Mistakes matter in law, even the smallest ones. What would happen if a small but substantively meaningful typographical error appeared in the earliest published version of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and remained uncorrected for several decades in versions of the decision published by the two leading commercial companies and in several online databases? And what would happen if judges, legal commentators, and practitioners wrote opinions, articles, and other legal materials that incorporated and built on that mistake? In answering these questions, this Article traces the widespread, exponential replication of an error (first appearing in 1928) in numerous subsequent cases and other law and law-related sources; explores why the phenomenon of reproducing mistakes matters in a legal system whose lifeblood is words and that heavily relies on the principle of stare decisis; and argues that one legacy of this cautionary tale of an unforced error can be a functional understanding of how the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Takings Clauses can and should protect private property rights in different yet related ways.


The question of legitimacy occupies center stage in debates on various
constitutional developments. For as long as constitutional scholars cannot
settle on a theory of legitimacy, the specter of a legitimacy deficit will
continue to haunt the practitioners of constitutional law. Constitutional
scholar Frank Michelman engages different schools of constitutional theory,
seeking the definitive answer to the legitimacy question. He classifies
theories of legitimacy into three categories, premised on notions of contract,
acceptance, or authorship. Arguing that contract-based and acceptanceoriented
legitimacy theories assume the notion of authorship, he
distinguishes constitutional authorship in terms of its presumed
transtemporal character and abandons it because of this character. To cut
this Gordian knot, Michelman proposes a presentist view of legitimacy.
Through an analysis of his theoretical engagement, this article argues that
his effort to abandon authorship-based theories fails. A commonly chosen,
authoritative dispute- settling institution, in line with Michelman's presentist
alternative, cannot stand without assuming a transtemporal concept of
constitutional authorship. Thus the Gordian knot remains.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the viability of Saccharomyces boulardii after PO administration in clinically normal horses and its efficacy as a treatment for horses with acute enterocolitis.

DESIGN
Prospective study.

ANIMALS
5 clinically normal horses and 14 horses with acute enterocolitis.

PROCEDURE
Feces were collected from 5 clinically normal horses and submitted for microbial culture for 2 days prior to administration of a lyophilized form of S. boulardii (25 or 50 g, PO, q 12 h) for 10 days. Feces were collected for microbial culture 5 and 10 days after treament initiation and 10 days after treatment was discontinued. Fourteen horses with acute enterocolitis were randomly allocated to receive a placebo or S. boulardii (25 g), PO, every 12 hours for 14 days.

RESULTS
S. boulardii was not detected in feces of clinically normal horses. After administration, yeast survived within the gastroinestinal tract but did not permanently colonize it. In horses with acute enterocolitis, the severity and duration of gastrointestinal tract disease during hospitalization were significantly decreased in horses receiving S. boulardii, compared with horses receiving the placebo.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Administration of S. boulardii may help decrease the severity and duration of clinical signs in horses with acute enterocolitis.


The purpose of the present study was to examine the experiences of European American students as they obtain advanced degrees in psychology. The study investigated what European American students find supportive and unsupportive as they pursue their doctoral degrees. The participants of this study consisted of 12 graduate students. Qualitative methods were employed, and data obtained through semi-structured interviews was analyzed using content analysis. The interviews revealed factors that students believe have facilitated their success in graduate school, as well as challenges experienced during graduate school, and the types of strategies they used when faced with obstacles. The participants were also asked about the experiences of their peers of color within their graduate programs. The results showed that the European American students have multiple factors that have facilitated their success in graduate school such as support from faculty, mentors, other students, and self-motivation. Participants also reported negative experiences such as lack of program structure and interpersonal challenges. In terms of strategies they used when faced with obstacles, the majority of participants stated that they relied on family and friends outside of school as well as engaged in self-care practices such as exercising. When asked about their perceptions of the experiences of their peers of color, most participants stated that their peers of color often feel uncomfortable within their graduate programs. One limitation of the study was that this study utilized audio-recorded telephone interviews, which may have impacted the rapport between the researchers and the participants. Another limitation of the study was that the participants were recruited from similar networks, which may have led to them responding in a similar manner. Future research should replicate this study to examine if doctoral students in disciplines other than psychology have similarities or differences in the factors they find supportive and challenging during their graduate studies.


Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) [Lafferty et al., 2001] can offer computational and statistical advantages over generative models, yet traditional CRF parameter and structure learning methods are often too expensive to scale up to large problems. This thesis develops methods capable of learning CRFs for much larger problems. We do so by decomposing learning problems into smaller, simpler subproblems. These decompositions allow us to trade off sample complexity, computational complexity, and potential for parallelization, and we can often optimize these trade-offs in model- or data-specific ways. The resulting methods are theoretically motivated, are often accompanied by strong guarantees, and are effective and highly scalable in practice.
In the first part of our work, we develop core methods for CRF parameter and structure learning. For parameter learning, we analyze several methods and produce PAC learnability results for certain classes of CRFs. Structured composite likelihood estimation proves particularly successful in both theory and practice, and our results offer guidance for optimizing estimator structure. For structure learning, we develop a maximum-weight spanning tree-based method which outperforms other methods for recovering tree CRFs. In the second part of our work, we take advantage of the growing availability of parallel platforms to speed up regression, a key component of our CRF learning methods. Our Shotgun algorithm for parallel regression can achieve near-linear speedups, and extensive experiments show it to be one of the fastest methods for sparse regression.


This thesis offers a contribution to Irish historiography with a study of Ireland's
diplomatic and friendship relations with the Soviet Union in the 'short Soviet twentiethcentury'.
To date no such study has been produced. The study has as its central focus
developments surrounding the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the
two states in 1973, and considers aspects of how those relations evolved down to 1980.
To provide an understanding of the legacy of relations prior to formalisation of relations,
the study commences with a survey of the principal diplomatic contacts from 1919 to
1972, including those that took place in America between representatives of the nascent
Irish republic and Soviet Russia during the revolutionary period of 1919-21, contacts
between the Irish Free State and the Soviet Union at the League of Nations in the mid-
1930s, and between the Republic of Ireland and the Soviet Union at the United Nations
from 1955 to 1972. It proceeds to examine in more detail events surrounding the
establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1973, and experiences during the first
six years at the Irish embassy to Moscow, and at the Soviet embassy to Dublin. To gain
insights from a wider societal perspective with oral and private archival evidence, an
account of the Ireland-U.S.S.R. Society – a unique friendship organisation located at a
conjunction of informational, cultural, academic, trade union and tourist affairs in Irish-
Soviet relations – is next presented. The final two areas of study draw upon archival
records of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs for the years 1974-80, which have
only recently been made available at the National Archives of Ireland. Drawing in the
main on the central registry series of files containing political reports sent to Dublin by
Ireland's first ambassador to Moscow, Dr Edward Brennan, the penultimate focus is
upon the 'island of Ireland' elements of those reports. Lastly, the thesis discusses
Ireland's second relationship with the Soviet Union, as mediated through European
Political Cooperation (E.P.C.), a parallel framework of the European Economic
Community. This discussion is principally facilitated by the records of Ireland's
involvement in a confidential subgroup of E.P.C. – the Eastern Europe Working Group
– which was dedicated to an ongoing compilation of studies of the Soviet Union and its
fellow member states of COMECON.


Background: Electrolysis is an electrochemical method for the treatment of water. recently water disinfection by electrochemical methods has been increasingly carried out. The aim of this applied research was to investigate the removal of Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) bacteria from drinking water by using electrolysis method with Al-Fe electrodes parallel with the monopole mode. Methods: An experimental study was conducted in the laboratory of microbiology, Iran University of Medical Science in May 2017. In this study, the contaminated water samples were prepared through adding 10 3 , 10 4 and 10 5 E. coli and S. aureus bacteria per 1 milliliters (mL) of drinking water. Independent variables Included: different concentrations of E.coli and S. aureus bacteria (10 3 , 10 4 and 10 5 CFU/ml), reaction time (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 min), initial pH (7, 8 and 9), electrode gap (1, 2 and 3 cm), current density (0.83, 1.67 and 3.3 mA/cm 2 ) to determine the optimum conditions were investigated. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze the results. Results: The results show that in the optimum conditions with increasing the pH from 7 to 9 removal efficiency of bacterial strains of E. coli and S. aureus were decreased significantly from 98 to 73% and 99.1 to 76%, respectively. In initial concentration of 104 CFU/ml, optimum conditions were obtained for current density, reaction time and electrodes gap, 1.67 mA/cm 2 , 20 min and 2 cm, respectively. With increasing current density and reaction time in both strains of bacteria, were decreased significantly. The electrodes gap do not have much impact on the efficiency of the process. The amount of electrical energy consumed in optimal conditions was calculated 0.5128 kilowatt-hour (kWh/h). Statistical analysis shows that exist significant relationship (P<0.01) between initial concentrations of bacterial strains and efficiency of the process. Conclusion: According to the results, E. coli and S. aureus , removal efficiency were obtained more than 98%, therefore electrolysis process can be used in the removal of pathogenic bacteria from drinking water Abstract .t a


PURPOSE
Investigate using the ratio of the two high temperature peaks (HTR) to analyze the glow curves of TLD700 to characterize orthovoltage x-rays in terms of their linear energy transfer (LET) as well as well as their HVL. LET is related to relative biological effectiveness (RBE) and studies have demonstrated RBE values from 1.1 to 2 for orthovoltage x-rays compared to megavoltage x-rays which have implications for radiobiological studies.

METHODS
TLD700 chips.015cm and.038cm thick were irradiated to about 0.20 Gy with x-rays with photon effective energies from 13 KeV to 6 MeV with an orthovoltage therapy unit, a linac and gamma rays from I-125, Ir-192 and Cs-137 radioactive isotopes. The different thickness detectors are used to correct for possible self-attenuation effects in the detectors at the lower energies. Since the 280 C high temperature peak is more sensitive to high LET radiation than the 210 C lower temperature peak, the ratio of the areas under the two temperature peaks for the TLDs irradiated to the different beam qualities normalized to the peak ratio for 6 MV is used to determine their HTR. These HTR values are compared to the calculated LET values obtained from the effective photon energies of the irradiations.

RESULTS
The data show that the HTR generally increases with decreasing photon energy from 1 for megavoltage x-rays to 1.94 for 13 KeV x-rays with a local maximum of 1.65 occurring at about 100 KeV. This dependence is similar to that of the calculated LET values which also exhibit a local maximum of 1.85 KeV/micron around 100 KeV. No measurable difference is observed for different thickness TLDs.

CONCLUSION
The HTR analysis of the TLD glow curves provides another method to characterize orthovoltage x-rays in terms of their LET that provides information on their biological effectiveness.


There are now abundant data indicating that Mycobacterium tuberculosis uses fatty acids as a carbon source in vivo. A key enzyme in gluconeogenesis, missing in the original annotation of the M. tuberculosis genome, is fructose 1,6-bisphosphatase (FBPase; EC 220.127.116.11). The authors have shown that M. tuberculosis Rv1099c, a glpX homologue, can complement Escherichia coli mutants lacking FBPase. The protein encoded by Rv1099c was shown to have FBPase activity. Rv1099c was expressed at significant levels in M. tuberculosis, and may encode the major FBPase of this pathogen.


Polymer demand varies considerably for different digestion processes as well as the same digestion processes at different locations and the reasons for these differences are not known. The objectives of this research were to develop a mechanistic understanding for these differences. The differences were hypothesized to depend on both the amount of charge in a sludge sample and the characteristics of the polymer. The first phase of the research was aimed at establishing the component of the sludge that creates the polymer demand and the second phase was aimed at understanding the interactions of polymers with the components of sludge.

This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series

ISBN: 9781843397267 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780404462 (eBook)


M. Siljander, N. Adero, F. Gitau, E. Nyambu Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland (*Corresponding author: email@example.com ) Taita Taveta University, School of Mines and Engineering, Kenya Taita Taveta University, School of Science and Informatics, Kenya Taita Taveta County Government, Kenya Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Department of Surface Mining, Germany Abstract: Motivated by the need to enhance the precision of land use/land cover classification for mining environments challenged by rapid anthropogenic and natural changes, we analysed multispectral Sentinel 2A satellite data using four different classifiers: Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Tree (RT) and Random Forest (RF). Using adjusted training sample sizes drawn from the Kishushe iron ore mining site in Taita Taveta, Kenya, we conducted image analysis and compared the classification accuracies of the four methods, confirmed further by ground truthing. The study met the main objective of evaluating and comparing the performance of the traditional Maximum Likelihood classifier with the three machine learning algorithms of Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Trees (RT), and Random Forest (RF). Eight land use/land cover classes were generated from each of the four classifications performed in R statistics software for RF and in ArcGIS 10.7 for RT, MLC and SVM methods. Random Forest (RF) method delivered the best overall accuracy at 74.63 % with a Kappa value of 0.67. Random Trees (RT) method came second at 72.64 % with a Kappa value of 0.64. The overall accuracy of the SVM method was 58.21 % with a Kappa value of 0.46 and for the MLC method, the overall accuracy was 57.21 % with a Kappa value of 0.45. These results confirmed that machine learning classifiers outperform traditional classifiers. The study also confirmed that for robust land use/land cover classification, it is essential to have quality training data as the quality can have large and considerable effects on classification results. Since the reliability of land use/land cover (LULC) maps derived from remotely sensed data for mining sites depends on accurate classification, this study gives evidence-based recommendation for adopting machine learning algorithms in satellite image analysis and classification to support environmentally sustainable decisions and informed policy direction for sound mine planning and monitoring. KeywordsAccuracy, earth observation, land use/land cover change, Maximum Likelihood, Random Forest, Random Trees, Support Vector Machine.


A technique for laboratory characterization of instrument transformers designed for transmission level voltage and current measurements is presented. The technique is also extended to transient event recorders (TERs). The objective of the method is to determine the suitability of existing substation instrument transformers for harmonic measurements, particularly in the frequency range of 60 to 1500 Hz covering the first 25 harmonics. Specifically, the following characteristics are of interest: transfer function magnitude and phase, linearity, and sensitivity of the frequency response to burdens. The measurement technique is based on exciting the instrument transformer primary with an impulsive waveform. Both input and output waveforms are recorded using laboratory grade probes and digitizers. Digital signal processing techniques are used to compute the instrument transformer frequency response. Several voltage transformers and current transformers in the 230 kV-765 kV voltage range were tested. The results are described. >


The present study was conducted to assess the antifeedant activity of Nimbecidine (0.03% Azadirachtin) against 4 instar larvae of the destructive phytophagous pest Spodoptera littoralis and investigate its disruptive effects on different nutritional parameters in both 4 and 6 (last) instar larvae. Fresh clean castor bean leaf discs were treated with sublethal concentrations (500, 100 & 10 ppm) of Nimbecidine and offered to the early 4 instar larvae for 24 hrs. Nimbecidine exhibited a serious antifeedant activity against 4 instar larvae in a dose-dependent course. A significant reduction of food consumed by the 4 and 6 instar larvae was recorded in an inverse relation to the concentrations. Enhanced approximate digestibility (AD) was recorded for 4 instar larvae, but remarkably prohibited for last instar larvae. A general inhibitory effect was exhibited by Nimbecidine on ECI and ECD of both 4 and 6 instar larvae with an exceptional case. Assimilation rate of 4 instar larvae was significantly induced at the higher two concentrations but considerably or slightly suppressed in last instar larvae. Significantly or slightly increasing relative metabolic rate was recorded. The relative weight gain was reduced, regardless the instar. The growth rate of 4 instar larvae was reduced parallel to the increasing concentration while a generally enhanced rate was recorded for last instar larvae. Nimbecidine exerted a prohibiting action on the excretory function in the 4 and 6 instar larvae which discharged drastically reduced amounts of fecal pellets.


A simulation was undertaken to predict the transient potential response following a concentration step at a rotating disk electrode comprised of an ion selective layer. A basis for this simulation was that the potential response would be independent of rotation rate since the diffusion layer is larger than the double layer at the electrode. In practice it was found that the potential response does vary with rotation rate. The response was such that the apparent concentration of the analyte in solution decreased with increased rotation rate. The reason for this behavior is due to the disruption of the double layer at the electrode surface by convection.


Globalization, surely one of the most used and abused buzzwords of recent decades, describes a phenomenon that is typically considered to be a neutral and inevitable expansion of market forces across the planet. Nearly all economists, politicians, business leaders, and mainstream journalists view globalization as the natural result of economic development, and a beneficial one at that. But, as noted economist Martin Hart-Landsberg argues, this perception does not match the reality of globalization. The rise of transnational corporations and their global production chains was the result of intentional and political acts, decisions made at the highest levels of power. Their aim to increase profits by seeking the cheapest sources of labor and raw materials was facilitated through policy-making at the national and international levels, and was largely successful. But workers in every nation have paid the costs, in the form of increased inequality and poverty, the destruction of social welfare provisions and labor unions, and an erratic global economy prone to bubbles, busts, and crises. This book examines the historical record of globalization and restores agency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians who worked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishes their neoliberal ideology already on shaky ground after the 2008 financial crisis and picks apart the record of trade agreements like NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart- Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America s Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an international economy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity."


Corrosion of prestressing strands is a main durability issue for prestressing structures. In general, the corrosion zones of strands are hidden in structures which lead to be hardly inspected by traditional methods. An instrument for detecting the non visible corrosion of prestressing strands using magnetostrictive guided waves is provided. The instrument is described in detail. The workflow to detect the strands is provided. Field trials and laboratory experiments show that the information of position, length and amount of the corrosion can be obtained from the data. The instrument provides support for ensuring the safety of prestressing structures.


A general solution for the Couette velocity profile is reported. Taylor's classical one-dimensional profile is shown to be a special case of this solution for configurations whose aspect ratio is large. Numerical evaluation indicates that error between the two profiles is a logarithmic function of the aspect ratio and provides data to estimate when Taylor's profile should be replaced with the present solution.


Cannabis sativa L. is a dioecious plant belonging to the Cannabaceae family. The discovery of the presence of many biologically-active metabolites (cannabinoids) in fibre-type Cannabis (hemp) has recently given rise to the valorisation of this variety. In this context, the present study was aimed at the multi-component analysis and determination of the main non-psychoactive cannabinoids (cannabidiol, cannabidiolic acid, cannabigerol and cannabigerolic acid) in female inflorescences of different hemp varieties by means of 13C quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (qNMR). The method proposed here for the first time for the determination of cannabinoids provided reliable results in a competitive time with respect to the more consolidated HPLC technique. In fact, it gave sufficiently precise and sensitive results, with LOQ values lower than 750 μg/mL, which is easily achievable with concentrated extracts, without affecting the quality of 13C-qNMR spectra. In conclusion, this method can be considered as a promising and appropriate tool for the comprehensive chemical analysis of bioactive cannabinoids in hemp and other derived products in order to ensure their quality, efficacy and safety.


ABSTRACTS: Pentoxifylline (PTXF) is a methylxanthine that modifies leukocyte function and inhibits cytokine release. To evaluate its effects on the cardiovascular manifestations of sepsis secondary to group B streptococci, 14 anesthetized, mechanically ventilated piglets were studied over a 240-min period. Animals were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received a PTXF bolus (20 mg/kg) followed by a continuous infusion of 5 mg/kg/h before and during group B streptococci (1 x 108 colony forming units/kg/min) administration and a control group that received saline as a placebo. Comparison of the hemodynamic measurements and arterial blood gases during the first 90 min of PTXF treatment with those of the control group resulted in the following 90 min values: systemic arterial blood pressure was significantly higher in the PTXF group (89 ± 10 versus 56 ± 30 mm Hg; P < 0.005) as was cardiac output (0.18 ± 0.04 versus 0.10 ± 0.07 L/kg/min; p < 0.005). Pulmonary vascular resistance remained lower in the PTXF-treated animals (135 ± 117 versus 248 ± 119 mm Hg/L/min/kg; P < 0.001), and these animals were less acidotic as measured by pH (7.07 ± 0.2 versus 7.31 ± 0.1; p < 0.05) and base deficit (-15 ± 9 versus −5 ± 2 mmol/ L;p < 0.05). Median survival time was significantly longer in the PTXF group (210 versus 90 min; p < 0.002). These data demonstrate that PLXF can ameliorate some of the deleterious hemodynamic manifestations of group B streptococci sepsis and result in improved survival in a young animal model.


The constant rise of the death toll and cases of COVID-19 has made this pandemic a serious threat to human civilization. Understanding of host-SARS-CoV-2 interaction in viral pathogenesis is still in its infancy. In this study we aimed to correlate how SARS-CoV-2 utilizes its proteins for tackling the host immune response; parallelly, how host epigenetic factors might play a role in this pathogenesis was also investigated. We have utilized a blend of computational and knowledgebase approach to elucidate the interplay between host and SARS-CoV-2. Integrating the experimentally validated host interactome proteins and differentially expressed host genes due to SARS-CoV-2 infection, we have taken a blend of computational and knowledgebase approach to delineate the interplay between host and SARS-CoV-2 in various signaling pathways. Also, we have shown how host epigenetic factors are involved in the deregulation of gene expression. Strikingly, we have found that several transcription factors and other epigenetic factors can modulate some immune signaling pathways, helping both host and virus. We have identified miRNA hsa-miR-429 whose transcription factor was also upregulated and targets were downregulated and this miRNA can have pivotal role in suppression of host immune responses. While searching for the pathways in which viral proteins interact with host proteins, we have found pathways like-HIF-1 signaling, autophagy, RIG-I signaling, Toll-like receptor signaling, Fatty acid oxidation/degradation, Il-17 signaling etc significantly associated. We observed that these pathways can be either hijacked or suppressed by the viral proteins, leading to the improved viral survival and life-cycle. Moreover, pathways like-Relaxin signaling in lungs suggests aberration by the viral proteins might lead to the lung pathophysiology found in COVID-19. Also, enrichment analyses suggest that deregulated genes in SARS-CoV-2 infection are involved in heart development, kidney development, AGE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications etc. might suggest why patients with comorbidities are becoming more prone to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 integrates its proteins in different immune signaling pathway and other cellular signaling pathways for developing efficient immune evasion mechanisms, while leading the host to more complicated disease condition. Our findings would help in designing more targeted therapeutic interventions against SARS-CoV-2.


Volume 1 Economic Statics, Dynamics and Conjuncture General introduction biographical sketch and introductory essays The Concepts of Economic Statics, Dynamics and Conjuncture (1924) Long Cycles of Economic Conjuncture (1926) D I Oparin, Critical Analysis of Professor Kondratiev's Long Cycle of Conjuncture and an Explanation for the Long Fluctuations of Certain Economic Elements: Counter Paper (1926) Volume 2 Basic Problems of Economic Statics and Dynamics Volume 3 Writings on Agriculture The System of the Unified Agricultural Tax in Kind (1921) Changes to Russian and World Agriculture during and after the War, and the main goals of our Agricultural Policy (1922) Relative Fall in Grain Prices and its Significance (1923) The World Grain Market and Prospects for our Grain Exports (1923) The Unified Agricultural Tax (1924) ...the Movement of National Economic and Agricultural Conjuncture in Connection with the Progress of Monetary Reform... (1924) Natural Accumulation in Agriculture and the Development of the National Economy (1926) On the Question of Rural Differentation (1927) Characteristic Properties of the Conditions of the Development of Agriculture in the USSR and their Significance (1927) Industry and Agriculture and their Interrelations (1928) The Problem of Foresight (1926) Critical Notes on the Plan of National Economic Development (1927) Plan and Forecast: Methods of Compiling Perspective Plans for Development of the National Economy and for Agriculture in Particular (1927) Critical Notes on the Plan of National Economic Development (1927) Foundations of the Perspective Plans for Development of Agriculture and Forestry (1925) Volume 4 Further Writings on Agriculture, Speeches, Letters Speeches, Notes on Vital Problems in the Period (1917) The Agrarian Question: On Land and Land Orders (1917) Large Peasant Farms (1917) Regulation of the Grain Market... (1922) The Year of Revolution from an Economic Point of View (1918) Extracts from Letters by Kondratiev (1922-1938) M I Tugan-Baranovsky (Basic Features of His Scientific World-view) (1923)


The tropical Small Island Developing States (SIDS) typically contribute little to global climate change, yet they are among the countries most vulnerable to sea level rises, variations in temperature, fluctuations in rainfall, and extreme weather events. With high population density and limited natural resources, they are also susceptible to the challenges of sustainable natural resource management. The Republic of Mauritius is one of four SIDS in the Indian Ocean, and one of six SIDS that are also members of the African Union. In 2008 the Mauritian government launched a programme called Maurice Ile Durable (MID, or Sustainable Mauritius) with the intention of turning Mauritius into a world and SIDS model of sustainable development. This chapter deploys MID as a lens through which to examine debates about environment and development in Mauritius. MID's remit included environment, employment, education, and equity, but its main priority was energy efficiency. This chapter contrasts the narrow focus of Mauritian government actors firstly with the critiques of environmentalists – who called for greater emphasis on the preservation of biodiversity and mitigation of climate change – and secondly with the interpretations of marginalised urban citizens, many of whom came to see MID in particularly – and consequently the concept of sustainable development in general – in terms of energy efficiency and economic development rather than (also) environmental sustainability. It suggests that MID could have been more effective if environmental sustainability had been foregrounded, and more inclusive if economic development had been more equitably distributed. 1. Environment and development: from ecological anthropology to sustainable development, political ecology, and climate change Social scientists in general – and human geographers and social anthropologists in particular – have long theorised the relationship between environment and development. Ecological anthropology in the 1960s posited that natural environments shaped culture by providing


Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of product market competition on the oil uncertainty–investment relation. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use firm-level financial data from the COMPUSTAT database, competition proxies from Hoberg and Phillips (2016) and macroeconomic data on crude oil price uncertainty. Corporate investment is measured as capital expenditure scaled by total assets or as the annual change in (net) total fixed assets plus depreciation. Since our panel data covers a short period (22 years) and the regressions include a combination of a lagged dependent variable and firm fixed effects, the authors apply Blundell and Bond's (1998) GMM system when regressing corporate investment on the interaction between oil uncertainty and competition. Findings - Consistent with the theories in the irreversible investment literature, the authors first show that investments are negatively related to oil uncertainty. Second, they show that firms in competitive industries decrease their investments in response to heightened uncertainty by a higher degree than firms in concentrated industries, suggesting that competition can exacerbate negative investment outcomes when success is uncertain. The authors also examine how competition relates to investment asymmetric reactions to positive and negative oil price return volatilities and find a stronger negative relationships between competition and investment-positive oil price volatility, indicating that increasing the probability of a negative outcome due to uncertainty leads firms to reduce investment to a larger extent. Practical implications - The findings provide useful insights to guide corporate investment decisions under oil price change uncertainty. In particular, if firms can wait for the resolution of uncertainty before deciding to pursue irreversible investment in a competitive market, they can avoid potentially large losses by foregoing investment when the outcomes are unfavorable. This is because competition brings a greater uncertainty to firm performance if the investment outcome is poor, as firms in competitive industries share a large proportion of industry-wide profits with rivals and, thus, competition could erode profit margins and increases the likelihood of being driven out of the market. Hence, firms in competitive markets should balance between strategic preemptive motives and waiting for the resolution of uncertainty before deciding to pursue investment. Originality/value - This study is the first to examine the effect of competition on the relationship between investment and oil price uncertainty. Moreover, it is the first to examine the effect of competition on the asymmetric response of investment to oil price uncertainty emanating from positive and negative changes in oil price.


Monte Carlo simulations of via filling have been performed using the lattice model of crystal growth, which allows vacancy formation in the film during the growth. Adsorption, desorption and surface diffusion of adatoms are taken into account. Using a two-dimensional model, we examined the film growth from the initial surface with hollow parts (wedge-shaped and flat-bottomed holes), the aspect ratio of which ranged from 0.5 to 4. When a wedge-shaped hole is filled with deposited atoms, small voids appear in the film, which are aligned in the growth direction. In the case of the flat-bottomed hole, on the other hand, large voids with several hundred vacant sites appear in the middle of the hole. The voids are elongated in the growth direction as the aspect ratio becomes large. These voids have a similar structure to those of the experiment of filling vias and trenches in Cu interconnections from the solution without additives. The mechanism of the void formation is discussed in relation to the aspect ratio and the overpotential.


Data-driven simulation has become a favorable way to train and test autonomous driving algorithms. The idea of replacing the actual environment with a learned simulator has also been explored in model-based reinforcement learning in the context of world models. In this work, we show data-driven traffic simulation can be formulated as a world model. We present TrafficBots, a multi-agent policy built upon motion prediction and end-to-end driving, and based on TrafficBots we obtain a world model tailored for the planning module of autonomous vehicles. Existing data-driven traffic simulators are lacking configurability and scalability. To generate configurable behaviors, for each agent we introduce a destination as nav-igational information, and a time-invariant latent personality that specifies the behavioral style. To improve the scalability, we present a new scheme of positional encoding for angles, allowing all agents to share the same vectorized context and the use of an architecture based on dot-product attention. As a result, we can simulate all traffic participants seen in dense urban scenarios. Experiments on the Waymo open motion dataset show TrafficBots can simulate realistic multi-agent behaviors and achieve good performance on the motion prediction task.


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This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between mineral exploration and environmental pollution in Nigeria with specific focus on natural gas and crude oil in the Niger Delta region. The model of Granger causality tests was used. Quarterly data covering 2008 and 2009 were used in accordance with the Akaike (1976) minimum lag length of time-series analysis. The ADF unit root tests show that the null hypothesis of a unit root is rejected and, the KPSS stationary test result accepts the null hypothesis of "stationarity" implying that the variables are fit for the purpose of Granger causality analysis. The test for cointegration show that the variables are cointegrated at the trace level; this imply that gas flaring, environmental pollution and foreign direct investment are statistically linked. The regression on the ordinary least squares illustrates that the impact of oil and natural gas exploration on the Nigerian environment is persistent in the long-run. The Granger-causality test result shows that there is one-way causality flowing from the flaring of gas by the foreign firms to the environmental pollution in Nigeria. The study finds a long-run uni-directional causal relationship flowing from mineral exploration to air, soil and water pollution.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Because no previous studies have addressed the issue, we describe clinical characteristics and surgical outcome of patients with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) in a pediatric population of the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We conducted a retrospective review of all consecutive cases of pediatric RRD (0-18 years) patients presenting at Dhahran Eye Specialist Hospital, a tertiary care hospital, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia over a period of 3 years.

RESULTS
Twenty patients were included in the study, accounting for 9.4% of all retinal detachment surgery cases performed over a period of 3 years (January 2006 to December 2008). The median age was 11.0 years, (range, birth to 18 years). Trauma, (45%) myopia/vitreoretinal degeneration (10%) and prior ocular surgery (25%) were significant risk factors for RRD. Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) more than grade C was present in 14/20 (70%) of cases. Most patients (15/20, 75%) were treated with pars plana vitrectomy and placement of an encircling buckle, while silicone oil or gas was used as tamponade in 13/20 (65%) patients. Surgery was successful in 17/20 (85%) cases in achieving retinal re-attachment. Visual acuity improved significantly following surgery (Mean preop 2.146 LogMAR, Mean postop 1.497 LogMAR) ( P= .014). Longer duration of RRD ( P =.007) and macular involvement ( P =.05) were associated with worse anatomical outcomes following surgery.

CONCLUSION
Pediatric RRD in the Eastern province is often associated with predisposing pathology. Surgery is successful in achieving anatomical reattachment of the retina in a majority of cases with improvement of visual acuity.


Slater-Pauling (SP) rules connect the magnetic and electronic properties of the half-metallic (HM) Heusler compounds. Employing first-principles electronic structure calculations we explore the validity of the SP rules in the case of transition from HM semi-Heusler compounds to various cases of HM full-Heusler compounds. We show that the coherent-potential approximation yields half-metallicity and thus a generalized version of the SP rules can be derived. On the contrary, supercell calculations, which are expected to describe the experimental situation more accurately, show that the energy gap considerably shrinks for the intermediate compounds and in several cases the half-metallicity is completely destroyed. The origin of this behavior is attributed to the voids, which influence the symmetry of the lattice.


We connect two scenarios in structured learning: adapting a parser trained on one corpus to another annotation style, and projecting syntactic annotations from one language to another. We propose quasi-synchronous grammar (QG) features for these structured learning tasks. That is, we score a aligned pair of source and target trees based on local features of the trees and the alignment. Our quasi-synchronous model assigns positive probability to any alignment of any trees, in contrast to a synchronous grammar, which would insist on some form of structural parallelism.

In monolingual dependency parser adaptation, we achieve high accuracy in translating among multiple annotation styles for the same sentence. On the more difficult problem of cross-lingual parser projection, we learn a dependency parser for a target language by using bilingual text, an English parser, and automatic word alignments. Our experiments show that unsupervised QG projection improves on parses trained using only high-precision projected annotations and far outperforms, by more than 35% absolute dependency accuracy, learning an unsupervised parser from raw target-language text alone. When a few target-language parse trees are available, projection gives a boost equivalent to doubling the number of target-language trees.


PURPOSE
This study evaluated and compared bonding characteristics of resin-based luting agents and special ceramic primers to zirconia.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Disk specimens (n = 242) were fabricated from zirconium dioxide ceramics (Katana) and bonded with four resin-based luting agents without priming. In addition, zirconia was bonded with 7 bondingsystem combinations of three priming agents and three resin-based luting agents. Two of the resin-based luting agents and two ceramic priming agents contain an identical adhesive monomer, 10-methacryloyloxydecyl dihydrogen phosphate (MDP), either in the material itself or in the priming agent. Shear bond strength was determined after 20,000 cycles of thermocycling. The Kruskal-Wallis test was performed for both pre- and post-thermocycling groups to evaluate the difference among primer and luting agent variations. On the basis of the Kruskal-Wallis test, Steel-Dwass multiple comparisons were further performed to compare the difference among four luting agents and seven conbinations of three primers and three luting agents for both pre- and post-thermocycling conditions.

RESULTS
Within the four unprimed groups, Clearfil SA Cement (5.8 MPa) and Panavia F 2.0 (6.7 MPa) showed statistically higher post-thermocycling bond strength than the other materials (0.1 MPa) (p < 0.05). Among the seven primer/cement combinations, Clearfil Ceramic Primer combined with Clearfil Esthetic Cement exhibited the highest post-thermocycling bond strength (7.5 MPa), followed by two groups primed with Monobond Plus (4.0-4.6 MPa) (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Application of resin-based luting and priming agents containing the adhesive monomer MDP provide better bond strength to zirconia than do other systems.


Widespread current cameras are part of multisensory systems with an integrated computer (smartphones). Computer vision thus starts evolving to cross-modal sensing, where vision and other sensors cooperate. This exists in humans and animals, reflecting nature, where visual events are often accompanied with sounds. Can vision assist in denoising another modality? As a case study, we demonstrate this principle by using video to denoise audio. Unimodal (audio-only) denoising is very difficult when the noise source is non-stationary, complex (e.g., another speaker or music in the background), strong and not individually accessible in any modality (unseen). Cross-modal association can help: a clear video can direct the audio estimator. We show this using an example-based approach. A training movie having clear audio provides cross-modal examples. In testing, cross-modal input segments having noisy audio rely on the examples for denoising. The video channel drives the search for relevant training examples. We demonstrate this in speech and music experiments.


Viral hepatitis is a term commonly used for several clinically similar, yet etiologically and epidemiologically distinct, diseases. Five human hepatitis viruses have been identified. Hepatitis A, B, C, and D are endemic in the United States; hepatitis E is rarely reported in the United States, and most U.S. cases are seen in persons who have traveled to areas where hepatitis E. is endemic. Hepatitis A and E are transmitted by the fecal-oral route; hepatitis B, C, and D are blood-borne diseases. Hepatitis A and B have been recognized as separate entities since the early 1940s and can be diagnosed by serologic tests. Tests are available to detect the antibody to hepatitis C and D virus; no commercial test is available to diagnose hepatitis E. Hepatitis A, B, and D can be prevented by vaccine, but no vaccines are available for hepatitis C or E.


: A 73-year-old woman developed erythroderma with intense pruritus, malaise, and chills 7 days after treatment with intravenous clindamycin. Two years later she experienced a similar reaction with more rapid onset (48 hours) after treatment with aztreonam. Resolution followed withdrawal of treatment in both instances, and intradermal tests proved positive at delayed reading for both drugs.


. With the popularization of social media, a vast amount of textual content with additional geo-located and time-stamped information is directly generated by human every day. Both tweet meaning and extended message information can be analyzed in a purpose of exploration of public mood variations within a certain time periods. This paper aims at describing the development of the program for public mood monitoring based on sentiment analysis of Twitter content in Russian. Machine learning (naive Bayes classifier) and natural language processing techniques were used for the program implementation. As a result, the client-server program was implemented, where the server-side application collects tweets via Twitter API and analyses tweets using naive Bayes classifier, and the client-side web application visualizes the public mood using Google Charts libraries. The mood visualization consists of the Russian mood geo chart, the mood changes plot through the day, and the mood changes plot through the week. Cloud computing services were used in this program in two cases. Firstly, the program was deployed on Google App Engine, which allows completely abstracts away infrastructure, so the server administration is not required. Secondly, the data is stored in Google Cloud Datastore, that is, the highly-scalable NoSQL document database, which is fully integrated with Google App Engine.


Introduction: Nurses are the first people that attend the accident site. Therefore, they
must be able to take care of victims and have skill to prevent detrimental effects of disaster.
The aim of this study was to determine competencies among Shahrekord emergency nurses
responded in disaster situation with Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE).
Materials & Methods: This study was a descriptive study which 25 emergency nurses of
educational hospital in Shahrekord were recruited by census statistical methods. Competency
of nurses for responding in disaster situation were evaluated by utilizing 8-station objective
structured clinical examination (OSCE). In each station "Task Based Checklist" has been
used for evaluation. For measuring validity, content validity and for reliability, test re test
was used. Data were analyzed by using SPSS/16.
Findings: The mean scores of nurses' performance in 8 stations were less than average. In
triage station was (3.5±1.6), life support (4.4±1.2), airway management (3.9±1.5), Chest tube
insertion (4.9±1.5), naso gastric tube insertion (6.1±2.2), IV therapy (1.9±0.7), IV line
insertion (5.4±1.3), suturing (8.6±1.5) urinary catheterization (9.1±1.5).
Conclusion: Competencies of nurses in providing care in disaster were undesirable and
less than average in all skills. So it is essential for nurses to acquire clinical and special skills
to prepare for disaster situations


For studying the dynamics of induction and disappearing of complement-fixing antibodies (CFA) specific to Trichomonas vaginalis, T. hominis and T. tenax we have immunized rabbits intravenously with live individuals of the protozoa as well as intravenously, intramuscularly and subcutaneously with individuals killed at 56 degrees C. Each method of immunization was carried out by 5 inoculations with intervals of 10 days. For carrying out quantitative complement fixation we have taken blood from the ear vein of all immunized rabbits immediately before the immunization and also after it, each 10th day during one year. The dynamics of rising and lowering of titres depended on the species of trichomonads and on the method of immunization. The antigens of T. vaginalis and T. hominis induced CFA in much higher titres as antigens of T. tenax. Titres of CFA specific for all three species of above-mentioned trichomonads rose most rapidly and to the highest level when the immunization of rabbits was carried out intravenously with live individuals of protozoa. Normalization of the titres of CFA has taken place during one year at least.


Low-salinity waterflooding (LSF) is one of the least-understood enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR)/improved-oil-recovery (IOR) methods, and proper understanding of the mechanism(s) leading to oil recovery in this process is needed. However, the intrinsic complexity of the process makes fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanism(s) and the interpretation of laboratory experiments difficult. Therefore, we use a model system for sandstone rock of reduced complexity that consists of clay minerals (Na-montmorillonite) deposited on a glass substrate and covered with crude-oil droplets and in which different effects can be separated to increase our fundamental understanding. We focus particularly on the kinetics of oil detachment when exposed to lowsalinity (LS) brine. The system is equilibrated first under high-salinity (HS) brine and then exposed to brines of varying (lower) salinity while the shape of the oil droplets is continuously monitored at high resolution, allowing for a detailed analysis of the contact angle and the contact area as a function of time. It is observed that the contact angle and contact area of oil with the substrate reach a stable equilibrium at HS brine and show a clear response to the LS brine toward less-oil-wetting conditions and ultimately detachment from the clay substrate. This behavior is characterized by the motion of the three-phase (oil/water/solid) contact line that is initially pinned by clay particles at HS conditions, and pinning decreases upon exposure to LS brine. This leads to a decrease in contact area and contact angle that indicates wettability alteration toward a more-waterwet state. When the contact angle reaches a critical value at approximately 40 to 50 , oil starts to detach from the clay. During detachment, most of the oil is released, but in some cases a small amount of oil residue is left behind on the clay substrate. Our results for different salinity levels indicate that the kinetics of this wettability change correlates with a simple buoyancyover adhesion-force balance and has a time constant of hours to days (i.e., it takes longer than commonly assumed). The unexpectedly long time constant, longer than expected by diffusion alone, is compatible with an electrokinetic ion-transport model (Nernst-Planck equation) in the thin water film between oil and clay. Alternatively, one could explain the observations only by more-specific [nonDerjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (DLVO) type] interactions between oil and clay such as cation-bridging, direct chemical bonds, or acid/base effects that tend to pin the contact line. The findings provide new insights into the (sub) pore-scale mechanism of LSF, and one can use them as the basis for upscaling to, for example, pore-network scale and higher scales (e.g., core scale) to assess the impact of the slow kinetics on the time scale of an LSF response on macroscopic scales.


The present article scrutinizes the manner with which a group of three postsecondary students (in Quebec, Canada) describe the social actors concerned by the controversy surrounding cellular telephones. The study was conducted on the basis of an ethnographic approach. Participant observation was performed by the researcher for 3 hours during each of 15 weeks. The theoretical framework developed by Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2001) was drawn on to show how the group assigns roles relating to public representation and the production of legitimate knowledges; in particular, it assigns to scientists the role of conducting research; to government the roles of building citizens' awareness about the risks related to cellular telephone use, protecting users, and guiding the conduct of the cellular telephone industry; and to citizens the roles of becoming/staying informed and of making limited use of cellular telephones. The study reported here also illustrates that, in the process, the group airs their views concerning the terms best suited to defining the subject of the controversy, constituting research "collectives," and disseminating knowledge. One main conclusion is that science education research projects drawing on the contributions of Callon et al. (2001) hold out considerable promise in terms of relevance and fruitfulness. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:543–559, 2008


ABSTRACT Identifying habitats that should be protected from further disturbance or conversion and isolating high-risk areas is a focus of community habitat plans in southern California shrublands. Larger wildfires are occurring at shorter intervals in recent decades, contributing to degradation and conversion of shrubland vegetation. Multitemporal remote-sensing approaches can bridge the gap between vegetation mapping and field sampling in habitats where frequent quantification and mapping of vegetation growth forms over large extents is required. The objective of this study is to examine the reliability and stability of a multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) approach with moderate spatial resolution imagery for monitoring changes in growth form fractional cover in shrubland habitats. Estimates from visual interpretation of high spatial resolution image were used as reference data for validating MESMA-derived maps and as basis for providing complementary monitoring protocols that may be accurate and cost-effective across multiple scales. Growth form proportions modelled in burned and unburned management areas compare well with expected fractional cover in mature and regenerating shrublands. In the management areas recovering from fire, herbaceous cover fraction exceeded 0.40 for all three study dates, suggesting that large portions of those management areas may already be invaded. From 2008 to 2011 overall herbaceous cover fraction in shrubland area increased by 2%. Herbaceous cover fraction was modelled with an overall mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.08, a smaller percentage than the percentage of herbaceous cover change recorded in areas recovering from fire (increase in herbaceous cover fraction from 0.09 to 0.13). This MESMA approach would be effective for quantifying changes in fractional cover that exceed 0.10, providing a way to delineate and quantify herbaceous invasions and expansions following disturbance or succession.


Partial sharing allows providers to possibly pool a fraction of their resources when full pooling is not beneficial to them. Recent work in systems without sharing has shown that redundancy can improve performance considerably. In this paper, we combine partial sharing and redundancy by developing partial sharing models for providers operating multi-server systems with redundancy. Two M/M/N queues with redundant service models are considered. Copies of an arriving job are placed in the queues of servers that can serve the job. Partial sharing models for cancel-on-complete and cancel-on-start redundancy models are developed. For cancel-on-complete, it is shown that the Pareto efficient region is the full pooling configuration. For a cancel-on-start policy, we conjecture that the Pareto frontier is always non-empty and is such that at least one of the two providers is sharing all of its resources. For this system, using bargaining theory the sharing configuration that the providers may use is determined. Mean response time and probability of waiting are the performance metrics considered.


To the Editor: The role of adults as reservoirs of pertussis was previously well established (1–7). Young army recruits undergoing basic training in the Israeli Defense Force constitute a unique adult population because of their special living and service conditions. This and the fact that they are not vaccinated with the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine after the age of 1 year (unlike children in most of the Western countries) led us to hypothesize that this semiclosed population may have an exceptionally high risk for pertussis. These young soldiers are on leave on weekends, during which time they come in close contact with susceptible family members, including young infants, and may thus facilitate the "import" and "export" of pertussis between the military setting and the general population. An outbreak of pertussis that recently occurred among infantry soldiers (8) indicated the need to conduct the present study, in which we sought to evaluate the prevalence and incidence of pertussis among young soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force.

We conducted 2 concurrent studies. The first was a 15-month (November 2001–March 2003), laboratory-based surveillance study of pertussis, which included 110 trainees who complained of persistent coughing (case definition: cough lasting 10–90 days) upon admission to compound clinics. Samples obtained from these patients were tested by a commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (PanBio, East Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) for the presence of immunoglobulin (Ig) A against a Bordetella pertussis sonicate and by an in-house IgA-detection ELISA directed against pertussis toxin as previously described (9). Results for IgA to B. pertussis sonicate were calculated as arbitrary ELISA units obtained according to the manufacturer's instructions. A result of 9 U (a cutoff point that was previously shown to provide a 98.5% specificity for the diagnosis of recent pertussis infection [8] or higher was considered positive. Results for IgA to pertussis toxin were calculated as arbitrary ELISA units according to a calibration curve of a serially, double-diluted, positive standard. The cutoff point was calculated by adding 3 standard deviations to the mean value of a group of 40 healthy study participants. A positive result in either test was considered a confirmed case of pertussis.

We conducted another substudy to estimate incidence. This substudy included 278 trainees who were interviewed regarding the occurrence of persistent cough and seeking of medical care during the preceding 6 months. We multiplied the prevalence of laboratory-confirmed pertussis found in the first study by the incidence of study participants with persistent cough who sought medical care in this study. The result was multiplied by 200,000 to receive incidence estimation for 100,000 person-years.

The median duration of cough among the 110 case-patients was 14 days, their median age was 19 years, 94 (85.5%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 77.5%–91.5%) were males, 71 (64.5%, 95% CI 54.9%–73.4%) were born in Israel, and 85 (77.3%, 95% CI 68.3%–84.7%) were in basic training when they visited the clinic. Twenty (18.2%, 95% CI 11.5%–26.7%) and 14 (12.7%, 95% CI 7.1%–20.4%) of the patients were positive for IgA antibodies to B. pertussis and pertussis toxin, respectively. Twenty-five patients (22.7%, 95% CI 15.3%–39.7%) were positive by either test. Significant variations were recorded during the follow-up period. The first period (November 2001–May 2002) was characterized by a high prevalence of pertussis among the 72 patients enrolled, with 19 (26.4%, 95% CI 16.7%–38.1%) and 14 (19.4%, 95% CI 11.1%–30.5%) positive for IgA to B. pertussis and pertussis toxin, respectively. In the second period (August 2002–March 2003), although characterized by the same median duration of cough (14 days), a substantially lower prevalence of pertussis was observed among the 38 patients enrolled, with only 1 (2.6%) and 0 patients, respectively, showing positive results in either of the 2 tests (p < 0.01 for differences between the 2 periods for both diagnostic methods).

The frequency of clinical symptoms observed in patients positive for pertussis by at least 1 ELISA (n = 25) was similar to those observed in patients negative for pertussis by both ELISAs (n = 85), with the exception of post-tussive emesis (40% versus 25%, respectively) and fever (4% versus 21%). These differences were not significant.

Of the 278 basic training respondents, 17 (6.1%, 95% CI 3.6–9.6%) reported a persistent cough (>2 weeks) during the preceding 6-month period; 13 (4.7%, 95% CI 2.5%–7.9%) had sought medical care. When we extrapolated from this sample and from the laboratory-confirmed prevalence of 22.7% among patients with persistent coughing who sought medical care (and thus came to the clinics), the incidence rate was 2,132 cases per 100,000 person-years (95% CI 440–6,240).

The prevalence of pertussis found in this study is comparable with that previously reported among U.S. Marine corps trainees, university students, and other civilian adult populations (1–7). Complete case-capturing could not be performed. However, the high clinical similarity between pertussis-positive and other cases of prolonged cough renders selection bias unlikely. The prevalence of disease in this study showed significant changes in relation to time in contrast to previous studies (3). This difference may be because our present study was conducted in a semiclosed population characterized by epidemic occurrence of the disease.

The incidence of pertussis reported in this study (2,132 cases per 100,000 person-years) is substantially higher than the findings of Nennig and others (10) among an urban population in San Francisco (176 cases per 100,000 person-years). This finding may be due to the difference in immunization practices between Israel and the United States (5 doses of DTP vaccine in the United States with the last 1 administered between the ages of 4 and 6 years, compared with only 4 doses of the vaccine during the first year of life in Israel) or to crowded living conditions of the recruits. Our findings emphasize the need for revaccination against pertussis of young adults in Israel, primarily of those at high risk for pertussis, such as army recruits.


Traffic steering (TS) mechanisms are designed to improve the overall
utilization of network resources in terms of bandwidth and services,
and to optimize traffic flow in terms of latency and jitter through
the network. Most existing TS systems require human intervention to
monitor and manage the assignment of specific paths to specific flows
or traffic types, reducing the effectiveness of TS. I2RS, as a near
real time programmatic interface to the routing system, provides the
ability to manage TS systems in a more dynamic and iterative way. This
document describes several TS use cases for I2RS.


Maximum mutual information (MMI) has become one of the two de facto methods for sequence-level training of speech recognition acoustic models. This paper aims to isolate, identify and bring forward the implicit modelling decisions induced by the design implementation of standard finite state transducer (FST) lattice based MMI training framework. The paper particularly investigates the necessity to maintain a preselected numerator alignment and raises the importance of determinizing FST denominator lattices on the fly. The efficacy of employing on the fly FST lattice determinization is mathematically shown to guarantee discrimination at the hypothesis level and is empirically shown through training deep CNN models on a 18K hours Mandarin dataset and on a 2.8K hours English dataset. On assistant and dictation tasks, the approach achieves between 2.3-4.6% relative WER reduction (WERR) over the standard FST lattice based approach.


Over the next few years, this text is likely to emerge as one of the best sources dealing with crime scene investigation. Although the author states that the text is written for only one audience, the crime scene investigator, the material is certain to be of interest to the criminalist, the latent fingerprint examiner, and the pathologist. In the introduction to the text, the respective roles of the crime scene investigator and the criminalist are discussed from a perspective that is more historical than philosophical, and some interesting insights into the development of operational attitudes toward crime scene investigation are offered. The seven chapters of the text comprehensively cover the equipment used in the processing of crime scenes, investigative approaches, and specific collection techniques. The most attractive feature of the text is the clarity and simplicity with which it is written. The second most attractive feature is the manner in which the book is illustrated. The illustrations are both felicitous and numerous. In the section dealing with the making of plaster casts, for example, there are a total of twelve photographs to illustrate each step in the process. The section dealing with equipment used in the collection of physical evidence is very much up-to-date and is profusely illustrated. For each type of evidence, the why is explained as well as the how, and the investigator using the text as a model need not rely on doing something by rote as opposed to doing something because of a more fundamental understanding of the process. The section dealing with photography and the sections dealing with the marking and packaging of various types of physical evidence are particularly clear and well written. In short, this is a very readable book that should be very useful to anyone responsible for any aspect of crime scene investigation.


BACKGROUND
An elevated plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) level is associated with an increased risk of vascular disease. Some studies have shown associations between tHcy level and small-vessel disease of the brain on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

DESIGN
In the Cardiovascular Health Study, 622 elderly participants without a history of transient ischemic attack or stroke had results for tHcy level and cranial MRI. We sought associations between tHcy level and MRI findings of ventricular grade, sulcal grade, white matter grade, and infarcts. We controlled for other factors, including levels of creatinine, folate, and vitamins B(6) and B(12) and methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase genotype.

RESULTS
After controlling for age and sex, tHcy level was not associated with the individual MRI findings. Further adjustments for other factors and other blood tests had little effect on these findings. The only significant finding was a linear trend across quintiles of tHcy level and a pattern of MRI findings combining infarcts and high white matter grade. The linear trend remained significant after controlling for other risk factors and atherosclerotic markers (top quintile vs bottom quintile odds ratio, 3.3; 95% confidence interval, 0.96-11.20; P =.04 for linear trend) but was slightly diminished after further controlling for creatinine, folate, and vitamins B(6) and B(12) (odds ratio, 3.2; 95% confidence interval, 0.81-13.10; P =.07 for linear trend).

CONCLUSION
We were unable to confirm the results of previous studies with respect to tHcy level and individual MRI findings, although an association was seen for an MRI pattern combining infarcts and high white matter grade.


: Investigations were made on different haematological parameters in H. fossilis at two environmental temperature (18 degrees C and 32.5 degrees C) and different periods of breeding cycles. The RBC counts 302.0-10(4)/mm3), WBC counts (10.6-10(4)/mm3), Hb concentration (19.0g%), haematocrit (36.0%), M.C.H.C. (57.7%), total blood volumes (0.966 ml) and per cent blood volumes (1.542%) gave significantly high values but M.C.V. (119.2 micrometer3) and erythrocyte surfaces (52.96 micrometer2) gave low values at higher temperature (32.5 +/- 1 degrees C) and during breeding period (G.S.I. = 10.4 +/- 0.52 g). The higher values obtained for different haematological parameters during breeding period at high temperature may be probably related to greater physical activity and higher metabolic activity at the time of reproduction.


Promoting renewable power and conserving land are often conflicting goals because renewable power requires a lot of land. The conflict is becoming an important issue on lands encumbered by conservation easements. I argue that the current legal rule allowing oil and gas development, but not wind and solar development, on conserved land does not make sense in light of the threats of climate change. The best way to encourage renewable power while respecting the intent of landowners is to have the Internal Revenue Service promulgate rules that explicitly allow renewable power going forward and interpret existing easements with a set of tools that match development parameters to conservation easements' stated purposes.


: The effect of the proteins and vitamin "D" deficiency in the diet on the formation of the calcium-binding protein (CaBP), absorption of calcium in the small intestine and on the Ca and P content in blood serum of rats was studied. The resulting data demonstrate that hypovitaminosis "D" leads to a significantly reduced formation of CaBP, diminished absorption of tagged C35 in the small intestine and Ca and P level in the blood serum. The decline of these values is observed in cases of protein deficiency and with rising protein shortage these changes become more marked. A further fall of the CaBP level, of the labelled calcium absorption and of the serumal Ca and P is observed with simultaneous action on the organism of the proteins and vitamin "D" deficiency.


Purpose Although medical ethics research is frequently published in medical journals, little is known about the prepublication review such articles receive. The authors sought to describe the prepublication review of medical ethics research at major medical journals and medical ethics journals. They also sought to compare the ethics backgrounds of editors at both journal types and editors' attitudes concerning the training necessary for reviewers of ethics research. Method In November 2006, the authors distributed a 19-item survey via the Internet and mail to editors of major medical journals, specialty medical journals, and medical ethics journals. The survey collected data on the use of peer review, importance of peer review, ethics training of editors, and editors' attitudes regarding the appropriate training for reviewers. Multiple-choice and open-response questions measured peer review use characteristics, and questions weighted with a five-point scale measured editor attitudes. Results Medical journals and medical ethics journals almost always peer reviewed articles examining topics in medical ethics and considered this review important to enhancing the quality of published ethics research. However, medical journals were less likely to have an editor with advanced training in ethics as compared with medical ethics journals (7% versus 100%, P < .001), and their editors viewed specialized training in ethics as less important for a reviewer than did medical ethics journal editors (2.56 versus 3.88, P = .035). Conclusions Physicians should be aware that ethics articles in prominent medical journals may not have been appropriately reviewed by a reviewer with specialized training in ethics.


The following theoretical and clinical investigation explores the therapeutic potentialities of a cognitive-behavioural art therapeutic intervention and treatment within an elementary school with a child who shows bullying behaviours towards his peers. Bullying has become a serious problem found within schools and therefore, has led many schools to start implementing intervention programs to address these problems. Ma (2001) noted that there is a strong relationship between bullying in the school and future violence in the community. Consequently, if bullying is a common problem in elementary schools, it should not be overlooked on the belief that children will grow out of it. Therefore, early assessments and interventions into the bullying cycle may help prevent the development of antisocial behaviours in children who bully and potentially reduce the emotional trauma associated with being a victim. The purpose of the present study was to show how using a cognitive-behavioural based art therapy approach can help a young boy who had been identified as a school bully, to understand the nature of his bullying behaviour, identify his maladaptive assumptions and eventually evaluate and modify his thinking strategies. Given that cognitive-behavioural therapy is an approach that involves collaboration between client and therapist, the student was involved in tracking, verbalizing and recording negative thoughts through both mental and visual imagery by allowing the student to input and design creative activities to support and enhance behavioural change


ABSTRACT Child health is taking the back seat in development strategies. In summarising a newly released collaborative report, this paper calls for a novel conceptual model where child health takes centre stage in relation to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It lays out five principles by which renewed effort and focus would yield the most benefit for children and adolescents. These include: re-defining global child health in the post-2015 era by placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals; striving for equity; realising the rights of the child to thrive throughout the life-course; facilitating evidence informed policy-making and implementation; and capitalising on interlinkages within the SDGs to galvanise multisectoral action. These five principles offer models that together have the potential of improving design, return and quality of global child health programs while re-energising the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.


Species that are primarily seral may form stable (self-sustaining) communities under certain disturbance regimes or environmental conditions, yet such populations may also be particularly vulnerable to ecological change. Aspen (Populus spp.) are generally considered seral throughout the northern hemisphere, including P. tremuloides, the most widely distributed tree species in North America. Recent declines in aspen populations have occurred, especially along drought-sensitive margins of its range and where fire exclusion and herbivory have promoted community transition. However, aspen also forms stable stands, and examination of the mechanisms that influence persistence can offer conservation insights, especially where populations are vulnerable to changing climate or altered disturbance dynamics. We sampled tree age and stand characteristics of isolated aspen forests in the arid Great Basin (USA) to determine if: (1) aspen communities are more fire-dependent and seral or fire-independent and stable; (2) ungulate browsing inhibits aspen stability; and (3) temporal patterns of vegetative reproduction (i.e., ramet establishment or "suckering") are correlated with climate. Aspen size and age class densities strongly fit negative exponential distributions, whether grouped geographically or by functional type, suggesting landscape-scale persistence. Continuous age distributions and high proportions of recruitment-sized to overstory trees suggest stability at stand-scales, with exceptions including stands with higher browsing pressure. Few stands had evidence of fire, and relationships between dead tree size and variability in live tree size suggest a lack of fire-dependency. Several five-year averaged climate variables and one sea surface temperature index were correlated with aspen ramet establishment densities over time, with strongest relationships occurring ~5 years prior to establishment year, often followed by inverse relationships ~1 year after. Indeed, aspen establishment density for a recent 41-year period was reliably reconstructed using antecedent climate conditions derived from a single drought index. Temporally synchronized aspen ramet establishment across the study region may be due to climate-driven storage of nonstructural carbohydrate reserves in clonal root systems later used for regeneration. Complex regeneration dynamics of these self-sustaining aspen stands, especially sensitivity to climate variability, suggest they may serve as harbingers of ecological change in the arid Great Basin and in other aspen populations near their range margin. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


This paper discusses external influences on innovation platforms (IPs) and the options for effective responses. The platforms examined in this paper were conceived as vehicles for facilitating institutional change in support of innovation that benefits smallholders, in selected agro-enterprise domains in Benin, Ghana and Mali. They were designed and implemented in a manner that enabled experimentation with processes of change in the selected domains. A Research Associate in each case facilitated the work of the IPs and applied Theory-Guided Process Tracing (TGPT) methodology to document the innovation processes pursued by platform members. The recorded data allow analysis of the external influences on the IPs. This paper first presents a typology as derived from literature of the main external influences on the domains of interest, and then uses the typology to analyse the influences on and responses of the IPs. The main influences were found to emanate from global, sub-regional and national levels. The IPs' responses were diverse but generally included reconstitution of the membership, lobbying, capacity-building among smallholders, and empowerment of smallholders by organizing provision of new knowledge, skills or financial resources. The paper highlights lessons drawn by the platform members in addressing the challenges involved. It concludes that external influences are important in determining the direction of socio-technical and institutional innovation.


BACKGROUND
i-Factor™ Bone Graft (Cerapedics Inc, Westminster, Colorado) is a composite bone substitute material consisting of P-15 synthetic collagen fragment adsorbed onto anorganic bone mineral suspended in an inert biocompatible hydrogel carrier. A pivotal, noninferiority, US FDA Investigational Device Exemption study demonstrated the benefits of i-Factor™ compared to local autograft bone in single-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at 1-yr postoperative.

OBJECTIVE
To report 2-yr follow-up.

METHODS
Subjects randomly received either autograft (n = 154) or i-Factor™ (n = 165) in a cortical ring allograft and followed using radiological, clinical, and patient-reported outcomes.

RESULTS
At 2 yr, the fusion rate was 97.30% and 94.44% in i-Factor™ and autograft subjects, respectively (P = .2513), and neurological success rate was 94.87% (i-Factor™) and 93.79% (autograft; P = .7869). Neck Disability Index improved 28.30 (i-Factor™) and 26.95 (autograft; P = .1448); Visual Analog Scale arm pain improved 5.43 (i-Factor™) and 4.97 (autograft) (p = .2763); Visual Analog Scale neck pain improved 4.78 (i-Factor™) and 4.41 (autograft; P = .1652), Short Form-36 (SF-36v2) Physical Component Score improved 10.23 (i-Factor™) and 10.18 (autograft; P = .4507), and SF36v2 Mental Component Score improved 7.88 (i-FactorTM) and 7.53 (autograft; P = .9872). The composite endpoint of overall success (fusion, Neck Disability Index improvement >15, neurological success, and absence of re-operations) was greater in i-Factor™ subjects compared to autograft subjects (69.83% and 56.35%, respectively, P = .0302). Twelve (7.45%) i-Factor™ subjects and 16 (10.53%) autograft subjects underwent re-operation (P = .3411). There were no allergic reactions associated with i-Factor™.

CONCLUSION
Use of i-Factor™ in anterior cervical discectomy and fusion is effective and safe, and results in similar outcomes compared to local autograft bone at 2 yr following surgery.


The aim of the study is to describe (1) plot of the story used by the writer to convey politics constellation in Roro Jonggrang novel, (2) character and characterization used by the writer to convey politics constellation in Roro Jonggrang novel, (3) background of the story used by the writer to convey politics constellation in Roro Jonggr a ng novel, and (4) politics constellation contained in Roro Jonggr a ng novel. The kind of this research is qualitative research. The data is phenomenon unit in Roro Jonggrang novel that accommodates plot, character, characterization, background, and constellation politics. The source of the data is a novel entitled Roro Jonggrang by Budi Sardjono. T he instrument of the research is the researcher that has given a theory about the plot, background, character, characterization, background, and constellation politics, especially sociological politics. the technique of collecting data are observation, reading technique, and taking a note. T he technique of data analysis is descriptive qualitative technique. T he result of this study is as follows . (1) The p lot used in Roro Jonggrang n ovel is a chronological plot . (2) T he main character is Roro Jonggrang, beside that there is another character as an addition . (3) B ackground of the study happens in Gedono temple, Prambanan temple, Suruh Ijo village, Kalibawang village, Kaswargan hill, Pengging square, Cepogo temple, dan Ciwa temple. T he time of the story is described in the ninth century when mataram kingdom holds the power. T he events are taken during morning, afternoon and evening time. social background in this novel is society and Javanese culture . (4) P olitics constellation in this novel is:  (a) P olitics communication happens between P engging and P rambanan kingdom. I n pengging kingdom, politics communication is done by Prabu Damar Maya, Bandung Bandawasa, Demang Selo, Demang Tegalrejo, Lurah prajurit Pengging, and Tumenggung Gagak Sabrang, whereas in prambanan kingdom politics communication is done by Roro Jonggrang, Dyah Mranti, Lurah Berbah, Lurah Kretek, and Prabu Baka Geni. I n this politics communication, there are some functions done by each kingdom. the function of politics communication is information function, instruction function, and persuasive function . (b) P olitics participation happens between P engging and P rambanan kingdom. Politics participation in pengging kingdom is marked by the participation of group soldier of Adipati Wono Goro, Loda Nyang, and Pengging soldier, whereas politics participation in P rambanan kingdom is marked by village chief participation . (c) T here are two social movements in Roro Jonggrang novel. They are regressive and expressive movement. Each kingdom did both of the movement.


AIM
to assess for a correlation between T2*CMR with LV function and mass in thalassemic patients with iron overload.

METHODS
a cross-sectional study on thalassemic patients was conducted between July and September 2010 at Cipto Mangunkusumo and Premier Hospitals, Jakarta, Indonesia. Clinical examinations, review of medical charts, electrocardiography, echocardiography, and T2*CMR were performed. Cardiac siderosis was measured by T2*CMR conduction time. Left ventricle diastolic and systolic functions, as well as LV mass index were measured using echocardiography. Correlations between T2*CMR and echocardiography findings, as well as serum ferritin were determined using Pearson's and Spearman's tests.

RESULTS
thirty patients aged 13-41 years were enrolled, of whom two-thirds had -thalassemia major and one-third had HbE/-thalassemia. Diastolic dysfunction was identified in 8 patients, whereas systolic function was normal in all patients. Increased LV mass index was found in 3 patients. T2*CMR conduction times ranged from 8.98 to 55.04 ms and a value below 20 ms was demonstrated in 14 patients. There was a statistically significant moderate positive correlation of T2*CMR conduction time with E/A ratio (r = 0.471, P = 0.009), but no correlation was found with LV mass index (r=0.097, P=0.608). A moderate negative correlation was found between T2*CMR and serum ferritin (r = -0.514, P = 0.004), while a moderate negative correlation was found between serum ferritin and E/A ratio (r = -0.425, P = 0.019).

CONCLUSION
T2*CMR myocardial conduction time has a moderate positive correlation with diastolic function, moderate negative correlation with serum ferritin, but not with LV mass index and systolic function.


Iraq suffered from the ravages of terrorism, after its occupation  in 2003 by the United States of America and its allies, and this led to the spread of armed groups, and Iraq has witnessed various and continuous terrorist operations that received extensive and intense media coverage from the media and of various types of print, audio and visual that had their effects. Large and clear inside Iraqi society.
   The research aimed to identify the reality of the roles of Iraqi press institutions in facing    the actions of terrorist organizations (Al-Qaeda and ISIS), and their role in forming citizen awareness regarding the activities of these organizations, and efforts to combat them.The study belongs to the field of descriptive research that aims to describe the research problem related to the phenomenon of terrorist organizations in Iraq, and the method was employed within the framework of using the survey method of the Scientific Library to monitor perceptions of the contents of terrorist organizations presented in Iraqi press institutions.
The study reached a number of conclusions:

The press has greatly contributed to building and forming trends, especially with the big crises and problems, and the growing desire of the public for the media to know its details, which indicates the great importance of these means towards terrorist incidents.
Failure to investigate the accuracy and credibility of many media outlets, including newspapers, in the process of transmitting and processing news of terrorist organizations, which causes citizens to spread terror, fear and panic without feeling the slightest social responsibility for what this news leaves in the issuance of its followers.


Nitrite undergoes reconversion to nitric oxide under conditions characteristic of the tumor microenvironment, such as hypoxia and low pH. This selective conversion of nitrite into nitric oxide in tumor tissue has led to the possibility of using nitrite to enhance drug delivery and the radiation response. In this work, we propose to serially characterize the vascular response of brain tumor‐bearing rats to nitrite using contrast‐enhanced R2* mapping. Imaging is performed using a multi‐echo gradient echo sequence at baseline, post iron oxide nanoparticle injection and post‐nitrite injection, whilst the animal is breathing air. The results indicate that nitrite sufficiently increases the vascular permeability in C6 gliomas, such that the iron oxide nanoparticles accumulate within the tumor tissue. When animals breathed 100% oxygen, the contrast agent remained within the vasculature, indicating that the conversion of nitrite to nitric oxide occurs in the presence of hypoxia within the tumor. The hypoxia‐dependent, nitrite‐induced extravasation of iron oxide nanoparticles observed herein has implications for the enhancement of conventional and nanotherapeutic drug delivery. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The Cañada Honda (CH) fossil coral reef, located in SW Dominican Republic, provides a unique opportunity to examine reef accretion in a high-sedimentation environment between 9.0-5.0 ky ago. Annual linear extension of fossil corals was determined for comparison with data from modern coral reefs. The reef is characterized by the high abundance of sediment-tolerant coral species, their tendency to form almost monospecific stands and grow as domes-cones with ragged margins. Also, colonies of Montastraea faveolata commonly contain bands of sediment incorporated within their skeletons. Calibrated radiocarbon ages of fossil corals range from 9,256±137 to 6,737±94.5 BP. Correlation with Holocene sea-level curves indicates that most corals on CH developed at depths greater than 15m. Growth rates varied from 0.09-0.44 cm/yr and suggest reduced light penetration caused by coral growth at such depths. Reef sediment is characterized by more than 85% carbonate material. A significant portion of the carbonate is allochtonous and was derived from nearby Neogene limestones. The reef was able to survive under these conditions because of the high carbonate content of incoming terrigenous sediment and that storms probably occurred sporadically providing intervening lowsedimentation periods during which reef corals could respond and grow back, "keeping-up" with sedimentation.


Immunosenescence is the reduced ability of the body to mediate an adaptive immune response. Multiple factors contribute to immunosenescence, including age-related changes in hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) phenotype, its niche, and the tissues responsible for lymphocyte development, such as the bone marrow and the thymus. Therefore, understanding lymphocyte development in the aged is fundamental to enhance the immune response capacity of the aging immune system. Here, we investigate the age-related dynamics of committed T cell progenitors (CTP), an HSC-derived bone marrow population capable of generating functional T cells via both thymic and extrathymic pathways. Specifically, we examined the CTP's frequency and absolute numbers in the bone marrow of young (1 month) and old (12 and 18 months) C57BL/6 mice using flow cytometry. Moreover, we compared the capability of young and aged CTP to generate T cells in vitro. Understanding the biology of CTP in relationship to aging could have important clinical applications in the treatment of diseases related to immunodeficiencies and cancer by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, as CTP-derived T cells protect against viral infections without inducing graft vs. host disease. This work could pave the way to studies related to human CTP populations and their therapeutic potential.


The focus of my research is on contemporary biomedical construction of pain as an object, i.e. the different ways in which pain has been conceptualized and approached as a specific site of investigation in biomedicine.

A significant shift in the scientific conception of pain occured in the second half of XXth century. In 1965, Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall propose the Gate Control theory of pain mechanism. This theory denies a fixed and direct relationship between stimulus and pain perception, and emphazises the role played by psychological factors in pain. The IASP utilizes this perspective on the phenomenon, describing pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated to an actual or potential tissue damage or described in the terms of such a damage."

The relationship between pain and damage is pivotal in the definition of pain as a pathological entity. In particular, the biomedical approach to pain appears to be strongly characterized by a dualistic view of its aetiology. Disease conceptions such as "psychogenic pain" and chronic pain are deeply influenced by the ways in which psychological factors have been interpreted as components, or as causes of pain.

In the second part of my dissertation, I focus on fibromyalgia, which is emblematic of the problematic acknowledgment of chronic pain as a disease. Even if fibromyalgia is actually treated in Rheumatology, its status as a disease is blurred, mainly because of its complex symptomatology including both physiological manifestations and psychological ones.

In the conclusion, I present a scenario of the different ways in which this disease is dealt with in biomedical knowledge, through medical literature, clinical practice, and patients' accounts. The findings of an ethnographic enquiry in the Rheumatology Division of a local clinic and a visual research on patients' experiences are analyzed and discussed.


Food policy councils (FPCs) have become a popular way to organize various food system stakeholders at the local, municipal, and state levels. FPCs typically build partnerships with stakeholders; examine current policies, regulations, and ordinances related to food; and support or create programs that address food system issues. While FPCs have the potential to affect policy change and often include policy-related goals in their missions, the literature on how FPCs engage in the policy process, what policies FPCs address, and the policy impacts of their work are very limited. We conducted an electronic survey of FPC leaders to describe FPCs, their level of engagement in policy processes, and the scope of their policy activities. We invited all U.S. FPCs that were included in an FPC database (N =92) to participate. Of the 56 FPCs that completed the survey (64 percent response rate), 52 percent had been in existence for at least 3 years and 85 percent were engaged in policy activities at the time of the survey. Most FPCs engage in policy work in multiple venues (88 percent) and on multiple topics (79 percent). Many FPCs reported participating in the policy process through problem identification (95 percent) and education (78 percent); few mentioned evaluating their policy work. Those not engaged in policy most often cited lack of resources and technical expertise as barriers. These results suggest that while most FPCs are engaging in policy, why and how they engage varies greatly. Since FPCs are frequently cited as an effective way to address local and state food system issues, there is a need for more rigorous evaluation of the processes, outcomes, and impacts of their work.


Objective: to evaluate the incidence of unfavorable outcomes in vascular trauma patients and their possible correlation to the distance between the city where the injury was sustained and the hospital where the patient received definitive treatment. Methods: descriptive and retrospective study. Data were collected from medical records of patients submitted to surgical procedures for arterial or venous injuries from February 2011 to February 2013 at the only trauma center providing vascular surgery in a vast area of the Amazon region. Trauma date, patient gender and age, mechanism and anatomic topography of injury, surgical management, need for surgical re-intervention, hospitalization period, postoperative complications, mortality and limb amputation rates were analyzed. The incidence of unfavorable outcomes was assessed according to the distance between the city where the vascular injury was sustained and the trauma center. Results: One hundred seventy-three patients with 255 vascular injuries were analyzed; 95.95% were male (p<0.05), mean age of 28.92 years; 47.4% were caused by firearm projectiles (p<0.05); topographic distribution: 45.66% lower limbs (p<0.05), 37.57% upper limbs, 6.94% abdominal, 5.2% thoracic and 4.62% were cervical vascular injuries; 51.42% of patients required hospitalization for seven days or less (p<0.05); limb amputation was necessary in 15.6% and the overall mortality was 6.36%. Conclusion: distances greater than 200Km were associated to longer hospitalization period; distances greater than 300Km were associated to increased limb amputation probability; severe vascular trauma have an increased death probability when patients need to travel more than 200Km for surgical treatment.