Using a combination of manuscript and printed sources, this thesis examines the ways in which Ovid's Tristia was read and received in sixteenth-century England. This study challenges the presupposition that readers have perpetuated since the early twentieth century – that Ovid was a lascivious or scandalous poet, spreading works full of lust – and forwards the case for Ovid the family man, loving husband, defender of poetry and immortal fame. Its opening chapter gives the reader a thorough grounding in the reception history of the Tristia – how it was read and used in the medieval and early-modern period in both France and England, in its manuscript and printed forms. It proves that this text was much-appropriated for its moral standpoint well into the seventeenth century. Chapter two provides vignettes of three writers key to England's continued engagement with the Tristia - John Skelton, Geoffrey Whitney and Ben Jonson - illustrating the work's wide appeal to poets, emblem-book compilers and playwrights in the sixteenth century. The ways in which envoy and the 'Go Little Book' conceit emerge in English Renaissance literature begins to be traced here. Chapter 3 on Thomas Wyatt subreads the Petrarchan angle from which the Tristia was approached, forwarding the case for a repurposing of the exilic work in his amatory verses. Thomas Churchyard's influence on the canon presents itself in chapter 4, as, significantly, the first translator of a three-book Tristia in 1572. Here the copy used is reidentified and Churchyard's own imitative practice of translation examined. Finally, the work culminates with a chapter on Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, Epithalamion, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe and the Shepheardes Calender, the ways in which they re-use the Tristian envoy, and how they approach monumentalising the poet through myth-making in a conscious attempt to confer immortal fame.


Most technical polymers and many biopolymers contain very different molecular species (unlike chain length, molecular architecture and/or chemical composition) in contrast to pure low molecular weight compounds. This inconsistent constitution of macromolecules proves very adverse in many cases. An adequate fractionation of polydisperse polymers is therefore mandatory.
Very efficient means are available for analytical purposes. However, these methods break down as soon as the required amount of product exceeds some ten grams. In order to gain access to large enough quantities of sufficiently uniform polymer samples, we have developed a special kind of extraction process called Continuous Spin Fractiona-tion (CSF). The better soluble macromolecular species are preferentially transferred from a feed phase (concentrated polymer solution) into a pickup phase (solvent of tai-lored thermodynamic quality). The main problem of the procedure lies in the high vis-cosities of reasonably concentrated polymer solutions, impeding the attainment of ther-modynamic equilibria. This hurdle could be cleared by means of spinning nozzles through which the feed is pressed into the pickup phase. CSF can be implemented to any soluble polymer and is likewise apt for the production of small and of large amounts of polymer samples with the required uniformity. This contribution explains how to customize CSF to the polymer of interest and presents a number of typical ex-amples.


This paper aims to compare changes in the competitive position of China and ASEAN-4 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) as exporters of manufactured goods to the US market between 1994 and 2001. Both static and dynamic shift-share models are employed to the 2-digit ISIC 3 of manufacturing section to investigate the changing patterns of export share that result from the shift effect, consisting industry-mix, export growth and interdependence. Findings from shift-share analysis shows China gained most of the US market share for exporting not only labour-intensive goods but also capital-intensive products at the expense of ASEAN. The static analysis suggests that China and Indonesia had difficulties in their industrial structures whereas Singapore and Malaysia experienced structural advantages. However, the dynamic analysis result shows that in 2001 the difficulties faced by China and Indonesia had disappeared, which indicated such an improvement in export structures had been made while Singapore and Malaysia, on contrary, lost their structural advantages. With respect to competitive effect, both static and dynamic analyses reveal that China's competitive advantage was extremely strong compared to ASEAN. Indonesia was the best performer amongst ASEAN, mainly corresponding to solid competitive advantage in exporting ISIC 32, which is relatively labour-intensive products to the US market. On the other hand, Singapore recorded the largest loss in the US market share, particularly from 1997 onwards.


Given that falls most commonly occur during walking due to unexpected balance perturbations like trips and slips, walking-based balance assessment including walking stability and adaptability to such perturbations could be beneficial for fall risk assessment in older adults. This cross-sectional study reanalyzed data from two larger studies conducted with the same walking protocol. Participants completed unperturbed walking trials at speeds of 0.4 m/s up to 1.8 m/s in 0.2 m/s steps. Ten unannounced treadmill belt acceleration perturbations were then applied while participants walked at equivalent stability, assessed using the margins of stability. Retrospective (12 months) falls incidence was collected to divide participants into people with and without a history of falls. Twenty older adults (mean age 70.2 ± 2.9 years) were included in this analysis; eight people with one or more recent falls and 12 people without, closely matched by sex, age and height. No significant differences were found in unperturbed walking parameters or their variability. Overall perturbation-recovery step behavior differed slightly (not statistically significant) between the groups after the first perturbation and differences became more pronounced and significant after repetition of perturbations. The No-Falls group significantly reduced the number of recovery steps needed across the trials, whereas the Falls group did not show these improvements. People with a previous fall tended to have slightly delayed and more variable recovery responses after perturbation compared to non-fallers. Non-fallers demonstrate more signs of adaptability to repeated perturbations. Adaptability may give a broader indication of the ability of the locomotor system to respond and improve responses to sudden walking perturbations than unperturbed walking variability or recovery to a single novel perturbation. Adaptability may thus be a more useful marker of falls history in older adults and should be considered in further research.


Heteroepitaxy of diamond on single-crystalline iridium via bias enhanced nucleation remains the most successful, and simultaneously, the most unexplored crystallization process developed for fabrication of wafer-scale thin films and free-standing substrates. Unique conditions provided by nucleation and growth from "soft-implanted" carbon clusters cause the formation of three-dimensional crystallographic irregularities, which take the form of various polyhedrons, also known as multiply twinned particles (MTPs). It is shown here that the diamond MTPs retain a thermodynamically stable structure on the micrometer-scale and can be controllably reproduced using specific nucleation and growth conditions. Particular crystallization mechanisms leading to the formation of icosahedron twins and completed icosahedrons in thin diamond epilayers are discussed, and the experimental findings are supported by a phenomenological model based on thermodynamic and kinetic concepts.


Crude oil production and its resources have been restricted today due to its depletion and consumption rate. Biodiesel involves less production cost, environmentally friendly, renewable, non-toxic and biodegradable. In this examination, a novel source likes Cassia javanica has been used as a feedstock for biodiesel utilizing the transesterification process. The impacts in biodiesel on exhaust gas emissions vary depending on the type of biodiesel and petrodiesel. Blends of biodiesel up to 20% mixed with petrodiesel fuels have been be used in all diesel engines and is more easily storage and distribution tools. The purpose of the current study investigates the analysis of biodiesel and their blends with diesel oil in four-stroke ICE applications like unburned hydrocarbons, sulfates, particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, and nitrated aromatic hydrocarbons. It ended that Cassia javanica methyl ester biodiesel blend (B20) with the addition of SiO2 nanoparticles exhibits a better engine performance and emission reduced compared to fossil fuels. Cassia javanica methyl ester can use directly in diesel engines without requiring extensive engine changes.


BACKGROUND: Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a disease marked by airway inflammation and airflow obstruction, resulting in air trapping in the lungs. OBJECTIVE: To assess the associations between airflow limitation, pulmonary volume and X-ray findings in patients with cystic fibrosis. METHOD: A cross-sectional retrospective study. Review of spirometric, plethysmographic, and chest X-ray findings of outpatients (age ³ 16 years). The airflow findings were classified as within normal limits or as airflow obstruction: mild, moderate or severe obstructive alteration. RESULTS: A total of 23 patients (15 male and eight female; mean age, 21 ± 5.9 years) were studied. Six of them were within normal limits, four had a mild, five had a moderate, and eight had a severe obstructive alteration. There was an association between airflow limitation and the increase of residual volume (p = 0.006) and also with the Brasfield score (p = 0.001), but not with the total lung capacity (p = 0.33). There was a correlation between residual volume and Brasfield score (r = 0,73, p = 0,002), but not with the total pulmonary capacity. Moreover, according to X-ray criteria, the air trapping was correlated only with the residual volume (p = 0.006). CONCLUSION: In patients with cystic fibrosis (age ³ 16 years), the progressive airflow limitation is accompanied by an increase in residual volume, while the total pulmonary capacity remains normal or tends to decrease. The X-ray score was associated with airflow limitation and residual volume, but not with total lung capacity.


Study of exoplanets is the holy grail of present research in planetary sciences and astrobiology. Analysis of huge planetary data from space missions such as CoRoT and Kepler is directed ultimately at finding a planet similar to Earth\-the Earth's twin, and answering the question of potential exo-habitability. The Earth Similarity Index (ESI) is a first step in this quest, ranging from 1 (Earth) to 0 (totally dissimilar to Earth). It was defined for the four physical parameters of a planet: radius, density, escape velocity and surface temperature. The ESI is further sub-divided into interior ESI (geometrical mean of radius and density) and surface ESI (geometrical mean of escape velocity and surface temperature). The challenge here is to determine which exoplanet parameter(s) is important in finding this similarity; how exactly the individual parameters entering the interior ESI and surface ESI are contributing to the global ESI. Since the surface temperature entering surface ESI is a non-observable quantity, it is difficult to determine its value. Using the known data for the Solar System objects, we established the calibration relation between surface and equilibrium temperatures to devise an effective way to estimate the value of the surface temperature of exoplanets for further analysis with our graphical methodology. ESI is a first step in determining potential exo-habitability that may not be very similar to a known life. A new approach, called Mars Similarity Index (MSI), is introduced to identify planets that may be habitable to the extreme forms of life.


This paper investigates the relations between market turnover, stock returns and conditional volatility on the French stock market. Our database consists of monthly observations of 128 common stocks from April 1996 to October 2014. We aggregate data to study the market-wide relationships between turnover, returns and volatility. Using contemporaneous relations, bivariate vector autoregression (VAR), Granger causality test and impulse response functions, we find that market turnover is positively related to contemporaneous and past returns, which we interpret as evidence of the mixture of distributions hypothesis (MDH) and the investor overconfidence hypothesis. This suggests that stock returns help forecast volume. However, there is weaker evidence regarding the informative content of trading volume when forecasting returns.


Abstract The method of labeled natural sand particles was used to study sediment transport along the central Mediterranean coast of Israel. Six portions of 300 kg each were tagged with various fluorescent colors, and distributed at six different locations in the vicinity of the Herzliya Marina. The tagged sand was scattered at the end of autumn, and sampled three times during the winter. Sampling was interrupted in mid-January because of unexpected dredging at the marina canal entrance. The samples were analyzed at the Yigal Allon Kinneret Limnological Laboratory. The wave climate during that time was analyzed using wave data from Ashdod (40 km south). Wave directions measured in Ashdod were corrected to make them applicable to the Herzliya coast, in accordance with suggested directional shift values. Seven wave storms with significant wave heights of over 2.5 m were observed. Two of them clearly indicate a dominant direction from the southwest and two others from the northwest. However, the time durations and the relative angles between the wave directions and the orthogonal to the coast of the storms propagating from the southwest are essentially larger than those arriving from the northwest. The following results were noted: (i) The drift of tagged sand particles correlated to longshore sediment transport at all depths was in a northern direction throughout the field experiment. The longest distance of transport was 5 km over a period of 36 days. (ii) "Onshore" sediment transport was present; sand from 15 m depth was found at 8 m depth. (iii) The cross-shore sediment transport carried sand to a depth of 8 m, but no colored sand from shallow water (2–4 m) was found deeper than 8 m. (iv) Although sedimentation at the marina entrance during the experiment was high, only small amounts of tagged sand were found at the entrance. (v) Findings of tagged sand showed the main area of sedimentation to be along the marina's main breakwater.


Background Patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have a burden of symptoms at least equivalent to that of patients with terminal cancer yet palliative care provision is less well established. A significant obstacle to providing palliative care for patients with COPD is the challenge associated with identifying those at risk of death when the condition is associated with such an unpredictable illness trajectory. Prognostic indicator tools may help overcome this but no systematic review has considered the utility of COPD specific prognostic indicator tools in primary care settings. Aim To explore whether multidimensional prognostic indicator tools in COPD can predict 12-month mortality in patients being managed in primary care. Methods This systematic review employs the discipline of narrative synthesis following the approach recommended by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD). An extensive search incorporating relevant conference proceedings was conducted, followed by data extraction through tabulation, quality assessment by two researchers and synthesis of available data. Results 22 individual tools were identified from 37 relevant papers. Four tools: the ADO index, HADO score, DOSE index and TARDIS were developed with a specific focus on primary care. Only the BODE index had been validated in sufficient cohorts for its efficacy to be confidently established; however the BODE index, with its 6-min walking test, lacks utility in primary care settings. No studies have assessed the prognostic approach currently recommended in UK clinical practice. Conclusions No current multidimensional prognostic indicator tools are sufficiently validated to be recommended for widespread use in UK primary care to identify patients at risk of death in the next 12-months. The research conducted to date suggests that there is scope to further validate some of the proposed tools and more work is required to understand the accuracy and applicability of prognostic indicator tools for use in COPD.


The 2004 EU enlargement and the subsequent migratory movements of citizens from the new member states (NMS) to old EU countries created a new transnational space in which biomedical regimes, as practiced in various locations, come together. In this study, I explore the new transnational space created by the migratory movements of Polish women living in Ireland and their healthcare practices associated with pregnancy and childbirth. I use these practices as a starting point to reflect on the power configurations characterising
healthcare, particularly maternity services, in Ireland and in Poland.
The study aims to answer two complementary research questions. First, how Irish and Polish healthcare services regulate women's (pregnant) bodies? Second, how Polish migrant women engage with these regulatory regimes and how these engagements are influenced by the position they occupy in larger power configurations in the host and home countries? In order to answer these questions, I adopt an encompassing perspective attentive to the larger context of structural configurations concerning healthcare in Ireland and in Poland, as well as the lived experiences of migrant women who engage with these
services. In order to grasp the complexity of Polish migrant women's transnational healthcare practices, I build my theoretical tools on three larger concepts: medicalisation, healthcare pluralism and transnational healthcare practices.
I use a variety of methods and sources: qualitative semi-structured interviews but also elements of participant observation, informal conversations with Polish women, healthcare professionals and community activists in Ireland and in Poland, as well as analysis of secondary data such as reports, newspaper articles, and internet forums.
The study shows that Polish and Irish biomedical regimes differently regulate women's bodies. However, these differences go beyond the national realisations of biomedicine, and result in the internal diversification of healthcare services in each country. Women, depending on their social positions, engage with these various realisations of biomedical regimes. As the study suggests, their active engagements should be seen in terms of their quest for a very specific enactment of biomedical regime, namely "personal biomedicine".


This work develops a class of probabilistic algorithms for the numerical solution of nonlinear, time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs). Current state-of-the-art PDE solvers treat the space- and time-dimensions separately, serially, and with black-box algorithms, which obscures the interactions between spatial and temporal approximation errors and misguides the quantification of the overall error. To fix this issue, we introduce a probabilistic version of a technique called method of lines. The proposed algorithm begins with a Gaussian process interpretation of finite difference methods, which then interacts naturally with filtering-based probabilistic ordinary differential equation (ODE) solvers because they share a common language: Bayesian inference. Joint quantification of space- and time-uncertainty becomes possible without losing the performance benefits of well-tuned ODE solvers. Thereby, we extend the toolbox of probabilistic programs for differential equation simulation to PDEs.


The thesis explores the insights from behavioural economic research for tax compliance. The theoretical model of tax evasion by Allingham and Sandmo (1972) is reviewed and then enriched with findings from research on bounded rationality and unbounded motivation for human behaviour. In specific implications for tax compliance of loss aversion, overweighting of low probabilities, small sample bias and procrastination are discussed. It is suggested that the perception of probabilities and the tendency to procrastinate affect the decision on whether or not to comply taxes. Further, implications for tax compliance of moral motivation, conditional cooperation and the threat of intrinsic motivation being crowded out are discussed. The act of complying, even when the risk of getting caught is low, indicate that people do not behave entirely selfinterested. To explore the evasion decision further, and look in depth at some of the phenomena discussed, a survey-experiment is conducted. The objective is to study whether peoples' tendency to overweigh low probabilities and their propensity to confirm to social norms affect their willingness to consider hiring black labour. The results from the experiment are reported at the end of the thesis. The main finding is that people overweigh low probabilities and that it affects their decision on considering hiring black labour.


The notable commercial and critical success of the four James Bond films made with actor Daniel Craig playing the lead role Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, GB/Cze/USA/Ger/Bah, 2006), Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, GB/USA, 2008), Skyfall (Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2012) and Spectre (Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2015) – has, over the past decade, provoked a sustained increase in the amount of academic commentary and debate around the Bond character, his fictional universe and multimedia incarnations. Working from the premise that Spectre knowingly advertises itself as a possible conclusion to the Craig era, this article attempts to identify and discuss a range of key thematic trends in Bond filmmaking (and Bond criticism) in the years since Casino Royale. Such themes include: enhanced attention to the fictional spy's body as a producer of textual and popular cultural meaning; Bond's complex relationship with evolving ideas of British national identity and state structures; the questionable extent to which the Craig Bond films constitute a meaningful revision of the 007 film franchise's traditional aesthetic and thematic defining characteristics.


The popularity of public investment in local bio-fuel production as a rural development initiative is growing. An important consideration in determining the level of public support for a plant's development, however, is accurately measuring public benefits resulting from plant activity. The purpose of the research reported here was to first develop a set of community multipliers associated with various bio-fuel plant configurations and then to develop an easy-to-use tool that allows local communities to measure potential benefits based on varying levels of plant activity.


Avian leukosis virus (ALV) induces bursal lymphoma in chickens after integration of proviral long terminal repeat (LTR) enhancer sequences next to the c-myc proto-oncogene. Labile LTR-binding proteins appear to be essential for c-myc hyperexpression, since both LTR-enhanced transcription and the activities of LTR-binding proteins are specifically decreased after inhibition of protein synthesis (A. Ruddell, M. Linial, W. Schubach, and M. Groudine, J. Virol. 62:2728-2735, 1988). This lability is restricted to hematopoietic cells from ALV-susceptible chicken strains, suggesting that the labile proteins play an important role in lymphomagenesis. The major labile activity binding to the a1 LTR region (A. Ruddell, M. Linial, and M. Groudine, Mol. Cell. Biol. 12:5660-5668, 1989) was purified from bursal lymphoma cells by conventional and oligonucleotide affinity chromatography, yielding three proteins of 35, 40, and 42 kDa. More than one of these species binds the a1 LTR region, as judged by gel shift analysis. A gene encoding an a1-binding protein (designated a1/EBP) was cloned by screening a bursal lymphoma cDNA library for fusion proteins binding the a1 LTR site. DNase I footprinting and gel shift assays indicate that the a1/EBP fusion protein binds multiple LTR CCAAT/enhancer elements in a pattern similar to that of the purified B-cell protein. DNA sequence analysis shows that this 2.2-kb cDNA encodes a 209-amino-acid open reading frame containing carboxy-terminal basic and leucine zipper motifs, indicating that a1/EBP encodes a novel member of the leucine zipper family of transcription factors.


The morphological characterization on platelet-type hematite particles was carried out extensively by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was found that the thickness of platelet-type hematite particles could be precisely measured from TEM images and convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED) patterns with the use of the imaging plate. Based on these analyses coupled with electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) which is useful to evaluate the specimen thickness with a simple manner, the mean-free path for inelastic electron scattering of hematite was determined to be 120 nm at an accelerating voltage of 200 kV. Thus, it is expected that the thickness of other hematite particles with various shapes, which is difficult to measure from TEM images and CBED patterns, can now be easily evaluated through EELS.


Abstract In this article, we discuss two types of cooccurrence restrictions involving reflexive clitics in European Portuguese and examine their implications for obligatory control. We argue that these restrictions may shed some light on where the controller is generated, thus making it possible to empirically test three Minimalist approaches to control: the predicate attraction approach (see Manzini and Roussou 2000), the PRO-based approach (e.g., Chomsky and Lasnik 1993, Landau 2000, 2004, Martin 2001), and the movement approach (e.g., Hornstein 1999, 2001, Boeckx, Hornstein, and Nunes 2010). We show that none of the approaches is able to capture all the relevant data if pursued under a strong lexicalist perspective such as Chomsky's (1993, 2000) and that only the movement approach can account for all the data in a uniform way under Chomsky's (2001) weak lexicalist perspective.


Oil-in-water emulsions are used in large amounts in hot-rolling mills of steel industries for cooling and lubrication of contacting metal surfaces. These emulsions are comparatively stable kinetically, and have high specific heats and heat transfer coefficients, and therefore can be used under high temperature and pressure conditions in hot-rolling mills of steel industries. These emulsions used in steel industries are however hazardous to the environment, and cannot be disposed of as such. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has set the permissible limit of 10 mg/l of oil for disposal. These emulsions are notoriously difficult to break. The present work is focused on the treatment of such tough emulsions, by Fe3O4 nanoparticles, in which oil and water are effectively separated. The other conventional processes such as acidification, centrifugation, coagulation, ultrafiltration, UV radiation, ozone treatment, thermal irradiation, and electrolytic method are either energy intensive, time-consuming, costly, or non-eco-friendly. The Fe3O4 nanoparticles were synthesised by a co-precipitation method and characterized by XRD, SEM, and TEM. An experimental setup was built in-house for the treatment of emulsion effluents on a conveyor belt. Experiments were conducted using 1 % (v/v) o/w emulsion and different weight percentages of nanoparticles in an aqueous slurry. The mass balances of oil, water, and nanoparticles were checked and showed good recoveries. This process is economical, eco-friendly, less energy-intensive, and less time-consuming when compared to the other established procedures.


This article is one of a series of contributions part of a forthcoming symposium to be published by the Tulsa Law Review honoring Laurence H. Tribe. I take as my point of departure articles in print in 1977 that Tribe and Frank Michelman wrote addressing the then-recent Supreme Court decision in National League of Cities v. Usery. Each reached essentially the same conclusion: National League of Cities was, at bottom, a decision best justified by reference to an implicit constitutional obligation to address basic needs borne by state and local governments. This was a controversial argument - it quickly became, for example, one prominent foil for Daniel Farber's essay Against Brilliance. I revisit the efforts of Tribe, Michelman, and Farber, adding a close look at the work of William Rehnquist during the same period. Justice Rehnquist wrote the National League of Cities opinion. His work around this time suggests a way of reading the Tribe and Michelman articles differently - less efforts at explaining what Rehnquist was doing as contesting - each in interestingly different ways - characteristic aspects of Rehnquist's radically critical approach to constitutional law during this period. As it turns out, the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA revives some of the questions raised by National League of Cities, and the Tribe and Michelman discussions. I consider at some length a genealogy that links the standing discussion in the Massachusetts majority opinion with decisions running across much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that point to a duty to protect arguably acquiring constitutional status in the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is possible that Tribe and Michelman glimpsed, however obliquely, an important element in constitutional law easier to articulate now than in 1977.


Trust is an important component of wireless sensor networks for believability of the produced data, and trust history is a crucial asset in deciding trust of the data. In this paper, we show how provenance can be used for registering previous trust records and other information such as node type, data type, and node location. Our aim is to design a distributed trust‐enhancing architecture using only local provenance during sensor fusion with a low communication overhead. Our network is cognitive in the sense that our system reacts automatically upon detecting low trust. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


It is often assumed that a vertical scale is necessary when value-added models depend upon the gain scores of students across two or more points in time. This article examines the conditions under which the scale transformations associated with the vertical scaling process would be expected to have a significant impact on normative interpretations using gain scores. It is shown that this will depend upon the extent to which adopting a particular vertical scaling approach leads to a large degree of scale shrinkage (decreases in score variability over time). Empirical data are used to compare school-level gain scores computed as a function of different vertical scales transformed to represent increasing, decreasing, and constant trends in score variability across grades. A pragmatic approach is also presented to assess the departure of a given vertical scale from a scale with ideal equal-interval properties. Finally, longitudinal data are used to illustrate a case when the availability of a vertical scale will be most important: when questions are being posed about the magnitudes of student-level growth trajectories.


Today, I speak on behalf of our 181 National Societies around the world that make up the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. I also speak on behalf of the millions of volunteers and members who every day work selflessly to protect the lives, livelihoods and dignity of vulnerable people everywhere. They are indispensable in our efforts to build a better world. So, I consider it an honour, and a responsibility to be before you today. I hope I can convey clearly the strong sense of solidarity and unity among the members of the International Federation in our collective commitment to the theme of this Conference "Protecting human dignity".


Object detection in three-dimensional (3-D) laser scanning point clouds of complex urban environment is a challenging problem. Existing methods are limited by their robustness to complex situations such as occlusion, overlap, and rotation or by their computational efficiency. This paper proposes a high computationally efficient method integrating supervoxel with Hough forest framework for detecting objects from 3-D laser scanning point clouds. First, a point cloud is over-segmented into spatially consistent supervoxels. Each supervoxel together with its first-order neighborhood is grouped into one local patch. All the local patches are described by both structure and reflectance features, and then used in the training stage for learning a random forest classifier as well as the detection stage to vote for the possible location of the object center. Second, local reference frame and circular voting strategies are introduced to achieve the invariance to the azimuth rotation of objects. Finally, objects are detected at the peak points in 3-D Hough voting space. The performance of our proposed method is evaluated on real-world point cloud data collected by the up-to-date mobile laser scanning system. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art 3-D object detection methods with high computational efficiency.


The failure conditions of tunnel surrounding rock under different cross section after full face excavation were studied through a number of model tests. The simulation of unsupported tunnel failure process under gravitational stress is carried out successfully in the tests. The test results show that failure of surrounding rock initiates from the upper part of the tunnel and develops upward progressively. Failure form of tunnel is different under different cross section type. Comparing with two-lane tunnel, the surrounding rock of three-lane tunnel keeps shorter stabilization, failure develops to the ground surface more rapidly, the stress changing amplitude of those beside tunnel is larger, and the rock mass on the top of the tunnel slides downward more clearly.


Optical trapping was used for decades in biotechnology for a broad range of applications. It can be used for remote manipulation, application of pico-Newton forces and even study DNA processes. Nevertheless, optical trapping setups can be cumbersome. In order to reduce their footprint and be able to integrate them in lab-on-chips circuits, several techniques exist. This work explores the use of hollow cavities in two dimensional photonic crystals for integrated optical trapping in lab-on-chips. Photonic crystals are excellent candidates for this application thanks to their capacity to confine light below the diffraction limit. Photonic crystals sample were fabricated at EPFL, from silicon on insulator wafers. The crystals were made on the silicon membrane 220 nm thick. The holes of the photonic crystal lattice are 250 nm in diameter. The trapping occurs inside the hollow cavity, which is 700 nm in diameter. This hollow cavity introduced a localized mode with a hexagonal symmetry. Thanks to the gradient forces from the cavity mode, we are able to trap polystyrene nano spheres with sizes ranging from 500 nm down to 250 nm. The interaction between the trapped nano sphere and the mode gives rise to back action effects. Such resonant optical trapping differs greatly from classical optical tweezers. To understand this resonant trapping and find the most important parameters, we record the motion of single nano spheres trapped inside the photonic crystal cavity. The measurement is performed with back focal plane interferometry, which allows the measurement of the motion of the tracked object in three dimensions at large sampling frequency. To use this method of detection, a special sample and microfluidic membrane had to be designed and fabricated. The microfluidic membrane is made in polymer and glass to reproduces the thickness of a microscope coverslip. High-resolution imaging is performed through this microfluidic membrane, which is also used to carry the nano spheres in microchannels and control their flow with precision. The results show that ratio of the linewidth of the resonance of the cavity to the detuned resonance wavelength caused by the presence of the trapped object is a critical parameter. The analysis of 250 nm nano spheres displays a complex behaviour, where the trapped nano spheres are jumping from one lobe of the mode to another with a frequency depending of the power coupled to the cavity. Additionally, the measurement of the power transmitted through the photonic crystal after coupling to the cavity hold a considerable amount of information. It is possible to correlate the power coupled into the cavity with the trapping position. Moreover, the transmitted power can be used to identify the operation regime of the trapping cavity, as well as the size distribution of a solution of particles. It is also demonstrated that the trapping of several nano spheres is possible within a single cavity, while the nano spheres arrange themselves in complex structures.


ABSTRACT In Europe, both the fruits and flowers of Sambucus nigra L. have been used against cold, as well as laxative, diaphoretic, and diuretic remedies. There are also a number of commercially available food products that contain elderberry juice, puréed or dried elderberries. Recent comprehensive literature data on pharmacology and chemistry of Sambuci fructus have encouraged us to screen extracts with different polarities from this plant material against cancer cell lines. The cytotoxic activity of the ethyl acetate and aqueous acetone extracts from elderberries as well as detected triterpenoids on human colon adenocarcinoma cell line (LoVo) and human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) was investigated by sulforhodamine B assay. Moreover, cell migration assay was conducted for triterpenoid fraction and pure compounds. Aqueous acetone extract possessed much lower IC50 value in cancer cell lines compared to ethyl acetate extract. The latter manifested high cytotoxicity against studied cell lines, suggesting that nonpolar compounds are responsible for the cytotoxic activity. Indeed, the phytochemical analysis revealed that ursolic and oleanolic acids are the main triterpenoids in the mentioned extract of which ursolic acid showed the highest activity with IC50 values of 10.7 µg/mL on MCF-7 and 7.7 µg/mL on LoVo cells.


The damping of perfectly bonded CFRPs may only be increased by increasing the energy dissipation in the matrix. Accordingly the use of short fibres results in a slight increase in loss factor for a negligible sacrifice in stiffness by introducing shear strain magnification at the fibre tips. However, selection of a highly dissipative matrix resin along with the careful design of fibre lay-up yielded a stiff light CFRP with substantially increased damping. An experimental apparatus was designed and built, which enabled the loss factors of CFRPs undergoing both applied and induced combined shear and flexural vibrations to be measured. Predictions of combined mode damping behaviour were made according to existing equivalent strain analyses applied firstly to the CFRP as a macroscopically homogeneous material and secondly to the resin as the dissipating phase of the CFRP. The former produced qualitative agreement with experimental results, although physical considerations suggest this agreement to be coincidental only. The latter analysis was concluded to be more representative although the effects of shear deformation ignored in the model were found to be highly significant. Examination of the effects of high dynamic strain amplitudes on the structural damping of longitudinally restrained members necessitated a revision of the fundamental definition of structural loss factor and the implications of linear material damping. Consequently the basic assumption that for a linearly damped material structural loss factor equals the material loss factor was contradicted. High amplitude strains were found to have negligible effect on resin or CFRP damping, whilst induced axial strains significantly reduced the flexural loss factor. Experimental results endorsed the theoretical models. CFRPs, like resins, displayed essentially linear damping characteristics throughout the investigations. Future analyses of damping should concentrate on energy dissipation in specimens rather than their loss factors.


This article describes one study of conversation partnerships between American students enrolled in teacher education programs, and international students enrolled at the same large midwestern university. Twenty-nine pairs of partners during one 15-week semester were directed to meet at least 10 times minimally 30 minutes each. Topics for initial meetings were recommended, to help partners get started. As the semester progressed, topics were based on interests and needs of the partners. Three data sources were collected and analyzed. International students were surveyed at the end of the program with demographic and open-ended question about their perceived outcomes of the experience. American students were required to keep and submit weekly logs of the meetings and their thoughts about the meeting. These students were further required to write an end-semester reflection paper, exploring their learning in areas of: better understanding the English language; learning about other cultures; and any other meaningful insights about the experience. These latter two data sources were analyzed qualitatively, using constant comparative analysis. Results of the study, overall, were positive with interesting insights from participants. International students reported improving their English. American students had their "eyes opened" repeatedly about other cultures. Many of the partners reported the forming on genuine and hopefully sustainable friendships. Often, the partnerships went beyond the course requirements spending evenings, or weekend days together.


Congestion control in Signaling System #7 faces new challenges as mobile communication systems and Intelligent Networks grow rapidly. New services change traffic patterns, add to signalling network load, and raise demands on shorter service completion times. To handle new demands, the congestion control mechanisms must foresee an overload situation, and respond to it so that the net-work can maintain high probability for successful service completion. By measur-ing the time consumption for the initial Message Signalling Units of a service session it is possible to predict the duration of the service session and to detect an emerging congestion. If the predicted duration of the service session is too long, the service session is annihilated. This is the foundation of a congestion control mechanism that reacts fast and on information supplied by the congested part of the network. The congestion control mechanism increases the ratio of successfully completed services during congestion by several hundred percent.


Abstract This study analyzes the efficiency of the road production by local governments using data envelopment analysis. The production of roads is a costly public service, which makes an efficiency analysis in this field an interesting subject. I enhance the previous literature, first, by examining the differences in the efficiencies of eastern German counties while considering the deformation of the pavement and foundation of roads, which previous studies have not included due to data limitations. Second, I use a unique dataset on road quality for my efficiency analysis and show that the efficiency levels differ from those in studies that apply proxies, such as the number of accidents, to capture the quality of roads. These findings indicate that there is a great need to develop reliable variables to describe government services. Additionally, I show that the correlations between efficiency levels and county characteristics vary greatly depending on the quality indicator used.


This
excellent story answered two unresolved questions in the past one century and
two centuries. The first one is that water is colored or noncolored (Water
as an Activator of Luminescence. Nature 1930, 125, 706-707)? If it is colorful,
why and how does it emit the bright colors? The second question is on the
physical origin of catalysis or catalyst, i.e., the mysterious internal force
of catalysis is what, and how this powerful force determines the chemical
reactivity, including activity, selectivity and life times (or stability of
catalyst)? (A Brief History of Catalysis. CATTECH 2003, 7 (4), 130-138.)

After reading this
interesting story, both seemingly non-related two questions could be perfectly
answered by topological excitation of singly hydrated hydroxide complex in
confined sub-nanospace.


Pre-Silurian continental-margin deposits in western Norway, non-conformably overlying allochthonous continental orthogneisses retain Ordovician 40Ar/39Ar cooling ages for phengites, implying either rapid cooling immediately after a Late Ordovician orogenic event, or less likely, a slow cooling following an Early Ordovician or older orogeny. The Dalsfjord Suite–Høyvik Group basement–cover pair are probably a lateral equivalent to Late Proterozoic sandstones ('sparagmites') covering the Jotun Nappe gneisses of the Middle Allochthon in central-south Norway. The Høyvik Group underwent polyphase deformation, greenschist-facies metamorphism (Tmax<450°C) and exhumation prior to deposition of the unconformably overlying Wenlockian continental-margin deposits of the Herland Group. The Høyvik Group was only weakly metamorphosed during obduction of the Solund–Stavfjord Ophiolite and the Scandian continental collision between Baltica and Laurentia. Phengitic white micas from the Høyvik Group yield cooling ages of 446.1± 3.0, 449.1±2.2 and 447.5±4.0 Ma, respectively, identical within experimental error. One sample gives a plateau over 72% of the gas analysed, whereas the other samples were slightly disturbed after initial cooling, as indicated by systematically lower apparent ages at low experimental extraction temperatures. Minor 40Ar loss probably occurred during subsequent Scandian deformation and late to post-orogenic extension.The Høyvik Group rocks were unroofed before the Wenlock time (423–428 Ma) and cooled through the temperature for argon retention in phengite at c. 447±4 Ma, indicating a maximum cooling rate between 14 and 22C/Ma-1 through Ashgill and Llandovery times before being subjected to low-grade metamorphism during the Scandian orogeny. Rapid pre-Scandian cooling, combined with peak metamorphic conditions of 450C or less, may indicate that the Dalsfjord–Høyvik basement–cover pair were aVected by an orogenic event during the Late Ordovician (Caradoc) time. The data also suggest that the Caledonian margin of Baltica may have experienced a more protracted tectonism during the Caledonian cycle than previously models focusing on Early Caledonian and Tremadoc (or older) ophiolite obduction and the Scandian continental collision between Baltica and Laurentia.


Although large language models are used in speech recognition and machine translation applications, OCR systems are "far behind" in their use of language models. The reason for this is not the laggardness of the OCR community, but the fact that, at high accuracies, a frequency-based language model can do more damage than good, unless carefully applied. This paper presents an analysis of this discrepancy with the help of the Google Books n-gram Corpus, and concludes that noisy-channel models that closely model the underlying classifier and segmentation errors are required.


Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the release of moxifloxacin from a variety of daily disposable (DD) contact lenses (CLs) under various conditions using a novel in vitro eye model. Methods Four commercially available DD conventional hydrogel (CH) CLs (nelfilcon A, omafilcon A, etafilcon A, and ocufilcon B) and three silicone hydrogel (SH) CLs (somofilcon A, narafilcon A, and delefilcon A) were evaluated. These lenses were incubated in moxifloxacin for 24 hours. The release of the drug was measured using a novel in vitro model in three experimental conditions: (1) phosphate buffered saline (PBS); (2) artificial tear solution (ATS) containing a variety of proteins and lipids; and (3) ATS with mechanical rubbing produced by the device. Results Overall, CH CLs had a higher drug release than SH CLs (P < 0.05) under all conditions. Typically, a higher drug release was observed in PBS than ATS (P < 0.05). For CH, drug release was found to be higher in ATS with rubbing than PBS or ATS (P < 0.05). For most lens types, ATS with rubbing produced higher drug release than ATS alone (P < 0.05). Generally, the release kinetics for all conditions were sustained over the 24-hour testing period, and no burst release was observed (P < 0.05). Conclusions Moxifloxacin release from a CL into ATS is lower when compared to release into PBS. When mechanical rubbing is introduced, the amount of drugs released is increased. Translational Relevance Results suggest that sophisticated in vitro models are necessary to adequately model on-eye drug release from CL materials.


The experience gained during production ramp-up leads to an increase of the effective production capacity over time. However, full utilisation of production capacity is not always possible during ramp-up. In such cases, the experience gained and hence the available effective capacity are overestimated. We develop a new method, which captures ramp-up as a function of the cumulative production volume to better reflect the experience gained while producing the new product. The use of the more accurate and computationally effective approach is demonstrated for the case of secondary pharmaceutical production. Due to its regulatory framework, this industry cannot fully exploit available capacities during ramp-up. We develop a capacity planning model for a new pharmaceutical drug, which determines the number and location of new production lines and the build-up of inventory such that product availability at market launch is ensured. Our MILP model is applied to a real industry case study using three empirically observed ramp-up curves to demonstrate its value as decision support tool. We demonstrate the superiority of our volume-dependent method over the traditional time-dependent ramp-up functions and derive managerial insights into the selection of ramp-up function and the value of shortening ramp-ups.


Analog memory offers enormous potential to speed up computation in deep learning. We study the use of phase-change memory (PCM) as the resistive element in a crossbar array that allows the multiply-accumulate operation in deep neural networks to be performed in-memory. With this promise comes several challenges, including this paper's main focus: the impact of conductance drift on deep neural network accuracy. Here we offer an overview of our recent work, including explanations of popular neural network architectures, along with a technique to compensate for drift ("slope correction") to allow in-memory computing with PCM during inference to reach software-equivalent deep learning baselines for a broad variety of important neural network workloads.


Integrated pest management (IPM) has gained recognition worldwide as a key tool for
sustainable arable farming. Promoting natural pest control, strategic use of insecticides, and
farmer participation are three important elements in IPM. However, knowledge gaps exist
related to the economic value of natural pest control service, insecticides' efficacies and side
effects, and farmers' incentives to adopt natural pest control in arable fields. This thesis
addresses these gaps using UK and European arable crop systems. With a natural enemy
exclusion experiment and economic surplus method, the annual economic value of
predators and parasitoids for the summer grain aphid (Sitobion avenae) control in wheat
(Triticum spp.) in South East England was estimated to be £0-2.3 Million, depending on the
aphid infestation levels. Insecticidal sprays based on action thresholds would enhance the
value of this ecosystem service. By conducting a UK online survey among experts on
insecticide efficacies and side effects in oilseed rape (Brassica napus) protection, relatively
older chemical groups were perceived to have lower efficacies for target arthropod pests
than newer ones. Foliar sprays were perceived to have greater negative impacts than seed
treatments on users' health, natural enemies, pollinators, soil and water. Many foliar active
ingredients pose potential risks for non-target arthropod species in UK oilseed rape fields.
Through an interview of European arable farmers participating in an agri-environmental
project, respondents' willingness to encourage natural (animal) pest control was relatively
low. In comparison, using insecticides to control pests was the typical practice. Ordinal
logistic regression indicated that farmers' decision to promote natural pest control was
positively associated with the perceived importance of this ecosystem service on crop
production, but negatively associated with the perceived number of important pests in the
fields. The implications of these findings and avenues for future research to enhance IPM in
arable crops are discussed.


Endogenous, nontraumatic clostridial myonecrosis has a frequent association with colon carcinoma, leukemia, diabetes mellitus, and drug-induced immunosuppression. We present two cases of Clostridium septicum myonecrosis. An 18-year-old girl developed severe abdominal pain on day 7 after hospitalization for cytostatic treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood cultures yielded Clostridium septicum and histopathological exam of muscle tissue showed extended myonecrosis. Eventually the patient recovered with antibiotics and surgical therapy. A 72-year-old diabetic woman was treated as an outpatient with an intramuscular injection of steroidal antiphlogistics for "acute lumbar disc disease". The next morning persistence of hip pain and discoloration of the right thigh caused hospitalization under the suspected diagnosis "fracture of the neck of the femur". Clostridium septicum was cultured from intraoperatively taken swabs. At autopsy, in addition to the gangrene, there was an adenocarcinoma of the cecum, which had not been diagnosed during life.


Face presentation attack detection (PAD) is essential in mitigating spoofing attack vulnerabilities in face recognition systems. Despite the relatively good detection performance of PADs on known attacks, they tend to be challenged by unknown samples. To address this issue, we present our PatchSwap approach that aims at creating more challenging and complex bona fide, attack, and partial attack samples despite limited training resources. The PatchSwap operates by swapping intra-identity patches between training samples and correspondingly updates their pixel-wise mask label, all under a controlled strategy. The PatchSwap is deployed as an augmentation technique and can be effortlessly integrated into any model training process. The different choices towards our PatchSwap design are exhaustively investigated and proven in detailed studies. We conduct extensive experiments under intra-dataset and cross-dataset scenarios and on three different network backbones. The experimental results showed that the PatchSwap successfully induces significant gains in the PAD performance under different evaluation settings.


In the study students' affective entry characteristics related to Physical Education lessons were examined based on three dimensions: interest towards the lesson, level of motivation in the lesson and educational gains. The study further aimed to investigate how these three dimensions were affected by the gender factor. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire developed by Yoncalik in 2006. A total of 1089 seventh grade pupils (530 girls; 559 boys) from 22 state primary schools in Konya and Ankara city centres participated in the study. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences 11.0 (SPSS) was used for the statistical analysis of the data. The t-test for independent groups was utilised to compare the participants' responses in terms of gender. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. The research findings revealed that boys were more interested, more motivated and had more educational gains than girls in the Physical Education lesson. Key words: Interest; Motivation; Physical Education; Primary school education.


Programming, safety measures and handling of inflexibility still hinder robot implementation for many applications. However, advancements in several fields such as programming, human–machine-interfaces and safety system technology are about to change this. These advancements could make it possible for operators to collaborate with robots that assist operators at close range, without compromising safety, often referred to as cobot installations. The aim of the project was to produce a picture of how potential economic advantages can be evaluated from installations of cobot cells, to be compared with manual assembly and standard robot installations.


In oil and gas well cementing, a strong cement sheath is wanted to insure long-term safety of the wells. Successful completion of cementing job has become more complex, as drilling is being done in highly deviated and high pressure-high temperature wells. Use of nano materials in enhanced oil recovery, drilling fluid, oil well cementing and other applications is being investigated. This study is an attempt to investigate the effect of nano materials on oil well cement properties. Two types of nano materials were investigated, which are Nano silica (>40 nm) and Nano Alumina (80 nm) and high sulfate-resistant glass G cement is used. The investigated properties of oil well cement included compressive strength, thickening time, density, free water and rheological properties. All tests are conducted according to API specification and proceed in Laboratory of Drilling in Petroleum Technology Department in University of Technology and in Missan Oil Company. The experimental results show that NS and NAL behave like accelerators when added to cement and work to increase the compressive strength at 38°C but these increasing in compressive strength changes when the temperature is increased to 60°C. Also, adding NS and NAL lead to increasing in rheological parameter and reduce free water but the change in density is very small. The results show that the effect of NAL on compressive strength and thickening time is greater than the effect of NS but the effect of NS on free water and rheology is greater than the effect of NAL.


Thalidomide, initially introduced as a sedative, was withdrawn from the market in the early 1960s after it was found to be a teratogen. However, it later found use as an investigational agent in the treatment of erythema nodosum leprosum, oral ulcers, graft versus host disease, and wasting associated with the human immunodeficiency syndrome. Its antiangiogenic properties were recognized in the early 1990s during a period where the importance of angiogenesis became increasingly apparent as a critical step in the in the proliferation and spread of malignant neoplasms. This led to the evaluation of thalidomide as an antiangiogenic agent in the treatment of several cancers. Thalidomide has already become part of standard therapy for the treatment of patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma. It has also been found to have varying degree of benefit in various other malignancies. Although more clinical trials are needed, Kaposi' s sarcoma and myelofibrosis represent other malignancies in which thalidomide has already demonstrated promising activity. The mechanism of action of thalidomide in cancer is still unclear, but do appear to be mediated by several other mechanisms in addition to its anti-angiogenic properties. This article reviews the current status of thalidomide for the treatment of non-plasma-cell malignancies.


Treatment of malignant and non-malignant cultured human cell lines with a cytotoxic IC50 dose of ∼2 μM tris(4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline)ruthenium(ii) chloride (RPC2) retards or arrests microtubule motion as tracked by visualizing fluorescently-tagged microtubule plus end-tracking proteins. Immunofluorescent microscopic images of the microtubules in fixed cells show substantial changes to cellular microtubule network and to overall cell morphology upon treatment with RPC2. Flow cytometry with MCF7 and H358 cells reveals only minor elevations of the number of cells in G2/M phase, suggesting that the observed cytotoxicity is not tied to mitotic arrest. In vitro studies with purified tubulin reveal that RPC2 acts to promote tubulin polymerization and when imaged by electron microscopy, these microtubules look normal in appearance. Isothermal titration calorimetry measurements show an associative binding constant of 4.8 × 106 M−1 for RPC2 to preformed microtubules and support a 1 : 1 RPC2 to tubulin dimer stoichiometry. Competition experiments show RPC2 does not compete for the taxane binding site. Consistent with this tight binding, over 80% of the ruthenium in treated cells is co-localized with the cytoskeletal proteins. These data support RPC2 acting as an in vivo microtubule stabilizing agent and sharing many similarities with cells treated with paclitaxel.


The privatization of government services tends to bring about a more rapid adoption of innovative policies due to the competitive pressures of the market. In federal systems, however, the diffusion of innovations across subnational governments may offset such benefits of privatization. In this study, we test whether county governments that have privatized their provision of foster care services are more or less likely to adopt policy innovations and more or less likely to learn from the policies of other counties than are those that have resisted privatization. We explore the diffusion of four innovative foster care policies across 384 counties in five states between 1995 and 2006. We find that the initial innovativeness arising from the market competition of privatization is counterbalanced by learning across public diffusion networks.


This paper presents a bi-level image compression method based on chain codes and entropy coders. However, the proposed method also includes an order estimation process to estimate the order of dependencies that may exist among the chain code symbols prior to the entropy coding stage. For each bi-level image, the method first obtains its chain code representation and then estimates its order of symbol dependencies. This order value is used to find the conditional and joint symbol probabilities corresponding to our newly defined Markov model. Our order estimation process is based on the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), a statistically based model selection technique that has proved to be a consistent order estimator. In our experiments, we show how our order estimation process can help achieve more efficient compression levels by providing comparisons against some of the most commonly used image compression standards such as the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group (JBIG), and JBIG2.


Background/aims: Fungal peritonitis (FP) significantly alters the outcome of patients on peritoneal dialysis (PD). Exposure to antibiotics is a risk factor for subsequent FP. Antifungal prophylaxis has been tried, with varying success, to prevent the occurrence of antibiotic-related fungal peritonitis (AR-FP). We aimed to evaluate the effect of prophylaxis with a low dose of fluconazole, in preventing AR-FP. Methods: In this retrospective review, we examined the incidence of FP in a cohort of 115 patients, who had received antibiotics for bacterial peritonitis and received a co-prescription of fluconazole, 50 mg/day for the duration of antibiotic therapy. The incidence of bacterial peritonitis and FP for up to 3 months after antibiotic therapy was noted. Results: One hundred and fifteen patients were followed up over a 6-year period, for 2549 patient-months. We observed 82 episodes of bacterial peritonitis and a total of 137 antibiotic prescriptions. The peritonitis rate was 1 episode per 31.08 patient-months (1 per 2.58 patient-year, 0.38 episodes every patient-year). We had six episodes of FP. There were no episodes of AR-FP. Conclusion: We observed very low rates of both bacterial peritonitis and FP, and prophylaxis with low-dose fluconazole seemed to confer protection against AR-FP. We did not encounter any adverse effects with its use.


In order to effectively integrate digital technology into education, it is necessary to examine and understand teachers' preparedness to use digital technology in education. The objective of this pilot study is to validate a self-reported instrument to measure teachers' preparedness to use Information and Communication Technologies for learning and teaching. The survey items of the instrument are grounded and developed on the basis of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Data was collected from a sample of 157 teachers at seven K-9 schools in Sweden and analysed mainly using exploratory factor analysis. The results yielded a seven-factor structure comprising a model of teachers' digital competence focusing on their preparedness. These factors are: (1) Abilities to use digital learning technology, (2) Social influence and support, (3) Intention of use, (4) Usefulness and efficiency, (5) Limitation awareness, (6) Pedagogical potential, and (7) Assistance awareness. The results of this study aim to support schools when encouraging and supporting teachers to use technology in teaching and learning. They can also be used to measure differences before and after inventions, such as on the job teacher training.


ENERGY AS A FACTOR FOR TURKISH-RUSSIAN RAPPROCHEMENT Saltuk Buğra Karahan Old Dominion University, 2015 Director: Steve A. Yetiv This dissertation started with a simple question: What was the main source of Turkish-Russian rapprochement seen generally after the end of the Cold War, specifically within the last 15 years (2001-2015)? A review of the literature on the subject revealed three explanations for Turkish-Russian rapprochement: (1) Perception of the U.S. as a threat in the Black Sea and Caucasus region, (2) Deterioration of Turkey's relations with the West, and (3) Turkey's need for energy. Thus came the main question for this work: To what extent does Turkey's need for energy play a role in Turkish-Russian rapprochement? Although each of the explanations are analyzed in detail as variables in this study, the focus is on energy, primarily from a Turkish foreign policy perspective. Once the variables were explored with their respective influence in TurkishRussian relations, they were further tested on the foreign policy choices of Turkey in two specific regions of interest for Turkey: the Middle East and the South Caucasus. In the case studies, with the consideration that each country's specific conditions played a role in its relations with Turkey, energy was found to be a significant factor. The findings from the case studies further supported the role of energy beyond any other factor in the making of Turkish foreign policy, and thus also support the main argument that Turkey's need for energy has served as the main factor for Turkish-Russian rapprochement.


The design and analysis of various distributed space time block coding
schemes for cooperative relay networks is considered in this thesis.
Rayleigh frequency flat and selective fading channels are assumed to
model the links in the networks, and interference suppression techniques
together with an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
type transmission approach are employed to mitigate synchronization
errors at the destination node induced by the different delays through
the relay nodes.
Closed-loop space time block coding is first considered in the context
of decode-and-forward (regenerative) networks. In particular, quasi orthogonal
and extended orthogonal coding techniques are employed for
transmission from four relay nodes and parallel interference cancellation
detection is exploited to mitigate synchronization errors. Availability
of a direct link between the source and destination nodes is studied.
Outer coding is then added to gain further improvement in end-to-end
performance and amplify-and-forward (non regenerative) type networks
together with distributed space time coding are considered to reduce
relay node complexity. A novel detection scheme is then proposed
for decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward networks with closed-loop
extended orthogonal coding and closed-loop quasi-orthogonal coding
which reduce the computational complexity of the parallel interference cancellation. The near-optimum detector is presented for relay
nodes with single or dual antennas. End-to-end bit error rate simulations
confirm the potential of the approach and its ability to mitigate
synchronization errors.


This paper lays out the complexity of why and how women have supported ISIS. It identifies gendered specifics in women's pathways towards the group and argues that prevent-, deradicalization- and rehabilitation programmes need to be gender-sensitive in order to adequately respond to these wide-ranging motivations, drivers and gender-specific catalysing factors. It explores women's different roles in ISIS and points to challenges in law-enforcement and judicial responses to women in ISIS, arguing that a gender-sensitive, case-by-case approach is crucial in order to avoid (subconscious) gender-stereotyping of women and to ensure gendered factors including issues around agency and criminal liability as well as women's experiences while in the Islamic State are taken into account.


This study is an extension of the earlier study with a focus on the impact of the El Nino induced weather changes at the regional and farm levels. It provides a complete continuum of the impacts and implications of El Nino from the national to the regional and farm levels. Hence, the general objective of the study is to determine the impact of El Nino induced climate variability on agriculture at the sub-national and farm level, and to identify appropriate mechanisms to mitigate the impact so as to ensure the stability of the agricultural contribution to the regional and farm economy. In this study, the northwest region of Peninsular Malaysia was chosen as the region under study. It comprises of the states of Kedah and Perlis. The main climatic feature of the region is its distinctive two dry seasons and the resultant drought periods. The region is also an important agricultural and food producing area in the country and the agricultural sector is one of the important economic contributors to the region. As such, it is expected that El Nino induced climatic changes could result in significant impacts on the performance of the agricultural sector and the regional economy as a whole.


Dear Editor, We thank the authors of the submitted Letter to the Editor1 for their interest in our article2 and would like to offer a Letter of Reply to their inquiries. As described in the second paragraph of the Results section,2 as well as the in the title for Table 1,2 this table displays the time intervals for calls which had a full set of times available. While advanced statistical analysis would be ideal in describing these times, it was not within the scope or purpose of this retrospective study, and as such, data are presented using the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles. Furthermore, while time between first medical contact and time to primary coronary intervention would certainly be interesting to examine, those data were not available for analysis. It is not particularly clear to us what "average time spent on imaging" is referring to. The number which is cited in the Letter to the Editor is the time that Emergency Medical Service crews spent on scene, and while that does include acquiring and transmitting a 12-lead electrocardiogram, it also encompasses getting to the patient, assessing and treating the patient, packaging the patient for transport, and moving the patient to the ambulance. As such, the authors of the Letter to the Editor seem to suggest an incorrect assumption regarding what they deem to be a "delay seen in the first imaging."


The pink stem borer (Sesamia nonagrioides Lef.) is the most important pest of maize (Zea mays L.) in northwestern Spain. The objective of this work was to evaluate defense mechanisms against Sesamia in 10 inbred lines and the 10-parent diallel among these inbreds. Hybrids and inbred lines were tested over 2 yr in northwestern Spain under natural and artificial infestations. Yield of infested and non infested plants per plot were computed to calculate yield loss caused by the pink stem borer attack. Principal component analyses for stem damage traits and for ear damage traits were made for each infestation condition. From the principal component analysis, an index was computed to measure stem damage and ear damage. Damage index under artificial infestation was used to evaluate antibiosis while antixenosis was detected when damage index of each genotype was compared under artificial and natural infestation. The regressions of yield loss on the damage index were used to separate the genotypes into four groups according to the possession of antibiosis andlor tolerance mechanisms. A509, A661, EP31, F7, PB60, and Z77016 showed stem antibiosis. A637, A661, EP31, F7, and PB60 exhibited stem tolerance. A509, A661, and EP31 stood out by their ear antibiosis. A637, A661, F7, and PB60 were tolerant to ear damage. We conclude that the three mechanisms of defense to the pink stem borer attack (antixenosis, antibiosis, and tolerance) were found among inbred lines and hybrids. A multitrait selection scheme using damage traits and yield could improve the defense level against pink stem borer.


Octavio Paz is one of the most recognised Latin American writers. His essays offer a sophisticated critique of global modernity. Although his work has advanced many of the arguments that orient our contemporary debates in the social sciences and in philosophy, it has hardly ever been seriously taken into consideration in these disciplines. The volume suggests that this may have been a mistake. Its authors indicate ways in which Paz' essays can be read as substantial contributions to the contemporary debates in various fields. The aim of this book is to present to a non-Spanish speaking audience some of the discussions about Paz' offerings to the ongoing debates. It also wants to make a clear statement: a critique of our contemporary modernity must go hand in hand with a non-exclusive intercultural understanding of Humanism.


This paper presents a novel metric inspection robot system using a deep neural network to detect and measure surface flaws (i.e., crack and spalling) on concrete structures performed by a wall-climbing robot. The system consists of four modules: robotics data collection module to obtain RGB-D images and IMU measurement, visual-inertial SLAM module to generate pose coupled key-frames with depth information, InspectionNet module to classify each pixel into three classes (back-ground, crack and spalling), and 3D registration and map fusion module to register the flaw patch into registered 3D model overlaid and highlighted with detected flaws for spatial-contextual visualization. The system enables the metric model of each surface flaw patch with pixel-level accuracy and determines its location in 3D space that is significant for structural health assessment and monitoring. The InspectionNet achieves an average accuracy of 87.64% for crack and spalling inspection. We also demonstrate our InspectionNet is robust to view angle, scale and illumination variation. Finally, we design a metric voxel volume map to highlight the flaw in 3D model and provide location and metric information.


We report the exact analysis of asymptotic behavior for some stochastic cellular automata with a quadratic conserved quantity. There exists a reduction from the cellular automaton with a quadratic conserved quantity to that with a primary through a transformation of variable. Exact analysis about the asymptotic behavior is made utilizing this relation.


The extratropical circulation response to cooling of the polar-winter stratosphere in a simple AGCM is investigated. The AGCM is a dry hydrostatic primitive equation model with zonally symmetric boundary conditions and analytically specified physics. It is found that, as the polar-winter stratosphere is cooled, the tropospheric jet shifts poleward. This response projects almost entirely and positively (by convention) onto the AGCM's annular mode. At the same time, the vertical flux of wave activity from the troposphere to the stratosphere is reduced and the meridional flux of wave activity from high to low latitudes is increased. Thus, as the stratosphere is cooled, the stratospheric wave drag is reduced. In order to understand this response, the transient adjustment of the stratosphere‐troposphere system is investigated using an ensemble of ''switch on'' stratospheric cooling runs of the AGCM. The response to the switch-on stratospheric cooling descends from the upper stratosphere into the troposphere on a time scale that matches simple downward-control theory estimates. The downward-control analysis is pursued with a zonally symmetric model that uses as input the thermal and eddy-driving terms from the eddying AGCM. With this model, the contributions to the response from the thermal and eddy-driving perturbations can be investigated separately, in the absence of eddy feedbacks. It is found that the stratospheric thermal perturbation, in the absence of such feedbacks, induces a response that is confined to the stratosphere. The stratospheric eddy-driving perturbation, on the other hand, induces a response that penetrates into the midtroposphere but does not account, in the zonally symmetric model, for the tropospheric jet shift. Furthermore, the tropospheric eddy-driving perturbation, in the zonally symmetric model, induces a strong upward response in the stratospheric winds. From these experiments and from additional experiments with the eddying AGCM, it is concluded that the stratospheric eddy-driving response induces a tropospheric response, but that the full circulation response results from a two-way coupling between the stratosphere and the troposphere.


Due to the increasing and varying risks that economic units face with, derivative instruments gain substantial importance, and trading volumes of derivatives have reached very significant level. Parallel with these high trading volumes, researchers have developed many different models. Some are parametric, some are nonparametric. In this study, the aim is to analyse the success of artificial neural network in pricing of options with S&P 100 index options data. Generally, the previous studies cover the data of European type call options. This study includes not only European call option but also American call and put options and European put options. Three data sets are used to perform three different ANN models. One only includes data that are directly observed from the economic environment, i.e. strike price, spot price, interest rate, maturity, type of the contract. The others include an extra input that is not an observable data but a parameter, i.e. volatility. With these detail data, the performance of ANN in put/call dimension, American/European dimension, moneyness dimension is analyzed and whether the contribution of the volatility in neural network analysis make improvement in prediction performance or not is examined. The most striking results revealed by the study is that ANN shows better performance when pricing call options compared to put options; and the use of volatility parameter as an input does not improve the performance. Keywords—Option Pricing, Neural Network, S&P 100 Index, American/European options


In this study, advanced methods of nonlinear data analysis and mechanistic models are combined to investigate transport and turnover of airborne sulphate in the aquifer of a forested watershed. The objective is to understand why adjacent sites differ substantially with respect to short-term and long-term sulphate concentration time series. First, a groundwater model was parameterized as a basis for a coupled model. A detailed analysis revealed substantial uncertainties with respect to, e.g. residence times and the spatial pattern of groundwater discharge. Second, a time series of sulphate concentration in the catchment runoff was analysed using artificial neural networks. The chemical hydrograph provides spatially integrated information about the groundwater of the watershed. In addition, the pronounced short-term dynamics reflect the varying contribution of shallow and deep groundwater on stream discharge. The neural network revealed a substantial change in these dynamics during the last 14 years. Based on these results, only a few of a variety of candidate processes were selected for a mechanistic model of reactive sulphate transport in the aquifer. Sulphate transport and interaction with the matrix is described as an equilibrium sorption process. A very simplified model is used for water transport. Although none of the parameters was fitted by inverse modelling, the model matched the long-term dynamics of sulphate concentration. In addition, it succeeded in giving the envelope of observed short-term variability of sulphate concentration due to the varying contributions of different flow paths. It is concluded that using different process-based and data-based modelling approaches in an iterative way can considerably help the optimization of hydrologic models with respect to the available data, thus avoiding some of the problems associated with over-parameterized mechanistic models.


Mast cells play a critical role in host immune responses and are implicated in the pathogenesis of allergic inflammation. Though mouse mast cell line MC/9 expresses cell surface Fas Ag and is sensitive to Fas-induced apoptosis, activated MC/9 cells are resistant to Fas-induced cell death by cross-linking of Fc e RI or Fc g R. Fas-associated death domain-like IL-1-converting enzyme (FLICE)-inhibitory protein (FLIP), a caspase-8 inhibitor that lacks the cisteine domain, is one of the negative regulators of receptor-mediated apoptosis. In this report, we show that activation of mast cells by cross-linking of Fc e RI or Fc g R can induce enhanced expression of FLIP and consequently a resistance to Fas-induced apoptosis, although the expression level of Fas Ag is not changed. Addition of antisense oligonucleotide for FLIP prevents resistance to Fas-induced apoptosis of activated mast cells, suggesting that endogenous FLIP inhibits Fas-mediated apoptosis in activated mast cells. Thus, the enhanced expression of FLIP in activated mast cells contributes to the resistance to Fas-induced apoptosis, which may result in the development and prolongation of allergic inflammation. The Journal of Immunology, 2000, 165: 6262–6269.


1Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment (AIHTA), Vienna, Austria; 2MSWiA Central Clinical Hospital, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland Aim: To summarize the evidence on the clinical effectiveness and safety of coronary sinus reducing stent (CSRS) therapy in refractory angina pectoris (AP) patients. Methods: We performed a systematic literature search in common databases (n=4). The evidence obtained was summarized according to GRADE methodology. A health technology assessment (HTA) was conducted using the HTA Core Model for Rapid Relative Effectiveness Assessment. Primary outcomes for the clinical effectiveness domain were the proportion of patients with improvement in two or more Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) angina score classes, overall mean reduction of CCS class, and Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) quality of life (QoL) score improvement. Outcomes for the safety domain were adverse device effects (ADEs) and serious adverse device effects (SADEs). Results: One randomized controlled trial (RCT) was identified. Outcomes that showed statistically significant differences between CSRS and sham treatment (in favor of CSRS) were CCS angina score improvement of one or two classes, overall mean reduction of CCS class, and SAQ QoL score improvement. Concerning safety, the sham-controlled trial data indicate that there were fewer SADEs in the intervention group (19%) than in the control group (46%). SADEs reported in observation studies ranged from none to 30%. The most frequently reported SADEs were death and stable angina. In the RCT, the only case of death occurred in the control group. Concerning clinical effectiveness, the risk of bias (RoB) was rated to be low, and concerning safety, the RoB was rated to range from low to moderate. As assessed by GRADE, the overall strength of evidence for effectiveness and safety was moderate. Internal and external validity of the evidence base were low. Conclusion: Even though the current evidence indicates that the assessed technology, CSRS, is potentially more effective than sham intervention for refractory AP patients, the lack of internal validity of the studies undermines the partially positive results.


Penn Central v. New York is the most important regulatory takings case of all time. There, the Supreme Court upheld the historic preservation of Grand Central Terminal in part because the City offset the burden of the landmarking with a valuable new property interest — a transferable development right (TDR) — that could be sold to neighboring property. Extraordinarily, 1.2 million square feet of those very same TDRs, still unused for over 40 years, are the subject of new takings litigation. According to a newly filed complaint, the TDRs that saved Grand Central have themselves been taken by the government, which allegedly wiped out their value by permissively upzoning the neighboring property. The litigation is not only a captivating postscript to Penn Central, but also a compelling context for examining the category of regulatory property more generally. Regulatory property — like TDRs and pollution credits, for example — is increasingly important and valuable, but raises complicated trade-offs between the need for stability in property-based entitlements and policy flexibility in governance. This Essay ultimately argues that the creation of regulatory property should not prevent policy changes far into the future.


One hundred sixty-one neoplasms from the region of the head and neck were studied by electron microscopy to define (1) subcellular structures important of essential to diagnosis, and (2) the application and/or limitations of fresh, formaldehyde-fixed, and paraffin-blocked tissues for diagnostic use. It was concluded that electron microscopical identification of specific cytoplasmic structures was helpful in the diagnosis of head and neck neoplasms, especially those that were equivocal at the light microscopical level. Although electron microscopy could permit a more accurate classification of neoplasms in many cases, it was of little value in separating benign from malignant lesions. It was also concluded that formaldehyde-fixed tissue was a reliable source of material for these studies. Paraffin-embedded tissue was much more limited.


Recent advances in allometric theory have proposed a novel quantitative framework by which to view the evolution of plant form and function. This general theory has placed strong emphasis on the importance of long-distance transport in shaping the evolution of many attributes of plant form and function. Specifically, it is hypothesized that with the evolutionary increase in plant size natural selection has also resulted in vascular networks that minimize scaling of total hydrodynamic resistance associated with increasing transport distances. Herein the central features of this theory are reviewed and a broad sampling of supporting but yet preliminary empirical data are analysed. In particular, subtle attributes of the scaling of tracheid and vessel anatomy are hypothesized to be crucial for the evolution of increased plant size. Furthermore, the importance of minimizing hydrodynamic resistance associated with increased transport distances is also hypothesized to be reflected in an isometric scaling relationship between stem mass, M S and root mass, M R ( i.e. M S µ µ µ M R ). Preliminary data from multiple extant and fossil plant taxa provide tantalizing evidence supporting the predicted relationships. Together, these results suggest that selection for the minimization of the scaling of hydrodynamic resistance within plant vascular networks has in turn allowed for the enormous diversification in vascular plant size.


This guide is for students enrolled in ARE or CNS 100 and suggests library resources and tools that might be helpful.


Lung function is a heritable trait. Heritability estimates posit that approximately30%–50% of the phenotypic variation in FEV1 is explained by genetics,1–3 and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of lung function4–11 have discovered multiple genetic variants that are associated with cross-sectional measurements in adults of FEV1, FVC and FEV1/FVC ratio at genome-wide significance levels. Many of these same loci have also been implicated in GWAS of COPD. Additional work is required to link these loci to pathophysiology. Functional studies on GWAS loci involving HHIP ,12 ,13 FAM13A ,14 HTR4 ,15 AGER 16 and IREB2 17 have already provided important insights into the biological mechanisms for genetic determinants of COPD and/or lung function.

Longitudinal change in lung function (ΔFEV1, ΔFEV1/FVC) is also heritable,18 albeit perhaps to a lesser degree than cross-sectional lung function levels. Although studies of longitudinal lung function have discovered a few loci associated with ΔFEV1 at genome-wide significance levels, none were robust to replication in the available populations. While at first glance the genetic determinants of FEV1 level and ΔFEV1 might be expected to show significant overlap, a recent study of COPD by Lange et al 19 and a complementary study in asthma by McGeachie et al 20 have suggested that low maximum attained lung function and accelerated lung function decline are distinct processes that can exert independent effects on the risk for chronic airflow obstruction. Therefore, it would not be surprising if different genetic determinants influenced cross-sectional and longitudinal lung function change. Longitudinal measurements of lung function are highly informative for identifying these separate processes. In contrast, one …


Objective: To evaluate the severity and causes of accidents on motorways M-1 and M-2.Study Design: Descriptive survey.Place and Duration of Study: Department of Public Health, Sarhad University Islamabad Campus from Jan to Mar 2017.Material and Methods: It was a census study and data of all accidents, occurred during 2015 (01 Jan-31 Dec), was collected by using National Highway and Motorway Police Forms (Form No: 1.1/ops, 1.2/ops and 1.3/ops). No sampling technique was involved as all accidents were studied.Results: Out of total 453 accidents during 2015, 242 (53%) were non-fatal, 102 (23%) were fatal and 109 (24%) involved property damage. Out of total 153 deaths, 89 (58%) were passengers, 51 (33%) were drivers and 13 (9%) were pedestrians. Six hundred (77%) passengers were injured out of 769 and number of drivers injured was 169 (22%). Major causes of accidents were over speeding (39%), dozing at wheel (21%) and tyre bursts (15%). Most of accidents were reported on Saturdays and Sundays; 78 (17%) and 75 (16.5%) respectively, whereas least number reported on Fridays 49 (11%). Maximum number of accidents happened in December that was 69 (15%), followed by July and September (14% in each month).Conclusion: According to the results of this study road accidents are more prevalent in male drivers (91%). Majority of crashes involved LTV (70%) and peak timings were midnight to early morning (30%) and afternoon (28%). Over speeding and dozing at wheel (63%) and poor tyre conditions (27%) were main causes of accidents requiring multi-sectoral approach along with community participation.


In this thesis five bulk ships from Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Skipsrederi AS has been monitored over time in order to discover the increase in resistance due to fouling on the hull and propeller. Each ship has reported weather and ship data twice a month. These reports have been used to discover the resistance due to fouling by correcting all other added resistances from each measurement in the given time period. When all other resistance types are corrected for, each measurement is as if the ship travelled in calm weather. Then these results can be compared. The resistance types that are corrected for in this thesis are: Added resistance in waves Added resistance in wind Added resistance due to steering Speed loss due to shallow water When each measurement has been corrected for these resistance types, they are corrected to a reference speed and draft to be able to compare the results properly. In addition, the extent of the added resistance due to yaw angle because of lift forces from the rudder has been investigated and found to be neglectable. It has been found that the increase in resistance due to fouling is relatively linear the first two-three years. After three years the increase in resistance gets exponential.


Title of Document: Ecosystem Impact of Winter Dinoflagellate Blooms in the Choptank River, MD Nicole Millette, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Directed By: Assistant Professor, Dr. Jamie Pierson, Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland Center of Environmental Science Heterocapsa rotundata is a dinoflagellate species that is known to form winter blooms in coastal and estuarine systems. Despite evidence that winter H. rotundata blooms are a common occurrence, there is a lack of laboratory and field-based research on the ecology of this species. My goal was to understand the impact these blooms had on the plankton food web and whether the winter blooms influenced the spring ecosystem. A majority of my research was done with water collected from the Choptank River, MD over the course of five winters. I conducted dilution and prey removal experiments to address the importance of top-down control to the formation of winter blooms. These experiments showed that appropriate environmental conditions are necessary for high H. rotundata growth, and that a bloom will not form unless zooplankton grazing pressure is reduced. I also used a combination of laboratory and field experiments to address whether mixotrophy helps H. rotundata bloom in winter, and my work showed that H. rotundata typically dominates winter blooms because they are a mixotrophic species that uses phagotrophy to overcome the light limitation of winter. I used cultures of Eurytemora carolleeae and H. rotundata to test if high H. rotundata abundances benefit E. carolleeae populations. I found that H. rotundata has no effect on E. carolleeae egg production rate or hatching success rate, but that they can increase the survival E. carolleeae nauplii. Ultimately, through the use of historical data and a temperature based E. carolleeae developmental model, I discovered that lower winter temperatures improve the potential for high annual recruitment of anadromous fish larvae hatched in spring in Chesapeake Bay. Winters with below average temperatures reduce the development rate of E. carolleeae nauplii hatched in winter, and H. rotundata blooms are likely to form and that increase the survival of E. carolleeae nauplii. The delayed development and increased survival causes distinct peaks in E. carolleeae populations later in spring, increasing the chance of high E. carolleeae abundance when fish larvae start feeding. Overall, my research has shown the winter temperature and plankton community can influence the spring ecosystem, specifically the survival and recruitment of anadromous fish larvae. ECOSYSTEM IMPACT OF WINTER DINOFLAGELLATE BLOOMS IN THE CHOPTANK RIVER, MD


In response to our paper on the evolutionary history of the Chinese flora, Qian suggests that certain features of the divergence time estimation employed might have led to biased conclusions in Lu et al (2018). Here, we consider Qian's specific criticisms, explore the extent of uncertainty in the data and demonstrate that (i) no systematic bias toward dates that are too young or too old is detected in Lu et al.; (ii) constraint of the crown age of angiosperms does not bias the generic ages estimated by Lu et al.; and (iii) ages derived from the Chinese regional phylogeny do not bias the conclusions reported by Lu et al. All these analyses confirm that the conclusions reported previously are robust. We argue that, like many large‐scale biodiversity analyses, sources of noise in divergence time estimation are to be expected, but these should not be confused with bias.