This thesis describes the strategy formulation process for Solergy. Solergy is a small start-up company in Almelo, The Netherlands. Solergy doesn't know how to reach its customers as a starting solar panel installer. These customers are the most important determinant for Solergies marketing strategy. This brings us to the research question of this thesis:
Research question:
Which strategy does Solergy need to reach its customers and gain market share?
Sub questions:
- A. Who are the customers and what is the most appropriate segment for Solergy?
- B. Which strategy is needed to reach the customers in this segment?
This thesis focuses on finding market information for Solergy. This means finding the most relevant information on the customers. This has to be done in order to find out which is the best marketing strategy. The theory of Segmenting, Targeting and positioning is used to narrow the market down. An analysis of the external opportunities helps in the strategy formulations process.
Various levels of strategy are distinguished. These are the functional level and the business level. For the business level the model of Mohr, Sengupta and Slater is used. This model distinguishes the strategies of the product leader, fast follower, customer intimate and the operational excellent company. For the functional level the model of Treacy & Wiersema and the model of Lauterborn are used. The model of Treacy and Wiersema distinguishes three different approaches to the market, based on quality, price and service. The model of Lauterborn makes it possible to implement these strategies. It uses the terms: customer, cost, convenience and communication.
The information is gathered by carrying out a desk research. Afterwards the information is analyzed and the relevant parts are selected. The exact nature and the methodological implication of these methods and techniques are also discussed in this research, as well as questions about the validity and reliability of the found information. The findings of this research are used to formulate a new strategy for Solergy. The essential strategic implications are: It's the best for Solergy to follow a fast follower strategy on a business level and a service approach on a functional level. This is the best strategy to reach the targeted customers. The targeted customers are house owners. The people above the age of 50 and higher educated customers are the most interesting ones. More specific information can be found in thesis.


Hundreds of ophthalmologists every year turn to us for advice and assistance

The UK medicolegal climate has changed dramatically over the past 120 years. Ophthalmologists now are subject to far greater scrutiny than ever before. We call it multiple jeopardy. From just one single incident ophthalmologists can be held accountable and have their professional conduct scrutinised in numerous ways: by the civil and criminal courts and coroners, by their employers, the National Clinical Assessment Service, and the regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC); through the NHS or independent sector complaints procedures and the healthcare regulator, the Healthcare Commission. The editor of the BJO suggested a title of "insuring ophthalmologists" for this article and, in that context, since 2000, the Medical Defence Union (MDU) has provided MDU members with an indemnity insurance policy for clinical negligence claims. However, as well as claims, hundreds of ophthalmologists every year turn to us for advice and assistance with many other equally important medicolegal matters, which I will touch on too.

Many doctors do not realise that just under half of the United Kingdom's practising doctors do not have professional indemnity insurance. MDU members have been provided with individual insurance contracts since 2000, a move not yet taken by the other UK defence organisations, whose members are indemnified on a purely discretionary basis.

This may seem strange, given the global medicolegal climate and the dramatic increase in negligence claims worldwide over the past 20 years. Many readers may not even know what discretionary indemnity is. Historically it was widely used as a means of indemnifying doctors, but has caused problems in many countries. Insurance is now mandatory in many EU states, most of the United States, and Australia. Unlike insurance, discretion …


Following the lead of Nguyen van Yen (2012 Nucl. Fusion 52 013005), this article tackles the problem of tomographic inversion with one camera assuming a constant emissivity of light along the magnetic field lines. In this way, the 3D problem reduces to 2D by helical symmetry, allowing for the reconstruction of any poloidal plane in the field of view of the camera. It is shown in this article that the complexity of using a wavelet basis for the reconstruction, as presented by Nguyen van Yen, is not necessary. The method is also validated by confronting it to 3D numerical data coming from the TOKAM3X code, for which the emissivity is slowly varying along the field lines (up to 20%), showing the robustness of the reconstruction. The technique is then applied to real camera data recorded during a D-shaped ohmic plasma shot realized in the COMPASS tokamak. The method is experimentally validated by comparing reconstructed data from camera and ion saturation currents measured by Langmuir probes in the divertor region. Finally, it is shown that automatic detection and tracking of structures visible in the reconstructed poloidal plane enables unique investigations of edge plasma physics and opens wide perspectives for this method.


Family law's model of marriage as a companionate, egalitarian relationship in which spouses make equal or similar contributions to work and home does not reflect the reality of many marriages. The attractiveness of this simplistic model of equality lies partly in three supporting mother myths: mothering just happens, mothering is free, and mothering is for babies. Innocent as they may seem, these myths pose great danger for divorcing mothers by creating fictional baselines of appropriate behavior against which real mothers are judged. While the ALI has taken steps toward slaying portions of these myths, their ultimate demise depends on abandonment of the law's egalitarian model of marriage and adoption of a model that distinguishes between status and contribution. Such a model lies in the gender-neutral, equality-based principles and rules of partnership.


The study examined whether the quality of the adolescent-parent relationship was associated with better diabetes management in adolescents with Type 1 diabetes by decreasing adolescents' extreme peer orientation. Adolescents (n = 252; 46% male and 54% female) aged 10 to 14 years with Type 1 diabetes completed assessments of extreme peer orientation (i.e., tendency to ignore parental advice and diabetes care to fit in with friends), adolescent-parental relationship, and adherence; HbA1c scores indexed metabolic control. Adolescents with higher quality relationships with parents reported less peer orientation and better diabetes care. The mediational model revealed that adolescents' high quality relationships with their parents (mother and father) were associated with better treatment adherence and metabolic control through less peer orientation. It is likely that high quality adolescent-parent relationships may be beneficial to adolescent diabetes management through a healthy balance between peer and parental influence.


KAVANAGH, B.: THE REINTRODUCTION OF THE GREY PARTRIDGE (PERDIX PERDIX) TO IRISH FARMLAND: TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY. Restocking of grey partridge, using game farm reared birds, never been successful in establishing a wild breeding population. Little information is available on the precise reasons for this failure. While the importation or translocation of wild caught birds to new areas has had limited success, this option has not been possible in Ireland in recent time. The aim of this project is to investigate and develop a methodology for the reintroduction of partridges using game farm stocks in a captive breeding programme based on a combination of the 'Montabello' and 'Euston' systems, used in the 19 century. The project is based on the hypothesis that partridges reared by parents will be better adapted to breed in the wild than birds reared from incubators. The study area is 1,000 hectares of mixed farmland in County Kildare. Two 7×3 m permanent pens were erected on each of three sites in the centre of the study area in autumn 1996. The sites were separated by 1 km from each other. An additional portable pen 5×2,5 m was erected at each site in spring 1998 bringing the total number of breeding pens to nine. In autumn 1996 twenty-five game farm reared partridges were released from each site. Forty birds survived to covey break up in February 1997. Three cocks and two hens were retrapped in spring using unreleased birds in the pens to attract mates. Thus five of the six pairs formed were composed of a retrapped and a previously unreleased bird while the sixth pen was filled an unreleased pair. All six penned pairs mated, all hens set nets and incubated. Hatching success was poor. Four chicks survived from two pens. Ten pairs of partridge were recorded in the study area from the previous autumn release. No chicks survived from these ten pairs outside the pens. Excessively wet weather during late incubation and hatching was responsible for most losses in the pens. In autumn 1997 seventy five game farm birds were released once again bringing the total autumn population to 100 birds in 1997. Thirty seven birds survived to spring 1998. Two cocks and two hens were retrapped and paired with unreleased mates. Four additional pairs from unreleased birds were placed in pens. Eggs were removed for incubation and replaced with dummy eggs. Twenty incubated eggs were then returned to the sitting hen at the piping stage. The outcome of this programme is reported.


Background and aim: WALANT procedures are becoming more popular, and are particularly useful in the COVID-19 pandemic. Procedures can be performed without needing access to general theatres and anaesthetic support, minimising the number of patient-healthcare interactions and avoiding aerosolisation. Our unit has taken this approach and aim to present a case series that demonstrates the efficacy and safety of WALANT. Methods: A prospective analysis of WALANT cases in a single plastic surgery centre during March-August 2020 was performed. All procedures using a WALANT approach were included, that would have otherwise required general anaesthetic or regional block. Data was collected on a number of variables, including patient satisfaction. Results: 37 procedures were included in analysis. The majority of the injuries consisted of hand trauma. There were no cases of post-operative complications, although one required completion in main theatres due to technicality. No patients required additional anaesthetic during the procedure and all reported pain score as 0/10. Overall patient satisfaction was 10/10 for 26 patients, 9/10 for 10 patients and 7/10 for one patient. Conclusions Results show the use of WALANT can facilitate an effective plastic surgery trauma service during COVID-19. Most of the procedures were performed in the outpatient department setting, without the need for main operating theatres or anaesthetic support. All procedures were performed within 24 hours of initial presentation and were able to be discharged on the same day. In addition, patient satisfaction remained high and post-operative complications were minimal. We propose that the use of WALANT should continue and increase beyond the current pandemic. (www.actabiomedica.it)


"Cyberbullying" has come to the fore in Canadian federal parliamentary debate largely in the last two years in tandem with high profile media reporting of several teen suicides. The federal government has responded to the issue by tabling Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. The omnibus Bill proposes, among other things, criminal law responses to non-consensual distribution of intimate images and gender-based hate propagation, but only at the expense of expanded state surveillance writ large. A criminal law response might appear to be the obvious policy choice for many who have followed media reporting on cyberbullying. However, our review of federal parliamentary debates from 2008-2013 revealed a much richer array of approaches in which the efficacy of criminal law responses was heavily contested. This article reports on the diversity of viewpoints that emerged within those debates, first contextualizing them within the conceptual complexity of the term "cyberbullying" and the media focus on tragic suicide cases. It suggests that "cyberbullying" has become less a problem and more an intellectual and political juggernaut for transporting a broad range of individual and social issues, as well as political ideologies, onto the public agenda. The conceptual elasticity of the term has to some extent facilitated co-optation of tragic suicide cases as a guise for pushing a tough on crime agenda, while obscuring underlying relational and systemic issues repeatedly identified by many claimsmakers within the debates. This article argues in favour of unpacking the "cyberbullying" juggernaut to expose as candidly as possible the wide range of individual and social issues that the term itself too easily obscures from view. Doing so, it suggests, is an essential first step toward development of a comprehensive multi-pronged strategy that better accounts for the richness and diversity of the concerns reflected in the cacophony of voices within the debates themselves. Such an approach could allow for prioritization of issues and development of responses aimed at addressing those most at risk, and capable of accounting for the ways in which individual actions are informed by the social context in which they occur, including well-established structures of discrimination.


We define a new fixpoint modal logic, the visibly pushdown μ-calculus (VP-μ), as an extension of the modal μ-calculus. The models of this logic are execution trees of structured programs where the procedure calls and returns are made visible. This new logic can express pushdown specifications on the model that its classical counterpart cannot, and is motivated by recent work on visibly pushdown languages [4]. We show that our logic naturally captures several interesting program specifications in program verification and dataflow analysis. This includes a variety of program specifications such as computing combinations of local and global program flows, pre/post conditions of procedures, security properties involving the context stack, and interprocedural dataflow analysis properties. The logic can capture flow-sensitive and inter-procedural analysis, and it has constructs that allow skipping procedure calls so that local flows in a procedure can also be tracked. The logic generalizes the semantics of the modal μ-calculus by considering summaries instead of nodes as first-class objects, with appropriate constructs for concatenating summaries, and naturally captures the way in which pushdown models are model-checked. The main result of the paper is that the model-checking problem for VP-μ is effectively solvable against pushdown models with no more effort than that required for weaker logics such as CTL. We also investigate the expressive power of the logic VP-μ: we show that it encompasses all properties expressed by a corresponding pushdown temporal logic on linear structures (caret [2]) as well as by the classical μ-calculus. This makes VP-μ the most expressive known program logic for which algorithmic software model checking is feasible. In fact, the decidability of most known program logics (μ-calculus, temporal logics LTL and CTL, caret, etc.) can be understood by their interpretation in the monadic second-order logic over trees. This is not true for the logic VP-μ, making it a new powerful tractable program logic.


ABSTRACT This article examines the recent popularity of women-centric narratives of trauma for television, in order to explore the politics of screening women's trauma. The first part of the article locates the shift towards women's "trauma TV" at the intersections of "quality" and "complex" television, "popular trauma culture" and "popular feminism." Following arguments that female trauma has become a mode of program differentiation in the post-network era, I demonstrate that the uptake of women's trauma is just as much a function of aesthetic and narrative trends as it is politics. The second part of the article looks to HBO's Westworld (2016-present) and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale (2017-present) to examine how women's trauma is represented for television, as well as the effects and implications of its representation and consumption. Through these series, I explore some of the issues and concerns of packaging women's trauma as television entertainment.


Welsh has generally been analyzed as allowing two types of relative clauses and other A´-constructions, one involving movement leaving a wh-trace, the other involving a resumptive pronoun in situ. In this paper, I argue that, despite the appearance of agreement, which seems to license a null resumptive pronoun, relative clauses formed on a number of syntactic positions (object of periphrastic verb, object of preposition, embedded subject) may involve movement. Both movement and non-movement strategies are argued to be available for some syntactic positions (object of preposition, embedded subject), and separate constraints must therefore be established for the distribution of each. Resumptive pronouns are argued to be subject to a variant of the A´-Disjointness Requirement. For wh-trace, the Welsh evidence is compatible only with an account involving multiple cyclic movement via a VP-external position (SpecAgrOP) as well as SpecCP.


This paper considers Stackelberg game decisions on the product and ordering policy in a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer is the leader and provides a home delivery service, thus he controls the distributed lead time, which consists of three components: setup time, production time and shipping time. First, a Stackelberg game model and a benchmarking integrated model involving service level and lead time are established, then some properties of this model are deduced, and efficient algorithms which are based on these models' analyses are developed. Furthermore, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the models and the algorithm, and some comparisons with the existed model are also given. The comparative results show that both the retailer's and the system's profits are increased effectively in the case of service level concerned.


Evaluative research into the capability of decentralized management of epidemiological vigilance (EV) was conducted in the operational, organizational and sustainable dimensions in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The quantitative approach was used in the construction of a baseline, with primary data obtained through an online questionnaire answered by thirty-eight municipal EV managers. In the qualitative approach to analyze the context and assess the management capability of municipalities in two case studies, techniques adapted to the analysis of discursive practices were used. This was done through semi-structured interviews with managers of regional and municipal government, health workers and representatives of the municipal health council. The case studies showed that the municipality with enhanced management capability is that in which the manager has the greatest potential of using the resources of his position, in addition to his ability to control, negotiate and coordinate with other actors. Due to decentralization of EV, considering the shared nature of management between the three spheres of government, there is a marked variation in the management capability of municipalities, determined by social, economic, political inequalities and management mechanisms adopted.


Animal shelter employees are in a unique position where they care for, and later kill, the same animals. The aim of our exploratory study was to assess whether "caring" and/or "killing" evokes physiological and psychometric indicators of stress in employees. Experiment 1 compared three careers that kill regularly, but involve varying degrees of husbandry (n = 28). Blood pressure (BP), salivary cortisol, heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV) were collected; data showed higher HR and lower HRV during the process of killing. Psychometric scales showed that burnout and Impact Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) scores were higher in careers with higher contact with animals. Experiment 2 compared three careers that involve husbandry, but varying exposure to killing (n = 41). BP, cortisol awakening response, HR, and HRV were measured as well as Professional Quality of Life Scale, IES-R, and Moral Injury Event Scale were administered. There were no significant differences across careers in any measures. The data suggest that the process of killing may be physiologically stressful to the person, and higher levels of animal contact in a euthanasia context may be associated with burnout and traumatic stress, but that the act of euthanasia is not a unique predictor of overall occupational distress.


Pediatric heart transplantations are limited by the supply of donor allografts. We sought to determine the cardiac allograft utilization rate for pediatric donors and identify donor factors that predict graft use for transplantation. The United Network for Organ Sharing deceased donor database was queried from April 30, 2006, to March 31, 2014. Donor risk factors that might affect graft use for cardiac transplantation were evaluated. The pediatric cardiac graft utilization rate was calculated, and logistic regression modeling was performed to determine the relationship of risk factors with graft use for transplantation. During the study period, 6682 eligible cardiac donors <18 years of age were identified, and 3758 (56.2%) grafts were utilized for transplantation. Grafts from male donors (OR 1.181) were significantly associated with graft utilization. Graft donor age >1 year (OR 0.363), non‐O blood type (OR 0.586), CDC 'high‐risk' donor status (OR 0.676), use of inotropes (OR 0.718), use of >2 inotropes (OR 0.328), and donor left ventricular ejection fraction <50% (OR 0.045) were significantly associated with graft nonutilization. The pediatric cardiac allograft utilization rate and risk factors for graft use for transplantation have been identified. Additional studies will be needed to assess the donor–recipient relationship on pediatric transplant outcomes.


In this study, development and enhancement of a stemmer algorithm for Geez texts were presented. The general approach used a longest-match principle and in this stemmer takes a corpus an input, then expand short words, remove punctual marks, special characters and numbers (normalization), remove stop words, identify the case when an affix is not a real affix (exceptions), handle irregular words, and finally removes its affixes and the corpus input is taking in Geez language and the resulting corpus in Geez language. In this enhanced stemmer, there is no need of transliteration; and stemmer is implemented with a user interface which make the stemmer easily understandable to none expert users and learners. The prototype was tested with three datasets with vary of 2000 words. To evaluate stemmer, manual error counting method was used. According to the evaluation of the experiments, the results showed that it achieved an average accuracy of 87.22% and the proposed method generated some errors over stemming and under stemming errors were 8.31% and 4.35%, respectively. In conclusion, an overall accuracy of the stemmer was encouraging which shows stemming can be performed with low error rates in morphologically rich languages such as Geez language. Finally, researchers found out that infixed words affect in geez stem words. They also found out that it is possible to use the stemmer for developing morphological analyzer, parser, and spell checker, thesaurus and word frequency counting and so on.Keywords: Information, Retrieval (IR), Stemming, morphology, Natural Language, Processing, Suffixes, Prefixes, Algorithm


Resistance training causes well-documented adaptations in the nervous system and increases maximal voluntary force of healthy human skeletal muscle in the trained and also of the same muscle in untrained limb. It is also well known that practice of a visuomotor skill without a load causes neural adaptations. These findings led to the hypothesis that a combination of resistance and visuomotor training would produce accelerated and larger gains in maximal voluntary force than each method alone. The purpose of the study was to compare strength gains produced by a loaded visuomotor and a traditional resistance training program. Subjects were randomly assigned to a visuomotor or resistance training group and completed 4 sets of 6 repetitions of elbow flexion at 70-85% of maximum intensity in each of 12 sessions over 4 weeks. The visuomotor vs. the resistance group performed significantly better in the visuomotor skill task. Maximal voluntary torque increased in the trained arm similarly in the two groups but unexpectedly not in the untrained arm. Although there is a strong conceptual and experimental basis for the hypothesis under the present experimental conditions a combination of a visuomotor skill with loads compared with conventional resistance training did not produce superior strength gains.


As of end of December 2010, Taiwan reports over 160 colleges and universities and is proclaimed as a country that reports highest college density. Therefore, a heavy impact and acute competition between colleges and universities has made the schools spare no effort to enhance quantity & quality of teaching and research related resources to stay competitive. However, a large improvement is required to the existing university e-libraries in terms of manpower allocation, budget amount, software & hardware facilities, quantity & quality of library collection and management philosophy deficiencies. Therefore, the management of various libraries needs to reinforce librarians' capabilities in management and decision making to enhance overall library performance. The paper mainly follows various decision-making thinking, decision-making philosophy, decision-making mindset, decision-making methods and decision-making discipline ideas of Habitual Domains, with over 10 years personal experience of being a curator of university library considered to come up with strategies that are beneficial to the decision making thinking of university curators in Taiwan, so as to achieve the performance of library affairs and to expect to enable a new opportunity for the future development of university e-libraries in Taiwan.


In this work, we define a novel Internet service, called ABE (Alternative Best-Effort), which allows interactive multimedia applications to receive low queuing delay within the existing best-effort Internet. We then develop and analyse a number of innovative scheduling algorithms that can implement ABE in a router. ABE differs from other services that provide low queuing delay in that it does not rely on any reservation and requires no charging of those that avail of the low delay service. We retain the best-effort context by protecting traffic that does not require lower delay for individual packets so that the existence of ABE is transparent to them, namely their performance is at least as good as it would be in the current best-effort Internet. The primary scheduler to implement ABE we developed is called DSD (Duplicate Scheduling with Deadlines). It guarantees that traffic marked as low-delay will spend no longer in the system of each router than some operator specified value. The performance of other traffic is protected by the use of a virtual queue, a packet deadline decision based mechanism and a controller. We prove important properties of DSD and show, by the tools of queuing analysis and simulation, that it succeeds in its goal: protecting the performance of other traffic and the best possible performance for low-delay traffic subject to the constraints of not exceeding the maximum permitted delay. The final part of this work addresses the question: what is the resultant long-term distribution of rates amongst flows, with equal round-trip times in a general network, that update their rates by the additive increase/multiplicative decrease algorithm? Contrary to what was previously believed, we find that the rate allocation is not proportionally fair, but is more closely represented by an allocation we derive.


This paper explores a sociocultural approach to the development of moral identity, by considering the recently published autobiography of Ingo Hasselbach. Hasselbach, the founder (in 1991) of the National Alternative neo-Nazi party in East Germany, writes about his childhood and youth, how and why he embraced the neo-Nazi perspective, and how and why he ultimately repudiated the movement that he had helped to create. The analysis of Hasselbach's story employs a "mediated action" approach to identity formation (Penuel & Wertsch, 1995; Wertsch, 1998). Such an approach entails taking human action as the starting point for the study of identity development, and understanding that mediated action, rather than an inner sense of identity, continuity, or sameness, provides the primary unit of analysis. In bringing a sociocultural perspective to bear on Hasselbach's autobiographical narrative, this paper thus highlights the connections that emerge in his autobiography between his changing/developing sense of moral identity and his moral actions and interactions in the world. In so doing, it explores and explicates the relationship between Hasselbach's moral identity and the sociocultural context in which it develops.


While many girls who become mothers before completing schooling consider academic qualifications to be very important, they may not be able to succeed academically if the support they need to complete their studies is insufficient. Usually, instead of getting support, the teen mothers endure misunderstandings and pressure. The teen mothers may feel disempowered because they are 'othered' and consequently, they develop forms of resistance which in most cases may foster their failure as learners. Our aim was to find out how much support was offered to these girls to facilitate their schooling, thus making it possible for them to complete their education and become self-reliant. A qualitative research approach was employed to gather information for the study. Teen mothers, their educators, and parents were interviewed to gather information about the girls' schooling situation. The results showed that many teen mothers failed to succeed with schooling because they lacked support to avoid the numerous disruptions to school attendance.


In November 1997, 140 researchers, administrators, and others interested in the support of nonpublic schools gathered at the University of Dayton to develop a research agenda for American private education. Under the able direction of Dr. Tom Hunt of the University of Dayton, the assembled educators responded to presentations by a variety of speakers through interactive group sessions as they identified the critical gaps in current knowledge about the nonpublic schools. What developed over the several hours of intense sessions was an agenda that should give direction to researchers well into the 21st century. The Dayton Agenda consists of questions grouped around the following fourteen topics:


These stable self-assembled nanoparticles were characterized by dynamic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy,which demonstrated that the nanosystem consists of spherical particles with a smooth surface both in aqueous environment and in dried state. Toxicity measurements showed that the composition is nontoxic when tested either on cell cultures or in animal feeding experiments. To evaluate the potential of the nanosystem for intracellular drug delivery and gene, the nanoparticles were fluorescently labeled and folic acid was attached as a cancer cell-specific targeting moiety. The quantitative data obtained by digital processing of the intensity of green color of each pixel in the pictures inside the cell boundaries and total intensity of fluorescence inside the cells showed thattargeted particles internalized into the cells significantly faster and the total accumulation of these particles was substantially higher in the cancer cells.


The energy density in Fulling-Rindler vacuum, which is known to be negative 'everywhere' is shown to be positive and singular on the horizons in such a fashion as to guarantee the positivity of the total energy. The mechanism of compensation is displayed in detail.


I develop a search-theoretic model to study how consumers' search behavior responds to exchange rate volatility. The model offers two main predictions. First, the number of cross-border travelers is increasing in exchange rate volatility. Second, the elasticity of cross-border travel with respect to exchange rate volatility is increasing in transportation cost. I use monthly Canadian traveler data from 2005 to 2012 to test the model's predictions. The estimate suggests that when exchange rate volatility increases by one standard deviation, the number of same-day travelers increases by 1.6 percent. When exchange rate volatility is measured by implied volatilities, the estimates increase to 2.1–2.5 percent. When the data is restricted to the subperiod before the 2008 financial crisis, the estimated coefficients of exchange rate volatility and implied volatilities increase to 4 percent and 7.3–10.7 percent, respectively. This paper concludes that cross-border shopping behavior responds to both ex ante and ex post exchange rate volatilities.


From a certain point of view, parametric engineering design may be considered as an optimization problem. The design problem may be represented through a set of design parameters. The optimal solution is located by using a set of competing design parameters and its evaluation is based upon specific criteria. A significant number of techniques and methodologies have been proposed in order to perform this difficult task. The selection of the appropriate one(s) depends strongly upon the nature and the specific characteristics of the design problem under consideration. The majority of these techniques and methodologies rely on the definition of some initial conditions. Wrong, misleading or incomplete initial conditions may result to solutions characterized by local optimality or may need excessive computational time in order to converge to either an optimal or a sub-optimal solution. In the context of the current work, two different approaches are used for initializing the optimization process: genetic algorithms and pattern search. Genetic algorithms need an initial population of individual solutions before the genetic operations could be deployed, while the pattern search techniques use a starting (initial) point for the optimization process. These two initial conditions (initial population and initial point) may be defined either randomly or deliberately. The present paper introduces a case-based design (CBD) module as pre-processor to the design optimization. This CBD module is based on an artificial competitive neural network, which is submitted to unsupervised learning by examples based on past design solutions. The new design is represented through fuzzy preferences and weighting factors, which are compiled by the neural network for retrieving similar past solutions. The retrieved solutions are used in order to determine the initial conditions of the optimization method (the initial population for the genetic algorithm (GA) or the starting point for the pattern search). The optimal solution is then searched using the criterion of the maximum aggregated overall preference. A system, namely Case-DeSC, has been developed in the purpose of evaluating the proposed framework in the application area of parametric design of oscillating conveyors. The results show that the proposed optimization methods converge faster to more efficient solutions if case-based reasoning (CBR) is utilized for defining the initial optimization conditions.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


OBJECTIVE
To compare clinical and economic outcomes associated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in cohorts before and after continuous quality improvement (CQI) was instituted.

STUDY DESIGN
Observational study.

METHODS
Clinical, angiographic, procedural, and outcome data on 1441 pre-CQI and 1760 post-CQI PCIs (performed in 1997 and 1998, respectively) were derived from an institutional PCI registry. Administrative data were used to estimate total procedural and postprocedural costs and length of stay (LOS). Logistic and generalized linear modeling was used to adjust in-hospital clinical and economic outcomes, respectively, for differences in patient characteristics.

RESULTS
The 2 cohorts were similar in terms of age, sex, and rate of diabetes. Post-CQI patients more often received intracoronary stents, had urgent PCIs, had a history of prior PCI, and received glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors. Procedural success without in-hospital complications occurred in 90% of both cohorts and did not differ statistically in adjusted analyses. Compared with patients treated pre-CQI, those treated post-CQI had a reduced adjusted odds ratio for in-hospital death or any myocardial infarction (odds ratio = 0.66; 95% confidence interval = 0.46, 0.95). Models predicted a mean postprocedural LOS difference of 0.8 days (2.8 days pre-CQI vs 2.0 days post-CQI; P <.001) and an average post-CQI cost savings of $5430 (P <.001).

CONCLUSION
Physician-led, multidisciplinary practice management efforts were successful at significantly reducing PCI-related costs in an era of rapid technological advances while maintaining and perhaps improving quality of care.


Mesothelial cells have been described to possess progenitor characteristics and contribute to regeneration through differentiation. However, it is not clear what the effects of prolonged culture have on the mesothelial cell properties and relative plasticity; as long-term cultures have not yet been established as a result of early senescence. Understanding the effects of time in culture is crucial for the development of novel therapies. In this thesis, we demonstrated that mesothelial cell cultures isolated from murine omentum could be cultured for more than 40 passages and showed relatively stable population doubling times. While initially, the cells did down-regulated the expression of mesothelial markers Wilm's tumor protein 1 (Wt1) and mesothelin and epithelial genes; their mesenchymal profile was maintained. This along with the increased Snail2 expression suggested the cells were progressing through the mesothelial to mesenchymal (MMT) transdifferentiation programme. TGF-β and more recently EGF are known mediators of MMT. Targeting signalling through these receptors with small molecule inhibitors LY364947 and PD153035, slowed the rate of gap closure, in vitro and increased zonula occludens 1 accumulation at cell-cell contacts. Which seemed to be mediated through the MEK5/ERK5 pathway. Furthermore, siRNA-mediated transient knockdown of Zeb1 and Zeb2 transcription factors also achieved attenuated the rate of migration. Next, we moved onto to accessing the progenitor properties of the mesothelial cells with time in culture. The expression of stem cells markers Bmi1 (Proto-Oncogene, Polycomb Ring Finger), Sox9 ((Sex Determining Region Y)-Box 9) and CD34 were downregulated with repeated passaging. However, the low passage mesothelial cells exhibited clonogenicity and could differentiate into osteoblasts and adipocytes. Finally, in an embryonic kidney rudiment assay, we could show that the mesothelial cells co-existed with the embryonic kidney cells and allowed renal structures to form in their presence. Ultimately, we have demonstrated that the mesothelial cells from the omentum maintain some mesothelial characteristics with prolonged culturing. The cells showed clonogenic and multi-lineage potential and expressed a number of stem cell genes. The MMT programme is complex and could be partly reversed by targeting TGF-βR1 and EGFR tyrosine kinases, which along with transiently silencing the Zeb transcriptional factors seem likely key targets in ameliorating pathological fibrosis.


The effect of grain boundaries (GBs) on deformation mechanisms becomes increasingly important as the volume of deformation reaches the submicrometer and nanoscale. The current work investigates the impact of grain boundaries on the incipient plasticity of small-scale deformations of fcc metals. For this purpose, the behavior of single and bi-crystal Au thin films during nanoindentation are studied, using large-scale atomistic simulations. Various symmetric ⟨110⟩ tilt GBs with a wide range of misorientation angles are included to analyze the effect of GB geometry on the nanoscale plasticity mechanisms. Potentially, GBs can act as a source, sink, or obstacle for lattice dislocation, depending on their geometry, energy level, and distance from the deformation zone. The role of the heterogeneous nucleation and emission of dislocations from GBs on the plasticity and hardness of bicrystals is analyzed. According to our results, the intrinsic free volume involved in the GB region is associated with dislocation nucleation at the GB. The volume of the plastic zone generated beneath the tip and the way it grows is strongly dependent on the GB structure. Dislocation nucleation occurs predominantly in the early stages of indentation at GBs with a dissociated interface structural unit, before the interaction of lattice dislocation and GB. Coherent twin boundaries display the lowest effect on the hardness. Based on our results, there is a strong correlation between the interfacial boundary energy and its effect on the bicrystal hardness. GBs with lower interfacial energy offer a higher barrier against slip transmission and nucleation at the GB.


Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) plays an important role in controlling proliferation or differentiation in almost all epithelial tissues. The pathophysiology of TGF-beta during carcinogenesis is now an important area of investigation, since it appears that as the process of carcinogenesis progresses, epithelial cells often become refractory to the growth-regulatory actions of TGF-beta. In this article we consider the possible cellular and molecular bases for this phenomenon, and then discuss some pharmacological approaches to enhancing the synthesis or activity of TGF-beta. These approaches may provide new modalities for prevention of carcinogenesis, if they can be applied during the early stages of the disease process, before cells become refractory. We give particular attention to tamoxifen and retinoic acid, since it has been shown that these agents, which are of known efficacy for prevention of cancer, can markedly enhance the secretion of specific isotypes of TGF-beta by several types of cells.


The multidisciplinary field of tissue-engineering was born as a means to restore or replace diseased tissue with new living tissue that is designed or constructed to meet the needs of each individual patient. Scientific advances in biomaterials, stem cells,growth factors, and biomimetic environments have created opportunities to reconstruct tissues from combinations of engineered scaffolds, cells and biologically active signaling molecules. Accordingly, advanced developments in tissue-engineering have
yielded a novel set of engineered tissue implants and treatment approaches. The demand for these tissue-engineered products may increase significantly, but, the progress has been slow due to scientific and technical difficulties that subject to a wide variety of philosophical, religious and ethical challenges, and economic viewpoints. One major concern is that, there are on-going debates on certain aspects that seem to indicate that man may be playing God. On the other hand, Islam encourages seeking remedy and treatment as the Prophet SAW is reported to have said: "There is a cure for every illness, though we may not know it yet" [Al-Bukhari]. Therefore, deliberations on tissue-engineering must include the religious and ethical perspectives since there are
still many grey areas that require the Islamic input. Religious and ethical discourses should be initiated between scientists, ethicist and Islamic scholars (ulama') since we are lacking of Islamic establishment in the area of bioethics in local and global community. In terms of basis of Islamic society, there is a need for discussion; ijtihad is a concept which gives flexibility to examine and adopt new scientific developments and resolve issues in the light of two major sources of Islam; the Al-Qur'an and As-Sunnah. Through the discussion, tissue-engineer scientists would be able to constantly enlighten ulama' on the technology developments, whilst ulama' could convey the essential Islamic input on each aspect of developments. Hence, it is clearly significant that ulama' must
first understand tissue-engineering technology and its' processes. The outcome of the discussion will indeed influence tissue engineering progress; the conditions for its acceptance or the grounds for its rejection. Eventually, it is the general society who will
benefit the most from this scholarly 'win-win' meeting of minds.


Understanding water-rock interactions occurring during hydraulic fracturing is vital to better engineer the hydraulic fracturing water. In this study, a systematic model of water-rock reactions is presented to mimic the interaction of reservoir rock with water.
 To investigate the water-rock interaction Marcellus Formation was selected. The reservoir rock samples from the Marcellus Formation were first characterized for its mineral composition by an X-ray diffraction (XRD) and for its elemental composition by an X-Ray fluorescence (XRF). Based on XRD results 3 major minerals were found in Marcellus shale; quartz, calcite, and illite. Later, these minerals with high purity content were ordered from an external chemical company to prepare pseudo rock samples and single-, two-, and three- component mineral-deionized water systems were prepared. The supernatant of these solutions were analyzed for their pH, total dissolved solids (TDS) content, particle size of the colloidal system, and zeta potential of the colloidal systems.
 For single-component mineral-water systems, it has been observed that pH and TDS in general give a linear relation with the mineral concentration. For two component mineral-water systems, these relations got weaker and for the three-component systems, only TDS gives good linear relation to the mineral concentration at room temperature. When the experiments repeated at 75 °C to see the effect of temperature on dissolution of minerals in a single-component system, no difference was observed in the linear relations, however, it has been observed that particle sizes of the colloidal systems for all single-component mineral-water system correlates with the TDS content of the water. It should be noted that while particle sizes measure in water gives an idea of the average size of the suspended particles in water, TDS provides information on the dissolved molecules or ionized particles in water. Moreover, we observed that for all experimental data regardless the temperature that we collected them, the TDS concentration decreases with the increase in pH.
 Our results for the first time link dissolved matter concentration in water (TDS) with the colloidal system parameter (particle size) and provide an insight on how the colloidal system (suspended solids in water) can affect TDS concentration.


DyKOSMap is a research prototype developed in the framework of the DynaMO project. It aims to maintain existing mappings established between knowledge organization systems (KOSs) by taking into account the dynamic nature of these KOSs. The aim of this work is to implement a web application, in order to make a more robust and easier-to-manipulate tool starting from this prototype.


ABSTRACT This paper presents a checklist of actions a junior faculty member should take if he or she wants to secure tenure and promotion. The list suggests: (1) learn not to make waves; (2) be compliant; (3) accept the position of indentured servant; (4) present as many conference papers as possible; (5) be a "utility infielder," able to teach a range of courses; (6) choose your friends carefully; (7) be patient; (8) use discrimination to your advantage; (9) be willing to move; (10) become an administrator; (11) move to a smaller university); and (12) publish as much as possible. These tips will help a junior faculty member learn to play by the formal and informal rules of tenure and promotion in higher education today. (SLD)


A guide for helping get started with using RefWorks, including how to get information into Legacy RefWorks, how to organize, manage, and share references, and how to create a bibliography. Create a bibliography in seconds!


Graphs, which encode pairwise relations between entities, are a kind of universal data structure for a lot of real-world data, including social networks, transportation networks, and chemical molecules. Many important applications on these data can be treated as computational tasks on graphs. Recently, machine learning techniques are widely developed and utilized to effectively tame graphs for discovering actionable patterns and harnessing them for advancing various graph-related computational tasks. Huge success has been achieved and numerous real-world applications have benefited from it. However, since in today's world, we are generating and gathering data in a much faster and more diverse way, real-world graphs are becoming increasingly large-scale and complex. More dedicated efforts are needed to propose more advanced machine learning techniques and properly deploy them for real-world applications in a scalable way. Thus, we organize The 3rd International Workshop on Machine Learning on Graphs (MLoG), held in conjunction with the 16th ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), which provides a venue to gather academia researchers and industry researchers/practitioners to present the recent progress on machine learning on graphs.


That spirits and gods, devils and idols, should be endowed with legal rights and enjoyments is again a practice as common as it seems to be ancient. Perhaps you will go to the length of saying that much the most interesting person that you ever knew was persona ficta. In May 1926, the German Society for International Law discussed the foundational question of the subjects of international law. "Who can appear independently before international forums? only states? or also others, particularly individuals?" asked the speaker, Godehard Josef Ebers, a professor at the University of Cologne. The topic possessed a strange novelty. "In the nineteenth century one hardly even considered the problem," Ebers noted incredulously. Now it appeared both neglected and pressing. The society's resolutions that year recognized that ever more non-state "factors"—including groups such as minorities as well as individuals—were emerging as the bearers of international rights and duties. The appearance of these new subjects suggested a transformation in the deep conceptual substructure (Grundauffassung) of international law, which had hitherto recognized states alone as international persons.


SmBa2Cu3O7-δ /(ZnFe2O4)x superconducting composites with 0.00 ≤ x ≤ 0.20 wt% were prepared by the usual solid-state reaction method. The prepared samples were investigated using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) at room temperature and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements in the temperature range (100-295 K). It is found that EPR spectra are dominated by an anisotropic Cu2+ EPR pattern. Moreover, the EPR spectral intensity increases as the temperature decrease from room temperature down to 100 K. The number of spins (N) participating in EPR resonance, the activation energy (Ea), the paramagnetic susceptibility (c) and the effective magnetic moment (μeff) are calculated as a function of both nanosized ZnFe2O4 addition and temperature. The results are interpreted in terms of localized Cu2+ ions from non-superconducting impurity phases and confirmed by magnetization-field (M-H) hysteresis measurements.


Biological control—the use of organisms (e.g., nematodes, arthropods, bacteria, fungi, viruses) for the suppression of insect pest species—is a well-established, ecologically sound and economically profitable tactic for crop protection. This approach has served as a sustainable solution for many insect pest problems for over a century in North America. However, all pest management tactics have associated risks. Specifically, the ecological non-target effects of biological control have been examined in numerous systems. In contrast, the need to understand the short- and long-term evolutionary consequences of human-mediated manipulation of biological control organisms for importation, augmentation and conservation biological control has only recently been acknowledged. Particularly, population genomics presents exceptional opportunities to study adaptive evolution and invasiveness of pests and biological control organisms. Population genomics also provides insights into (1) long-term biological consequences of releases, (2) the ecological success and sustainability of this pest management tactic and (3) non-target effects on native species, populations and ecosystems. Recent advances in genomic sequencing technology and model-based statistical methods to analyze population-scale genomic data provide a much needed impetus for biological control programs to benefit by incorporating a consideration of evolutionary consequences. Here, we review current technology and methods in population genomics and their applications to biological control and include basic guidelines for biological control researchers for implementing genomic technology and statistical modeling.


The gross and unsubsidized net agricultural production from the major Australian farming regions have been calculated from data collected by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. The results suggest that the wheat and sheep zone is the most important farming region, producing one third of the nation's agricultural gross revenue and one half of its agricultural net output. Important contributions to gross and net agricultural output are also made by the pastoral and high rainfall sheep zones. Because of the high level of subsidy, the dairying zone makes no contribution to net output although it produces fifteen per cent of the nation's gross agricultural revenue. Australia's irrigated lands produce approximately ten per cent of national gross and net agricultural output.


The Board of Editors of the South Dakota Law Review is honored to dedicate Volume 62 to Judge Kathleen F. Trandahl of South Dakota's Sixth Judicial Circuit Court. The South Dakota Law Review joins Judge Trandahl's colleagues in saluting her outstanding career as a lawyer, colleague, and judge. The Board is pleased to be able to recognize, through this dedication, Judge Trandahl's outstanding record of service on the bench as well as her contributions to South Dakota's legal community. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Judge Trandahl, a native of Madison, South Dakota, graduated from Augustana (College) University in 1982, and attended the Institute of Comparative Political and Economic Systems at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Judge Trandahl continued her education at the University of South Dakota School of Law, graduating in 1985. She was admitted to the South Dakota Bar in 1986, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court in 1989. Judge Trandahl began her legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dale E. Bradshaw of South Dakota's Third Judicial Circuit. In 1986, she became the Deputy State's Attorney for Tripp County in Winner, South Dakota. Judge Trandahl also worked in private practice for seven years before becoming the sole proprietor of Trandahl Law office in 1993. In 1994, Governor Walter Miller appointed Judge Trandahl to the bench for South Dakota's Sixth Judicial Circuit. In addition to her professional responsibilities, Judge Trandahl has also generously dedicated her time to assisting with the implementation of HOPE Probation in Tripp and Gregory Counties and has worked as a backup judge for the STOP DUI/Drug Court for Hughes and Stanley Counties. She has also has served as Chair for the Court Appointed Special Advocates ("CASA") Commission, the State Chair for iCivics, and participated in the Governor's Commission on the Indian Child Welfare Act and the South Dakota Equal Justice Commission. Judge Trandahl volunteers her time helping out with various events and activities at the University of South Dakota School of Law. Outside of the legal community, Judge Trandahl also currently serves as President of P.E.O., Chapter AM, on the Board of Directors for South Dakota Voices for Children, and is a member of Rotary International. She also enjoys spending time with her husband, Edward Hellewell; sons, Nick and Ryan Trandahl; step-children, Eve, Joshua, and Taylor (Amber) Hellewell; and stepgrandchildren, Jayden, Rylee, Stryder, Noah, Hannah, and Sarah. Judge Trandahl's decades of service have earned her the highest respect from members of the State Bar of South Dakota, the University of South Dakota School of Law, and the community that she has served. As a result, Judge Trandahl has been honored with numerous awards, including the 2014 University of South Dakota's Women in Law Attorney of the Year Award, the Rotary International Paul Harris Award, and the Distinguished Graduate Award from St. Thomas School in Madison, South Dakota. JUSTICE LORI S. WILBUR[dagger] We grew up in the same town, our parents were good friends, but I did not really get to know Kathleen Felker Trandahl until I had the privilege to serve as a judge with her. The Sixth Circuit, where we served together from 1994 until 2011, is gigantic--about 17,720 square miles. That is slightly smaller than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey combined (I was convinced the Sixth Circuit had more pheasants than people). We covered many miles just to get to court without regard to the time it took to conduct court sessions. There is no doubt that Judge Trandahl holds the Sixth Circuit record for miles driven on Highway 18. I especially enjoyed the gender equity of having Judge Trandahl at the table at judge's meetings when policy decisions needed to be made. Judge Trandahl was innovative, not shy, and had a finely honed sense of justice. It took Judge Trandahl about ten years of "judging" to see that addictions were a major problem for our citizens and our court system. …


The Miocene Zhujiang Formation is the key horizon for oil and gas exploration in the Pearl River Mouth basin of northern South China Sea. With the help of core observation, seismic attributes and various analytical data, the sedimentary facies marks, distribution of sedimentary facies and depositional model of forced regression in the Miocene Zhujiang Formation of the Pearl River Mouth basin, northern South China Sea, have been studied. Forced regressive deposits were formed during the period when relative sea level ranged from highstand to lowstand and the sediments were forced to undergo progradation so that five sets of foreset delta deposits are developed in turn. In the early stage of forced regression, the normal delta where the delta plain, delta front and prodelta are not absent mainly developed. In the later stage of forced regression, the shelf edge delta with only the delta front and the prodelta, the longshore bar along the shelf break and the turbidite fan in the deep water of the slope area were developed. The favorable reservoir of forced regressive deposits are located near the upper boundary of the falling stage systems tract and the basal surface of forced regression, and they are the sand bodies of shelf edge delta, longshore bar and turbidite fan. The research results may provide guidance for reservoir prediction.


Assessing Education Interventions that Support Diverse Learners Shuangshuang Liu Due to the variety of factors that may affect student achievement, individual students often come to schools with different levels of academic preparation. These students from diverse academic background come with different learning needs. So, to better serve them, schools have adopted a variety of strategies, including increasing instructional time, reducing class sizes, providing differentiated curriculum and improving teacher quality through professional development trainings. My dissertation consists of three papers that examine several education interventions targeting at students with different academic abilities. These studies examine the design and current uses of several popular education interventions, and provide actionable insights on improving these interventions to enhance learning experiences for students at different points of the achievement spectrum. Chapter one evaluates a multi-subject remedial program that provided additional instruction on math and reading to under-performing students in a large metropolitan school district. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and school administrative records, I find that double-dose remedial math courses improve math test scores by 0.21 standard deviations at the end of the school year. Yet, the effect of double-dose reading courses on reading achievement is small and statistically insignificant. In addition, the required extra classes in math or reading do not have crowd-out impact on instruction time and student performances on nontargeted core subjects. Finally, the study shows that students who receive treatments in multiple subjects do not necessarily have larger gains. While double-dose math courses may improve students' math skills, the effect disappears for students who were taking double-dose reading courses at the same time. This finding suggests that two separate double-dose courses in different subjects may be ineffective in improving student achievements. To support students who struggle with more than one subject, schools should consider redesigning the double-dose courses with alternative curriculum and instructional strategies to integrate content of different courses and to increase student engagement. Chapter two examines effects of taking accelerated math courses under a subject-based acceleration program for middle school students. Students assigned to accelerated courses were exposed to more advanced curriculum and higher-performing peers. Using school administrative records and fuzzy regression discontinuity approach, the study finds null effects of taking accelerated math courses on students' end-of-grade math test scores. Specifically, the effects are insignificant for students who took accelerated courses in both math and English Language Arts, and for those who took accelerated courses only in math. Also, the effects are insignificant for low-income and minority students. These findings are unexpected given the treatments provided by accelerated courses. The study provides possible explanations to the findings, and suggests directions for future research. Chapter three examines the sustainability of teacher knowledge gains from teacher professional development (PD) programs. Teacher PD is seen as a promising intervention to improve teacher knowledge, instructional practice, and ultimately student learning. While research finds many instances of significant program effects on teacher knowledge, little is known about how long these effects last. If teachers forget what is learned from the professional development program, the contribution of the intervention will be diminished. Using a largescale dataset with 3,340 in-service teachers from 161 programs, this study examines the sustainability of gains in teachers' content knowledge for teaching mathematics (CKT-M). Results show that there is a negative rate of change in CKT after teachers complete the training and that this estimated rate is relatively stable over time, suggesting that the average gain in test scores before and after the program is lost in just 37 days. There is, however, variation in how quickly knowledge is lost, with teachers participating in summer programs losing more rapidly than those who attend programs that occur during school years. The implications of these findings for designing and evaluating professional development programs are discussed.


The localization of occult infection is often a difficult clinical problem. In 1975, labeling of leukocytes with indium In 111 became technically feasible, and subsequent clinical experience with 111In-labeled leukocyte scanning demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity for acute infection. To our knowledge, experience with white blood cell scanning in the head and neck has not been previously reported. The University of California, San Francisco, experience with 111In-labeled white blood cell scanning was reviewed. Between 1982 and 1987, 520 whole-body 111In-labeled leukocyte studies were performed, of which 60% were interpreted as abnormal. Eighteen studies were abnormal in the head and neck region, and the medical records of these patients were retrospectively reviewed. Abnormal findings correlated with other evidence of disease that involved mucosal surfaces, the neck, and the mediastinum. Sites in the nasopharynx with nasogastric tubes and tracheotomy sites were abnormal without associated clinical evidence of infection. Further clinical experience is needed to correlate white blood cell scan findings with disease in the head and neck and to define the role of the scan in diagnosis and management of otolaryngological disorders.


The hydration coefficient of cement is the main influence factor of the cumulating quatity of internal heat. It directly affects temperature-rise of the concrete and the variation in temperature stresses of mass concrete, to a certain degree, control occurring of the mass concrete cracks. So,it is the main content of construction management of mass concrete. According to the root cause which lends to mass concrete cracks occur, we have analyzed the influence of hydration coefficient on mass concrete temperature stress by the large finite analyzing software ANSYS, and drawn the corresponding conclusion.


This study aims to investigate the quality of Simental frozen semen based on the temperatures and duration of thawing. The materials used in this study were frozen semen of Simental cattle. The study used a laboratory experiment using a completely randomized design (CRD) factorial with 6 treatments and 10 replications. The thawing temperatures were 37°C and 25°C and the durations of thawing were 7 seconds, 15 seconds and 30 seconds. The variables observed in this study were the motility, viability and abnormality of Simental frozen semen. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The difference in advanced test was done by using the smallest Real Difference Test. The results showed that the temperature and duration of thawing and the interaction of temperature and duration of thawing provide a highly significant difference (P <0.01) on motility, viability and abnormality of Simental frozen semen. The highest motility (45,5%) and viability (75,65%) were found on 37°C and during 30 seconds of thawing, and the lowest abnormality was 4,71%. This study concludes that the optimal thawing temperature and the lenght of thawing for Simental frozen semen is 37°C and 30 seconds respectively. Keywords: thawing , sperm, motility, viability, temperature, abnormality


In higher plants, RNA-DNA interactions can trigger de novo methylation of genomic sequences via a process that is termed RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM). In potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd)-infected tobacco plants, this process can potentially lead to methylation of all C residues at symmetrical and nonsymmetrical sites within chromosomal inserts that consist of multimers of the 359-bp-long PSTVd cDNA. Using PSTVd cDNA subfragments, we found that genomic targets with as few as 30 nt of sequence complementarity to the viroid RNA are detected and methylated. Genomic sequencing analyses of genome-integrated 30- and 60-bp-long PSTVd subfragments demonstrated that de novo cytosine methylation is not limited to the canonical CpG, CpNpG sites. Sixty-base-pair-long PSTVd cDNA constructs appeared to be densely methylated in nearly all tobacco leaf cells. With the 30-bp-long PSTVd-specific construct, the proportion of cells displaying dense transgene methylation was significantly reduced, suggesting that a minimal target size of about 30 bp is necessary for RdDM. The methylation patterns observed for two different 60-bp constructs further suggested that the sequence identity of the target may influence the methylation mechanism. Finally, a link between viroid pathogenicity and PSTVd RNA-directed methylation of host sequences is proposed.


Objective: This is study aimed to determine if serum levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) can be used as a biological marker to make a distinction between the depressive episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) and recurrent major depressive disorder (UD). Methods: Patients between 18-65 years of age and diagnosed with BD and UD according to DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria, who were admitted to the outpatient clinic of psychiatry department were enrolled to the patient arm of the study. Volunteers between 18-65 years of age, who had no physical morbidity and clinical psychopathology according to DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria, were enrolled to the control arm of the study. There were 24 patients (11 BD and 13 UD) and 18 healthy volunteers. Patients were required to be drug naive for the past four weeks prior to the study enrollment. Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) were applied to all patients. The serum levels of BDNF of all the subjects were studied. Results: There were no differences between groups in terms of sociodemographic variables. Total number depressive episodes were higher in BD group compared to UD group. There were no differences between BD and UD groups in terms of serum levels of BDNF. However, in patient group serum BDNF values were lower than the control group. Serum BDNF levels did not correlate with age, body mass index or gender in each group. Serum BDNF levels did not correlate with mean scores of HDRS or number of depressive episodes. Discussion: Considering the outcomes of the present study, serum BDNF levels did not demonstrate any significant difference between patient groups. However, serum BDNF levels were lower in patient groups compared to controls. For the time being there is no valid biological diagnostic marker for psychiatric disorders. The data of the present study is far from generating a biological marker for the distinction of depressive episodes of UD and BD.


The results of a study of cats with signs of urocystitis are presented. The general principles of diagnostics based on clinical, laboratory and additional research methods are established. Clinically acute urocystitis was manifested by disorders of urination – pollakiuria, dysuria, stranguria. Some of the animals showed an increase in body temperature, pain in the bladder and tightness of the walls of the abdominal cavity. According to the results of urine study, it was observed that 43.7% of the cats with urocystitis showed an increase in relative density of the urine, a change in urine pH towards higher alkaline levels, urine residue – erythrocytes, leukocytes and microorganisms were indicated. Impurities of salt and sand were found in 58.4% of the cats. In 31.4% of the cats, urocystitis was a complication of urolithiasis. Early diagnosis, especially differential diagnosis of acute and chronic, secondary urocystitis presents difficulties. Therefore, in cases of suspected inflammatory diseases of the urinary tract, a complex examination using ultrasound of the kidneys, bladder, prostate gland (in males) and the uterus (in females) is recommended.With therapeutic purpose, sick cats (two groups of 8 animals/group) were administered: anti-microbial agent (5% solution of Enrofloxacin), spasmolytic medicinal agent – Riabal®. Animals of the second group were additionally administered the drug Cystocure (Candioli Farmaceutici). According to the instructions, the plant basis of the powder Cystocure is presented by extracts of cranberries and orange peels. These substances provide the main properties of the drug – help in resisting the bacterial colonization of the lower urinary tract and change in urine pH to the acid side. The applied therapy positively influenced the clinical condition of the cats. Their general health was improved, painful sensations during the act of urination disappeared, the quantity and frequency of diuresis normalized. On the seventh day of treatment, according to the results of the study, the urine became transparent, no microorganisms were detected. In cats of the second group, which additionally used the drug Cystocure, the amount of salts and sand decreased significantly, the pH of the urine did not exceed the recommended value of 6.4, in contrast to animals of the first group.


Computerized quantification of electroencephalograms enables pharmacological compounds designed to counteract pathological cerebral aging to be evaluated. The results obtained by this method when substances which sedate or stimulate the central nervous system are used suggest the existence of a negative correlation between neuronal activity and electroencephalographic power. More precisely, the application of this method to pharmacology suggests a relation with the activity of one or several neurotransmission systems. By extension, studies of cerebral aging may benefit from this new technique of cerebral exploration because it allows the demonstration of age related changes in the EEG effect of drugs studied in physiological conditions. Thus we have demonstrated an interaction between the almitrine-raubasine combination and the noradrenergic system in rats. In clinical pharmacology, the evaluation of these two compounds is still liable to numerous experimental biases. The almitrine-raubasine combination was tested in controlled trials in elderly people complaining of intellectual deterioration; the results obtained were fairly similar to those observed in old rats, thus demonstrating an effect on the central nervous system and perhaps also an action on the noradrenergic system in human.


Helga Helgadóttir Ísleifur Ólafsson Karl Andersen Sveinbjörn Gizurarson 1Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland; 2Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland; 3Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Introduction: Conventional venous blood collection requires a puncture with a needle through the endothelium of a vessel. The endothelial injury causes activation of circulating platelets and the release of thromboxane A2. The aim of the study was to investigate if platelets continue to form thromboxane A2 in the blood tube after sample collection, but such synthesis would give false information about the actual circulating thromboxane A2 value. Methods: Thromboxane B2 is a biologically inactive but stable metabolite of thromboxane A2 and can be measured in blood samples by a standard enzyme immunoassay. Thromboxane B2 measurements reflect thromboxane A2 concentration. Blood samples were collected in 3.2% sodium citrate vials and EDTA vials from ten individuals and centrifuged and frozen at different time points (0, 30, and 120 minutes). Plasma aliquots were transferred to and frozen in 1.8 mL polypropylene tubes and the citrate samples were also transferred to and frozen in propylene tubes containing indomethacin. Results: Concentrations of thromboxane B2 in plasma samples collected in citrate vials and stored in propylene tubes increased very rapidly as the samples were left for longer after sampling and allowed to stand at room temperature. After 120 minutes, the amount of thromboxane B2 was 400% higher than in the reference sample at time zero. In comparison, thromboxane B2 concentration was about 200% higher in the 120-minute samples compared to the reference in samples collected in citrate vials but stored in indomethacin tubes. In samples collected in EDTA vials, a 10% reduction in thromboxane B2 concentration in the 120-minute samples was observed. Conclusion: Storage conditions, type of sampling vial and time from sampling until sample processing (centrifuging) has a major impact on thromboxane B2 stability.


Background. The minimally invasive lateral interbody fusion (MIS LIF) in the lumbar spine can correct coronal Cobb angles, but the effect on sagittal plane correction is unclear. Methods. A retrospective review of thirty-five patients with lumbar degenerative disease who underwent MIS LIF without supplemental posterior instrumentation was undertaken to study the radiographic effect on the restoration of segmental and regional lumbar lordosis using the Cobb angles on pre- and postoperative radiographs. Mean disc height changes were also measured. Results. The mean follow-up period was 13.3 months. Fifty total levels were fused with a mean of 1.42 levels fused per patient. Mean segmental Cobb angle increased from 11.10° to 13.61° (P < 0.001) or 22.6%. L2-3 had the greatest proportional increase in segmental lordosis. Mean regional Cobb angle increased from 52.47° to 53.45° (P = 0.392). Mean disc height increased from 6.50 mm to 10.04 mm (P < 0.001) or 54.5%. Conclusions. The MIS LIF improves segmental lordosis and disc height in the lumbar spine but not regional lumbar lordosis. Anterior longitudinal ligament sectioning and/or the addition of a more lordotic implant may be necessary in cases where significant increases in regional lumbar lordosis are desired.


When William Bratton was appointed police commissioner of New York City in 1994, turf wars over jurisdiction and funding were rife and crime was out of control. Yet in less than two years, and without an increase in his budget, Bratton turned New York into the safest large city in the nation. And the NYPD was only the latest of five law-enforcement agencies Bratton had turned around. In each case, he succeeded in record time despite limited resources, a demotivated staff, opposition from powerful vested interests, and an organization wedded to the status quo. Bratton's turnarounds demonstrate what the authors call tipping point leadership. The theory of tipping points hinges on the insight that in any organization, fundamental changes can occur quickly when the beliefs and energies of a critical mass of people create an epidemic movement toward an idea. Bratton begins by overcoming the cognitive hurdles that block organizations from recognizing the need for change. He does this by putting managers face-to-face with operational problems. Next, he manages around limitations on funds, staff, or equipment by concentrating resources on the areas that are most in need of change and that have the biggest payoffs. He meanwhile solves the motivation problem by singling out key influencers--people with disproportionate power due to their connections or persuasive abilities. Finally, he closes off resistance from powerful opponents. Not every CEO has the personality to be a Bill Bratton, but his successes are due to much more than his personality. He relies on a remarkably consistent method that any manager looking to turn around an organization can use to overcome the forces of inertia and reach the tipping point.


— Predator–prey interactions are a vital yet often under- studied reg- ulator of marine fish population and community structure. However, fish prey species often cannot be identified by using morphological characters because of degradation from digestion. Consequently, diet is often poorly known for piscivorous predators. The study described here combined visual inspection and molecular diet analysis to increase taxonomic resolution for prey found in stomachs of red snap- per ( Lutjanus campechanus ) (number of stomachs=105) along the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States. Overall, the diet of red snapper from this region was diverse with 42 inver- tebrate and 28 vertebrate taxa identified. Broadly, shrimp were the most important prey consumed according to indices of relative importance (39.95%), followed by fish (34.38%) and crab (19.04%) species. In total, 19 fish prey species were identified by using DNA barcoding, compared with 2 species identified when visual methods alone were used. Results of the use of increased taxonomic resolution do not indicate significant predation by red snapper on other managed fish species in the snapper- grouper complex, indicating that the rebuilding stock of red snapper in the region is not affecting other managed species through direct predation.


This paper adopted the photoelectric micro measurement system based on CCD which was independently developed by Laboratory of Process Automatic and Detection Harbin Institute of Technology to detect dimension of the small precise parts. Under the various focusing status, it was discovered that articulation of focusing has huge effect on the measurement of measurand. According to the characteristics of measurand, we adopted the entropy function as the evaluation function of automatic focusing, developed a special software to process entropy value of the picked images, and obtained the relationship of focusing evaluation function and measurement error through a large number of experiments. The experimental result effectively verified the effect of articulation of focusing on dimension measurement.


This chapter explores citizenship as an interdisciplinary concept of central interest in the field of global studies. The chapter outlines the general concept of citizenship and discusses how several circumstances related to globalization and its accompanying social and economic disparities, in addition to ongoing patterns of immigration and cultural change, have disrupted the civil, political, and social rights of modern citizenship and opened new lines of contestation over questions of "who belongs" within specific nation-states. Next, the chapter discusses global citizenship, tracing the progression of this specific concept in political thought and contemporary scholarship and then reckoning with several lines of critique that have questioned the feasibility and desirability of global citizenship. The chapter also examines how global citizenship and related ideas, such as global competency and global consciousness, have been employed within the endeavor of civic education.


In this paper, we investigate the stable throughput of a cognitive interference channel (four nodes: a primary transmitter- receiver pair and a secondary transmitter-receiver pair) with random packet arrivals and possible relaying of primary packets by the secondary transmitter. We extend the previous work [1] by considering the optimal design of the secondary transmitter with the following additional degrees of freedom: a) optimization of the detector of the primary activity (trade-off between probability of false alarm and probability of missed detection); b) a packet acceptance control mechanism that prevents queue overflow due to the traffic relayed on behalf of the primary. Moreover, we investigate the impact of errors in detecting the primary activity on the queuing delays.


The electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) technology was combined with ultrasonic honing technology and ELID-ultrasonic honing system was proposed. And the electrolysis parameters, ultrasound parameters, honing parameters reasonable were matched for ELID- ultrasonic honing system and the honing processing experiments were carried out. Studies have shown that parameters in ELID-ultrasonic honing system are independent without disturbing each other. Compared to traditional honing and ultrasonic honing, ELID-ultrasonic honing system has a significant advantage in machining accuracy, surface roughness, processing efficiency and so on. The feasibility of ELID- ultrasonic honing system is validated, which provided a new compound method of honing for ultra-precision honing machining.


A major problem in site remediation is frequently the lack of appropriate standards for pollutants in soil. Lack of standards for an exposure route can result in subjective judgments regarding the extent of remediation needed. These problems are particularly important when considering the potential for groundwater contamination by inorganic materials. The partitioning of trace metals is highly dependent on the nature of the soil and on the solution pH. The maximum level of metal in soil for which the equilibrium soluble metal does not exceed the drinking water standard can be computed, at any pH, from the measured partition coefficient for any metal and soil.

The sorption of cadmium and lead onto major types of New Jersey soil has been determined as a function of pH. As the pH decreased, the amount of adsorbed metal decreased.

As is conventionally done, we have transformed these data into sorption coefficients (Kd) which are a function of pH. To apply such data in the decision making process, it is necessary to use the Kd and appropriate conditions of soil/groundwater in the environment. The calculation determines the maximum concentration of metal which will not result in exceedence of water quality standards. Thesecriteria can be used as a soil standard which will be protective of groundwater quality.

We developed adsorption/desorption relationships in the form of a mathematical model and computed the maximum level of metal in soil for which the equilibrium soluble metal will not exceed the drinking water standards.


This article previews the issues and arguments in Quackenbush v. Allstate Insurance Co., on the Supreme Court's 1995-96 docket. The Court will address two primary issues: (1) Is a federal district court's remand order based on abstention grounds immediately appealable under the Cohen collateral order doctrine?, and (2) May a federal district court abstain in actions involving money damages, or is abstention appropriate only in equitable proceedings?This spring the Supreme Court will hear its eleventh case in less than 10 years involving the immediate appeal of federal district court orders. Normally, litigants must await a final judgment before bringing an appeal to a higher court. However, the Court has articulated a "collateral order" doctrine that permits certain district court orders to be appealed immediately.The appropriate application of the collateral order doctrine has been the repeated subject of Supreme Court litigation. Indeed, Quackenbush is the second case this Term concerning the doctrine. The Court's collateral order decisions have stretched with annual regularity through the past decade. In Quackenbush, the Supreme Court is asked to decide whether a federal district court's order a case back to state court on abstention grounds is immediately appealable to a federal appellate court under the collateral order doctrine, or whether an appeal of the remand order may only be made through a writ of mandamus procedure. In general, remand orders based on jurisdictional defects are not immediately appealable. 28 U.S.C.§ 1447(d) (1988). However, the district court's remand order in Quackenbush was based on abstention grounds rather than jurisdictional grounds. It is also pertinent to note that earlier this Term the Court unanimously reaffirmed the general rule concerning the non-appealability of remand orders. In addition to the issue of whether or not an abstention-based remand order is immediately appealable via the collateral order doctrine, the Court also has been asked to determine a fundamental question concerning the appropriate circumstances for applying the abstention doctrine: Is the doctrine available only in equitable cases or is it also available in cases at law for money damages? The Quackenbush case is significant for at least three reasons. First, and most broadly, the sheer number of collateral order cases that the Supreme Court has reviewed during the last decade suggests doctrinal trouble, if not crisis. Perhaps, this is the reason the Court hears a collateral order case just about every Term. Despite the Court's earnest pronouncement that immediate review of district court orders is the exception not the rule, federal litigants continue to exploit the collateral order doctrine as a means to achieve immediate review. It seems certain that until the Supreme Court clarifies or refines the collateral order doctrine, Court watchers can expect the pattern of hearing one or more collateral order case each Term to continue.Second, and more narrowly, the Court's decision on the immediate appealability of a federal court's remand order on non-jurisdictional grounds could have significant impact on the federal courts' workload: the so-called floodgate problem. State court defendants frequently avail themselves of their removal right to federal court, and the non-reviewability of remand orders is a rule intended to reduce litigation and delay in determining the appropriate forum for adjudication. If the Court now determines that remand orders based on such non-jurisdictional grounds as the abstention doctrine are immediately appealable as collateral orders, the Court conceivably opens the door to many such appeals, encouraging satellite litigation with the inevitable burdens of cost and delay.Third, the Court has been asked a fundamental question about the merger of law and equity in federal courts and is poised to determine if the judicially created abstention doctrine in its many permutations applies only to equitable actions and not to legal actions involving money damages. Since the Court has never before made such an explicit distinction in its abstention decisions, it is of great moment whether the Court will now recognize such a distinction for the application of abstention doctrine. If the Court chooses to recognize that the abstention doctrine applies only in equitable actions, the proverbial Pandora's box may be opened because lower federal court judges, when faced with a request to abstain, will now be required initially to construe whether an action is legal or equitable.


We study a multi-round welfare-maximising mechanism design problem in instances where agents do not know their values. On each round, a mechanism first assigns an allocation each to a set of agents and charges them a price; at the end of the round, the agents provide (stochastic) feedback to the mechanism for the allocation they received. This setting is motivated by applications in cloud markets and online advertising where an agent may know her value for an allocation only after experiencing it. Therefore, the mechanism needs to explore different allocations for each agent so that it can learn their values, while simultaneously attempting to find the socially optimal set of allocations. Our focus is on truthful and individually rational mechanisms which imitate the classical VCG mechanism in the long run. To that end, we first define three notions of regret for the welfare, the individual utilities of each agent and that of the mechanism. We show that these three terms are interdependent via an $\Omega(T^{\frac{2}{3}})$ lower bound for the maximum of these three terms after $T$ rounds of allocations, and describe an algorithm which essentially achieves this rate. Our framework also provides flexibility to control the pricing scheme so as to trade-off between the agent and seller regrets. Next, we define asymptotic variants for the truthfulness and individual rationality requirements and provide asymptotic rates to quantify the degree to which both properties are satisfied by the proposed algorithm.


An analytical and experimental investigation is made of the effect of a 2-D ventilated gas cavity on the spectrum of turbulent boundary layer wall pressure fluctuations upstream of a gas cavity on a plane rigid surface. The analytical model predicts the ratio of the wall pressure spectrum in the presence of the cavity to the blocked wall pressure spectrum that would exist if the cavity were absent. The ratio is found to oscillate in amplitude with upstream distance (−x) from the edge of the cavity. It approaches unity as −ωx∕Uc→∞, where ω is the radian frequency and Uc is the upstream turbulence convection velocity. To validate these predictions an experiment was performed in a water tunnel over a range of mean flow velocities. Dynamic wall pressure sensors were flush mounted to a flat plate at various distances upstream from a backward facing step. The cavity was formed downstream of the step by injecting carbon dioxide gas. The water tunnel measurements confirm the predicted oscillatory behavior of the ...


Transforming growth factor β type II receptor (TβRII) is a tumor suppressor gene that can be transcriptionally silenced by histone deacetylases (HDACs) in cancer cells. In this report, we demonstrated the mechanism by which trichostatin A (TSA), an inhibitor of HDAC, induces the expression of TβRII in human pancreatic cancer cell lines by modulating the transcriptional components that bind a specific DNA region of the TβRII promoter. This region of the TβRII promoter possesses Sp1 and NF-Y binding sites in close proximity (located at –102 and –83, respectively). Treatment of cells with TSA activates the TβRII promoter in a time-dependent manner through the recruitment of p300 and PCAF into a Sp1·NF-Y·HDAC complex that binds this DNA element. The recruitment of p300 and PCAF into the complex is associated with a concomitant acetylation of Sp1 and an overall decrease in the amount of HDAC associated with the complex. Transient overexpression of p300 or PCAF potentiated TSA-induced TβRII promoter activity. The effect of PCAF was dependent on its histone acetyltransferase activity, whereas that of p300 was independent. Stable transfection of PCAF caused an increase in TβRII mRNA expression, the association of PCAF with TβRII promoter, and the acetylation of Sp1. Taken together, these results showed that TSA treatment of pancreatic cancer cells leads to transcriptional activation of the TβRII promoter through modulation of the components of a Sp1·NF-Y·p300·PCAF·HDAC-1 multiprotein complex. Moreover, the interaction of NF-Y with the Sp1-associated complex may further explain why this specific Sp1 site mediates transcriptional responsiveness to TSA.


Abstract This Essay is a personal reflection on the state of scholarship in the field of comparative constitutional law. I draw parallels between the development of and reaction to 'critical perspectives' on domestic US comparative constitutional law today. I argue that the parallels have similar political roots, in concern that critical perspectives undermine the ability of constitutional law, whether domestic or comparative, to resist conservative and antiliberal tendencies. I conclude with some speculations about the source of the political commitments by scholars of comparative constitutional law, and in particular about the way the field's overall cosmopolitanism affects scholarship on anti-cosmopolitan populisms.


—The gradual transition of the Bazhenov Formation top into the overlying deposits makes it difficult to establish its upper boundary. The problem is aggravated by the lack of core material when the formation is recognized according to the results of geophysical well studies. A comprehensive analysis of geochemical and lithological data and the results of geophysical well surveys enabled us not only to determine the specific structure of the transitional zone from the Bazhenov Formation top to the rocks of the sub-Achimov member, but also to propose the criteria for delineating the upper boundary in the central regions of the West Siberian sedimentary basin within the Khentei hemianteclise, the South Nadym megamonoclise and the Mansi syneclise. Four members are distinguished in the transitional zone of the studied well sections (from bottom to top), which differ in lithological, geochemical and geophysical characteristics: (I) the "coccolithic" upper part of the Bazhenov Formation; (II) transitional member from the upper part of the Bazhenov Formation to the bottom of the sub-Achimov member; (III) transitional member from the bottom of the sub-Achimov member to its lower part; and (IV) the lower part of the sub-Achimov member. Member II is virtually not distinguished within the Khentei hemianteclise and the South Nadym megamonoclise. Member III contains the boundary between zones with different redox conditions. In case member II is distinguished, the upper boundary of the Bazhenov Formation corresponds to its top. To recognize the Bazhenov Formation top, it is necessary to use the integrated analysis results of the lithological and geochemical studies of the well core, and logging data (gamma-ray logging, neutron gamma-ray logging and its variations, lateral logging, and induction logging) when focusing attention mainly on radioactivity.