Under operating conditions effect, insulated power cables can undergo critical degradations. Ultraviolet (UV) radiations are one of the most destructive constraints which affect the properties of the material used for insulation. Because of its good properties, crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) is widely used in medium voltage (MV) and high voltage (HV) cables insulation. Regardless of its excellent performances, XLPE can degrade when exposed to UV. The objective of this work is to report experimental results concerning the effect of accelerated UV ageing on the properties of XLPE insulation. For this purpose, dielectric characterization, visual observations and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis are performed to assess the extent of ageing. Obtained results show that UV ageing affects greatly the XLPE insulation. So, an evolution in the dielectric properties (dielectric constant, dissipation factor, dielectric loss index and AC volume resistivity), color change and deterioration of surface morphology with ageing time are noticed. Keywords—Ultraviolet (UV) Radiations, Insulation, Crosslinked Polyethylene, UV Ageing, Dielectric Chracterisation.


The Miller Fisher variant is an uncommon but well known syndrome being described as a triad of areflexia, ataxia and complex ophthalmoplegia. It is characterized by antibodies against myelin that affects peripheral nerves, extraocular muscles and Schwann cells. Anti-ganglioside antibodies have been recognized in disease pathogenesis and decreasing antibody production is the mainstay of treatment. The course is usually benign with improvement after immunomodulation. This case report describes the approach to a patient suspected of having a demyelinating disorder. It delineates the subsets of immune mediated neuropathies in evaluating the diagnosis and emphasizes the need for early therapeutic intervention in achieving a good clinical outcome.


In this paper, by using properties of Baer subplanes, we describe the construction of a minimal blocking set in the Hall plane of order q 2 of size q 2 +2q+2 admitting $1-$, $2-$, $3-$, $4-$, $(q+1)-$ and $(q+2)-$secants. As a corollary, we obtain the existence of a minimal blocking set of a non-Desarguesian affine plane of order $q^2$ of size at most $4q^2/3+5q/3$, which is considerably smaller than $2q^2-1$, the Jamison bound for the size of a minimal blocking set in an affine Desarguesian plane of order $q^2$. We also consider particular Andre planes of order $q$, where $q$ is a power of the prime $p$, and give a construction of a small minimal blocking set which admits a secant line not meeting the blocking set in $1$ mod $p$ points. Furthermore, we elaborate on the connection of this problem with the study of value sets of certain polynomials and with the construction of small double blocking sets in Desarguesian projective planes; in both topics we provide some new results.


Technological advances in low-power digital signal processors, radio frequency (RF) circuits, and micromechanical systems (MEMS) have led to the emergence of wirelessly interconnected sensor nodes. The new technological possibilities emerge when a large number of tiny intelligent wireless sensor nodes are combined. The sensor nodes are typically battery operated and, therefore, energy constrained. Hence, energy conservation is one of the foremost priorities in design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) protocols. Limited power resources and bursty nature of the wireless channel are the biggest challenges in WSNs. Link adaptation techniques improve the link quality by adjusting medium access control (MAC) parameters such as frame size, data rate, and sleep time, thereby improving energy efficiency. In This work, our study emphasizes optimizing WSNs by building a reliable and adaptive MAC without compromising fairness and performance. Here, we present link adaptation techniques at MAC layer to enhance energy efficiency of the sensor nodes. The proposed MAC uses a variable frame size instead of a fixed frame size for transmitting data. In order to get accurate estimations, as well as reducing the computation complexity, we utilize the extended Kalman filter to predict the optimal frame size for improving energy efficiency and goodput, while minimizing the sensor memory requirement. Next, we designed and verified different network models to evaluate and analyze the proposed link adaptation schemes. The correctness of the proposed theoretical models have been verified by conducting extensive simulations. We also prototype the proposed scheme with the MAC protocol on Berkeley Motes. Both prototype and simulation results show that the proposed algorithms improve the energy efficiency by up to 15%.


The smoothed profile method is extended to study the rheological behaviour of colloidal dispersions under shear flow by using the Lees–Edwards boundary conditions. We start with a reformulation of the smoothed profile method, a direct numerical simulation method for colloidal dispersions, so that it can be used with the Lees–Edwards boundary condition, under steady or oscillatory-shear flow. By this reformulation, all the resultant physical quantities, including local and total shear stresses, become available through direct calculation. Three simple rheological simulations are then performed for (1) a spherical particle, (2) a rigid bead chain and (3) a collision of two spherical particles under shear flow. Quantitative validity of these simulations is examined by comparing the viscosity with that obtained from theory and Stokesian dynamics calculations. Finally, we consider the shear-thinning behaviour of concentrated colloidal dispersions.


edi tor 's note : NEHA strives to provide up-to-date and relevant in formation on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profes sion. In pursuit of these goals, we feature a column from the Environmental Health Services Branch (EHSB) of the Centers for Disease Control and Pre vention (CDC) in every issue of the Journal. In this column, EHSB and guest authors from across CDC will highlight a variety of concerns, opportunities, challenges, and successes that we all share in environmental public health. EHSB's objective is to strengthen the role of state, local, and national environmental health programs and professionals to anticipate, identify, and respond to adverse environmental exposures and the consequences of these exposures for human health. The services being developed through EHSB include access to topical, relevant, and scientific in formation; consultation; and assistance to environmental health specialists, sanitarians, and environmental health professionals and practitioners. The conclusions in this article are those of the author(s) and do not neces sarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Carol Selman is a senior public health advisor at EHSB. She leads the Environmental Health Services Network (EHS-Net) team.


Facilities for the manufacturing of pharmaceutical drug substances on the pilot-plant and the industrial scale as well as chemical reactors and vessels used for chemical work-up mainly consist of alloyed stainless steel. The influence of the alloy composition and the surface condition, i.e. of the roughness of the stainless-steel materials, on the adsorption of structurally diverse steroidal substances and, hence, on the quality of the products was studied. In general, stainless-steel alloys with smooth, not so rough surfaces are to be favored as reactor material. However, it was demonstrated in this study that, on account of the weak interaction between active substances and steel materials, mechanically polished materials of a medium roughness up to approx. 0.4 microm can be employed instead of the considerably more cost-intensive electrochemically polished stainless-steel surfaces. The type of surface finishing up to a defined roughness, then, has no influence on the quality of these pharmaceutical products. Substances that, because of their molecular structure, can function as "anions" in the presence of polar solvents, are adsorbed on very smooth surfaces prepared by electrochemical methods, forming an amorphous surface film. For substances with this structural characteristics, the lower-cost mechanically polished reactor materials of a medium roughness up to approx. 0.5 microm should be used exclusively.


The electron photodetachment of the aqueous halides and hydroxide is studied after resonant excitation in the lowest charge-transfer-to-solvent (CTTS) state. The initially excited state is followed by an intermediate assigned to a donor-electron pair that displays a competition of recombination and separation. Using pump–repump–probe (PREP) spectroscopy, the pair species is verified via a secondary excitation with separation of the pairs so that the yield of released electrons is increased. The observed recombination process on the one hand and the similar absorptions of the intermediate and the hydrated electron on the other hand suggest that the donor-electron pairs incorporate only few if not just one water molecule. The geminate dynamics measured in the various CTTS systems reveal a strong influence of the parent radical. The electron survival probability decreases significantly from 0.77 to 0.29 going from F– to OH–. The extracted dissociation rates of the halogen-electron pairs seem to be proportional to the mutual diffusion coefficients of the geminate particles, while such a relation between the recombination rate and the diffusion coefficient is not found. Results for I– show that excitation of a higher-lying CTTS state opens a new relaxation channel, which directly leads to a fully hydrated electron, while the relaxation channel discussed above is not significantly affected.


In this thesis the results of a study of the magnetic interactions in series of polynuclear complexes of chromium(III), molybdenum(III), and vanadium(II) are reported. These comprise series of compounds of formula A31V12X9 (M = Cr(III), Mo(III); X = Cl, Br; A = univalent cation) containing binuclear [M2X9]3- entities and the compounds AVX3 (X = Cl, Br) containing infinite linear chains (-VX3-)1-n .
Particular emphasis has been placed on the relation-ship between magnetic properties and the structure of the compounds. In this connection a survey has been made of previous investigations of magnetic interactions in poly-nuclear transition element complexes. It is evident that there is the need for a study of the variation of magnetic interactions in series of simple polynuclear complexes of closely related structures.
From single crystal and powder x-ray diffraction studies carried out on the A3M2X9 system it has been determined that change of the size of cation A results in a change in the metal-metal separation in the binuclear anion._ From a combination of the x-ray structural data and magnetic susceptibility measurements the variation of magnetic exchange with change of metal-metal distance has been determined. Detailed correlations have also been made between the magnetic properties and the proposed structures for the vanadium complexes. The magnetic data on the compounds of formula AVX3 is consistent with a structural model which involves pairing of vanadium atoms along an infinite chain.
For all the compounds studied it has been possible to obtain useful information on the contributions of the different mechanisms for exchange by a comparison of the magnetic properties of related chloride and bromide complexes. It is concluded that in the molybdenum binuclear compounds, the dominant mechanism for spin-spin coupling is direct exchange between the molybdenum atoms.
The various superexchange effects via the bridging halogens contribute no more than 10% of the total exchange. The relative contributions of the ferro- and antiferromagnetic superexchange mechanisms are very dependent on the structure of the binuclear anion. The magnetic inter-actions in the corresponding chromium complexes are weaker than in their molybdenum analogues by a factor of fifty. The magnetic properties of the vanadium(II) compounds are similar to those of the molybdenum binuclear complexes. In the former compounds, however, the superexchange via the bridging ligands forms a greater contribution to the total exchange. This is attributed to the shorter metal-ligand bonds in the AVX3 compounds.


We explore the information-theoretic duality between source coding with side information at the decoder and channel coding with side information at the encoder. We begin with a mathematical characterization of the functional duality between classical source and channel coding, formulating the precise conditions under which the optimal encoder for one problem is functionally identical to the optimal decoder for the other problem. We then extend this functional duality to the case of coding with side information. By invoking this duality, we are able to generalize the result of Wyner and Ziv (1976) relating to no rate loss for source coding with side information from Gaussian to more arbitrary distributions. We consider several examples corresponding to both discrete- and continuous-valued cases to illustrate our formulation. For the Gaussian cases of coding with side information, we invoke geometric arguments to provide further insights into their duality. Our geometric treatment inspires the construction and dual use of practical coset codes for a large class of emerging applications for coding with side information, such as distributed sensor networks, watermarking, and information-hiding communication systems.


Author(s): Nelli, Stephanie | Advisor(s): Serences, John | Abstract: ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATIONThe role of alpha oscillations in visual information processingbyStephanie NelliDoctor of Philosophy in Neurosciences with a Specialization in Computational NeuroscienceUniversity of California San Diego, 2019Professor John Serences, Chair Neural oscillations are one the most prominent features of electrical brain recordings, involving the synchronized activity of large populations of neurons, and have been linked to a variety of important functions over the past century. Existing theories propose these oscillations allow the brain to dynamically switch between functional neural circuits, allowing computational flexibility on time scales too fast for the slow structural changes that characterize long-term cortical plasticity. In particular, alpha oscillations (~8-13 Hz) are often visible in raw scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings over visual and parietal cortex and seem to regulate the waxing and waning of visual attention and perception across time. However, many previous results focus specifically on the phase, power or frequency of the alpha oscillation, neglecting the common dynamical systems that simultaneously generate all these metrics and impact visual information processing. In this dissertation, I begin by reviewing relevant literature about alpha oscillations, and then aim to link together disparate measures of the alpha oscillations in both behavior and the brain to address how dynamical alpha state regulates visual information processing. First, in C1 I find that both phase locked and purely power based analyses of imprecise attentional selection display alpha rhythms, suggesting a common impact on behavior. Indeed, in C2 I show that alpha frequency, which governs phase and amplitude are linked mathematically in simple models of harmonic oscillators, which I confirm in neural recordings. Thus, the impact of alpha oscillations on perception depend on circuit interactions with top-down driving oscillators, and in C3 I find that optimal oscillatory drive for visual perception depends intimately on each subject's particular dynamical system and resultant peak alpha frequency. Together, this thesis challenges core assumptions underlying current theories of the role that alpha oscillations play in regulating visual information processing using both mathematical models and empirical data. I then propose a more unified theoretical framework in which alpha frequency, phase and amplitude should not be viewed as independent metrics to be correlated with behavior, but instead as the result of a common dynamical system that impacts visual perception.


Abstract Purpose: To report the feasibility and preliminary effects of a psychosocial care program entitled "coping-oriented supportive program" (COSP) for people with spinal cord injury (SCI) during inpatient rehabilitation. Methods: This was a pilot test of the COSP using a convenience sample of 22 participants with SCI (11 participants per group) with pre- and post-test, comparison group design. The feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of the COSP were examined. Results: Nine patients with SCI in the intervention group and 11 in the comparison group who completed five or more sessions of the intervention were included in the data analysis. The COSP was feasible with high levels of recruitment, retention and protocol adherence. Good acceptability was suggested by the participants' feedback on the intervention program. The intervention group had a statistically significant greater improvement in self-efficacy (z = –1.978, p = 0.048), life enjoyment and satisfaction (z = –2.801, p = 0.005), and satisfaction of social support (z = –2.298, p = 0.022) at post-test, when compared to the comparison group. Whereas, no significant improvement was found for coping. Conclusions: Our findings support the feasibility and acceptability of the COSP, and suggest that this intervention is a promising psychosocial care program to enhance people's life satisfaction and well-being as well as the satisfaction of social support after SCI. Further testing of this program with a larger-sized and diverse sample of people with SCI is needed. Implications for Rehabilitation The Chinese culturally-sensitive psychosocial care program (coping-oriented supportive program) is feasible, and has the potential to enhance people's self-efficacy in coping with spinal cord injury, and improve their psychosocial well-being and life satisfaction. The conventional inpatient spinal cord injury rehabilitation services could be improved by providing this "first-line" psychosocial care program in line with the current medical rehabilitation service.


PURPOSE
To determine the stereochemistry of carotenoids in human ocular tissues in comparison with plasma and liver and to elucidate the possible transformations of dietary (3R,3'R,6'R)-lutein and (3R,3'R)-zeaxanthin in the eye. Similarly, to characterize the carotenoid profiles in the eye tissues, plasma, and liver of quails and frogs to determine whether these can serve as appropriate nonprimate animal models for metabolic studies.

METHODS
Configurational isomers of carotenoids and their nondietary by-products from pooled human plasma, liver, retinal pigment epithelium (RPE-choroid), ciliary body, iris, and lens were characterized and quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) on a chiral column. Carotenoids and their nondietary by-products in pooled extracts from quail and frog plasma, liver, retina, RPE-choroid, iris, and lens were similarly characterized and quantified.

RESULTS
(3R,3'R,6'R)-lutein, (3R,3'R)-zeaxanthin, (3R,3'S; meso)-zeaxanthin, (3R,3'S,6'R)-lutein (3'-epilutein), 3-hydroxy-beta, epsilon -carotene-3'-one, and 5Z- and all-E-lycopene were detected in nearly all human ocular tissues examined. (3R,3'S; meso)-zeaxanthin was not detected in the human plasma and liver but was present in human macula, retina, and RPE-choroid. (3S,3'S)-zeaxanthin was detected in human macula in minute quantities. The carotenoid profiles in quail and frog ocular tissues were somewhat similar to those in humans, with the exception that lycopene was absent. Frog retina, plasma, and liver revealed the presence of (3S,3'S)-zeaxanthin.

CONCLUSIONS
The most likely transformations of carotenoids in the human eye involve a series of oxidation-reduction and double-bond isomerization reactions. Quail and frog appear to possess the appropriate enzymes for conversion of dietary (3R,3'R,6'R)-lutein and (3R,3'R)-zeaxanthin to the same nondietary by-products observed in humans and thus may serve as excellent nonprimate animal models for metabolic studies.


Experiments with a slope-feedback variable-velocity-scanning method for compressing the bandwidth of television signals are described. The test conditions were intended to demonstrate the method under favourable conditions and one test-pattern of moderate complexity-test-card 'C'-only was used. The experiments showed that smoothing of the signal by narrow bandwidth can be overcome using the method. But, even at best (corresponding to the least compression ratio observed = 1.7/1), spatial distortion of the received picture is noticeable.


The paper describes the numerical modelling of the swirling fluid flow in the Stairmand cyclone (conical reverse-flow – CRF) with tangential inlet (equipment for separating solid particles from the gaseous fluid flow). A review of experimental and theoretical papers is conducted introducing three-dimensional differential equations for transfer processes. The numerical modelling of the Stairmand cyclone the height of which is 0.75 m, diameter – 0.17 m, the height of a cylindrical part – 0.290 m, a conical part – 0,39 m and an inlet area is 0,085×0,032 m is presented. When governing three-dimensional fluid flow, transfer equations Navje-Stokes and Reynolds are solved using the finite volume method in a body-fitted co-ordinate system using standard k– e and RNG k– e model of turbulence. Modelling is realised for inlet velocity 4.64, 9.0 and 14.8 m/s (flow rate was 0.0112, 0.0245 and 0.0388 m 3 /s). The results obtained from the numerical tests have demonstrated that the RNG k– e model of turbulence yields a reasonably good prediction for highly swirling flows in cyclones: the presented numerical results (tangential and radial velocity profiles) are compared with numerical and experimental data obtained by other authors. The mean relative error of ± 7,5% is found. Keywords: cyclone, solid particles, numerical modelling, turbulence, one-phase flow. DOI: 10.3846/mla.2010.085


Adversarial training has been highly successful in the context of image super-resolution. It was demonstrated to yield realistic and highly detailed results. Despite this success, many state-of-the-art methods for video super-resolution still favor simpler norms such as $L_2$ over adversarial loss functions. This is caused by the fact that the averaging nature of direct vector norms as loss functions leads to temporal smoothness. The lack of spatial detail means temporal coherence is easily established. In our work, we instead propose an adversarial training for video super-resolution that leads to temporally coherent solutions without sacrificing spatial detail.
In our generator, we use a recurrent, residual framework that naturally encourages temporal consistency. For adversarial training, we propose a novel spatio-temporal discriminator in combination with motion compensation to guarantee photo-realistic and temporally coherent details in the results. We additionally identify a class of temporal artifacts in these recurrent networks, and propose a novel Ping-Pong loss to remove them. Quantifying the temporal coherence for image super-resolution tasks has also not been addressed previously. We propose a first set of metrics to evaluate the accuracy as well as the perceptual quality of the temporal evolution, and we demonstrate that our method outperforms previous work by yielding realistic and detailed images with natural temporal changes.


Synopsis Scanning patients that have metallic implants may cause tissue heating. This heating is quantified with electromagnetic simulations. We present an alternative method to quickly compute the electromagnetic response of implants by reducing the problem size using a low-rank inverse updating method. This method requires a pre-computed library of field responses at possible implant locations. Results show computed RF fields that are completely equivalent to full-wave simulations while being 1500 times faster. In particular, computations involving small geometric alterations become faster. This method facilitates rapid field computations and possibly enables online RFor tier 4 ISO/TS 10974 safety assessment.


The BiCIKL project is born from a vision that biodiversity data are most useful if they are presented as a network of data that can be integrated and viewed from different starting points. BiCIKL's goal is to realise that vision by linking biodiversity data infrastructures, particularly for literature, molecular sequences, specimens, nomenclature and analytics. To make those links we need to better understand the existing infrastructures, their limitations, the nature of the data they hold, the services they provide and particularly how they can interoperate. In light of those aims, in the autumn of 2021, 74 people from the biodiversity data community engaged in a total of twelve hackathon topics with the aim to assess the current state of interoperability between infrastructures holding biodiversity data. These topics examined interoperability from several angles. Some were research subjects that required interoperability to get results, some examined modalities of access and the use and implementation of standards, while others tested technologies and workflows to improve linkage of different data types.
 These topics and the issues in regard to interoperability uncovered by the hackathon participants inspired the formulation of the following recommendations for infrastructures related to (1) the use of data brokers, (2) building communities and trust, (3) cloud computing as a collaborative tool, (4) standards and (5) multiple modalities of access:

 If direct linking cannot be supported between infrastructures, explore using data brokers to store links

 Cooperate with open linkage brokers to provide a simple way to allow two-way links between infrastructures, without having to co-organize between many different organisations

 Facilitate and encourage the external reporting of issues related to their infrastructure and its interoperability.

 Facilitate and encourage requests for new features related to their infrastructure and its interoperability.

 Provide development roadmaps openly

 Provide a mechanism for anyone to ask for help

 Discuss issues in an open forum

 Provide cloud-based environments to allow external participants to contribute and test changes to features

 Consider the opportunities that cloud computing brings as a means to enable shared management of the infrastructure.

 Promote the sharing of knowledge around big data technologies amongst partners, using cloud computing as a training environment

 Invest in standards compliance and work with standards organisations to develop new, and extend existing standards

 Report on and review standards compliance within an infrastructure with metrics that give credit for work on standard compliance and development

 Provide as many different modalities of access as possible

 Avoid requiring personal contacts to download data

 Provide a full description of an API and the data it serves

 If direct linking cannot be supported between infrastructures, explore using data brokers to store links
 Cooperate with open linkage brokers to provide a simple way to allow two-way links between infrastructures, without having to co-organize between many different organisations
 Facilitate and encourage the external reporting of issues related to their infrastructure and its interoperability.
 Facilitate and encourage requests for new features related to their infrastructure and its interoperability.
 Provide development roadmaps openly
 Provide a mechanism for anyone to ask for help
 Discuss issues in an open forum
 Provide cloud-based environments to allow external participants to contribute and test changes to features
 Consider the opportunities that cloud computing brings as a means to enable shared management of the infrastructure.
 Promote the sharing of knowledge around big data technologies amongst partners, using cloud computing as a training environment
 Invest in standards compliance and work with standards organisations to develop new, and extend existing standards
 Report on and review standards compliance within an infrastructure with metrics that give credit for work on standard compliance and development
 Provide as many different modalities of access as possible
 Avoid requiring personal contacts to download data
 Provide a full description of an API and the data it serves
 Finally, the hackathons were an ideal meeting opportunity to build, diversify and extend the BiCIKL community further, and to ensure the alignment of the community with a common vision on how best to link data from specimens, samples, sequences, taxonomic names and taxonomic literature.


This corpus-based study examines the lexical field of theft in the Anglo-Saxon law-codes and documents containing reports of lawsuits (charters, writs, and some chapters of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). The individual Old English lexemes are analysed not only in terms of their meaning, collocation patterns, and Latin translations, but also, more unusually in a field-approach, with reference to their distribution over the various textual genres and the discourse strategies dominant in these. Although primarily linguistic in focus, a detailed description of the theft-offences and the wider context in which they occur should also be of interest to the historian.


Abstract Serine proteases are proteolytic enzymes with an active serine residue in their catalytic site. Kallikreins are a subgroup of the serine protease family which is known to have diverse physiological functions. The human kallikrein gene family has now been fully characterized and includes 15 members tandemly located on chromosome 19q13.4. Here we discuss the common structural features of kallikreins at the DNA, mRNA and protein levels and summarize their tissue expression and hormonal regulation patterns. Kallikreins are expressed in many tissues including the salivary gland, endocrine tissues such as testis, prostate, breast and endometrium, and in the central nervous system. Most genes appear to be under steroid hormone regulation. The occurrence of several splice variants is common among kallikreins, and some of the splice variants seem to be tissuespecific and might be related to certain pathological conditions. Kallikreins are secreted in an inactive zymogen form which is activated by cleavage of an Nterminal peptide. Some kalikreins can undergo autoactivation while others may be activated by other kallikreins or other proteases. Most kallikreins are predicted to have trypsinlike enzymatic activity except three which are probably chymotrypsinlike. New, but mainly circumstantial evidence, suggests that at least some kallikreins may be part of a novel enzymatic cascade pathway which is turnedon in aggressive forms of ovarian and probably other cancers.


Summary Objectives To conduct a basic sustainability analysis of health systems, and explore models for conceptualising and creating sustainable organizations, based upon the experiences of the environmental sciences and organisational theory. To explore the role of information technologies in assisting health organizations become sustainable enterprises. Methods A review of recent literature into sustainable systems and an analysis and extension of the literature to the specific case of healthcare. Results Many if not all health systems around the globe face dual challenges of increasing demands and diminishing resources, which are ultimately unsustainable. Four physical system conditions which are pre-requisites for sustainability of systems – that materials should not be extracted, accumulate or be depleted faster than they can be managed, and that systems should fundamentally meet human needs apply equally to healthcare. For healthcare, in addition to physical material and energy, resources include people, and data, information and knowledge. Further, healthcare is an open system that needs to be sufficiently adaptive to changes if it is to sustain. Information and communication technologies are crucial tools to enable any large and complex modern enterprise to model, measure and then manage business processes. Technologies like organisational simulation, the electronic health record, and decision support are essential tools for sustainable health services. Applied inappropriately however, IT can itself create unsustainable conditions, for example through the accumulation of legacy systems, a situation that adherence to technical standards should mitigate. Conclusions It is crucial that our nations undertake a formal sustainability analysis of their health systems, to identify where the most pressing challenges are. In concert, there needs to be a long term process of exploring innovative designs for health services that improve the sustainability of the system as a whole, and there needs to be a will to implement the health system policies, infrastructure and services to ensure that in 20 years time we do have a healthy health system.


Differential Evolution with Inexact Line Search (DEILS) is proposed to determination of the ground-state geometry of atom clusters. DEILS algorithm adopts probabilistic inexact line search method in acceptance rule of differential evolution to accelerate the convergence as the region of global minimum is approached. More realistic many-body potential energy functions, namely the Tersoff and Tersoff-like semi-empirical potentials for silicon, are considered. Numerical studies indicate that the new algorithm is considerably faster and more reliable than original differential evolution algorithm, especially for large-scale global optimization problem of MBP6/Si(C). Moreover, some ground-state solutions, which are superior to the known best solution given in literature, are reported.


This is a joint work between the Italian Red Cross and the Environmental Laboratories, Baghdad. The drinking water (DW) samples from 16 residential districts in Baghdad were chemically evaluated with reference to the raw water samples and water directly taken from the purification plants. In addition to the routinely measured parameters, 17 metals and 11 trihalomathane (THM) were measured. Generally, the samples of water analysed can be considered of good quality. The relatively high sulphate and aluminium contents results from the use of aluminium sulphate as flocculent. The ammonia and Nitrite concentrations were lower than the detectable limit, because ammonia is converted into chloramines and nitrite is converted into Nitrate during chlorination. This indicates no sewage contamination of the drinking water. The high chloride contents can be referred to the use of partially degraded hypo for the disinfection. The presence of THM's in the samples analysed is indicative of good disinfection process. The presence of these compounds is preferred better than bacterial contamination. The relatively high levels of zinc and iron have no impact on the quality of DW. Iron, however, was efficiently removed during the treatment, together with Manganese. Reference was done to the EU specification of drinking water regarding total hardness, chloride contents, sulphate, iron and THM's. As for the iron content, the original pH of the river water (7.5 and 8.0) ensures that Iron should not be present in soluble form at a detectable level. Corrosion of the pipes could be one of the reasons for the presence of iron. Key Words: Drinking water quality, heavy metals, sulphate, Aluminium, Trihalomethans, hardness.


This paper presents a novel technique for addressing domain adaptation (DA) problems with active learning (AL) in the classification of remote sensing images. DA models the important problem of adapting a supervised classifier trained on a given image (source domain) to the classification of another similar but not identical image (target domain) acquired on a different area. The main idea of the proposed approach is iteratively labeling and adding to the training set the minimum number of the most informative samples from the target domain, while removing the source-domain samples that do not fit with the distributions of the classes in the target domain. In this way, the classification system exploits already available information, i.e., the labeled samples of source domain, in order to minimize the number of target domain samples to be labeled, thus reducing the cost associated to the definition of the training set for the classification of the target domain. In addition, we define a convergence criterion that allows the technique to stop the iterative AL process on the target domain without relying on the availability of a test set for it. This is an important contribution, as in operational applications, it is not realistic to assume that a test set for the target domain is available. Experimental results obtained in the classification of very high resolution and hyperspectral images confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique.


During tumor invasion and metastasis, cancer cells interact with host tissues. Penetration of the extracellular matrix by cancer cells is mediated in part by interaction of cell surface receptors with laminin, the major glycoprotein component of the basement membrane. A variety of cell surface laminin binding proteins have been identified, including members of both the integrin and non-integrin families. The 67 kDa laminin receptor is a non-integrin protein with a high affinity for laminin. Immunohistochemical, immunoblot, RNA blot and in situ hybridization studies have demonstrated that levels of 67 kDa laminin receptor protein and/or mRNA are increased in a variety of human adenocarcinomas. In contrast, cancers of squamous cell origin may not demonstrate the same pattern of laminin receptor expression.


Caught between their female gender and their aspirations in a public sphere founded on the gender role of men, women face a problem that is more intractable than conventional feminist political analysis has fully recognized. In this book, Jennifer Chapman addresses both the substance of the problem and feminist strategies for change. Male dominance of political elites is virtually universal and yet there is no general theory of recruitment to account for this. Jennifer Chapman uses a rigorous comparative study of political recruitment to show why different models of the process among men produce near-identical results, irrespective of context. She then looks beyond this general pattern to its gender basis, and to strategies for change.


This paper aims to present a theoretical analysis of a new educational type of learning styles for next generations. We are in a new era of technological breakthrough regarding Artificial Intelligence and Robotics that will change the jobs as we know them and will create others. In the next decades, machines and robots are expected to perform more current tasks than humans and there will be a need of new skilled workers that could program, design and handle the Artificial Intelligence. What happens with the ones that will be left out ? It will be a critical issue for the business to take a proactive role in supporting their existing employees through reconverting to new areas of competencies and the educational institutes to create an environment that facilitates workforce transformation. The change in the educational paradigm should have two key components: soft skills and technical skills. Soft skills are the key abilities for the ones that will reconvert from jobs that will disappear and technical skills are key abilities for the jobs that aren't created yet. The best scenario is the combination of the two skill sets and the challenge to combine them in a new educational platform for students and reconverting education for adults and elders. The studies show us that we are not proactive on the issue of preparing the workforce that will fill the job market in the future. This article will review a series of predictions regarding jobs that will be created based on the digitization of old industries, new technological areas and a modern way of education.


The events of the Arab Spring and recent military coup in Egypt have highlighted the central importance of the constitutional treatment of Islam. Many constitutions in the Muslim world incorporate clauses that make Islamic law supreme or provide that laws repugnant to Islam will be void. The prevalence and impact of these "Islamic supremacy clauses" is of immense importance for constitutional design — not just for Muslim countries but also for U.S. foreign policy in the region, which became engaged in the issue during constitution-writing in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, to date, there has been no systematic or empirical examination of these clauses. Many questions remain unexplored: Where did these clauses originate? How have they spread? Are they anti-democratic impositions? What determines their adoption in national constitutions?This Article fills this gap. Relying on an original dataset based on the coding of all national constitutions since 1789 and case studies from four countries — Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq — it traces the origin and adoption of Islamic supremacy clauses since their first appearance in Iran in 1907. We make three major, counterintuitive claims: First, we argue that the repugnancy clause — the most robust form of Islamic supremacy clause — has its origins in British colonial law, and indeed, that all forms of Islamic supremacy are more prevalent in former British colonies than in other states in the region. Second, we argue that in many cases, these clauses are not only popularly demanded, but are also first introduced into their respective jurisdictions during moments of liberalization and modernization. Third, contrary to the claims of those who assume that the constitutional incorporation of Islam will be antithetical to human rights, we demonstrate that almost every instance of "Constitutional Islamization" is accompanied by an expansion, and not a reduction, in the rights provided by the constitution. Indeed, constitutions which incorporate Islamic supremacy clauses are even more rights-heavy than constitutions of other Muslim countries which do not incorporate these clauses. We explain the incidence of this surprising relationship using the logic of coalitional politics.These findings have significant normative implications. On a broader level, our work supports the view of scholars who argue that the constitutional incorporation of Islam is not only compatible with the constitutional incorporation of basic principles of liberal democracy, but that more democracy in the Muslim world may mean more Islam in the public sphere; in fact, we find that more democratic countries are not necessarily any less likely to adopt Islamic supremacy clauses. Our findings also suggest that outsiders monitoring constitution-making in majority Muslim countries who argue for the exclusion of Islamic clauses are focused on a straw man; not only are these clauses popular, but they are nearly always accompanied by a set of rights provisions that could advance basic values of liberal democracy. We accordingly suggest that constitutional advisors should focus more attention on the basic political structures of the constitution, including the design of constitutional courts and other bodies that will engage in interpretation, than on the Islamic provisions themselves.


We analyze the value of investor relations (IR) strategies to IPO firms. We find that firms that are less visible and have inexperienced management tend to hire IR consultants prior to the issue date. IR consultants help create positive news coverage before an IPO, as reflected in a more optimistic tone of published media. Their presence is associated with higher underpricing at the IPO date but with lower long-run returns. IR-backed IPOs also exhibit disproportionately higher insider-related agency problems, as IR-induced higher underpricing tends to occur primarily in IPOs where underwriter and venture capitalist agency conflicts are more severe. These findings suggest that the IR programs of IPO firm are mostly short-term oriented and facilitate the ulterior motives of some insiders (underwriters and venture capitalists) targeting higher first-day returns.


On June 21, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held that state law is completely pre-empted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)of 1974 with respect to disputes over denial of benefits under ERISA-regulated health benefit plans. The Court's ruling appears to insulate managed care organizations from punitive and extra-contractual damages related to denial of benefits. In its decision, the Court overruled two lower court rulings.


Acrylamide (AA) is a germ cell mutagen and induces clastogenic effects predominantly in spermatids of mice. The mechanism of AA clastogenicity has been a matter of dispute. Since the reactivity of AA with DNA is low but is high with proteins containing SH groups, it was suggested that protamine alkylation could be the mechansim of clastogenicity by AA in spermatids. This was substantiated by the observation that the time course of protamine alkylation and dominant lethal effects in spermatids of mice induced by AA was strictly parallel. Another suggestion was that AA may be metabolized by cytochrome P-450 to the epoxide glycidamide (GA), which is then the ultimate DNA-reactive clastogen. This suggestion was based on the similarity of the stage specificity pattern for dominant lethality and heritable translocation induction by AA and GA. To test this latter assumption, 1-aminobenzotriazole (ABT), an inhibitor of P-450 metabolism, was used in the present experiments. Male mice were pretreated with ABT (3x50 mg/kg) on three consecutive days followed by AA treatment (125 mg/kg) on day 4. Parallel groups of animals were treated with AA (125 mg/kg), ABT (3x50 mg/kg) or with the solvent double-distilled water. The experiment was repeated once with slightly varied mating parameters. The results of both experiments showed that ABT inhibited or significantly reduced the AA-induced dominant lethal effects. Thus, the present data support the hypothesis that the AA metabolite GA is the ultimate clastogen in mouse spermatids.


Complex or radial sclerosing lesions (CSL/RSL) are uncommon diagnoses on core needle biopsy with a reported upgrade rate ranging between 0% and 23%. As a result, their management remains controversial. In this study, we sought to determine the rate of malignancy on excision for patients with pure CSL/RSL on core biopsy, and to evaluate future breast cancer risk when CSL/RSL is managed without excision. We retrospectively reviewed 118 cases of CSL/RSL diagnosed on image‐guided breast biopsies between 2005 and 2014 at our institution. Of 98 analyzed patients, 34 (35%) underwent excision and 64 (65%) were observed. Demographic and clinical variables between excision and observation groups were compared. In excised specimens, factors associated with upgrade to malignancy were evaluated. The median age at diagnosis was 49 years (range, 27‐88 years). In the excision group, 3/34 cases were associated with malignancy, an overall upgrade rate of 9%. All malignant cases had core needle biopsies interpreted as discordant and were BIRADS 4B or more on imaging. In the observation group, at a median follow‐up of 2.2 years, 3/64 (5%) patients developed ipsilateral cancers, all of which were distant from the index CSL/RSL. In our series, we report a 9% malignancy rate on excision of BIRADS >4C lesions characterized as CSL/RSL on core biopsy. In patients with concordant biopsies and BIRADS 4A or lower lesions who underwent observation, we found a low rate of subsequent ipsilateral cancers. Further studies are needed to confirm that for CSL/RSL in concordant core biopsies and BIRADS 4A or lower, nonpalpable lesions, observation may be a reasonable alternative to excision.


Essays in Macroeconomics Sergey Kolbin This dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter 1, "Precision of Communication in Coordination Games of Regime Change," is in the field of macroeconomics and economics of information. I study a model of regime change in which the government can communicate with different levels of precision as a function of the underlying fundamentals. In the model, higher precision of communication corresponds to a lower dispersion of private information among market participants. I compare a policy of an uncommitted government, which chooses the precision of communication after it learns the realization of fundamentals, to a policy of a committed government, which commits to a state-dependent policy before it learns the realization of fundamentals. I find that an uncommitted government communicates imprecisely for weak fundamentals and precisely for strong fundamentals. In contrast, a committed government communicates precisely for weak fundamentals and imprecisely for strong fundamentals. Consequently, a committed government saves its regime more often than an uncommitted one. An uncommitted government can benefit from a rule that enforces constant precision of communication. Chapter 2, "Multiple Equilibria in Global Games with Varying Quality of Information," is a follow up chapter on Chapter 1. I show that global game models can have multiple equilibria if the quality of information available to agents varies with the state of economic fundamentals. First, I construct two examples that illustrate why the quality of information may vary and show that the corresponding information structures support several equilibria. Second, I construct an information structure that supports a given number of equilibria. Very different equilibria can exist simultaneously, even if agents' quality of information is arbitrarily high. The set of possible equilibria can be very similar to the set of equilibria under complete information, even when agents are uncertain about the state of fundamentals and beliefs of other agents. My results have practical implications for the disclosure of information by governments and for our ability to predict the outcome of currency attacks or debt runs based on economic fundamentals. Chapter 3, "Long-Run Price Elasticity of Trade and the Trade-Comovement Puzzle," is in the field of international macroeconomics and is coauthored with Lukasz Drozd and Jaromir Nosal. What role do international trade linkages play in transmitting shocks across borders? Analytically, we demonstrate that in a broad class of open economy macroeconomic models, shock transmission crucially depends on dynamic properties of trade elasticity—which is rarely modeled explicitly in business cycle theory. We illustrate the quantitative relevance of this point by exploring the well documented link between trade and comovement in the cross-section of countries, and by relating our theoretical findings to those in the literature. We find that dynamic elasticity does indeed affect the findings in a quantitatively significant way. Hence, our paper advocates for using dynamic elasticity models in contexts that evaluate international business cycle theory vis-a-vis data on cross-country variation of business cycle moments.


Informational cues such as the price of a wine can trigger expectations about its taste quality and thereby modulate the sensory experience on a reported and neural level. Yet it is unclear how the brain translates such expectations into sensory pleasantness. We used multilevel mediation analysis of neural and behavioral data obtained in participants who tasted identical wines cued with different prices. We found that the brain's valuation system (BVS) in concert with the anterior prefrontal cortex explained the effect of price cues on taste pleasantness ratings. The sensitivity of the BVS to rewards outside the taste domain moderated the strength of these effects. Moreover, brain mediators of price cue effects overlapped with brain regions previously found to be involved in placebo analgesia. These findings provide novel evidence for the fundamental role that neural pathways linked to motivation and affective regulation play for the effect of informational cues on sensory experiences.


Failure to place markers/sensors accurately when motion capture the human body is probably the single greatest contributor to measurement variability in rehabilitation applications. In this paper, we study the effect of inadvertent changes in the position of sensors while evaluating similarities between similar actions in motion capturing. We then use a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based technique followed by additional mechanisms to compensate for the effect of sensor position changes within the motion data. The collected data from our designed experiments show differences between similar actions with different marker placement. By applying signal processing, we show how these variations can be compensated for and so provide more accurate motion data.


Conventional designs of educational programs are usually based on implicit instruc‐
tional design approaches that look equally at all learners. However, research indicates
that learning is a complex activity involving a number of different aspects. Using tech‐
nology to deliver and support learning adds another layer of complexity. In a rapidly
changing environment a template to map the implementation of blended learning is
proposed to contribute to the ongoing debate in higher education in implementing
blended learning approaches. In a challenging economic environment, some of the
key strategic leadership challenges that institutions must address are articulated.
Much of the research into deploying e-learning initiatives suggests that it is a complex
undertaking and that educational institutions are at various stages in the develop‐
ment and deployment of technology-facilitated initiatives. A number of key leader‐
ship challenges are outlined that academic leaders must address in delivering the
curriculum using technology. A proposed framework for deploying blended learning
coupled with a template for educational managers to embrace in their strategic de‐
ployment of technology in delivering the curriculum is presented.


The publication of Lester G. Telser's 1964 paper [52] was the starting point for much of the recent literature on advertising and competition. The major finding of that paper was that "there is little empirical support for an inverse association between advertising and competition, despite some plausible theorizing to the contrary" This review does not deal with the question of whether advertising is excessive, nor with the related issues of the welfare economics of advertising or product differentiation. Rather, it focuses on those papers which examine the impact of advertising on barriers to entry and on the extent of price competition. Advertising expenditures are designed to influence consumer demand for the firm's products. They may affect both direct and cross-elasticities of demand. Those who argue that advertising may limit competition maintain that the relevant demand curves[1] are more inelastic and that cross-elasticities are lower as a result, while those who dispute this contention suggest that advertising has no such influence or even that it leads to more elastic demands and higher cross-elasticities. Much controversy has therefore turned on the direction of the effects of advertising on demand elasticities. [Авторский текст]


Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) of DNA is a powerful isothermal nucleic acid amplification method that can generate upward of 10(9) copies from less than 100 copies of template DNA within an hour. Unfortunately, although the amplification reactions are extremely powerful, real-time and specific detection of LAMP products remains analytically challenging. In order to both improve the specificity of LAMP detection and to make readout simpler and more reliable, we have replaced the intercalating dye typically used for monitoring in real-time fluorescence with a toehold-mediated strand exchange reaction termed one-step strand displacement (OSD). Due to the inherent sequence specificity of toehold-mediated strand exchange, the OSD reporter could successfully distinguish side products from true amplicons arising from templates corresponding to the biomedically relevant M. tuberculosis RNA polymerase (rpoB) and the melanoma-related biomarker BRAF. OSD allowed the Yes/No detection of rpoB in a complex mixture such as synthetic sputum and also demonstrated single nucleotide specificity in Yes/No detection of a mutant BRAF allele (V600E) in the presence of 20-fold more of the wild-type gene. Real-time detection of different genes in multiplex LAMP reactions also proved possible. The development of simple, readily designed, modular equivalents of TaqMan probes for isothermal amplification reactions should generally improve the applicability of these reactions and may eventually assist with the development of point-of-care tests.


This research identifies the extent to which different contexts shape and modify the language and behaviours of four people with acquired brain injury. Comparisons are made with factors which can influence the language acquisition of children with autism because it is postulated that children with autism also have a particular brain injury. The comparison does not end there as the criteria for effective management necessary to nourish the communication skills of both groups appears similar. The four contexts used to shape and evaluate the language of people with brain injury include their own home, a residential camp with maximum support and enriched activity, a post camp period with comparable support, followed by a return to their own home with very limited support. Measures of communication skills demonstrate the success of the enriched camp facility. This was characterised by planning, structured support, and expectation of success from the participants. Their motivation and ability to communicate generally far exceeded the communication skills that each person with brain injury demonstrated when organised activity and sustained support is not available.


We present a theoretical study of solutions of nonlinear systems of partial differential equations which describe turbulent movement of Atmosphere flows counting with heat transfer, humidity and moisture content. We investigate the existence and uniqueness of strong solution. We also establish an explicit algorithm for numerical computing of the solution by Galerkin method. The results may find practical application in modelling the Atmosphere dynamics, especially in the clouds, where the introduction of separate functions of humidity and water (moisture) content is justified.


: In a prospective study at Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center from 1975 to 1981, 5563 postmenopausal women were followed for a total of 37,236 patient-years of observation. During these seven years, 53 patients were found to have breast cancer, for an incidence of 142.3:100,000 women per year. The mean age (+/- SD) of the patients with cancer was 56.9 +/- 8.24 years, and the mean age of the entire patient population was 56.8 +/- 6.75 years. The expected incidence of breast cancer in this age group, according to the Third National Cancer Survey (1975), is 188.3:100,000 women, and for ages 55 to 59, according to the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Result Reporting (NCI SEER) data (1980), is 229.2:100,000. The lowest incidence of breast cancer (67.3:100,000) was observed in the estrogen-progestogen users and was significantly lower than that of the untreated group (342.3:100,000), with P less than or equal to .01. The incidence of the estrogen-progestogen users was also significantly lower than that expected from the NCI SEER data, with a relative risk of 0.3 (95% confidence interval, 0.1 to 0.8). The incidence of mammary malignancy in the estrogen users (141.0:100,000) was significantly lower than in the untreated group (342.3:100,000), with P less than or equal to .01. Although the incidence in the estrogen users was not significantly lower than that expected according to the NCI SEER data (relative risk = 0.7, 0.5 to 1.1), there was a trend in that direction. These data indicate that estrogen therapy for postmenopausal women does not increase the risk of breast cancer and may afford some protection. Added progestogen to postmenopausal estrogen therapy significantly decreases the risk for this malignancy.


Gunungsewu Karst (also known as Sewu karst in the literature) is synonymous with morphology of a carbonate terrain dominated by hills crowned by accordant-level tops that developed in a humid tropical environment by comparatively more rapid dissolution and denudation. In addition, the hills are sinoid to cone-shaped. Surface drainage is negligible compared to subsurface water flow. Abandoned channel segments and spatial arrangements of karst hills have been found to correspond with fracture patterns that are genetically associated with the regional compression direction of Jawa Island. Images derived from space platforms show many landform patterns that were neither known from ground-based nor from aerial photograph study. Landforms arranged in ring, multi-ring, spiral, polygonal, and long linear to serpentine patterns are common beside the expected depressions of dolines, poljes, and uvalas. The orientations of the long linear ridges appear to change systematically from those near the coast to those located inland. These linear ridges are interpreted as depositional fronts, most likely representing breaker zones. The youngest depositional ridge fronts, located nearest to the present shoreline, are parallel to the geological strike of Jawa Island. Toward the island's interior, linear depositional fronts deviate in orientation by as much as 40 o . This is now interpreted to have resulted from counterclockwise rotation of the Gunungsewu microplate since the late Middle Miocene. Similar CCW rotations are indicated by the paleomagnetic orientations of igneous rocks located farther east in the southern range of the island. Active tectonics is expressed in stage-wise net uplift of Gunungsewu whereas regional tilting appears negligible. Stacked and often paired river terraces (thus suggesting land uplift) have been used to relatively date paleoarcheological finds. Very recent uplift on the coast show up in lazy-V limestone notch profiles, and occasionally by stacked notches. At the Klayar coast, slight northward tilt of a few degrees are expressed as counter-regional inclination of a subrecent abrasion platform.


In this paper we discuss a class of constructions in German syntax which have been known as coherent infinitive, clause union or verb raising constructions. These data run against the predictions of strictly configurational theories by apparently having a syntactic structure where the subcategorization frames of two or more verbal heads are merged into one. Thus, in addition to a fully bi-clausal structure with two clearly separated verbal heads, we also have to envisage the case where a verb is apparently raised from an embedded to form a verb cluster together with its governing verb, while the sets of their arguments are merged into a single set, representing the case of clause union. In addition, there are constructions where there is no evidence for clause union, but where one could nevertheless argue for the formation of a verb cluster. We investigate these data by looking at a series of constructions which bear evidence on the issue. Among these are extraposition, which appears a reliable test for nonobligatory verb raising; subjectless constructions, which are possible only as the complements of so-called raising verbs but not of control verbs; S-pronominalization, which seems to be limited to equi-verbs; scrambling and long reflexivization, which we can take as evidence for clause union; the scope of adjuncts and negation which argues in favour of verb raising, but does not necessarily presuppose clause union; and finally certain topicalization phenomena which appear to violate almost any of the generalizations set up so far by configurational theories.


This paper considers how legal education and training should react to change in the legal professions. It refers briefly to existing literature on the character of these changes and develops information on new forms of legal work. It then goes on to consider a set of developing legal concepts and legal subject areas in order to begin a critical discussion of whether, and how, legal education should reorganise in view of the changes in the profession. How should one begin the process of constructing legal education for a globalised, internationally regulated, industrialised, "deprofessionalised" legal profession with resultant effects on legal careers, legal concepts and legal subject classifications? Looking at the paradigms of legal work, concepts of "graduateness", types of legal career and new legal concepts, this paper begins the work of mirroring changes within society against changes in legal practice and consequential developments for legal education.


Aim:
Scientific debate regarding the future trends, and subsequent ecological, biogeochemical and societal impacts, of gelatinous zooplankton (GZ) in a changing ocean is hampered by lack of a global baseline and an understanding of the causes of biogeographic patterns. We address this by using a new global database of GZ records to test hypotheses relating to environmental drivers of biogeographic variation in the multidecadal baseline of epipelagic GZ biomass in the world's oceans.

Location:
Global oceans.

Methods:
Over 476,000 global GZ data and metadata items were assembled from a variety of published and unpublished sources. From this, a total of 91,765 quantitative abundance data items from 1934 to 2011 were converted to carbon biomass using published biometric equations and species-specific average sizes. Total GZ, Cnidaria, Ctenophora and Chordata (Thaliacea) biomass was mapped into 5° grid cells and environmental drivers of geographic variation were tested using spatial linear models.

Results:
We present JeDI (the Jellyfish Database Initiative), a publically accessible database available at http://jedi.nceas.ucsb.edu. We show that: (1) GZ are present throughout the world's oceans; (2) the global geometric mean and standard deviation of total gelatinous biomass is 0.53 ± 16.16 mg C m−3, corresponding to a global biomass of 38.3 Tg C in the mixed layer of the ocean; (3) biomass of all gelatinous phyla is greatest in the subtropical and boreal Northern Hemisphere; and (4) within the North Atlantic, dissolved oxygen, apparent oxygen utilization and sea surface temperature are the principal drivers of biomass distribution.

Main conclusions:
JeDI is a unique global dataset of GZ taxa which will provide a benchmark against which future observations can be compared and shifting baselines assessed. The presence of GZ throughout the world's oceans and across the complete global spectrum of environmental variables indicates that evolution has delivered a range of species able to adapt to all available ecological niches.


Program synthesis has been long studied with recent approaches focused on directly using the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate code. Programming benchmarks, with curated synthesis problems and test-cases, are used to measure the performance of various LLMs on code synthesis. However, these test-cases can be limited in both quantity and quality for fully assessing the functional correctness of the generated code. Such limitation in the existing benchmarks begs the following question: In the era of LLMs, is the code generated really correct? To answer this, we propose EvalPlus -- a code synthesis evaluation framework to rigorously benchmark the functional correctness of LLM-synthesized code. EvalPlus augments a given evaluation dataset with large amounts of test-cases newly produced by an automatic test input generator, powered by both LLM- and mutation-based strategies. While EvalPlus is general, we extend the test-cases of the popular HumanEval benchmark by 80x to build HumanEval+. Our extensive evaluation across 26 popular LLMs (e.g., GPT-4 and ChatGPT) demonstrates that HumanEval+ is able to catch significant amounts of previously undetected wrong code synthesized by LLMs, reducing the pass@k by up-to 19.3-28.9%. We also surprisingly found that test insufficiency can lead to mis-ranking. For example, both WizardCoder-CodeLlama and Phind-CodeLlama now outperform ChatGPT on HumanEval+, while none of them could on HumanEval. Our work not only indicates that prior popular code synthesis evaluation results do not accurately reflect the true performance of LLMs for code synthesis, but also opens up a new direction to improve such programming benchmarks through automated testing. We have open-sourced our tools, enhanced datasets as well as all LLM-generated code at https://github.com/evalplus/evalplus to facilitate and accelerate future LLM-for-code research.


In this short but complex monograph Heyman uses his expertise as an ethnographer of both borderlands and border enforcers to devise moral and practical improvements in U.S. immigration policy. Heyman argues persuasively that current U.S. immigration policies are both unjust and unworkable. They are unjust, he contends, because they are fueled by antiimmigrationism, a sentiment that fails to recognize the common humanity of others. They are unworkable, he notes, because numerical controls have not prevented the influx of immigrants who are not authorized to live and work in the United States. Heyman reasons that as a member of a profession that is dedicated to analyzing the human condition, he is ethically obligated to promote policies that are both realistic and moral. Finding a moral heart for U.S. immigration policy is devoted to this endeavor. Heyman proposes that immigration to the United States be governed by compacts between the local communities where immigrants reside and employers or relatives who want to bring an immigrant into the country. Local communities would assess the improvements in housing, education, and public services that would be needed to accommodate new residents. Immigrant sponsors would then contribute to the costs of these improvements. According to this plan, immigration would be decentralized, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service would become a clearinghouse, illegality and law enforcement activities along U.S. borders would be reduced, immigrants could travel more freely, and all immigrants would be legal permanent residents entitled to live, work, receive public services, and even vote in local elections within the United States. There is much to commend about this proposal. Shifting the focus of the INS from enforcement to regulation would make crossings less hazardous, thus reducing death tolls along the U.S.-Mexico border. The current artificiality of the categories of kin who can sponsor immigrants would be replaced by a system that more realistically reflects individuals' actual relationships. Immigrants would be able to come and go legally, instead of being "trapped" within U.S. borders by a pending legalization case or by a fear of being apprehended upon reentry. According immigrants greater (indeed almost all) legal rights would reduce discrimination. I do, however, have some doubts about the proposal. For instance, migration from one part of the United States to another also adds new residents to local communities, and could potentially burden local services. Why then should employers only have to contribute to local infrastructure if they hire individuals from outside of the country? Also, if employers face extra costs for hiring immigrant workers, immigrant workers may face job discrimination. It seems more equitable to hold the federal government responsible for allocating resources to local communities based on their population sizes and demographics. Financing such allocations through across-the-board taxes instead of through compact costs charged to immigrant sponsors would further reduce distinctions between permanent residents and citizens. Heyman grounds his policy critique and proposal in what he characterizes as core anthropological values and the common characteristics of moral systems. …


– The purpose of the present study is to examine how perceived employability relates to job exhaustion, psychological symptoms and self‐rated job performance in involuntary and voluntary temporary employees compared to permanent employees., – The study is based on a cross‐sectional design using a sample of university teachers and researchers (n=1,014) from two Finnish universities. Of the sample, 40 percent (n=408) are permanent employees, 49 percent (n=495) involuntary and 11 percent (n=111) voluntary temporary employees. Most respondents (54 percent) have education above a Master's degree, the average age is 43 years, and 58 percent are women., – The results of general linear model analyses show that perceived employability promotes favorable outcomes among all respondents. However, the negative relationship between perceived employability and job exhaustion and psychological symptoms is stronger among voluntary than among involuntary temporary employees., – The study indicates that although perceived employability seems to be important to all employees, involuntary temporary employees benefit least from high perceived employability in terms of individual well‐being.


What happens when three feminist literary critics, accustomed to reading and writing separately, get together to work through a difference of opinion? Several times a semester, we met for brown-bag lunches in Veronica's office and, as is inevitable for English professors, the talk turned to what we were reading. Lynn and Veronica, both Americans, were enthusiastic about Canadian Margaret Atwood's latest novels, while Donna, a Canadian, felt that Atwood's popularity in the United States had hindered our awareness of the excellence of her Canadian literary foremother, Margaret Laurence, just as Atwood's feminism overwhelmed the Canadian aspects of Atwood's identity as a writer. Veronica and Lynn resolved to read Margaret Laurence, and Donna decided to reread some Atwood. Our initial goal was to alter, in this instance at least, the usual isolation of the solitary critical enterprise. But we didn't realize when we started that our interpretations would test the limits of our priorities and the boundaries of our scholarly and personal friendships. As our conversations ensued, we became increasingly aware that our attraction to these writers differed according to competing aspects of our individual backgrounds. Veronica is the grandchild of Lithuanian and Ukrainian immigrants, while a central part of Lynn's identity was her decision to marry a Jew against the express wishes of her parents--a sort of ethnicity by choice. Donna, as a Jew and a Canadian living in the United States, voices the competing and complementary aspects of that additional hybridity. Specifically, we found that our unity as feminist literary critics, committed to the analysis of sexual difference as a primary constituent of psychosocial identity and literary history, was challenged and modified by other aspects of our individual identities. Our respective ethnicities linked us to other, equally compelling systems of classification, and thus determined our readings of Atwood and Laurence. As we continued to work together, we realized that we were relating both to the texts and to each other, and that this dynamic was perhaps the most interesting and useful aspect of the experience. More specifically, as each of us expressed the autobiographical underpinnings of our reading, especially our ethnicities, to the others in the group, we achieved a greater degree of empathy, which in turn led to personal growth and sometimes to new interpretations of these texts. Most importantly, by voicing our differences, we arrived at a feminism that is not monologic or unwittingly exclusionary and that reflects a new-world situation of multinational independence. Given such a gestation, what follows here is the outcome of several years of reading, talking, and writing about these two Canadian writers but which is ultimately just as much about our own backgrounds and views of feminism. We cast it here in the form of a conversation in order to give the flavor of the talk, essays, and e-mail messages that we shared over the years in the way that a formal academic essay could not. We three were in dialogue with each other and about each other as well as about our differing and changing views of Laurence and Atwood, a kaleidoscope of perspectives. For us, the process was as important as the product, and we present this conversational style here as a potential model for other scholars, particularly feminists, to break down the walls of their solitary ivory towers and learn about themselves and others as a part of learning about the writers they profess to explicate. LYNN: Feminism--the presupposition that not only are women the equals of men, but in some ways superior--meets readers as they enter all of Atwood's works, whisks them in, and accompanies them, gregarious and sardonic, on their winding paths throughout the texts, dark and fearsome and utterly beguiling. In such alluring works as The Handmaid's Tale and The Robber Bride, feminism enables--indeed compels--readers to interpret the insights transmitted as often through flashes of lightning illuminating the night sky as through the misty, ambiguous light of day. …


Study Design. The role of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in sciatica in lumbar disc herniation (LDH) in rats was investigated. Objective. We evaluated the effects of exogenous 5-HT applied on the nerve root on pain-related behavior, the release of endogenous 5-HT in plasma, and the expression of 5-HT2A receptors in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) in a rat LDH model. Summary of Background Data. In previous studies, 5-HT2A receptor antagonists improved sciatica in patients with LDH and attenuated pain-related behavior induced by nucleus pulposus applied to the nerve root in rats. Methods. Adult female Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into four experimental groups [control group; low-dose (10 &mgr;g) 5-HT-group; high-dose (30 &mgr;g) 5-HT-group; and autologous nucleus pulposus (NP) and saline group] and each drug was applied to the L5 nerve root. Von Frey tests were used for pain-behavior testing. To assess levels of endogenous 5-HT released in capillaries surrounding inflamed nerve roots, we measured 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA), a metabolite of 5-HT. Expression of 5-HT2A receptors in the left L5 DRG was examined by immunohistochemical and immunoblotting analyses in the control and NP groups. Results. Mechanical withdrawal thresholds of the high-dose 5-HT and the NP groups were significantly decreased after surgery compared with the control group and recovered after 14 days in the high-dose 5-HT group. 5-HIAA in plasma was increased by nucleus pulposus applied on the nerve root for 7 days after surgery. The expression of 5-HT2A receptors was enhanced in a time-dependent manner by nucleus pulposus. Conclusion. Exogenous 5-HT to the nerve root induced pain-related behavior with short-lasting effects compared with the nucleus pulposus application. 5-HIAA content in plasma and expression of 5-HT2A receptors in DRG neurons increased early time points after the nucleus pulposus application. These results suggest that 5-HT plays a role in the early phase of the chemical pathogenesis of sciatica in LDH in rats.


Meetings are important arenas where institutional roles and relationships are acted out. Conversation analysis, a data-driven qualitative methodology utilized to study naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, was used in this study to uncover the mechanisms behind meeting talk. In a meeting shared understanding is essential and must be done in an economical manner. One interactional device to reach common agreement are formulations that summarize what has been said or draw out its relevant implication. In this essay, a sub-class of formulations, pre-closing formulations, are in focus. They serve to close the current topic and move on to the next. The aim of this thesis was to find out what kind of interactional devices are used in pre-closure formulations. The findings from the analysis of data, from a cross-functional team meeting at Ericsson in Stockholm, show how a pre-closing formulation followed by silence from the participants is the basis for an agreement. Furthermore the chair can utilize a pre-closing formulation to emphasize the topic of discussion and to influence the sense-making and thus "do" leadership. With a pre-closing formulation the meeting participants can be prepared to be held accountable for the status in a project. However, a pre-closing must not lead to a closing of the topic, the findings show how meeting participants act to continue after the chair's candidate pre-closing formulation.


Abstract Candida species are the most common causes of invasive fungal infections in humans, producing infections that range from mucocutaneous disorders to invasive disease that can involve any organ. Here we present our clinical experience with anidulafungin for the treatment of documented nosocomial candidaemia. From february 2009 through January 2010 all patients with documented candidemia treated with anidulafungin in three medical centers in italy were reviewed. Demographics, clinical and microbiological data, and outcome were collected for each patient. Twenty-four patients were included in the study. Most patients had a central venous catheter (CVC) or a port-a-cath (100%), had a history of recent surgery (87.5%), or were receiving total parenteral nutrition (79%), broad spectrum antibiotics (83%), steroids or chemotherapy (45.8%). C. albicans (54%) was the most commonly isolated pathogen. CVC was the source of candidemia in 79% of cases. Six patients (25%) developed severe sepsis or septic shock, and five patients had unfavorable outcomes, with an overall mortality rate of 20%. No patients experienced side effects related to anidulafungin therapy. Anidulafungin was effective in the treatment of patients with documented candidemia arising from different sites, and no significant side effects were observed.


In this thesis we attempt to investigate St. Athanasius' defence of the biblical character of the crucial Nicene term "homoousios" which has been called mto question from the very first moment of its emergence in the official ecclesiastical documents until today. In the Introduction we explore two themes: first, the position of the "homoousios" in modem Athanasian scholarship in which we identify three main problems: a) that very little attention has been paid to the relations of the term with the Bible, b) that it is still regarded as a doctrinal development which marked the beginning of importation into the Christian doctrine of ideas alien to the genuine biblical message and c) that the twofold option between "generic" and "numerical" identity is the prevailing view of understanding the meaning of the term. Second, we briefly explore the data provided by the Athanasian pro-homoousion texts which show that he dealt with two problems: a) that the term was not biblical and b) that it implied division of God. As a result, he relates the term with two fundamental biblical doctrines: the natural generation of the Son from the Father and the unity of essence of the Son / with the Father. His main argument is that the objections raised against the "homoousion" spring out of objection to these biblical doctrines and although the term is not included in the Scriptures it fully preserves their message. In view of this, we divided our thesis into two corresponding parts. In the first part we look into the biblical evidence which Athanasius recalls as the source of the doctrine of the Generation of the Son from the Father. We follow his attempt to establish it starting from the conception of the Father as Begetter, going to the act of begetting and finally to the Son as the Offspring of the Father. In the first chapter we investigate his interpretation of the biblical texts to which he refers with regard to the first two points: the Son has the beginning of his existence in the being (=essence) of the Father and therefore the biblical verb which describes his generation is "to beget" and not "to create". We investigate the understanding of the Son as Offspring in the second chapter together with the other Christological titles 'Word' and 'Wisdom' with which he establishes the indivisible nature of the divine generation. In the third chapter we look into the Biblical Paradigms 'light- effulgence', 'fountain-river' and 'image' which illustrate his understanding emphasizing the spiritual dimension of divine generation. In the second part we look into the biblical doctrine of the Unity of the Son with the Father which Athanasius mainly bases on the Gospel of St. John. He identifies absolute community of attributes between Father and Son in the biblical descriptions of them except the designations 'Father' and 'Son' which are uniquely attributed to them individually. Thus Athanasius concludes in explaining his understanding as unity of being, essence or divinity and duality of names or persons. Both are equally real and true without subordination of the one to the other. The 'homoousion' is understood to maintain both the distinction and the unity of the Father and the Son. Finally in the Conclusions we summarize the results of our discussion focusing on the meaning of the 'homoousion' and the hermeneutical principles that arise out of Athanasius exegesis.


Welfare states are subject to constant change. Societal and political changes in recent decades have made social services increasingly crucial in the provision of welfare. Such conversions in the welfare architecture are not remaining without implications for the citizens concerned. This article illustrates the importance of social services in the context of current social investment strategies. It outlines a program of new challenges, pitfalls and opportunities for the effective realization of welfare citizenship in a service-based welfare architecture by contextualizing sui-generis characteristics of social services in the area of tension between democratic demands and current forms of welfare architecture and provision.


Perisomatic inhibition originates from three types of GABAergic interneurons in cortical structures, including parvalbumin‐containing fast‐spiking basket cells (FSBCs) and axo‐axonic cells (AACs), as well as cholecystokinin‐expressing regular‐spiking basket cells (RSBCs). These interneurons may have significant impact in various cognitive processes, and are subjects of cholinergic modulation. However, it is largely unknown how cholinergic receptor activation modulates the function of perisomatic inhibitory cells. Therefore, we performed paired recordings from anatomically identified perisomatic interneurons and pyramidal cells in the CA3 region of the mouse hippocampus. We determined the basic properties of unitary inhibitory postsynaptic currents (uIPSCs) and found that they differed among cell types, e.g. GABA released from axon endings of AACs evoked uIPSCs with the largest amplitude and with the longest decay measured at room temperature. RSBCs could also release GABA asynchronously, the magnitude of the release increasing with the discharge frequency of the presynaptic interneuron. Cholinergic receptor activation by carbachol significantly decreased the uIPSC amplitude in all three types of cell pairs, but to different extents. M2‐type muscarinic receptors were responsible for the reduction in uIPSC amplitudes in FSBC– and AAC–pyramidal cell pairs, while an antagonist of CB1 cannabinoid receptors recovered the suppression in RSBC–pyramidal cell pairs. In addition, carbachol suppressed or even eliminated the short‐term depression of uIPSCs in FSBC– and AAC–pyramidal cell pairs in a frequency‐dependent manner. These findings suggest that not only are the basic synaptic properties of perisomatic inhibitory cells distinct, but acetylcholine can differentially control the impact of perisomatic inhibition from different sources.


While imitation learning provides us with an efficient toolkit to train robots, learning skills that are robust to environment variations remains a significant challenge. Current approaches address this challenge by relying either on large amounts of demonstrations that span environment variations or on handcrafted reward functions that require state estimates. Both directions are not scalable to fast imitation. In this work, we present Fast Imitation of Skills from Humans (FISH), a new imitation learning approach that can learn robust visual skills with less than a minute of human demonstrations. Given a weak base-policy trained by offline imitation of demonstrations, FISH computes rewards that correspond to the"match"between the robot's behavior and the demonstrations. These rewards are then used to adaptively update a residual policy that adds on to the base-policy. Across all tasks, FISH requires at most twenty minutes of interactive learning to imitate demonstrations on object configurations that were not seen in the demonstrations. Importantly, FISH is constructed to be versatile, which allows it to be used across robot morphologies (e.g. xArm, Allegro, Stretch) and camera configurations (e.g. third-person, eye-in-hand). Our experimental evaluations on 9 different tasks show that FISH achieves an average success rate of 93%, which is around 3.8x higher than prior state-of-the-art methods.


In this paper, we present an enhanced adaptive frequency hopping (EAFH) mechanism for improving the performance of frequency hopping-based wireless personal area networks (WPANs) under frequency-static and frequency-dynamic interference. The proposed mechanism monitors the overall packet error rate (PER) of the system to determine the right number of channels to be excluded from the hopset. Then based on the PER of individual channel, it decides whether to exclude a certain channel or not. Finally, proper packet length is associated with those channels remaining in the hopset. These decisions, which pertain to hopset size and packet length, are made so as to optimize the performance of the hopping system in a coexistence environment. We developed an analytical model to justify the behavior and performance of the proposed mechanism. Simulations are conducted under an environment of some collocated Bluetooth (BT) piconets and a Wi-Fi network to validate the developed model and show the superiority of EAFH. Simulation results show that, compared with those existing mechanisms including orthogonal hopset-based mechanisms, EAFH could provide much higher throughput while still maintaining reasonably good channel occupancy.


• Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) is a promising alternative wastewater treatment to the conventional activated sludge system. As AGS has enhanced settling abilities and provides different redox conditions across the granules at the same time, the processes based on AGS allow substantial space, energy and chemical products savings. A few wastewater treatment plants (mainly hybrid or pilot plants) are already using AGS. Nevertheless the performances of lab-scale reactors fed with simple synthetic wastewater are usually different from those of plants treating real wastewater where nutrient removal performances are more versatile and granules have a fluffy structure. Moreover, if the microbial community structures from AGS reactor fed with simple synthetic substrate have been extensively studied, it is less the case of the biomass from AGS reactors fed with more complex substrates or real wastewater. Material and Methods • In order to make a step toward the comprehension of AGS used to treat municipal wastewater, this experiment was designed to study the impact of polymeric organic compounds on nutrient removal performances and microbial communities. These properties were monitored on a lab scale AGS sequencing batch reactor during a progressive substrate transition from volatile fatty acids (VFAs), to a more complex substrate mixture containing VFAs, glucose and amino acids, and finally to a synthetic wastewater containing VFAs, starch and oligo-peptides. Results and Conclusions • With the lowered VFA concentrations, phosphorus (P)-removal performances were impaired. At the same time, amino acids fermentation significantly increased the ammonium concentration, thus extending the time required for total nitrification. The composition of the artificial wastewater was further adapted in order to recover efficient P- and nitrogen (N)-removal. Molecular analyses will show how the changes in substrate composition have influenced the AGS bacterial community structure that has kept its high settling ability and the granule size distribution throughout the first substrate transition.


Carboxylesterase 1 (CES1) is the main human liver esterase and is involved in
the metabolism and disposition of numerous endogenous and pharmacological
compounds. Some of the substrates of this enzyme are widely prescribed agents
such as clopidogrel (Plavix®), methylphenidate (Ritalin®) and oseltamivir
(Tamiflu®). However, there is much uncertainty regarding the genetic variability
within CES1, and its regulation and involvement in drug-drug interactions (DDI).
Polypharmacy is frequent in elderly, HIV and tuberculosis infected populations,
and the risk of harmful DDIs is high, especially when these populations overlap.
The role played by CES1 on the treatment of all these three pathologies and vice
versa needs to be better characterized. In this thesis the role of CES1 genetic
variability and its potential role in DDIs are explored both in isolation and in
conjunction with other genetic, demographic, physio-pathological and iatrogenic
factors.
The impact of CES1 genetic variability was assessed on the anti-platelet effect of
clopidogrel as well as on isoniazid pharmacokinetics in acute coronary syndrome
(ACS) and HIV/Tuberculosis co-infected populations respectively. DDIs
mediated by CES1 were explored in a HIV positive cohort treated with
clopidogrel and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs). Also,
in vitro experiments with primary hepatocytes were used to investigate CES1
intracellular expression in the presence of prototypical PXR inducers used in
tuberculosis treatment.
The results of this thesis show that the CES1 rs2244613 SNP does affect
clopidogrel anti-aggregant activity and may contribute to treatment non-response.
Another CES1 variant, rs3815583, was found to be associated with changes in
isoniazid pharmacokinetics. The studies did not indicate that NNRTI coadministration
with clopidogrel would impair the anti-platelet activity since no
relevant changes in exposure of the antiplatelet agent were identified. In the same
way, the results do not anticipate DDIs between CES1 substrates and rifamycins,
since no induction of expression was identified after incubating primary human
hepatocytes in vitro with rifampicin, rifabutin and rifapentine.
In conclusion, the results shown in this thesis support the idea that CES1 genetic
variability may play a bigger role than previously suspected in treatment response
but may not be a mediator of clinically relevant DDIs.


Abstract Sulfur cinquefoil (family Rosaceae) is an invasive, herbaceous perennial, native to Eurasia. It has wide ecological amplitude and has become established throughout North America in numerous habitat types. Sulfur cinquefoil reproduces only by seed (achenes); however, little is known about its regenerative strategy or reproductive biology. To improve understanding of the mechanisms of expansion for sulfur cinquefoil, we quantified seed production and measured seed dispersal at sites infested with sulfur cinquefoil in different habitats in northeast Oregon. Seed dispersal was measured by using sticky traps (30 × 100 cm, replaced every 2 weeks) radiating in 4 cardinal directions from individual source plants. Estimated seed production for 2 years (2001 and 2002) was nearly 4 times higher than previously reported (≈6 000 seeds per plant; range ≈ 2 620–15 150 seeds per plant). For most sites, seed production was similar in both years. However, site, year, and their interaction (site × year) had significant influence on flower and stem production. Seeds were dispersed from July through mid-October 2001, although almost 40% of the seeds were captured between mid-July and mid-August. Dispersal followed a classic decay function; approximately 83% of the seeds were captured within 60 cm of the source plants. Once sulfur cinquefoil reaches a site, it appears to spread and persist by releasing numerous seeds near the parent plants, thereby forming increasingly dense stands.


This article gives an overview of the state of the art 3D data acquisition systems (i. e. airborne laser scanning and digital aerial cameras) and the derivation of forestry related information from the derived 3D points clouds. The described examples are focusing on forest area delineation, growing stock and biomass estimation, forest growth assessment, forest road extraction as well as its changes. The shown examples are located in the Alpine space and discuss the possibilities and limitations of integrating these data sources into operational forestry applications.