BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Our purpose was to show changes in the diameter of the M1 segment of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) by using high-resolution MR imaging in patients with chronic internal carotid artery occlusion after IV administered acetazolamide challenge. Changes in blood flow velocity of the basal cerebral arteries are thought to correlate with changes of cerebral blood flow. Changes in the diameter of the basal cerebral arteries, however, might influence the validity of transcranial Doppler measurements.

METHODS
Eight patients with internal carotid artery occlusion who were undergoing acetazolamide testing for assessment of cerebrovascular vasomotor reactivity were included in the study. Blood flow velocities of both MCAs were measured with transcranial Doppler sonography before and 25 minutes after the administration of acetazolamide. Before and 15 minutes after the administration of medication, MR imaging was performed contralateral to the occlusion side. A T2-weighted turbo-gradient spin-echo sequence was chosen to show a cross section of the M1 segment in high resolution (pixels, 0.27 x 0.29 mm). Based on interpolated data, the smallest and greatest MCA diameters were determined.

RESULTS
We did not find changes in the diameter of the MCA after acetazolamide provocation testing with high-resolution MR imaging in patients with occlusive extracranial carotid artery disease.

CONCLUSION
The results of our study support the hypothesis that changes in MCA flow velocity measured by transcranial Doppler sonography reflect relative changes in cerebral blood flow after acetazolamide provocation testing.


Objectives: To explore the immediate and lasting benefits of the essential oils used in the dōTERRA AromaTouch Technique®, an essential oil application method similar to a full-body aromatherapy massage, on stress, immune secretions, inflammatory signaling, and anxiety in healthy volunteers. Design: Pilot trial. Location: dōTERRA International corporate campus (Pleasant Grove, UT) Subjects: Healthy volunteers (n=18). Interventions: Half of the subjects (n=9) received the technique twice per week for three weeks. Control groups consisted of the other healthy individuals (n=9) who received the same massage-like technique with fractionated coconut oil instead of the essential oils. Outcome Measures: Salivary levels of cortisol (μg/dL), TNF-α (pg/ mL), IL-6 (pg/mL), IL-1β (pg/mL), IL-8 (ng/mL), and C-reactive protein (ng/mL) as well as the secretory rate of immunoglobulin A (μg/min), heart rate (beats/minute), blood pressure (mm Hg), and Spielberger state anxiety scores. Baseline measurements were taken immediately before the first session. Additional measurements were taken immediately after the first session and after receiving bi-weekly sessions for a 3-week period. Results: Both groups experienced decreases in heart rate, mean arterial pressure, diastolic blood pressure, state anxiety scores, and salivary levels of cortisol immediately after the first session. The essential oil group also showed significantly decreased levels of C-reactive protein in the saliva immediately after the technique. After three weeks of regularly receiving the technique, subjects in the essential oil group had significantly lower salivary levels of C-reactive protein and three of the four inflammatory cytokines tested. Conclusions: Because of the experimental design, many outcomes of the technique can be attributed specifically to the activity of the essential oils. The essential oils used in the AromaTouch Technique may be effective for enhancing the relaxation associated with a massagelike procedure involving physical touch. The oils in the technique may also be solely responsible for a major inhibitory effect on inflammatory signaling. Validation of this result warrants further investigation in a trial with a larger sample size.


In 1979, the Department of Human Nutrition of the Agricultural University at Wageningen began a research project on obesity in young adults. The main objectives of this project are the investigation of aetiological aspects and health consequences of obesity. It is a prospective study and is being carried out in a young adult population of three age groups (19-21, 24-26 and 29-31 years as at 1 January 1980) in the Municipality of Ede. The present thesis deals with the investigations into determinants of body fatness and two methodological studies concerning relative weight and habitual physical activity which form the first part of the research project mentioned above. In the Introduction, a general survey is given of the methods of measuring body fatness. Health consequences and aetiology of obesity are also surveyed. Approximately 3900 subjects participated in the studies described in Chapter 2 and 3, and a subsample of approximately 300 subjects from the initial population participated in the studies described in Chapters 4-6. The relationship between various socio-demographic variables and body mass index (BMI; weight/height 2 ) is dealt with in Chapter 2. The prevalence of severe obesity (BMI ≥30.0 kg/m 2 ) was 2% in both sexes. The most salient socio-demographic determinants of BMI were age and level of education. Older subjects were heavier, and subjects who had a higher level of education were lighter. Other socio-demographic determinants of BMI were: level of father's occupation and religion in both sexes; parity in females; and urbanization and church attendance in males. The relationship between aspects of daily life-style and BMI are described in Chapter 3. Five conceptually meaningful factors could be distinguished within the aspects of daily life-style considered. These factors were interpreted as constructs of: 1, slimming behaviour; 2, behaviour characterized by the consumption of coffee and alcohol, smoking habits and number of hours of sleep per night (CASS behaviour); 3, eating sweet and savoury snacks; 4, health-conscious behaviour; and 5, physical activity. Heavier subjects had higher ratings for slimming behaviour and lower ratings for health-conscious behaviour. In addition heavier males had higher ratings for CASS behaviour. Possible improvement in the prediction of body fatness when an index of relative weight is based not only on body weight and body height, but also on frame size, is considered in Chapter 4. The prediction of body fatness was not improved when frame size, as assessed by knee width and wrist width, was taken into account. BMI was the most preferable of the indices considered. The development of a short questionnaire for the measurement of habitual physical activity is discussed in Chapter 5. Three dimensions could be distinguished within the pattern of habitual physical activity. They are interpreted as: 1, physical activity at work; 2, sport during leisure time; and 3, physical activity during leisure time excluding sport. Level of education was inversely related to physical activity at work, and positively related to physical activity during leisure time excluding sport. Subjective experience of work load was inversely related to both sport and other physical activities during leisure time. Lean body mass was positively related to both physical activity at work and sport, in males only. The relationship between body fatness and both food consumption and habitual physical activity are dealt with in Chapter 6. The average daily energy intake in males was rather high (about 3000 kcal) and average body weight increased by 1.2 kg in the preceding year. Both findings suggest the existence of a positive energy balance. In females the average daily energy intake of about 2170 kcal was closer to the recommended intake and average body weight remained constant. There were no important differences in the pattern of habitual physical activity between the categories of body fatness defined. However the daily energy intake of fatter subjects was lower than that of leaner subjects. This finding may be explained by a reduction of food intake in fatter subjects in an attempt to reduce body weight. There is also some evidence to suggest that many fatter subjects have a reduced need for energy, but it is not clear whether this is a causal factor of obesity or an effect of prolonged slimming. Finally, a general discussion of the results is given in Chapter 7. While some of the findings can be useful for the management of obesity. it must be emphasized, that several aspects have yet to be studied in detail in the research project of which this thesis forms the first part.


The role of teaching materials in English language teaching classes is relatively high. Among the teaching materials, the importance of textbooks cannot be denied. Textbooks play a fundamental role in a wide variety of materials. Despite different views about textbooks and differences of opinion about their use , they are still used by most teachers. This study aims to evaluate the 4th grade English textbook in line with teachers' opinions. In this study, a mixed research method was used. The study was conducted with 115 English teachers working in Edremit, Tuşba, and İpekyolu, the central districts of Van province, in the academic year 2021-2022. "Textbook Evaluation Questionnaire" and "Semi-structured Interview Form" were used to collect data. Within the scope of the research, 12 English teachers were also interviewed. The teachers who participated in the study think that the visuals used in the book, the general appearance of their book, and the font size are reasonable. Most teachers think the book's content is appropriate for learning outcomes and teaching principles. It was determined that the teachers agreed with the items related to the exercises and activities of the book at a moderate level. Teachers think that exercises and activities should motivate students, and the exercises used in the book should be diversified. Textbooks are one of the most essential materials in the teaching process, and the process of preparing a textbook should be done by considering the curriculum, learning outcomes, and student and teacher needs. In addition to the exercises and activities used in the content of the book, the formal features of the book should also be given importance. The exercises and activities used in the textbooks prepared for young age groups should encourage students to learn and entertain them simultaneously.


We studied the structure of the occipital part of brain in rats with experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE), which were treated with intraperitoneal injections of intravenous immunoglobulin from 12th to 15th day after EAE induction. All rats were divided on tree groups: the first group and the second group received human intravenous immunoglobulin and rat immunoglobulin, respectively and the third group serves as a control group. We observed more expressed vascular edema and nervous cells alterations in control group in comparison to the treated groups. Therefore intravenous immunoglobulin improves the state of the occipital part of brain in rats with EAE.


A 36-year-old woman pregnant, G2 P1, presented at 27 weeks of gestation after two previous visits elsewhere, as an outpatient in a gynecological clinic. An ultrasound examination revealed bilateral hydronephrosis. Also, ureteral dilation and bladder overdistension was present (Figure 1, 2 and 3). We evaluated that the cause was a urinary tract obstruction. Specifically, we are dealing with posterior urethral valves. The anteroposterior diameter of the pelvis on a transverse view of the abdomen was 6 mm. The amniotic fluid index (AFI) was 3 cm, so, oligohydramnios. Fetal Biometry responds to the 27th week of gestation. The sex of the fetus was male. Following identification of urinary tract dilation, a detailed anatomic scan was performed to exclude the presence of associated extra-renal anomalies. After corticosteroid regimens, at week 30 of pregnancy, due to the fetal diagnosis previously determined and now anhydramnios, with the informed consent of both parents, are deciding to end a pregnancy with Caesarean section. On 17.07.2017, at 8:45 AM, the baby of the male sex is born, with body weight 1700 grams, and Apgar score was; 7 in the first minute, 8 in the fifth minute. Shortly after birth, because of the prematurity and the manifestation of the signs of Infant respiratory distress syndrome (IRDS), the baby is transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The treatment started according to the protocol with fluid, antibiotic therapy, and surfactant administration. Even despite therapy, the condition is constantly worsening the baby is intubated and passes on mechanical ventilation. The baby's condition continues to worsen even further until cardiac arrest, even despite reanimation measures, the baby died within a few hours.


The constant increase in cyber security breaches (CSB) has raised concerns globally
mainly due to deviant behaviour of employees. Previous studies have claimed that a lack
of security technologies and capabilities have contributed to these breaches. Despite
increasing cyber security investment, organisations continue to experience security
breaches. In light of the non-excludability of cyber security as a public good, this study
seeks to examine factors that stimulate cooperation to comply with security requirements
to prevent security breaches. However, little work has examined the relationship between
non-excludability of cyber security and cooperative behaviour to achieve cyber security
compliance (CSC) in organisations. Hence, this thesis presents an in-depth analysis of
cooperation to address CSC in critical national information infrastructure (CNII) sectors
in Malaysia. Specifically, this study aims to: i) investigate factors that influence
employees' cooperative behavioural intentions (ITC) in achieving CSC; ii) analyse the
mediation effect of organisational security practices by employees' cooperative behaviour
in promoting CSC; and iii) identify the effectiveness of cyber security governance
instruments implemented at organisational, sectoral and national levels in Malaysia. A
representative sample of 155 organisations with 69.7 % from a population of 220 from
these sectors participated in this study. The important CSC factors were included:
effective security awareness (ESA), technical capability (TC), security role (SR) and
institutional role (IR) (which constitute cooperation), top management commitment
(TMC), structured security processes (SSP), security investment (SI) and organizational,
sectoral and national governance instruments sectoral and national governance
instruments. Various statistical methods including binary logistic regression, Karlson
Holm and Breen method and ordinal logistic regression were deployed to answer each research question. The findings were subsequently confirmed by face-to-face interviews.
The findings show that ESA (OR = 2.561, p = 0.04), SR for top management (OR = 3.224,
p = 0.06) and middle management (OR = 2.759, p = 0.020) and IR (OR = 1.528, p =
0.044) significantly predict ITC. Employees' ITC can be strengthened by instilling a
sense of belongingness through ESA and internalisation of IR to behave altruistically to
achieve a common goal. The findings also show that large workforce organisations (OR
= 0.342, p = 0.026) are less likely to contribute to ITC, indicating that opportunistic
behaviour looms strongly in large groups. Furthermore, ITC contributed significantly (OR
= 0.067, p = 0.001) to employees' cooperation in organizations. The results also show
that cooperation partially mediates the relationship between both TMC (OR = 0.222, p =
0.002) and SSP (OR = 1.555, p = 0.006) with CSC, where SSP has stronger mediation
effect (30.63 %) than TMC (16.67 %). This study also shows how inter-related tasks
embedded in security processes require cooperative and collective efforts to promote
CSC, in which security information and knowledge are transferred in a structured and
systematic manner. Finally, this thesis shows that cyber security governance instruments
implemented in organisations (OR = 2.469, p = 0.000) and at national level (OR = 4.242,
p = 0.003) are more likely to be more effective than across sectors in achieving CSC in
organisations.


Objectives: The application of light weight products used for automobile needs to require the use of Al metal matrix composites (MMCs). The optimized combination of process variables has been found to accomplish for better machining.
Methods/statistical analysis: There is different type of machining methods used for machining of MMC but it is not so easy to machine these materials with full efficiency and desired output responses because of difficult to machine these materials as compared to other unreinforced materials like alloys and smart materials. The main reason behind hardness of aluminum MMCs is heterogeneous structure which makes its surface layer with high fatigue strength, smooth, and tough. L9 orthogonal array has been used to perform the experiments.
Findings: The effect of parameters has been calculated and analyzed for response analysis. The effect of various machining parameters like wire diameter, current, voltage, pulse on time, and pulse off time is observed and analyzed on surface properties of the Al–SiC MMCs. As a result of compressive residual stress on the surface that is a plus point for material to use it for tough work, but along with this it will cause high tool wear and surface imperfections while machining, so these are some reasons for the recommendation of non-conventional machining methods to machine aluminum matrix composites. So, several new techniques were added in some past few years of research which is explained in this research article.
Application/improvements: Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) which is an advanced machining method which is used for manufacture difficult shapes conductive work piece materials. Experimental work will be done on the WEDM of Al–SiC MMC.
Keywords: Aluminium Metal Matrix Composite Al–SiC, Surface Roughness, Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM), Surface Integrity, Taguchi's Method, Response and Regression Analysis.


This paper aims to identify incentive structures for co-operations between the public and private sector in urban development as well as the economic reasons for such structures. The current and at the moment intense discussions taking place in Germany regarding Public Private Partnership (PPP) rotate around the areas of traffic construction as well as structural engineering projects. However there exist a great number of fields of operation for PPP. One study, from the German Institute of Urban Affairs, shows us great growth potential in the areas of urban development respectively urban renewal. In this context, PPP will be analysed from the point of view of new institutional economics as well as the game theory, this will help reveal uncertainties as well as identify problems in the complexity of building cooperation and through the design of incentive structures help to reduce and overcome same. Due to the complex social and economic problems within the scope of urban development, singular instance solutions will not lead to the desired result on the contrary what is required is more of an integrated strategically approach. This paper pursues the question, which elements of classic real estate development and the guideline and coordinating operations of the PPP Task Forces can and should be used in urban development respectively what modifications are required on said elements. Because of the essential implementation of economically and socially intricate projects in urban development, it is necessary to establish PPP as a central aspect in the discussion about administrative reform.


A little-noticed clinical report indicates that a low-fat, whole-food vegan diet, coupled with daily walking exercise, leads to rapid remission of neuropathic pain in the majority of type 2 diabetics expressing this complication. Concurrent marked improvements in glycemic control presumably contribute to this benefit, but are unlikely to be solely responsible. Consideration should be given to the possibility that improved blood rheology - decreased blood viscosity and increased blood filterability - plays a prominent role in mediating this effect. There is considerable evidence that neural hypoxia, secondary to impaired endoneurial microcirculatory perfusion, is a crucial etiologic factor in diabetic neuropathy; the unfavorable impact of diabetes on hemorheology would be expected to exacerbate endoneurial ischemia. Conversely, measures which improve blood fluidity would likely have a beneficial impact on diabetic neuropathy. There is indeed evidence that vegan diets, as well as exercise training, tend to decrease the viscosity of both whole blood and plasma; reductions in hematocrit and in fibrinogen may contribute to this effect. The fact that vegan diets decrease the white cell count is suggestive of an improvement in blood filterability as well; filterability improves with exercise training owing to an increase in erythrocyte deformability. Whether these measures influence the activation of leukocytes in diabetics - an important determinant of blood filterability - remains to be determined. There are various reasons for suspecting that a vegan diet can reduce risk for other major complications of diabetes - retinopathy, nephropathy, and macrovascular disease - independent of its tendency to improve glycemic control in type 2 patients. The vegan diet/exercise strategy represents a safe, 'low-tech' approach to managing diabetes that deserves far greater attention from medical researchers and practitioners.


Abstract Although economic, political, ethnic and religious factors have led to regionalisms and other divides, causing civil strife and civil wars in many countries, in Botswana the north–south divide existed for a long time merely as a political undercurrent. However, the turn of the twenty-first century saw the explosion of issues motivated by perceptions that it was the north–south divide that caused imbalance in the provision of infrastructural development and ethnic inequality. This article traces the north–south divide in Botswana back to the early British colonial enterprise, when it was used for administrative convenience. Although in the post-colony the first president handled the situation pro-actively, his successors abandoned this approach. Regionalism ensued as personal ambitions for power and wealth took political and sometimes tribal dimensions. Ethnic identities were used to bolster campaigns despite the fact that identities in Botswana are multiple and multilayered rather than mutually exclusive.


Leaves of Scorzonera incisa DC. (Asteraceae) are eaten raw against diabetes and headache. Evaluation of medicinal, edible plants using profiling methods has become a common phenomenon. Petroleum ether (PE), ethyl acetate (EA), and n‐butanol (BU) fractions were prepared from ethanol extract of the aerial parts of the plant. Isolation by HPLC and phenolic profiling by validated LC‐MS/MS method with 53 compounds were conducted on the EA fraction. GC‐MS method was used to profile the PE fraction. In‐vitro inhibitory activities of all fractions against α‐amylase, α‐glucosidase, AChE, BChE, tyrosinase and urease enzymes were measured. Isoorientin, vitexin, cynaroside and chlorogenic acid were isolated and characterized from the EA fraction as major compounds. LC‐MS/MS analysis quantified 36 compounds in the EA fraction. 20 compounds were tentatively determined in the PE fraction. Compounds with the same molecular and fragment ions, a low percentage of identified compounds, and very close polarities were revealed to be some limits of the nature for LC‐MS/MS profiling. Particularly, the presence and amount of substances other than the standard compounds used in the profiling methods and possible misdetections should not be neglected in evaluating medicinal plants and establishing a correlation between compounds and bioactivity.


fluid (CSF) during the acute phase of multiple sclerosis, in animal model of multiple sclerosis and experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). In contrast, during the remission phase of the diseases the levels of NGF drop significantly. More recently, the increased level of NGF has also been reported in other autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus. These observations suggest that over production of NGF in CNS may functionally be related to the state of activation of the immune system in autoimmune diseases. Concomitantly, proinflammatory cytokines are upregulated in the acute phase of autoimmune diseases and are known to be potent inducers of the expression of heat shock proteins (HSP). Moreover, NGF is known to be a chemotactic factor for polymorphonuclear cells (14, 15). Due to concomitantly increased level of NGF in inflammatory sites and around the blood vessels in acute phase of the disease with leukocyte infiltration of the immune cells in CNS, one may question whether NGF has any effect on production of proinflammatory cytokines through production of heat shock proteins and leukocyte infiltration. To answer the above questions, NGF was injected intracerebroventricularly at doses 20 οr 5 µg/mice for 4 days. The results show that the administered NGF neither has any effect on the expression of HSP-27 nor on leukocyte infiltration in central nervous system, suggesting that the high doses of NGF utilized in these experiments affect neither the immune nor the central nervous systems.


The increase in production, consumption and inadequate disposition of plastics has generated an accumulation of these elements in marine ecosystems, which have become important microplastics sinks (< 5 mm). The objective of this research was to determine the temporal and spatial differences in the density, distribution, and type of microplastics in the sediments of Buenaventura Bay. For this purpose, sediment samples were collected in the internal estuary (close to the rivers) and in the external estuary (with a greater marine influence). Samples were obtained in the dry, transition, and rainy season for the years 2015 and 2019. Microplastics were extracted by density separation method, each particle was classified and measured by optical microscopy. Density ranged from 11 to 1,354 particles/kg, with averages of 194.9 ± 51.3 and 359.6 ± 88.0 particles/kg for the years 2015 and 2019, respectively, reporting an increase of 84.4 %. The internal estuary presented a higher density in both years and the fibers constituted the most common form of microplastic particles, with 63.7 % for 2015 and 56.03 % for 2019. The presence and increasing accumulation of microplastics generates risks and adverse effects for the marine communities; additionally it coul compromise the food safety for coastal human populations.


A study was conducted with 124 intercollegiate student-athletes at an NCAA Division I institution to examine the relationship between self-identity variables (i.e., identity foreclosure and athletic identity) and career maturity. Results indicated that both identity foreclosure and athletic identity were inversely related to career maturity. Significant effects of gender, playing status (varsity vs. nonvarsity), and sport (revenue producing vs. nonrevenue producing) on career maturity were observed. The findings suggest that failure to explore alternative roles and identifying strongly and exclusively with the athlete role are associated with delayed career development in intercollegiate student athletes, and that male varsity student-athletes in revenue-producing sports may be especially at risk for impaired acquisition of career decision-making skills. The results underscore the importance of understanding athletic identity issues and exercising caution in challenging sport-related occupational aspirati...


ABSTRACT The toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) has gained importance as a major mammalian receptor for lipoproteins derived from the cell wall of a variety of bacteria, such as Borrelia burgdorferi,Treponema pallidum, and Mycoplasma fermentans. We were interested in identifying mutations in the TLR2 gene that might prove to be associated with altered susceptibility to septic shock. We performed a mutation screen of the TLR2 gene using single-stranded conformational polymorphism in 110 normal, healthy study subjects and detected an Arg753Gln mutation in three individuals. No other missense mutations were detected in the TLR2 open reading frame. Functional studies demonstrate that the Arg753Gln polymorphism, in comparison to the wild-type TLR2 gene, is significantly less responsive to bacterial peptides derived from B. burgdorferi and T. pallidum. In a septic shock population, the Arg753Gln TLR2 polymorphism occurred in 2 out of 91 septic patients. More importantly, both of the subjects with the TLR2 Arg753Gln polymorphism had staphylococcal infections. These findings suggest that a mutation in the TLR2 gene may predispose individuals to life-threatening bacterial infections.


Most images used in visualization are computed with the planar pinhole camera. This classic camera model has important advantages such as simplicity, which enables efficient software and hardware implementations, and similarity to the human eye, which yields images familiar to the user. However, the planar pinhole camera has only a single viewpoint, which limits images to parts of the scene to which there is direct line of sight. In this paper we introduce the curved ray camera to address the single viewpoint limitation. Rays are C1-continuous curves that bend to circumvent occluders. Our camera is designed to provide a fast 3-D point projection operation, which enables interactive visualization. The camera supports both 3-D surface and volume datasets. The camera is a powerful tool that enables seamless integration of multiple perspectives for overcoming occlusions in visualization while minimizing distortions.


Modern blockchains support a variety of distributed applications beyond cryptocurrencies, including smart contracts, which let users execute arbitrary code in a distributed and decentralized fashion. Regardless of their intended application, blockchain platforms implicitly assume consensus for the correct execution of a smart contract, thus requiring that all transactions are totally ordered. It was only recently recognized that consensus is not necessary to prevent double-spending in a cryptocurrency, contrary to common belief. This result suggests that current implementations may be sacrificing efficiency and scalability because they synchronize transactions much more tightly than actually needed. In this work, we study the synchronization requirements of Ethereum's ERC20 token contract, one of the most widely adopted smart contacts. Namely, we model a smart-contract token as a concurrent object and analyze its consensus number as a measure of synchronization power. We show that the richer set of methods supported by ERC20 tokens, compared to standard cryptocurrencies, results in strictly stronger synchronization requirements. More surprisingly, the synchronization power of ERC20 tokens depends on the object's state and can thus be modified by method invocations. To prove this result, we develop a dedicated framework to express how the object's state affects the needed synchronization level. Our findings indicate that ERC20 tokens, as well as other token standards, are more powerful and versatile than plain cryptocurrencies, and are subject to dynamic requirements. Developing specific synchronization protocols that exploit these dynamic requirements will pave the way towards more robust and scalable blockchain platforms.


BACKGROUND: In the context of the progressive movement towards patientcentred
care, patient-specific decision support is an important focus of interest. Many
diagnostic and treatment patient decision aids (PDAs) are now available to help
patients make informed choice decisions. An increasing number of these are
software-based, with some available online. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
(MCDA) is a potentially useful technique on which to base a software-assisted PDA,
especially when the decision is complex - as is the case in choosing the best
treatment for non-small cell lung cancer – but it has so far been relatively little
exploited in this area. The use of any from a number of existing MCDA-based
software applications in the development and delivery of a MCDA-based interactive
PDA can be an effective way of achieving "best-practice" or normative standards of
decision making, such as 1) a well-constructed set of decision criteria or 2) logically
consistent patient preferences. However, it also involves the use of resources such as
the time and cognitive effort involved in decision-making. The comparative
evaluation of alternative MCDA-based software applications in developing and
delivering a PDA therefore involves trade-offs between decision effectiveness and
decision resource criteria moving from the normative to the prescriptive. MCDA is
an ideal tool for this meta-evaluation task as well as for the adoption decision itself.
AIM: To analyse, as proof of concept, the use of MCDA for the development,
implementation and evaluation of interactive PDAs in routine clinical practice.
OBJECTIVES:
1. To assess the use with clinicians in the Spanish NHS of two alternative MCDA
software applications which implement dissimilar MCDA techniques in the
development of a PDA in routine clinical practice;
2. To assess the use with clinicians in the Spanish NHS of the same two alternative
MCDA software applications in the implementation of a PDA in an environment
replicating actual clinical consultations;
3. To build a meta-multi-criteria decision model based on the Decision Resources
Decision Effectiveness Analysis (DRDEA) framework and assess the use of this
model by clinicians in the Spanish NHS to make the choice between the two MCDA
applications as the basis for a PDA.
METHODS:
1) Two dissimilar MCDA software applications served as a basis for the
development of a lung cancer clinical management PDA in close collaboration with
two different groups of three clinicians from two different Spanish NHS hospitals
(H1 and H2): 1) Expert Choice, which implements the Analytic Hierarchy Process
(AHP) MCDA approach; 2) Annalisa in Elicia (ALEL), which implements the
Simple Attribute Weighting (SAW) MCDA approach. The process of codevelopment
of the PDA in hospitals H1 and H2 was documented;
2) Expert Choice was used to implement (i.e. deliver) the lung cancer clinical
management PDA in three hypothetical consultations in hospital H1. In each
consultation, one of the three clinicians involved in the development of the tool, with
support by this researcher, guided a proxy patient (a non-clinical member of hospital
staff) through the PDA. The same process was repeated with the MCDA software
ALEL in hospital H2. The process of delivery of the PDA in hospitals H1 and H2 was
documented;
3) This researcher built a meta-multi-criteria decision model based on the DRDEA
framework to help clinicians choose between different MCDA software applications
as the basis of a PDA. The MCDA approach used for this meta-model was Multi-
Attribute Value Theory (MAVT). The model was implemented, using the software
HiView 3, with three clinicians from hospital H3 for the choice between Expert
Choice and ALEL as the basis of a lung cancer clinical management PDA.
RESULTS:
The thesis makes a three-fold contribution to research in patient-centred decision
support. First, it presents two new MCDA software-based approaches to clinical
decision support, based on joint work with clinicians in the Spanish NHS, for
developing an interactive PDA for the clinical management of non-small cell lung
cancer. Second, it describes the use of these decision support tools in the delivery of
5
an interactive PDA for the clinical management of non-small cell lung cancer in a
hospital environment via simulated consultations between actual clinicians, with
support from this researcher, and proxy lung cancer patients. Third, it presents and
applies a new MCDA-based methodology for evaluating the use of alternative
MCDA software applications in the development and delivery of interactive PDAs.


This study considers the effect of cash cropping on food availability and investigates the determinants of household food expenditure as a proportion of gross income relying on a sample of rural households in the Nyeri district of Kenya. Results from an application of a Tobit model suggest that household food purchases and food availability may suffer as a consequence of increasing cash cropping in Kenya. Husbands favour commercial crops and, it seems, favour non-food purchases. Married women living with their husbands use proportionately less of their gross income to purchase food compared to unmarried women and to those women not living with their husbands. Male bias in food purchased is present, and is exacerbated when payment for cash crops is lumpy. Lumpy cash payments tend to reduce proportionate food purchases by households. We also find that remittances and family size are positively associated with food purchases as a proportion of gross income. Because of household food availability issues, there is a case in many developing countries for reducing policy emphasis on expansion of production of non-food cash crops and a case for greater encouragement of subsistence food production. Increased commercialisation of agriculture can result in reduced availability of food to women and children.


The complexity of collective existence is expressed through an awareness of its real identity, which then entails an appropriate attitude towards its own negativity. Within the hierarchically structured identity, different levels of its generality make it possible to consider them as factors of a plural reality. If negativity is raised to consciousness, then its dark side is dismantled. Thus, instead of being a factor of conflict, negativity becomes an element of complementariness and a factor in the construction of a shared identity at a higher level of generality.


With the explosion of computer science in the last decade, data banks and networksmanagement present a huge part of tomorrows problems. One of them is the development of the best classication method possible in order to exploit the data bases. In classication problems, a representative successful method of the probabilistic model is a Naïve Bayes classier. However, the Naïve Bayes effectiveness still needs to be upgraded. Indeed, Naïve Bayes ignores misclassied instances instead of using it to become an adaptive algorithm. Different works have presented solutions on using Boosting to improve the Gaussian Naïve Bayes algorithm by combining Naïve Bayes classier and Adaboost methods. But despite these works, the Boosted Gaussian Naïve Bayes algorithm is still neglected in the resolution of classication problems. One of the reasons could be the complexity of the implementation of the algorithm compared to a standard Gaussian Naïve Bayes. We present in this paper, one approach of a suitable solution with a pseudo-algorithm that uses Boosting and Gaussian Naïve Bayes principles having the lowest possible complexity. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Pressure gain combustion (PGC) is considered to be a potential technology to increase the cycle efficiency of gas turbine. As one viable candidate for PGC, rotating detonation engine (RDE) draws more attention due to its significant advances in continuous mode of operation. In practical, one of the basic challenges for RDE application is to reliably initiate detonation wave. For this purpose, both detonation initiation mechanism and enhancement approach are urgently needed to be understood. In this work, a toroidal shock wave focusing detonation initiator is presented. On this basis, the two-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the detonation initiation characteristics by using the toroidal shock wave focusing. All of the flame acceleration, shock wave focusing, detonation wave forming, and propagation are analyzed in detail. The numerical results show that the toroidal shock wave focusing initiator developed in this study can rapidly realize the detonation initiation over a short distance and performs significantly better than the traditional smooth or obstructed tube based imitators under different operating conditions. Under the same operating condition, the novel developed initiator decreases time of 59.2% and distance of 84.7% for the smooth tube based initiator, and time of 52% and distance of 78.9% for the obstructed one. Besides, the multifield analysis indicates that both the local explosion induced by shock wave focusing in concave cavity and the entrainment vortex generated by shock wave and jet flame in front of diaphragm are important mechanisms to initiate detonation wave. This study is expected to enhance the understanding of the physical mechanism of shock wave focusing detonation initiation and contribute to the development of detonation propulsion technology.


Created in early 1921, the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments was a committee of eminent figures formed by the League of Nations to consider the problem of international disarmament in its widest aspects and to suggest potential initiatives, plans and solutions. What made it unique was that its members were specifically appointed as private individuals, unrestrained by formal instructions from governments. They were intended to be free to put forward ideas and opinions that seemed most likely to produce real progress but which might have created political turmoil if they had come from official representatives. To some contemporary observers this extraordinary degree of independence was tremendously appealing; to others, the lack of accountability on an issue of supreme importance to the national security of member states was desperately objectionable. In practice, much of the commission's work resolved into a battle between interventionist British members and resistant French members, led respectively by Lord Robert Cecil and Colonel Edouard Requin, with its most prominent outcome being the failed 1923 draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance. A fascinating experiment in the possibilities of transnationalism within an international organization, the Temporary Mixed Commission on Armaments both exemplified the fluidity of the League of Nations in its early years and showed the limited results a transnational approach could achieve on as contentious an issue as disarmament.


In this paper we present a tool, LengthFinder, for optimizing word-lengths of hardware designs with fixed-point arithmetic based on analytical error models that guarantee accuracy. LengthFinder adopts a multi-stage approach, with four novel features. First, the code analysis stage selects loops to instrument, such that information about the number of iterations can be extracted to generate more accurate results. Second, aggressive heuristics are used to produce non-uniform word-lengths rapidly while meeting requirements from the guaranteed error functions. Third, a method capable of reducing the search space has been developed for data-partitioning with a variable word-length reduction. Fourth, a genetic algorithm with selective-crossover and high mutation probability is applied to obtain near-optimal results. The benefits of LengthFinder are illustrated with various case studies. We show that LengthFinder can run over 200 times faster than previous techniques (Lee et al., 2006), while producing more accurate results, relative to values obtained from integer linear programming.


The hygienic-sanitary and microbiological qualities of sandwiches sold by street-vendors in Londrina-PR were assessed, and the antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out on isolated bacteria. Sanitary conditions were evaluated in 47 street-vending places, and 20 samples were randomly collected for analyzing the contamination with Aerobic mesophilic bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, total coliforms and coliforms at 45oC, and Salmonella. The isolated microorganisms were identified and their sensitivity to antibiotics was evaluated. The sanitary conditions were inadequate in 79.2% of the evaluated items. All sandwiches (100%) were contaminated with mesophilic bacteria, coliforms at 35oC and fecal coliform, and 45% with E. coli. S. aureus was found in 55% of samples, and in 25% these values were higher than those allowed by legislation. No Salmonella sp was isolated from any of the tested samples. The hygiene practices of many food street-vending places are not adequate, resulting in a high proportion of read-to-eat foods with microbiological quality unsatisfactory for consumption.


A novel model-predictive-control strategy with a timeout scheme and p-step-ahead state estimation is presented in this paper to overcome the adverse influences of stochastic time delays and packet losses encountered in network-based real-time control. An open-loop unstable magnetic-levitation (maglev) test bed was constructed and employed for its experimental verification. The compensation algorithms developed in this paper deal with the network-induced stochastic time delays and packet losses in both the forward path and the feedback path simultaneously. With the p-sampling-period delay upper bound, the networked control system (NCS) can also accommodate up to p - 1 successive packet losses. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this networked real-time control strategy.


Author(s): Whitworth-Smith, Andrew C. | Abstract: This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the Brazilian cultural and activist network Fora do Eixo (FDE). Since 2005, FDE has emerged at local and national levels as a form of civic engagement in the digital age that connects political, economic and cultural fields of action. FDE has origins in cities outside the Sao Paulo-- Rio de Janeiro axis that dominates cultural production in Brazil, where it began producing independent music festivals through a system of barter and trade of cultural services. This alternative system soon morphed into an internal "solidarity economy" organized around a complementary currency, Card. FDE has since transformed into a full-fledge social movement, consolidating into communal houses across Brazil where members live and work full-time on a multiplicity of cultural projects and social campaigns and where a collective bank covers their material needs. Digital technology is as central to FDE's daily operations as it is to its institutional identity and to the identity of its members; they have become masterful at harnessing the affordances of new media to elevate their online visibility and promote their agenda and themselves. Its highly sophisticated communication team has allowed FDE to mobilize large publics and capture the attention of mainstream media companies like Globo, as well as high-level politicians including President Dilma Rousseff. The network's relevance as a social force was made particularly visible during the 2013 protests in Brazil where its latest initiative, Midia NINJA, exposed police aggression and effectively debunked official versions of the protests espoused on mainstream news. This study seeks to understand FDE as a particular model of economic, cultural and political organization for a networked public. I analyze the complex and often messy processes involved in FDE's alternative systems of living, of cultural production and of political mobilization. Its ability to maintain a collective bank involves multifaceted strategies wherein "solidarity", as a discourse, is parlayed into economic, social and political forms of capital. Understanding both the material and symbolic dimensions of FDE's discursive strategies reveals important insights about how power is negotiated nowadays in the struggle for control of alternative cultural and political processes in Brazil


This paper presents the theoretical development and experimental implementation of a sensing technique for the robust and precise localization of a robotic wheelchair. Estimates of the vehicle's position and orientation are obtained, based on camera observations of visual markers located at discrete positions within the environment. A novel implementation of a particle filter on camera sensor space (Camera-Space Particle Filter) is used to combine visual observations with sensed wheel rotations mapped onto a camera space through an observation function. The camera space particle filter fuses the odometry and vision sensors information within camera space, resulting in a precise update of the wheelchair's pose. Using this approach, an inexpensive implementation on an electric wheelchair is presented. Experimental results within three structured scenarios and comparative performance using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Camera-Space Particle Filter (CSPF) implementations are discussed. The CSPF was found to be more precise in the pose of the wheelchair than the EKF since the former does not require the assumption of a linear system affected by zero-mean Gaussian noise. Furthermore, the time for computational processing for both implementations is of the same order of magnitude.


One methodological shortcoming of the contingent valuation method (CVM) is that it allows for both accidental and deliberate misreporting of individual preferences. In CVM surveys the preferences of people for an environmental improvement are measured in terms of their willingness to pay (WTP) to get that improvement or the project that yields it. The WTP respondents state in CVM interviews is interpreted as the monetary equivalent of the utility they expect from the environmental improvement in question. Myriads of attempts have been made to identify and eliminate those elements of a CVM survey which might induce respondents to deviate from stating their true willingness to pay in a CVM interview. Little attention has been paid, however, to the psychological characteristics of survey respondents, which may as well play an important role in this context. In particular, insights from modern personality psychological research which has already been applied in the recent decades in the field of behavioral economics have not been given much consideration in the context of environmental valuation. Therefore, this study scrutinizes the influence of personality traits on WTP statements from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Of special interest is the usefulness of personality traits for detecting biases in WTP answers.
Personality traits are fundamental human dispositions, which influence people's typical behavior, thoughts and feelings. In personality psychology today, it is commonly accepted that personality traits of human beings can be represented by five global personality domains, namely neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Neuroticism represents the tendency of individuals to experience negative emotions, such as fear, sadness, embarrassment, and anger. Extraversion represents sociability, energeticness, and the tendency of individuals to experience positive emotions. Openness to experience represents the interest of individuals in the engagement with new experiences and impressions. Agreeableness incorporates the characteristics of empathy, cooperation, and care in interpersonal situations. Conscientiousness represents the tendency of being thorough, reliable, well-organized, and hard-working and hence describes the degree of self-control and purposefulness. These are the underlying concepts of the Big Five personality model (BFM) which forms the theoretical basis for this study.
When it comes to the economic valuation of environmental goods, neuroticism and extraversion are suspected to distort respondents' WTP statements. In this study the following hypotheses are analyzed: Neurotic respondents are expected to report WTP answers which are overshadowed by different sorts of negative emotions resulting in an understatement of their WTP answers. Respondents who score high on extraversion are expected to overstate their WTP responses in comparison to their true WTP because of their optimism and friendliness. Openness to experience and agreeableness, on the other hand, are not expected to cause biases contained in WTP answers. Yet, systematic relationships between the two personality domains and stated WTP are anticipated because these two domains are likely to be related to individual preferences for environmental projects. Positive association between openness to experience and stated WTP is expected because open individuals, who prefer novelty and are more ready to adopt new activities, may expect higher benefits from the project than respondents who score low on the openness scale. Agreeable respondents, who are fundamentally altruists, are expected to value environmental projects higher than respondents with a low level of agreeableness. As a consequence, a positive relationship between agreeableness and WTP answers is expected. Conscientiousness is not expected to influence stated WTP because the tendencies of being well-organized and hard-working appear to be not relevant to the economic valuation of environmental goods.
The derived theoretical predictions of the influence of the five personality domains on stated WTP were verified in a practical CVM survey conducted in northern Thailand to assess the social benefits accruing to a lowland community in a watershed in Chiang Mai province from a project aiming at the improvement of their household water supply. The total of 570 personal interviews were conducted. Since the elicitation question format is generally suspected to influence CVM results, the sample was split to test the influence of personality in two elicitation question formats, namely the dichotomous choice elicitation format (DC) where respondents were asked if they would support the proposed project if they had to pay a surcharge of a specified amount on their water bill (N=345), and the payment card format (PC) where respondents were asked to specify the payment interval from a given list that contains their WTP for the project (N=225). In both splits, respondents were asked to complete the NEO-FFI, a 60-item personality inventory designed to assess the five personality domains.
Using factor analysis, five factors corresponding to the five personality domains emerged from the dataset indicating that the BFM can describe the personalities of the respondents in this study. However, it was found that that 20 items of the NEO-FFI worked poorly, hence they were excluded from further analysis. Results from probit and tobit regression models revealed a number of systematic relationships between the personality characteristics of CVM respondents and their responses to the WTP question. Openness to experience and conscientiousness exhibited a significantly positive effect on WTP statements for both question formats, whereas extraversion was significantly negatively related to WTP only in the PC format. Surprisingly, neuroticism and agreeableness did not have any effect on WTP responses. When it comes to the influence of the five domains on responses to other contingent valuation questions (socio-demographic household characteristics, lifestyle, general attitudes etc.), neuroticism showed a negative impact on stating extreme responses and a positive effect on protest beliefs. This means that respondents who score high on the neuroticism scale tended to select the middle response options of the Likert scales used in this context regardless of the content of the question. They are also likely to have a strong protest attitude towards the tap water improvement program in question than respondents who score low on the neuroticism scale. Extraversion showed a negative impact on response time, indicating that respondents who score high on extraversion tend to use less time to answer survey questions than low scorers. Conscientiousness displayed a positive influence on stating extreme responses, response time, and protest beliefs. No impact of openness to experience and agreeableness on contingent valuation survey responses was found. Taken together, these results suggest that the personality characteristics of the respondents as measured by the adjusted 40-item NEO-FFI offer new insights into the psychological processes leading to systematic variations in WTP answers and other forms of contingent valuation survey responses. Such new insights give rise to a number of recommendations for further CVM surveys.
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Intraperitoneal injection of pristane (2,6,10,14 tetramethylpentadecane) is a standard technique for obtaining monoclonal antibody-enriched ascitic fluid. However, pristane also induces plasmacytomas and an erosive arthritis resembling rheumatoid arthritis in BALB/c mice, probably as a consequence of enhanced interleukin 6 production. We report here that the production of autoantibodies characteristic of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a further consequence of injecting pristane in BALB/c mice. Anti-Su antibodies appeared as early as 1-2 mo after a single injection of 0.5 ml pristane, followed by anti-U1RNP and anti-Sm antibodies after 2-4 mo. Within 6 mo of pristane injection, 9 of 11 BALB/c mice had developed anti-Su, anti-U1RNP, anti-U2RNP, anti-Sm, and possibly anti- U5RNP antibodies. Autoantibodies were not produced by 20 BALB/c mice of the same age and sex that were not injected with pristane. Thus, autoantibodies characteristic of lupus were induced in mice that are not usually considered to be genetically susceptible to the disease. The induction of autoantibodies associated with SLE by pristane may be relevant to understanding the role of abnormal cytokine production in autoantibody production and the pathogenesis of autoimmune disease. Furthermore, the induction of high titer autoantibodies by pristane dictates caution in the use of ascitic fluid as a source of monoclonal antibodies, since the polyclonal antibodies induced by pristane may copurify with the monoclonal antibody secreted by an injected hybridoma.


Mefloquine hydrochloride, a new 4-quinolinemethanol, was administered as a single oral dose to 47 volunteers infected with malaria. Treatment resulted in rapid clearence of fever and parasitemia. No recrudescence of parasites was observed after treatment of chloroquine-sensitive infections of Plasmodium falciparum. More significantly, in nonimmune persons with chloroquine-resistant infections, 1 gram of mefloquine cured 10 of 12 patients and 1.5 grams cured all 8 patients who received this dose of the drug. The marked activity of a single dose of mefloquine against chloroquine-resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum suggests that this agent may be more useful than currently available drugs are for the treatment of drug-resistant malaria.


Energy policy evaluation and development can often involve the combined use of evidence from energy ratings, national housing energy models, and empirical statistics. Limited research has been done, however, to look at systematic differences in the energy consumption estimates from these different tools or sources. This paper compares annual gas consumption estimates from two versions of the Cambridge Housing Model (CHM), a national energy stock model, with empirical data from over 2.5 million gasheated homes in England in the National Energy Efficiency Database (NEED). The analysis investigates differences by dwelling type, size, and age band. It also compares gas consumption across different rating bands estimated from Energy Performance Certificates (EPC). The findings show systematic overestimation by the CHM for larger older dwellings and far lower savings than would be expected from upgrading dwellings to a minimum of EPC Band C. This has implications for use of building energy models that assume uniform operational settings across all dwellings, especially where older larger dwellings are the target of energy efficiency initiatives. It suggests that the models should be regularly reviewed and revised based on empirical evidence and that greater uncertainty should be ascribed to predictions of energy savings in the residential sector.


BACKGROUND
Watery diarrhoea coupled with weight loss is a serious condition with many potential causes. We present a possibly underappreciated cause which usually responds well to treatment; left untreated it may have a severe course.

CASE PRESENTATION
A man in his fifties with known coronary and cerebrovascular disease was admitted for watery diarrhoea. Prerenal kidney failure occurred on the same day as the initial colonoscopy. The next day he suffered a stroke. He was anticoagulated and recovered within days. In the following months his state of malabsorption continued, with ultimately 50 % weight loss (BMI 14.7) and severe electrolyte disturbances. Intravenous electrolyte solutions and nutrition were administered. Oedema and aphthous duodenal lesions were the only endoscopic findings. Microscopic findings of total villus atrophy in all sampled sites in the small intestine, including the ileum, were striking. There were inflammatory cells in lamina propria, apoptotic cells and disappearance of goblet cells. Coeliac disease was ruled out by serology and HLA typing.

INTERPRETATION
A final diagnosis of autoimmune enteropathy was made, based on exclusion of other intestinal and systemic diseases. Treatment with infliximab intravenously and budesonide in an open capsule regime was successful.


Abstract Context: The leaves of Pyrola decorate H. Andr (Pyrolaceae), known as Luxiancao, have long been used for treating kidney deficiency, gastric haemorrhage and rheumatic arthritic diseases in traditional Chinese medicine. Objective: The phytochemicals and antioxidant capacities in vitro of P. decorate leaves were investigated. Materials and methods: Ethanol, petroleum ether, acetidin, n-butyl alcohol and aqueous extracts of Pyrola decorate leaves were prepared by solvent sequential process, and then isolated and purified to obtain phytochemicals. Cell viability was measured by MTT assay. PC12 cells were pretreated for 24 h with different extractions of P. decorate leaves at concentrations of 0.1, 0.5, 1, 5 and 10 mg/mL, then H2O2 of 0.4 mM was added in all samples for an additional 2 h. The antioxidant capacities of betulin, ursolic acid and monotropein were determined in PC12 cells against H2O2 induced cytotoxicity in vitro as well. Results: Nine compounds (1–9) were isolated and structurally determined by spectroscopic methods, especially 2D NMR analyses. Ethanol extract treated groups showed inhibitory activity with IC50 value of 10.83 mg/mL. Betulin, ursolic acid and monotropein were isolated from P. decorate, and demonstrated with IC50 values of 6.88, 6.15 and 6.13 μg/mL, respectively. Discussion and conclusions: In conclusion, Pyrola decorate is a potential antioxidative natural plant and worth testing for further pharmacological investigation in the treatment of oxidative stress related neurological disease.


Abstract:  In the boreal forests of Fennoscandia, over 99% of forest area has been altered by forestry practices, which has created forest with age structures and stand characteristics that differ from primary forest stands. Although many researchers have investigated how forestry affects species abundance, few have assessed how forestry practices affect fitness correlates of species living in altered habitats, and this has negatively affected management efforts. We experimentally addressed the effect of standard forestry practices on fitness correlates of an open‐nesting, long‐lived bird species typical to boreal forests of Eurasia, the Siberian Jay (Perisoreus infaustus). We used a before‐after comparison of reproductive data on the level of territories and found that standard forestry practices had a strong negative effect on the breeding success of jays. Both partial thinning of territories and partial clearcutting of territories reduced future breeding success by a factor of 0.35. Forestry practices reduced territory occupancy. Thus, over the 15 years of the study, productivity of the affected population declined over 50% as a result of territory abandonment and reduced breeding success. Results of previous studies on Siberian Jays suggest that the strong effect of forest thinning on fitness is explained by the fact that most common predators of nests and adults are visually oriented and thus thinning makes prey and nests more visible to predators. The consequences of thinning we observed are likely to apply to a wide range of species that rely on understory to provide visual protection from predators. Thus, our results are important for the development of effective conservation management protocols and for the refinement of thinning practices.


Before information ϕ arrives, market observers must be uncertain whether the stock price conditioned on ϕ will be higher or lower than the current price. Otherwise there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity. By assuming this minimal condition of efficient markets, it is shown under the mean-variance CAPM that information that leaves the future value of a firm more certain, in the sense that its perceived covariance with the market is reduced towards zero, can lead to a higher expected return on that asset. A further result is that it is theoretically possible that the required return on the stock will necessarily fall after observing signal ϕ, or (in other circumstances) that it will necessarily rise. In general, information that allows better discrimination between firms leads some firms to have higher costs of capital and other firms to have lower costs of capital. Less obviously, better discrimination between firms can induce a higher average cost of capital across the market.


The increased presence of technology in all aspects of daily life makes computational thinking a necessary skill. Predictions say that the rising need for computational thinkers will be unmet by computer science graduates. An e-textile learning module, based on principles of constructionism, was designed as a method to develop computational thinking skills and encourage interest and confidence in the computing fields in both male and female graduate education students. The module leveraged the affordances of the LilyPad Arduino, a technology that allows for the creation of projects that integrate textiles and electronics without soldering. The creation of the learning module relied on design-based research methodologies and followed the use-modify-create principle for the included activities. Multiple data sources were analyzed using The Computational Thinking Rubric for Examining Students' Project Work to examine artifacts and interactions for indications of computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives. Students participated in debugging activities and created their own projects as part of the learning module. Analysis of the learning module activities showed students using computational thinking concepts, engaged in computational thinking practices, and exhibiting computational thinking perspectives. During the coding process, several new computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives emerged. There was evidence of both an increase and decrease in confidence among the student participants. Improvements for the next iteration of the learning module were presented and the implications for the study of computational thinking explored. The study helps contradict the shrinking pipeline metaphor by showing that it is possible to encourage interest in computation in university students, not just middle-school


This paper demonstrates that a simple proposition that technological leadership enables a firm to initiate radical product innovation is potentially misleading, and presents a conceptual framework called "the dilemma of technological leadership." Highiighting the differences between product development and technology development, which have tended to be more or less neglected, from the perspective of problem-solving, the framework shows that mechanisms embedded in a technologically leading firm impede radical product innovation, and that pursuing or establishing technological leadership itself inevitably includes some negative effects on the magnitude of product innovation. Our framework suggests that the dilemma is not simply a matter of mentality of a technological leader, but a result of natural and subjectively rational behavior of a technologically leading firm in order to make the most of its technological advantage in approaching porduct innovation, and that there would be a pitfall for a technological leader which intends to create competitive advantage through radical innovation by resorting to its rich technological capabilities.


Multi-camera visual sensor networks (VSNs) require large computational resources in order to perform visual analysis in real-time. One way to match the computational needs is to augment the VSN with dedicated processing nodes that do in-network processing, but this requires careful allocation of loads from the sensor nodes in order to ensure low processing times. In this paper we formulate the problem of load allocation and completion time minimization in a VSN as an optimization problem. We propose a distributed algorithm for load allocation, and evaluate its performance in terms of completion time and convergence compared to a Greedy algorithm. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm converges faster, but at the cost of increased completion times. Nonetheless, combined with appropriate coordination, the proposed algorithm achieves low completion times at low complexity.


The purpose of this study was to examine the historical roots of America's contemporary fascination with firearms. America's gun cultures reached new heights in the era after World War II due to a renewed focus on the family and national heritage and a growing preoccupation with defending traditional gender roles. In addition, the research reveals that America does not have a monolithic gun culture. Instead, multiple subcultures that flourished in the Cold War era, including one stemming from childhood play, one among recreational gunners and sport hunter�, and one that flourished as a result of civil and military defense efforts. The dissertation begins in 1945 with the return of the veterans and concludes with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This era is a critical moment in the development of the nation's gun cultures because it is the last period in which guns receive relatively no criticism and enjoy minimal state or federal regulation. The tragic death of President John F. Kennedy, however, becomes a catalyst for the rise of anti-gun campaigns and signals the end of the last "golden age" for guns. Historians have only studied firearms in relation to the Second Amendment and violence. Unfortunately, studying guns only in the context of the Constitution and aggression has shed little light on America's various gun cultures. Moreover, the story of firearms is not entirely one of violence, particularly in the era immediately following World War Il. Looking at firearm cultures only through this lens distorts America's relationship with guns and this project seeks to evaluate American gun cultures with a new perspective.


Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic variants in nine chromosomal regions that are associated with atrial fibrillation (AF). The mechanisms underlying these associations are unknown. To investigate these mechanisms, we mapped associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and allelic expression of candidate genes in the region of interest. Methods Whole blood was collected for DNA and RNA extraction from 447 patients at the time of cardiac catheterisation or cardiac surgery. 45 participants had a history of AF. We confirmed expression in whole blood of candidate genes at four loci; KCNN3 in 1q22, CAV1 and CAV2 in 7q31, C9orf3 and FANCC 9q22 and SYNE2 and ESR2 in 14q23 (Table). Abstract YIA4 Table 1 In order to tag genetic variation at each locus, a total of 136 SNPs were genotyped using the Sequenom platform. The same platform was used to quantify the relative expression of each allele of the candidate genes using one or more transcribed SNPs. Associations between SNP genotype and allelic expression ratios were tested by phasing the genotypes and performing likelihood ratio tests. Results 7 SNPs in a 67kb region of chromosome 7q31 were associated with CAV1 expression. The risk [G] allele of the AF-associated SNP rs3807989 was associated with a 0.91-fold decrease in expression of CAV1 (p = 4.15e-05). 5 SNPs in the same region were associated with CAV2 expression. The pattern of association between genotype and expression was different for CAV1 and CAV2 and the AF-associated SNPs were not associated with CAV2 expression. The risk [A] allele of a glaucoma-associated SNP, rs4236601, was associated with a 1.12-fold increase in expression of CAV2 (p = 3.14e-03). 24 SNPs in a 359kb region of chromosome 14q23 were associated with SYNE2 expression. The risk [T] allele of the AF-associated SNP rs1152591 was associated with a 1.12-fold increase in expression of SYNE2 (p = 4.35e-27). No SNPs in this region were associated with ESR2 expression. The strength of association between SNP genotype and CAV1 expression at chromosome 7 and SYNE2 expression at chromosome 14 are shown in the figure. The positions of GWAS hit SNPs and candidate genes are marked. 3 SNPs in a 244kb region of chromosome 9q22 were associated with C9orf3 expression. The AF-associated SNP, rs10821415, lay within the region of association, but was not itself significantly associated with expression. No SNPs were associated with FANCC expression. No associations were found between SNP genotype and expression of KCNN3 in chromosome 1q22. Conclusions We have mapped cis-regulation of gene expression in peripheral blood cells at 4 loci associated with AF. We have identified associations between the risk alleles of AF-associated SNPs and decreased expression of CAV1 and increased expression of SYNE2 in blood, providing further evidence for the role of these genes in the pathophysiology of AF and highlights them as potential targets of future drug treatments. Abstract YIA4 Figure


The television show has its own characteristics which give strength and appeal on the television broadcast . One of the teams in the industry is the host of the television program Kribo in MNCTV. As for the meaning of fashion which can be explained from the theory of "semiotics Pierce" as icons , indices and symbols . namely the episode consisted of a cup of black coffee head using frizzy hair wig , clothes worn then use the concept of the 70s . In this study using a qualitative methodology, and then using the critical paradigm and writers critiquing fashion sense emcee Pierce semiotic program Kribo consisting icon, index, and symbols. As defined semiotics Pierce is getting comfort in program Kribo hosted and will be closer to the viewers as well as the speaker , so it looks more formal and there is no restriction or impediment whatsoever to get to know and interact to all sources by wearing the fashion era of the 60 's and 70's in particular in the event program Kribo in MNCTV.

Keyword: Fashion, Semiotics, Host, Kribo


Cities of the world are constantly changing and part of this change takes place at the neighborhood level. The aging of physical structures, the aging of the residents, and the movement of people in and out of the neighborhood are the components that give neighborhoods a life cycle (Knox, 2005). This paper explores neighborhood change in a region of the city of Miami that is known as Little Havana. See Map 1. The name 'Little Havana' does not appropriately describe the changes that have taken place in the neighborhood; in fact, it only portrays one facet of the total change. Nonetheless, the name has remained attached to the area and has hidden its rich history and dynamism while sending the false impression of Little Havana as a monoculture neighborhood. Hence, it is the overall objective of this paper to show that there is more to Little Havana than its stereotypical name suggests. Thus, this paper will raise the question ―How has Little Havana changed?‖ and it will be explored by looking at one of the most influencing factors of neighborhood change: its people (Knox, 2005).


The gain of a high power TW relativistic klystron can be increased substantially with the use of a varying phase velocity, large beam aperture, lengthened output structure, designed for asynchronous interaction to control space charge fields and provide near-adiabatic bunch compression during the power extraction process. While this technique enables the replacement of a pulsed vacuum tube driver system with a small, inexpensive solid state RF source, lengthening the output circuit increases the number (and reduces the separation) of the longitudinal mode resonances in the TM01 operating band. Thus, the probability of exciting parasitic oscillations is increased, especially when the klystron is operated into a mismatched load or a high Q structure. The prevention of such oscillations, even when in close proximity to the operating frequency, using a technique that is unaffected by the phase or amplitude of reflected signals is described; and test results are presented of a solid state driven, 76dB gain 17GHz TW relativistic klystron recently installed in the linac test facility at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.


In a neo-classical setting of equity-valuation, this paper develops a principle of dividend policy irrelevancy (DPI) to identify and exploit characteristics of earnings. The latter refers to the idea that a value-relevant variable can not reasonably be labeled "earnings" unless it satisfies certain analytical properties with intuitive appeal. The paper proceeds in two parts. The first part, which culminates in Proposition I, provides necessary and sufficient conditions for DPI. The second part concerns how DPI predicates constructs of earnings and their analytical properties. A key result, Proposition II, shows that one can use the analytical properties of earnings to deduce the core approach in practical equity-valuation, namely, measures of growth in expected earnings explain the price to forward-earnings ratio.


All-optical clock recovery for the return-to-zero modulation format is demonstrated experimentally at 40 Gbits/s by using an amplified feedback laser. A 40 GHz optical clock with a root-mean-square (rms) timing jitter of 130 fs and a carrier-to-noise ratio of 42 dB is obtained. Also, a 40 GHz optical clock with timing jitter of 137 fs is directly recovered from pseudo-non-return-to-zero signals degraded by polarization-mode dispersion (PMD). No preprocessing stage to enhance the clock tone is used. The rms timing jitter of the recovered clock is investigated for different values of input power and for varying amounts of waveform distortion due to PMD.


Abstract This introductory essay discusses the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade across three continents. It begins by investigating the historical amnesia about the trade which has only recently and in some geographies been ameliorated, taking as a point of departure observations by Nobel Prize Winners Derek Walcott and Toni Morrison, who were in the vanguard of a movement to memorialise it. The essay moves on to discuss not only traditional memorials, walking trails and artworks, but also ghostly legacies of the trade, including human body parts. Taking the small slave port of Lancaster, England, as a key case study, the essay draws on recent theoretical work on corporeality, spectrality, Holocaust studies, trauma, dark tourism, the Black Atlantic and memory studies to interrogate the meanings of these legacies. The way that black agency contributes to new understandings of the horrors of the slave trade is demonstrated by discussion of William Wells Brown's intervention at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Such "guerrilla memorialisation" is shown at work historically and in recent memorialisations of the trade. Moreover, its urgent need in the wake of contemporary issues of forced labour from the African continent is discussed. The final section on memorial landscapes summarises the essays in this volume and discusses the links between the various locales. France, which is trying to come to terms with its history through legislation and the creation of memorials, is discussed as a slave power case study. The new memorial in Nantes is an important municipal response to the legacy of the trade and by its esplanade design is linked back to the city trails in Britain discussed earlier in the essay. Other geographies with slaving pasts such as Wales and Mauritius are introduced, as well as the African Burial Ground in New York. The essay ends where it started, on the West Coast of Africa, with a reflection on heritage tourism and the complex legacies of slavery on the slave castle coast.


Objectives To explore obstetricians' and gynaecologists' experiences of work‐related traumatic events, to measure the prevalence and predictors of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), any impacts on personal and professional lives, and any support needs. Design Mixed methods: cross‐sectional survey and in‐depth interviews. Sample and setting Fellows, members and trainees of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). Methods A survey was sent to 6300 fellows, members and trainees of RCOG. 1095 people responded. Then 43 in‐depth interviews with trauma‐exposed participants were completed and analysed by template analysis. Main outcome measures Exposure to traumatic work‐related events and PTSD, personal and professional impacts, and whether there was any need for support. Interviews explored the impact of trauma, what helped or hindered psychological recovery, and any assistance wanted. Results Two‐thirds reported exposure to traumatic work‐related events. Of these, 18% of both consultants and trainees reported clinically significant PTSD symptoms. Staff of black or minority ethnicity were at increased risk of PTSD. Clinically significant PTSD symptoms were associated with lower job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. Organisational impacts included sick leave, and 'seriously considering leaving the profession'. 91% wanted a system of care. The culture in obstetrics and gynaecology was identified as a barrier to trauma support. A strategy to manage the impact of work‐place trauma is proposed. Conclusions Exposure to work‐related trauma is a feature of the experience of obstetricians and gynaecologists. Some will suffer PTSD with high personal, professional and organisational impacts. A system of care is needed.


Since Zhengzhou was affirmed for state key city of MIE and demonstration city of Henan MIE in 2002, ERP and ERP's element technologies have been demonstrated the application, and the demonstration system having the dint of arouse and radiates has been built, which its layout was reasonable and the structural layer was clear. In demonstration enterprises, the development period of new products was shortened from 153 days to 102 days. Contribution rate of MIE in the new product was raised from 37.4% to 51.3%. The occupancy of stock funds was decreased from 40% to 27%. On this foundation, aiming at the midium and small enterprises, four sharing MIE platform were set up. At the same time, the element technologies of informatization personalization were applied. So, the coordinate development mode of medium and small enterprises MIE was put forward. The preliminary result showed that this strategy could solve the bottleneck problem of medium and small enterprises MIE and it could become the basis of the enterprise cluster MIE constrution.


The ceramic material listed, described, and photographed, on the enclosed ceramic resource disk, comes from an archaeological excavation funded by FM Developments Ltd., and carried out in 2005 on the site of the Verreville glass and pottery manufactury in Glasgow by Headland Archaeology Ltd. The ceramic material recovered dates mostly from the Kidston and Cochran periods (see below), and has been sorted by fabric type, decoration, and form, into (18 Folders and 152 Word Files). The excavation material has been assigned to Glasgow Museums and the shards were catalogued using there accession numbers beginning (GM 2006. 05. 1 to 1194). The ceramic assemblage is significant in that it was produced mainly for the North American export market, and therefore many of its products are extremely rare in Britain. The transfer printed patterns illustrated on (Word Files 102 to 129) have been given temporary names by the author, who would be happy to be contacted by ceramic researchers who could fill in the details


This paper presents outage probability analysis and a practical algorithm for antenna selection in multiple-input multiple-output wireless communication systems employing space-time block codes (STBC). First, to minimize the outage probability in these systems, a satisfactory antenna selection criterion for an STBC is to maximize the channel Frobenius norm. Analysis shows that the more receive antennas are selected, the better the performance. However, the performance of transmit antenna selection heavily depends on how fast the channel changes. When the channel changes slowly, since STBC averages the channel gains of the selected transmit antennas, selecting more transmit antennas causes lower coding gain and thus higher outage probability. When the channel is fast changing, it is shown analytically that the system can no longer provide transmit selection diversity in the high SNR regime. Since the transmit diversity can be still provided by using STBC, the best STBC scheme varies with SNR. Although the outage analysis helps determine the STBC scheme, finding the optimal antenna subsets with maximum channel Frobenius norm for each fading state is still a challenging problem. This is because solving the problem optimally requires an exhaustive search with exponentially growing complexity. When the numbers of antennas are large, the problem becomes intractable. To reduce the complexity, this problem is formulated as a quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) problem. Despite the fact that the problem is nonconvex, a semidefinite relaxation of QCQP enables the problem to be solved approximately in polynomial time. Simulation results indicate that the loss of semidefinite relaxation to optimal selection is negligible.


Margins about a target volume subject to external beam radiation therapy are designed to assure that the target volume of tissue to be sterilized by treatment is adequately covered by a lethal dose. Thus, margins are meant to guarantee that all potential variation in tumour position relative to beams allows the tumour to stay within the margin. Variation in tumour position can be broken into two types of dislocations, reducible and irreducible. Reducible variations in tumour position are those that can be accommodated with the use of modern image-guided techniques that derive parameters for compensating motions of patient bodies and/or motions of beams relative to patient bodies. Irreducible variations in tumour position are those random dislocations of a target that are related to errors intrinsic in the design and performance limitations of the software and hardware, as well as limitations of human perception and decision making. Thus, margins in the era of image-guided treatments will need to accommodate only random errors residual in patient setup accuracy (after image-guided setup corrections) and in the accuracy of systems designed to track moving and deforming tissues of the targeted regions of the patient's body. Therefore, construction of these margins will have to be based on purely statistical data. The characteristics of these data have to be determined through the central limit theorem and Gaussian properties of limiting error distributions. In this paper, we show how statistically determined margins are to be designed in the general case of correlated distributions of position errors in three-dimensional space. In particular, we show how the minimal margins for a given level of statistical confidence are found. Then, how they are to be used to determine geometrically minimal PTV that provides coverage of GTV at the assumed level of statistical confidence. Our results generalize earlier recommendations for statistical, central limit theorem-based recommendations for margin construction that were derived for uncorrelated distributions of errors (van Herk, Remeijer, Rasch and Lebesque 2000 Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 47 1121–35; Stroom, De Boer, Huizenga and Visser 1999 Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 43 905–19).


The distribution of Uncinula necator variants resistant to triadimenol, penconazole and flusilazole were determined in vineyards with suspected resistance in the regions Tulbagh, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, De Dooms, Riebeeck Kasteel and Paarl. The regional subpopulations had all been exposed to triadimefon or triadimenol prior to 1989, when these fungicides were phased out and other demethylation-inhibiting fungicides (DMls) were applied. The occurrence of resistant variants in the subpopulations was compared with those in a vineyard in the Ceres Karoo region, which was isolated by two mountain ranges from the viticultural regions and where triadimefon was used prior to 1989, then abandoned. No other DMls were applied. A discriminatory germ tube length was used as a criterion to distinguish between sensitive and tolerant conidia at a discriminatory fungicide dose of 0.3 μg/mL. All the populations showed reduced sensitivity to triadimenol. This finding indicated an earlier shift in triadimenol sensitivity in the subpopulations and showed that resistant variants are sufficiently competitive to become established in vineyards. Cross-resistance between the triazoles was indicated by the frequency at which resistant variants occurred in subpopulations. The Ceres Karoo population was at baseline sensitivity level for penconazole and flusilazole. However, the four populations (De Dooms, Franschhoek, Riebeeck Kasteel and Stellenbosch) which showed the highest shifts in sensitivity to triadimenol, also displayed a high level of reduced sensitivity to flusilazole.  This was in spite of the fact that only the Stellenbosch population was regularly treated with flusilazole. The other three populations were predominantly exposed to penconazole. Reduced sensitivity to penconazole was furthermore most prevalent in the Paarl K, Paarl I, Riebeeck Kasteel and De Dooms populations. Of these populations, Paarl K and Paarl I received predominantly penconazole, whereas the other two populations were treated with a range of DMis. Penconazole EDso values for the Paarl K, Paarl I, Riebeeck Kasteel and De Dooms pathogen populations (which showed the highest shifts in sensitivity to this fungicide) were 0.908, 1.022, 1.253 and 1.942 μg/mL, respectively. In these populations, 53%, 38%, 71 % and 91 % of the conidia respectively belonged to the 1.0-3.0 μg/mL and higher resistant classes. Reduced sensitivity to flusilazole was most prevalent in the Stellenbosch, De Doorns, Riebeeck Kasteel and Franschhoek populations. Flusilazole EDso values for these populations were 1.580, 1.813, 2.143, 3.885 μg/mL, respectively, whereas 83%, 82%, 96% and 79% of the conidia respectively belonged to the 1.0-3.0 μg/mL and higher resistant classes. These findings suggest a differing sensitivity of the pathogen to the three triazole fungicides which indicate that resistance to DMis is a multigenic trait in U. necator.


Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small-regulatory RNA molecules, were closely involved in the pathogenesis of a broad-spectrum of colorectal cancer (CRC). But role of miR-147b in CRC still remains unclear. Methods: Real-time RT-PCR or Western blotting was utilized to detect the expressions of miR-147b and RAP2B in CRC cell lines and tissues. Luciferase reporter assays were conducted to detect the associations between miR-147b and 3′UTRs of RAP2B. A series of assays were performed to evaluate the effect of miR-147b on proliferation, migration, and invasion of CRC in vitro and in vivo. Results: We found that the level of miR-147b was significantly lower in CRC tissues than in normal tissues (p = 0.0006). Enforced expression of miR-147b led to suppression of CRC cell proliferation in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Specifically, miR-147b promoted proliferation by arresting CRC cells in the G1/G0 phase. Mechanically, RAP2B was identified as a direct target gene of miR-147b and RAP2B rescued the suppression of proliferation and invasion reduced by miR-147b in CRC cells. Conclusions: miR-147b not only plays important roles in the regulation of cell proliferation and tumor growth in CRC, which might be a potential prognostic marker or therapeutic target for CRC.


Employing multiple pulsars and using an appropriate algorithm to establish ensemble pulsar timescale can reduce the influences of various noises on the long-term stability of pulsar timescale, compared to a single pulsar. However, due to the low timing precision and significant red noises of some pulsars, their participation in the construction of ensemble pulsar timescale is often limited. Inspired by the principle of solving non-stationary sequence modeling using co-integration theory, we put forward an algorithm based on co-integration theory to establish an ensemble pulsar timescale. It is found that this algorithm can effectively suppress some noise sources if a co-integration relationship between different pulsar data exists. Different from the classical weighted average algorithm, the co-integration method provides the chance for a pulsar with significant red noises to be included in the establishment of an ensemble pulsar timescale. Based on data from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), we found that the co-integration algorithm can successfully reduce several timing noises and improve the long-term stability of the ensemble pulsar timescale.


Background and Objective: The ubiquitous nature of social media (SoMe) involves merging of personal-professional personas. Healthcare organisations publish guidance on how to use social media responsibly. However, inappropriate use of social media continues to be evident amongst undergraduate pharmacy students with potential implications for their fitness to practise. There is evidence of a lack of understanding of how online behaviour, or e-professionalism, relates to the student code of conduct. There remains a need within the pharmacy undergraduate student population for guidance which will be similarly acceptable and directly applicable to their context. Objective: to develop peer-group designed recommendations for pharmacy student SoMe guidelines. Design: Qualitative, activity-based focus groups were conducted based on a topic guide informed by existing literature and a previous study by the research team. The topic guide also formed the framework for thematic data analysis. The study was approved by university Ethical Review Committee. Results: Focus groups were conducted across four Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) stages (S1: n=10; S2: n=5; S3: n=8; S4: n=6). All except one participant (n=29) were aged under 24 with near equal male:female ratio (n=15:14). The majority of participants did not use SoMe guidelines despite daily SoMe use, but rather used personal judgement to decide on appropriate SoMe content. Some elements of existing guidance were seen as valuable but lacked balance of content/tone and examples of appropriate SoMe behaviours. There was no agreement on 'appropriate behaviours' however general concerns emerged around guidance impinging personal personas and impacting perceptions of e-professionalism. Conclusion: Social media guidelines for undergraduate pharmacy students should address concerns surrounding eprofessionalism. These should include examples of good practice, yet should contain clear 'points for practice' in a simple, user-friendly format alongside a lecture or video presentation. Whilst students were aware of profession-specific guidance, student-specific guidance was viewed as beneficial to support undergraduate students, in particular with the blurred boundaries between personal-professional personas. The results of this study have been used to inform the delivery of SoMe support for students within the MPharm course. Further work is being undertaken to explore the definition of appropriate online behaviours and provision of guidance as part of doctoral studies.


Zhongshan is a famous hometown to many overseas Chinese. Overseas Chinese from Zhongshan living abroad are concerned about the urban development of their hometown and have offered tremendous financing resources. They have returned to their hometown and participated in government, invested in municipal development, improved public services, established industry and donated to schools. These efforts not only led to Zhongshan's business economy boom, but also effectively promoted the urban construction process of modern Zhongshan. This paper traces the urban construction in Zhongshan during the period of the Republic of China, and investigated the great contributions of overseas Chinese to the urban development of modern Zhongshan.