Quality of experience (QoE) is becoming increasingly important in signal processing applications. In taking inspiration from chemometrics, we provide an introduction to the design of video quality metrics by using data analysis methods, which are different from traditional approaches. These methods do not necessitate a complete understanding of the human visual system (HVS). We use multidimensional data analysis, an extension of well-established data analysis techniques, allowing us to better exploit higher-dimensional data. In the case of video quality metrics, it enables us to exploit the temporal properties of video more properly; the complete three-dimensional structure of the video cube is taken into account in metrics' design. Starting with the well-known principal component analysis and an introduction to the notation of multiway arrays, we then present their multidimensional extensions, delivering better quality prediction results. Although we focus on video quality, the presented design principles can easily be adapted to other modalities and to even higher dimensional data sets as well.


Purpose AZD1775 is a first-in-class, potent, and selective inhibitor of WEE1 with proof of chemopotentiation in p53-deficient tumors in preclinical models. In a phase I study, the maximum tolerated dose of AZD1775 in combination with carboplatin demonstrated target engagement. We conducted a proof-of-principle phase II study in patients with p53 tumor suppressor gene ( TP53)-mutated ovarian cancer refractory or resistant (< 3 months) to first-line platinum-based therapy to determine overall response rate, progression-free and overall survival, pharmacokinetics, and modulation of phosphorylated cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK1) in skin biopsies. Patients and Methods Patients were treated with carboplatin (area under the curve, 5 mg/mL⋅min) combined with AZD1775 225 mg orally twice daily over 2.5 days every 21-day cycle until disease progression. Results AZD1775 plus carboplatin demonstrated manageable toxicity; fatigue (87%), nausea (78%), thrombocytopenia (70%), diarrhea (70%), and vomiting (48%) were the most common adverse events. The most frequent grade 3 or 4 adverse events were thrombocytopenia (48%) and neutropenia (37%). Of 24 patients enrolled, 21 patients were evaluable for efficacy end points. The overall response rate was 43% (95% CI, 22% to 66%), including one patient (5%) with a prolonged complete response. Median progression-free and overall survival times were 5.3 months (95% CI, 2.3 to 9.0 months) and 12.6 months (95% CI, 4.9 to 19.7), respectively, with two patients with ongoing response for more than 31 and 42 months at data cutoff. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first report providing clinical proof that AZD1775 enhances carboplatin efficacy in TP53-mutated tumors. The encouraging antitumor activity observed in patients with TP53-mutated ovarian cancer who were refractory or resistant (< 3 months) to first-line therapy warrants further development.


In his illustrations of the "Geology of Yorkshire,"* Mr. John Phillips referred only one species of Polyzoa to the "Zoophyta" group, which he found adhering to fossils derived from the Cornbrash Rocks of the Yorkshire coast. This species Phillips named Cellaria Smithii. "It seems," the author says, "to belong to the genus hippothoa, Lamx., see his Expos. Meth. t. lxxx., fig. 16, Scarborough, attached to cardium citrinoideum." Phillips.

In Mons. Jules Haime's description of the "Fossil Bryozoa of the Jurassic formation, † the author only cites one species (p. 180), Berenicea lucensis , as found in the Great Oolite, Hampton Cliffe, and also in the Bradford Clay and Cornbrash.

From material, at that time in my possession, and also from a careful study of the Polyzoan fauna preserved in the cases of the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, I was able to record, and partially describe, in my third "Report on Fossil Polyzoa,"‡ the following Cornbrash examples:—

1. Stomatopora Waltoni, Haime Cornbrash, Stanton.

2. " dichotoma, Lamx " ,,

3. Terebellaria ramosissima, Lamx " "

4. Diastopora microstoma, Mich (?) " ,,

In another paper on the "Jurassic Polyzoa found in the neighbourhood of Northampton"|| I also described amongst others, and partly illustrated, the following species:

1. Stomatopora Waltoni, Haime, Cornbrash, Bedford.

2. Diastopora Oolitica, Vine " ,,

3. " Davidsoni, Haime " "

4. Terebellaria ? increscens, Vine.

Since these papers were written I have been allowed to examine, study, and select, from more than six hundred fossils, a ...


By presenting continuously updated heading and distance information on a small head-mounted display (HMD), as a supplement to a GPS-receiver, we examined if workload could be reduced and performance increased, when navigating in a demanding situation. The purpose was to present limited but sufficient information to facilitate navigation. The technique was tested on ground troops, but could also be used by rescue services and police in situations that require navigation in unknown environments. The main findings were that the workload was reduced in one aspect (during navigation) but increased in another (looking for foot placement). There were no clear differences in performance, except that participants stopped fewer times to look at the GPS-receiver if they had updated heading and distance information. This suggests that a supplement display with minimal information could be useful when navigating with a GPS-receiver in an unknown environment.


The limited number of active pixels in a Geiger-mode Avalanche Photodiode (G-APD) results not only in a non-linearity but also in an additional fluctuation of its response. Both these effects are taken into account to calculate the amplitude resolution of an ideal G-APD, which is shown to be finite. As one of the consequences, the energy resolution of a scintillation detector based on a G-APD is shown to be limited to some minimum value defined by the number of pixels in the G-APD. PACS numbers: 85.60.Gz


Abstract Aims Anxiety disorders are widespread across the world. A systematic understanding of the disease burden, temporal trend and risk factors of anxiety disorders provides the essential foundation for targeted public policies on mental health at the national, regional, and global levels. Methods The estimation of anxiety disorders in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 using systematic review was conducted to describe incidence, prevalence and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in 204 countries and regions from 1990 to 2019. We calculated the estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) to quantify the temporal trends in anxiety disorders burden by sex, region and age over the past 30 years and analysed the impact of epidemiological and demographic changes on anxiety disorders. Results Globally, 45.82 [95% uncertainty interval (UI): 37.14, 55.62] million incident cases of anxiety disorders, 301.39 million (95% UI: 252.63, 356.00) prevalent cases and 28.68 (95% UI: 19.86, 39.32) million DALYs were estimated in 2019. Although the overall age-standardised burden rate of anxiety disorders remained stable over the past three decades, the latest absolute number of anxiety disorders increased by 50% from 1990. We observed huge disparities in both age-standardised burden rate and changing trend of anxiety disorders in sex, country and age. In 2019, 7.07% of the global DALYs due to anxiety disorders were attributable to bullying victimisation, mainly among the population aged 5–39 years, and the proportion increased in almost all countries and territories compared with 1990. Conclusion Anxiety disorder is still the most common mental illness in the world and has a striking impact on the global burden of disease. Controlling potential risk factors, such as bullying, establishing effective mental health knowledge dissemination and diversifying intervention strategies adapted to specific characteristics will reduce the burden of anxiety disorders.


Achieving energy efficiency is a very important step of applying the concepts of sustainability, this will reduce the financial costs that coming from energy consumption for the purposes of operating HVAC system so this concept will give a great effect on the environment and the economic aspects. Bank buildings are represented of the financial strength of the country, as they have a strong and direct impact on the reality of society and urban reality, and these buildings often consume a large amount of energy for cooling and heating purposes in the hot and dry climate of Iraq, so the research problem is focus on the knowledge deficiency of the importance of the role of technologies of sustainability in advancing the banking work at the design and performance level. Therefore, the aim of research was to find the knowledge aspects of designing the external envelope of the banking building in a sustainable manner that contributes to achieving energy efficiency and reducing the negative impact of banking buildings on the environment, as a result technique of sustainability and technological developments have led to the change and innovation in designing an advanced environment in banking buildings, such as achieving communication in the work environment in addition to providing comfort to the occupants in it, and this will lead to improved performance and production.


"Dutch society witnesses a continuous growth in the number of both singles and cohabitors. Despite this fact most young people indicate that they eventually desire to marry and to have children.... When cohabitation is not recorded or registered in a uniform manner, statistics which consider only married couples with or without children as families underestimate the de facto number of families. If both married and unmarried couples are considered as family nuclei, as recommended by the United Nations, the total formal number of families in the Netherlands has to be augmented with approximately half a million ¿hidden' families consisting of unmarried couples." (SUMMARY IN ENG)


We show that several coding schemes, in particular turbo encoding, dramatically improve the performance of a noncoherently detected frequency shift-keying modulation with correlated signals. The proposed a posteriori probability (APP) decoder based on bit-by-bit decisions proves to be highly flexible and more efficient than a classical block decisions decoding scheme. Moreover, the choice of the FSK modulation tone spacing is important. Simulation results show that the turbo-coded FSK exhibits the lowest error probability when compared to TCM, convolutional and lattice encoding schemes.


We previously reported that extracellular ATP induces membrane ruffling and chemotaxis of microglia and suggested that their induction is mediated by the Gi/o‐protein coupled P2Y12 receptor (P2Y12R). Here we report discovering that the P2X4 receptor (P2X4R) is also involved in ATP‐induced microglial chemotaxis. To understand the intracellular signaling pathway downstream of P2Y12R that underlies microglial chemotaxis, we examined the effect of two phosphatidylinositol 3′‐kinase (PI3K) inhibitors, wortmannin, and LY294002, on chemotaxis in a Dunn chemotaxis chamber. The PI3K inhibitors significantly suppressed chemotaxis without affecting ATP‐induced membrane ruffling. ATP stimulation increased Akt phosphorylation in the microglia, and the increase was reduced by the PI3K inhibitors and a P2Y12R antagonist. These results indicate that P2Y12R‐mediated activation of the PI3K pathway is required for microglial chemotaxis in response to ATP. We also found that the Akt phosphorylation was reduced when extracellular calcium was chelated, suggesting that ionotropic P2X receptors are involved in microglial chemotaxis by affecting the PI3K pathway. We therefore tested the effect of various P2X4R antagonists on the chemotaxis, and the results showed that pharmacological blockade of P2X4R significantly inhibited it. Knockdown of the P2X4 receptor in microglia by RNA interference through the lentivirus vector system also suppressed the microglial chemotaxis. These results indicate that P2X4R as well as P2Y12R is involved in ATP‐induced microglial chemotaxis. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


It is a well known fact that quantum elds on Minkowski spacetime are correlated for each pair of spacetime regions. In Robertson-Walker spacetimes there are spacelike separated regions with disjoint past horizons but the absence of correlations in that case was never proved. We derive in this paper formulae for correlations of quantum elds on Robertson-Walker spacetimes. Such correlations could have reasonably innuenced the formation of structure in the early universe. We use methods of algebraic and constructive quantum eld theory.


Summary 1. In many biodiversity surveys, a small proportion of species require a disproportionate amount of a researcher's time and effort to detect or identify. If we are interested in predicting species diversity or composition, what are the consequences for statistical power of ignoring difficult species ‐ that is, of surveying only a subset of the full suite of species? 2. We analysed 10 data sets on a variety of taxa, at different spatial scales, to assess correlations for species richness and species composition between a full data set and subsets of data with different numbers of species deleted at random, or according to the time investment required for inclusion. Power analyses characterized the trade-off between the number of sites surveyed and the completeness of the survey in each site. 3. For species richness, the majority of information regarding among-site patterns was retained even with large numbers of species removed. With only half the full species pool, the lower 95th percentile of correlations between the full vs. randomly generated reduced data sets was >0·75 in all 10 cases. With 10% of the full species pool removed, correlations were ≥ 0·95. 4. Subsets of species were not as good at capturing among-site patterns of species composition (ordination scores and pairwise site dissimilarities). With half the full species pool, lower 95th percentile correlations between the full and randomly generated reduced data sets were as low as 0·1. Nonetheless, in most cases the lower 95th percentile correlation with half the number of species was >0·7, and removing 10% of species gave correlations >0·8 across all data sets. 5. For the three data sets in which species were also removed according to the time investment for inclusion, correlations fell within the range of variability observed for random species removals. 6. Synthesis and applications . In biological surveys, ignoring a relatively small proportion of species (e.g. <10%), and often a much larger proportion, results in very little loss of information on patterns of biodiversity. As such, statistical power in many biodiversity studies may be maximized by eliminating difficult species from a survey in order to increase the number of sites surveyed.


OH radicals play an important role in pollutant removal in nonthermal plasmas. It is crucial to clarify the behavior of OH radicals in this process. A time-resolved 2-D OH radial distribution was investigated in a pulsed corona discharge by planar laser-induced fluorescence at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The OH evolutions under different gas components were studied, and the evolution process was simulated. The OH decay processes were found to be divided into two periods: a fast decay period and a slow decay period. The O, N, and HO2 are dominant radicals for OH generation and decay. The OH radicals are mainly generated near a nozzle electrode. The concentration variations of O2, NO, and H2O in the background gas led to different OH density evolutions. The OH distribution zones were different as gas components varied. The maximum area of OH radical distribution after discharge decreased by 20% as O2 increased from 5% to 8 %, and it decreased by 69% as NO (150 ppm) was added into the background gas.


Introduction: Pneumococcal infection is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. There is a paucity of data on pneumococcal infection in Nigeria. We aimed to determine the epidemiology and clinical outcome of pneumococcal infection in a Tertiary Referral Center in Northwestern Nigeria. Materials and Methods: We conducted a prospective, hospital-based study on patients with community acquired pneumococcal infections. All studied subjects had clinical evaluation and relevant laboratory investigations. The outcome was defined as mortality. Analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics with differences and relationships determined using Student′s t-test, Chi-squared and Fisher′s exact tests as appropriate, with P < 0.05 regarded as significant. Result: Three hundred and two cases of bacteriologically proven community acquired pneumonia (241/302), bacteremia (38/302) and meningitis (23/302) were screened, out of which 125/241 (51.7%), 7/23 (30.4%) and 8/38 (21.1%) were pneumococcal pneumonia, pneumococcal meningitis and pneumococcal bacteremia, respectively. Most of the patients, 87/140 (69.3%) had comorbidity conditions. The overall mortality rate was 12.9%. Chronic heart disease (odds ratio [OR] = 1.143; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.032-0.638), human immunodeficiency virus infection (OR = 2.309; 95% CI = 1.258-4.241), age ≥65 years (OR = 6.397; 95% CI = 2.181-18.746), and infection with multi-drug resistant Pneumococcus (OR = 4.089; 95% CI = 1.274-13.125) were identified as independent risk factors for mortality. Conclusion: The Pneumococcus is a common cause of community acquired infections among adults in northwestern Nigeria, with associated high mortality.


Bursty enhancements of hot electrons (≳0.5 keV) with duration of minutes sometimes occur in the tail magnetosheath. In this study we used the unique simultaneous measurements from the two Acceleration Reconnection Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon's Interaction with the Sun probes to investigate the likely sources, spatial structures, and responsible processes for these hot electron enhancements. The enhancements can be seen at any distance across the magnetosheath, but those closer to the magnetopause are more often accompanied by magnetosheath density and flow magnitudes changing to more magnetosphere‐like values. From simultaneous measurements with the two probes being on either side of magnetopause or both in the magnetosheath, it is evident that these hot electrons come from the magnetosphere near the current sheet without further energization and that the enhancements are a result of bursty lateral magnetosphere intrusion into the magnetosheath, the enhancements and changes in the magnetosheath properties becoming smaller with increasing outward distance from the intrusion. From limited events having specific separation distances and alignments between the probes, we estimated that a single isolated enhancement can have a thin and elongated structure as narrow as 2 RE wide in the X direction, as long as over 7 RE in the Y direction, and as thin as 1 RE in the Z direction. We propose that Kelvin–Helmholtz perturbations at the magnetopause and subsequent magnetosphere‐magnetosheath particle mixing due to reconnection or diffusion can plausibly play an important role in generating the bursty magnetosphere intrusion into the magnetosheath and the hot electron enhancements.


Recently, in an article written by Gutierrez-Marco et al. and published in Annals of Geophysics [60, Fast Track 7, 2017], there are some incorrect affirmations written against my work in the paleontological field that I have been carried out for more than 10 years on new species of trilobites from the Ordovician of Morocco. They have questioned the quality of my work but also that of my collaborators and the institutions with which I am collaborating, particularly the Geological Museum of the Seminario of Barcelona (Spain), an institution that has been doing geological research since 1874. For this reason, I will present here some evidences that show the incorrectness of such statements reported in the paper by Gutierrez-Marco et al. [2017]


High pressure accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC) tests have been performed on three different crude oils, at their respective reservoirs pressures. The experiments on medium heavy Clair oil and heavy Wolf Lake oil used clean silica sand, incorporating 3% kaolinite, to represent the reservoir matrix, whereas Athabasca Tar Sand was used in its preserved, virgin state. The Clair oil and Wolf Lake oil tests involved high initial water saturations, representative of either, a postwaterflooded or a post-steam injection state, in the reservoir. A second test on Athabasca Tar Sand used a lower oil (bitumen) saturation, but without adjusting the original brine saturation. Although the medium Clair oil exhibited high exothermicity, throughout the temperature range, the temperature detected for the onset of low temperature oxidation (LTO) was much higher than that for Athabasca Tar Sand. The calculated activation energies also indicate that Athabasca Tar Sand is very reactive in the LTO region. Furthermore, the overall continuity exhibited by the measured exotherms, indicates that all three oils are potentially good candidates for in situ combustion, as an oil recovery method.


Physical side-channel monitoring leverages the physical phenomena produced by a microcontroller (e.g. power consumption or electromagnetic radiation) to monitor program execution for malicious behavior. As such, it offers a promising intrusion detection solution for resource-constrained embedded systems, which are incompatible with conventional security measures. This method is especially relevant in safety and security-critical embedded systems such as in industrial control systems. Side-channel monitoring poses unique challenges for would-be attackers, such as: (1) limiting attack vectors by being physically isolated from the monitored system, (2) monitoring immutable physical side channels with uninterpretable data-driven models, and (3) being specifically trained for the architectures and programs on which they are applied to. As a result, physical side-channel monitors are conventionally believed to provide a high level of security. In this paper, we propose a novel attack to illustrate that, despite the many barriers to attack that side-channel monitoring systems create, they are still vulnerable to adversarial attacks. We present a method for crafting functional malware such that, when injected into a side-channel-monitored system, the detector is not triggered. Our experiments reveal that this attack is robust across detector models and hardware im-plementations. We evaluate our attack on the popular ARM microcontroller platform on several representative programs, demonstrating the feasibility of such an attack and highlighting the need for further research into side-channel monitors.


Serum and tissue concentrations of the macrophage-specific colony-stimulating factor (CSF-1) and the number of CSF-1-responsive cells in bone marrow were investigated in mice chronically infected with a low-virulence strain of the opportunistic zoopathogenic yeast Candida albicans. CSF-1 levels in serum, brain, kidney, liver, and lung were significantly increased shortly after infection and remained elevated during the 2 weeks preceding the onset of specific T cell-dependent immunity. The number of monocytic precursor cells was also increased in the bone marrow of infected mice. When macrophages from naive donors were exposed in vitro to purified murine CSF-1, their anticandidal activity in vitro appeared to be enhanced. CSF-1 was also administered in vivo to prospective recipients of a lethal C. albicans challenge. The results showed that the factor could effectively potentiate the animals' resistance to the yeast, as shown by increased survival times and reduced recovery of viable C. albicans from the organs of the CSF-1-treated mice. Therefore, the present data suggest that CSF-1 is likely to contribute to early resistance to fungal infection and could be successfully exploited in experimental models of antifungal immunotherapy.


Consumer systems for home energy management can provide significant energy saving. Such systems may be based on nonintrusive appliance load monitoring (NIALM), in which individual appliance power consumption information is disaggregated from single-point measurements. The disaggregation methods constitute the most important part of NIALM systems. This paper reviews the methodology of consumer systems for NIALM in residential buildings.


We provide a decidable characterization of regular forest languages definable in FO2(<h,<v). By FO2(<h,<v) we refer to the two variable fragment of first order logic built from the descendant relation and the following sibling relation. In terms of expressive power it corresponds to a fragment of the navigational core of XPath that contains modalities for going up to some ancestor, down to some descendant, left to some preceding sibling, and right to some following sibling. We also show that our techniques can be applied to other two variable first-order logics having exactly the same vertical modalities as FO2(<h,<v) but having different horizontal modalities.


The influence of cryogenic pollen storage on fruit set and seed production in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) was investigated. Flowers pollinated with pollen samples stored for 5 weeks at -80C, with or without 20 h precooling at 4C, had similar fruit set and number of viable seed per fruit as those pollinated with fresh pollen. Pollen samples, which were repeatedly cooled (-80C) and warmed (to 22 to 24C) for up to six cycles, continuously maintained the same viability as the fresh pollen. When cryogenically stored pollen of L. esculentum 2-837, LA359, LA3198, and LA3199 were used to pollinate LA359, the number of viable seed formed per fruit differed significantly. Results of this study suggest that pollen cryopreservation can be used successfully for tomato breeding and germplasm storage.


RCP(Rich Client Platform) is a Java development platform to develop Rich Client based on OSGi framework. This paper proposes a method of designing Schema Mapper by using RCP based on XSLT(eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) of W3C(World Wide Web). The Schema Mapper defines each document structure of the Source that offers data and the Target that handles data as schema and makes XSLT document which is defining translation regulation between two schemas. The created XSLT document shows original schema, Translation regulation, and purpose schema in order on the editor program as pattern of tree. The Schema Mapper implemented in this paper under WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) can write, edit, and test translation regulation and offers special edit program for a variety of document format and schema document such like XML(eXtensible Markup Language), DBF(Data Base Format), and UDF(Usesr Defined Format). It also designs and implements flexibly to be able to add new document format easily.


Species duration data for living benthic foraminifera derived from an extensive literature search have been compiled and analyzed to investigate rates and patterns of species origination. The same data subjected to taxonomic standardization through examination of many specimens lodged in museum collections indicate strikingly different, and more realistic, rates and patterns. Evolutionary generalizations based on data generated from the literature only are often unreliable and may be directly in opposition to reality. Extensive attempts at taxonomic standardization should be the norm in paleobiological investigations.


Oil reservoir production systems are usually associated with a temperature gradient and oil production facilities frequently suffer from pipeline corrosion failures. Both bacteria and archaea potentially contribute to biocorrosion of the oil production equipment. Here the response of microbial populations from the petroleum reservoir to temperature gradient and corrosion of carbon steel coupons were investigated under laboratory condition. Carbon steel coupons were exposed to production water from a depth of 1809 m of Jiangsu petroleum reservoir (China) and incubated for periods of 160 and 300 days. The incubation temperatures were set at 37, 55, and 65°C to monitoring mesophilic, thermophilic and hyperthermophilic microorganisms associated with anaerobic carbon steel corrosion. The results showed that corrosion rate at 55°C (0.162 ± 0.013 mm year-1) and 37°C (0.138 ± 0.008 mm year-1) were higher than that at 65°C (0.105 ± 0.007 mm year-1), and a dense biofilm was observed on the surface of coupons under all biotic incubations. The microbial community analysis suggests a high frequency of bacterial taxa associated with families Porphyromonadaceae, Enterobacteriaceae, and Spirochaetaceae at all three temperatures. While the majority of known sulfate-reducing bacteria, in particular Desulfotignum, Desulfobulbus and Desulfovibrio spp., were predominantly observed at 37°C; Desulfotomaculum spp., Thermotoga spp. and Thermanaeromonas spp. as well as archaeal members closely related to Thermococcus and Archaeoglobus spp. were substantially enriched at 65°C. Hydrogenotrophic methanogens of the family Methanobacteriaceae were dominant at both 37 and 55°C; acetoclastic Methanosaeta spp. and methyltrophic Methanolobus spp. were enriched at 37°C. These observations show that temperature changes significantly alter the microbial community structure in production fluids and also affected the biocorrosion of carbon steel under anaerobic conditions.


Erik H. Erikson is a psychoanalyst and an anthropologist of international stature. His works have served, over the past decades, as some of the best examples of scholarly and clinical work which linked individual psychological maturation and development with social process. His concept of modal adaptive tasks at phase specific stages of life has not only been proved as a process analysis of normal behavior but allows a cross-sectional analysis throughout life. Among his more original concepts is the description of the process which he called ego-identity. Ego identity is Erikson's attempt to link the internal psychological make-up of the individual with the environment which is social reality. Since identity, according to Erikson, is formed during adolescence and consolidated at the end of adolescence, much of his writings on the subject of identity concerns youth. The purpose of the book, Identity: Youth and Crisis , is to demonstrate


The fragmentation of molecular systems into ions and neutral species is ubiquitous in fundamental and applied science. While the ion fragments are relatively easily detected by mass spectrometry technique, the information on the neutral product that is formed in correlation is challenging. In this contribution, we present a detailed description of the correlated ion-(ion/neutral) time of flight mass spectrometer, which is dedicated to the study of molecular dissociation induced by electrons at low energies (<20 eV). This new mass spectrometer uptakes the challenge to provide the correlation of ion/neural species produced in low energy electron-molecule collision processes.


The financial and popular media report almost daily on the volatility of securities market prices. Yet, many people continue to buy securities to hedge against or speculate on certain risks. People can also buy or sell derivatives to hedge against or speculate on fluctuations in securities prices. This Article discusses three regulatory policy implications of utilizing derivatives markets to reallocate the bearing of securities price risks. First, if there are too few non-redundant derivative markets, a competitive market equilibrium allocation of securities price risks is typically constrained Pareto inefficient. This financial economic result means that for typical economies, a regulator can in principle improve social welfare by financial market interventions. Second, introducing some but not enough non-redundant derivatives markets has indeterminate normative consequences for the allocation of securities price risks. This financial economic result means that for typical economies, introducing a new derivative market can improve, worsen, or have no effect on the welfare of consumers and investors. Finally, government regulation might not improve the social allocation of securities price risks because of informational or political economy obstacles. This financial economic result means that for typical economies, the ability of regulatory intervention may be constrained by lim-


Recent work has shown that thymopoietin, a polypeptide with actions in the immune and nervous systems, potently binds to the alpha-bungarotoxin (alpha-BGT) receptor. The present study was done to characterize the interaction of thymopoietin at the nicotinic alpha-BGT binding site in cultured muscle cells and to correlate these findings with the effects of the polypeptide on nicotinic receptor-mediated function. Inhibition studies showed that thymopoietin potently inhibited 125I-alpha-BGT binding in C2 muscle cells in culture, with an IC50 of 1.1 nM, a value similar to that for alpha-BGT. Thymopoietin bound to the alpha-BGT receptor in the cells in culture relatively slowly; at 10(-8) M thymopoietin, maximal inhibition occurred after 45 to 75 min of exposure to the polypeptide. Dissociation of thymopoietin from the receptor exhibited a much longer time course; recovery of alpha-BGT binding to control values after exposure to 10(-8) M thymopoietin occurred approximately 16 hr after removal of the polypeptide. The effects of thymopoietin on 125I-alpha-BGT binding correlated well with those on nicotinic function. Thymopoietin potently inhibited nicotinic receptor-mediated 22Na uptake in muscle cells in culture, with an IC50 of 2 nM. This effect was dependent on the length of the preincubation period with thymopoietin, with maximal inhibition occurring after 60 min of exposure to the polypeptide. Recovery of the functional response after thymopoietin (10(-8) M) exposure required about 16 hr. The mode of inhibition of receptor-mediated ion flux by thymopoietin was similar to that observed with alpha-BGT but distinct from that obtained with d-tubocurarine and gallamine. To conclude, thymopoietin, a thymic polypeptide associated with the immune system, potently inhibited both 125I-alpha-BGT binding and nicotinic receptor-mediated function in C2 muscle cells. These findings may have implications for myasthenia gravis and/or other neuromuscular disorders.


In Turkey, foreign students are studying in most of the universities. On July 15, 2016, these students faced a treacherous coup attempt against democracy and were able to witness the Turkish people's reaction to the coup attempt. The aim of this study is to examine the views of foreign students studying at Mustafa Kemal University on democracy. In the literature, foreign students who studied in Turkey have been searched in terms of many variables, but because foreign students not seen in a study examining the perception of democracy, this research has seen momentous. The sample of the study composed of foreign students studying at Mustafa Kemal University. In this study, qualitative research was applied as a data collection method. The opinions of the students were taken with the interview form and the collected information was evaluated from the educational point of view. In this study, the descriptive survey model, which is one of the general surveying methods, is used. "The Perception of Democracy of Foreign Students" questionnaire was applied to measure the perceptions of democracy of foreign students in the university. By taking into consideration various variables, it is concluded that foreign students are sensitive about democracy and anti-democratic events.

 Key words: Foreign students, democracy, sense of democracy, The Arab Spring.


We have used nested reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) and PCR on genomic DNA to search for aberrations in the FHIT and PTPRG genes, both located in chromosomal band 3p14.2, in specimens from cytogenetically analyzed benign breast lesions (three samples with atypical hyperplasia and one with fibroadenosis) from two women belonging to breast cancer families. The transcription analysis showed that the FHIT gene was either not expressed or that its expression was dramatically reduced to a level not detectable by nested RT-PCR in the samples with atypical hyperplasia. Genomic analysis of exons 3 and 5 of FHIT and exon 12 of PTPRG provided evidence that these DNA segments were homozygously deleted in the majority of the cells. These data are in line with the histopathological features and cytogenetic findings in the three samples; none contained normal parenchyma, and all had chromosomal aberrations involving band 3p14. RT-PCR analysis of the fibroadenosis specimen, which had a normal karyotype, detected the expected 856-bp fragment as well as an additional alternative transcript variant of FHIT with 1014 bp. The additional 158-bp sequence, which may add 38 amino acids to the NH2-terminal part of the previously described FHIT protein, was inserted between exons 4 and 5 and seems to be a new exon located in intron 4 of FHIT.


Off-label prescribing of psychiatric drugs is common, despite lacking strong scientific evidence of efficacy and potentially increasing risk for adverse events. The goal of this study was to characterize prevalence of off-label prescriptions of psychiatric drugs and examine patient and clinician predictors of off-label use. This manuscript presents a retrospective, cross-sectional study using data from the 2012 and 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS). The study examined all adult outpatient visits to psychiatric practices for chronic care management with a single listed visit diagnosis in which at least one psychiatric drug was prescribed. The main outcome measure was off-label prescribing of at least one psychiatric drug, defined as prescription for a condition for which it has not been approved for use by the FDA. Among our sample representative of 1.85 billion outpatient visits, 18.5 million (1.3%) visits were to psychiatrists for chronic care management in which at least one psychiatric drug was prescribed. Overall, the rate of off-label use was 12.9% (95% CI: 12.2–15.7). The most common off-label uses were for manic-depressive psychosis treated with citalopram and primary insomnia treated with trazodone. Several patient and clinician characteristics were positively associated with off-label prescribing, including seeing a psychiatrist (OR: 1.06, 95% CI, 1.01–1.12; p = 0.03) instead of another type of clinician, the office visit taking place in the Western region of the country (OR: 1.09, 95% CI, 1.01–1.17; p = 0.02), and the patient having 3 or more chronic conditions (OR: 1.12, 95% CI, 1.02–1.14; p = 0.003). In contrast, having Medicare coverage (OR: 0.93, 95% CI, 0.84–0.97; p = 0.04) and receiving payment assistance from a medical charity (OR: 0.91, 95% CI, 0.88–0.96; p = 0.03) instead of private insurance were negatively associated with off-label prescribing. These results suggest that certain classes of psychiatric medications are being commonly prescribed to treat conditions for which they have not been determined by the FDA to be clinically efficacious and/or safe.


To effectively solve the problems of inconsistent communication protocols in automatic monitoring equipment, and limited data acquisition transmission and monitoring equipment, this paper developed programmable single point multiple output intelligent data acquisition and transmission system. It made an in-depth elaboration of the data acquisition and transmission system from hardware design, software architecture and principle, main functions and technical parameters. Finally, it came up with four innovation points: (i) intelligent (automatic) matching a variety of communication protocols for environmental monitoring equipment, (ii) realizing multi-protocol and multi-target parallel data transmission, (iii) realizing remote dynamic input of control instructions through wired or wireless network, and (iv) supporting configuration (process) simulation of field equipment DCS operating conditions.


The research presents a techniques for natural hazard assessment using GIS
 and cartographic approaches with multi-hazard mapping in urban communities,
 because natural hazards are a multi-dimensional phenomena which have a
 spatial component. Therefore the use of Remote Sensing and GIS has an
 important function and become essential in urban multi-hazard assessment. The
 first aim of this research was to determine the geographical distributions of
 the major types of natural hazards in the study area. Seismic hazards,
 landslides, rockfalls, floods, torrential floods, and excessive erosion are
 the most significant natural hazards within the territory of Banja Luka
 Municipality. Areas vulnerable to some of these natural hazards were singled
 out using analytical maps. Based on these analyses, an integral map of the
 natural hazards of the study area was created using multi-hazard assessment
 and the total vulnerability was determined by overlapping the results. The
 detailed analysis, through the focused research within the most vulnerable
 areas in the study area will highlight the administrative units (urban
 centres and communes) that are vulnerable to various types of natural hazard.
 The results presented in this article are the first multi-hazard assessment
 and the first version of the integral map of natural hazards in the Republic
 of Srpska.


Abstract. Droughts can have an impact on forest functioning and production, and even lead to tree mortality. However, drought is an elusive phenomenon that is difficult to quantify and define universally. In this study, we assessed the performance of a set of indicators that have been used to describe drought conditions in the summer months (June, July, August) over a 30-year period (1981–2010) in Finland. Those indicators include the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), the Soil Moisture Index (SMI), and the Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA). Herein, regional soil moisture was produced by the land surface model JSBACH of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model (MPI-ESM). Results show that the buffering effect of soil moisture and the associated soil moisture memory can impact on the onset and duration of drought as indicated by the SMI and SMA, while the SPI and SPEI are directly controlled by meteorological conditions. In particular, we investigated whether the SMI, SMA and SPEI are able to indicate the Extreme Drought affecting Forest health (EDF), which we defined according to the extreme drought that caused severe forest damages in Finland in 2006. The EDF thresholds for the aforementioned indicators are suggested, based on the reported statistics of forest damages in Finland in 2006. SMI was found to be the best indicator in capturing the spatial extent of forest damage induced by the extreme drought in 2006. In addition, through the application of the EDF thresholds over the summer months of the 30-year study period, the SPEI and SMA tended to show more frequent EDF events and a higher fraction of influenced area than SMI. This is because the SPEI and SMA are standardized indicators that show the degree of anomalies from statistical means over the aggregation period of climate conditions and soil moisture, respectively. However, in boreal forests in Finland, the high initial soil moisture or existence of peat often prevent the EDFs indicated by the SPEI and SMA to produce very low soil moisture that could be indicated as EDFs by the SMI. Therefore, we consider SMI is more appropriate for indicating EDFs in boreal forests. The selected EDF thresholds for those indicators could be calibrated when there are more forest health observation data available. Furthermore, in the context of future climate scenarios, assessments of EDF risks in northern areas should, in addition to climate data, rely on a land surface model capable of reliable prediction of soil moisture.


A technique for measuring the fuel dilution of oil in a diesel engine is presented. Fuel dilution can occur when advanced in-cylinder fuel injection techniques are employed for the purpose of producing rich exhaust for lean NOx trap catalyst regeneration. Laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy is used to monitor the oil in a Mercedes 1.7-liter engine operated on a dynamometer platform. A fluorescent dye suitable for use in diesel fuel and oil systems is added to the engine fuel. The LIF spectra are monitored to detect the growth of the dye signal relative to the background fluorescence of the oil; fuel mass concentration is quantified based on a known sample set. The technique was implemented with fiber optic probes which can be inserted at various points in the oil system of the engine. A low cost 532-nm laser diode was used for excitation of the fluorescence. Measurements of fuel dilution of oil are presented for various in-cylinder injection strategies for rich operation of the diesel engine. Rates of fuel dilution increase for all strategies relative to normal lean operation, and higher fuel dilution rates are observed when extra fuel injection occurs later in the combustion cycle when fuel penetration into themore » cylinder wall oil film is more likely.« less


RADAR is a cross-disciplinary internet-based service for long-term and format-independent archiving and publishing of digital research data from scientific studies and projects. The focus is on data from disciplines that are not yet supported by specific research data management infrastructures. The repository aims to ensure access and long-term availability of deposited datasets according to FAIR criteriaWilkinson et al. 2016 for the benefit of the scientific community. Published datasets are retained for at least 25 years; for archived datasets, the retention period can be flexibly selected up to 15 years. The RADAR Cloud service was developed as a cooperation project funded by the DFG (2013-2016) and started operations in 2017. It is operated by FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz-Institute for Information Infrastructure.
 As a distributed, multilayer application, RADAR is structured into a multitude of services and interfaces. The system architecture is modular and consists of a user interface (frontend), management layer (backend) and storage layer (archive), which communicate with each other via application programming interfaces (API). This open structure and the access to the APIs from outside allows integrating RADAR into existing systems and work processes, e. g. for automated upload of metadata from other applications using the RADAR API. RADAR's storage layer is encapsulated via the Data Center API. This approach guarantees independence from a specific storage technology and makes it possible to integrate alternative archives for the bitstream preservation of the research data.
 The data transfer to RADAR takes place in two steps: In the first step, the data is transferred to a temporary work storage. The ingest service accepts individual files and packed archives, optionally unpacks them while retaining the original directory structure and creates a dataset. For each file found, the MIME Type (see Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions specification)) is analysed and stored in the technical metadata. When archiving and publishing, a dataset is created in the second step. The structure of this dataset - the AIP (archival information package) in the sense of the OAIS standard - corresponds to the BagIt standard. It contains, in addition to the actual research data in original order, technical and descriptive metadata (if created) for each file or directory as well as a manifest within one single TAR ("tape archive", a unix archiving format and utility) file as an entity in one place. This TAR file is stored permanently on magnetic tapes redundantly in three copies at different locations in two academic computing centres.
 The FAIR Principles are currently being given special importance in the research community. They define measures that ensure the optimal processing of research data, accessibility for both humans and machines, as well as reusability for further research. RADAR also promotes the implementation of the FAIR Principles with different measures and functional features, amongst others:
 Descriptive metadata are recorded using the internal RADAR Metadata Schema (based on DataCite Metadata Schema 4.0), which supports 10 mandatory and 13 optional metadata fields. Annotations can be made on the dataset level and on the individual files and folders level. A user licence which rules re-use of the data, must be defined for each dataset. Each published dataset receives a DOI which is registered with DataCite. RADAR metadata uses a combination of controlled lists and free text entries. Author identification is ensured by using an ORCID ID and funder identification by CrossRef Open Funder Registry. More interfacing options, e.g. ROR and the Integrated Authority File (GND) are currently implemented. Datasets can be easily linked with other digital resources (e.g. text publications) via a "related identifier". To maximise data dissemination and discoverability, the metadata of published datasets are indexed in various formats (e.g. DataCite and DublinCore) and offered for public metadata harvesting e.g. via an OAI-provider.
 These measures are - to our minds - undoubtedly already significant, but not yet sufficient in the medium to long term. Especially in terms of interoperability, we see development potential for RADAR. The FAIR Digital Object (FDO) Framework seems to offer a promising concept, especially to further promote data interoperability and to close respective gaps in the current infrastructure and repository landscape.
 RADAR aims to participate in this community driven approach also in its role within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). As part of the NFDI, RADAR already plays a relevant role as a generic infrastructure service in several NFDI consortia (e.g. NFDI4Culture and NFDI4Chem). With RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture, FIZ Karlsruhe for example offers researchers from chemistry and the cultural sciences low-threshold data publication services based on RADAR. We successively develop these services further according to the needs of the communities, e.g. by integrating and linking them with subject-specific terminologies, by providing annotation options with subject-specific metadata or by enabling selective reading or previewing options for individual files in existing datasets.
 In our presentation, we would like to describe the present and future functionality of RADAR and its current level of FAIRness as possible starting points for further discussion with the FDO community with regard to the implementation of the FDO framework for our service.


The object of study of this paper is the class of hybrid systems consisting of so-called linear complementarity (LC) systems, that received a lot of attention recently and has strong connections to piecewise affine (PWA) systems. In addition to PWA systems, some of the linear or affine submodels of the LC systems can 'live' at lower-dimensional subspaces and re-initializations of the state variable at mode changes is possible. For LC systems we study the stability and controllability problem. Although these problems received for various classes of hybrid systems ample attention, necessary and sufficient conditions, which are explicit and easily verifiable, are hardly found in the literature. For LC systems with two modes and a state dimension of two such conditions are presented.


In this Masters thesis, a method for independent characterization of nonlinear electro-optic (EO) tensor components (r13, r33) of organic polymers is presented. Organic non-linear optical (NLO) polymers provide low cost and easily process able photonic devices. The characterization setup proposed in this thesis is controlled by a LabVIEW program that allows fast, accurate and automated measurement of r13 and r33. The setup measures transmission spectrum of a Fabry-Perot cavity, filled with an NLO polymer, as a function of incident angle. It uses the changes in refractive index in the polymer due to the electro-optic effect to measure the tensor components. This method is then utilized for characterization of a Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), Disperse Red1 (DR1) guest-host blend sample.


Reflective listening–demonstrating that you have heard your conversational partner–is key to effective communication. Expert human communicators often mimic and rephrase their conversational partner, e.g., when responding to sentimental stories or to questions they don't know the answer to. We introduce a new task and an associated dataset wherein dialogue agents similarly mimic and rephrase a user's request to communicate sympathy (I'm sorry to hear that) or lack of knowledge (I do not know that). We study what makes a rephrasal response good against a set of qualitative metrics. We then evaluate three models for generating responses: a syntax-aware rule-based system, a seq2seq LSTM neural models with attention (S2SA), and the same neural model augmented with a copy mechanism (S2SA+C). In a human evaluation, we find that S2SA+C and the rule-based system are comparable and approach human-generated response quality. In addition, experiences with a live deployment of S2SA+C in a customer support setting suggest that this generation task is a practical contribution to real world conversational agents.


Abstract This article explores whether Turkey is the continuing or a successor state of the Ottoman Empire. This is a question that attracts particular attention in the context of the contemporary political debate on 'neo-Ottomanism'. After the analysis of past debates on succession and continuity, the Ottoman Empire's legacy is considered in light of the international case law, especially the 1925 Ottoman Public Debt Arbitration. Arguments of the international doctrine in favour of and against the Ottoman continuity thesis are also explored and tested by reference to comparable cases. The peculiarity of the transitional period from the Empire to the Republic, where two governments and two constitutions coexisted, is crucial to understanding the transmission process of the legal personality. Despite the undeniable ambiguity of the issue, the conclusion tilts towards the continuity argument. Potential positive and negative, as well as legal and political, implications of continuity, including those related to delictual responsibility, are discussed at the end.


The 'crisis' of liberal peace has generated considerable debate in International Relations. However, analysis is inhibited by a shared set of spatial, cultural and temporal assumptions that rest on and reproduce a problematic separation between self-evident 'liberal' and 'non-liberal' worlds, and locates the crisis in presentist terms of the latter's resistance to the former's expansion. By contrast, this article argues that efforts to advance liberal rule have always been interwoven with processes of alternative order-making, and, in this way, are actively integral, not external, to the generation of the subjectivities, contestations, violence and social orders that are then apprehended as self-evident obstacles and threats to liberal peace and as characteristic of its periphery. Making visible these intimate relations of co-constitution elided by representations of liberal peace and its crisis requires a long view and an analytical frame that encompasses both liberalism and its others in the world. The argument is developed using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and illustrated with reference to Sri Lanka.


A 1-Mb content addressable ROM (CAROM) with a variable-length match function is proposed. The device has four new characteristics: the operational mode, the modified NAND-type memory cell, the simple AND-logic circuit (ALC), and the improved serial priority encoder circuit. Large capacity and high retrieval performance are achieved by these new characteristics. Simulation confirms that the retrieval cycle type is 60 ns/page and the encoding cycle time is 50 ns. The circuit is designed with a 1.0- mu m single-poly double-metal CMOS process.<<ETX>>


This study aimed to investigate the usefulness of auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in rats. To this end, N1, P2 latencies, and the N1 P2 amplitude of responses to different acoustic stimuli from rats, which were implanted with permanent electrodes in the inferior colliculus (IC), were evaluated and used to demonstrate the frequency characteristics of IC region. Permanent electrodes were implanted in IC regions of 7 male albino rats by the stereotaxic method. The animals were exposed to five tones series of stimuli (1000 Hz, 2000 Hz, 4000 Hz, 6000 Hz, and 8000 Hz tones with 1500 ms interstimulus intervals) of 70 dB with a duration of 1000 ms. AEPs)were recorded and analyzed with the Brain-Data Acquisition system. There were no statistically significant differences in N1, P2 latencies, and the N1-P2 amplitude of AEPs from IC regions of rats as a result of changes in the frequency of stimulus. It was determined that the dominant frequency activity of the IC to acoustic stimulus was theta-alpha band, with theta as the peak frequency. As a result it was concluded that there are similarities between the N1, P2 components of rat AEPs, and human AEPs. We have suggested that the rats may provide a useful model for investigating the generation of middle latency components of AEPs in humans.


The historical origins of tort and contract have left some technical rules which separate them and may make it advantageous for a plaintiff to sue in tort or in contract. For example the duty in contract is generally strict while that in tort is not generally so. A plaintiff who has alternative cause of action in tort and contract may thus sue in contract. But this advantage is not listed to the law of contract for generally the damages that are recoverable in tort are wider than in contract. Also under the limitation of actions it is submitted that given the same circumstances arising from breach of duty, time may begin to run or may expire in contract when it has not begun to run in tort. This conflict between tort and contract raises the problem as to what law should be given primacy in a conflict situation. Three possible answers exist: (1) To give primacy to contract as creating the relationship;(2) To give primacy to tort on the basis that to exclude tort is to allow a wrongdoer benefit by committing two wrongs instead of one;(3) To give primacy to none and allow the plaintiff choose his cause of action. Some systems have made a choice between these but at common law only the second answer has not been adopted. Thus a Plaintiff may in some cases bring his action in tort or in contract or in contract alone depending on the capacity in which the contractual relationship is entered into. This conflict has extended to Private International Law and it is interesting to observe that the Courts have gone off in all directions to find an answer.


With the development of human activities in offshore shelf waters, the harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena has become a focal species in relation to management of human activities and marine habitat conservation efforts. In this study, acoustic and visual time series of harbour porpoise occurrence were analysed from the Horns Reef area, eastern North Sea, aiming at resolving periodic- ity, spatial scale of aggregation and habitat drivers in porpoises. A total of 51 fine-scale surveys and 474 d of hydrophone deployment at 2 stations were analysed by partial least squares regression and spatial modelling in relation to synoptic (spatio-temporal) data derived from a local, high-resolution hydrodynamic model. Small-scale changes in local currents reflecting upwelling driven by the inter- action of the semi-diurnal tidal currents with the steep slopes of the bank were the main habitat driver identified from the acoustic as well as the survey data. Spatial modelling based on selected key predic- tor variables showed the distribution of harbour porpoises to alternate between 2 upwelling cells de- pending on the direction of tidal currents. The size of upwelling cells was less than 10 km, matching the small-scale spatial structure of survey data as revealed by geostatistical analysis. The findings may have great implications for the design of future protected areas for harbour porpoises, and they indi- cate that the overlap between areas of concentration of the species and areas targeted by fisheries and the offshore wind industry could be avoided without major changes to current management practices.


Abstract This paper provides a counterbalance to the emphasis on positive psychology within recent HRM scholarship by utilizing a relational framework to explore the antecedents and outcomes of alienation. We focus on the associations between relational features of work – prosocial impact, employee voice and role overload – and job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion and explore whether alienation mediates these relationships. Drawing on data from two public sector organizations in Ireland and the UK (n = 1455), our findings show that the relationships between these three work features and job satisfaction are fully mediated by alienation. In the case of emotional exhaustion, our findings indicate that perceptions of the relational elements of prosocial impact and employee voice may give rise to higher levels of exhaustion where employees are alienated. The study's contribution lies in its identification of alienation as an important mechanism through which relational work features influence well-being. In addition, by drawing on a relational framework utilised within the engagement literature, the study makes a first attempt in drawing alienation into the wider nomological net proffered by the engagement literature. Thus, it provides new insights into the nature and importance of understanding alienation in contemporary workplaces.


DNA methylation is one of the major epigenetic modifications influencing the regulation of gene expression. The opium poppy is an important medicinal plant. Its latex contains opium, which is a rich source of pharmaceutical benzyisoquinoline alkaloids (BIA). Here, the methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) profiling technique using 21 MSAP molecular markers was applied in order to compare levels of DNA methylation between 6 opium poppy varieties. MSAP profiling reflected the different methylation statuses among opium poppy varieties having divergent BIA content. Moreover, different organ-specific epigenetic profiles were observed between the samples. Differential epigenetic profiles of capsules and shoots from the leaves pointed to the impact of methylation on BIA biosynthesis. The data implied that the different DNA methylation status may have important biological significance, in the case of alkaloid content in opium poppy in particular.


This paper argues that the categorical authority of love's imperatives is derived from a sentimental contract. The problem is defined and the paper argues against two recent attempts to explain the authority of love's demands by Velleman and Frankfurt. An argument is then set out in which it is shown that a constructivist approach to the problem explains the sources of love's justifications. The paper distinguishes between the moral and the romantic case but argues that the sources of authority are paralleled in each. The paper ends by asking what we are to say when the demands of morality and the demands of love conflict.


Language is a vehicle through which people communicate with one another. The words and expressions people use to communicate with each other can either build relationships, act as a catalyst to commence conflict or fan the flames of an ongoing conflict. People do not usually find themselves in a conflict zone with persons to refer to them as "the other". Social media brings people from around the globe to communicate but there is always a feeling of belonging that units these people in the social media speech community. This work examines the language of discrimination on social media by Cameroonians at the tribal, regional and gender levels. It looks at the language from the level of discursive vocabulary items used by Cameroonians on social media that can provoke feelings of discrimination towards one another. Data for this study comprised of some 50 WhatsApp and Facebook screenshots and some 25 questionnaires administered through random selection of users of the social media platforms under study. Using the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis by Norman Fairclough, (1995) and the discursive model of Language and Gender by Cameron (2005). The results reveal that 100% of the respondents agreed to the fact that there is the prevalence of the language of discrimination on social media in varying proportions at gender, regional and tribal level. 67% of those who have encountered such discrimination express that this can affect life out of social media, while the 33% of those who think it will not affect their lives put up several mechanisms to shield this effect like ignoring such posts, defending their kind or reproaching the author of the discriminatory post.


Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is increasingly used in the management of hepatobiliary lesions, allowing staging and tissue acquisition. It is operator-dependent, and fine needle aspiration (FNA) of solid lesions provides an auditable standard; high-volume centres have shown excellent results for solid pancreatic lesion FNA with sensitivities of 92%–97%. The British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines stress that clinical quality should determine service provision, with geographical accessibility a secondary consideration. We set up the Wessex EUS network, working from a single hepatobiliary (HPB) pancreatic multidisciplinary team, with EUS provided in four local centres providing agreed standards and audit. Pancreatic solid lesion FNA results showed a pooled sensitivity of 94%, comparable with high-volume single centres. This demonstrates a network with good clinical governance is a plausible solution to providing a specialist service such as EUS and may be a roadmap that other specialist services under pressure could follow.


A program which utilizes patient instructors (PI) to teach and evaluate interviewing skills of pharmacy students is described. The PIs were programmed with a history of either hypertension, chronic pulmonary disease, or congestive heart failure. Content areas within each history included past and present drug therapy, adverse drug reactions, drug interactions, as well as socioeconomic and other factors affecting therapy. The interviews were done with small groups of students and followed by PI evaluation of interview content and process. The majority of students felt the experience helped them assess and improve their interviewing skills and agreed the program should continue. The advantages of utilizing PIs to teach interviewing skills are discussed.


The frequentist and the Bayesian approach to the estimation of autoregressions are often contrasted. Under standard assumptions, when the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate is close to 1, a frequentist adjusts it upwards to counter the small sample bias, while a Bayesian who uses a at prior considers the OLS estimate to be the best point estimate. This contrast is surprising because a at prior is often interpreted as the Bayesian approach that is closest to the frequentist approach. We point out that the standard way that inference has been compared is misleading because frequentists and Bayesians tend to use dierent models, in particular, a dierent distribution of the initial condition. The contrast between the frequentist and the Bayesian at prior estimation of the autoregression disappears once we make the same assumption about the initial condition in both approaches.


This thesis presents a novel approach to reduce the complexity and overload of information in Cultural Heritage (CH) on the Web through the use of a Tangible User Interface (TUI). It discusses how the Web and its technologies such as the Semantic Web have changed the interoperability and reach that knowledge, data and information can have. These technologies have allowed to link knowledge across CH organisations and helped to reduce uncertainty about the information used to create it. Nevertheless, it is cumbersome for a vast majority of online users to find relevant content, due to the overload of information available and the complexity of its nature. This research argues that this is because two main factors. The first factor is the dependency of Graphical User Interfaces on the Web that hinder complex exploration and technologic engagement for general users. The second factor identifies a requirement for CH organisations to become part of an Online Cultural Heritage ecosystem engaged through an interactive system on the Web. As a result, CH organisations do not have a meaningful system for their users to explore their content. This research addresses these problems by [1] developing an understanding on how CH knowledge is integrated across different organisations and different ways in which users engage and manipulate it and, [2] exploring how a TUI can facilitate the production of complex queries that enables the user to engage with the conceptual and technical information used to describe the knowledge about OCH collections. Chapter One presents an outline of the research problem, aims and objectives. It discusses the new challenges that CH organisation face when engaging with their users on the Web. Chapter Two presents a literature review of the current state of CH organisations, their information and knowledge and how they relate on the Web. Chapter Three argues that on the Web, CH organisations are conceptually and contextually integrated into a single entity that can be called Online Cultural Heritage (OCH). CH studies do not to consider that on the Web, visitors are no longer limited to a particular type of CH organisation (e.g. library, museum), nor to a particular collection held by that organisation. In addition, this chapter gives a brief introduction to Europeana as example of how information is shared across organisations on the Web, as it will be used as main case study later on. After describing the roles that data and information have on the production of knowledge, Chapter Three continues by presenting a literature review that highlights how users transform data into knowledge and their different needs of information when approaching information sources. It further identifies how users engage with Europeana's information and the interfaces used to do it. Therefore, Chapter Four addresses the relevance that user interfaces have on accessing information, data or knowledge on the Web and particularly OCH. It explains how TUIs can boost performance by providing the required thought structure through physical activities and the use of constructivism as theoretical approach. It introduces interaction design principles (such as Token and Constraint (TAC) and OnObject) where physical affordances are used to convey information to users, thus reducing the complexity of an interactive system. Chapter Five presents the research framework general plan. It introduces the a-priori and aposteriori phases of the research, where the first one focuses on understanding users' behaviours when querying Europeana and OCH, and Chapter Six will fully discuss Europeana as a case study. The research framework is fully described in Chapter 7 for the a priori section present the a-priori phase as a user centred design experiment where participants express their query behaviours. The test users included people with particular knowledge about cultural heritage objects (e.g. historians, archaeologists) analysing how they convert data into knowledge according to their different levels of need of information. The evaluated results are further used to contextualise the role of the interactive prototype to be designed. Such design process is presented in the following Chapter Eight. This chapter presents the integrated interaction design methodology adapted for the development of the TUI prototype. It presents the evaluation results for both experiments. It concentrates in Usability and UX evaluations to understand the engagement that users have with OCH information through the TUI. Such methods identify emotions and sense of helplessness related to the interactive process. It integrates a usability test to reveal users' procedural task results that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the system, which alter users' engagement with the information. Chapter Nine concludes by reviewing the results obtained and highlighting the challenges posed, benefits that the Web and its particular technologies offer to CH organisations, and the need for the adoption of interactive systems such as these, that eases question making processes and allow users to explore complex datasets in a meaningful way, while it also describes future work that can be carried out.


BACKGROUND
Haemodialysis (HD) and peritoneal dialysis (PD) should be regarded as complementary methods of renal replacement therapy. Approximately 10-20% of patients on PD are transferred annually to HD due to technique failure. Much smaller proportion of patients changes modality from HD to PD, predominantly due to vascular access problems, cardiac disease or patient preference. The effects of these transfers on therapy outcome, patient and technique survival have not been studied, with research focusing on outcome measures within the single modality and comparisons between the two methods.

METHODS
We have analysed retrospectively a cohort of 264 patients treated with PD in a single PD centre during 1994-2006. Patient characteristics, therapy measures and outcome of patients were compared between patients for whom PD was the initial method of renal replacement therapy (group 1, n = 197) and those transferred to PD from haemodialysis because of complications (group 2, n = 67). The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards multiple regression analysis were used to assess patient and technique survival.

RESULTS
In patients transferred from HD, significantly less had diabetes (11.9% versus 38.1%, P < 0.0001) and there were also significantly more females (57% versus 42.2%, P < 0.05). Baseline Kt/V was significantly higher in the primary PD therapy group (2.46 +/- 0.57 versus 2.11 +/- 0.48, P < 0.001), due to lower residual renal function in patients transferred from HD. Group 2 had also significantly higher peritonitis rate (0.86 versus 0.62 episode/year, P < 0.05). During the time of observation, 71 patients have died, in 100 patients kidney transplantation was performed, 56 were transferred to HD, renal function recovered in 5 and 32 were still on PD at the end of the study. No significant differences were observed in unadjusted patient survival, but technique survival was significantly lower in group 2 (P < 0.05). In the Cox multiple regression model, diabetes status, age and albumin level significantly influenced survival. Relative risk of death was not increased significantly in patients transferred from HD.

CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggest that outcome of patients transferred from HD is similar to that achieved in patients in whom PD is the first choice therapy. Thus, this option should be strongly considered in patients experiencing complications on HD, mainly vascular access problems, heart failure or intradialytic hypotension.


The aim of this paper is to analyze theoretically and experimentally the stator current of a three-phase squirrel-cage induction machine in order to show how it is influenced by electrical rotor faults. The approach used for this study analyzes the modification introduced by n broken rotor bars in the rotor cage magnetomotive force and then estimates the resulting frequency spectrum in the stator current. This approach is validated in a 3-kW 230-V/400-V 50-Hz 2850-r/min two-pole three-phase induction machine, showing the sensitive frequency components to rotor fault condition.


The final U.S. Credit Risk Retention Rule for Securitizations was released by six federal agencies in October 2014. The content of the Final Rule was disappointing—if unsurprising—for an industry that spent four years offering up countless proposals. In effect, the Final Rule offers very little relief for collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). Nevertheless, the Final Rule may have been softened enough around the edges to make a continuing—if smaller—CLO market feasible. The agencies rejected several approaches suggested by the industry, including a proposal for a qualified commercial loan, a third-party equity option, and a qualified CLO, but they eased up on several issues critical to CLOs, removing the unworkable "cash throttle," allowing risk retention by a CLO manager's majority-owned affiliate, and permitting CLO managers to utilize full-recourse financing to support risk retention. Investors are likely to migrate toward managers that are expected to be risk retention survivors.


We confirm, with a twist, that listing to a stock exchange can mitigate financial constraints of firms, using Japanese firm-level data over 20 years, 1995-2014, controlling for main-bank relationship and majority owner influence. Compared to a similar unlisted firm, a listed firm has a lower marginal product of capital on average and more new borrowings in recessions. Theoretically, we argue that these are key pieces of evidence to indicate less tight financial constraints for the listed firms than the unlisted. However, the listed firms do not borrow more on average over time. They rather maintain the lower leverage so that they can mitigate the borrowing constraints. We also find that the listed firms do not face lower interest rates.


A soy protein manufacturing facility was faced with the challenge of reducing its effluent phosphorus (P) content from 20-50 mg L(-1) down to <2 mg L(-1) total P without increasing soluble salt levels to comply with discharge and receiving water requirements. A number of biological and chemical P removal technologies previously evaluated either failed to achieve the new standards or would have produced prohibitive amounts of residual sludge and unacceptably high effluent salt concentrations. Lime precipitation, utilising a novel crystallisation technology, was demonstrated through on-site pilot testing to meet the process objectives. It is capable of achieving the required P removal at pH 10 while not increasing soluble salts and producing rapid settling and filterable particles. Also, minimal carbonate removal was observed with residual solids generation being only 40% of a complete lime softening reaction. This paper describes the technical evaluation that led to the full-scale treatment system that was put into operation in late 2005.


ABSTRACT Ten marine reservoir effect (R) values were obtained from archaeological shell-middens along the San Matías Gulf, North Patagonian Atlantic coast, Argentina. They were determined by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements on marine shell (Mytilidae) and charcoal samples (burned, short-lived plants) derived from a common stratigraphic unit. The R values fluctuate between 205±48 and 358±56 14C yr BP from ca. 5300 to ca. 700 14C yr BP with no obvious temporal trend. Calculated ΔR values fluctuate between +30±66 and –162±48 yr during the same time span. Local factors such as restricted connection with the open sea or presence of aged carbonates do not appear to have had an influence on this effect along the gulf coastline. The mean R value obtained (266 ± 51 yr) constitutes a useful value for correcting ages in shells from abundant archaeological deposits recorded in the area since Middle Holocene times.


The calpain-10 gene (CAPN10) on chromosome 2q37.3 was the first candidate gene for type 2 diabetes (T2D) identified through a genomewide screen and positional cloning. One polymorphism (UCSNP-43: G-->A) and a specific haplotype combination defined by three polymorphisms (UCSNP-43, -19, and -63) were linked to an increased risk of T2D in several populations. To quantitatively assess the collective evidence for the effects of CAPN10 on risk of T2D, we conducted a meta-analysis of both population-based and family-based association studies. We retrieved data from the MEDLINE, PubMed, and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man databases, as well as from other relevant reports and abstracts published up to July 2003. From a total of 26 studies with primary data (21 population-based studies: 5,013 cases and 5,876 controls; 5 family-based studies: 487 parent-offspring trios), we developed a summary database that contains variables of study design, study population/ethnicity, specific polymorphisms and haplotype combinations in CAPN10, and diabetes-related metabolic phenotypes. For population-based studies, we used both fixed-effects and random-effects models to calculate the pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the associations of CAPN10 genotypes with the risk of T2D. We also calculated weighted mean differences for the associations between CAPN10 and diabetes-related quantitative traits. Under either an additive or a dominant effect model, we found no statistically significant relation between CAPN10 genotypes in the UCSNP-43 locus and T2D risk. However, under a recessive model, individuals homozygous for the common G allele had a statistically significant 19% higher risk of T2D than carriers of the A allele (OR 1.19; 95% CI 1.07-1.33). The association between the 112/121 haplotype combination and T2D risk appeared to be overestimated by several initial small studies with positive findings (OR 1.38; 95% CI 1.04-1.84). After we removed these initial studies, this association became nonsignificant (OR 1.11; 95% CI 0.91-1.35). Moreover, we found no evidence for the associations between the UCSNP-43 G/G genotype and the 112/121 haplotype combination and metabolic phenotypes. Our meta-analysis of family-based studies showed only an overtransmission of the rare allele C in UCSNP-44 from heterozygous parents to their affected offspring with T2D. Our analysis indicates that inadequate statistical power, racial/ethnic differences in frequencies of alleles, haplotypes and haplotype combinations, potential gene-gene or gene-environment interactions, publication bias, and multiple hypothesis testing may contribute to the significant heterogeneity in previous studies of CAPN10 and T2D. Our findings also suggest that both large-scale, well-designed association studies and functional studies are warranted to either reliably confirm or conclusively refute the initial hypothesis regarding the role of CAPN10 in T2D risk.


A review of the current state of work in computer modelling in music reveals underlying problems of completeness and variability in the application of principles, which are indicative of central problems in systematic music theory generally. Solutions suggested by current work, again in computer modelling, require consideration of the pragmatics of listening to music leading to hypotheses which might act as bases both for variation in the application of principles and for the inference of new principles. Proposed hypotheses are derived from discussion of analyses of two pieces of music (the first of Webern's Five Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 5, and the third movement of Mozart's piano sonata in D major, K.284). Some conclusions are drawn both for potential application in computer modelling and for theories of musical meaning.


Northwest Europe has undergone repeated episodes of exhumation (the exposure of formerly buried rocks) due to such factors as post-orogenic unroofing, rift-shoulder uplift, hotspot activity, compressive tectonics, eustatic sea-level change, glaciation and isostatic readjustment. The main observational legacy of this exhumation around the North Atlantic is preserved in the comparatively young (Mesozoic and Cenozoic) geological record of this region. Despite a rapid increase in the understanding of the exhumation of this area, there are still many unknowns: the relative intensity of the various phases and their geographical variation; mechanisms of uplift; primary causes of exhumation. Tied to these problems is the larger-scale question of whether the circum-North Atlantic is unique or whether its behaviour is typical for passive margins. There have been several attempts in recent years to bring together researchers to address these questions, but these have often focused on one particular geographical area or one particular exhumation phase. Before an integrated story can emerge, disciplines that have traditionally remained apart need to come together: geomorphology and offshore seismic interpretation; Palaeogene and Neogene studies; Scandinavian and British-Irish research schools. This volume represents a first step in this direction by providing an inter-disciplinary set of studies over a wide latitudinal range of the NW European margin. The studies presented here are based on a variety of techniques that have been employed to address the main concerns of North Atlantic exhumation history, including timing, mechanisms and the sedimentary response of the continental margin. The 25 papers presented in this volume have


How can we do leadership better, for any place, for whatever we need leadership to do there? In this thesis I propose that the ongoing ability to perceive, reflex on, choose and act to get safe-enough, problematized-enough to make confident-enough decisions on the leadership practice needed is a key practice to practise. This is doing containment. Practising involves paying critical attention to place, practices, power, pace, position, performance, processes, purpose for our people (the Ps). It involves getting comfortable-enough sitting into discomfort. Practise, as explored in the Development section, necessitates seeking guides, resources, models and other 'stuff' and making critical agentic choices to purpose this 'for' doing development (of self, of others). Enough is key to this. I draw on voices from multiple academic fields and also from other philosophical, cultural, practice-based ways of knowing, being and becoming, particularly the work of Nagarjuna. These voices form a notional community of consensus-enough with justification-enough to support the theory-in-use of containment. This is explored in four studies: the first two studies with partner firms in Nepal to substantiate containment-in-practice; the second two studies, in India and the UK, build the theory-in-use to a framework for interventions supporting leadership development. These studies initially followed a Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology (CGTM) then moved towards a more post-qualitative approach to method. Containment is proposed within constructivist, situated knowledges and a Middle Way approach. As such the researcher's voice, position and socio-cultural place and those of the research participants are explored along with their influences on the inquiry, its development and impacts. The thesis concludes with a call for a renaissance in criticality within groups, organisations and the public sphere, activated by leadership as a counter to the too-safe consensus that feels not-safe-enough. Attention to Place and to Practise is the key. Please find individual parts of this thesis uploaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e8vuro6ayxxxo45/AAA__28kSNwKNgMgw7CVFtsAa?dl=0


Complex glycans have important roles in biological recognition processes and considerable pharmaceutical potential. The synthesis of novel glycans can be facilitated by engineering glycosyltransferases to modify their substrate specificities. The choice of sites to modify requires the knowledge of the structures of enzyme-substrate complexes while the complexity of protein structures necessitates the exploration of a large array of multisite mutations. The retaining glycosyltransferase, alpha-1,3-galactosyltransferase (alpha3GT), which catalyzes the synthesis of the alpha-Gal epitope, has strict specificity for UDP-galactose as a donor substrate. Based on the structure of a complex of UDP-galactose with alpha3GT, the specificity for the galactose moiety can be partly attributed to residues that interact with the galactose 2-OH group, particularly His280 and Ala282. With the goal of engineering a variant of bovine alpha3GT with GalNAc transferase activity, we constructed a limited library of 456 alpha3GT mutants containing 19 alternative amino acids at position 280, two each at 281 and 282 and six at position 283. Clones (1500) were screened by assaying partially purified bacterially expressed variants for GalNAc transferase activity. Mutants with the highest levels of GalNAc transferase activity, AGGL or GGGL, had substitutions at all four sites. The AGGL mutant had slightly superior GalNAc transferase activity amounting to about 3% of the activity of the wild-type enzyme with UDP-Gal. This mutant had a low activity with UDP-Gal; its crystallographic structure suggests that the smaller side chains at residues 280-282 form a pocket to accommodate the larger acetamido group of GalNAc. Mutational studies indicate that Leu283 is important for stability in this mutant.


Abstract In this paper, we mainly study the action of Aut(G) on the set Ω of all maximal subgroups of G, and we use P to denote the action of Aut(G) on Ω. When G is a finite non-cyclic abelian p-group, P is transitive. When G is minimal non-abelian, there are three cases. If G is quaternion group, P is transitive; if G is a metacyclic group, P is non-transitive; if G is not a metacyclic group, P is transitive.


Many rural communities in the Nigeria Delta Region have been exposed to the flaring of Associated (AG) gas due to increased extraction of petroleum in the area. The study aimed at assessing the effect of gas flaring on the built environment using buildings as the main observed objects. Two rural communities (Obrikom and Omoku) were used for the case-control study. The study, carried out within a period of 11 months, combined modeled and measured estimates, considered emissions inventory and location data and combined expert judgment to assess possible effects of gas flaring on a sample of 106 buildings. Results shows that SO 2, NO 2 and PM 10 were the major pollutants that may have acted as causative agents of the observed impacts (corrosion of roof tops, coloration of walls, leakage of roof tops etc), due to their toxic properties. There was high positive correlation between pollution levels and the level of impact on the sampled buildings (OR = 3.2, 95%, C.I. 1.3 – 6.7). The study concluded that epidemiological studies on the communities around gas flaring points have become imperative to determine the health effects from continuous exposure.


It is unknown whether animals, like humans, can employ behavioural strategies to cope with impulsivity. To examine this question, we tested whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) would use self-distraction as a coping strategy in a situation in which they had to continually inhibit responses to accumulating candies in order to earn a greater amount of those rewards. We tested animals in three conditions in which they were sometimes given a set of toys and were sometimes allowed physical access to the accumulating candies. Chimpanzees allowed the rewards to accumulate longer before responding when they could divert their attention to the toys, and they manipulated the toys more when the candies were physically accessible. Thus, chimpanzees engaged in self-distraction with the toys when such behaviour was most beneficial as a coping mechanism.


This study investigates the fluvial dynamics of straight natural stream channels. In particular, this experimental field study quantitatively assesses a physically based non-linear mathematical theory of alternate bar formation under unsteady natural flow conditions within a straight alluvial stream. The study site is an artificially straightened section of the Embarras River located approximately 16 km south of Champaign, Illinois. Data were collected on channel form, gradient, alternate bar dimensions, bed sediment size and flow stage over a 2 year study period.

Both linear and non-linear steady flow hydrodynamic theories suggest that alternate bars are critical to the process of meander development. But these theories do not predict bar development for unsteady flow conditions, which typically occur in natural alluvial channels. Tubino (1991) suggests that bar evolution for a flood hydrograph can be divided into three parts: (1) a period of limited bar growth during the rising stage of the flood; (2) a stage of modest bar decay near the peak of the flood; and (3) a stage of non-linear bar growth during the prolonged falling stage of the flood.

Bars developed during the falling limb of a hydrograph, and exhibited sequential development rather than the uniform growth along the reach predicted by Tubino's model. As flow stage decreased, short, low, fine-grained bars were superimposed on long, high and coarser-grained bars that developed under preceding high flow stages. These results suggest that the process of bar formation in artificially straightened natural streams with heterogeneous bed material may occur under different flow conditions and in a different manner than predicted by theoretical models. Further work should focus on attempting to isolate the physical mechanisms responsible for alternate bar formation in straight natural streams with heterogeneous bed material and flashy hydrologic flow regimes.


We demonstrate the need to view in a dynamic context any decision based on limited information. We focus on the use of product costs in selecting the product portfolio. We show how ex post data regarding the actual costs from implementing the decision leads to updating of product cost estimates and potentially trigger a revision of the initial decision. We model this updating process as a discrete dynamical system (DDS). We define a decision as informationally consistent if it is a fixed-point solution to the DDS. We employ numerical analysis to characterize the existence and properties of such solutions. We find that fixed points are rare, but that simple heuristics find them often and quickly. We demonstrate the usefulness and robustness of our methodology by examining the interaction of limited information with multiple decision rules (heuristics) and problem features (size of product portfolio, profitability of product markets). We discuss implications for research on cost systems.


Events within the last 15 years of college policy debate have sparked widespread discussion and reflection on essential questions like who participates in debate and why does (or should) one debate. Recent debate success and controversies, both having made waves throughout popular media press, have only complicated these conversations. Deliberations on what should be done in the college policy debate community, whether through individual discussions or at the institutional level, have been largely based on anecdotes and hearsay rather than the evidence that supposedly sets this debate community apart. In an attempt to provide evidence that might enhance these deliberations, the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Census was administered during the fall of 2014 to gather data on current college policy debate demographics and attitudes toward contemporary debate practices, norms, and controversies. The 2014 CEDA Census was completed by 378 respondents, representing current debaters, coaches, and alumni. Survey participants answered questions about their own demographics, the debate resolution, motivations for debate, community concerns, tournament administration, and overall debate satisfaction. This essay reviews literature on debate assessment and data collection, outlines the CEDA Census research methodology, presents preliminary data analysis, and concludes with initial evidence-based recommendations. Keywords: policy debate, evidence, data, assessment


The philosopher John Passmore distinguished between (1) "problems in ecology," or what we might call problems in scientific understanding of ecological change, and (2) "ecological problems," or what we might call problems faced by societies due to ecological change. The spread of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) and conversion of the central and southern Great Plains of North America to juniper woodland might be categorized as a problem in ecology, an ecological problem, or both. Here, we integrate and apply two interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving—social-ecological systems thinking and ecocriticism—to understand the role of human culture in recognizing, driving, and responding to cedar's changing geographic distribution. We interpret the spread of cedar as a process of culturally induced range infilling due to the ongoing social-ecological impacts of colonization, analyze poetic literary texts to clarify the concepts that have so far informed different cultural values related to cedar, and explore the usefulness of diverse interdisciplinary collaborations and knowledge for addressing social-ecological challenges like cedar spread in the midst of rapidly unfolding global change. Our examination suggests that it is not only possible, but preferable, to address cedar spread as both a scientific and a social problem. Great Plains landscapes are teetering between grassland and woodland, and contemporary human societies both influence and choose how to cope with transitions between these ecological states. We echo previous studies in suggesting that human cultural values about stability and disturbance, especially cultural concepts of fire, will be primary driving factors in determining future trajectories of change on the Great Plains. Although invasion-based descriptors of cedar spread may be useful in ecological research and management, language based on the value of restraint could provide a common vocabulary for effective crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary communication about the relationship between culture and cedar, as well as an ethical framework for cross-cultural communication, decision-making, and management.