This paper explores a simple and efficient baseline for person re-identification (ReID). Person re-identification (ReID) with deep neural networks has made progress and achieved high performance in recent years. However, many state-of-the-arts methods design complex network structure and concatenate multi-branch features. In the literature, some effective training tricks are briefly appeared in several papers or source codes. This paper will collect and evaluate these effective training tricks in person ReID. By combining these tricks together, the model achieves 94.5% rank-1 and 85.9% mAP on Market1501 with only using global features. Our codes and models are available in Github. 1


Forest area is increasing in temperate biomes through active and passive restoration of old fields. Despite the large extension of restored forests, the success of contrasting restoration strategies (active – planted forests ‐ vs. passive – secondary forests ‐) over time has never been evaluated in Mediterranean forests. We studied how restoration strategy determined forest restoration success. We evaluated which restoration strategy resulted in forests more like references (i.e. forests with continuous canopy cover since at least the 1940s) in terms of structure, diversity, functional composition, and dynamics. We then assessed whether active restoration accelerated forest recovery compared to passive restoration. We studied a chronosequence of recovery in four forest types (mountain and Mediterranean pine forests and mesic and Mediterranean oak forests) using the data of the Spanish Forest Inventory in central Spain. Each plot was classified as planted, secondary or reference forest. We modelled the response ratios of 11 forest attributes and a multifunctionality index as a function of restoration strategy, forest age, and abiotic and biotic constraints. Secondary forests showed a greater likeness to references than planted forests in oak forests while minor differences between secondary and planted forests were found in pine forests. The recovery speed of most forest attributes in secondary and planted forests was similar. Multifunctionality was higher, and increased more rapidly, in planted than in secondary forests in Mediterranean oak forests. However, multifunctionality was similar for both restoration strategies in the other forest types. Synthesis and applications. The long‐term assessment of forest recovery in Mediterranean abandoned fields indicated that both planted forests and natural forest succession are successful restoration strategies, depending on the aim and the forest type. In our research, restoration strategy did not influence the magnitude and speed of forest recovery in pine forests. However, in oak forests, natural forest succession led to forests more alike to references, but planted forests can maximize and accelerate recovery of forest multifunctionality.


1. By the use of Signal Detection Theory techniques, resistive load detection sensitivity was estimated in six normal subjects, and compared with detection when the chest cage was strapped in the position of full expiration. 2. With chest cage restriction there was both a decrease in detection sensitivity and an increase in the willingness to report the presence of an added load to breathing. 3. This suggests that the similarity of detection in chest clamping and control previously reported was due partly to increased detection bias with chest clamping. 4. These results have implications concerning the dependence of detection on afferent information from the chest wall.


Violent offenders represent a substantial proportion of prisoner populations and the rehabilitation of this group is a necessary priority of correctional services. Despite the recognition that programs delivered in this area have some demonstrated efficacy, the principles of effective treatments are often inadequately demarcated and the extent to which interventions can reduce aggressive and violent propensities is modest relative to interventions targeting other forms of offending (Howells, 2010). Researchers have consequently called for greater intersection between psychological aggression theory and interventions for violent offenders (e.g., McGuire, 2008). In this thesis, the most comprehensive and contemporary aggression theory, the General Aggression Model (GAM; Anderson & Bushman, 2002), is drawn upon to examine how the conceptualisation of aggression in offender populations might be enhanced, enabling more sophisticated attempts to reduce aggressive and violent tendencies. Although existing research supports the GAM's main contention that aggressive individuals regularly retrieve and employ aggression-related cognitions, the application of this framework to violent offending has been hindered by insufficient empirical validation of the model's central tenets in individuals with clinically significant levels of aggression. In particular, studies examining the importance of the GAM's characterisation of aggression-related cognitions to clinical formulations of personality pathology are non-existent, despite the recognition that individuals with certain personality disorders (PD) are over-represented in forensic populations and consistently demonstrate higher rates of aggression. A series of theoretical and empirical investigations of the importance of aggression-related cognitions to aggression were consequently undertaken in relation to the aggressive behaviour of offenders. A more specific aim of the research was to examine how the application of the GAM might assist in elucidating the relationship between PD and aggressiveness. The research commences with a comprehensive review of the literature regarding current psychological aggression theory and violent offender treatment, examining the evidence available to support the role of the constructs specified by the GAM in aggressive individuals. The findings emerging from this analyses were that: a) the GAM bears relevance to clinically significant levels of aggression and may assist in improving the efficacy of violent offender treatment programs, although further research is required to more fully explore the importance of the GAM constructs to aggression, and b) for offenders with PD, utilisation of the GAM can provide researchers and clinicians with a framework to more fully characterise the relationships between various PDs and aggression, and clinically, would enable systematic assessment and treatment of constructs that are conducive to aggression. For the empirical component of the research, 87 offenders referred for presentence evaluation were assessed on their histories of aggression, Axis I and II diagnostic status, psychopathy, aggression-related and other maladaptive cognitions (normative beliefs supportive of aggression, aggressive behavioural scripts, Early Maladaptive Schema [EMS]) and trait anger. The convergent validity of three instruments designed to measure past aggression was initially investigated (Life History of Aggression, Aggression Scale [LHA-A]; Violence Rating Scale; Cormier-Lang System for Quantifying Criminal History), and the finding that the LHA-A most reliably quantifies the density of past aggression (i.e., frequency and severity of acts) was used to inform the methodology of subsequent studies. The first empirical study examined the importance of three knowledge structures; namely, normative beliefs supportive of aggression, aggressive scripts, and EMS, along with trait anger, to the aggression histories of the sample. Regression analyses were used to investigate the unique contribution of each of these constructs to aggression, with the results suggesting that positive attitudes to violence, frequent script rehearsal and high trait anger concurrently increased the likelihood of past aggression. In contrast, EMS did not predict aggression. On the whole, these findings were consistent with the GAM's understanding of aggression, and suggested that more systematic targeting of aggression-related cognitions in violent offenders is necessary. The second empirical study examined whether normative beliefs supportive of aggression, aggressive scripts and trait anger assisted in explaining differences in aggressiveness among offenders with Axis II PD symptoms and traits of psychopathy. Regression analyses were undertaken to examine the relative contributions of aggression-related constructs (i.e., normative beliefs, scripts and trait anger) and PD to aggression. The results confirmed a relationship between several PDs and aggression, and more importantly, suggested that for the majority of PDs related to aggression (Antisocial, Borderline, Paranoid and Schizotypal Personality Disorders, and psychopathy), the consideration of normative beliefs, scripts, and anger facilitated an improved understanding of aggressiveness. Overall, the findings suggest that the GAM offers valuable insight into the psychological features that characterise individuals with PD who are prone to aggression. Taken together, these findings suggest that contemporary aggression theory appears to have much to offer in enhancing understandings of aggression in offender populations. Furthermore, they indicate that broader adoption of the GAM framework is likely to assist in both characterising and differentiating among violent offenders and would provide a comprehensive conceptual framework upon which to target and ameliorate aggressive behaviour.


Inflammation and endothelial activation are associated with an increased risk of CVD and epidemiological evidence suggests an association between levels of markers of inflammation or endothelial activation and the intake of fruit. Also, vitamin E, a fat-soluble antioxidant, has anti-inflammatory properties. We performed a randomised 2 × 2 factorial, crossover trial to determine the effect of orange and blackcurrant juice (500 ml/d) and vitamin E (15 mg RRR-α-tocopherol/d) supplementation on markers of inflammation and endothelial activation in forty-eight patients with peripheral arterial disease. Patients were randomly allocated to two dietary supplements from the four possible combinations of juice and vitamin E: juice+vitamin E; juice+placebo; reference beverage (sugar drink)+vitamin E; and reference beverage+placebo. The supplementations were given for 28 d, separated by a 4-week wash-out period. Analysis of main effects showed that juice decreased C-reactive protein (CRP) by 11 % and fibrinogen by 3 % while the reference drink increased CRP by 13 % and fibrinogen by 2 % (P < 0·008 and P < 0·002, respectively). No significant differences were measured for IL-6 and the endothelial activation markers von Willebrand factor, tissue-plasminogen activator and plasmin activator inhibitor-1. Vitamin E supplementation had no significant effects on the various markers. We observed no significant interaction between juice and vitamin E. In this study, orange and blackcurrant juice reduced markers of inflammation, but not markers of endothelial activation, in patients with peripheral arterial disease, relative to sugar drinks.


Abstract— Neural network tree (NNTree) is a hybrid learning model. Currently We have proposed a simplified multiple objective optimization based genetic algorithm for evolving such kind of NNTrees and shown through experments that an NNTree can be interpreted easily if the number of inputs for each expert neural network (ENN) is limited. One problem remained is that for those problems the input features are continuous. This means that even if the number of inputs for each ENN is, say 4, the number of corresponding binary inputs will be 64 if each continuous input is represented with a 16-bit binary number. This also means that the computational complexity is proportional to 2^64. To make the NNTrees more interpretable, we propose an interpretable NNTree through self-organized learning of features. We will show through experiments that the NNTrees built from the training data after self-organized learning are equally good as those obtained from the original data. Further, the number of quantization points in each dimension is usually less than 10 for the databases we used. This means that 3 or 4 binary inputs are enough to represent each continuous input, and thus, the NNTrees so obtained are much more interpretable.


David Rozman was a fascinating man: he possessed uncommon ability to not only study the past but also see into the future. Having fled from strife-torn Russia in 1922, Rozman came to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in 1927 and until his retirement in 1961 conducted some of the most insightful historical and economic studies of population, industrial, and land-use changes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Based on these studies, he was instrumental in helping Massachusetts citizens to think about and plan for better land-use. To correctly understand the development of Massachusetts in the twentieth century, it is instructive to review Dr. Rozman's studies, findings, and recommendations. It is equally instructive to examine his life, training, and career, which gave such a forward-looking perspective to his work. Born in 1895 to Adolph and Esther Rozman in Eupatoria, Russia, a Black Sea port city on the west coast of the Crimean peninsula, David Rozman was educated at Eupatoria's classical gymnasium from 1910 to 1915 preparatory to entering the University of Moscow in 1915 to study economics. He completed three years of undergraduate study before social and economic turmoil in Russia, resulting from World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, forced suspension of his studies. Conditions had been difficult even prior to World War I. Rozman wrote: "The evils of restricted land transfer are to be seen in Russia before the war where common ownership and periodical redistribution of land in the communes confined peasants to a miserable existence on constantly diminishing land holdings as population grew in numbers."1 During the Bolshevik takeover of the Crimean peninsula soon after the war, Anna Reid indicates: "Sixty thousand Crimeans were killed in less than six months, and another 100,000 died of starvation." She refers to an emigre newspaper that described conditions in Eupatoria as follows: Bands of gypsies live in the suburbs of the city, dying of hunger. Robberies are innumerable during the night. The soldiers of the Red Army, in rags and bare feet and dying of hunger, attack the inhabitants at nightfall and steal their clothing. The Communists are not exempt from these attacks. The lack of fuel requires that doors and windows are used for heating.... Amidst such terror and hardship, Rozman followed countless other Russians who for decades had emigrated to the United States to seek a better life.2 Nearly a decade later, having become established at Massachusetts State College, Rozman was interviewed about the current Soviet regime and said: "Russia has two roads open to it if it continues to enforce its present form of communistic government, and both of these roads lead to a common goal, namely capitalism as it is found in the other nations of the world. These roads are either a change through forceful revolution or through modification of its present economic standards." What Rozman predicted in 1931 now has come close to reality.3 Rozman emigrated in 1922 to the United States and enrolled as a senior at the University of Wisconsin in Madison; in 1923 he received his bachelor's degree in economics. He married his wife Nadia in 1924 while studying at Wisconsin for the master's degree in economics, which he received in 1926. He and she eventually had one son, David S. Roman. While at the University of Wisconsin, Rozman became interested in the emerging new field of land economics fathered by one of the university's greatest scholars, Richard T. Ely, director of the famous Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities. In 1920 Ely founded the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities at the University of Wisconsin, in which the study of land and public utility problems was based on knowledge of the nature, significance, evolution, and operation of economic institutions and forces. Ely understood that land problems are basic to many economic activities and, therefore, chose as the institute's motto, "Under all, the land. …


Aims:This article reviews the problems of cross-cultural applicability, which have been identified at the level of instrument items, at the level of criteria, and at the level of concepts and diagnoses. One near-universal appears to be that the diagnoses carry a weight of moral judgement and often of social stigma, whatever the clinician's intentions. Methods: The findings of studies on variations between cultures in the meaningfulness and meaning of the main substance use diagnoses and criteria are described. Results: Suggestions are made for directions of thinking and work to improve the cross-cultural applicability of five current diagnoses: intoxication, withdrawal, harmful use, abuse and dependence. Conclusion: It is argued that the possibility should be held open of bounded applicability of some diagnoses or criteria, in some societies but not in others.(Reprinted with permission from "Diagnostic Issues in Substance Use Disorders" by American Psychiatric Publishing)


Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a severe demyelinating disease, is caused by mutations in a gene coding for a peroxisomal membrane protein (ALDP), which belongs to the superfamily of ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters and has the structure of a half transporter. ALDP showed 38% sequence identity with another peroxisomal membrane protein, PMP70, up to now its closest homologue. We describe here the cloning and characterization of a mouse ALD-related gene (ALDR), which codes for a protein with 66% identity with ALDP and shares the same half transporter structure. The ALDR protein was overexpressed in COS cells and was found to be associated with the peroxisomes. The ALD and ALDR genes show overlapping but clearly distinct expression patterns in mouse and may thus play similar but nonequivalent roles. The ALDR gene, which appears highly conserved in man, is a candidate for being a modifier gene that could account for some of the extreme phenotypic variability of ALD. The ALDR gene is also a candidate for being implicated in one of the complementation groups of Zellweger syndrome, a genetically heterogeneous disorder of peroxisome biogenesis, rare cases of which were found to be associated with mutations in the PMP70 (PXMP1) gene.


After some opening remarks on the recent commodification of guoxue, I first trace the rise of guoxue in the contemporary period, and then I examine two topics in more detail: guoxue's historical and contemporary transformation into an academic discipline; and the immediate origins of guoxue's pronounced ethnoepistemological character. Through this examination my aim is to bring into greater relief some of the aspirations invested in guoxue by its contemporary protagonists, and also to highlight some of the conundrums associated with those aspirations.


The parameters of a market share response function are estimated by using time series data separately for several sales territories. In a second stage an attempt is made to explain territorial differences in parameter estimates. It appears that for the brand studied advertising may serve to increase the price sensitivity.


The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) functions in vivo as a cAMP-activated chloride channel. A member of the ATP-binding cassette superfamily of membrane transporters, CFTR contains two transmembrane domains (TMDs), two nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs), and a regulatory (R) domain. It is presumed that CFTR couples ATP hydrolysis to channel gating, and as a first step in addressing this issue directly, we have established conditions for purification of biochemical quantities of human CFTR expressed in Sf9 insect cells. Use of an 8-azido[alpha-(32)P]ATP-binding and vanadate-trapping assay allowed us to devise conditions to preserve CFTR function during purification of a C-terminal His(10)-tagged variant after solubilization with lysophosphatidylglycerol (1%) and diheptanoylphosphatidylcholine (0.3%) in the presence of excess phospholipid. Study of purified and reconstituted CFTR showed that it binds nucleotide with an efficiency comparable to that of P-glycoprotein and that it hydrolyzes ATP at rates sufficient to account for presumed in vivo activity [V(max) of 58 +/- 5 nmol min(-1) (mg of protein)(-1), K(M)(MgATP) of 0.15 mM]. In further work, we found that neither nucleotide binding nor ATPase activity was altered by phosphorylation (using protein kinase A) or dephosphorylation (with protein phosphatase 2B); we also observed inhibition (approximately 40%) of ATP hydrolysis by reduced glutathione but not by DTT. To evaluate CFTR function as an anion channel, we introduced an in vitro macroscopic assay based on the equilibrium exchange of proteoliposome-entrapped radioactive tracers. This revealed a CFTR-dependent transport of (125)I that could be inhibited by known chloride channel blockers; no significant CFTR-dependent transport of [alpha-(32)P]ATP was observed. We conclude that heterologous expression of CFTR in Sf9 cells can support manufacture and purification of fully functional CFTR. This should aid in further biochemical characterization of this important molecule.


Electronic commerce (E-commerce) is one of the issues that are expected to influence the various logistics and supply chain processes/operations including: production, packaging, warehousing, transportation, etc. Consequently, the environmental implications of E-commerce are of concern and interest. In this regard, there are some pilot studies, but they are unable to deliver conclusions or generalisations, except suggestions for continuation works. There are even contradictory results and complaints that the data collection process is very difficult if not impossible in several instances. Investigating this issue, this dissertation finds that the toolbox of environmental systems assessment tools are designed for assessment of objects that are in a level of product, process, material or project, and not assessment of objects such as E-commerce, covering unlimited number of chains transferring products/commodities within various industries. In the meantime, the dissertation finds that the field of supply chain and logistics management does not provide an alternative platform for environmental assessment for this problem. In fact, the ?Logistics/Supply Chain & Environment? (Log-Env) is itself in need for a renewal. The dissertation, thereafter, proposes and discusses a new way of performing an environmental assessment, under the name: ?Horizontal Environmental Assessment? (HEA). The structure of this assessment includes ?assessment of strategies? as a main part of it. The strategies meant by here are a group of specific decisions known in the supply chain and logistics management field such as centralisation, postponement, differentiation, Just-In-Time, focused factories, etc. Several benefits can be reached with HEA, mainly contributing in building some understanding on the environmental implications of E-commerce, and contributing in developing the area of Log-Env in terms of terminology and filling the gap in the topics of environmental empirical analyses of logistics/supply chains impacts. Up to date, one can find only one line of discussion in Log-Env, and that is the impact of environment on logistics. For founding the bases of HEA, the dissertation describes the structure and type of data it requires. Yet, some of such data is not currently available, for example, environmental understanding on the preference between: centralisation or decentralisation from environmental point of view, and so forth for the rest of other strategies. Therefore, the dissertation took the step ahead to contribute in this type of understanding as a step contributing in fact in-directly to building HEA. A strategy, taken as a case for this purpose, is postponement, demarcated to the food industry. The dissertation, however, first studied the topic ?food postponement? by conducting semi-structured interviews with over 50 contacts within the European food industry due to the fact that ?food postponement? itself is a new topic with very limited treatment. Afterwards the dissertation held an experiment of environmental assessment of food postponement using ?expert panel? (Delphi). The outcomes indicate that there are good chances for developing this kind of assessments if taken on a large scale of collaboration in terms of time and members (academics and industry). The dissertation shows as well the validity and benefits of carrying out assessments of strategies from a systems approach viewpoint, and through presenting the examples of similar line of discussions or attempts that exist in the literature. (Less)


In 1913 Albert Einstein developed the theory of Special Relativity. This theory describes the relation
between space and time and revolutionized the understanding of the universe. While the concept is
generally accepted new experimental setups are constantly being developed to challenge the theory,
but so far no contradictions have been found.
One of the postulates Einsteins theory of Relativity is based on states that the speed of light in vacuum
is the highest possible velocity. Furthermore, it is demanded that the speed of light is independent
of any chosen frame of reference. If an experiment would find a contradiction of these demands,
the theory as such would have to be revised. To challenge the constancy of the speed of light the socalled
Kennedy Thorndike experiment has been developed. A possible setup to conduct a Kennedy
Thorndike experiment consists of comparing two independent clocks. Likewise experiments have
been executed in laboratory environments. Within the scope of this work, the orbital requirements
for the first space-based Kennedy Thorndike experiment called BOOST will be investigated.
BOOST consists of an iodine clock, which serves as a time reference, and an optical cavity, which
serves as a length reference. The mechanisms of the two clocks are different and can therefore be
employed to investigate possible deviations in the speed of light. While similar experiments have
been performed on Earth, space offers many advantages for the setup. First, one orbit takes roughly
90 min for a satellite based experiment. In comparison with the 24 h duration on Earth it is obvious
that a space-based experiment offers higher statistics. Additionally the optical clock stability has to
be kept for shorter periods, increasing the sensitivity. Third, the velocity of the experimental setup
is larger. This results in an increased experiment accuracy since any deviation in the speed of light
would increase with increasing experiment velocity. A satellite planted in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
travels with a velocity of roughly 7km=s. Establishing an Earth-bound experiment that travels with
a constant velocity of that order is impossible. Finally, space offers a very quiet environment where
no disturbances, such as vibrations, act upon the experiment, which is practically unavoidable in a
laboratory environment.
This thesis is contrived of two main chapters. The chapter titled "Mission Level" exploits orbital
candidates. Here, possible orbits are explained in detail and the associated advantages and problems
are investigated. It also contains a discussion about ground visibility and downlink feasibility
for each option. Finally, a nominal mission scenario is sketched. The other chapter is called "Sub-
Systems". Within this chapter the subsystems of the spacecraft are examined.
To examine the possible orbits it is necessary to define criteria according to which the quality of the
orbits can be determined. The first criteria reflects upon the scientific outcome of the mission. This
is mainly governed by the achievable velocity and the orbital geometry. The second criteria discriminates
according to the mission costs. These include the launch, orbital injection, de-orbiting, satellite
development, and orbital maintenance. The final criteria defines the requirements in terms of
mission feasibility and risks, e.g. radiation. The criteria definition is followed by explaining the mission
objectives and requirements. Each requirement is then discussed in terms of feasibility.
The most important parameters, such as altitude, inclination, and the right ascension of the ascending
node (RAAN), are discussed for each orbital option and an optimal range is picked. The optimal
altitude depends on several factors, such as the decay rate, radiation concerns, experimental contributions, and eclipse duration. For the presented mission an altitude of 600 km seems to be the best
fit. Alongside the optimal altitude possible de-orbiting scenarios are investigated. It is concluded
that de-orbiting of the satellite is possible without any further external influence. Thus, no additional
thrusters are required to de-orbit the satellite. The de-orbiting scenario has been simulated
with systems tool kit (STK). From the simulation it can be concluded, that the satellite can be deorbited
within 25 years. This estimation meets the requirements set for the mission.
Another very important parameter is the accumulative eclipse duration per year for a given orbit.
For this calculation it is necessary to know the relative positions and motion of the Earth and the
Sun. From this the eclipse duration per orbit for different altitudes is gained.
Ground visibilities for orbital options are examined for two possible ground stations. The theory is
based on the geometrical relation between the satellite and the ground stations. The results are also
shown an agreement with the related STK simulations. Finally, the both ground stations are found
adequate to maintain the necessary contact between the satellite and the ground station.
In the trade-off section, orbit candidates are examined with a more detail. Results from the previous
sections with some additional issues such as the experiment sensitivities, radiation concern and
thermal stability are discussed to conclude which candidate is the best for the mission. As a result
of the trade-off, two scenarios are explained in the "Nominal Mission Scenario" section which covers
a baseline scenario and a secondary scenario.
After selecting a baseline orbit, two sub-systems of the satellite are examined. In the section of "Attitude
Control System (ACS)" where the question of "Which attitude control method is more suitable
for the mission?" is tried to be answered. A trade-off among two common control methods
those are 3-axes stabilization and spin stabilization is made. For making the trade-off possible external
disturbances in space are estimated for two imaginary satellite bodies. Then, it is concluded
that by a spin stabilization method maintaining the attitude is not feasible. Thus, the ACS should
be built on the method of 3-axes stabilization.
As the second sub-system the possible power system of the satellite is examined. The total size and
the weight of the solar arrays are estimated for two different power loads. Then, the battery capacity
which will be sufficient for the power system budget is estimated together with the total mass of
the batteries.
In the last section, a conclusion of the thesis work is made and the possible future works for the
BOOST mission are stated.


The present review focuses on recent development in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). Progress made in the characterization of the early events of viral DNA synthesis and of virus-host cell interactions, especially in the context with the formation of viral DNA replication sites, is highlighted. An up-dated overview is presented on important stages of lytic infection cycle, such as virion entry, viral DNA synthesis, viral DNA cleavage and packaging into preformed capsids; and maturation (nucleocapsid envelopment) and egress of virions. Many novel interactions are discussed that extend not only our knowledge of the biology of this virus but may represent possible new targets for antiherpesviral therapy.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: The period after transition from hospital to skilled nursing facility (SNF) is high-risk, but variability in outcomes related to transitions across hospitals is not well-known. Objectives: Evaluate variability in transitional care outcomes across Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and non-VHA hospitals for Veterans, and identify characteristics of high-performing and low-performing hospitals. Research Design: Retrospective observational study using the 2012–2014 Residential History File, which concatenates VHA, Medicare, and Medicaid data into longitudinal episodes of care for Veterans. Subjects: Veterans aged 65 or older who were acutely hospitalized in a VHA or non-VHA hospital and discharged to SNF; 1 transition was randomly selected per patient. Measures: Adverse "transitional care" outcomes were a composite of hospital readmission, emergency department visit, or mortality within 7 days of hospital discharge. Results: Among the 365,942 Veteran transitions from hospital to SNF across 1310 hospitals, the composite outcome rate ranged from 3.3% to 23.2%. In multivariable analysis adjusting for patient characteristics, hospital discharge diagnosis and SNF category, no single hospital characteristic was significantly associated with the 7-day adverse outcomes in either VHA or non-VHA hospitals. Very few high or low-performing hospitals remained in this category across all 3 years. The increased odds of having a 7-day event due to being treated in a low versus high-performing hospital was similar to the odds carried by having an intensive care unit stay during the index admission. Conclusions: While variability in hospital outcomes is significant, unmeasured care processes may play a larger role than currently measured hospital characteristics in explaining outcomes.


Uncertainty in power systems operations has been traditionally managed by multistage decision making and operating reserve requirements. A familiar example of multistage decisions is day-ahead unit commitment and real-time economic dispatch. An alternate approach for managing uncertainty is a stochastic formulation, which allows the explicit modeling of the sources of uncertainty. This paper compares stochastic and reserve methods and evaluates the benefits of a combined approach for the efficient management of uncertainty in the unit commitment problem. Numerical studies show that unit commitment solutions obtained for the combined approach are robust and superior with respect to the traditional approach in terms of both economics and reliability metrics.


In current physical rehabilitation protocols, patients typically perform exercises with intermittent feedback or guidance following the initial demonstrations from the physiotherapist. Although many patient-centered systems have been developed for home rehabilitation, few systems have been developed to aid the physiotherapist as well as patients in the rehabilitation clinic. This article proposes the Automated Rehabilitation System (ARS), a system designed specifically for rehabilitation clinics using an iterative design process, developed with physiotherapists and patients in a knee and hip replacement clinic. ARS consists of body-worn inertial measurement units that continuously measure the patient's pose. The measured pose is graphically represented as an animation and overlaid with the instructed motion on a visual display shown to the patient during exercise performance. ARS allows physiotherapists to quantitatively measure patient movement, assess recovery progress, and manage and schedule exercise regimens for patients. The system requirements and design requirements were derived through a focus group with 13 physiotherapists. For patients, ARS provides visual feedback and a novel exercise guidance feature to aid them while exercising. The patient interface was evaluated in a user study with 26 outpatients. The results show that performing the exercises with the visual guidance tool improves the quality of exercise performance.


In this work, the temperature dependence of the sarco-endoplasmic reticulum Ca(2+) -ATPase (SERCA2) activity from rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss cardiac ventricles was measured and compared with the mammalian SERCA2 isoform. The rate of ATP-dependent Ca(2+) transport catalysed by O. mykiss vesicles was totally abolished by thapsigargin and the Ca(2+) ionophore A(23187) . At warm temperatures (25 and 30° C), the SERCA2 from O. mykiss ventricles displayed the same rate of Ca(2+) uptake. At 35° C, the activity of the O. mykiss enzyme decreased after 20 min of reaction time. The rate of Ca(2+) uptake catalysed by the mammalian SERCA2 was temperature dependent exhibiting its maximal activity at 35° C. In contrast to the rate of Ca(2+) uptake, the rate of ATP hydrolysis catalysed by O. mykiss SERCA2 was not significantly different at 25 and 35° C, but the rate of ATP hydrolysis catalysed by the rat Rattus norvegicus SERCA2 isoform at 35° C was two-fold higher than at 25° C. At low temperatures (5 to 20° C), the rate of Ca(2+) uptake from O. mykiss SR was less temperature dependent than the R. norvegicus isoform, being able to sustain a high activity even at 5° C. The mean ±s.e. Q(10) values calculated from 25 to 35° C for ATP hydrolysis were 1·112 ± 0·026 (n = 3) and 2·759 ± 0·240 (n = 5) for O. mykiss and R. norvegicus, respectively. Taken together, the results show that the O. mykiss SERCA2 was not temperature dependent over the 10 to 25° C temperature interval commonly experienced by the animal in vivo. The Q(10) value of SERCA2 was significantly lower in O. mykiss than R. norvegicus which may be key for cardiac function over the wide environmental temperatures experienced in this eurythermal fish.


The bottom dwelling air-breathing catfish, Clarias batrachus (Linn.) also respires via its skin (an accessory water-breathing organ). Prolonged (90 days) exposure to disodium arsenate heptahydrate has caused massive damage (e.g. wear and tear of various cellular components including club cells, hypertrophy and hyperplasia of the goblet mucous cells, altered staining and the slimy secretion) to the epidermis of its skin. The present study investigated the recovery in architecture of the damaged epidermis following return of the 90 days disodium arsenate heptahydrate exposed fish to clean water. The significant regeneration of its different cellular components (epithelial cells, Club cells, Mucous cells) took place after 24 h of withdrawal when sloughing; wear and tear and other damages of the epidermis of the skin got substantially reduced. The histopathological alterations which still continued included squeezing out of contents of the Club cells that formed a thin layer on the body surface. Regeneration of the Club cells continued throughout the epidermis even though the newly formed Club cells still showed massive sign of degeneration. Altered staining behaviour and hyperactivity of the Mucous cells continues even after prolonged withdrawal of the stress of the arsenic salt. Similarly the glycoproteins of the slime secreted by the mucous cells retained their sulphate moieties. This indicates that disodium arsenate heptahydrate induces certain permanent non-reversible damages including altered mucogenic activity in the epidermis of the skin of C. batrachus.


UK construction industry faces challenges in meeting skill and labour shortages.
Amongst other reasons, gender segregation has led the industry being unable to benefit
from the diverse skills that women can offer. Among such skills is leadership.
Therefore, a research focusing on the contribution of leadership styles exhibited by
construction female managers towards the industry development is currently
undertaken. This paper presents the research methodology that has been adopted to this
research. Justifications are made for the appropriate choice of methodology in terms of
its philosophy, strategy and techniques. Focus has been given on the research techniques
used for data collection and data analysis. Accordingly, the techniques namely
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), Personal Attribute Questionnaire (PAQ),
Semi-structured and Expert interviews are elaborated followed by an illustration on the
research process and techniques.


BACKGROUND
 One of the promises of digital health is to better engage patients and improve care for vulnerable populations. Patients with drug use disorders are a vulnerable population who often do not receive the care they need, both for their drug use disorders as well as their other health care needs. Appropriate primary care for patients with drug use disorders needs to be patient-centered, holistic, highly accessible, and engaging. The electronic Case-finding and Help Assessment Tool (eCHAT) was designed as a patient-centered tool for the identification and measurement of problematic health behaviors and mood states.

 OBJECTIVE
 The aim of this study was to explore the patient experience of eCHAT at an Australian family medicine clinic for patients with drug use disorders.

 METHODS
 A total of 12 semistructured interviews were conducted with patients, two interviews were conducted with doctors, and one focus group was conducted with patient advocates who were former patients of the clinic where the study took place. The transcripts were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis.

 RESULTS
 The key themes identified from the interviews and the focus group were as follows: (1) eCHAT helped reduce stigma related to drug use in the doctor-patient consultation, (2) restricted answer options impacted the ability of patients to tell their stories, (3) patient-related response factors, (4) increased efficiency in the consultation process, and (5) divergence in level of concern around security and privacy.

 CONCLUSIONS
 eCHAT has the potential to help vulnerable patients in primary care to engage more with their doctors and reduce experiences of stigma. eCHAT may be a useful digital health intervention in a family medicine clinic for patients with drug use disorders. It has the potential to improve patient engagement and access to health care, which are crucial areas of need in this vulnerable population. However, it is important to clearly communicate the privacy risk of digital health tools and to implement eCHAT such that it will add value to, rather than displace, in-person consultations with the family doctor.


Apparent-time and real-time studies of place names in Prod
This paper contains a socio-onomastic examination of the place names of Prod, a small town in Hajdu-Bihar county. The empirical research focuses on the applicability of the apparent-time and real-time studies to the sociology of place names. In a follow-up study (panel study), the author compared the place name knowledge of some residents of Prod in 2013 and in 2019. The panel study revealed that in the six and a half years between the two surveys, children's and young people's knowledge of names expanded greatly. In the middle of one's life, the number of known names – which sometimes increases vastly, in many cases almost doubles – begins to stagnate, and after that only minimal reduction or expansion can be observed in the established toponymic knowledge. This general tendency may be influenced by changes in one's knowledge of names resulting from unique living situations or life events.


Since in many cases past and present the professional translation field is not — or is only weakly — differentiated, the transposability of dispositions acquired through experiences related both to other fields and to translators' larger life conditions and social trajectory may play a fundamental role in a translator's habitus. Research on translators' socio-biographies therefore deserves special attention. For native literary author-translators who live and work in a diglossic society characterized by socio-linguistic conflicts between the translators' working languages, the plural and dynamic internalization of this conflict and of broader linguistic and cultural hierarchies is likely to form one of the constitutive aspects of their habitus and self-image, of their literary and translational behavior. In the first part of this article, I propose a tentative typology of Belgian native author-translators' habitus and self-image according to potentially different internalizations of the Belgian linguistic conflict in their broader socialization process. In the second part, I present relevant aspects of the socio-biography of Camille Melloy, a native literary author-translator who translated between conflicting cultures in early twentieth century Belgium.


The opportunity for this presentation provides me with three gratifications. The first and most important is that the scientist being honored is Elizabeth Neufeld. The second is the honor bestowed upon me by being selected to introduce Dr. Neufeld. Finally, the preparation of this introduction has provided me with the opportunity to reconstruct a scientific career from its beginnings to its present exciting momentum, an exercise in which I was helped with great enthusiasm by a number of people who have known Liz during the various phases of her scientific life. I am particularly pleased to note that our awardee is the product of that unique breeding ground of success stories, the special New York education system. After arriving in New York in 1940 at the age of 12 from Paris, a refugee from Nazi persecutions in Europe, Liz Neufeld, like so many other young refugees at the time, qualified for one of the specialized schools in New York--the Hunter College High School. From there she went to Queens College, one of the major high-quality free institutions of higher learning of the New York City college system, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1948. Obviously turned on to a scientific career, she successfully applied for a research assistantship at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where she worked with the first of her mentors, Dr. Elizabeth Russell, to this day her good friend and enthusiastic admirer. Her first publications are derived from that experience and are concerned with hematologic genetics of mice.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


CONTEXT
Recent studies suggested that higher BMI and serum urate levels were associated with lower risk of developing dementia. However, these reverse relationships remain controversial, and whether serum urate and BMI confound each other is not well established.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate the independent associations of BMI and urate, as well as their interaction with the risk of developing dementia.

DESIGN AND SETTINGS
We analyzed a cohort of 502,528 individuals derived from the UK Biobank that included people aged 37 to 73 years for whom BMI and urate were recorded between 2006 and 2010. Dementia was ascertained at follow-up using linkage to electronic health records.

RESULTS
During a median of 8.1 years of follow-up, a total of 2138 participants developed dementia. People who were underweight had an increased risk of dementia (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.91, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.24-2.97) compared with people of healthy weight. However, the risk of dementia continued to fall as weight increased, as those who were overweight and obese were 19% (HR = 0.81, 95%: 0.73-0.90) and 22% (HR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.68-0.88) less likely to develop dementia than people of healthy weight. People in the highest quintile of urate were also associated with a 25% (HR = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.64-0.87) reduction in the risk of developing dementia compared with those who were in the lowest quintile. There was a significant multiplicative interaction between BMI and urate in relation to dementia (P for interaction = 0.004), obesity strengthens the protective effect of serum urate on risk of dementia.

CONCLUSION
Both BMI and urate are independent predictors of dementia, and there are inverse monotonic and dose-response associations of BMI and urate with dementia.


REPORT OF A CASE The patient, a 62-year-old white woman, was referred to the University of South Florida Medical Clinics, Tampa, for examination of pruritic lesions of her extremities that were present intermittently for a few years. The physical examination disclosed periorbital edema; dry skin over both lower extremities; and a few eczematous, coin-shaped lesions on the extensor aspects of the lower extremities. On careful inspection of the skin, the patient was noted to have waxy, indurated pale areas over the right pretibial region and two large, exuberant tumoral lesions with brawny edema on the dorsum of her left foot (Fig 1). Examination of her nails revealed clubbing (Fig 2). Biopsy specimens were obtained and sent for hematoxylin-eosin (Fig 3) and special staining (Fig 4). What is your diagnosis? DIAGNOSIS: Pretibial myxedema. DISCUSSION Localized myxedema is an infiltrative, metabolic dermopathy with deposition of acid mucopolysaccha-rides in the dermis.1-5Classically, this process manifests cutaneously as raised, waxy nodules or plaques varying in color from flesh to yellow-brown to red.


In the outer radiation belt, the acceleration and loss of high‐energy electrons is largely controlled by wave‐particle interactions. Quasilinear diffusion coefficients are an efficient way to capture the small‐scale physics of wave‐particle interactions due to magnetospheric wave modes such as plasmaspheric hiss. The strength of quasilinear diffusion coefficients as a function of energy and pitch angle depends on both wave parameters and plasma parameters such as ambient magnetic field strength, plasma number density, and composition. For plasmaspheric hiss in the magnetosphere, observations indicate large variations in the wave intensity and wave normal angle, but less is known about the simultaneous variability of the magnetic field and number density. We use in situ measurements from the Van Allen Probe mission to demonstrate the variability of selected factors that control the size and shape of pitch angle diffusion coefficients: wave intensity, magnetic field strength, and electron number density. We then compare with the variability of diffusion coefficients calculated individually from colocated and simultaneous groups of measurements. We show that the distribution of the plasmaspheric hiss diffusion coefficients is highly non‐Gaussian with large variance and that the distributions themselves vary strongly across the three phase space bins studied. In most bins studied, the plasmaspheric hiss diffusion coefficients tend to increase with geomagnetic activity, but our results indicate that new approaches that include natural variability may yield improved parameterizations. We suggest methods like stochastic parameterization of wave‐particle interactions could use variability information to improve modeling of the outer radiation belt.


ABSTRACT The peer coaching program described in this paper was designed to promote a teacher self-directed system which established sharing with colleagues through team planning and classroom observation and feedback. While the ultimate goal of the program was to improve instruction and, thereby, to increase student learning, the program also facilitated the exchange of teaching methods and materials, provided teachers with regular positive feedback on their classroom performance from their peers, helped teachers to focus on instructional goal achievement, and relieved the isolation of the classroom. In preparation for the program, 41 teachers (of a total of 133 staff members) attended workshops that provided guidance in teacher observation and feedback skills and discussions on effective teaching and on evaluation methods. Unique features of the prograva included teachers providing support for their colleagues and assuming responsibility for their professional growth, and the teachers chosing their own coach or coaches rather than having them assigned. A description is given of the peer coaching process and the development of the program. A year-end evaluation of the program is reported, based on interviews with four case studies of participants in the program, two questionnaires completed by the participants, and interviews with division chairpersons and the principal. (JD)


Background: Current guidelines recommend that clopidogrel should be held for 5 days prior to coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedure. However, it is unknown if this recommendation should apply to robotic-assisted (rCABG), which is less invasive because it does not involve sternotomy and thus reduces the risk of bleeding. Objective: To compare postoperative bleeding for rCABG patients who were taking clopidogrel within 5 days of the procedure with those who were not taking clopidogrel. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study conducted between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012 of consecutive patients undergoing rCABG. Patients were categorized into 2 groups based on whether or not clopidogrel was administered within 5 days prior to the date of surgery. The primary outcome measure was the occurrence of the Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) definition for CABG-related bleeding. The secondary outcome measure was a comparison of chest tube output during the first 24-hour postoperative period. Results: A total of 136 rCABG patients were included in the final analyses. Of these, 39 (29%) received clopidogrel within 5 days of surgery. CABG-related bleeding using the BARC definition occurred in 26% of patients who received clopidogrel and 8% of patients who did not (P = .011). Median chest tube output during the first 24-hour postoperative period was also greater in patients who received clopidogrel (900 vs 735 mL, P = .002). Conclusions: The use of clopidogrel within 5 days of rCABG is associated with greater postoperative bleeding and chest tube output, as defined by the BARC criteria.


Aims To explore: (1) whether during exercise metabolic equivalents (METs) appropriately indicate the intensity and/or metabolic cost for post-myocardial infarction (MI) males and (2) whether post-exercise VO2 parameters provide insight into the intensity and/or metabolic cost of the prior exercise. Methods 15 male phase-IV post-MIs (64.4±6.5 years) and 16 apparently healthy males (63.0±6.4 years) participated. Participants performed a graded cycle ergometer test (CET) of 50, 75 and 100 W, followed by 10 min active recovery (at 50 W) and 22 min seated recovery. Participants' heart rate (HR, bpm), expired air parameters and ratings of perceived exertion (exercise only) were measured. Results General linear model analysis showed throughout significantly lower HR values in post-MI participants that were related to β-blocker medication (F (2,5)=18.47, p<0.01), with significantly higher VCO2/VO2 (F (2,5)=11.25, p<0.001) and gross kcals/LO2/min (F (2,5)=11.25, p<0.001). Analysis comparing lines of regression showed, during the CET: post-MI participants worked at higher percentage of their anaerobic threshold (%AT)/MET than controls (F (2,90)=18.98, p<0.001), as well as during active recovery (100–50 W) (F (2,56)=20.81, p<0.001); during seated recovery: GLM analysis showed significantly higher values of VCO2/VO2 for post-MI participants compared with controls (F (2,3)=21.48, p=0.001) as well as gross kcals/LO2/min (F (2,3)=21.48, p=0.001). Conclusion Since METs take no consideration of any anaerobic component, they failed to reflect the significantly greater anaerobic contribution during exercise per MET for phase-IV post-MI patients. Given the anaerobic component will be greater for those with more severe forms of cardiac disease, current METs should be used with caution when determining exercise intensity in any patient with cardiac disease.


Theoretical and experimental investigations on the dependence of the intensity of infrared (IR) absorption of polycrystalline cubic boron nitride thin films under the residual compressive stress conditions have been performed. Our results indicate that the intensity of the IR absorption is proportional to the total degree of freedom of all the ions in the ordered regions. The reduction of interstitial Ar atom concentration, which causes the increase in the ordered regions of cubic boron nitride (cBN) crystallites, could be one cause for the increase in the intensity of IR absorption after residual compressive stress relaxation. Theoretical derivation is in good agreement with the experimental results concerning the IR absorption intensity and the Ar interstitial atom concentration in cubic boron nitride films measured by energy dispersion X-ray spectroscopy. Our results also suggest that the interstitial Ar is the origin of residual compressive stress accumulation in plasma enhanced cBN film deposition.


As non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies advance, commercial NVDIMM devices have been made readily available for various computing systems. To efficiently utilize the high-density and high-capacity of NVM, the latest Xeon CPUs support a special Memory Modethat turns the DRAM into a last-level (L4) cache and uses NVM as the user-addressable system memory. Unfortunately, Memory Mode often provides low performance, even slower than when only NVM is used without any DRAM cache. According to our analysis, this is due to the inefficient management of a DRAM cache by the integrated memory controller, which results in high miss rates. This paper proposes a new hybrid memory allocator, called TARMAC. By employing intelligent yet lightweight memory management policies at the memory allocator level, TARMAC manages two different types of memory devices more efficiently, achieving 37% higher cache hit rate, 67% higher throughput, and 40% shorter memory latency than the hardware-based Memory Mode, on average. TARMAC exposes memory interfaces compatible with traditional memory allocators, enabling existing software to use TARMAC without any manual modification.


The chapter entitled "The Practice of Participatory Enterprise Modelling – a Competency Perspective" by Anne Persson addresses the question of how to develop enterprise models in a participatory way, in particular which competencies that are required for this purpose. The chapter presents the two main ways of working when it comes to involving stakeholders in the modelling process, the participatory and the non-participatory, and then focuses on the participatory approach. The author describes the desired competencies of domain experts and method experts, which are two of the most crucial actors in the participatory modelling process. The author further argues that although competency is one of the most critical success factors in modelling it is an overlooked topic in modelling research. The chapter is illustrated with quotes from an interview study that the author has carried out.


Causal effect estimation from observational data is one of the essential problems in causal inference. However, most estimation methods rely on the strong assumption that all confounders are observed, which is impractical and untestable in the real world. We develop a mediation analysis framework inferring the latent confounder for debiasing both direct and indirect causal effects. Specifically, we introduce generalized structural equation modeling that incorporates structured latent factors to improve the goodness-of-fit of the model to observed data, and deconfound the mediators and outcome simultaneously. One major advantage of the proposed framework is that it utilizes the causal pathway structure from cause to outcome via multiple mediators to debias the causal effect without requiring external information on latent confounders. In addition, the proposed framework is flexible in terms of integrating powerful nonparametric prediction algorithms while retaining interpretable mediation effects. In theory, we establish the identification of both causal and mediation effects based on the proposed deconfounding method. Numerical experiments on both simulation settings and a normative aging study indicate that the proposed approach reduces the estimation bias of both causal and mediation effects.


In many machine learning applications, from medical diagnostics to autonomous driving, the availability of prior knowledge can be used to improve the predictive performance of learning algorithms and incorporate `physical,' `domain knowledge,' or `common sense' concepts into training of machine learning systems as well as verify constraints/properties of the systems. We explore the learning using privileged information paradigm and show how to incorporate the privileged information, such as segmentation mask available along with the classification label of each example, into the training stage of convolutional neural networks. This is done by augmenting the CNN model with an architectural component that effectively focuses model's attention on the desired region of the input image during the training process and that is transparent to the network's label prediction mechanism at testing. This component effectively corresponds to the visualization strategy for identifying the parts of the input, often referred to as visualization mask, that most contribute to the prediction, yet uses this strategy in reverse to the classical setting in order to enforce the desired visualization mask instead. We verify our proposed algorithms through exhaustive experiments on benchmark ImageNet and PASCAL VOC data sets and achieve improvements in the performance of $2.4\%$ and $2.7\%$ over standard single-supervision model training. Finally, we confirm the effectiveness of our approach on skin lesion classification problem.


Background: The increasing prevalence of Methicillin resistant among staphylococci (MRSA) is an increasing problem. Increasing incidence of infections due to MRSA has led to emphasis on the need for safe & effective agents to treat both systemic & localized Staphylococcal infections. Clindamycin has been used to treat pneumonia & soft tissue and musculoskeletal infections due to MRSA. One important issue in Clindamycin treatment is the risk of clinical failure during therapy caused by MLSB inducible resistance. Objectives: To isolate and identify Staphylococcus aureus and CONS from all clinical samples & to determine the inducible Clindamycin resistance among the Staphylococcus aureus and CONS. Methods: A total of 100 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and CONS from various samples were isolated. Methicillin resistance was detected by using a 1 μg Oxacillin disc. The D-test was performed using the discs of Clindamycin (CL)(2μg) and Erythromycin (ER)(15μg) placed at a distance of 15mm (centre to centre) along with routine antibiotic susceptibility testing. Results: Among Staphylococcus aureus, MSSA isolates were 32(47.05%) compared to MRSA isolates, 26(38.24%) and among CNS, MSCONS isolates were 8(11.77%) compared to MRCONS 2(2.9%).A total of 12(17.64 %) isolates showed iMLSB, of which 8(11.77%) were MRSA, 2(2.9%) were MSSA and 2(2.9%) MRCONS isolates. Conclusion: Prevalence of inducible Clindamycin resistance among Staphylococcal isolates was significant. Hence the implementation of this D-test routinely, which is simple, reliable & inexpensive will reveals the iMLSB & cMLSB phenotype & prevents the therapeutic failure of Clindamycin.


Residential Schools in Canada were created to assimilate native children into Canadian culture. Native traditions, languages and lifestyles were systematically obliterated via prescribed curriculum, punitive educational practices and rampant physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual abuse inflicted upon them. The lingering effects of such atrocities (alarmingly high suicide rates, alcohol and drug addiction and feelings of negative self-worth) have plagued subsequent generations of Aboriginal people in Canada. A residential school survivor's testimonial helps contextualize the horrors experienced by thousands of children. The paper concludes with the steps undertaken by native groups across Canada that hope to address, via traditional healing methods, the residual effects of such a legacy of pain.


In this work, we study the design of a precoder on the user downlink of a multibeam satellite channel. The variations in channel due to phase noise introduced by on-board oscillators and the long round trip delay result in outdated channel information at the transmitter. The phase uncertainty is modelled and a robust design framework is formulated based on availability and power constraints. The optimization problem is cast into the convex paradigm after approximations and the benefits of the resulting precoder are highlighted.


As the number of wireless networks increased, so too did the need for a wireless networking standard. 802.11 belongs to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802 family of standards for local and metropolitan area networks and wireless LANs. Wireless networks use radio frequency signals to transmit data and for this reason are more prone to security threats than wired networks due to their broadcast nature. The Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol was developed to protect the privacy of data transmissions in 802.11 WLANs. Keywords : Standar 802.11, standar 802.11a, standar 802.11b, standar 802.11g, Access Point, Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), HotSpot Area, WEP. Download PDF


Indications are that more scientists, mathematicians, and engineers will be needed to compete in the world markets 1, 2 . However, the majority of young people entering the workforce will be women and minorities, who traditionally have not pursued careers in these fields 3 . More recently, a Senate bill passed that provides 600,000 new visas for foreign workers sought by the burgeoning high-tech industry 4 . Clearly we need to nurture the technical interest and achievements of all students. Devising strategies to increase their participation and enjoyment in the use of computers is the impetus for Me and Comp Sc. College students like music and MP3's. They also like technology…cell phones, beepers, computer games, email, and surfing the web. This love of technology cuts across all educational disciplines. A combination demo/hands-on exercise for the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is under development for inclusion in an introductory computer science course. The purpose of the exercise is to expose students to more than the traditional word processing and spreadsheet exercises and to make them aware of the relationships between computers and music. This project is called Me and Comp Sc.


Leaves of up to eleven different plant species (terrestrial moss: Hylocomium splendens and Pleurozium schreberi; blueberry: Vaccinium myrtillus and Vaccinium uliginosum; cowberry: Vaccinium vitis-idaea; crowberry: Empetrum nigrum; birch: Betula pubescens and Betula nana; willow: Salix spp.; pine: Pinus sylvestris; and spruce: Picea abies) have been collected from up to nine catchments (size 14–50 km2) spread over a 1 500 000 km2 area in northern Europe and analysed for 'total' (digestion by 16M HNO3) sulphur concentrations. Soil samples were taken of the O- and C-horizon at each plant sample site. The soil samples were analysed for 'total' (digestion by 16M HNO3 for O-horizon, aqua regia for C-horizon) and 'soluble' (ammonium acetate extraction buffered at pH 4.5, O-horizon only) S concentrations. The overall median S concentration for all plants is 1290 mg kg−1. The median S concentration is 965 mg kg−1 in moss; 990 mg kg−1 in conifers; 1490 mg kg−1 in shrubs; and 1900 mg kg−1 in deciduous trees. Total S concentrations in the leaves of the 11 plant species are very different within and between the catchments. Compared to the total regional variance, the local variance within just one catchment is very high. One of the nine catchments was located directly adjacent (5–10 km S) to the nickel smelter and refinery at Monchegorsk, Kola Peninsula, Russia, one of the largest SO2 (and metal) emitters in Europe. Only spruce needles returned significantly higher S concentrations (by a factor of 2) in all samples collected near Monchegorsk. Otherwise pollution is reflected in a higher variance rather than in high concentrations. Willow leaves show by far the highest total S concentrations. They are, however, not related to pollution but were observed in the catchment nearest to the coast of the Barents Sea. The measured S concentrations in the leaves do not correlate well either with 'available' or total S in the soils. Several different pathways must be considered for leaf uptake of S in all plants. The important role of S as a major plant nutrient and the consequently high background concentrations and variations prohibit the use of leaves as reliable indicators of SO2 pollution levels in air. It is not possible to establish general 'background' S concentrations in plant leaves for a very large area.


The main aim of our work is to improve the accuracy of the hyperplane tracker of F. Jurie and M. Dhome (see IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. and Machine Intelligence, vol.24, no.7, p.996-1000, 2002) for real-time template matching. As the computation time of the initialization of the algorithm depends on the number of points used for estimating the motion of the template, only a subset of points in the tracked template is considered. Traditionally, this subset is determined at random. We present three different methods for selecting points better suited for the hyperplane tracker. We also propose to incorporate color information by working with eigenintensities instead of gray-level intensities, which can greatly improve the estimation accuracy, but only entails a slight increase in computation time. We have carefully evaluated the performance of the proposed methods in experiments with real image sequences.


Development of drug resistance against alkylating cytostatic drugs has been associated with higher intracellular concentrations of glutathione (GSH) and increased expression of glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzymes. Therefore, enhanced detoxification by the glutathione/glutathione S-transferase pathway has been proposed as a major factor in the development of drug resistance toward alkylating agents. In this paper we describe 31P NMR and HPLC studies on the spontaneous and glutathione S-transferase catalyzed formation of glutathionyl conjugates of two metabolites of ifosfamide, i.e., 4-hydroxyifosfamide and ifosfamide mustard. At 25 degrees C activated ifosfamide (= 4-hydroxyifosfamide + aldoifosfamide) disappeared faster in the presence of a 10-fold excess of GSH (t1/2 = 107 min) compared to incubations without GSH (t1/2 = 266 min). No evidence for the formation of 4-glutathionyl ifosfamide was found. The ultimate alkylating species of ifosfamide is ifosfamide mustard (IM). In the absence of glutathione, the rate constant for the disappearance of the ifosfamide mustard signal at 25 degrees C (pH 7) was 1.98 x 10(-3) min-1 (t1/2 = 350 min). In the presence of a 10-fold molar excess of glutathione, this rate constant was 1.95 x 10(-3) min-1 (t1/2 = 355 min), indicating that the spontaneous formation of an aziridinium ion is the rate-limiting event in the reaction with glutathione. The aziridinium ion formed from IM can deprotonate upon formation, leading to the formation of a (noncharged) aziridine species. This intermediate (N-(2-chloroethyl)-N'-phosphoric acid diamide) was characterized by 31P, 1H, and 13C NMR spectra. When 2 mM ifosfamide mustard was incubated with 1 mM GSH in the presence of 40 microM GST P1-1, the formation of monoglutathionyl ifosfamide mustard was 2.3-fold increased above the spontaneous level. The other major human isoenzymes tested (A1-1, A2-2, and M1a-1a) did not influence the formation of monoglutathionyl ifosfamide mustard. The results of these studies demonstrate that increased levels of GST P1-1 can contribute to an enhanced detoxification of ifosfamide.


Abstract In a series of focus groups during 2001 and 2002, organic farmers from different regions of the United States identified a wide range of risks to their operations. The focus groups were facilitated by the University of Maryland in cooperation with a research team from USDA's Economic Research Service, to explore the risks faced by organic farmers, how they are managed, and needs for risk management assistance. Contamination of organic production from genetically modified organisms was seen as a major risk, particularly by grain, soybean and cotton farmers. Focus-group participants producing grains and cotton—many of whom knew about and had obtained crop insurance—raised concerns about coverage offered, including the need for insurance to reflect the higher prices received for organic crops. Most fruit and vegetable producers participating in the focus groups had little knowledge of crop insurance. When provided with basic information about crop insurance, operators of small fruit and vegetable farms were skeptical about its usefulness for their type of operation.


This review of recent contributions reveals common conclusions about the effects of integration on location. For high trade costs, the need to supply markets locally encourages firms to spread across different regions. Integration weakens the incentives for self-sufficiency and for intermediate values of trade costs pecuniary externalities induce firms and workers to cluster together, turning location into a self-reinforcing process. However, agglomeration raises the price of immobile local factors and goods, so far low transport costs firms may spread to regions where those prices are lower.


The purpose of this article is to relate a methodology for using an adjustable articulator with the help of axiography. Axiography revealed the true rotation axis, which allowed the cast of the mandible to be mounted without losing the established reference plane. In doing so, the new position of the mandible was stabilized with the aid of a reposition splint, which proved to be very successful.


The difficulty and limitation of small target detection methods for high-resolution remote sensing data have been a recent research hot spot. At present, it has much realistic significance to rapidly detect targets in high resolution remote sensing images, especially within limited computation resources. Employing relative achievements of visual attention in perception psychology and neurosciences, this paper endeavors to construct an attention model for target detection and make use of the advantages of fast and accurate small target detection under complex varied nature environment. The proposed model consists of the processing of bottom-up visual information extraction and top-down visual attention guiding. The construction and calculate method is presented in paper. The novel framework breaks down the complex problem of scene analysis and improves the computation efficiency by selective attention. The experimental results over aircraft detection in Quick-bird satellite images show that the proposed model is well-behaved on high resolution remote sensing images.


We study the positive solutions to boundary value problems of the form ; , ; , where is a bounded domain in with , is the Laplace operator, is a positive parameter, is a continuous function which is sublinear at , is the outward normal derivative, and is a smooth function nondecreasing in . In particular, we discuss the existence of at least two positive radial solutions for when is an annulus in . Further, we discuss the existence of a double S-shaped bifurcation curve when , , and with .


Lentinula edodes belongs to the group of fungi known as ligninolytic fungi, due to its ability to degrade the aromatic structure of the lignin. textile dyes also have aromatic structure, and after microbial degradation, some of them can be transformed into toxic compounds, when compared to the original structure, representing risk to environment and human health. therefore, the potential of the fungus L. edodes iNCQS 40220 to decolorize and to detoxify reactive red 198 (azo dye), reactive blue 214 (azo dye) and reactive blue 21 (cooper phthalocyanine dye) in a mixture (MxD), was evaluated. After 14 days of incubation, total decolorization in liquid media was obtained. the fungal treatment of MxD did not present toxic effects towards blood human cells. the genotoxicity of MxD, assessed by Comet assay, was efficiently reduced to 61% and in the Ames test presented negative response for mutagenicity for Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium tA97, tA98, tA100 and tA102 strains. the results indicated L. edodes INCQS 40220 efficiency on decolorization and genotoxicity reduction of a mixture of different dyes. therefore, based on these results, obtained under laboratory conditions, L. edodes iNCQS 40220 has potential for textile effluent treatment.


Fractional order integral is introduced into active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) to establish the structure of fractional order proportional integral controller (FPI). Fractional order ADRC (FADRC) is designed by replacing the nonlinear state error feedback control law using nonlinear function combination in ADRC with FPI, which can combine the high performance of ADRC estimating disturbances with the characteristics of fractional order calculus more really describing the physical object and spreading the stable region of the system parameters. The proposed FADRC is applied to permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) speed servo system in order to improve robustness of system against the disturbances. Compared with ADRC, simulation results verify that the proposed control method has given very good robust results and fast speed tracking performance.


The aim of the study was to determine the anthropometric and motor development profile of a selected group of street children in Potchefstroom, in the North West Province, South Africa. A sample of 28 street children living in a state-owned shelter (20 boys and eight girls) between the ages of 7 to 14 years participated in the study. The anthropometric measures included stature, body mass, body-mass index (BMI), and two skinfolds (subscapular and triceps) and were measured according to the protocol of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK). The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, the Sensory Input Screening Instrument and a section of the Quick Neurological Screening Test II were applied to determine the motor development profile of the street children. The results of the anthropometric measures showed that the street children are shorter, lighter and have a lower BMI and smaller skinfolds than the norm for children of the same age. Signs of malnutrition were also noted. The results showed deficits in all the three aspects of motor development that were tested. With regard to the gross motor development, deficits were found with regard to running speed and agility, bilateral coordination and strength. Fine motor deficits were found in upper limb speed and dexterity, response speed and visual motor control. The neuromotor development of street children also showed deficits, especially with regard to vision. African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation & Dance Vol. 13 (2) 2007: pp. 127-134


Cryptocurrency Market today counts a market capitalization of $207 Billion, with more than 3000 coins and where main dominant Cryptos, as BTC, ETH, LTC have reached a clear popularity on Social Networks such Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and GitHub. Hence, it is today an important financial reality that attracts a lot of risk lovers and digital coin users. Nevertheless, the ambiguity of Market Nature and the huge volatility makes this market complex and approach to Cryptocurrency analysis a stiff process. It looks distant from exchange market, which appears stable and with low volatility level, and appears more similar with stock. Both in fact, present high degree of risk, but Crypto market results more fragile. All this makes price forecasting an interesting and complex game. Looking at the actual State of Art, the most interesting trend is the application of several machine learning algorithms, such as simple and multiple Linear Regression, Support Vector machine (SVM), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) to OHCLV financial data. But the lack of seasonality and the continuous volatility drastically afflict models accuracy. Throughout the recent years, Sentiment Analysis has been involved into the Cryptocurrency price forecasting. It is a tool, based on Opinion Mining and Natural Processing Language that allows extracting polarity from Social Posts and Text, a good proxy of investor Sate of Confidence about Market. Most of works consider just Twitter sentiment and Google Trend with daily data sampling frequency. Today, few papers have inferred on Blockchain quantitative features as possible Price spread explanatory variables. Blockchain is the most underlying cryptocurrency technology and it is definable as a distributed, immutable and transparent ledger that allows emitting transactions stored by blocks. This innovation paradigm is impacting on several business areas, as Financial Transactions, Supply Chain and Politic, with a hype expectation that is touching the stars. The scope of this work, is to explore the main Cryptocurrency Sources, and evaluating which kind of data is offered, with which granularity and time horizon and in which ways (REST APIs, Web Socket APIs, csv, excel adds-on). Under this perspective, three kinds of data are stored: the OHLCV (Open, High, Low, Close, Volume) financial data, Social Data, including Facebook likes, Reddit posts, comments, GitHub activity and Blockchian data, as Block size in Byte, the number of Transactions, the Difficulty to add a new Block, the Miners Remuneration in USD. Once Data Crawling is reached, the thesis proceeds inferring on the existence of possible correlation between financial data and Social and Blockchain data. Finally, in order to empirically evaluate the validity of the work done so far, a Multilayer Perception, a Neural Network algorithm, is rune. The forecasting performances are analyzed, computing the Mean Square Error. The work counts 5 chapters, that deeper explain the above steps and with takeaways, highlighting the fundamental concepts and results, reached in each chapter. In particular the thesis is scheduled as following: - Chapter 1: Cryptocurrency Overview - Chapter 2: Blockchian as Paradigm Shift and technology - Chapter 3: Cryptocurrency Sources and Data Crawling - Chapter 4: Heatmap and variables relationship - Chapter 5: Multilayer Perceptron application


A brief historical overview of the microelectronics of the present home entertainment LSI chips with regard to the product specifications and performance aspects of the home entertainment LSI chip sets, such as for digital cameras, home robotics and games are given in order to explore the possible killer applications as our driving force for our future semiconductor and electrical and electronic industries. SOI design in Cell Processor is one good example. But some further technology break-through may be needed for our future potential real-time AIPS/AINS applications. Here, AIPS stands for Artificial Intelligent Partner Systems and AINS stands for Artificial Intelligent Nursery Systems.


Abstract This study aimed to: (1) investigate the readiness of Vocational High School (VHS) students, the schools, and the industry to implement the industrial practicum, (2) describe the implementation of the industrial practicum, and (3) describe the result of the industrial practicum implementation. This study was an evaluation research study using the Countenance Model. The research population comprised all teachers and principals of VHSs, all the industrial practicum instructors, and all Year III VHS students of the building engineering expertise program in Makassar City. The sample was selected using the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. The results showed that VHS students were ready to carry out the industrial practicum. This was supported by their knowledge, basic skills and ability and socialization by the schools. VHSs were ready to implement the industrial practicum. Large- and middle-scale industries were ready to implement the industrial practicum. However, only 75% of smallscale industries were ready to do so. Cooperation between industries, especially small ones, and vocational schools was less satisfactory. A few middle- and largescale industries, on the other hand, were quite good. The students' activities in the industrial practicum ran well because they were supported by their ability to adapt themselves with the industrial environment. Their basic practical skills were poor. The teachers were also good, indicated by the intensity of their visits to the industries during the industrial practicum. Such visits improved the students' motivation and supported them. The instructors also performed the activities well, especially in guiding the students during the industrial practicum. The instructors continuously provided guidance to the students before accomplishing assignments and checked the results. The final assessment by the instructors included students' attendance, discipline, motivation, work quality, initiative, creativity, attitudes, and performance. In the final achievement, most students were in the very satisfactory category and only a few were in the moderate category. Keywords: program evaluation, industrial practicum


Abstract In this study, we coupled a well‐established whole‐cell system based on E. coli via light‐harvesting complexes to Rieske oxygenase (RO)‐catalyzed hydroxylations in vivo. Although these enzymes represent very promising biocatalysts, their practical applicability is hampered by their dependency on NAD(P)H as well as their multicomponent nature and intrinsic instability in cell‐free systems. In order to explore the boundaries of E. coli as chassis for artificial photosynthesis, and due to the reported instability of ROs, we used these challenging enzymes as a model system. The light‐driven approach relies on light‐harvesting complexes such as eosin Y, 5(6)‐carboxyeosin, and rose bengal and sacrificial electron donors (EDTA, MOPS, and MES) that were easily taken up by the cells. The obtained product formations of up to 1.3 g L−1 and rates of up to 1.6 mm h−1 demonstrate that this is a comparable approach to typical whole‐cell transformations in E. coli. The applicability of this photocatalytic synthesis has been demonstrated and represents the first example of a photoinduced RO system.


Retention and Attrition Factors of Nonreturning Students at Utah State University by Amy L. Jordan, Master of Science Utah State University, 1981 Major Professor: Keith T. Checketts, Ph.D. Department : Psychology vii The purpose of this study was to determine the factors which affected the decision of students not to return to Utah State University after completion of the previous quarter. The factors were determined by a mailed questionnaire which was a modification of the Withdrawing/ Nonreturning Student Survey developed by American College Testing (ACT). One hundred twenty-two former Utah State University students who had attended fall quarter, 1979 but failed to register for winter quarter were randomly chosen for the study. The students were asked to complete the questionnaire and return it to Utah State University. The return rate through the mail was low and many were completed over the telephone. The results indicated that full-time employment, financial difficulties, marital plans, and the decision to attend a different college or university were the factors cited most frequently as reasons for not returning to Utah State University. viii A recommendation was made for the staff members who work with freshmen to be made aware of the large numbers of these students who do not return to Utah State University. It was also suggested that the distribution system for financial aids be reviewed to determine the most effective utilization of their resources for retention of students. Also, Utah State University may want to explore the special needs of out-of-state students with regard to social life. A study which further investigates the attrition rates of graduate students was recommended. (70 pages)


A control system for automatic tuning of substrate-integrated, evanescent-mode cavity, microwave filters, with piezoelectric actuators, is developed. The system is based on an elegant sensing method using monitoring capacitors mounted on top of the actuators, where the digital value of them is directly measured. The system first requires us to characterize the resonators in the filter and then can automatically tune the filter without any extra instrument. Characterization is used to circumvent the hysteresis and creeping effects of the piezoelectric actuators. This procedure extracts a unique frequency–capacitance relationship, which is modeled using a quadratic polynomial and saved into the system for tuning. Polynomial coefficients, extracted from the characterization data, are utilized to implement a closed-loop feedback control algorithm for the standalone tuning operation. The capability of the control system in automatically tuning a variety of microwave filters using this methodology is experimentally demonstrated.


The only book series to summarize the latest progress on organic reaction mechanisms, Organic Reaction Mechanisms, 1973 surveys the development in understanding of the main classes of organic reaction mechanisms reported in the primary scientific literature in 1973. The 9th annual volume in this highly successful series highlights mechanisms of stereo-specific reactions. Reviews are compiled by a team of experienced editors and authors, allowing advanced undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and chemists to rely on the volume's continuing quality of selection and presentation.


Jakarta is the capital city of Indonesia with a very dense population, approximately four million of the thirteen million in Jakarta area traveling to and from the city every working day. MRT can be an alternative transportation solution for those who are also environmentally friendly. The life and economic activity of a city depend on how easy the city residents travel or their mobility and how often they can do it to various destinations in the city. The city of Jakarta, which has a traffic density, will have an obvious impact when the MRT has been running effectively. The change in attitude and mentality of people who are using MRT will be obvious, especially the changes in different individual's experiences with specific patterns combined with particular objects in a particular space and time. Which in this case, the application of behavior setting can be a theory that can be explored as a built environment created by people, in connection with the above understanding, the behavior setting in architecture explains the relationship between human behavior and the environment, especially the architectural space. Therefore, the existence of the MRT, which represents a breakthrough in public transportation, will significantly influence the behavior set with its environment. Thus, through this theory, it will be seen the suitability between the behavior setting that is formed with the function of space at the Blok M, Jakarta MRT Station.


We analyze the underlying source of gender differences in earnings estimates on a crowd-sourcing platform with low barriers to entry. This platform allows us to examine gender differences within earnings estimates among a sample of non-professional analysts in an effort to better understand the development of analyst ability. Estimates made by females are more accurate than those made by males. We eliminate explanations of more talented females joining the platform, an innate ability of females to process information, females utilizing more up-to-date information, superior stock selection among females, and survivor ship bias. Rather, our evidence is consistent with females learning faster and males exhibiting greater overconfidence. Our findings provide new insight into the mechanisms behind the increase in accuracy documented among professional female analysts. Finally, we observe a positive market response when females provide more optimistic estimates.


This Article examines the tension between freedom of speech and laws restricting the defamation of religion, using the case study of Singapore and the Amos Yee case. In 2015, four days after the death of revered former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Amos Yee, a sixteen-year-old blogger, posted a video called "Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead!" and, one day later, an image on his blog entitled "Lee Kuan Yew buttfucking Margaret Thatcher." As part of Yee's eight-minute-long video, Yee spent forty seconds criticizing Lee by drawing an unfavorable analogy between Lee and Jesus. As a result, Yee was charged under section 298 of the Penal Code, the law prohibiting the "uttering of words with the deliberate intent to wound the religious or racial feelings." While international news highlighted Yee's prosecution as a blatant attempt to silence criticism of the former Prime Minister, the courts held steadfast in their belief that Yee's words were hurtful towards Christians, and that offending the religious sentiments of any community would not be tolerated in Singapore. This Article will review the facts of the case, the history of the law, and its application. It will also attempt to situate the law in the larger Defamation of Religions resolution debate in the United Nations from 1999–2010 and review legal restrictions on free speech in the United States and Europe.


This study investigates modality markers used as expressions of politeness in British and American ambassadorial speeches via a corpus-based method. Results of the research reflect the semantic and pragmatic perspectives of modality markers on the theories of modality and politeness. Although modality and politeness are the central topics in a wide range of studies, the two domains have been discussed separately and their relationship has not been empirically investigated. Moreover, there has been no study on modality markers in British and American discourse, nor has the use of modality markers in British and American ambassadorial speeches been examined. Therefore, this research examines the relation of modality to politeness via the use of British and American ambassadorial speeches. The research contributes to the practice of the discourse community with the analysis of modality markers as politeness strategies in ambassadorial speeches. The results of a comparative analysis of modality markers as speakers' politeness strategies collected in ambassadorial speeches reveal that American and British ambassadors are strikingly different in their frequency of modality markers expressing particular politeness categories. American ambassadors use more modality markers expressing positive politeness strategies such as paying attention to hearers, expressing strong commitment, hedging on hearers' positive face, expressing optimism, complimenting to mitigate the force of comments, making claims and minimising the imposition of face-threatening acts. British ambassadors, however, employ more modality markers expressing negative politeness strategies such as hedging on negative face-threatening acts, expressing hypotheses, expressing humbleness and mitigating the force of obligation. Therefore, this thesis claims that American ambassadors use more modality markers expressing positive politeness in terms of personal emotions and directness, while British ambassadors prefer modality markers expressing negative politeness such as tentativeness, indirectness and mitigation. It is noted that modality is represented in a range of syntactic structures and patterns other than single modal auxiliary verbs. In addition, since modality markers as expressions of politeness are culture-specific, the use of modality markers differs from one culture to another. Moreover, modality markers cannot totally be treated as hedges in intercultural communication since some modality markers which seem to be semantically similar between languages are actually different in their pragmatic functions among different cultures.


Cast and cephalometric analyses were performed to measure the effects of treatment with a lip bumper. The lip bumper was fabricated from an 0.045 inch wire with shrink tubing and no acrylic shields. Nine of the 32 patients were evaluated two years after the comprehensive phase of treatment. Patients were in the mixed dentition stage of development (mean age of 9.9 yrs). A single orthodontist designed all the appliances and treated all the cases. There was significant expansion between the canines, first premolars, second premolars and molars, with the greatest expansion occurring between the first premolars. Cephalometric analysis revealed that the molars underwent angular uprighting but did not move bodily. Incisor irregularity decreased 60% during this phase of treatment. The retention cases revealed that the arch depth decreased, perhaps due to loss of leeway space, but arch widths all were broader, especially in the anterior segment, than at the end of the lip bumper phase. Incisor irregularity also remained trivial (x = 0.3 mm), suggesting appreciable stability.


Even though it is common knowledge that the "I" in CLIL stands for integration, it appears that this concept has not been sufficiently addressed in previous research on CLIL and multilingual education. Rather, as also stated in the introduction of "Conceptualising Integration in CLIL and Multilingual Education", a lot of research on CLIL has focused on learning outcomes, showing that it is possible to acquire a foreign language while at the same time achieving the same content goals as in first language content classes.


The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is one of today's most challenging projects in ground-based astronomy. Addressing one of the key science cases for the E-ELT, the study of the early Universe, requires the implementation of multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO), a dedicated concept relying on turbulence tomography. We use a novel pseudo-analytical approach to simulate the performance of tomographic reconstruction of the atmospheric turbulence in an MOAO system on real datasets. We simulate simultaneously 4K galaxies in a common field of view on massively parallel supercomputers during a single night of observations. We are able to generate a first-ever high-resolution galaxy map at almost a real-time throughput. This simulation scale opens new research horizons in numerical methods for experimental astronomy, some core components of the pipeline standing as pathfinders toward actual operations and future astronomic discoveries on the E-ELT.