Under climate change and increasing water demands, groundwater depletion has become regional and global threats for water security, which is an indispensable target to achieving sustainable developments of human society and ecosystems, especially in arid and semiarid regions where groundwater is a major water source. In this study, groundwater depletion of 2003–2016 over Xinjiang in China, a typical arid region of Central Asia, is assessed using the gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite and the global land data assimilation system (GLDAS) datasets. In the transition of a warm-dry to a warm-wet climate in Xinjiang, increases in precipitation, soil moisture and snow water equivalent are detected, while GRACE-based groundwater storage anomalies (GWSA) exhibit significant decreasing trends with rates between-3.61 ± 0.85 mm/a of CSR-GWSA and −3.10 ± 0.91 mm/a of JPL-GWSA. Groundwater depletion is more severe in autumn and winter. The decreases in GRACE-based GWSA are in a good agreement with the groundwater statistics collected from local authorities. However, at the same time, groundwater abstraction in Xinjiang doubled, and the water supplies get more dependent on groundwater. The magnitude of groundwater depletion is about that of annual groundwater abstraction, suggesting that scientific exploitation of groundwater is the key to ensure the sustainability of freshwater withdrawals and supplies. Furthermore, GWSA changes can be well estimated by the partial least square regression (PLSR) method based on inputs of climate data. Therefore, GRACE observations provide a feasible approach for local policy makers to monitor and forecast groundwater changes to control groundwater depletion.


Making sense of auction sales, in terms of English contract law, is no easy task. Despite the common perception of hammers hitting blocks, signifying the creation of the basic sale contract,1 a typical auction sale necessarily involves the making of several forms of contract other than the obvious primary sale agreement. The purpose of this article, therefore, is threefold, namely, to (1) examine these various forms of contractual relationship2 which may come into existence as a result of a traditional (face to face) auction sale; (2) consider specifically the selling of land at public auction with a view to advocating a change in the law requiring the formality of writing for sales contracts of land for both private and public auctions, and (3) compare briefly the contractual elements of an online ascending model of auction sale typified by the eBay phenomenon.


Effective speech communication using microphone Array is getting significant research in speech acquisition methods such as speaker localization and tracking. Localization techniques play an important role for automatic camera in videoconferencing system and for other human machine interfaces. To locate the accurate Direction Of Arrival (DOA) from the source, it is necessary to design a suitable microphone array system with minimum internal hardware noise and more efficient localization algorithm. There are many algorithms developed for estimating the number of sources and locating the DOA, such as Bayesian algorithm, kalman filtering, Generalized Cross Correlation (GCC) and Steered Response Power (SRP) algorithm. But SRP algorithm with its steered beam forming technique for speaker localization is more robust using microphone array. The Phase Alignment Transform (PHAT) has gained a lot of attention in the recent research for its quite robust response in low noise, but reverberant environment. So combining SRP-PHAT will become the robust localizer in reverberant environment. This project aims at designing and installing a remote speech pickup system functioning as a frontend to a VoIP system in the biometric lab. A large microphone array is designed and installed on the ceiling of the biometric lab and integrated it with a signal processing software suit for speaker localization and tracking, SRP-PHAT algorithm is used as a localizer. Experiments were done on real time recorded data of human talkers. The algorithm gives accurate DOA from the dominant speaker and is suitable for real time processing.


: Although Plesiomonas shigelloides is considered to be a cause of diarrhea in the Orient, it has infrequently been noted to be associated with diarrhea in Taiwan. Six cases of various extent of diarrhea were found to be associated with P. shigelloides in stool culture in this department between January 1987 and December 1988. Only two of them had history of chronic diarrhea and the others had mild or even no symptom. All six strains of this organism were susceptible to most commonly used antibiotics, but resistant to ampicillin, carbenicillin, clindamycin, oxacillin, penicillin, and vancomycin. Those which required least minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) were cefazolin, ceftazidime, cefuroxime, ciprofloxacin, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole. Our experiences showed that P. shigelloides may cause mild diarrhea in normal hosts. It sometimes is an incidental finding. An oxidase test for this organism should be included as routine culture of the stool specimen, but treatment is not always necessary.


An archaeological investigation was carried out by Oxford Archaeology North (OA North), on behalf of the National Trust, in August 2002, as a mitigation response to a service trench which was excavated, without archaeological supervision, on National Trust land. The land lies in the grounds of Borrans Park residential house and forms part of the vicus around the Roman fort at Ambleside, known as Galava, (NGR NY 374 037), and is within a scheduled
monument (SM 13567). The investigation involved the examination of two exposed ends of a partially backfilled service trench and two small trial pits.
The main trench was aligned east/west and measured approximately 75m in length 1.2m in width and had a maximum depth of 0.8m. The western end of this trench was referred to as Trench 1, the eastern end as Trench 2, the total length of trench examined in the main trench was 9.5m. Trench 3 was located just north of Trench 1 and Trench 4 was just north and west of Trench 2. The results from Trenches 2, 3 and 4 were minimal revealing the remains of a previous backfilled service trench and natural deposits. In contrast Trench 1 revealed as series of deposits of confirmed Roman date. These deposits included the remains of a possible metal working structure, associated with rake out material derived from fuel combustion, possible surfaces and numerous layers.


This paper investigates the use of radial basis function neural networks for adaptive attitude control and momentum management of spacecraft. In the first part of the paper, neural networks are trained to learn from a family of open-loop optimal controls parameterized by the initial states and times-to-go. The trained is then used for closed-loop control. In the second part of the paper, neural networks are used for direct adaptive control in the presence of unmodeled effects and parameter uncertainty. The control and learning laws are derived using the method of Lyapunov.


As is known, when water injected at the inlet of the compressor, the water droplets will move onto the blade where water film could form on the blade surface. In this paper, the movement and formation of the water film on a transonic rotor, NASA Rotor 37, are simulated and analyzed by using unsteady numerical methods under different water injecting conditions.The motions of water droplets and flows in the blade passage are presented in detail. Tearing process of water film on the blade surface is also a key point of this research. The preliminary results indicate that the movement of water droplets is tending to deviate from the suction surface and pile on the pressure surface due to the effect of inertia force, and water film could be formed on the pressure surface. Continuity and scope of the water film on the blade surface will develop with the increasing of droplet sizes and water injection rate. Based on the simulation, it is found that more discrete water films are formed on the pressure side of blade when the droplets move onto the pressure surface, tearing phenomenon may occur where the area is of lower water film thickness. Smaller enough sprayed droplet size can not only ensure the compressor performance of wet compression, but also avoid the erosion caused by water film accumulation.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


Technological developments in genomics and other -omics originated the idea that precise measurements would lead to better therapeutic strategies. However, precision does not entail accuracy. Scientific accuracy requires a theoretical framework to understand the meaning of measurements, the nature of causal relationships, and potential intrinsic limitations of knowledge. For example, a precise measurement of initial positions in classical mechanics is useless without initial velocities; it is not an accurate measurement of the initial condition. Conceptual and theoretical accuracy is required for precision to lead to the progress of knowledge and rationality in action. In the search for accuracy in medicine, we first outline our results on a theory of organisms. Biology is distinct from physics and requires a specific epistemology. In particular, we develop the meaning of biological measurements and emphasize that variability and historicity are fundamental notions. However, medicine is not just biology; we articulate the historicity of biological norms that stems from evolution and the idea that patients and groups of patients generate new norms to overcome pathological situations. Patients then play an active role, in line with the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem. We argue that taking this dimension of medicine into account is critical for theoretical accuracy.


The essence of undertaking a product innovation project is to create or establish something new. Risk taking is an intrinsic part of that process. In today's markets, with heavy competition, advanced technology and tough economic conditions, successful product innovation has become critically important to maintaining and increasing competitive advantage. In consequence, the importance of diagnosing and managing risks throughout the development process has increased accordingly. As risks are inherent to innovation, a strategy based on risk avoidance cannot be a realistic option. So if risks are unavoidable, management must develop an approach that will identify risks at an early stage of the innovation process and develop strategies to manage them. Risk diagnosis and handling should thus be seen as an essential part of successful product innovation management. In the paper a risk assessment framework is introduced for diagnosing risks in product innovation projects. In this framework three domains of innovation risk factors are distinguished: technological risks, organizational risks and business risks. Technological risks, are related to the intended product (components), the production process and production equipment to use and to specific intellectual property issues. Organizational risks, are related to such factors as the way the innovation project is organized and managed and possible external influences from the project environment. Business risks finally, address issues like the impact on the company's brand positioning, consumer and trade acceptance, commercial viability of the new product and possible actions from potential competitors.Traditionally, the scale of any risk has been defined as depending on its likelihood of occurrence and the magnitude of the consequence if it does occur. In the paper, we introduce a conceptual framework for diagnosing risks in product innovation projects. We propose that the true nature of a project risk is not only determined by the likelihood of its occurrence and the consequence if it does occur, but also on the perceived ability or inability to influence the risk factor within time and resource limits. Since many technological and organizational factors interact in an innovation process, they should all together be carefully considered in a structured way. We develop a risk skeleton for product innovation within a world-scale operating consumer goods company. Based on data from 114 in-depth interviews and 8 breakthrough projects, a risk skeleton consisting of 12 main risk categories and 142 connected critical innovation issues are identified. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the use of the risk skeleton as a risk assessment tool.


w: www.uksca.org.uk e: firstname.lastname@example.com 15 While some elements of the strength and conditioning portfolio have yet to achieve acceptance in the preparation of athletes in all sports, one area of practice which is almost universally accepted is the principle of the warm-up. Today, few athletes at any level train or compete without some attempt at a "warm-up". However, while the general principles surrounding the need to warm-up remain valid, a large body of evidence is building up which both questions some of our current practices, and provides possible opportunities to improve practice. This article looks at current practice, and presents a model around which to construct effective warm-ups.


Oxygenated fuels, in this case short carbon-chain alcohols, have been investigated as alternative fuels to power compression ignition engines. A major advantage of short-chain alcohols is that they can be produced from renewable resources, i.e., cultivated commodities or biomass-based biorefineries. However, before entering the market, the effects of short-chain alcohols on engine performance, exhaust emissions, noise and sound quality need to be understood. This work sheds light on the relationship between the physicochemical properties of the alcohol/diesel fuel blends (ethanol and 1-propanol) on engine performance, exhaust emissions and, for the first time, on noise and sound quality. It has been demonstrated that when the content of alcohol in blends increased, soot and soluble organic material emissions drastically decreased, mainly due to the increase of oxygen content in the fuel. Reduction in soot emissions combined with higher thermodynamic efficiency of alcohol fuels, with respect to diesel fuel, enable their utilization on compression ignition engines. There is also an improvement in the soot-NOx trade off, leading to large reductions on soot with a small effect on NOx emissions. The oxygen content within the fuel reduces CO and THC emissions at extra-urban driving operation conditions. However, hydrocarbons and CO emissions increased at urban driving conditions, due to the high heat of vaporization of the alcohol fuels which reduces cylinder temperature worsening fuel atomization, vaporization and mixing with air being more significant at lower cylinder temperature conditions (low engine loads and speeds). Similarly, the higher the presence of alcohol in the blend, the higher the noise emitted by the engine due to their low tendency to auto-ignition. The optimization of alcohol quantity and the calibration of engine control parameters (e.g., injection settings) which is out of the scope of this work, will be required to overcome noise emission penalty. Furthermore, under similar alcohol content in the blend (10% v/v), the use of propanol is preferred over ethanol, as it exhibits lower exhaust emissions and better sound quality than ethanol.


Non-oxidized metallic copper particles were prepared by plasma irradiation into aqueous solution of cupric sulfate in the presence of gelatin as a protective agent using home-made microwave induced plasma equipment. Then, two different steric structures of ascorbic acid, L-ascorbic acid and isoascorbic acid, were added as reducing auxiliaries. In the case of isoascorbic acid addition, metallic copper particles were obtained by plasma irradiation within about 5 minute. This result suggests that the reduction of copper ion from Cu2+ to metallic Cu can be succeeded by hydrogen radical generated by plasma in water combination with isoascorbic acid, and without toxic chemical agent such as hydrazine. Additionally, the diameter of copper particles can be controlled by the mount of CuSO4•5H2O and gelatin. These results were indicated that the plasma in liquid process has possibilities for high-speed and low environmental load process to prepare metallic copper particles.


Discordance between weekday and weekend sleep schedules is common (Bonnet & Arand, 1995; Breslau, Roth, Rosenthal, & Andreski, 1997; Machado, Varella, & Andrade, 1998; Strauch & Meier, 1988; Tsai & Li, 2004). Brief retrospective self-report measures are essential for epidemiological research studies (Moul, Hall, Pilkonis, & Buysse, 2004), but self-reports are prone to error in recall, and the greater the variability in nightly sleep, the less reliable are retrospective reports (Babkoff, Weller, & Lavidor, 1996). More accurate self-report responses may be possible if measures prompt participants to consider variations in sleep schedules that are consistent (i.e., weekday and weekend sleep schedules). The current study experimentally examined whether Bifurcated (Weekday and Weekend) retrospective assessments of sleep are more accurate than Unitary (Past Week) assessments. Participants were randomly assigned to complete one of the two versions (Bifurcated vs. Unitary) of the Sleep Questionnaire. One hundred and thirty-one participants were included in the analyses. Results of a a series of analyses demonstrated that the Bifurcated version of the Sleep Questionnaire provided more accurate and less variable estimates of total sleep time than the Unitary version of the Sleep Questionnaire. Differences between the versions of the Sleep Questionnaire for other sleep variables were less consistent, and the increased length of the Bifurcated version of the Sleep Questionnaire may have contributed to increased missing and unusable data in this group. Overall, the findings suggest that in both research and clinical work, retrospective measures that examine weekday and weekend sleep separately may offer advantages over retrospective measures that do not differentiate between weekday and weekend sleep.


We wished to investigate the effects of sleep deprivation on sleep, arousal propensity, respiratory events and peripheral chemoresponses in healthy infants, since these effects might be relevant to mechanisms concerned with some cases of sudden infant death syndrome. Paired observations were made overnight during natural sleep and following sleep deprivation, in a randomized fashion, in 15 healthy infants aged 78 (7) days (mean (SD)). Polysomnograms were recorded and sleep was scored using Anders' criteria. Respiratory events were categorized into central, mixed and obstructive apnoeas. Peripheral chemoresponses were measured during quiet sleep from the respiratory response to two-breath alternations in fractional inspiratory oxygen (F1, O2) (0.42 and 0.00). Arousal propensity was determined from awakening and arousal thresholds to graded photic and auditory stimuli during quiet sleep, and from spontaneous awakenings and limb movements. Compared with natural sleep, following sleep deprivation infants maintained a greater proportion of quiet sleep (39 vs 44%). There was no measurable change in arousal propensity. During quiet sleep, obstructed breathing events tended to be more common after sleep deprivation (0.1 vs 0 events.h-1) and the expiratory time during baseline breathing increased significantly (1.27 vs 1.58 s) although the decrease in respiratory rate was not significant (32 vs 30 breaths.min-1). Peripheral chemoresponses altered significantly, alternations in tidal volume/inspiratory time (VT/tI) as a measure of inspiratory drive increased after sleep deprivation (9 vs 21%). In conclusion, following short-term sleep deprivation in infancy, respiratory control alters, peripheral chemoresponsiveness increases in magnitude and the timing of baseline breathing alters, without any detectable alteration in arousal propensity. This state may be associated with an increased vulnerability to obstructive respiratory events.


This study evaluated SpokenText Reader, a smartphone application to aid the print disabled who study from audio recordings. Based on a literature review and usability test, conducted with print disabled university students. These students indicated that they can be better accommodated using it while studying. Additionally, a model emerged for a hybrid design, which blends features offered by SpokenText Reader with those offered by current smartphone e-text readers designed for the print disabled. The new model proposes a design, which has e-text under the hood but offers two interfaces: one with a user experience biased to interacting with the e-text and the second with a user experience biased to audio generated from the e-text in real-time.


In this study the obtention of in vitro haploid plants from haploid embryos induced by pollination with irradiated pollen was investigated. The haploid embryos of four cucumber genotypes obtained in different season of the year were cultured on the E20A medium under aseptic condition in 1992-1994. The percentage of embryos that turned into plantlets, duration needed for plant formation, and in situ plantlet development were investigated. Also, the micropropagation possibility with clonning and propagation coefficient of plantlets were determined. The ability of embryos at advanced-stages to form plants was found to be higher (60 % in the first year and 80 % in the second year) than the ones at globular stage. These embryos also produced haploid plants rapidly (in 3.5-day). A higher number of haploid plants was derived from the embryos that were cultured from May to September than from the ones that were cultured in other periods of a year. A maximum of 82 % of the embryos cultured in June produced haploid plants in the second year. The plantlets developed well on the media used and could be cloned with ease. The interval between successive clonings was approximately 30 days. The number of micro cuttings per plant ranged from 3 to 12. Beside that fact that the number of haploid plants per fruit was not high enough, total 190 haploid plants were obtained in four genotypes throughout the study.


We have previously shown that C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), a guanylate cyclase agonist, can stimulate cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR)-mediated chloride secretion in murine airway epithelial cells via protein kinase (PK) A activation through the inhibition of cGMP-inhibited phosphodiesterases. In this paper, we show that CNP is also capable of reducing amiloride-sensitive sodium absorption in murine airway epithelium through a cGMP-dependent mechanism that is separate from the CFTR regulatory signaling pathway. Both murine tracheal and nasal tissues exhibit sensitivity to amiloride-sensitive sodium regulation by exogenously added CNP. CNP depolarized the nasal transepithelial potential difference by 6.3 ± 0.5 mV, whereas the cGMP-inhibited phosphodiesterase inhibitor milrinone actually hyperpolarized the nasal transepithelial potential difference by 2.0 ± 1.2 mV in mice homozygous for a CFTR stop mutation [CFTR(-/-)]. Inhibition of guanylate cyclase activity and PKG activity in normal mice resulted in an increase in amiloride-sensitive sodium absorption, suggesting that tonic regulation of amiloride-sensitive sodium absorption is in part due to basal cGMP levels and PKG activity.


Abstract Results are presented from a pilot study using a fluorescent dye tracer imaged by airborne lidar in the ocean surface layer on spatial scales of meters to kilometers and temporal scales of minutes to hours. The lidar used here employs a scanning, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser to emit an infrared (1064 nm) and green (532 nm) pulse 6 ns in duration at a rate of 1 kHz. The received signal is split to infrared, green, and fluorescent (nominally 580–600 nm) channels, the latter two of which are used to compute absolute dye concentration as a function of depth and horizontal position. Comparison of dye concentrations inferred from the lidar with in situ fluorometry measurements made by ship shows good agreement both qualitatively and quantitatively for absolute dye concentrations ranging from 1 to >10 ppb. Uncertainties associated with horizontal variations in the natural seawater attenuation are approximately 1 ppb. The results demonstrate the ability of airborne lidar to capture high-resolution thre...


Over 1, 37,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2016 alone, that is more than the number of people killed in all our wars put together. Daily 16 children die due to road accidents in India. On an average for every four minutes, a death is recorded out of 1214 road crashes every day. The objective of this paper is to save human lives by empowering the existing model of the video cameras present in the motor ways with Speed-guns in order to track vehicles accurately and control Speed.


BACKGROUND
The introduction of women officers into HM Prison Service raised questions regarding women's ability to perform what had traditionally been a male role. Existing research is inconclusive as to whether female prison officers are as competent as male prison officers, and whether there are gender differences in job performance. This study examined prisoners' perceptions of male and female prison officers' performance.

HYPOTHESES
The hypotheses were that overall competence and professionalism ratings would not differ for men and women officers, but that there would be differences in how men and women were perceived to perform their roles. Women were expected to be rated as more communicative, more empathic and less disciplining.

METHOD
The Prison Officer Competency Rating Scale (PORS) was designed for this study. Ratings on the PORS for male and female officers were given by 57 adult male prisoners.

RESULTS
There was no significant difference in prisoners' ratings of overall competence of men and women officers. Of the PORS subscales, there were no gender differences in Discipline and Control, Communication or Empathy, but there was a significant difference in Professionalism, where prisoners rated women as more professional.

CONCLUSION
The failure to find any differences between men and women in overall job competence, or on communication, empathy and discipline, as perceived by prisoners, suggests that men and women may be performing their jobs similarly in many respects. Women were rated as more professional, and items contributing to this scale related to respecting privacy and keeping calm in difficult situations, where there may be inherent gender biases.


This paper is concerned with the evaluation of design techniques, both for the propulsive performance and for the structural behaviour of a composite flexible proprotor. A numerical model was developed using a combination of aerodynamic model based on blade element momentum theory (BEMT), and structural model based on anisotropic beam finite element, in order to evaluate the coupled structural and the aerodynamic characteristics of the deformable proprotor blade. The numerical model was then validated by means of static performance measurements and shape reconstruction from laser distance sensor outputs. From the validation results of both aerodynamic and structural model, it can be concluded that the numerical approach developed by the authors is valid as a reliable tool for designing and analysing the UAV-sized proprotor made of composite material. The proposed experiment technique is also capable of providing a predictive and reliable data in blade geometry and performance for rotor modes.


The effects of acute gamma-irradiation on the Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say) and sensitivity of insects, long time exposed on radioactively contaminated territories, to pesticides were studied. LD50 values of insects to ionizing radiation during the ontogenesis process was shown to increase (from 8 to 48 Gy). Differences were noted in the development rates of the natural population of beetles collected on agricultural lands with 137Cs contamination density of 0.05-1.2 MBq/m2, with the sensitivity to various pesticide groups being the same.


This research is conducted to allocate Rajawali Mas family members into a fit job position based on Miner's Entrepreneurial Personalities and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  This research uses a quantitative descriptive research design.  There are three participants chosen in this study, including the first generation of Rajawali Mas, the second generation of Rajawali Mas who join the business, and an expert in human resource management and family business. The questionnaire and interview are used to collect the data. The result of the study found that each family member who joined the Rajawali Mas business has different characteristics of entrepreneurship. Based on the Miner's Test, Rajawali Mas family members possessed different types of entrepreneur route, such as the Personal Achiever, the Real Manager and the Expert Idea Generator, including a complex entrepreneur which is possessed by the CEO. Based on the MBTI, Rajawali Mas family member personality ranged to ISTJ, ESTJ, ESTP and ISFJ personality.


Iowana frisoni Hottes was collected and studied for the first time since its original collection in 1925. It was found in remnant prairies where it fed on the basal stem of the endemic plants Silphium laciniatum L. and S.terebinthinaceum Jacquin (Asteraceae). Later in the season it fed on the stem or leaf stipules within the cavity created by the leaf axil. The aphid was always tended by ants, Lasius flavus (E), L. neoniger Emery, and two Crematogaster species, which housed the aphids by building soil collars around the bases of plants and sealing leaf axils with soil and dead plant material. The ants also carried I. frisoni underground when the aphid colony was disturbed. We redescribe the apterous vivipara morph of I. frisoni and describe for the first time the fundatrix, alate vivipara, male, ovipara, and egg.


In foregoing study, a new phenomenon of the local dent of upper face sheet occurs in the simulation of dynamic response of sandwich plate subjected to blast loading. The reason and the effect of local dent on energy absorption are not ascertained. In this paper, two kind of square honeycomb plate with the cell wall thickness of 1mm and 0.5mm and with the same mass are modeled. And the dynamic response of both plates subjected to blast loading is simulated using LS-DYNA. For the thicker cell wall (1mm), the local dent is obvious while for the thinner cell wall (0.5mm), the local dent is not obvious and can be ignored. In addition, curves of the ratio of the maximum deflection of lower face sheet of sandwich plate to monolithic solid plate vs the mass of TNT charge as well as the ratio of internal energy are obtained. The results indicate that the local dent has the contribution to the energy absorption of sandwich plate especially in early time and the sandwich plate with the core of thinner cell wall has more effective capacity in blast-resistance than that with the core of thicker cell wall.


Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the "welfare state" will also be discussed.


The natural gas tightly correlates with our everyday life. However, driven by gray incomes, some users are prone to stealing gas by refitting the equipment without permission. Especially for the boiler room users in winter, this phenomenon appears more rampant. Traditional gas-theft detection methods highly rely on the on-site inspection, where exists ineffective and randomness. With the rapidly deployed IoT sensors, we can collect real-time gas consumption data to analyze users' behavior patterns, where the gas-theft suspects could be discovered early and accurately. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach, named SVOC, to detect gas-theft suspects among boiler room users. Our approach consists of a scenario-based data quality detection algorithm, a deformation-based normality detection algorithm, and an One-Class Support Vector Machine (OCSVM) based anomaly detection algorithm. Specifically, considering the temporal proximity between the gas consumption and the outdoor temperature, the normality detection algorithm adopts a similarity-based deformation correlation to detect normal boiler room users out of abnormal ones. Then, we employ OCSVM as the anomaly detection algorithm to capture various features across multiple data sources, aiming to distinguish gas-theft suspects from the remaining irregular users. Here, the detected normal and abnormal users are fed into the OCSVM for training and prediction, respectively, which can overcome the label scarcity problem. We conduct extensive experiments on a real-world dataset during one heating season. The results demonstrate distinct advantages of our approach over various baselines. We have developed a real-time system on the cloud, providing daily gas-theft suspects for gas companies.


Being tourism one of the industries highly dependent on water, it is a necessary resource to ensure the hospitality sector sustainability. Due to this, the research objective is to raise the benefits coming from the international scientific literature to contribute to water resources management in the sector. To achieve this, the present research uses the intervention instrument Knowledge Development Process-Constructivist, aiming to select, identify and analyze literature characteristics. The paper selects a set of 25 articles with scientific recognition, that identified the following results: Spain is the country with the highest representativeness of studies developed; University of the Balearic Islands is the most found authors' home university; Azilah Kasim is prominent author in the area; hotels with more than three stars are the most studied; water consumption in guest rooms are the most analyzed hotels areas; stakeholders' involvement is essential to an efficient water management, especially manager's environmental awareness. Aiming to help hotel managers to elaborate a water management plan and review their water usage, water resources management practices in hotels are highlighted, besides the most used indicators. The paper also provides future research opportunities.


Enterprise systems (ES) are a priority in China. The main literature on ES is dominated by survey-based research on large Western firms, which typically focus on the user firm only and on the before-and-after effects of implementation. Analyses using critical success factors and technology adoption theories feature widely. China-based research on ES although growing is relatively limited and is significantly influenced by Western-based approaches. In contrast, this research examines ES adoption and implementation in Chinese SMEs from a continuous, process perspective using four case studies. It argues that ES adoption and implementation is a complex process that involves multiple stakeholders, and exploring the interplay among them explains why and how an ES is adopted and implemented. Actor-network theory (ANT) informs the main analysis. Importantly, the unit of analysis (UOA) is the user-SME and the technology provider combined. The findings challenge the dominant user-centred adoption theories and the importance of the technology provider in the sociotechnical role.


Elastin is the main structural protein of elastic fibers that allows tissues in vertebrates to extend and recoil. Heterozygous loss of function mutations in the elastin gene (ELN) can cause supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS), a rare obstructive cardiovascular disease typically characterized by a narrowing of the ascending aorta. The association of SVAS with hypertension, valvular defects and other congenital heart defects (CHDs) is of broader public health significance. The main goal of this research is to generate and characterize a set of SVAS-like mutant zebrafish lines. Zebrafish have two elastin genes, elna and elnb. First, I investigated the genetic and transcript diversity of zebrafish elastins by sequencing 46 and 44 overlapping cDNA clones from elna and elnb, respectively. I uncovered substantial variation in from both genes with a total of 79 single nucleotide variants (SNVs) in elna and 89 in elnb. In addition, there were numerous in-del variants and alternative splicing events. To assess the role of elna in zebrafish development, a line of elna homozygous mutants was established. The mutation (elnasa12235 c.264T>A, p.Tyr88*) induces nonsense-mediated decay in a developmentally regulated fashion with close to complete elimination of the mutant transcript starting at 3 days post-fertilization. Phenotypic examination of mutant embryos displayed reduced blood flow, regurgitation, valve and heart looping abnormalities. Regurgitation and valve irregularities was also observed in a mutant adult male. Histological examination of the hearts in adult elna mutant fish showed thinning and loss of the elastic cartilage-like morphology in bulboventricular valves. Further work with larger numbers of fish needs to be done, to obtain reliable estimates of the frequency and possible sex specificity, and clutch-to-clutch variability of valve and other cardiovascular defects in elna mutants. In conclusion, my studies show extensive sequence variation in elna and elnb. Mutants of elna have displayed promise to help explain cardiovascular development and detrimental effects of elastin mutations in humans with SVAS especially with respect to cardiac valve abnormalities.


Graph learning-based algorithms are becoming the prevalent traffic prediction solutions due to their capability of exploiting non-Euclidean spatial-temporal traffic data correlation. However, current predictors primarily employ heuristically constructed static traffic graphs in forecasting, which may not describe the latent traffic dynamics well. Existing attempts on dynamically generated traffic graphs also face challenges like prolonged model training time and undermined model expressibility. In this paper, a novel data-driven graph construction scheme based on graph adjacency learning is proposed for graph learning-based traffic predictors. The proposed scheme explores inter-time-series dependency with the graph attention mechanism to embed the sensor correlation in a latent attention space, which determines the correlation of any possible sensor pairs for traffic graph construction. Comprehensive case studies on three real-world traffic datasets reveal that the proposed scheme outperforms state-of-the-art static and dynamic graph construction baselines. Additionally, time-varying and sparse graph construction schemes are devised and assessed to boost the efficacy, and a hyper-parameter test develops guidelines for parameter and model architecture selection.


The Elizabethan Reformation of 1559 marked not only a religious, but also a socio‐cultural watershed, yielding processes of transformation and redefinition of existing tropes and symbols, as reflected in a variety of aesthetic expressions engendered in England during the last third of the sixteenth century. English keyboard music, hitherto largely composed for the organ and conceived in terms of the Catholic rite, now lost its liturgical function and composers, notably William Byrd, organist of the Chapel Royal and England's foremost musician, began exploring new compositional avenues of non‐ecclesiastical keyboard music. The first known collection of the new repertoire is My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591), an ornately designed manuscript of Byrd's secular keyboard music dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Neville. Exploring the volume both as a musical text and as an artefact in the context of post‐Reformation English culture, this article seeks to explicate the aesthetic and communicatory value of Byrd's keyboard idiom in the specific material form in which it was dedicated to a patroness, demonstrating how the novelty and sophistication of his keyboard compositions were embedded in Renaissance intellectual traditions that shaped similarly innovative and genuinely English creative achievements in literature, visual art and indeed music.


An efficient pristine hole-transporting material (HTM), tetrathiafulvalene derivative (TTF-1), was introduced into perovskite solar cells, without the use of p-type dopants. As compared to cells based on well-known p-type doping with spiro-OMeTAD, perovskite solar cells based on dopant-free TTF-1 performed with a comparable efficiency of 11.03%; moreover, the stability of the dopant-free TTF-1 based cell was greatly improved two fold in air at a relative humidity of ∼40%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of perovskite solar cells employing a dopant-free HTM based on a tetrathiafulvalene derivative yielding an efficiency over 11%. The present finding paves the way for the development of efficient dopant-free HTMs for perovskite solar cells, which promotes the advancement of cost-effective and practical perovskite solar cells.


In recent years great concern has been expressed over the potential impact of pharmaceuticals in the environment. Pharmaceutical from various therapeutic classes have increasing being detected in the environment typically at low concentration in surface water. 1 This has lead to development of ecopharmacovigilance (EPV). World Health Organization (WHO) defines eco pharmacovigilance as the science and activities associated with the detection, evaluation, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects of pharmaceuticals in the environment. 1,2,3,4 Compared to the west EPV in India is still in infancy, there is no formal frame-work to monitor for potential adverse effects of the pharmaceuticals on the environment.


: The state of the blood acid-base balance and dynamics of carbonic acid gas mass transfer were studied in sportsmen at the sea level and in mountains. It is shown that at the sea level due to an intensive muscular activity large amounts of CO2 are formed and excreted; the mass transfer of this gas is multiply accelerated, simultaneously, a pronounced decompensated metabolic acidosis is observed which in some cases is complicated respiratory acidosis. The similar exercises in mountains are followed by a more pronounced disturbance in the acid-base balance and a more intensified mass-transfer of CO2. After 12-day acclimatization and training in mountains the buffer blood capacity increases, the metabolic acidosis under conditions of muscular activity is less pronounced.


A powerful, short verbatim play assembled from mothers' experiences of their children being abused.

A verbatim play, created from the testimonies of seven mothers who have had to come to terms with the devastating reality of their children being sexually abused. In a society in denial of the widespread occurrence of the sexual abuse of children, and with a system ill-equipped to deal with the families, the women tell the often harrowing stories of how they have struggled to access medical and social services for their families as well as justice from the courts.


For over fifteen years there has been significant effort in elastography, which describes the general area of imaging material mechanical properties. Shear vibration elastography uses dynamic tissue displacements to infer material properties from the physics of motion. The method can be used with both magnetic resonance and ultrasound data, which can both be modeled with the time-harmonic, Helmholtz equation if the material is linear, isotropic, incompressible, and piecewise-homogeneous. In this work, we develop a unified perspective on direct Helmholtz inversion. Using the fundamental theorem of statistics and a Gaussian noise model, we present a closed form for the joint conditional probability distribution of the real and imaginary parts of the squared wavenumber given the data and an arbitrary set of weights. An approximate distribution can be used in the case of high SNR which allows a figure-of-merit to be established to objectively compare inversion approaches. Adaptively choosing the inversion weights for each subregion as the smoothed and windowed conjugate of the data results in a narrow conditional probability distribution function and, consequently, high-quality estimates of complex shear modulus. To test the results, we used experimental ultrasound data-collected using a focused 5 MHz transducer with a pulse-repetition frequency of 4 kHz in a block of 15% bovine gel. The gel was harmonically compressed using a signal containing equal amplitudes at frequencies of 200, 300, 400 and 500 Hz. Noise on the measured displacement was estimated from the magnitude of the complex (baseband) correlation function and used with the conditional probability distribution function to report error bars on single-region estimates of complex shear modulus, wave-speed and attenuation.


SrThO3 belong to stable perovskites family. Some theoretical works have been performed on this compound. However the pressure effect in the pressure range 0 to 30 GPa was never conducted. This work highlights the importance of the hydrostatic compression on the lattice constant and energy bandgap of the compound. Lattice parameter is found to decrease with increasing pressure. SrThO3 comes out as a direct band gap material. We discussed the effect of pressure on the energy band gap and got to know that overall energy band gap decreases as pressure increases. Finally we discussed the density of states of SrThO3 and plotted it against energy.


Just a decade ago, a requirement that a designer disclose the origin of traditional cultural expressions, traditional knowledge, and biological or genetic resources used in creating a design in an industrial design application was virtually unheard of in national or regional protection systems. But as awareness of the many ways in which cultural and genetic resource use and misappropriation can occur is evolving, some developing countries have begun exploring the appropriateness of—and in some cases even instituting—such a requirement.
These developments have taken center stage in the negotiations of a draft Design Law Treaty (DLT) in the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs, and Geographical Indications, which is expected to make it easier for applicants to obtain design protection globally by limiting domestic design registration requirements. Currently, a controversy exists over an African Group proposal to allow policy space in the draft DLT for countries to be able to require design applicants to disclose the origin of traditional cultural expressions, traditional knowledge, and biological or genetic resources used in creating protectable designs. This paper focuses on that controversy. It highlights possible justifications countries may have for desiring the flexibility to impose disclosure requirements on design protection applicants; and opines on the broader ramifications of the dispute for policy coherence and mutual supportiveness goals in relation to cultural and genetic resource protection issues.


This paper focuses on the important scholar and antiquarian Giovanni Giocondo from Verona and in particular his two editions of the De architectura of Vitruvius published in 1511 and in 1513. Two illustrations of this friar are related to the two Vitruvian passages concerning the female architectural supports called Caryatids and the Tower of the Winds at Athens. A careful study of these two drawings leads to the conclusion that they cannot depend only on the Vitruvian text, but also on visual sources. These sources of inspiration are identified respectively with the so-called Lodge of the Caryatids of the Erechtheum at Athens and with the same Tower of the Winds. Probably Friar Giocondo got information and perhaps drawings of these two monuments in 1506 when he traveled in the Saronic Gulf. Thus Giocondo's drawing of the Caryatids probably reveals that the wrong interpretation of the Korai of the Erechtheum as Vitruvian Caryatids already existed in the early 16th century.


The diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia is a genus that associated with harmful algal blooms
(HABs) worldwide. One third of the species produce the neurotoxin, domoic acid (DA)
which is a causative agent of amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP). Research interest in
toxic Pseudo-nitzschia thrived after the outbreak of the first ASP case stroked Canada in
1987. Following the incidence, numerous studies have been undertaken throughout the
open oceans. However, occurrences of Pseudo-nitzschia spp. were reported as species
complex/complexes due to the taxonomic uncertainty in the genus. This has lead to
enormous confusion in species identification) In this study, a thorough field survey
focused on Pseudo-nitzschia species were undertaken to investigate the spatial
distribution pattern and species composition in Malaysian waters. Samplings covered
locations in the Andaman Sea, the Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, Sulu Sea
and Celebes Sea. Plankton samples were collected from 17 locations using a 20 gmmesh
plankton net haul. Samples were subjected to acid wash treatment before detailed
morphological observations under transmission electron microscope (TEM).
Identification of Pseudo-nitzschia species was based on the frustules morphology with
morphometric measurements. In total, 22 species were identified; in which 16 were new
records in Malaysia, and a new morphotype discovered. Among the toxic species found,
including P. brasiliana, P. caciantha, P. calliantha, P. cuspidata, P. delicatissima, P.
multistriata, P. pseudodelicatissima, P. pungens, and P. turgidula were previously
reported to associate with ASP events worldwide.
In order to aid the species identification of this complex species, molecular
approaches have been introduced in Pseudo-nitzschia taxonomy. Molecular
phylogenetic analyses are applied based on a genetic marker to resolve the Pseudonitzschia
species complex/complexes. In this study, whole cell fluorescence in situ
hybridization (FISH), a rapid molecular detection tool was applied on both field and
cultured samples. Two toxic species, P. pungens were used as model species in FISH
optimization and on-field application. Species-specific probes were designed in silico.
The accessibilities of probes were tested in silico based on complete 28S rRNA
secondary structure information. The probes were successfully optimized on clonal
cultures and natural spiked samples. Whole-cell FISH was proven as a potential rapid
detection tool for monitoring of toxic Pseudo-nitzschia species in Malaysia. This study
has provided further insight and better understanding on Pseudo-nitzschia taxonomy
using both the morphological and molecular approaches. The finding of a new
morphotype warrants further investigation to obtain genetic evidence. FISH method
with species specific probes on targeted Pseudo-nitzschia species are proposed as
monitoring tools for the related agency in Malaysia.


The main aim of the present work was to fabricate and evaluate gastro retentive high density microspheres with both synthetic and natural polymers for the sustained release of Famotidine to treat gastric ulcers. The microspheres were prepared by the coacervation phase separation technique. Famotidine was checked for its compatibility with polymers used by using Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopic (FTIR) analysis. The surface morphology was studied by scanning electron microscopic (SEM) studies. The percentage of yield, surface associated drug content, drug entrapment efficiency and in vitro dissolution studies were performed and the dissolution data was treated with mathematical kinetic models. Accelerated stability studies were also carried out to the optimized formulation (F-6). The FTIR spectrum of pure drug and drugpolymer blend showed the stable character of Famotidine in the micro capsules. The microspheres were found to be spherical. The microspheres had good entrapment efficiency and percentage yield. The release of drug from the microspheres extended up to 12 h. The release kinetics data and characterization studies indicate that drug release from microspheres was diffusion sustained and that the microspheres were stable. The study revealed that Gellan gum and Karaya gum in combinations with Povidone found to be effective combination for microspheres and the gastric retention was aided with Iron oxide.


Background Pterygium is a common degenerative eye disease. Despite various surgical methods to treat pterygium, recurrence is the main complication. The main issue is finding a surgical method with the lowest recurrence. Objective to compare the complications, recurrence rate and the cosmetic effects of two surgical techniques, namely conjunctival rotation autograft (CRA) and conjunctival autograft (CA), in treating pterygium. Methods This randomized clinical trial was conducted at Khalili Hospital in Shiraz, Iran, from January to August 2015. Forty-five eyes from 45 patients were studied. The patients were randomly divided into two groups using the blocking method. The patients of one group were operated on by the CRA technique, while the other group was operated on by the CA method. The patients were checked for the recurrence of pterygium, and other complications at the end of the first, third, and sixth month. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS version 21. Results The mean age of the patients was 42.5 years. The recurrence of pterygium was not observed in any of the patients 6 months after the surgery. Following 6 months after the operation, graft retraction occurred during the first week for one patient (4.5%) in the CA group, and five patients (21.7%) in the CRA group. The prevalence rate of graft injection among the patients of the CA and CRA groups 6 months after the operation was 9.1% and 65.2%, respectively. There was a significant correlation between injection intensity and the dissatisfaction of the patients with the operation's outcome (p=0.017). Conclusion CRA with mitomycin is considered as an effective method to reduce the recurrence of pterygium after operation. This technique can be used as an acceptable method for pterygium operation, especially for patients with insufficient conjunctiva. Clinical trial registration The trial was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (http://www.irct.ir) with the Irct ID: IRCT2016092119581N2. Funding The study was financially supported by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) (grants No. 8901).


The members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been continuously involved in achieving a balanced outcome in the area of fisheries subsidies negotiations in 2018. The discussions have been ongoing and will continue in 2019. According to the 11th Ministerial Conference decision of the WTO, members are committed towards securing a deal in 2019. There are various aspects of fisheries subsidies that members of the WTO are presently assessing. The SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Target 14.6 is one of the fundamentals for an outcome in the fisheries negotiations. The SDG Target 14.6 aims to prohibit or reduce fisheries subsidies linked to overfishing, overcapacity and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). In 2018, in the Rules Negotiating Group (RNG) on the fisheries clusters, members have discussed on overfishing and IUU issues. However, discussions on the overcapacity issue merits further investigations part of the SDG Target 14.6. This paper therefore aims to assess the relationship between fishing vessel capacity and fisheries subsidies as well as non-tariff measures, and provide further policy advice to trade negotiators in relation to the SDGs. In the assessment, we use panel data modelling of select developed OECD member countries that hold current vessel capacity and assess this against subsidies, non-tariff measures, exports and fish landing. The selected OECD member countries comprise of the proponents of the "Friends of fish" group. The finding of the paper provides policy recommendations for negotiators on fisheries subsidies and overcapacity. It also provides suggestions for special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries (LDCs) in the fisheries negotiations.


Isla del Coco (also known as Cocos Island) is an oceanic island in the Eastern Tropical Pacific; it is part of the largest national park of Costa Rica and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The island has been visited since the 16th Century due to its abundance of freshwater and wood. Marine biodiversity studies of the island started in the late 19th Century, with an intense period of research in the 1930's, and again from the mid 1990's to the present. The information is scattered and, in some cases, in old publications that are difficult to access. Here I have compiled published records of the marine organisms of the island. At least 1688 species are recorded, with the gastropods (383 species), bony fishes (354 spp.) and crustaceans (at least 263 spp.) being the most species-rich groups; 45 species are endemic to Isla del Coco National Park (2.7% of the total). The number of species per kilometer of coastline and by square kilometer of seabed shallower than 200m deep are the highest recorded in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Although the marine biodiversity of Isla del Coco is relatively well known, there are regions that need more exploration, for example, the south side, the pelagic environments, and deeper waters. Also, several groups of organisms, such as the flatworms, nematodes, nemerteans, and gelatinous zooplankton, have been observed around the Island but have been poorly studied or not at all. Citation: Cortés, J. 2012. Marine biodiversity of an Eastern Tropical Pacific oceanic island, Isla del Coco, Costa Rica. Rev. Biol. Trop. 60 (Suppl. 3): 131-185. Epub 2012 Dec 01


Valid patient consent must cover each medical measure over a patient. Should there be no such consent, that measure is unlawful, regardless if regulated or nonregulated, succesful or unsuccessful, with a harmful consequence or without it. From the civil law point of view, this represents bodily injury and injury of a person right, raising liability. Patient consent to a certain medical measure is not a pure formality, it is not a form without a content, because a patient must know what he / she is approving. Medical doctor has duty to tell him / her about it, because he / she, as a rule of thumb, does not know. Th is advice must contain, for a patient all necessary information, for freely deciding if he / she accepts or does not accept proposed medical treatment. Because legal authorities have built relevant standard, advice scope today is mostly known. However, our lawmaker has listed what an advice to patient should embrace. It has not been mentioned in this list that a patient must familiar on a medical doctor person who is to undertake medical measure on him / her. Th erefore, it is clear that a patient consent is valid even without such advice, as is the case in other jurisdictions. On the other hand, patient autonomy means also a possibility to limit his / her consent to a medical treatment to a designated medical doctor, who enjoys his/ her trust. Patient may have necessity for such a consent especially when he / she should undergo some serious surgery, because it is not all the same who will operate him / her. Should a chosen medical doctor, from some reason, cannot do the surgery, patient must be timely advised and asked if he / she agrees with replacement of the surgeon or does he / she want surgery delay. Surgeon replacement without patient consent makes surgery illicit. Medical organization and private practice whose medical doctor performs such a surgery, undertakes operation consequnces and owe indemnity of material and intangible losses to a patient, without right to reward. Prof. Jakov RADIŠIĆ, LLD, Ret. University in Kragujevac


Continuum investigates what happens to someone when the continuity of this personal 'script' is interrupted. By exploring the impact of serious brain injury on an individual – the disruption of the continuity of experience by the trauma of injury disrupts that individual's impression of themselves and can lead to personality change.

Since the investigation of the play revolves around an individual's life script being disrupted and the disorientation that causes, the play seeks to create this experience for the audience through developing a fractured structure. The timescale is obscure to the audience for much of the play and scenes are of unpredictable length and sometimes run concurrently with other scenes. The rigour is obviously to ensure that there are sufficient touchstones for the audience to ensure understanding.


Neuronal Calcium Sensor 1 (NCS-1) is a multi-functional Ca2+-binding protein that affects a range of cellular processes beyond those related to neurons. Functional characterization of NCS-1 in neuronal model systems suggests that NCS-1 may influence oncogenic processes. To this end, the biological role of NCS-1 was investigated by altering its endogenous expression in MCF-7 and MB-231 breast cancer cells. Overexpression of NCS-1 resulted in a more aggressive tumor phenotype demonstrated by a marked increase in invasion and motility, and a decrease in cell-matrix adhesion to collagen IV. Overexpression of NCS-1 was also shown to increase the efficacy of paclitaxel-induced cell death in a manner that was independent of cellular proliferation. To determine the association between NCS-1 and clinical outcome, NCS-1 expression was measured in two independent breast cancer cohorts by the Automated Quantitative Analysis method of quantitative immunofluorescence. Elevated levels of NCS-1 were significantly correlated with shorter survival rates. Furthermore, multivariate analysis demonstrated that NCS-1 status was prognostic, independent of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, HER2, and lymph node status. These findings indicate that NCS-1 plays a role in the aggressive behavior of a subset of breast cancers and has therapeutic or biomarker potential. Implications: NCS-1, a calcium-binding protein, is associated with clinicopathologic features of aggressiveness in breast cancer cells and worse outcome in two breast cancer patient cohorts. Mol Cancer Res; 15(7); 942–52. ©2017 AACR.


Benzylpiperazine (BZP) is a stimulant drug that produces effects similar to amphetamines (Campbell, Cline, Evans, Lloyd, & Peck, 1973). It has been sold legally in New Zealand in the form of 'party pills' since 2000. The legal status of BZP party pills has been debated in New Zealand as the media reported cases of apparent overdoses and adverse reactions leading to hospitalization (Brogden, 2005; Crewdson, 2007; Reiber, 2005; Rankin, 2006). Representatives of the BZP party pill industry publicly defended their product claiming that BZP party pills were reducing substance related harm by reducing illicit substance use (Bowden, 2007b, p.1). They also claimed that banning BZP would result in an increase in use of illicit substances, especially methamphetamine or 'P' (Barnett, 2007). The overall aim of this thesis is to test the claims that BZP party pills reduce substance related harm by reducing illicit substance use, and to identify potential outcomes of a BZP party pill ban. In addition, the perceived risks of party pill and other drug use will be examined. In chapter one I review key concepts relating to BZP party pill use: recreational drug use, harm reduction, and risk perception. In chapter two the history and New Zealand context of BZP party pills are reviewed. In chapter three, study one qualitatively analyzes BZP party pill marketing material in an attempt to describe the culture and discourse promoted by the BZP party pill industry. This analysis demonstrated that BZP party pills were primarily marketed as part of a recreational drug using culture. In chapter four, study two quantitatively investigated whether BZP party pill use was associated with reduced levels of illicit substance use in a sample (N=796) of first year university students. This study also examined the relationship between risk perception and frequency of substance use. Study two demonstrated that BZP party pill users are generally recreational poly-drug users who used illicit substances equally as often as illicit users who did not use BZP party pills. BZP party pills did not appear to reduce illicit substance use, and therefore harm. For the majority of substances there was no significant relationship between risk and use behaviour. The legal status of substances appeared to be important when participants rated the risks of use. Legal substances (including BZP) tended to be rated as safer than illegal substances. In chapter five, study three qualitatively analyzed 60 interviews with regular BZP party pill users to identify potential outcomes of a BZP party pill ban. A combination of alternatives were likely to be used by BZP party pill users, primarily illicit substances, especially ecstasy, as well as alcohol, and black market BZP. However methamphetamine (P) was an unpopular alternative. Study three also analyzed how BZP party pill users assess the costs and benefits of BZP party pill use. Decisions to use BZP party pills relied heavily on the benefits of use, rather than the costs. In chapter six, the general discussion describes the implications, ethical considerations, limitations, and outcomes of the research.


The structural stability and properties of single silicon interstitials in their neutral state are investigated via ab initio methods in 3C- and 4H-SiC. By carefully checking the convergence with Brillouin Zone (BZ) sampling and supercell size we show that the split interstitial along <110> direction and tetrahedrally coordinated structure have similar formation energies in the cubic polytype. We discuss possible artifacts coming from the well known Density Functional Theory (DFT) underestimation of the band gap, which is particularly relevant for 3C-SiC. For 4H-SiC, the most energetically favorable silicon interstitial is found to be the split interstitial configuration ISisp<110> but situated in the hexagonal layer. The defect formation energies in 4H-SiC are in general larger than those in 3C-SiC, implying that the insertion of silicon interstitial introduces a large lattice distortion to the local coordination environments and affect even the second- or third-nearest neighbors. We also present an extensive comparison between well converged plane waves calculations and SIESTA [1,2] calculations based on localised orbitals basis sets.


This paper shows that Julia provides sufficient performance to bridge the performance gap between productivity-oriented languages and low-level languages for complex memory intensive computation tasks such as graph traversal. We provide performance guidelines for using complex low-level data structures in high productivity languages and present the first parallel integration on the productivity-oriented language side for graph analysis. Performance on the Graph500 benchmark demonstrates that the Julia implementation is competitive with the native C/OpenMP implementation.


The article presents a network analysis of 22,861,013 geocoded external hyperlinks, collected from 230 Danish, 220 Norwegian and 208 Swedish news websites in 2016. The analysis asks what the structural properties of the Scandinavian media systems—including its geography and ownership structures—mean for news outlets' centrality within the hyperlinked news ecology. The analysis finds that whereas incumbent legacy media occupy central positions, about one third of the network is absent from the hyperlinked interaction, primarily local, independently owned newspapers. A multiple linear regression analysis shows that national distribution and corporate ownership correlates to network centrality more than other predictors. As brokers in the network consist of the large, legacy, capital-based news organisations, hyperlink connectivity is primarily characterised by proximity to the centres of power, corporate ownership, agenda setting incumbency and national distribution.


This research aims to mine the relationship between demographic variables and brand associations, and study the relative importance of these variables. The study is conducted on fast-food restaurant brands chains in Jordan. The result ranks and evaluates the demographic variables in relation with the brand associations for the selected sample. Discovering brand associations according to demographic variables reveals many facts and linkages in the context of Jordanian culture. Suggestions are given accordingly for marketers to benefits from to build their strategies and direct their decisions. Also, data mining technique used in this study reflects a new trend for studying and analyzing marketing samples.


Microporous silica material AMPS has been synthesized via TEA+ cations assisted self-assembly of silica species in acidic aqueous solution. Nitrogen adsorption analysis revealed 0.65 nm uniform micropores in AMPS, companied with a Langmuir surface area of 745 m2/g and a pore volume of 0.22 cm3/g. The microporous AMPS exhibited an excellent adsorptive performance for volatile organic compounds (VOC) such as cyclohexane and acetone, compared with conventional zeolites such as Y, ZSM-5 and A. The adsorption was rapidly saturated at lower relative pressure with higher capacities than that of conventional zeolites. These features implied promising potentials in the separation and removal of VOCs in the atmosphere by using APS-3.


UR POSTMODERN TIMES, it is often observed, are rough times for orthodox belief. But religious beliefs aren't the only ones being put to the test these days. Certain established secular creeds, too, seem to be taking their lumps. Consider the ostensible fate of one particularly long-running such orthodoxy, educational progressivism. It is true, of course, that classrooms across the country continue to exhibit progressively inspired practices, from "natural" ways of teaching math to "whole language" rather than phonetic reading methods; true, too, that one of the doctrine's most cherished dicta - its preference for "critical thinking" over what is disdainfully called the "mere" accumulation of facts - is enshrined in the heart of almost every teacher and embedded in textbooks and teaching plans from kindergarten on. All this has long been so, and must bring some consolation to the rank and file. But it is also true that educational progressivism, in practice and in theory, is fast losing ground. For almost two decades, in fact, that particular set of ideas - grounded in Rousseau, transplanted in America by John Dewey and his followers, and disseminated through the educational establishment by generations of loyal acolytes ever since - has suffered what must only appear to the faithful as one ignominious setback after another. There was, to begin with, that famous - some would say infamous - 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, America at Risk, documenting the distinct mediocrity of the nation's students and by corollary the impressive failings of its schools. These failings, certain observers were quick to point out, had risen more or less exactly alongside the ascendance of progressive ideas in the public schools. At the same time, and even more annoying to progressives, such critics were turning out to have echoes at the highest levels of politics. After 12 years of Republican governance - including most notably William J. Bennett's tenure as secretary of education - "standards," "testing," "achievement," and other terms regarded by progressives as ideological fighting words were once more in national circulation. Yet even that much in the way of public criticism, one suspects, could have been comfortably countenanced by the flock; they had, after all, grown accustomed in the course of their long history to challenges from traditionalists of different stripes. But then, as the 1980s wore on into the '90s, came an outpouring of influential books and articles from critics who could not possibly be written off as tools of reaction. Some of these claimed sympathy with progressivism's aims while dissenting from what had been committed in its name. For these critics, what mattered was not the "otherwise unassailable precepts" of progressivism, as the historian Diane Ravitch once put it, but the fact that these precepts had gotten twisted around in practice to become "justification for educational practices that range from the unwise to the bizarre." It was a message that reached an ever-wider audience of the concerned, as the statistics on everything from reading to the sats piled up worse by the year. But the harshest blow to progressive ideas, and what ought to have been the most demoralizing, came in the even more unexpected form of the writings of literary scholar E.D. Hirsch. A Gramsci-quoting, self-described political liberal, Hirsch did more than deplore the excesses of progressivist practice; he attacked the creed itself head-on, and on moral grounds to boot. In 1987, his profoundly influential book Cultural Literacy argued that progressive ideas in the schools were depriving all students, particularly those least advantaged, of the knowledge required for citizenship and a decent life. Some years later, in The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (1996), Hirsch went even further, arguing in meticulous detail that "the mistaken ideas" of progressivism had led to "disastrous consequences," and that "since mistaken ideas have been the root cause of America's educational problems, the ideas must be changed before the problems can be solved. …


Abstract It is agreed by most scholars that the Stoics were compatibilists regarding the relation between responsibility and determinism. On this view, the Stoics depart from two other positions. Unlike some eliminative determinists — labelled in modern discussions "hard-determinists", but already active in Antiquity — they assert that, despite determinism, there are things that "depend on us", or are : things for which we are genuinely responsible and for which, therefore, we may justifiably be praised or blamed. But the Stoics also depart from the libertarian or "anti-determinist" 2 a position championed by the Epicureans in the early Hellenistic period and by Alexander of Aphrodisias on behalf of the Peripatetics, towards the end of the second century AD. Unlike the libertarian, who agrees on the incompatibility alleged by the hard-determinist, but preserves responsibility by rejectin necessitation, the Stoics preserve both responsibility and necessitation.


We have investigated the techniques to improve the channel mobility of SiC MOSFETs and found that the hydrogen termination of dangling bonds at a MOS interface is very effective in improving the channel mobility, particularly that of the interface fabricated on a (11-20) face wafer. A high channel mobility of MOSFET on the (11-20) face was achieved to 244cm2/Vs by new process which can terminate dangling bonds by hydrogen. The vertical MOSFET, which is prepared using this process, has a low on-resistance of 5.7 mΩcm2 and a breakdown voltage of 1100 V. The channel resistance is estimated at 0.58 mΩcm2.


The usual derivation of the Lagrangian of a model for massive vector bosons, by spontaneous symmetry breaking of a gauge theory, implies that the prefactors of the various interaction terms are uniquely determined functions of the coupling constant(s) and the masses. Since, under the renormalization group (RG) flow, different interaction terms get different loop-corrections, it is uncertain whether these functions remain fixed under this flow. We investigate this question for the U(1)-Higgs-model to 1-loop order in the framework of Epstein–Glaser renormalization. Our main result reads: choosing the renormalization mass scale(s) in a way corresponding to the minimal subtraction scheme, the geometrical interpretation as a spontaneously broken gauge theory gets lost under the RG-flow. This holds also for the clearly stronger property of BRST-invariance of the Lagrangian. On the other hand, we prove that physical consistency, which is a weak form of BRST-invariance of the time-ordered products, is maintained under the RG-flow.


BACKGROUND: Penetrating injuries of the neck are potentially dangerous, causing high rates of morbidity and mortality due to their association with sever bleeding and serious damage to the vital structures in the cervical region. OBJECTIVE: To know the incidence and distribution of these injuries on the anatomical zones of the neck and the damage of the vital structures in the cervical region and their early surgical management. METHODS: A prospective study on 52 patients of both civilian and military personnel with penetrating neck injuries attended the casualty department at Alyarmouk hospital over a period of 7 months from JuneDecember 2006. RESULTS: Fifty patients (96.15%) were males. Twenty four patients (46.15%) were in their third decade. Twenty six patients (50%) were injured by shrapnel of explosives, 23 patients (44.21%) by bullets & 3 patients (5.77%) by unknown objects. Thirty six patients (69.23%) were injured at zone 2, 11 patients (21.15%) at zone 3 & 5 patients (9.62%) at zone 1. Twenty nine patients (55.77%) had laryngeal & tracheal injuries. Thirteen patients (25%) had pharyngeal & esophageal injuries. Four patients (7.7%) had recurrent laryngeal nerve injury. Nine patients (17.3%) had vascular injuries 6 arterial & 3 venous. One patient had vertebral & spinal cord injury. Forty one patients (78.86%) had tracheostomy operations, & 13, (25%) had neck exploration.Six patients (11.54%) treated conservatively. Nine patients (17.3%) have died. CONCLUSION: Male patients at their middle age were the predominant victims either by shrapnel or by bullets. Zone 2 was most commonly affected followed by zone 3 & zone 1. Laryngo – tracheal, pharyngo – esophageal & vascular structures were mostly involved. Tracheostomy & neck exploration were the main urgent operations performed for them. The high mortality reflected the serious nature of these injuries. KEY WARDS: neck wounds, penetrating injuries.


Wang et al. analyzed artificially biased data to show that our results can be explained by a bias against sequences with low fitness. We explicitly acknowledged this potential caveat in our original study. Showing that an artificially introduced bias can produce a spurious signal of positive epistasis does not demonstrate that such bias exists in our original data.


Content Delivery Network services, which were originally aimed at achieving fast content delivery, began being used for fast delivery of data stored in cloud services, but they are only effective for frequently accessed data. In this paper, we present an overlay architecture of inter- data center (DC) networking for fast content delivery that is effective for long-tail contents. Based on round-trip time measurements between DCs, content distribution trees (CDTs) are dynamically reconfigured to maximize data transfer throughputs from origin to all other DCs. Furthermore, to enhance throughput by using parallel data transfer on overlay paths (OPs) on a current CDT, a content file are segmented off-line into blocks that are then named at a content server so that each of multiple parallel block-streams can be transferred by an assigned HTTP proxy server at each hop of the OP. Numerical examples obtained by using multiple traceroute servers located in an Asia-Pacific region show that throughput estimates of optimized OPs between some country pair are more than ten times greater than that of direct paths.


Separation of cross-cutting concerns is an important issue in business process management, where Aspect-Oriented Business Process Modeling (AO-BPM) aims to support this separation through a new form of encapsulation technique. Although different researchers have investigated how these models can be designed to support separation of non-retroactive cross-cutting concerns, there is no study that defines the separation of retroactive ones. The lack of a unified definition of the syntax and the operational semantics for these models hinders their enactment in practice as well. As a result, the perceived usefulness and usability of these approaches have not yet been investigated so far. Thus, this article fills this gap by formalizing an AO-BPM language and the semantics that can support enactment of such models. The semantics is validated through the state-space analysis technique, and the feasibility of the implementation is also demonstrated. The perceived usefulness and easy to use of the AO-BPM is evaluated by applying the Technology Acceptance Model during a workshop session. The result shows that participants perceived the approach usable and easy to use.


Purpose: Focusing on the nascent corporate heritage identity domain, this empirical study introduces the theory of corporate heritage stewardship. In particular, the research explores managers' collective understanding of their organisation's corporate heritage and how the latter is marshalled, and strategically represented, by them. The case study was undertaken in Great Britain's oldest extant brewery. Established in 1698 Shepherd Neame is one of UK's oldest companies.

Design/methodology/approach: Empirical research informed by a theory-building, case-study using qualitative data. This study draws on multiple sources of data generated through semi-structured interviews, the analysis of documents and non-participant observations. The analysis of data was facilitated by a multi-stage coding process and a prolonged hermeneutic interaction between data, emerging concepts, and extant literature.

Findings: Corporate heritage identity stewardship theory argues that the strategic enactment of a corporate heritage identity is predicated on a particular management mindset, which is meaningfully informed by three awareness dimensions expressed by managers (i.e. awareness of positionality, heritage, and custodianship). These awareness dimensions are underpinned by six managerial stewardship dispositions characterised by a sense of: (1) continuance; (2) belongingness; (3) self; (4) heritage; (5) responsibility; and (6) potency. The findings are synthesised into a theoretical framework of managerial corporate heritage identity stewardship.

Research limitations/implications: The insights from this empirical case study meaningfully advance our theoretical understanding of the corporate heritage identity domain. Whilst the empirical contribution of this study is qualitatively different from statistical/substantive generalisations, which seek to establish universal laws, the research insights are valuable in terms of theory-building in their own terms and are analytically generalisable. The insights from this study have the potential to inform further studies on corporate heritage identities, including research underpinned by a positivistic, and quantitative, methodology.

Practical implications: The findings have utility for corporate marketing management in that they illustrate how a collective corporate heritage mindset can both inform, as well as guide, managers in terms of their stewardship of their firm's corporate heritage identity. The theoretical framework is of utility in practical terms in that it reveals the multiple dimensions that are significant for management stewardship of a corporate heritage identity.

Originality/value: The research confirms and expands the notion of management stewardship in corporate identity in corporate marketing contexts by identifying how a multi-dimensional managerial mindset has constitutive and instrumental relevance. Moreover, this study identifies the distinct characteristics of this corporate identity type – corporate heritage identity – which are revealed to have a saliency for managers. Both insights underpin the corporate heritage identity stewardship theory explicated in this article.

Keywords: Corporate Heritage, Corporate Heritage Identity, Corporate Marketing, Corporate Identity, Case Study, Qualitative Research


Numerical simulations for the effect of body forces due to aircraft acceleration on the airflow and contaminant dispersion in a model for a passenger aircraft cabin are performed in this study. It was found that those body forces have a significant impact on the contaminant dispersion phenomena and concentrations, especially during the climb leg, where the concentration was almost triple its counterpart during the steady level flight case at the two monitoring locations. Air velocities, on the other side, increased noticeably during the climb and descent legs leading to evident changes in the airflow patterns, vorticity magnitudes, and at some locations, vorticity directions, as well. Keywords-Aircraft ventilation; Air quality; Contaminants; Aircraft acceleration; Airflow vorticity; Numerical simulation; CFD


Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), self-assembled from metal ions with organic ligands, are well known for their intriguing framework topology, permanent porosity, and tunable optical properties and have shown great promise for a good number of applications. Over the past few years, luminescent MOFs have attracted growing attention, especially for developing various luminescent sensors, by virtue of their excellent selectivity and high sensitivity. In this feature article, we highlight some of the recent significant progress in this active research field, and provide a comprehensive review on luminescent MOFs as sensory materials for diverse sensing applications including for metal ions, anions, small molecules and gases, nitroaromatics and explosives, temperature, as well as other aspects.


To realize the trajectory tracking control for six degrees of freedom parallel robot, a fuzzy sliding mode control strategy based on support vector machines is presented. Sliding mode control algorithm has complete adaptability to system disturbance and siring in sliding mode, which is used to automatically track the uncertainty of system parameters and external disturbance. Fuzzy algorithm is applied to improve the sliding mode control performance. Fuzzy support vector machines have strong treatment of non-linear signal and generalization ability, which is used to reduce the chattering in sliding mode control. The parameters of fuzzy support machines controller are optimized by hybrid learning algorithm, which combines least square algorithm with improved genetic algorithm, to get the optimal control performance for the object. The simulation results demonstrated that the control strategy designed gets tracking effect with high precision and speed, as well as reduces chattering of control under the condition of model error and external disturbance.


Compensation statutes (such as Oregon's Measure 37) attempt to elevate the importance of private property by insulating property value from any negative effects that land use regulations may have, typically by awarding compensation where property owners are required to suffer limitations in their land use choices. Although the efforts of compensation statutes may appear reasonable at first glance, a closer examination reveals difficulties in implementing such schemes. Using Measure 37 as a leaping point, this Article inquires into the relationship between compensation statutes and the property such legislation purports to protect. This Article compares the Measure to traditional property doctrines and property rights among competing claims. From a coherence perspective, this Article then argues that the 'property' protected under Measure 37 created internal conflicts throughout the law, piecing property rights apart from property duties in land uses, rendering incoherent the bundle of existing property expectations.


Approximately 15,000,000 people in the United States are at least moderately obese, that is, 20% or more above their ideal weight. 1 In order to lose weight, many of these engage in dieting under the care of a physician. Obesity is commonly considered to be an evidence of serious unconscious emotional conflict, and many investigators have stated that dieting can and does upset the precarious psychological equilibrium with catastrophic results. In one investigation, Stunkard 2 reported, "For a large number of overweight persons, the mechanical prescription of reducing diets has had unfortunate consequences. For a smaller number it has been disastrous." He found that 51% of the obese women in a nutrition clinic reported untoward responses to previous attempts at weight reduction, and a more detailed investigation of 25 women revealed that 9 had suffered emotional disturbances of psychotic intensity during present and past attempts at weight reduction.


Abstract Smart Home technologies have the potential to increase the quality of life, home security and facilitate elderly care. Therefore, they require access to a plethora of data about the users' homes and private lives. Resulting security and privacy concerns form a relevant barrier to adopting this promising technology. Aiming to support end users' informed decision-making through addressing the concerns we first conducted semi-structured interviews with 42 potential and little-experienced Smart Home users. Their diverse concerns were clustered into four themes that center around attacks on Smart Home data and devices, the perceived loss of control, the trade-off between functionality and security, and user-centric concerns as compared to concerns on a societal level. Second, we discuss measures to address the four themes from an interdisciplinary perspective. The paper concludes with recommendations for addressing user concerns and for supporting developers in designing user-centered Smart Home technologies.


This paper investigates the association between Corporate Governance (CG) performance and enterprise risk in India. The study also investigates the behavior of risk under different classifications. As part of this study, Risk is estimated through a Multifactor Estimation of VaR. with Cash Value Added being used as the covariate that represents the value of the firm. This study helps to rate the progress of enterprise risk governance reforms from the point of CG performance, plan further reforms and enable investors to choose the right firms. Policy makers will know where to focus, stakeholders will recognize their roles and responsibilities with respect to risk management and management will take informed operational decisions around the policies set. Major findings of the paper are: there exists significant risk on the extreme ends of the CGPI ordinal scale, CGPI influences CVA which in turn determines enterprise risk, CVA and risk analysis finds a significant role for industrial segments. Also the number of risk free companies in these extreme segments is the least. Manufacturing and service sectors carry maximum risk.


Associations between reading achievement and behavior, albeit problematic, are empirically supported in the literature. Although well documented, many of the studies were conducted outside of the school context using reading measures not typically aligned with school curricula. Furthermore, previous studies primarily document the existence of delinquent behavior without assessing outcomes of the behaviors. To provide more insight on this issue, this study examines the relationship of reading achievement and suspensions for African American males in the middle grades using four years of archival data from a large urban school district. Results show that the strongest relationship between reading achievement and suspensions occur at the end of sixth grade, while other indicators, depending on grade level, show strong relationships to suspensions, as well. Implications for these findings are discussed and SSRI, a literacy-based alternative to conventional suspensions, is introduced.


This short comment on Nomi Stolzenberg's symposium paper, Liberalism in Love (28 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 593 (2010)), addresses the enduring conflict between rationalism and romanticism as it manifests itself in law. In psychology, the cognitive/behavioral revolution has brought about a dramatic decline in the prominence of psychoanalytic research and therapy. But I argue that this conquest should be seen more in terms of an ambivalence. In law, rationalist ideas about the self and individual decision making necessarily coexist with more romantic ideas about identity and selfhood. Nomi Stolzenberg's essay moves us to think about law in integrated terms: not defined by an opposition between reason and passion, but by their mutual interdependence.


The study derives from a multi-year project implemented by OER Africa. The project sought to understand how OER might be used as a catalyst for pedagogical transformation in African universities. Within a non-determinist and interpretivist theoretical framework and an over-arching project methodology of participatory action research, the study made use of an analytical autoethnographic approach to capture and analyse data and to make recommendations. The approach was informed primarily by hermeneutics and systems thinking and involved multiple in-country engagements and the triangulation of information derived from document review, observation and iterative focus group discussions and individual interviews. The key finding of this study is the suggestion that engagement with OER is unlikely to move from being an individual to an institutional focus unless such engagement is aligned with the overall vision, mission and business model of the university.


Given the prominence of dryland salinity as a resource management problem in Australia, it might be expected that farmers would keenly monitor the levels of saline groundwater under their farms. However, many farmers choose not to monitor, in some cases even when they have previously installed bores suitable for this purpose. We investigated this apparent paradox by analysing the monitoring behaviour of a group of farmers in the Jerramungup region of southern Western Australia. The farmers are unusual in displaying a very high rate of monitoring compared with other regions, although this rate has fallen over the past decade. A range of physical, economic and social influences on monitoring behaviour are identified by statistical analysis of survey and physical data. A key finding is that farmers who are using the information from monitoring to assess salinity management strategies implemented on their farms are likely to monitor more frequently. This suggests that monitoring frequency may be driven in large part by the availability of suitable salinity management practices that can be implemented, in contrast to the view that adoption of salinity management practices may be enhanced by programs that encourage monitoring.


Background: Nowadays, stroke can be considered as the one of the major causes of disability and mortality worldwide. However, relationship between serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level with stroke early prognosis has not been well studied, especially in Iran. Therefore, the present study aimed to study the relationship between CRP level of serum in patients with acute stroke at first 24h of admission and stroke early prognosis. Methods: This prospective cross-sectional study was performed on 50 patients with acute stroke who were admitted at Emergency Ward of Shahid Rajaie Hospital, in Tonekabon City, Iran, between May 2013 to July 2014. In first step, valid clinical diagnosis was made based on CT scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the patients. The ethical observations were considered for all patients. The serum level of CRP was measured by standard method, at first 24h of the admission. Clinical information and risk factors (age, gender, type of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus) was detected for each patient. On discharge, early prognosis by modified Rankin Scale (mRS) (mRS< 3= good and mRS≥ 3= bad) was also recognized. In this study, statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software, and logistic regression method was used (P< 0.05). Results: The results of this study showed that 38% of the patients were 70-80 years old. Also, 52% of the patients were male and 48% were female. The serum CRP level of patients at the first 24h of admission increased in all studied patients. The mean of the serum CRP level was 12.82 that were higher than the normal range. The statistical analysis showed that there was no significant relationship between the serum CRP level and the stroke early prognosis. Conclusion: Although the serum CRP level was not recognized as an anticipator factor for stroke prognosis at this study, it is recommended to performance of more studies by case-study method on this setting. Abstract


Threatened ecosystem conservation requires an understanding of the effectiveness of management and the challenges hindering successful protection and recovery. Bringing together researchers, land managers and policymakers to identify key threats, management needs, and knowledge gaps provides a unified account of the evidence and tools needed to improve threatened ecosystem management. We undertook a research prioritization process for Australian alpine and subalpine peatlands with experts across policy, research, and management. Through individual interviews, structured group discussions, and voting, we generated 25 priority research questions that, if addressed, would enhance our capacity to conserve peatlands. Knowledge gaps spanned four topics: understanding peatland dynamics, impacts of threats, methods to manage these, and the effectiveness of management. Consistent monitoring standards, an open‐access knowledge platform and commitment to long‐term joint research and management were identified as vital. This collaboration enabled development of a shared agenda of research priorities to target knowledge gaps for informing policy and management of threatened alpine peatlands. Our findings substantiate the importance of stronger ongoing collaboration among researchers, land managers and policymakers across jurisdictions to support conservation.