Mushroom is one of the commonly consumed foods. Image processing is one of the effective way for examination of visual features and detecting the size of a mushroom. We developed software for segmentation of a mushroom in a picture and also to measure the cap width of the mushroom. K-Means clustering method is used for the process. K-Means is one of the most successful clustering methods. In our study we customized the algorithm to get the best result and tested the algorithm. In the system, at first mushroom picture is filtered, histograms are balanced and after that segmentation is performed. Results provided that customized algorithm performed better segmentation than classical K-Means algorithm. Tests performed on the designed software showed that segmentation on complex background pictures is performed with high accuracy, and 20 mushrooms caps are measured with 2.281 % relative error.


Purpose : The purpose of this study was to identify independent factors associated with prolonged recovery time after intravenous sedation for dental treatment in patients with intellectual disabilities. Methods : This study was designed as a prospective cohort study. Participants were patients with intellectual disabilities, for whom sedation for dental treatment was planned in Okayama University Hospital. The outcome variable was recovery time. The predictor variables were patient background, antiepileptic and psychotropic drugs, and anesthesia-related variables. Factors affecting the outcome were examined with multiple regression analysis. Results : We enrolled 260 cases in this study. Oral midazolam was a strong independent determinant in prolonged recovery time. Teeth extraction, short treatment time and lower body mass index were significant independent predictors of prolonged recovery time. Conclusion : Oral midazolam is a clear independent determinant of prolonged recovery time after sedation, while psychotropic drugs and antiepileptic drugs were not independent determinants in this study.


The Romantic vision of ancient architecture, together with the evaluation of the said architecture as historical legacy, have contributed to the extensive path followed by the discipline of architectural restoration towards its consolidation as a scientific method along the 19th and the 20th century. During the Renaissance, when attention was turned to Classic Architecture, the study of the construction methods became the first germ for recognising the value of ancient architecture, in its many styles, as historical heritage. The scientific analysis that then took place in the 19th century, framed in the philosophical trend of Positivism, was also be reflected in architectural restoration: an appropriate intervention had to begin with learning about of the history of the construction. This can easily be understood considering that the term restoration includes many medieval constructions being completed or reconstructed introducing large additions or extensions, which were done taking as reference the use of traditional construction materials with their corresponding traditional technology and the study of agreements and manuscripts. These documents were unveiled by research, in parallel to the development of the formulation of a theoretical structural model, bearing in mind that, initially, masonry, timber and cast iron were the main construction materials, and their properties dictated the nature of structural forms (Charlton 1982). The debate about architectural restoration begun in the 19th century has gone on to history mainly thanks to names like Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin, Morris or Pugin. However, behind these names, a series of prominent figures can be recognized. The group was comprised of individuals of all filiations who were developing and bringing together the theory and the scientific practice originated in the twilights of the 18th century in the newly established French Republic. The innumerable positions, schools, trends and declarations that have developed since then, have today a point in common: the valuation and the respect for ancient architectural monuments, a living testimony for learning about the societies who constructed them. The present work focuses on the figure of the Englishman George Edmund Street (1824-81), whose work is not as well known as that of some of his contemporaries named above, but is not less important for that reason. Street contributed to the restoration of many architectural monuments; his experience allowed him to device certain approaches to this discipline that yielded numerous restoration interventions, both inside and outside England. His work has not received as much attention as that of Butterfield, and his name is certainly not as well known as Scott's. Yet he has hardly been altogether forgotten (Hitchcock 1960).


This article aims to address the relationship between a measure of stock correlation and a decrease in the risk-adjusted performance of basic quantitative investment strategies. The author studied simple momentum, value, size, and mean reversion investment strategies in the U.S. stock market for the period from 1928 to 2012. The empirical results suggest that all strategies appear to be caught in a correlation trap, as they have the tendency to experience a decrease in risk-adjusted performance when the proposed measure of correlation increases. This effect is present over the whole study period, not restricted to the last few years.


Abstract Turkey has thus far been generally neglected in most IR studies on power categorisations, such as middle or middle-range power, regional power or rising/emerging power, despite its rising regional power status in the past decade. This paper attempts to understand Turkey's regional power together with its rising power status using an integral approach. In doing so, it empirically tests whether or not Turkey fits Daniel Flemes's 'regional power' category, which seems to be proposing a more complete and integral framework through the fulfilment of four basic preconditions: claim to leadership; possession of necessary power resources (material and ideational); employment of material, institutional and discursive foreign policy instruments; and acceptance of leadership by third parties. Based upon these analytical tools, the article will discuss Turkey's performance in creating a regional impact in its neighbouring regions of the Middle East, the Balkans and the Black Sea and Caucasus.


In this work we tackle the open problem of self-join size (SJS) estimation in a large-scale distributed data system, where tuples of a relation are distributed over data nodes which comprise an overlay network. Our contributions include adaptations of five well-known SJS estimation centralized techniques (coined sequential, cross-sampling, adaptive, bifocal, and sample-count) to the network environment and a novel technique which is based on the use of the Gini coefficient. We develop analyses showing how Gini estimations can lead to estimations of the underlying Zipfian or power-law value distributions. We further contribute distributed sampling algorithms that can estimate accurately and efficiently the Gini coefficient. Finally, we provide detailed experimental evidence testifying for the claimed increased accuracy, precision, and efficiency of the proposed SJS estimation method, compared to the other methods. The proposed approach is the only one to ensure high efficiency, precision, and accuracy regardless of the skew of the underlying data.


Diffraction-interference patterns of parametric down-converted photons through a transmission grating by both one- and two-photon detection schemes are presented. The measured patterns are explained by the Fourier analysis of the two-photon wave packet, considering the quantum spatial correlation between the constituent photons. Spatial diffraction-interference patterns were recorded by a two-photon detector consisting of two avalanche photodiodes. For comparison, diffraction-interference patterns of Ti:sapphire laser are also observed using the same apparatus (a uncorrelated case).


In accordance with the methodology of the constructivist approach, the personal identity manifested as a unique self-image is regarded  as a dynamic hierarchical system. Under the approach based on M.  Kuhn and T. McPartland's test, we have developed and put into  practice a special questionnaire, which allows ranking 16 categories  in terms of their importance. These categories reflect social role  components of identity in the main spheres of life, thus presenting  an individual or a group identity structure as an orderly hierarchy.  Based on a sample of 1251 students of various sex, age, nationality, confession, residence and field of study, we have proved  that affiliation to a certain social or cultural group influences the  hierarchy of identity components. The study has shown that gender  and professional affiliation are of highest impact on the significance of identity components, as well as, albeit less  substantial, belonging to a particular ethnoreligious group and being  the resident of a certain region. Sociocultural affiliation in all  instances was an important differentiating characteristic, which  determined the disparities in significance of the respective basis of  the identity in the hierarchy. At the  same time, sociocultural  affiliation in most cases had an effect on the importance of less than  a half of the other identity components, thus determining the  general structure of the identity. In conclusion, gender, educational  and professional, ethnic, confessional or regional sociocultural group  is a significant social determinant of personal development in the  formation of the self-image hierarchy, which underlies the characteristics and structure of one's identity.


The conjugate gradient (CG) method is an efficient iterative method for solving large-scale strongly convex quadratic programming (QP). In this paper we propose some generalized CG (GCG) methods for solving the $\ell_1$-regularized (possibly not strongly) convex QP that terminate at an optimal solution in a finite number of iterations. At each iteration, our methods first identify a face of an orthant and then either perform an exact line search along the direction of the negative projected minimum-norm subgradient of the objective function or execute a CG subroutine that conducts a sequence of CG iterations until a CG iterate crosses the boundary of this face or an approximate minimizer of over this face or a subface is found. We determine which type of step should be taken by comparing the magnitude of some components of the minimum-norm subgradient of the objective function to that of its rest components. Our analysis on finite convergence of these methods makes use of an error bound result and some key properties of the aforementioned exact line search and the CG subroutine. We also show that the proposed methods are capable of finding an approximate solution of the problem by allowing some inexactness on the execution of the CG subroutine. The overall arithmetic operation cost of our GCG methods for finding an $\epsilon$-optimal solution depends on $\epsilon$ in $O(\log(1/\epsilon))$, which is superior to the accelerated proximal gradient method [2,23] that depends on $\epsilon$ in $O(1/\sqrt{\epsilon})$. In addition, our GCG methods can be extended straightforwardly to solve box-constrained convex QP with finite convergence. Numerical results demonstrate that our methods are very favorable for solving ill-conditioned problems.


The status exchange hypothesis suggests that partners in black/white marriages in the United States trade racial for educational status, indicating strong hierarchical barriers between racial groups. The authors examine trends in status exchange in black/white marriages and cohabitations between 1980 and 2010, a period during which these unions increased from 0.3 percent to 1.5 percent of all young couples. The authors find that status exchange between black men and white women did not decline among either marriages or cohabitations, even as interracial unions became more prevalent. The authors also distinguish two factors driving exchange: (1) the growing probability of marrying a white person as educational attainment increases for both blacks and whites (educational boundaries) and (2) a direct trade of race-by-education between partners (dyadic exchange). Although the theoretical interpretation of exchange has focused on the latter factor, the authors show that status exchange largely emerges from the former.


In 1636, residents at the convent of Santa Chiara in Carpi in northern Italy were struck by an extraordinary illness that provoked bizarre behavior. Eventually numbering fourteen, the afflicted nuns were subject to screaming fits, throwing themselves on the floor, and falling abruptly into a deep sleep. When medical experts' cures proved ineffective, exorcists ministered to the women and concluded that they were possessed by demons and the victims of witchcraft. Catering to women from elite families, the nunnery suffered much turmoil for three years and, remarkably, three of the victims died from their ills. A maverick nun and a former confessor were widely suspected to be responsible, through witchcraft, for these woes. Based primarily on the exhaustive investigation by the Inquisition of Modena, The Scourge of Demons examines this fascinating case in its historical context. The travails of Santa Chiara occurred at a time when Europe witnessed peaks in both witch-hunting and in the numbers of people reputedly possessed by demons. Female religious figures appeared particularly prone to demonic attacks, and Counter-Reformation Church authorities were especially interested in imposing stricter discipline on convents. Watt carefully considers how the nuns of Santa Chiara understood and experienced alleged possession and witchcraft, concluding that Santa Chiara's diabolical troubles and their denouement -- involving the actions of nuns, confessors, inquisitorial authorities, and exorcists -- were profoundly shaped by the unique confluence of religious, cultural, judicial, and intellectual trends that flourished in the 1630s.


Quick and easy to reference, this short, clinically focused guide is ideal for use on placements or for revision.

The professional role of the nurse is at the very foundation of good care management and provision. Nurses are accountable to patients, the public, employers and their entire profession. It is imperative that you have a sound understanding of the various ethical, legal and professional issues you will face during your career. This competency-based text covers:

- Professional issues and accountability
- Communication
- The patient journey
- Diagnostic testing
- Care planning
- Managing and leading in the clinical environment
- End-of-life care

Outlining relevant key concepts, lifespan matters, assessment and nursing skills, it also helps you learn by including learning outcomes, concept map summaries, activities, questions and scenarios with sample answers, and critical reflection thinking points. It is suitable for pre-registration nurses, students on the nursing associate programme and newly qualified nurses.


Generally inverter is developed with centre on high reliability, low cost and mass-production for transformed electrical energy from the PV module to the grid. Basically the DC/AC inverters are used in grid connected photovoltaic energy production systems as the power processing interface between the electric grid and the photovoltaic energy source. The energy injected into the electric grid by the photovoltaic system depends on the amount of power extracted from the photovoltaic power source and the efficient processing of the DC/AC inverter power. Basically the line commutated inverter has generate square shaped waveform of line current, which has produces large amount of harmonic and also produces excess of heat which causes the transformer winding is damage. The effects of the electric grid standards and regulations as well as the photovoltaic array working characteristics on the design of grid-connected photovoltaic inverters have been considered. In this paper explain the basic idea about the control methods and topologies like cascaded multilevel inverter, Sinusoidal Pulse width Modulation (SPWM), 3-level diode clamp inverter and Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) to grid connected inverter for solar photovoltaic based system. After analysis the technique Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) is apply to control the inverter because of its high efficiency and simulation is done through MATLAB/Simulink. Keyword: Photovoltaic system, Harmonic, Inverter topology, multilevel inverter, SPWM


Along with being a dynamic process that affects large areas, desertification is also one of the most serious problems in many countries. The effects of this phenomenon threaten the sustainability of natural resources, namely water resources, agricultural production and major basic infrastructure, specifically roads and habitations. Several factors exacerbate this phenomenon such as the climate dryness, the geological and morphological characteristics of the terrain, the irrational use of space, population growth and the over-exploitation of vegetation and water resources. This work aims to evaluate the desertification index in the Oued-El-Maleh watershed, through the integration of key factors involved in the MEDALUS model (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use) within a GIS. The model includes among its indexes: climate, vegetation, soil and management. Each index was obtained by the combination of sub-indexes. All the factors, measured and integrated into a geographic information system, enabled us to spatialize, on a synthetic map, the degree of the desertification effect throughout the watershed. This map is a managing tool available for decision-making regarding the selection of priority areas in the fight against desertification. High sensitivity to desertification class represents only 35% of the watershed. This class is concentrated in the north of the study area that corresponds to plains and low altitude. This could be explained by the dominance of agro-pastoral activity and the presence of a big population pressure.


Based on the new generation TMCP technology, The State Key Laboratory of rolling and automation, Northeastern University(RAL) developed an advanced cooling system(ADCOS-PM). The system was combination of ultra-fast cooling (UFC) equipment with the advantage of high cooling intensity and homogeneous cooling and traditional accelerated cooling equipment(ACC). The UFC equipment was composed of jet impingement cooling device with high-pressure water and the ACC equipment was composed of laminar cooling device with good controllability. The control object of ADCOS-PM control system including finish cooling temperature and cooling-rate of every stage was controlled by adjusting the parameters such as the run-out table speed, state of active and inactive jet, flow rate of active jet. The temperature profile of plate was completed on the run-out table so that the product with fine microstructure and good mechanical properties was produced. The ADCOS-PM was built in 4300mm plate mill of Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. in 2010 and the recycling products with high-performance were produced.


A wide clinical experience in General Surgery has brought about a remarkable knowledge about lymphatic disorders both primary and secondary ones. Diagnostic and histopathological studies of lymphatic diseases allowed to better understand etiological aspects and pathophysiological mechanisms responsible of complex clinical features correlated to lymphatic dysfunctions. Translational lymphologic basic and clinical researches permitted to improve therapeutical approaches both from the medical and surgical point of view. Thus, strategies of treatment were proposed to prevent lymphatic injuries, to avoid lymphatic complications and to treat lymphatic diseases early in order to be able even to cure these pathologies.


Study Design. A population-based case-control study, we identified adolescents with and without scoliosis in Minnesota who were 12 through 18 years of age. Matched control subjects were randomly selected from school children who did not have scoliosis or any other condition. Information on scoliosis was obtained by a self-administered questionnaire, the Adolescent Health Survey. Collected on more than 75,000 school age adolescents, with established validity and reliability, a secondary analysis of adolescents with scoliosis was performed as compared with a normative peer group. Objective. To describe and characterize the psychosocial impact of scoliosis on the areas of peer relations, body image, and health-compromising behavior, such as suicidal thought and alcohol consumption. Summary of Background Data. The impact of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis has not been assessed using generic health status measures appropriate for adolescents. Previous studies have concentrated on the health status of adults by measuring work status, marriage status, and other adult measures. The purpose of this study was to study the health status of patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, using the Adolescent Health Survey, a generic health status measure with established validity and reliability. Methods. Body image, peer relations, social and high-risk behavior, and comparative health were assessed to determine if scoliosis was an independent risk factor and to determine if scoliosis was associated with these psychosocial issues. Results. Six hundred eighty-five cases of scoliosis were identified from the 34,706 adolescents. The prevalence was 1.97%. Of the 685 adolescents with scoliosis and their control subjects, the adjusted odds ratio for having suicidal thought among adolescents with scoliosis, compared to adolescents without scoliosis, was 1.40 (P value of 0.04) after adjustment for race, gender, socioeconomic status, and age. The adjusted odds ratio for having feelings about poor body development among adolescents with scoliosis was 1.82 (P value 0.001) compared with adolescents without scoliosis after adjustment for race, gender, socioeconomic status, and age. Scoliosis was an independent risk factor for suicidal thought, worry and concern over body development, and peer interactions after adjustment. Conclusion. Scoliosis is a significant risk factor for psychosocial issues and health-compromising behavior. Gender differences exist in male and female adolescents with scoliosis.


This paper presents results of an on-going effort to develop a new rotating stall suppression system. This system uses oscillatory blowing along the blade span on one or more airfoils in a row. The results presented herein focus on the flow characteristics of the internal plenum, and the performance of the oscillatory blowing system. A numerical simulation and an experimental investigation are being used to study the internal flow characteristics. The numerical simulation uses a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes flow solver where the turbulence was modeled with the Shear Stress Transport model. The experimental setup developed for validating the oscillatory flow was developed to determine the relationship between the geometric configurations of the internal plenum and the resultant unsteady flow characteristics. The numerical simulations will be validated by data obtained from the experimental setup.


A major goal of the treatment of cleft lip and palate is to improve the esthetic acceptability of the face. It is assumed that an improved esthetic appearance is associated with significant psychosocial benefits, but there is almost no empiric support for this assumption. Researchers have been hindered in the study of this problem because scales to measure severity of facial impairment of clefts have not been available; however, standard scales of facial impairment have been developed for occlusal traits, orthognathic structure, and facial attractiveness. The purpose of this paper is to describe selected theoretic and methodologic approaches to scaling the esthetic acceptability of various facial characteristics and to discuss how these methods have been applied to the study of relationships between facial morphology and psychosocial variables. It is argued that these approaches may be useful, as models for the development of scales of severity of cleft impairment, to clinicians and reseachers who are interested in the treatment of facial clefts.


Focusing on an unresearched group of women brewers, and drawing conceptually on embodiment and identity work, this article explores worker corporealities within the gendered landscape of microbreweries and deepens understanding of the body/work/gender nexus in the context of brewer's work. In doing so, it challenges the marginalisation of female worker bodies in scholarly work on male-dominated occupations. Drawing on interview and observation data collected in the UK in 2015, verbal narratives of women brewers' experiences of their working lives are utilised to provide insights into how their gendered bodily practices constitute resources for constructing a distinctive 'brewster' identity. Women brewers engage in identity work, on both individual and collective levels, through the material and symbolic framing of their embodied and gendered working selves; navigating their physical working environments; downplaying gender to emphasise physical competence; and foregrounding gender in relation to non-physical aspects to accentuate difference and collective contribution.


Nanostructured porous silica particles with sizes in the micrometer to sub-micrometer range are of great interest due to their potential applications as catalyst supports and nanocomposite materials. However, if these particles are to be used in industry, a process must be developed to affordably produce them on a large scale. This paper reports on a high-energy ball-milling process that has been used to create micrometerto sub-micrometer-sized mesoporous silica particles starting from a silica xerogel prepared by a surfactant self-assembly sol– gel process. We have studied various milling conditions such as milling media (zirconia, stainless steel, or steelcentered nylon balls), milling time, and the presence of surfactants during milling and the resulting effect on particle size and pore structure. Results from transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, light scattering, and nitrogen adsorption demonstrate the feasibility of producing large quantities of nanostructured particles by this simple milling process.


Powdered whole liver was used in cases of general amyloidosis secondary to bone tuberculosis. Seven children were given this therapy. One died shortly after the treatment was started. Another child died after fourteen months of treatment, although retrogression of the lardaceous disease was evident. In this instance, probably irreparable changes set in prior to the inception of the therapy. The remaining five showed no clinical signs of amyloidosis after treatment for a period of eighteen months.


The aim of this experimental study was to determine whether Motexafin Gadolinium (MGd) could serve as an efficient intraoperative contrast agent avoiding problems that arise with surgically-induced intracranial enhancement. F98 orthotopic brain tumors or surgical lesions were induced in Fisher rats. T1-weighted MRI studies were performed with either a single or multiple daily doses of MGd. The last contrast dose was administered either 7 or 24 h prior to scanning in both tumor-bearing and surgically treated animals. Animals receiving either 30 or 60 mg/kg MGd i.v. developed clinical signs of impaired motor activity, and increasing lethargy. MGd given i.p. was tolerated up to a dose of 140 mg/kg. Despite multiple dosages, and several administration modes (i.p. and i.v.), no significant enhancement was observed if the scans were performed 7 or 24 h following the last MGd dose. Clear enhancement was observed if the scans were performed 30 min. following MGd administration. Scans of necrotic lesions were positive 7 h post MGd injection. MGd scans showed no significant enhancement following surgically-induced lesions while scans with conventional contrast agents showed both meningeal and intraparenchymal enhancement. This study suggests that MGd is not sequestered in viable tumor for the necessary time interval required to allow delayed imaging in this model. The agent does seem to remain in necrotic tissue for longer time intervals. MGd therefore would not be suitable as a contrast agent in iMRI for the detection of residual tumor tissue during surgery.


With the evolution of today's semiconductor technology, chip temperature increases rapidly mainly due to the growth in power density. For modern embedded real-time systems, it is crucial to estimate maximal temperatures in order to take mapping or other design decisions to avoid burnout, and still be able to guarantee meeting real-time constraints. This paper provides answers to the question: When work-conserving scheduling algorithms, such as earliest-deadline-first (EDF), rate-monotonie (RM), deadline-monotonic (DM), are applied, what is the worst-case peak temperature of a real-time embedded system under all possible scenarios of task executions? We propose an analytic framework, which considers a general event model based on network and real-time calculus. This analysis framework has the capability to handle a broad range of uncertainties in terms of task execution times, task invocation periods, and jitter in task arrivals. Simulations show that our framework is a cornerstone to design real-time systems that have guarantees on both schedulability and maximal temperatures.


[Introduction]. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) constitutes a major public intervention in the European Union (EU) which generates large redistributive effects. Significant resources are being transferred among producers and consumers of agricultural products and the taxpayers. The geographic distribution of these three groups (producers, consumers, taxpayers) in the different member states generates also transfers among the member states. The distribution of benefits and losses under the CAP has attracted the interest of researchers in the past. During the 1980s, Buckwell et al (1982) and Brown (1989) dealt with this issue, when the rules of the 'traditional' CAP were very much in place. In the 1990s, Ackrill, Hine, Rayner and Suardi (1997) obtained estimates of the impact of the 1992 CAP reform on the existing distribution of benefits and losses. However, their analysis is ex ante in nature and it concentrates on the most important products included in the 1992 reform of the CAP, excluding the mediterranean products. Tarditi and Zanias (1997 and 2000) do include the mediterranean products and obtain ex post results up to 1995 for the EU regions. Zanias (2002) includes the mediterranean products, produces results at national levels up to 1999 and simulates the potential impact of a partial re-nationalisation of the CAP. Renewed interest for the issue exists for three reasons: 1) Negotiations currently take place in the EU about the 2007-2013 financial framework and the initial positions of the large budget contributors call for a reduction in the EU own resources, which is opposed by some other member states. Since the financing of the CAP attracts nearly half of the EU budget, the distribution of the CAP benefits has important implications for these negotiations. 2) Three major reforms of the CAP have taken place (1992, 1999, 2003), which have changed the philosophy of the CAP, moving away from price intervention and towards direct subsidies to the farmers and rural development measures. Yet the distribution results so far stop in 1999 and a need for more recent results exists. 3) It is useful to have a benchmarking of the distribution of benefits before the implementation of the latest CAP reform (2003) and the gradual application of the CAP to the new member states. This study extends the results of Zanias (2002) regarding the distribution of benefits among member states covering the period 1988-2003, and focuses on the "anatomy" of the generated transfers and their determinants.


Abstract: Chirality and handedness are concepts that apply to the structure of molecules. Chirality is defined by the lack of certain features of symmetry, which lead to an object not being superimposable on its mirror image. Handedness is a different phenomenon relating to the ability to classify chiral objects into right‐handed and left‐handed objects. All handed objects are chiral, but not all chiral objects are handed. In 1968 through 1970, Ruch and coworkers developed a theory of chirality that provided a mathematical basis for the handedness of chiral objects. Handed chiral objects are considered to be analogous to shoes, which are readily classified into right and left shoes regardless of the size, material, style, or other attributes of the shoes in question. Nonhanded chiral objects are considered to be analogous to potatoes, which have no symmetry because of their irregular patterns of 'bumps' and 'eyes,' thereby meeting the lack of symmetry requirements for chirality. There is, however, no unambiguous way to classify a set of potatoes into 'left' and 'right' potatoes. In the case of molecules, a tetrahedron with four different substituents such as an asymmetric carbon atom in organic chemistry can readily be classified into right and left tetrahedra, as is typical for organic molecules in biological systems. An octahedral molecule with six different substituents, however, exhibits nonhanded chirality. For this reason, the fact that the key building block of natural products is a tetrahedral carbon atom rather than an octahedral atom of some type may be a critical factor in the handedness of many molecules found in biological structures.


This paper describe an application of a transductive method for risk mapping which allows to compute the confidence interval of an estimation, without any assumption on data distribution, except identity and independancy of inputs. The methos reliability is compared to conditionnal Sequential Gaussian Simulation. The robustness of this reliability to poor underlying regression models is also studied. The data set used is a digital elevation model of the South-West part of Switzerland ('Valais'). Experiments to evaluate the robustness of RRCM against the iid assumption are conducted using the data set of cadmium concentration in Leman Lake sediments in 1983 ('Cd83')


Austenite/ferrite phase transformations in Fe-xCu-10Ni alloys, 0<x<15 (mass%), are studied under two different cooling conditions, ice-brined quenching or slow cooling in the dilatometer. The influence of copper addition and cooling rate on the microstructure of the alloys is studied. Metallographic examinations of quenched samples show that metastable transformations occur during cooling. As for Fe-Ni alloys, it is impossible to stabilize the high temperature phase (γFeNi) in the Fe-Ni-Cu alloys. Dilatometry measurements of the γ → α transformation temperature with a cooling rate of 2°C/min also indicate a metastable phase formation despite the low cooling rate. For all alloys, a mixture of massive and lath ferrite is observed, one being predominant depending on the cooling conditions and composition. It is shown that the cooling rate has nearly no influence on the microstructure of alloys with a small amount of Cu unlike the alloys containing more Cu. In all alloys containing Cu, nanometric γCu precipitates, much finer in the quenched samples, are detected in the ferrite grains.


This thesis presents an exploratory study into the concept of assessment confidence development, building upon previous studies in self-efficacy and academic confidence. In particular, this study concentrates on students transitioning from FE to their first year of HE studies in Business and Management and the associated assessment regime. The resultant substantive understandings of experience of this transition have been constructed with the assistance of 11 first year students, during 2 interviews across a year. The first of these interviews was undertaken in induction week and was followed by a second interview at the end of the first academic year of HE study.
An inductive approach has been taken to the production of data which has been analysed using thematic analysis and I-poem analysis in order to theorise around the influencing factors and aspects of assessment design linked to the development of assessment confidence. The subsequent findings have emerged through authentic representation of the student voice, confirmed during member checking exercises.
The main findings of this study suggest that students may be more widely influenced by their contextual experiences of FE assessment than have previously been recognised. In addition, student experiences of assessment regimes at this level are typified by familiarity, routine, repetition and modelling. In the transition to HE assessments, the students in this study experienced self-doubt, uncertainty and ambiguity leading to perceptions of risk and lack of control. Assessment design aspects of clarity, relevance and authenticity in addition to student choice and freedom are presented as key to understanding how HE educators can mitigate risk and loss of control during this transitional period.
This thesis contributes to the wider understanding of how students interact with assessment during transitional phases and in particular into unfamiliar subject areas with distinctly different assessment regimes. This substantive theorising presented builds upon the more domain specific notions of self-efficacy already associated with student 'confidence' in order to better design the assessment experience for students making that transition.


We use data from the past 30 years of takeover activity in the U.S. banking industry to test competing neoclassical and misvaluation merger theories. Test results are consistent with evidence in the literature that merger activity is significantly related to both structural industry change and stock price misvaluation. Our primary contribution is to show that changes in misvaluation reflect a rise in industry-wide risk taking and that increases in risk originate from changes in industry structure due to deregulation. A measure of bank risk taking subsumes the power of stock price misvaluation to explain subsequent merger activity.


Non-uniformed 3D sparse data, e.g., point clouds or voxels in different spatial positions, make contribution to the task of 3D object detection in different ways. Existing basic components in sparse convolutional networks (Sparse CNNs) process all sparse data, regardless of regular or submanifold sparse convolution. In this paper, we introduce two new modules to enhance the capability of Sparse CNNs, both are based on making feature sparsity learnable with position-wise importance prediction. They are focal sparse convolution (Focals Conv) and its multi-modal variant of focal sparse convolution with fusion, or Focals Conv-F for short. The new modules can readily substitute their plain counterparts in existing Sparse CNNs and be jointly trained in an end-to-end fashion. For the first time, we show that spatially learnable sparsity in sparse convolution is essential for sophisticated 3D object detection. Extensive experiments on the KITTI, nuScenes and Waymo benchmarks validate the effectiveness of our approach. Without bells and whistles, our results outperform all existing single-model entries on the nuScenes test benchmark. Code and models are at github.com/dvlab-research/FocalsConv.


Infinite width limits of deep neural networks often have tractable forms. They have been used to analyse the behaviour of finite networks, as well as being useful methods in their own right. When investigating infinitely wide convolutional neural networks (CNNs), it was observed that the correlations arising from spatial weight sharing disappear in the infinite limit. This is undesirable, as spatial correlation is the main motivation behind CNNs. We show that the loss of this property is not a consequence of the infinite limit, but rather of choosing an independent weight prior. Correlating the weights maintains the correlations in the activations. Varying the amount of correlation interpolates between independent-weight limits and mean-pooling. Empirical evaluation of the infinitely wide network shows that optimal performance is achieved between the extremes, indicating that correlations can be useful.


ABSTRACT Background Skin temperature asymmetry (SkTA) may assist in early identification of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), but previous work has been limited by methodological shortcomings including failure to account for the cutaneous nerve distribution where temperature is measured and reliance on laboratory equipment not clinically available. Pilot work suggested that a cold pressor test (CPT) provided a consistent thermoregulatory stress and might increase sensitivity/specificity of SkTA measurements generated reliably by handheld infrared (IR) thermometers. Aims This study investigated the sensitivity, specificity, and validity of SkTA in the upper limb to identify CRPS. Methods This study was part of a larger clinical trial (the SARA study: www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT02070367). Using IR thermometers, we evaluated SkTA over major peripheral nerve distributions in the hands before and after immersing a single foot in 5°C water for 30 s. Participant groups included healthy volunteers, CRPS, known nerve injury, and hand fracture. Results SkTA was measured in 65 persons, including 17 persons with CRPS (meeting Budapest criteria). Analysis of variance for n = 378 SkTA observations supported diagnosis, CPT, and nerve distribution as significant predictors (P < 0.001) explaining 94% of the variance. Post CPT, sensitivity for a >1.5°C SkTA improved to 82.4% from 58.8%, whereas specificity dropped from 56.3% to 43.8%. Conclusion This study adds further support for the accuracy of SkTA as a diagnostic indicator of CRPS. Further precision in estimates will be gained from larger studies, which should also seek to replicate our findings for SkTA in the lower limbs.


According to the 2021 European Society of Cardiology guidelines, the four pillars of medical therapy in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) include sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors, beta-blockers, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitors. However, in clinical practice, concomitant use of all four drug groups in target doses is often limited by their intolerance or fear of potential complications. Herein, we present strategies to initiate or modify HFrEF therapy in frequent but challenging clinical scenarios (symptomatic hypotension, atrial fibrillation, kidney disease or worsening renal function, hyperkalemia) in a way that does not lead to unnecessary reduction or cessation of life-saving treatment.


Readability of code is commonly believed to impact the overall quality of software. Poor readability not only hinders developers from understanding what the code is doing but also can cause developers to make sub-optimal changes and introduce bugs. Developers also recognize this risk and state readability among their top information needs. Researchers have modeled readability scores. However, thus far, no one has investigated how readability evolves over time and how that impacts design quality of software. We perform a large scale study of 49 open source Java projects, spanning 8296 commits and 1766 files. We find that readability is high in open source projects and does not fluctuate over project's lifetime unlike design quality of a project. Also readability has a non-significant correlation of 0.151 (Kendall's τ ) with code smell count (indicator of design quality). Since current readability measure is unable to capture the increased difficulty in reading code due to the degraded design quality, our results hint towards the need of a better measurement and modeling of code readability.


Aim To evaluate the impact of radiochromic film positioning relative to the central beam axis (CAX) in proton beam therapy. Secondarily, to compare the dosimetric measurements obtained by RTQA and EBT film and to compare these to the doses calculated by the treatment planning system (TPS). Methods The EBT and RTQA dosimetric radiochromic films were immersed in a water phantom and irradiated with a proton beam. The films were placed parallel to the CAX and at a 5° angle on the horizontal plane to assess the effect of film inclination on Bragg peak profiles. Calibration was performed by irradiating small pieces of film at doses ranging from 0.0 Gy to 3.5 Gy in increments of 0.5 Gy. The TPS was used to create treatment plans for two different geometrical targets (cylindrical and cuboidal). After irradiation, all film pieces were scanned on a flatbed scanner and red channel data were extracted from the 48‐bit RGB images using ImageJ, Photoshop, Origin8, and Excel software. The dose distributions from the irradiated films were compared to the dose obtained from the TPS. Bragg peak profiles were abstracted from the irradiated films and compared. Results The dosimetric measurements obtained by both EBT and RTQA positioned at a 5° to the CAX closely matched the dose calculated by the TPS for the cylindrical target. In contrast, dose distributions measured in the cuboidal targets were less precise. Gamma index (GI) values (3%/3 mm acceptance criteria for isodose >90% of dose) were 99.8% and 93% for EBT film placed at a 5° angle versus 47.1% and 80.8% for EBT film parallel to the beam. The dosimetric measurements in RTQA film positioned parallel to the CAX showed GI values with <27% agreement with the TPS‐calculated dose. Conclusion Our finding show that RTQA film can be used to accurately measure doses in the proton beam at the region of Bragg peak; however, to obtain the most accurate readings, the film should be positioned at a small angle to the CAX.


The purpose of this column is to respond to reader interests in security issues and at the same time to promote a greater understanding of NIDS. A "briefing" provides background information, among others. We hope these columns will help everyone to better understand the complex of issues involved in security affairs. Please note that the views in this column do not represent the official opinion of NIDS.


We study the formation mechanism of rims created around femtosecond laser ablated craters on glass. Experimental studies of the surface morphology reveal that a thin rim is formed around the smooth craters and is raised above the undamaged surface by about 50–100 nm. To investigate the mechanism of rim formation following a single ultrafast laser pulse, we perform a one-dimensional theoretical analysis of the thermal and fluid processes involved in the ablation process. The results indicate the existence of a very thin melted zone below the surface and suggest that the rim is formed by the high pressure plasma producing a pressure-driven fluid motion of the molten material outwards from the centre of the crater. The numerical solutions of pressure-driven fluid motion of the thin melt demonstrate that the melt can flow to the crater edge and form a rim within the first nanoseconds of the ablation process. The possibility that a tall rim can be formed during the initial stages of the plasma is suggestive that the rim may tilt outwards towards the low pressure region creating a resolidified melt splash as observed in the experiments. The possibility of controlling or suppressing the rim formation is discussed also.


Several known antiallergic agents, including cromolyn sodium and a series of pyrido[2,1-b]quinazolines, inhibit human alkaline phosphatase (ALP), a membranal enzyme associated with calcium uptake in certain tissues. A comparison of ALP and rat passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) inhibition indicates that PCA inhibition may be associated with drug-ALP interaction, since ALP inhibition potency parallels PCA inhibitory activity. The unpredictability of the PCA test toward clinical efficacy could in part be related to the uncompetitive nature of these inhibitors. The results also suggest that alkaline phosphatase may be a component of membranal calcium channels.


What is the relationship between good leadership and corruption? In this paper, I will compare the leadership characteristics and corruption scandals of Vladimir Putin and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to understand the role leadership and corruption played in the continuous support of the two leaders. The abundance of similarities between the economic and political conditions of the two states as well the characteristics of the two presidents make Brazil and Russia perfect selections for the comparison. While examining the state of corruption and the improvements under both leaders, I analyze their leadership strategies to explain their popularity. I conclude by arguing that, in the eyes of Russians and Brazilians, corruption is secondary to great leadership characteristics. As long as the population considers the leader fit to rule, primarily that he possesses positive leadership characteristics and produces results for the country, the public will overlook his corrupt activities and continue to elect him.


Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) induces a sequence-specific silencing in eukaryotic cells. This silencing process beggins when long dsRNA is cleaved to 21 to 26 long small RNA by means of the RNAse III-type enzyme Dicer. These small dsRNA are included into silencing effector complexes, that are targeted to complementary sequences. Small RNA dependent gene silencing can be achieved by distinct mechanisms based depending mainly on the nature of target sequences and on the proteins present in the effector complex. The route of interference RNA (RNAi) begins when Dicer yields small interference RNA (siRNA) that bind to complementary mRNA for its degradation, forming the RISC complex. siRNA are naturally formed from transposons and dsRNA viruses during its replication, as well as from other bidirectional transcribed repetitive sequences. Some of the enzymes thar are part of the RNAi machinery, including Dicer, are encoded by multigene families in many species, that also play a role in other mechanisms of RND-dependent gene silencing. MicroRNA's (miRNA) are other small RNA's that can induce gene silencing at the mRNA level. These are formed in a general manner when Dicer process hairpin structures resulting from the transcription of non-coding sequences from plant and animal genomes. miRNA's are integrated into a RISC-like complex, after which, depending on their degree of complementarity with target mRNA, can either repress translation or induce mRNA degradation. miRNA-dependent silencing is essential for the development of multicellular organisms. Artificial RNAi induction by means of siRNA or miRNA is being used as a tool to inactivate gene expression in culture cells and in living organisms. This review focuses on the progress in the understanding of the mechanisms involved in gene regulation by RNA in animals and details some current efforts to apply theses phenomena as a tool in research and in the therapeutic of human diseases.


Intracardiac echocardiography (ICE), a technique in which structures of the heart are imaged using a catheter navigated inside the cardiac chambers, is an important imaging technique for guidance in cardiac ablation therapy. Automatic segmentation of these images is valuable for guidance and targeting of treatment sites. In this paper, we describe an approach to segment ICE images by generating an empirical model of blood pool and tissue intensities. Normal, Weibull, Gamma, and Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distributions are fit to histograms of tissue and blood pool pixels from a series of ICE scans. A total of 40 images from 4 separate studies were evaluated. The model was trained and tested using two approaches. In the first approach, the model was trained on all images from 3 studies and subsequently tested on the 40 images from the 4th study. This procedure was repeated 4 times using a leave-one-out strategy. This is termed the between-subjects approach. In the second approach, the model was trained on 10 randomly selected images from a single study and tested on the remaining 30 images in that study. This is termed the within-subjects approach. For both approaches, the model was used to automatically segment ICE images into blood and tissue regions. Each pixel is classified using the Generalized Liklihood Ratio Test across neighborhood sizes ranging from 1 to 49. Automatic segmentation results were compared against manual segmentations for all images. In the between-subjects approach, the GEV distribution using a neighborhood size of 17 was found to be the most accurate with a misclassification rate of approximately 17%. In the within-subjects approach, the GEV distribution using a neighborhood size of 19 was found to be the most accurate with a misclassification rate of approximately 15%. As expected, the majority of misclassified pixels were located near the boundaries between tissue and blood pool regions for both methods.


Indian power sector is highly energy deficient with grid frequency going as low as 48 Hz. Constraints on electricity usage from state electricity boards are imposed on industrial and commercial sectors so as to minimize load curtailment in residential sectors. Also with climate change playing an increasing role in our lives, efforts are underway to promote energy efficiency in infrastructure usage. As a consequence of these two facts most organizations consider 'greening their infrastructure' as one of the top concerns. The conventional way of quantifying infrastructure efficiency is by monitoring energy consumption at the resource level which does not help in taking decisions on investment in energy efficient projects. In this paper we emphasize the need and explain the methodology to arrive at energy consumption at activity and business process levels. The objective of this paper is to develop a tool with which the energy consumption of activities and business processes can be estimated, so as to avoid the need to meter all of them. Results are presented from a case study carried out in one of the delivery centers of Tata Consultancy Services.


The determination of trace-amount organotins in plastic food packaging materials is of great significance in food safety. However, due to the complexity of organotins and sample treatment processes, it is still a challenging task. Here, we report a method for the sensitive and simultaneous determination of organotins in plastic food packaging materials and edible oils, by utilizing sheathless capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. The method of sample pretreatment with ultrasonic extraction and solid phase extraction is used to eliminate interference. The results showed low limits of detection (LODs) of 2 pg mL-1-50 pg mL-1 and excellent inter/intra-day repeatability. Good average recoveries in the range of 80.27% to 108.52% were obtained at three spiked concentrations, with a relative standard deviation less than 8.71%. The successful simultaneous determination of the target analytes will pave the way for further assessment of contamination and migration behaviour of organotins from packaging materials to food, which is of great significance for evaluating and controlling food safety.


In this thesis we investigate the influence of an additional periodic modulation potential which is weak, either electric or magnetic in nature, and spatially modulated along one dimension, on the equilibrium thermodynamic and dielectric response properties of a two-dimensional electron gas in the presence of an externally applied perpendicular magnetic field. The application of an additional modulation potential results in a broadening of the Landau level energy spectrum into bands whose widths oscillate as a function of the externally applied magnetic field. Such oscillations are found to reflect the commensurability between the two different length scales present in the system, namely the cyclotron diameter at the chemical potential and the period of the modulation. W e show that such commensurability effects are also to be found in all thermodynamic quantities of the system which, in the case of a magnetic modulation, are shown for the first time^ They appear at low magnetic fields as an amplitude modulation of the well-known de Haas-van Alphen-type oscillations, familiar from the homogeneous two-dimensional electron gas system in an external magnetic field which m a y or m a y not be resolved depending on temperature, and are only weakly dependent on temperature. Their origin is attributed to the oscillations occurring in the bandwidths and are consequently completely different in origin from the usual de Haas-van Alphen-type oscillations. W e also find that the resulting commensurability oscillations in each thermodynamic function exhibit well-defined phase relations between the electric and magnetic modulations except in the case of the orbital magnetisation and the orbital magnetic susceptibility. The dynamical dielectric response function and collective excitations for such weak spatially modulated systems are also calculated within the random-phase approximation. It is found that the dynamical dielectric response function is not only broadened by the additional spatial modulation, it also contains a series of subsingularities at the band edges. The origin of the new subsingularities is related to the transition energies near the van Hove singularities of the energy bands attributed to the modulation-induced broadening of the energy spectrum. This broadening, being non-uniform, leads to the reintroduction of particle-hole pair excitations into the dielectric response function. Such broadening of the response function is also found to modify the magnetoplasmon modes of such systems over their unmodulated counterpart. The broadened Landau levels allow for a new low-frequency intramagnetoplasmon mode to occur which exhibits oscillatory behaviour as a function of the external magnetic field. It is also shown that additional modulation-induced oscillations occur in the inter-magnetoplasmon spectrum, which is split into the principal and the Bernstein modes. All such oscillations reflect the ubiquitous commensurability oscillations now found in these weakly modulated systems as a function of the external magnetic field.


Mobile communications technology has increasingly become integrated into modern day life and the rate of this integration is growing rapidly. However, many mobile devices including personal digital assistants (PDA) and mobile phones are predominantly passive, lacking a facility for automated information handling. For example, a mobile phone cannot automatically detect a user's context and react to support that situation. In this thesis, we present a context aware system that automatically detects mobile users' activity context through information gathered from a mobile phone. The thesis contains two main contributions: the development of the context prediction model and the implementation of a context aware system. The development of the context prediction model involves the use of Bayesian networks to solve the uncertainty regarding a user current activity, along with the prediction of possible future activities. A Bayesian probabilistic network is a comprehensive probabilistic computational framework for reasoning under conditions of uncertainty. In this research, we utilise Bayesian networks as a modelling tool to support context reasoning and activity prediction within the context aware domain. A further contribution of this work is the development of a real world context aware system based upon our above theoretical contribution. A Sony Ericsson P910i mobile phone alongside a context aware engine server has been implemented to demonstrate the theoretical principles. The mobile phone is used to capture contextual information from a user and interact with the context engine server. Using a probabilistic approach and uncertainty metric, the Bayesian context prediction network (which is located on the context engine server) predicts a user's likely activity, and contextual information is provided to the user via their mobile phone. A dataset of real-life user activities has been collected to evaluate the accuracy of the predicted activities. The results of the evaluation demonstrated encouraging levels of accuracy for this approach.


HREM lattice images have been obtained using forbidden reflections generated by (111) stacking faults in silicon lying normal to the beam at temperatures up to 600 °C. Stationary and video images of 30°/90° partial dislocations relaxing toward equilibrium are studied. The lattice images formed from these forbidden reflections show directional fluctuations which are believed to be kinks, since, as expected from mobility measurements, a higher density is observed on 90° partials than on 30° partials, whereas artifacts contribute equally. Video difference images are used to obtain direct estimates of kink velocity. Observations of kink delay at obstacles, thought to be oxygen atoms at the dislocation core, yield unpinning energies and the parameters of the obstacle theory of kink motion. The kink formation energy is obtained from the distribution of kink pair separations in low-dose images. The kink migration rather than formation energy barrier is thus found to control the velocity of unobstructed dislocations in silicon under these experimental conditions.


The potential hazards of humic acid (HA) associated with hog waste effluent, coupled with increasing awareness of environmental problems, have prompted many countries to control disposal of effluents into water bodies and to maximize removal of HA. Here we employed the white-rot fungus, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, to degrade the HA in composted hog waste effluent, evaluated by the response surface method. Preliminary experiments demonstrate that pH, temperature and quantity of inoculum are significant variables determining success of the fungus. In total, 13 experiments were conducted with three variables designated as A (pH), B (temperature) and C (inoculum amount). The optimal conditions for reduction of HA by P. chrysosporium are pH 6, 31.5°C and an inoculum quantity of 5.86 g. Predicted and experimental results exhibit strong agreement, indicating efficiency in the model obtained by response surface method. Therefore, P. chrysosporium is an effective micro-organism for removal of HA from composted hog waste effluent.


Aims: The paper gives an overview on design and sample selection, measures, realization and analyses of the 2012 Epidemiological Survey of Substance Abuse (ESA). Methods: A disproportional sample was drawn from population registers using a two- stage probability design oversampling younger birth cohorts. Different modes of administration were used (paper-and-pencil questionnaire, telephone interview, online questionnaire). Results: A total of 9 084 individuals aged 18 to 64 years participated in the survey (response rate 53.6 %). The redressement weight had an effectiveness of 67.6 %. Non-responders showed a lower prevalence of alcohol and cannabis use, but a higher prevalence of episodic heavy drinking and hypnotics use as well as a higher tobacco use quantity. Respondents in the telephone and internet mode had a lower rate of substance use than those in the paper-and-pencil mode. Conclusions: Contrary to the general trend of decreasing response rates, the ESA achieves increasing response rates over the past years due to the application of a mixed mode design. Selectivity effects are possible because of the exclusion of specific population subgroups and non- response effects.


Theory and research suggests a link between self-esteem and cardiac vagal tone (parasympathetic nervous system influence on the heart). A literature review suggests that vagal tone protects the body against physiological threat responding (e.g., sympathetic responding) and that vagal tone is highest when we feel secure. Terror management theory posits that humans, who live in a largely symbolic world, derive feelings of security and protection from threat by way of acquiring and maintaining selfesteem. Thus we hypothesized that if vagal tone provides physiological security, and we derive a sense of security through symbolic means by way of self-esteem, then high or increased self-esteem should lead to high or increased vagal tone. To test this hypothesis we conducted two studies in which we manipulated self-esteem by giving participants positive or negative feedback. We predicted that positive feedback would lead to higher vagal tone than negative feedback. Consistent with these predictions, in both studies we found indications that positive feedback increased vagal tone relative to negative feedback. In Study 2, to more fully test our theoretical perspective we induced threat by leading participants to believe they would receive electric shocks. We predicted that both self-esteem and vagal tone would buffer against sympathetic threat responding. Consistent with our model we found that the positive feedback eliminated the sympathetic response to threat of shock that was elicited in the negative feedback condition. Also consistent with our model, higher vagal tone predicted lower sympathetic responding to threat of shock. We discuss future directions for this research and implications for physical health.


This thesis studies the use of collaborations as a mean to visualize behaviour of an observed distributed reactiv system. The work is inspired by previous work where an approach using elementary collaborations, that is collaborations with only two participants, visualized a running system. This work investigates how the previous work can be enhanched by adding the possibility to visualize systsem behaviour at different abstraction levels and improve usability, scalabiliy and overview in the visualization. A monitor for the visulization of distributed reactiv systems will be implemented. A system model and trace information from the obeserved system will be used in order to realize the visualization. By adding the possibility to visualize nested collaborations, a systems behaviour can be visualized at different levels of abstraction. The necessary constraint on the model of a system, and an algorithm for the detection of nested collaboration in the observed system, is suggested and implemented. An automatic approach for the loading of data from a model of the observed system is added to improve uasbility. Additional filtering and layout mechanisms are implemented in order to provide better overview in the visualization. A post-mortem approach to visalization is taken in order to generate a correct visualzation. The speed of the visualzation can be controlled by the user. The possibility to reverse the visualization is also implemented.


With the widespread adoption of cloud computing, the ability to record and account for the usage of cloud resources in a credible and verifiable way has become critical for cloud service providers and users alike. The success of such a billing system depends on several factors: The billing transactions must have integrity and nonrepudiation capabilities; the billing transactions must be nonobstructive and have a minimal computation cost; and the service level agreement (SLA) monitoring should be provided in a trusted manner. Existing billing systems are limited in terms of security capabilities or computational overhead. In this paper, we propose a secure and nonobstructive billing system called THEMIS as a remedy for these limitations. The system uses a novel concept of a cloud notary authority for the supervision of billing. The cloud notary authority generates mutually verifiable binding information that can be used to resolve future disputes between a user and a cloud service provider in a computationally efficient way. Furthermore, to provide a forgery-resistive SLA monitoring mechanism, we devised a SLA monitoring module enhanced with a trusted platform module (TPM), called S-Mon. The performance evaluation confirms that the overall latency of THEMIS billing transactions (avg. 4.89 ms) is much shorter than the latency of public key infrastructure (PKI)-based billing transactions (avg. 82.51 ms), though THEMIS guarantees identical security features as a PKI. This work has been undertaken on a real cloud computing service called iCubeCloud.


In this study, I examine the literacy, school, and work experiences of three professional adult learners attending Northeast State College (NSC), a four-year public university in New England. I define professional adult learners as those over the age of twenty-five who enroll in formal programs of post-secondary study for reasons having to do primarily with career advancement and/or transition. More often than not, professional adult learners work full-time and pursue their studies part-time. This project grew out of my work teaching at NSC in the late 1990s. At that time, I had a limited sense of who professional adult learners are, why they enroll or re-enroll in college, and what role literacy, and in particular writing, plays in their lives. I had an even more limited sense of how I was supposed to help such students, many of whom are already competent and even savvy communicators, improve their writing. In this project, I investigate participants' literate lives both in and outside the classroom, examining, in particular, their writing across three domains: school, home/ community, and work. I argue that, far from remediation, what professional adult learners need in terms of writing instruction is an overarching awareness of the role of genre in professional and academic writing and frequent opportunities to connect writing instruction inside school with the wide variety of rhetorical tasks and projects in which they often already engage outside of school.


Offshore Oil spills are of tremendous concern due to its enormous harm to economic and ecological systems. Corexit dispersants are used as an important combating agent for oil spills as they can dilute oil downward to water column and promote its biodegradation. They were extensively used during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and dispersed 16% of the spilled oil.  The aims of this paper was to illustrate the transport and fate of the key ingredient of Corexit dispersants, dioctylsulfosuccinate, sodium salt (DOSS), in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Relevant data were collected from literature and governmental databases. Subsequently, the distribution of DOSS was correlated with distributions of the flow of diverse hydrocarbons. The results indicated that DOSS had highest distribution correlation coefficients with gases and BTEX. The smaller molecular gases and aromatic compounds have higher distribution correlation coefficients while larger molecular alkanes have higher distribution correlation coefficients. The obtained correlation would provide useful information on the fate and behaviour of Corexit dispersants.


One important problem in code generation for embedded processors is the design of efficient compilers for target machines with application-specific architectures. This paper outlines the design of a C compiler for an industrial application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) for telecom applications. The target ASIP is a, network processor with special instructions for bit-level access to data registers, which is required for packet-oriented communication protocol processing. From a practical viewpoint, we describe the main challenges in exploiting these application-specific features in a C compiler and we show how a compiler backend has been designed that accommodates these features by means of compiler intrinsics and a dedicated register allocator. The compiler is fully operational and first experimental results indicate that C-level programming of the ASIP leads to good code quality without the need for time-consuming assembly programming.


Abstract Prolog is an excellent tool for representing and manipulating data written in formal languages as well as natural language. Its safe semantics and automatic memory management make it a prime candidate for programming robust Web services. Although Prolog is commonly seen as a component in a Web application that is either embedded or communicates using a proprietary protocol, we propose an architecture where Prolog communicates to other components in a Web application using the standard HTTP protocol. By avoiding embedding in external Web servers, development and deployment become much easier. To support this architecture, in addition to the transfer protocol, we must also support parsing, representing and generating the key Web document types such as HTML, XML and RDF. This article motivates the design decisions in the libraries and extensions to Prolog for handling Web documents and protocols. The design has been guided by the requirement to handle large documents efficiently. The described libraries support a wide range of Web applications ranging from HTML and XML documents to Semantic Web RDF processing. The benefits of using Prolog for Web-related tasks are illustrated using three case studies.


ABSTRACT Candida albicans is among the most common human fungal pathogens, causing a broad range of infections, including life-threatening systemic infections. The cell wall of C. albicans is the interface between the fungus and the innate immune system. The cell wall is composed of an outer layer enriched in mannosylated glycoproteins (mannan) and an inner layer enriched in β-(1,3)-glucan and chitin. Detection of C. albicans by Dectin-1, a C-type signaling lectin specific for β-(1,3)-glucan, is important for the innate immune system to recognize systemic fungal infections. Increased exposure of β-(1,3)-glucan to the immune system occurs when the mannan layer is altered or removed in a process called unmasking. Nanoscale changes to the cell wall during unmasking were explored in live cells with atomic force microscopy (AFM). Two mutants, the cho1Δ/Δ and kre5Δ/Δ mutants, were selected as representatives that exhibit modest and strong unmasking, respectively. Comparisons of the cho1Δ/Δ and kre5Δ/Δ mutants to the wild type reveal morphological changes in their cell walls that correlate with decreases in cell wall elasticity. In addition, AFM tips functionalized with Dectin-1 revealed that the forces of binding of Dectin-1 to all of the strains were similar, but the frequency of binding was highest for the kre5Δ/Δ mutant, decreased for the cho1Δ/Δ mutant, and rare for the wild type. These data show that nanoscale changes in surface topology are correlated with increased Dectin-1 adhesion and decreased cell wall elasticity. AFM, using tips functionalized with immunologically relevant molecules, can map epitopes of the cell wall and increase our understanding of pathogen recognition by the immune system.


Complex systems are characterized by many interacting units that give rise to emergent behavior. A particularly advantageous way to study these systems is through the analysis of the networks that encode the interactions among the system constituents. During the past two decades, network science has provided many insights in natural, social, biological, and technological systems. However, real systems are often interconnected, with many interdependencies that are not properly captured by single-layer networks. To account for this source of complexity, a more general framework, in which different networks evolve or interact with each other, is needed. These are known as multilayer networks. Here, we provide an overview of the basic methodology used to describe multilayer systems as well as of some representative dynamical processes that take place on top of them. We round off the review with a summary of several applications in diverse fields of science.


Behavioural finance has been emerging as a significant discipline in academia as it speaks about the irrational behaviour of investors. Behavioural finance is the combination of classic economics and finance with psychology and decision making sciences. It is the study of how investors systematically make errors in judgment, or "mental mistakes".Specifically, behavioral finance has two blocks: cognitive psychology and the limits to arbitrage. Cognitive refers to how people think. There is a huge psychology literature documenting that people make systematic errors in the way they think: they are over confident they put too much weight on recent experience etc. Their preference may also create distortions. Behavioural finance uses this body of knowledge, rather than taking arrogant approach that it should be ignored. Limits to arbitrage refer to in what circumstances arbitrage force will be effective, and they won't be.
"An Empirical Study on the psychographic factors influencing financial decisions of informed individual investors, with special reference to Bangalore financial market", has done with the objective of identifying the effect of three major anomalies namely over confidence, fear of loss, and effect of information and media and relationship of age and fear of loss on the investment decisions. Primary Data collection has been done with the help of questionnaire and had a sample size of 242. The above three aspects have studied and proved using various statistical tools like chi square, one sample t test, ANOVA and correlation. From the study it was proved that investors are overconfident but at the same time there is high fear of loss as well. Study shows that effect of information and news stories plays a major role in investment decisions. Age and fear of loss also have a significant relationship. Only 3 Anomalies has been considered for the study, considering the remaining will give further scope of research.


Adolescents worldwide are at high risk for adverse consequences of sexual activity, including HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases, and unintended pregnancy. Effective intervention strategies are needed to address this risk. This article discusses the advantages of the reasoned action approach for developing such strategies, including the ability to integrate population-specific qualitative information with the approach to develop an intervention that is both theoretically grounded and culturally appropriate. It also describes an application of the approach in developing "Let Us Protect Our Future," a culturally appropriate HIV risk-reduction intervention for adolescents in South Africa, where sexually transmitted HIV infections are having an especially devastating impact. The results of a randomized controlled trial revealed that grade 6 students in schools that received the intervention were less likely to report having sexual intercourse, unprotected sexual intercourse, and multiple sexual partners during the 12-month follow-up period than their counterparts in control schools.


—The availability of numerous UI components, the promise of accessibility, and cross-platform support have made UI frameworks (e.g., Flutter, Xamarin, React Native) and libraries (e.g., wxPython) quite popular among software developers. However, their widespread use also highlights the need to understand the experiences of programmers with visual impairments with them. We adopted a mixed-methods design comprising two stud- ies to understand the accessibility and challenges of developing interfaces with UI frameworks and libraries. In Study 1, we analyzed 96 randomly-sampled archived threads of Program-L, a mailing list primarily comprising programmers with visual impairments. In Study 2, we interviewed 18 programmers with visual impairments to confirm the findings from Study 1 and gain a deeper understanding of their motivations and experiences in using UI frameworks. Our participants considered UI development essential to their programming responsibilities and sought to acquire relevant skills and expertise. However, accessibility barriers in programming tools and UI frameworks complicated the processes of writing UI code, debugging, testing, and collaborating with sighted colleagues. Our paper concludes with recommendations grounded in empirical findings to improve the accessibility of frameworks and libraries.


This research was aimed to identify the changes of nucleotide (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) growth hormone gene in the population of Aceh cattle. There were 44 samples of DNA sequenced, and a few samples from Gen Bank (M57764). Based on the analysis using MEGA program, it was identified one new mutation on exon five on 2230 bp in which C nucleotide turned into T nucleotide, and this was called Silent Mutation (Leusine-Leusine/ CTC-CTT). The frequency of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) genotype on 2230 bp (C/T) was CC (0.36), TT (0.14) and CT (0.50). The genotype TT was not possessed by Aceh cattle from Saree, but possessed by those from Banda Aceh and Indrapuri. Chi-square test showed not significant differences in allele frequencies for three population. The frequency of genotype SNP on 2291 bp (A/C) was AC (0.11) and CC (0.89). The frequency of allele C was higher than allele A and T.


Horror films often use the male as monster, though conventional ideology says that it is not his masculine characteristics that make him monstrous. Barbara Creed writes that in the horror film, the male body is represented as monstrous "because it assumes characteristics usually associated with the female body." The thematic thread of Todd Solondz's Happiness, beneath its facade of domestic anxiety, is that of deviant masculinity. In mapping Billy's horrific trajectory towards maturity, the film's project is an abject representation of the specific rites of passage that he must undergo in order to accede to manhood. Masculinity in the film is constructed as monstrous via the very characteristics that are inherent to his experience of becoming a man. While at face value Happiness would seem to elude classification as a horror film, it addresses these issues through the generic conventions of the horror film, employing many of the codes and conventions of horror, evoking an effect on the body of the spectator that is in keeping with the traditional appeal of the genre. Where these films traditionally work to annihilate the threat to patriarchy and repress the abject, Happiness concludes with images of the paternal order in crisis. Billy comes to embody the monstrous masculine, his semen marking the collapse of symbolic law, illustrated by the failure of the paternal figure to prohibit the incestuous bond that is established between mother and child.


Modern Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) generate realistic images remarkably well. Previous work has demonstrated the feasibility of "GAN-classifiers" that are distinct from the co-trained discriminator, and operate on images generated from a frozen GAN. That such classifiers work at all affirms the existence of "knowledge gaps" (out-of-distribution artifacts across samples) present in GAN training. We iteratively train GAN-classifiers and train GANs that "fool" the classifiers (in an attempt to fill the knowledge gaps), and examine the effect on GAN training dynamics, output quality, and GAN-classifier generalization. We investigate two settings, a small DCGAN architecture trained on low dimensional images (MNIST), and StyleGAN2, a SOTA GAN architecture trained on high dimensional images (FFHQ). We find that the DCGAN is unable to effectively fool a held-out GAN-classifier without compromising the output quality. However, the StyleGAN2 can fool held-out classifiers with no change in output quality, and this effect persists over multiple rounds of GAN/classifier training which appears to reveal an ordering over optima in the generator parameter space. Finally, we study different classifier architectures and show that the architecture of the GAN-classifier has a strong influence on the set of its learned artifacts.


Several tactics were evaluated for insecticide resistant greenbug, Schizaphis graminum (Rondani), control on sorghum. During the first 2 yr of this research, control by chlorpyrifos, carbofuran, and malathion and mixtures of the latter 2 chemicals plus piperonyl butoxide with chlorpyrifos were compared on sorghum. Chlorpyrifos provided <60% control. The mixtures of chlorpyrifos + carbofuran or malathion provided good control of insecticide resistant greenbug. The mixture of chlorpyrifos + piperonyl butoxide provided mediocre control of resistant greenbugs. In 1996, an experiment was designed to evaluate the effects of greenbug population insecticide resistance ratio and preexposure of greenbugs to chlorpyrifos on control by mixtures of chlorpyrifos with carbofuran or malathion. About half of the plots were presprayed with chlorpyrifos (0.28 kg [AI]/ha) 4 d before applying individual insecticides or mixtures. Plots were infested with 2 ratios of resistant: susceptible greenbugs (1:3 and 3:1, respectively). Application of mixtures of chlorpyrifos + malathion provided best control followed by chlorpyrifos + carbofuran and chlorpyrifos. Prespraying greenbugs with chlorpyrifos did not affect their control with subsequent insecticide resistance management mixtures. The difference between the 2 ratios was significant with the lowest greenbug densities in plots dominated by susceptible individuals. There was a significant yield response to greenbug densities. The highest yields were obtained in plots sprayed with chlorpyrifos + malathion mixtures. When chlorpyrifos was applied to greenbug populations dominated by resistant aphids, yields were lower than in the infested control plots where greenbugs were not sprayed. Economic analysis of the data further demonstrated the advantage of the chlorpyrifos + malathion mixture for controlling insecticide resistant greenbug.


We present a new nonorthogonal sp3 tight binding model to study the band offsets of widegap heterostructures as a function of interface strain due to external pressure and lattice mismatch and thermal expansion gradient. As examples we discuss the GaN and ZnSe based heterostructures, because their properties are important for optoelectronic applications. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment for valence band offsets of various heterostructures at T = 300 K.


Cell therapy with platelets is a widely accepted approach for wound healing and tissue regeneration in medicine. however, with most available methods poorly concentrated platelet suspensions (up to 0.3∙106 1/ μl) or suspensions of mostly inactivated or lost platelets are obtained. In this study, we aimed to develop a simple and effective method for preparing a suspension of native and resting platelets with over 1∙106 1/μl. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) was obtained from fresh blood of healthy donors (n = 5) collected using different amounts of heparin as the anticoagulant. Samples of PrP were spun down and re-suspended in auto logous blood plasma. Count and vitality of platelets in each sample were determined by aggregation study on the Solar aP2110 aggregometer. Platelet shape and cytoplasmic granularity that indicate the nativity of platelets were monitored on the CoULter ePICS XL Flow Cytometer. this study of aggregation of platelets in PrP obtained using various amounts of heparin allowed us to reduce final concentrations to the amount that effectively prevented clotting and did not affect platelet reactivi ty (5 U/ml). PRP concentrated 5 times with a total concentration of cells of 1∙106 1/μl was able to be activated by adenosine diphosphate (aDP) (aggregation rate 54 ± 7%). the amount of cells with altered shape and granularity in concentrated suspension was not higher than 20%. This finding means that the platelets would still be able to release a number of growth factors and other biologically active compounds after stimulation or injection into tissue during cell therapy. the decrease in heparin concentrations also minimizes haemorrhage in the injection site supporting biomedical use of the suspension. A simple and effective method for preparation of highly-concentrated PRP (1.2∙106 1/ μl) for biomedical use was developed. Aggregometry and flow cytometry proved that obtained platelets were resting and able to be activated. Being autologous, the preparation can be widely used for cell therapy without additional precautions.


Digital learning in rural areas have various limita tions, such as limitations in access to information and the lack of human resourc es in rural areas. Availability of learning materials / learning objec ts (LO) is one of the supporting components of the existing presence of d igital learning. Thus it takes existence of Learning Object Repository (LOR) t hat serves as a storage and information portal for the LO. LOR existence mus t be supported by a Learning Management System (LMS) that enables inter ac ion between teachers and students in schools within the scope o f digital learning. Product development, services and LOR system in rural areas in this study developed using methodologies and perspectives of PSS (Produc t-Service System).


Amyloid Binding Partners Amyloid-β (Aβ) is critical to the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but its role in normal physiology remains unclear. Kim et al. (p. 1399; see the Perspective by Benilova and De Strooper) found that murine-paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B (PirB) and its human ortholog, leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor B2 (LilrB2) both bound to oligomerized Aβ. Early in mouse development, ocular dominance plasticity was affected by interactions between oligomeric Aβ and PirB. In hippocampal brain slices from a mouse model of AD, reductions in long-term potentiation induced by Aβ required PirB. Furthermore, the memory defects characteristic of a mouse model of AD were dependent on function of PirB. Many binding partners for Aβ have been identified, and so the extent to which these findings can be exploited therapeutically remains unclear. A potential β-amyloid receptor in neurons regulates ocular dominance in mouse brain development. [Also see Perspective by Benilova and De Strooper] Soluble β-amyloid (Aβ) oligomers impair synaptic plasticity and cause synaptic loss associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). We report that murine PirB (paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B) and its human ortholog LilrB2 (leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor B2), present in human brain, are receptors for Aβ oligomers, with nanomolar affinity. The first two extracellular immunoglobulin (Ig) domains of PirB and LilrB2 mediate this interaction, leading to enhanced cofilin signaling, also seen in human AD brains. In mice, the deleterious effect of Aβ oligomers on hippocampal long-term potentiation required PirB, and in a transgenic model of AD, PirB not only contributed to memory deficits present in adult mice, but also mediated loss of synaptic plasticity in juvenile visual cortex. These findings imply that LilrB2 contributes to human AD neuropathology and suggest therapeutic uses of blocking LilrB2 function.


Directional flow of mucus across the mucociliary epithelium enables the clearance of the airway. This study shows that nNOS supports the flow by regulating the planar polarity and ciliary beat frequency of ciliated cells in the tracheal epithelium. Clearance of the airway is dependent on directional mucus flow across the mucociliary epithelium, and deficient flow is implicated in a range of human disorders. Efficient flow relies on proper polarization of the multiciliated cells and sufficient ciliary beat frequency. We show that NO, produced by nNOS in the multiciliated cells of the mouse trachea, controls both the planar polarity and the ciliary beat frequency and is thereby necessary for the generation of the robust flow. The effect of nNOS on the polarity of ciliated cells relies on its interactions with the apical networks of actin and microtubules and involves RhoA activation. The action of nNOS on the beat frequency is mediated by guanylate cyclase; both NO donors and cGMP can augment fluid flow in the trachea and rescue the deficient flow in nNOS mutants. Our results link insufficient availability of NO in ciliated cells to defects in flow and ciliary activity and may thereby explain the low levels of exhaled NO in ciliopathies.


Today, as firms become more competitive in their fields, the use of strategic insights and management practices are becoming an integral part of the firms' activities- especially for new ventures which are in the early phases of their lifecycle. Indeed, they cannot improve their performance if they do not take advantage of such tools and mechanisms. On the other hand, nascent firms are facing lots of problems due to the lack of appropriate use of strategic insights. One of the main problems is the acceptance of strategic management practices in such companies. Then, in this paper, the authors try to investigate the elements which affect their acceptance. Authors use technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework to examine the hypotheses. Findings reveal that all the factors were influential, other than complexity, vendors' support, firm size, and industry type. Research paper Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Shahidifar, E. (2016). ―Strategic management in new ventures: the role of technological, organizational and environmental factors‖, Journal of Entre-preneurship, Business and Economics, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 130–149.


Outdoor and Indoor Air Quality and Severity of COVID19: Where Communicable and Non-communicable Preventive Measures Meet The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up new realities for health systems. Scientists and health officials are currently focusing on implementing infectious disease prevention measures to slow or stop transmission, including handwashing, physical distancing, stay home orders, and quarantine. It has become apparent in recent months that, as with other infections, some people exposed to the coronavirus will experience severe symptoms, and less than one to four percent will die. COVID-19 is more severe in sensitive populations, including the elderly and people with chronic disease and immunodeficiency, which highlights the importance of environmental and host factors in the development of the disease. Along with hygiene measures, the fight against COVID-19 must include noncommunicable disease prevention measures to improve the environment and build host resilience against infection. The negative immunomodulatory role of toxicants is widely established (1). Both acute and chronic exposure to chemicals, such as air pollutants, contributes to an increased incidence of diseases, including cancer and allergies, and can exacerbate underlying respiratory disorders and infections in children and adults (2, 3). Therefore, it is relevant to develop a model that links air pollution exposure with the increased rate and severity of COVID-19t. We already know that the COVID-19 pandemic and air quality are associated, as quarantine, stay home orders, and light traffic have led to better outdoor air quality in China (4). Improved air quality should help reduce the exacerbation of underlying respiratory disorders and infections and strengthen the general health and immune systems of the population, which should ultimately reduce the severity of this respiratory pandemic. The proposed link also highlights the potential effects of improving indoor air quality as a support measure against the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for the elderly andpatients _______ with underlying respiratory diseases and immunodeficiency (Figure 1). Recommendations by health authorities to stay home has increased daily exposure to indoor air. In addition, cooking at home due to closed restaurants decreases the quality of indoor air. COVID-19 public messages should include indoor air quality management, such as regularly opening windows to improve ventilation. This communication is especially important for the elderly and immunocompromised, and residents of cold regions and rural areas where the wood stove is the primary source of cooking and heating. Lastly, public messaging in the fight against COVID-19 should include avoiding toxic substances, in order to strengthen underlying health and the immune system. Measures to stay healthy include consuming healthy food and water, and by quitting smoking and excessive drinking, controlling stress, getting adequate sleep, and exercising to maintain a healthy weight.


Automatic Differentiation (AD) is applied to the open-source CAD system Open CASCADE Technology using the AD software tool ADOL-C (Automatic Differentiation by OverLoading in C++). The differentiated CAD system is coupled with a discrete adjoint CFD solver, thus providing the first example of a complete differentiated design chain built from generic, multi-purpose tools. The design chain is demonstrated on the gradient-based optimisation of a squared U-bend turbo-machinery cooling duct to minimise the total pressure loss.


A classification of fire danger and radiation factors in the Chernobyl zone is presented. The scenarios of forest fire emergence and aerial migration of 137Cs was analyzed. The characteristic of 137Cs resulted from the forest fire of various types was estimated. It was found that this fires lead to change of radiation condition and radioecological situation in the evacuation zone.


Amidst current concerns about the value of a legal education, this article seeks to identify ways in which law schools and law professors can take steps to maximize the learning experience for their students. The article focuses on cutting-edge strategies that will help a diverse population of law students become self-regulated learners. Drawing on the work of educational psychologists, it describes ways to help students adapt to the demands of the law school learning experience and then outlines specific strategies for teaching students to regulate their motivational beliefs, their resource management practices, and their approaches to mastering the material. Throughout, the article emphasizes the importance of these skills for success both as law students and as lawyers. Finally, checklists are provided to help law professors build a culture of self-regulated learning in their schools.