline in 2001–2016 active fires globally linked to an increase in net primary productivity observed in northern Africa, along with global agricultural expansion and intensification, which generally reduces fire activity. There are high levels of variability, however. The large‐scale regions exhibit either little change or decreasing in fire activity except for strong increasing trends in India and China, where rapid population increase is occurring, leading to agricultural intensification and increased crop residue burning. Variability in Canada has been linked to a warming global climate leading to a longer growing season and higher fuel loads. Areas with a strong weekly cycle give a good indication of where fire management is being applied most extensively, for example, the United States, where few areas retain a natural fire regime.


An emerging and now highly significant way by which futures are being imagined and enacted in schools is through the increased production and use of data. This thesis explores the life of data and experiences of data-based living through a deeply-textured account from one school in North-East England. Based on a multi-method qualitative study it seeks, with pupils and teachers in the school, to understand how the proliferation of data is negotiated in detail, in place and in practice. From the school, and with its members, I consider what might constitute an ethic of care in the context of data.

The thesis offers a detailed exploration of the roles that data are playing in the process of education and the production of futures. I draw on and contribute to education studies, the sociology of education, data studies and the geographies of education, childhood, youth and young people, futurity and data. I argue that data work to bundle and bind. Data bundle together different spaces and times as 'the school', knowable in the present, comparable with recorded 'pasts' and enabling the imagining and realising of futures. This bundling of spaces, times and knowledges – both within and beyond the school – renders them amenable to judgment, decision and intervention. Data also act to bind people and their futures together where pupils and teachers become coresponsible for securing each other's futures and so also the future of the school and the nation. The 'pupil multiple' is produced and pupils' digital personae circulate with many sources of data assembled, sorted and sifted. However, the relationship between bodies and bytes, and different sources of data, shifts between coherence, divergence and blurring and becomes both a source of conflict and underpins an 'atmosphere of progress'.


The production of peptides and small proteins with microbicidal activity collectively called antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is commonly considered to be a primitive mechanism of immunity and has been extensively studied in insects and other non-vertebrate organisms. In addition, a variety of AMPs present in amphibian skin secretion has been well characterised. There is now increasing evidence that AMPs play a crucial role in human immunity as well. Virtually all human tissues and cells typically exposed to microbes are able to produce AMPs. Important AMPs belonging to two structurally distinct classes, known as the defensins and the cathelicidins, are mainly produced by epithelial cells and neutrophils. AMPs significantly contributing to the chemical skin barrier are represented by dermcidin, psoriasin and RNase 7. The antimicrobial activity of saliva largely depends on histidine-rich AMPs known as histatins. Many more, in part less well-known AMPs and AMP-like proteins exist that exhibit various additional functions, apart from their antimicrobial properties. Among them, the neutrophil granule proteins azurocidin and cathepsin G are members of a family of serine-protease homologues called serprocidins and play a role in the regulation of the immune response and degradation of extracellular matrix proteins respectively. As another AMP-like protein of the neutrophil granule content, bactericidal/permeability increasing protein (BPI) is both able to permeabilise bacterial membranes and to function as an opsonin. The whey acidic protein (WAP) domain containing class of AMPs, including secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), elafin and trappin-2, is equally important in inhibition of neutrophil serine proteases and killing of microbes. Certain CC or CXC chemokines are known to possess antimicrobial properties and therefore are called kinocidins. Several kinocidins, including thrombocidin-1 and -2, are contained in the α-granules of platelets. A cytoplasmic AMP described as ubiquicidin turned out to be identical with the strongly basic ribosomal protein S30. Proteolytic cleavage of the histone protein H2A in the stomach gives rise to an AMP initially described as buforin I. Adrenomedullin is a hormone-like AMP exhibiting vasodilatory and hypotensive effects. Lysozyme is mainly known for its cell wall degrading activity, but is also capable of non-enzymatic killing of bacteria. An iron-binding protein present in milk and other secretions named lactoferrin was shown to possess antimicrobial and antiviral activity and has been implicated in protection against cancer. Clinical studies on the treatment of infectious diseases have been performed with artificial peptides derived from human lactoferrin, histatins and BPI in addition to porcine protegrins, frog magains and bovine indolicidin. Omiganan, representing an indolicidin derivative, has been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of acne and catheter-related local infections and is currently considered to be the most promising AMP-based drug candidate.


True random number generators (TRNGs) are crucial components for the security of cryptographic systems. In contrast to pseudo--random number generators (PRNGs), TRNGs provide higher security by extracting randomness from physical phenomena. To evaluate a TRNG, statistical properties of the circuit model and raw bitstream should be studied. In this article, a model for the beat frequency detector--based high-speed TRNG (BFD-TRNG) is proposed. The parameters of the model are extracted from the experimental data of a test chip. A statistical analysis of the proposed model is carried out to derive mean and variance of the counter values of the TRNG. Our statistical analysis results show that mean of the counter values is inversely proportional to the frequency difference of the two ring oscillators (ROSCs), whereas the dynamic range of the counter values increases linearly with standard deviation of environmental noise and decreases with increase of the frequency difference. Without the measurements from the test data, a model cannot be created; similarly, without a model, performance of a TRNG cannot be predicted. The key contribution of the proposed approach lies in fitting the model to measured data and the ability to use the model to predict performance of BFD-TRNGs that have not been fabricated. Several novel alternate BFD-TRNG architectures are also proposed; these include parallel BFD, cascade BFD, and parallel-cascade BFD. These TRNGs are analyzed using the proposed model, and it is shown that the parallel BFD structure requires less area per bit, whereas the cascade BFD structure has a larger dynamic range while maintaining the same mean of the counter values as the original BFD-TRNG. It is shown that 3.25M and 4M random bits can be obtained per counter value from parallel BFD and parallel-cascade BFD, respectively, where M counter values are computed in parallel. Furthermore, the statistical analysis results illustrate that BFD-TRNGs have better randomness and less cost per bit than other existing ROSC-TRNG designs. For example, it is shown that BFD-TRNGs accumulate 150% more jitter than the original two-oscillator TRNG and that parallel BFD-TRNGs require one-third power and one-half area for same number of random bits for a specified period.


In Malaysia, the Government has been supportive in inculcating entrepreneurships skills at the higher learning institutions through policies such as training providers, funding, infrastructure and facilities to encourage students to start their own businesses (Mohd Zahari Ismail, 2006). Such support is seen as one of the effort to transform the country's economy into a knowledge-based economy whereby entrepreneurship has been identified as one of the key elements to the development of the economy. It has been contended that in developing successful entrepreneurs, an early exposure in entrepreneurial courses is essential (Mansor and Othman, 2011). Law graduates in Malaysia are open to join either be the judiciary, government agencies, corporate and banking sectors or private practice. In most circumstances, law graduates will be attached to private firms and this eventually will lead to most of them opening their own legal firm. This means lawyers could not avoid standard business practices such as preparing cash flow report, business and succession plan and audit report. There are also many lawyers who end up in business, such as construction and trading companies. As such, law graduates are potential entrepreneurs. This paper intends to discuss the relationship between involvement in entrepreneurship programs and the interest of law undergraduates to become entrepreneurs when they graduated from the University. The study is based upon a survey conducted on law undergraduates of Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyah of Laws, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). A quantitative research methodology is adopted in this study.


In the following article, Christine Hamilton and Adrienne Scullion review the system of theatre provision and production that exists in the rural areas of Scotland, most especially in the Highlands and Islands, assessing the policy framework that exists in the nation as a whole and in the Highlands and Islands in particular. They highlight the role and responsibilities of volunteers within the distribution of professional theatre in Scotland, challenge the response of locally based theatre-makers and nationally responsible agencies to represent rural Scotland, and raise issues fundamental to the provision of culture nationally. In doing so, they question what we expect theatre policy to deliver in rural areas, and what we expect rural agents to contribute to theatre provision and policy. Finally, they suggest that, in the system of rural arts in Scotland, there are wider lessons for the development of arts in and the arts of other sparsely populated and fragile communities. Christine Hamilton is the director and Adrienne Scullion the academic director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the University of Glasgow, where Adrienne teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Television Studies.


We address content discovery in wireless networks with infrastructure, where mobile nodes store, advertise, and consume content while Broker entities running on infrastructure devices let demand and offer meet. We refer to this paradigm as match-making, highlighting its features within the confines of the standard publish-and-subscribe paradigm. We study its performance in terms of success probability of a content query, a parameter that we strive to increase by acting as follows: 1) We design a credit-based scheme that makes it convenient for rational users to provide their content (thus discouraging free-riding behavior), and it guarantees them a fair treatment. 2) We increase the availability of either popular or rare content, through an efficient caching scheme. 3) We counter malicious nodes whose objective is to disrupt the system performance by not providing the content they advertise. To counter the latter as well as free riders, we introduce a feedback mechanism that enables a Broker to tell apart well- and misbehaving nodes in a very reliable manner, and to ban the latter. The properties of our match-making scheme are analyzed through game theory. Furthermore, via ns-3 simulations, we show its resilience to different attacks by malicious users and its good performance with respect to other existing solutions.


Abstract While critical analyses of media representations of lesbians continue to grow, less attention is paid to audience responses to those representations. This paper explores women's experiences of viewing lesbians on screen, analysing qualitative data from focus groups with audiences of a women-only film season screened in a UK cinema: "Lesbians on Screen: How Far Have We Come?" We consider how the internalisation of the "male gaze" complicates some women's viewing of lesbian characters and how women attempt to challenge and resist that gaze through their viewing practices and strategies. We discuss audience creativity in re-signifying representations of women, as well as other strategies including choosing to view privately or in women-only spaces. These acts of resistance disrupt the dominance of the male gaze, patriarchal cinema spaces, and reception of images on screen. By examining women's reflections on the experience of being in a women-only audience, a unique cinema space that "felt free" of conventional constraints of heteronormativity and patriarchy, this paper also examines how the gendered cinema space affects audience experiences.


Interactions between proteins are fundamental for every biological process and especially important in cell signaling pathways. Biochemical techniques that evaluate these protein–protein interactions (PPIs), such as in vitro pull downs and coimmunoprecipitations, have become popular in most laboratories and are essential to identify and validate novel protein binding partners. Most PPIs occur through small domains or motifs, which are challenging and laborious to map by using standard biochemical approaches because they generally require the cloning of several truncation mutants. Moreover, these classical methodologies provide limited resolution of the interacting interface. Here, we describe the development of an alternative technique to overcome these limitations termed "Protein Domain mapping using Yeast 2 Hybrid-Next Generation Sequencing" (DoMY-Seq), which leverages both yeast two-hybrid and next-generation sequencing techniques. In brief, our approach involves creating a library of fragments derived from an open reading frame of interest and enriching for the interacting fragments using a yeast two-hybrid reporter system. Next-generation sequencing is then subsequently employed to read and map the sequence of the interacting fragment, yielding a high-resolution plot of the binding interface. We optimized DoMY-Seq by taking advantage of the well-described and high-affinity interaction between KRAS and CRAF, and we provide high-resolution domain mapping on this and other protein-interacting pairs, including CRAF-MEK1, RIT1-RGL3, and p53-MDM2. Thus, DoMY-Seq provides an unbiased alternative method to rapidly identify the domains involved in PPIs by advancing the use of yeast two-hybrid technology.


Objective: To determine the early electrocardiographic changes in a cohort of ambulatory cameroonian COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychlo- roquine and Azithromycin. Design: Prospective study. Setting: Treatment centres of the city of Yaounde, Cameroon, from May 7th to 24th 2020. Participants: We enrolled 51 consecutive confirmed COVID-19 on RT-PCR who having mild forms of COVID-19 and treated by hydroxychloroquine 200 mg twice daily during seven #days plus Azithromycin 500 mg the first day and 250 mg the remaining 4 days as per national standard. Main Outcomes Measures: The primary end-point was the change in QTc interval between day 0 (D0), day 3 (D3) and day 7 (D7). Secondary endpoints were changes in all other cardiac electrical conductivity patterns and the occurrence of clinical arrhythmic events during the course of treatment. Results: The population (29 men and 22 women) was aged 39 ± 11 years (range 17 to 61 years). Mean Tisdale score was 3.35 ± 0.48. No significant change from baseline (D0) of QTc was observed at D7 (429 ± 27 ms at D0 versus 396 ± 26 ms at D7; p = 0.27). A reduction of heart rate was observed between the D0 and D7 (75 ± 13 bpm versus 70 ± 13 bpm, p = 0.02) with increased QRS duration between D0 and D7 (95 ± 10 ms versus 102 ± 17 ms, p = 0.004). No symptomatic arrhythmic events occurred during the treatment course. Conclusions: No life-threatening modification of the QT interval was observed in non-severe COVID-19 patients treated ambulatory with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Studies are needed in critical-ill and older patients.


Recently, community has paid increasing attention on model scaling and contributed to developing a model family with a wide spectrum of scales. Current methods either simply resort to a one-shot NAS manner to construct a non-structural and non-scalable model family or rely on a manual yet fixed scaling strategy to scale an unnecessarily best base model. In this paper, we bridge both two components and propose ScaleNet to jointly search base model and scaling strategy so that the scaled large model can have more promising performance. Concretely, we design a super-supernet to embody models with different spectrum of sizes (e.g., FLOPs). Then, the scaling strategy can be learned interactively with the base model via a Markov chain-based evolution algorithm and generalized to develop even larger models. To obtain a decent super-supernet, we design a hierarchical sampling strategy to enhance its training sufficiency and alleviate the disturbance. Experimental results show our scaled networks enjoy significant performance superiority on various FLOPs, but with at least 2.53x reduction on search cost. Codes are available at https://github.com/luminolx/ScaleNet.


Research on patient satisfaction with physician assistants in rural primary care medical practices is lacking. This study attempted to: determine patients' satisfaction with family practice PAs in rural communities, assess patient perceptions of "comfort" with PAs in a range of hypothetical medical procedures, analyze patients' reactions to PAs as a function of patient characteristics, and document perceptions of changes in medical practices after PAs are employed. Findings support reports that patients are highly satisfied with PA services and extends those observations to rural primary care practices. Reaction to PAs is more favorable among women, more favorable in patients with more education, and more favorable among those with greater contact with PAs.


[1] In situ measurements of sea ice thickness (I), snow depth (S), and snow freeboard (Fsn) from drilling profile lines from 15 cruises into the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, were analyzed. I was calculated from in situ Fsn and S using an isostatic approach. I was also directly estimated from Fsn as can be obtained from laser altimetry. The root-mean-square difference (RMSD) between observed and calculated I reduces, and the correlation between Fsn and I increases substantially, when (1) using values averaged over the survey lines (∼50 m) instead of single drill hole measurements (∼1 m) and (2) treating positive and negative sea ice freeboard (Fi) separately. For small Fi, however, S approximates Fsn pointing toward an isostatic balance also between S and I. Our linear regression analysis between the in situ measurements suggests a direct conversion of Fsn into I using a region-specific set of equations. RMSD values are similar to those obtained employing isostatic balance models and treating positive and negative Fi separately. However, more data would have been needed to obtain significant differences between most of the various models suggested. Still our new approach gives a viable alternative for Antarctic I retrieval from altimetric measurements of Fsn alone. Correlation between in situ observations of Fsn and S is high. RMSD between observed and calculated S is small. This suggests estimation of S from altimetric Fsn measurements. Such S has an estimated precision of ∼5 cm, and is neither affected by snow wetness or grain size nor limited to S < 50 cm.


BACKGROUND Androgenetic alopecia is a common condition, with severe attendant psychosocial implications, and for which it is difficult to obtain a satisfactory degree of clinical improvement. OBJECTIVE To explore the possible clinical benefit of injecting platelet-derived growth factors into the scalp of patients using a specific autologous blood concentrate. MATERIALS AND METHODS Two injections of a leukocyte platelet–rich plasma (L-PRP) with the addition of concentrated plasmatic proteins were administered at baseline and after 3 months (single spin at baseline and double-spin centrifugation at 3 months). Macrophotographs were taken at baseline and after 6 months, and 2 independent evaluators rated them using Jaeschke rating of clinical change. RESULTS Sixty-four consecutive patients were enrolled. Some improvement was seen in all patients by 1 evaluator and in 62 by the other. The mean change in clinical rating was 3.2 (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.9–3.5) and 3.9 (95% CI, 3.5–4.3), and the proportion of patients reaching a clinically important difference was 40.6% and 54.7%, according to the 2 evaluators, respectively. CONCLUSION Our pilot study may provide preliminary evidence that this treatment may induce some degree of clinical advantage for male- and female-pattern baldness. This may warrant the design of randomized controlled clinical trials to formally test this procedure.


Preferences are ubiquitous in our everyday life. They are essential in the decision making process of individuals. Recently, they have also been employed to represent ethical principles, normative systems or guidelines. In this work we focus on a ceteris paribus semantics for deontic logic: a state of affairs where a larger set of respected prescriptions is preferable to a state of affairs where some are violated. Conditional preference networks (CP-nets) are a compact formalism to express and analyse ceteris paribus preferences, with some desirable computational properties. In this paper, we show how deontic concepts (such as contrary-to-duty obligations) can be modeled with generalized CP-nets (GCP-nets) and how to capture the distinction between strong and weak permission in this formalism. To do that, we leverage on an existing restricted deontic logic that will be mapped into conditional preference nets.


In this thesis, I contend that the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts produced in England (1260-1500) had fundamental importance in shaping the cognitive and conceptual responses of readers who were not literate in Latin. I begin by establishing the primacy of Latin paraliturgical materials, used for teaching beginning readers the preliminary skills needed to recite Latin prayers. In Books of Hours, all the visual components of the page combined to inculcate a distinctive mode of reading, close to monastic lectio, which was to influence Middle English devotional writing. In my second chapter, I demonstrate that thirteenth-century pastoral writings such as the Manuel des Peches placed readers in intimate contact with modes of reading translated from the Latin, and that this mode of reading endured in popularity into the fifteenth century. My third chapter considers the translation of the French of England of the Manuel into Middle English as Handlyng Synne, and the transmission of that Middle English text in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. Handlyng Synne repositions the French of England as a language exclusive to 'clerkes,' and this repositioning creates a space in which Latin becomes almost vernacularised. In the visual dynamics of the Handlyng Synne manuscripts, we see evidence of readers who were competent to interpret Latin submerged in Middle English. In Nicholas Love's Mirror, paraliturgical Latin again comes to the fore, in visual dynamics that construct a space for Middle English readers on the margins of Latin textual culture. In my final chapter, I look at the late-medieval manuscripts of the romance Robert of Sicily, finding in them complex interactions between languages, which shed light on the text's central exploration of the process of translation and of the positions of Latin and Middle English. I conclude that, despite medieval writers' rhetorical distinction of the three main languages of medieval England from one another, Latin models of reading were transmitted from paraliturgical contexts, from texts written in the French of England, into Middle English manuscripts, whose visual contents are constantly in contact with Latin.


Based on a survey of inter-municipal unions (IMUs) and inter-municipal companies (IMComs) in Poland, this article identifies the most common motives for launching inter-municipal cooperation and the most frequently reported outcomes. The declared motives are compared with the perceived outcomes, with a particular focus on mismatch situations: disappointments (when the expected gain was not realised) and unexpected outcomes (when the reported outcomes exceeded initial expectations). The research shows that the latter are reported more frequently than the former. The most frequently indicated motives for cooperation were related to financial benefits and included cost reduction and applying for additional funding. The "defensive" motive of IMC – cooperation to maintain the status quo – is practically absent. The data also suggests that cooperation can be perceived as "a value in its own right".


Few minutes of hypoxia exposure stabilizes hypoxia‐inducible factors, resulting in erythropoietin (EPO) gene transcription and production. A brief intermittent hypoxia exposure increased EPO levels in young healthy individuals, suggesting that a single session of intermittent hypoxia has the potential to increase oxygen‐carrying capacity. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the effect of a single session of intermittent hypoxia on serum EPO levels and hemoglobin mass among older individuals. We hypothesized that a single session of intermittent hypoxia would raise serum EPO levels and lead to an increase in hemoglobin mass in older individuals. Seventeen participants (8 women, age: 54 ± 8 years, height: 177 ± 10 cm, weight: 76 ± 14 kg, BMI: 24 ± 4 kg/m2) were randomly assigned to an intermittent hypoxia group (IH, n=11) or an intermittent normoxia group (IN, n=6). Intermittent hypoxia consisted of eight 4‐minute cycles at a targeted arterial oxygen saturation of 80% interspersed with normoxic cycles to resaturation. Air was made hypoxic by titrating nitrogen into the breathing circuit. Intermittent normoxia consisted of the same protocol, but nitrogen was not added to the breathing circuit. Pulmonary gas exchange, arterial oxygen saturation, and hemodynamics were continuously measured throughout both protocols. EPO levels were measured before and 4.5 hours after the beginning of each protocol. Hemoglobin mass was assessed via carbon monoxide rebreathing the day before and seven following intermittent hypoxia or normoxia. Intermittent hypoxia lowered arterial oxygen saturation (98 ± 1 to 82 ± 3 %, p<0.01), which resulted in a lower fraction of inspired oxygen (20.8 ± 0.1 to 10.9 ± 1.0 %, p<0.01). There was no significant change in EPO levels in either condition (IH:10.4 ± 2.9 to 13.3 ± 4.2; IN: 5.6 ± 2.4 to 6.5 ± 2.9 mU/ml, main effect for time p=0.12). Similarly, there was no change in hemoglobin mass in response to both conditions (IH: 752 ± 189 to 754 ± 189; IN: 858 ± 177 to 879 ± 157 g, main effect for time p=0.87). Intermittent hypoxia did not affect mean arterial pressure (87 ± 15 to 88 ± 14 mmHg, p=0.18) or cardiac output (5.5 ± 1.5 to 5.7 ± 1.5 L/min, p=0.22), but increased heart rate (62 ± 9 to 68 ± 9 bpm, p<0.01). In conclusion, a single session of eight 4‐minute cycles of intermittent hypoxia did not increase serum EPO levels in older individuals.


The variable positioning of bare personal pronouns in Old English prose remains something of a mystery. In the role of prepositional object, for example, these elements are often found in positions where other prepositional object types are rarely attested. This article reports the results of an empirical study of a correlation between the variable placement of these pronouns and their specification for grammatical person. By demonstrating that this correlation defies a number of independent explanations, it is argued that person is an important aspect of the syntax of these constituents. The identification of two further correlations, one involving narrative mode and the other involving the relative positioning of preposition and verb, further demonstrates the value of quantitative methods in historical linguistics.


Transnational insolvency cases inherently involve questions of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. In an attempt to add uniformity to international insolvency law, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) unanimously adopted the text of the Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency on May 30, 1997. Congress, drawing from UNCITRAL's Model Law, reformed the United States' statutory law on international bankruptcies, namely section 304 of the Bankruptcy Code, as part of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. This Article examines current theoretical approaches to international insolvencies, prior law on international insolvency, and the probable effect of Chapter 15's addition to the Bankruptcy Code,


Treatment of metastatic melanoma with tumor reactive T cells (adoptive T cell therapy, ACT) is a promising approach associated with a high clinical response rate. However, further optimization of this treatment modality is required to increase the clinical response after this therapy. ACT in melanoma involves an initial phase (pre-REP) of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) expansion ex vivo from tumor isolates followed by a second phase, "rapid expansion protocol" (REP) generating the billions of cells used as the TIL infusion product. The main question addressed in this thesis was how the currently used REP affected the responsiveness of the CD8 T cells to defined melanoma antigens. We hypothesized that the REP drives the TIL to further differentiate and become hyporesponsive to antigen restimulation, therefore, proper cytokine treatment or other ways to expand TIL is required to improve upon this outcome. We evaluated the response of CD8 TIL to melanoma antigen restimulation using MART-1 peptide-pulsed mature DC in vitro. Post-REP TILs were mostly hyporesponsive with poor proliferation and higher apoptosis. Phenotypic analysis revealed that the expression of CD28 was significantly reduced in post-REP TILs. By sorting experiment and microarray analysis, we confirmed that the few CD28 post-REP TILs had superior survival capacity and proliferated after restimulation. We then went on to investigate methods to maintain CD28 expression during the REP and improve TIL responsiveness. Firstly, IL-15 and IL-21 were found to synergize in maintaining TIL CD28 expression and antigenic responsiveness during REP. Secondly, we found IL-15 was superior as compared to IL-2 in supporting the long-term expansion of antigen-specific CD8 TIL after restimulation.


For millennia before colonization, First Nations laws regarding children flourished across what is now known as Canada. These laws were ignored by colonial forces who imposed their own version of child welfare on First Nations families. This resulted in what the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) called "cultural genocide." The reassertion of First Nations laws that are derived through community consultation processes presents a promising alternative to the reliance on provincial or territorial laws that apply today.On November 30, 2018, Minister Philpott of Indigenous Services Canada, accompanied by leaders from the Assembly of First Nations, Metis National Council, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami announced that the federal government would table historic "Indigenous" child welfare legislation in the House of Commons, early in 2019 (Indigenous Services Canada, 2018). It seems like good news but will it really build healthy families and, over time, reduce the over-representation of First Nations children in care or is it another colonial paper tiger? The answer is – it depends. But red flags are already flying, such as the pan-Indigenous approach, the lack of a clear funding base, and a lack of attention to the child welfare needs among and between First Nations, Metis, and Inuit.


This article introduces a new algorithm to detect active fires in geostationary remotely sensed data. The algorithm calculated dynamic statistical multispectral thresholds based on, and sensitive to, biogeographical region, subseason, and time-of-day. The spectral characteristics of nonfire and noncloud mid-infrared values were found to vary with biogeographical region, subseason, and time-of-day. These differences were exploited to define a new seasonal Biogeographical Region and Individual Geostationary HHMMSS Threshold (BRIGHT) multivariate adaptive threshold geostationary satellite fire anomaly algorithm. The algorithm was demonstrated on 12 months of daytime data acquired from the geostationary satellite system, the Advanced Himawari Imager (on Himawari-8) over Australia (7.69 million km2). The resulting hotspots were compared with those from the existing Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) polar-orbiting fire-hotspot algorithm. The intercomparison showed that BRIGHT wildfire hotspots, detected using Himawari-8 and Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia (IBRA) data, were also detected by MODIS polar-orbiting fire hotspots 88% of the time. While MODIS hotspots were detected by BRIGHT hotspots only 39% of the time; the majority of the undetected MODIS hotspots had low radiative power. BRIGHT provides a new method for the remote sensing of active fires providing reliable observations at spatial and temporal scales useful for fire managers.


Water management has been carried out for many centuries wherever there has been a need to provide water to large numbers of people. Complex social norms have developed around water management and competing users have established political (governance) and economic cooperative relationships. For example, community-managed irrigation schemes in Bali and the cloud-collection canals built by the Incas at Inca Pirca in Peru are examples of water management systems which still currently supply water to people (Sullivan et al., 2005). Water resources will steadily decline because of population growth, pollution and expected climate change (Hemson et al., 2008). It has been estimated that the global demand for water doubles approximately every two decades (Meyer, 2007) and that water will even become as expensive as oil in the future (Holland, 2005). "In the year 2000, global water use was twice as high as it was in 1960" (Clarke and King, 2004:19). Unfortunately this trend is expected to continue. The aim of this paper is to describe how water poverty mapping as a process can be used to assist the management of our already scarce water resources. It constructs a water poverty map after which it describes its application at various management levels. The research indicates that the mapping process can be used to obtain more accurate predictions, as well as to form part of the master plan and integrated development plan documents. Keywords: Water management, water poverty mapping Disciplines: Water management, geographical information systems (GIS), poverty studies, decision support


Abstract. This paper introduces a method to automatically estimate vertical and horizontal clearances of highway viaducts and gantries from Mobile Laser Scanner (MLS) point clouds. It is essential to have accurate data on the vertical and horizontal clearances of overhead infrastructure objects along the highway. Accurate clearance data is used for routing oversized transports, infrastructure reconstruction, maintenance and settling legal claims after incidents. The proposed method takes a point cloud of an infrastructure object as input, and as output provides the user with a concise overview of the horizontal and vertical clearances of the object. A point cloud of a highway overpass or gantry is segmented into the different clusters relevant for determining the clearances. The discrete points in these clusters will then be used to approximate their surfaces with B-splines. Subsequently the minimal clearances can be estimated. These clearances are estimated at certain pre-specified locations according to guidelines from the highway authority. The paper also includes a comparison of the inferred clearances from the point clouds with archived measurements performed by third party contractors. For this case study, a Dutch highway section containing 50 gantries and 20 viaducts is selected. Along this stretch of highway the clearances are estimated. The estimated clearances for each structure are then compared with archived in situ measurements. This will give a quantitative analysis of the quality of the estimated clearances. The estimated vertical clearances have an overestimation of 20–30 mm compared to the validation data. The horizontal clearances show a median underestimation of 20 mm.


Inspired by watching a group of children playing freely during their summer holidays, in this essay I am drawing parallels between the activities of playing and improvisation with learning and participatory action in our relational contexts. I am looking at improvisational participatory activity as key to learning, development and growth. Through the mentioning of the four stages of competence model, I am discussing how "mathematising" expert knowledge and competence in terms of stages of advancement, evaluation measures and de-contextualised accounting systems, may weaken our abilities for intuitive, spontaneous improvisations in our relational activities and restrict learning from within the doing and development of practice knowledge.


Background Ultrasound (US) examination of the entheses is increasingly used to document pathological changes in e.g. psoriasis arthritis and spondyloarthritis. Grey-scale (GS) US is used to assess morphological changes and Doppler US to assess increased blood flow. The OMERACT expert group has agreed on the following elementary components when assessing the entheses on US examination; hypoechogenicity, increased thickness, enthesophytes/ calcifications, erosions, and Doppler activity (1). Little is known about US assessment of the entheses in asymptomatic persons, thus the frequency and distribution of the above components between genders and age groups is uncertain. Objectives To investigate the frequency of enthesitis components in the entheses of the lower limb in a group of healthy subjects. Methods We recruited 64 subjects (32 women and 32 men), eight women and eight men in four decades, from 20 to 59 years. None of the subjects had previous or present signs of tendon or joint disease in the lower extremities. None of the participants took any kind of medication. All subjects were examined by a rheumatologist and blood samples were collected to rule out any clinical signs of tendon or joint disease e.g. swollen and tender entheses or increased inflammatory markers in the blood. The dominant leg was examined with US using a Logiq 9 (GE Medical, Milwaukee, WI, USA) with a ML 6–15 MHz transducer and a fixed pre-set with Doppler settings optimised for inflammatory flow. Both GS and Doppler examination were made. The entheses were examined for hypoechogenicity, increased thickness, enthesophytes/ calcifications, erosions, and Doppler activity. Results No subjects had clinical signs of tendon or joint disease. Seven displayed various degrees of hypermobility and seven had various degrees of flatfoot; some in combination. None of the blood tests indicated any pathology. On US erosions were only seen in one Achilles insertion (not shown in table). The Doppler activity was not measured in plantar fascia due to attenuation of the heel fad pad. All other US pathology present is seen in the table below. Conclusions Only minor pathological findings in the entheses of the lower limb were present in an age stratified cohort of healthy persons. The changes most frequently seen were bony changes in the insertion of the quadriceps and Achilles tendons. A weak tendency toward more pathological findings was seen in this cohort among men, compared to women, and additionally, with increasing age. The findings suggest that US can be used to diagnose/examine subjects for pathological changes of the entheses although with caution regarding enthesophytes of the quadriceps and Achilles tendon. References Terslev L et al. Defining enthesitis in spondyloarthritis by ultrasound: results of a Delphi process and of a reliability reading exercise. Arthritis Care Res 2014 May;66:741–8. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Five experiments were performed to identify the basic Spanish colour categories (BCCs) and to locate them in the CIE L*u*v* space. The existence of 11 BCCs was confirmed using an elicited list task and a free monolexemic naming task. From the results provided by a synonymicity estimation task, it was concluded that, in Spanish, 2 synonymous terms (morado and violeta) are used to name a category equivalent to the English category purple. Three experiments provided information about the colourimetric localization of the 11 Spanish BCCs. Two experiments used monolexemic naming tasks (free and restricted) and a third required the free signalling of prototypes and good exemplars. It was observed that Spanish and British BCCs are essentially equivalents in number and colourimetric delimitation and, therefore, our work can be considered to extend and complement previous research (on English BCCs) insofar as achromatic categories in colour space localization, the links between chromatic and achromatic categories (red and orange have no direct links with achromatic categories), and the dependence of the use of BCCs on lightness are concerned. Lastly, our results indicate the existence of 2 categories that are nearly basic: beige and garnet.


Intimate Negotiations: The Political Economy of Gender, Sex, and Family Among Mexican Immigrants in New York City Debra J. Pelto This ethnographic project examines sexual communication and negotiation in the context of the political economy of migration. Using participant observation as well as in-depth and life history interviews and secondary sources, the research goals are to explicate the meanings and practices related to gender and sexuality among the transnational population of mid-life heterosexual Mexicans in New York; map ideologies and practices regarding family size and family planning, including histories of negotiation within the context of relationships and couples, embedded within processes of sexual socialization and historical-political-economic structures in the selected population; map experiences with accessing health care services, in the context of this community of low-wage, undocumented, uninsured workers; and explicate the relationships between gender, sexuality, reproduction, parenthood, and labor migration, within the political economy of Mexican migration to New York. The research population consists of Mexican-born women and men in Queens, New York City, ages twenty-two to forty-five. This project aims to contribute to our understanding of how culture changes through interactions between agents and structures; to contribute to an area of sexuality research that has received insufficient attention, which intersects the fields of gender, migration, demography, and health; to increase our understanding of sexual communication among mid-life cohabiting adult migrants; to identify gaps between service needs and utilization; and to offer suggestions on how to improve health programs and services for this emerging immigrant population.


Background: Previous research has suggested that foods which are beneficial to health are more expensive, and more difficult to obtain, in deprived as compared to affluent areas, and that this may help to explain the greater adherence to healthy eating guidelines in more affluent areas of the UK. Recent government policy initiatives to combat poor access to healthy diets have been partly based upon studies that have investigated intra-urban spatial variations in food price and availability. However those studies which provide the evidence base for government policy are: few in number, on a very small scale, and based upon data which in light of recent changes in the food retail economy may be out of date. Aims: This study aims to rectify these problems, and to update and extend previous surveys. In doing so it addresses four main questions: Are there spatial variations in food retail provision in urban areas of the UK. Does the price and availability of food vary by type of shop in an urban area. Are there differences in food price and availability by level of deprivation in urban areas. Which is the strongest predictor of food price and availability: shop location, shop type or magnitude of area level of deprivation? Method: A survey, on foot, of the price and availability of fifty-seven food items taken from the Family Budget Unit's 'Modest but Adequate Diet' (1993) was undertaken in a random sample of food retail stores drawn from the Public Registers of Food Premises covering the Glasgow area, a large and socially heterogeneous urban centre in the West of Scotland. A response rate of 97.7% (n=250) of eligible food stores was achieved. Results: In the majority of cases, the price and availability of these food items did not significantly differ between areas at a variety of spatial scales. Those food items that did significantly differ in price were found, for the most part, to be cheaper in poorer areas. For food availability no real pattern was detected. The location of food shopping opportunities in the city was, on the whole, evenly distributed and the types of stores that present the greatest opportunities in tenns of price efficiency and food availability were evenly distributed in poorer areas. Some of those few foods that did differ significantly in price and availability were items whose consumption is discouraged in contemporary dietary guidelines. Conclusion: This project is the largest and most systematic study of spatial variations in food price and availability undertaken to date in the UK. Previous research literature has suggested that food is more expensive and less available in poorer urban areas, and that some deprived urban areas do not have adequate food shopping facilities. This study provides some evidence that this is not the case in Glasgow in the late 1990s. Changes in the food retail economy since the early to mid 1990s may have precipitated this change.


Exact calculations for probabilities on complex pedigrees are computationally intensive and very often infeasible. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are frequently used to approximate probabilities and likelihoods of interest. However, when a locus with more than two alleles is considered, the underlying Markov chain is not guaranteed to be irreducible and the results of such analyses are unreliable. A method for finding the noncommunicating classes of the Markov chain would be very useful in designing algorithms that can jump between these classes. In this paper, we will examine some existing work on this problem and point out its limitations. We will also comment on the difficulty of developing a useful algorithm.


For patients with severe maxillary resorption, extensive grafting procedures can mean lengthy treatment times. But there is an alternative. By anchoring in the zygomatic bone, the NobelZygoma implant system can enable an immediate loading protocol for a graftless treatment. It also offers a broad choice of prosthetic options. This dramatically shortens time-to-teeth for increased patient satisfaction, and allows patients with severely resorbed maxillae to return to a normal quality of life.


Abstract Maxillectomy is the surgical removal or resection of the maxilla or upper jaw bone. Maxillectomy may be total or partial. It is performed during surgical treatment of cancer and infections (bacterial. fungal) of the oral cavity, nasal cavity and maxillary sinuses. Patient affected from post-Covid mucormycosis require local debridement or surgical resection resulting in maxillectomy. After surgery, patient has difficulty in mastication, speech, and swallowing because of communication between oral and nasal cavity. This may also give rise to psychological challenges and social exclusion. The prosthodontic rehabilitation of such patient using obturator provide a separation between oral and nasal cavity and improve the quality of life of the patient. There are various techniques and materials used for fabrication of definitive obturator. This article discusses the prosthodontic rehabilitation after maxillectomy in post-covid mucormycosis patients using obturator by conventional and 3D printed techniques.


Plant antibacterial peptides have been isolated from a wide variety of species. They consist of several protein groups with different features, such as the overall charge of the molecule, the content of disulphide bonds, and structural stability under environmental stress. Although the three-dimensional structures of several classes of plant peptides are well determined, the mechanism of action of some of these molecules is still not well defined. However, further studies may provide new evidences for their function on bacterial cell wall. Therefore, this paper focuses on plant peptides that show activity against plant-pathogenic and human-pathogenic bacteria. Furthermore, we describe the folding of several peptides and similarities among their three-dimensional structures. Some hypotheses for their mechanisms of action and attack on the bacterial membrane surface are also proposed.


The bioavailability and toxicity of mercury to aquatic organisms are greatly dependent on its chemical species, such as inorganic and methylated mercury. We examined the influences of various physico-chemical parameters (metal concentration, salinity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and colloidal organic carbon (COC) on the bioavailability of inorganic mercury (Hg(II)) and mono- methylmercury (MeHg) to the green mussel Perna viridis. The uptake rate constant of MeHg was about 8.5x higher than that of Hg(II). The uptake increased by 75% for Hg(II) and 117% for MeHg with decreasing salinity from 30 psu to 15 psu. Biogenic DOC derived from diatom decomposition decreased the uptake of Hg(II), consistent with the results of DOC originating from natural seawater. In contrast, the uptake of Hg(II) was enhanced considerably in the presence of humic acid. The bioavailability of MeHg was only weakly influenced by differences in DOC quality or quantity, but it was significantly decreased by estuarine DOC. The influence of COC on Hg bioavailability was also dependent on the colloidal structural properties and the colloid-metal complexation. Binding with colloidal nanoparticles increased the uptake of Hg(II) by 3.3 to 7.3 times compared to low molecular weight-complexed Hg, but decreased the uptake of MeHg by 42 to 73%. For both Hg(II) and MeHg, the uptake of the 9 d aged radiolabeled metals was lower than the uptake of the 2 d aged radiola- beled forms. Our study suggests that various mechanisms, such as facilitated transport and direct col- loidal ingestion, are involved in the uptake of Hg(II) and MeHg under different dissolved and col- loidal organic carbon conditions. COC and DOC need to be separately considered, given their different influences on mercury uptake.


Validation of reactive systems, such as telephone switching systems and traffic controllers, is made unusually difficult by the fact that such systems must perform heterogeneous behaviors robustly in complex, dynamic environments. This renders them unusually difficult to specify and even to state requirements for. In the ISAT project (Hall, 1992) end-user requirements are stated as concrete behavior scenarios, and a multi-functional apprentice system aids the human developer in acquiring and maintaining a knowledge-based specification consistent with the scenarios. This paper describes ISAT's novel approach to validating the acquired specification by using sound scenario generalization to construct descriptions of scenario classes with guaranteed behavior. It also describes the key technical problems that must be solved in order to implement sound scenarios generalization using explanation-based techniques, as well as ISAT's solution to the problems. The approach is implemented and has been tested on two reactive systems; an email system and a telephone switching system.<<ETX>>


ABSTRACT This paper presents the assessment of the operation and control of hybrid AC–DC microgrid (HMG) integrated with alternative energy sources. The system is analyzed by incorporating fuzzy logic and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) based controllers in the control scheme of battery. Photovoltaic array and fuel cell system are coupled to the DC bus and an electrolyzer based hydrogen storage system is used for energy storage in the DC subgrid. The output of the wind energy system along with the battery is fed to the AC bus through an inverter. The AC and DC subgrids are integrated through an interlinking converter which is controlled to facilitate power exchange between the subgrids based on the frequency of AC bus and DC bus voltage. Appropriate power management is achieved within the subgrids and between the subgrids by the coordinated control schemes employed in the HMG. The main focus of this article is the analysis of the impact of incorporating conventional proportional–integral controller, fuzzy logic controller and ANFIS based controller in the control scheme of the battery when the subgrids are subjected to power fluctuations. By employing the ANFIS based controller, the transients in the voltage and power output of the battery system are minimized and deviations occurring in the AC bus voltage during load variations are reduced.


This paper presents an integrated programmable gate timing control and primary gate driver chip for an active-clamp forward converter (ACFC) Power Block for data center applications. The ACFC Power Block converts 48 V intermediate bus voltage to processor core voltage on a motherboard with high power density. To improve the overall efficiency and reduce the system form factor, the gate timing control function and gate driver with a high voltage level shifter are integrated on a gate driver chip. These features in the gate driver chip enable the Power Block to optimize the timing of switching transistors and therefore achieve optimum efficiency. The silicon chip is fabricated in a 0.13 μm BCD process. Initial hardware operates at 48 V input and 0.75 V output voltages. Full gate timing control functions have been verified by measurement. An electrical model of this converter shows over 90% efficiency at 130 A.


An experimental set up for cryocooler based ac susceptometer is designed and fabricated. Hylum is chosen as the former material. Primary and secondary coils are winded over a single hylum former. Secondary coil, a set of two equal and oppositely winded coils, is first winded over the hylum former. Then the primary coil is winded over it. Copper wire (150 micron) is used for winding. The whole set up is then set in the cryocooler (HC-4E, Sumltomo cryogenics). An ac current is supplied to the primary coil from DSP Lock-in Amplifier (Model SR830), which produces the required magnetic field. This magnetic field magnetize the sample and an induced emf in secondary coil is observed. The effect of magnetic field in secondary coil is cancelled by the two oppositely winded coil system. So that the emf induced is only due to the change in moment of sample. This emf is then separated to in-phase and out-of phase voltage component in lock-in amplifier. The in-phase and out-of phase voltage component is converted to in-phase and out-of phase component of ac susceptibility by dividing a voltage factor V0. Temperature is lowered down to liquid helium temperature in cryocooler and data are recorded using lab view program. Then the in-phase and out-of phase component of ac susceptibility is plotted against varying temperature. This is the background plot for ac susceptometer.
In our project we have chosen La1-xSr xMnO3 (LSMO) as sample. Sample is prepared by auto combustion sol-gel method. Pellets are made and cut into rectangular shape. One such rectangular shaped cut sample is carefully placed in the centre of one of the secondary coil. Then the ac susceptibility measurement is done by retaining all the parameter such as applied voltage and frequency constant in lock-in amplifier. Data are plotted and the susceptibility plot with sample is obtained. The susceptibility plot for sample was obtained by deducting the background from the susceptibility plot with sample. The phase change in the LSMO system is studied using the Ac susceptometer.


Modern household customers use many power electronic based devices for their daily usage. Those devices emit harmonic current pollutions and eventually increase harmonic voltage distortion level in the network. In the future network, the background harmonic pollution in the MV and upstream networks could increase with the integration of more distributed generations. Thus, the harmonic related problem will increase in the network and therefore should be considered seriously. With the distorted supply voltage, most of the devices produce even more harmonic current pollutions. In this paper, three typical households are modeled with their various connected devices. Each device is tested in the laboratory to find out its harmonic current emission spectrum for different grid voltage conditions. Also, harmonic current spectrums are measured in the laboratory at each of the three house model's terminal. Further, harmonic simulation is done on a typical low voltage network in which several household customers are connected and the above measured harmonic spectrums of households are used in the analysis. Harmonic current emission levels at different points of the network are calculated. Those values are compared with the laboratory measurements and also with the available standard limits. This analysis gives an overview of harmonic current emission level at different installations of a low voltage network.


In aims to meet the goal of 25% CO2 emission reduction compared to 1990 by 2020, the government has been developing policies on insulation renovations. In order to achieve the previously stated target, all existing houses are required to conduct insulation renovation. Thus, investigations on insulation efficiencies of existing apartments are necessary to verify the effect of insulation renovation on CO2 emissions. The Energy-Saving Standard, which sets the insulation efficiency of housings, was first presented in 1980, followed by the New Energy-Saving Standard in 1992 and the Next-Generation Energy-Saving Standard in 1999. Therefore, insulation efficiencies of housings are considered to be diverse depending on the age of completion. Research on the actual situation of insulation efficiencies in detached houses exists, but those on existing apartments are insufficient. In this study, we investigate the actual situation of insulation efficiencies of existing apartments and conduct an analysis on energy savings and reduction in utility costs through insulation renovation of existing apartments with different insulation efficiencies.


The transcription factor E2F switches on target genes during the early Gphase of the cell cycle. In his Perspective,
 La Thangue
 discusses new findings (
 Ogawa
 et al.) that reveal the importance of an E2F family member, E2F-6, for silencing genes in quiescent cells in Gof the cell cycle.


There was a time in United States history when the central argument for investing in public education was to ensure that voters were sufficiently informed about the issues of the day to make wise decisions: education for self-governance. According to multiple sources, voter ignorance remains a serious concern and this may be a factor in why the political system in the United States is not more responsive to the needs and preferences of the electorate. Based on an analysis of political discourse and educational policy initiatives, this essay argues that democratic citizenship education has been sidelined by the focus on education for jobs and the economy and outlines what a serious focus on education for active democratic citizenship should entail.


Background In recent decades, the world watched a dramatic increase in the incidence of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) among young individuals (≤55 years-old) and a relative decrease in the elderly. The management of ACS in young patients with multivessel disease still needs to be elucidated, as these individuals maintain a long life expectancy. Research Question To compare clinical outcomes and care costs in individuals with premature ACS and multivessel disease undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods and Results Participants included all individuals ≤55 years-old admitted with ACS to public hospitals in Brasília (Brazil) between 2013 and 2015 and who underwent cardiac catheterization with SYNTAX score ≥23 or Duke category 6. Outcomes were adjudicated with death certificates and data from medical records. The primary outcome was the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), defined as death due to cardiovascular causes, recurrent hospitalizations due to cardiovascular ischemic events, and incident heart failure New York Heart Association III-IV. As secondary outcome we assessed indirect and direct costs by evaluating the cost of lost productivity (in international dollars (Int$) per year) due to illness and death, outpatient costs and costs with new hospitalizations. Multivariate and principal components (PC) adjusted analyzes were performed. Results Among 1,088 subjects (111 CABG and 977 PCI) followed for 6.2 years (IQR: 1.1), 304 primary events were observed. MACE was observed in 20.7% of the CABG group and 28.8% of the PCI group (p = 0.037). In multivariate analyses, PCI was associated with a hazard ratio (HR) = 1.227 (95% CI: 1.004–1.499; p = 0.0457) for MACE, and in PC-adjusted HR = 1.268 (95% CI: 1.048–1.548; p = 0.0271) compared with CABG. Despite direct costs were equivalent, the cost due to the loss of labor productivity was higher in the PCI group (Int$ 4,511 (IQR: 18,062)/year vs Int$ 3,578 (IQR: 13,198)/year; p = 0.049], compared with CABG. Conclusions Among young individuals with ACS and multivessel disease, surgical strategy was associated with a lower occurrence of MACE and lower indirect costs in the long-term. Graphical Abstract In a large cohort of ACS individuals with multi-vessel disease, CABG was related to a lower occurrence of CV deaths or Recurrent ACS as compared to PCI. In addition, comparing the impact of the two strategies, CABG was associated with substantive lower indirect costs.


A crucial issue in corporate networks is to identify to what extent different strategic and operational decisions need to be coordinated between the involved companies. In this paper we elaborate on the issue of synchronization of information flow based on interconnectivities between companies in order to coordinate a corporate network by the means of DSM, Dependence Structure Matrix. The results show that DSM can be used to identify interconnectivities among actors in a network and to identify which information that needs to be shared between companies in the network.


This study reports on the analysis of macrobotanical remains recovered at three of the B-sites rock shelters in central Ghana (B4C, B5C, B6B), which were excavated under the auspices of the Kintampo Archaeological Research Project (KARP). These rock shelters yielded large quantities of Kintampo material culture as well as pottery attributed to the Punpun. The overall aims are to further our understanding of prehistoric subsistence in tropical West Africa and to address some outstanding issues relating to the economic role of oil palm through the study of macrobotanical remains. Although palynological evidence indicates a substantial rise in oil palm pollen during the Late Holocene, various interpretations of this increase have been proposed. To date, sampling and analysis of macrobotanical remains have not been designed to investigate the nature of oil palm utilisation during this period. We argue that simple archaeobotanical quantification methods indicate that oil palm use during Kintampo occupations of sites B4C, B5C, and B6B and possibly other locales was significant. As such, humans should not be ruled out as agents having an impact on Late Holocene landscapes of West Africa. These and other archaeobotanical data from tropical Africa suggest that arboriculture was a component of prehistoric subsistence.


"Various aspects of mortality in Mongolia are considered in this article, which analyses data from a large-scale demographic survey conducted in late 1994. Because of health improvements introduced into the country following the Second World War, Mongolia experienced a three-fold increase in its population between 1950 and 1990. However, the survey and other data show that the pace of rapid population growth has produced some ill effects. Short birth intervals, high birth orders and mother's young age at the time of giving birth have all increased mortality and morbidity risks."


Mangosteen is a tropical fruit with great economic potential. The major impediment to the development of a mangosteen industry is the long prehearing stage that seedlings require to produce fruits.There is little information regarding optimum nursery practices to enhance growth and development of mangosteen seedlings. Two experiments were conducted to determine the effect of various shade and fertilizer treatments on growth of young mangosteen plants. Each experiment lasted 22 months from transplanting to harvest. Seedlings were grown under 0,30, 50, 70 and 90% artificial shade and received 3, 6, and 9 g per pot of a 15-4.8-10.8% (N-P-K) commercial fertilizer mixture at three, eight and 15 months after planting. Plants grown under 50% shade and supplied with 9 g of fertilizer accumulated significantly more dry matter, had thicker stems, grew taller and developed a larger leaf area. Plants grown under full sunlight grew little or died.


A polystyrene-supported BINOL-derived chiral phosphoric acid has been applied to the desymmetrisation of meso-diones to produce enantioenriched cyclohexenones. The catalytic resin has proven highly active and robust, giving rise to Hajos–Parrish or Wieland–Miescher type products in good yields and enantioselectivities, while allowing for extended recycling.