The enumeration and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in bone marrow may provide important prognostic information and might help to monitor efficacy of therapy. Since current assays cannot distinguish between apoptotic and viable DTCs/CTCs, it is now possible to apply a novel ELISPOT assay (designated 'EPISPOT') that detects proteins secreted/released/shed from single epithelial cancer cells. Cells are cultured for a short time on a membrane coated with antibodies that capture the secreted/released/shed proteins that are subsequently detected by secondary antibodies labeled with fluorochromes. In breast cancer , we measured the release of cytokeratin-19 (CK19) and mucin-1 (MUC1) and demonstrated that many cancer patients harbored viable DTCs in their bone marrow, even in patients with apparently localized tumors (stage M 0 : 54%). Preliminary clinical data (n=57) showed that patients with DTC-releasing CK19 have an unfavorable outcome. We also studied CTCs or CK19-releasing cells (CK19-RC) in the peripheral blood of 194 M1 breast cancer patients and showed that patients with CK19-RC had a worse clinical outcome. In prostate cancer patients (n=48), we used prostate-specific antigen (PSA) secretion as marker to detect PSA-secreting cells and observed that 83% and 42% of M 1 & M 0 cancer patients, respectively, had CTCs with a difference in the CTC median (29 for M 1 & 9 for M 0 ) and found that a significant fraction of CTCs also secreted fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2), a known stem cell growth factor. More recently, in colon cancer , a considerable portion of viable CTCs detectable by the Epispot assay is trapped in the liver as the first filter organ in colon cancer patients. The enumeration of CK19-RC by the CK19-Epispot assay in 75 colorectal cancer patients revealed viable CTCs in 65.9% and 55.4% (p=0.04) patients in mesenteric and peripheral blood, respectively, whereas CellSearch detected CTCs in 55.9% and 29.0% (p=0.0046) patients. In mesenteric blood, the number of CTC was significantly higher than in the peripheral blood. Our clinical data showed that localized colon cancer patients with a high level of CTCs have an unfavorable outcome (n=60). In conclusion , the EPISPOT assay offers a new opportunity to detect and characterize viable DTCs/CTCs in cancer patients and it can be extended to a multi-parameter analysis revealing a CTC/DTC protein fingerprint. Citation Format: Catherine Alix-Panabieres. Detection and characterization of viable circulating tumor cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research; 2013 Oct 27-30; National Harbor, MD. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Can Prev Res 2013;6(11 Suppl): Abstract nr ED06-01.


OBJECTIVE
Analysis and generalization of data related to visfatin involvement in the pathogenesis of inflammation at various stages of rheumatoid arthritis.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Visfatin is an adipocytokine which has been also identified in non-adipose tissues. It influences directly on maturation of B cells, which are involved in autoantibody production and T cell activation. Visfatin can promote inflammation via regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNF, IL-1β and IL-6. Concentration of circulating visfatin in rheumatoid arthritis patients is higher comparing to healthy individuals. Several studies suggest that visfatin level is associated with rheumatoid arthritis activity, and its elevation may precede clinical signs of the relapse. In murine collagen-induced arthritis visfatin levels were also found to be elevated both in inflamed synovial cells and in joint vasculature. Visfatin blockers have been shown to confer fast and long-term attenuation of pathological processes; however, most of their effects are transient. Other factors responsible for hyperactivation of immune system can participate in this process at a later stage. Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with combination of these blockers and inhibitors of other mediators of inflammation can potentially improve treatment outcomes comparing to current therapeutic strategies. Recent advances in the treatment of experimental arthritis in mice as well as application of emerging treatment strategies obtained from oncology for rheumatoid arthritis management could be a source of novel adipokine-mediated anti-rheumatic drugs.

CONCLUSION
The ongoing surge of interest in anticytokine therapy makes further study of visfatin highly relevant as it may serve as a base for innovational RA treatment.


In this thesis, the effect of inhomogeneous pre-stress on elastic wave propagation and scattering in nonlinear elastic materials is investigated. Four main problems are considered: 1. torsional wave propagation in a pre-stressed annular cylinder, 2. the scattering of horizontally polarised shear waves from a cylindrical cavity in a pre-stressed, infinite, nonlinear elastic material, 3. the use of pre-stress to cloak cylindrical cavities from incoming horizontally polarised shear waves, and 4. the scattering of shear waves from a spherical cavity in a pre-stressed, infinite, nonlinear elastic material.It is observed that waves in a hyperelastic material are significantly affected by pre-stress, and different results are obtained from those which would be obtained if the underlying stress was neglected and only geometrical changes were considered. In Chapter 3 we show that the dispersion curves for torsional waves propagating in an annular cylinder are strongly dependent on the pre-stress applied. A greater pressure on the inner surface than the outer causes the roots of the dispersion curves to be spaced further apart, whereas a greater pressure on the outer surface than the inner causes them to be spaced closer together. We also show that a longitudinal stretch causes the cut-on frequencies to move closer together and decreases the gradient of the dispersion curves, whilst a longitudinal compression causes the cut-on frequencies to move further apart and increases the gradient of the dispersion curves. In Chapter 4 we observe that pre-stress affects the scattering coefficients for shear waves scattered from a cylindrical cavity. It is shown that, for certain parameter values, the scattering coefficients obtained in a pre-stressed medium are closer to those that would be obtained in the undeformed configuration than those that would be obtained in the deformed configuration if the pre-stress were neglected. This result is utilised in Chapter 5 where the cloaking of a cylindrical cavity from horizontally polarised shear waves is examined. It is shown that neo-Hookean materials are optimal for this type of cloaking. A stonger dependence of the strain energy function on the second strain invariant leads to a less efficient cloak.We observe that, for a Mooney-Rivlin material, as S1 tends from 1 towards 0 (in other words, as a material becomes less dependent on the first strain invariant, and more dependent on the second strain invariant), there is more scattering from the cloaking region. For materials which are strongly dependent on the second strain invariant the pre-stress actually increases the scattering cross-section relative to the scattering cross-section for an unstressed material, hence these materials are unsuitable for pre-stress cloaking.Finally, in Chapter 6 we study the effect of pressure applied to the inner surface of a spherical cavity and at infinity on the propagation and scattering of shear waves in an unbounded medium. It is shown that the scattering coefficients and cross-sections for this problem are strongly dependent on the pre-stress considered. We observe that a region of inhomogeneous pre-stress can lead to some counterintuitive relationships between cavity size and scattering cross-sections and coefficients.


The semantics of temporal logic is usually defined with respect to a word representing a computation path over a set of atomic propositions. A temporal logic formula does not control the behavior of the atomic propositions, it merely observes their behavior. Local variables are a twist on this approach, in which the user can declare variables local to the formula and control their behavior from within the formula itself. Local variables were introduced in 2002, and a formal semantics was given to them in the context of SVA, the assertion language of SystemVerilog, in 2004. That semantics suffers from several drawbacks. In particular, it breaks distributivity of the operators corresponding to intersection and union. In this paper we present a formal semantics for local variables that solves that problem and others, and compare it to the previous solution.


T-cells detect with their T-cell antigen receptors (TCRs) the presence of rare peptide/MHC complexes (pMHCs) on the surface of antigen presenting cells (APCs). How they convert a biochemical interaction into a signaling response is poorly understood, yet indirect evidence pointed to the spatial antigen arrangement on the APC surface as a critical factor. To examine this, we engineered a biomimetic interface based on laterally mobile functionalized DNA origami platforms, which allow for nanoscale control over ligand distances without interfering with the cell-intrinsic dynamics of receptor clustering. We found that the minimum signaling unit required for efficient T-cell activation consisted of two ligated TCRs within a distance of 20 nanometers, if TCRs were stably engaged by monovalent antibody fragments. In contrast, antigenic pMHCs stimulated T-cells robustly as well-isolated entities. These results identify the minimal requirements for effective TCR-triggering and validate the exceptional stimulatory potency of transiently engaging pMHCs.


The Key of Web Services lies in how to describe and find Web serve, and which is mainly realized depending on UDDI technology is realized. The company which provided the services by UDDI can register information, it can make the potential user and/or cooperative partner find the services and simple shelf of the business of these companies. At the same time, UDDI can make company find other company, so as to expand the potential business partnership. We can say UDDI has offered the chance for company to step into new market and service, also make the companies in all scales expand their own place business among the global market rapidly.


Using the C6/36 clone of the Aedes albopictus cell line, a derived cell line was obtained capable of growing in a commercial serum-free medium facilitating this line to keep its morphologic characteristics and adhesion capacity. The growth speed rate reduction of the adapted cell line was compensated by its low maintenance cost. Its usefulness in the multiplication of dengue viruses 1 and 2 was tested; the reported line showed the same susceptibility for the 2 agents than the original cell line when the indirect fluorescence technique was applied.


The city of Kampala has undergone a period of rapid urbanization that has contributed to the degradation of the city's natural environment. The urban environmental profile for Kampala has been prepared as the first component of the assignment promoting green urban development in Africa: enhancing the relationship between urbanization, environmental assets, and ecosystem services, a project being conducted under the leadership of the World Bank. An overall objective of this project is to link the study of urban environmental issues with the advancement of more sustainable urban growth. The profile summarizes the existing quality of the wetlands and other aquatic and terrestrial environmental assets, identifies the key drivers that are the cause of their vulnerability, and describes the key institutional challenges and constraining factors that limit the city's ability to address environmental management challenges. Identification of the key environmental assets and key drivers of environmental degradation within the city required a more comprehensive review of reports on urban planning and infrastructure services. The city has recently made progress in the development of key infrastructure systems such as solid waste management and sanitation. The report is organized as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two sets the background and context for Kampala, providing an overview of the impacts of rapid urbanization and climate change, drawing linkages to urban environmental assets. Section three, quality of the environmental assets of Kampala describes the state of the key environmental assets, including the terrestrial assets, aquatic assets, and air quality, and attempts to infer the associated historic and current trends. Section four, drivers of environmental vulnerability and degradation describes the key issues that are driving degradation and the impacts caused. Section five, institutional issues and challenges describes the key factors that constrain Kampala's ability to effectively address environmental management challenges. Section six, provides a synthesis of key findings.


The increasing concern over climate change has led to a number of international agreements to control greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture currently accounts for 28 percent of Ireland's total greenhouse gas emission and therefore has a major role to play in Ireland achieving its emissions targets. To date research into reducing emissions from Irish agriculture has focused on devising abatement strategies at the farm level such as changes in animal feeding practices. Alternatively emissions could be controlled using market-based emissions abatement strategies such as emissions taxes or permit trading, which are in theory a least cost means of cutting emissions. This paper uses data from the Irish National Farm Survey to construct a farm-level Linear Programming model and to simulate a market for tradable emission permits. The impact on average gross margin of allowing farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by trading permits is compared with a scenario where emissions are unconstrained and a scenario where a command and control approach is adopted to reduce emissions.


Heart failure (HF) is a global public health concern that continues to have a sufficient impact on morbidity, mortality and disability in developing ad developed countries. Contemporary diagnostic and prediction strategy bases on biomarker use, which helps improving individual prognostication and early verification of the disease. However, widely implementing biomarkers such as natriuretic peptides, and several new biomarkers (glectin-3, soluble ST2 and others) were not demonstrated strong ability to improve discriminative capacity in various HF phenotypes. In this context micro vesicle (MVs), which play a core role in the endogenous reparation, coagulation, inflammation, immunity and metabolic memory phenomenon, could be prospective biomarkers in HF with predictive ability. However, there is not yet strong evidence those immune phenotypes of MVs are important for prediction and development of several phenotypes of HF. The aim of the review: to summarize knowledge regarding the role of various MVs in diagnosis and prognosis of HF.


Series of energy‐filtered TEM images have been acquired with very narrow energy slit using a post‐column energy filter. This allowed us to reconstruct spectra with an energy resolution estimated to 2 eV, and a spatial resolution in the order of 0.5 nm. In that way, fine structures of the N‐K edge in AlN/GaN heterostructures have been investigated and compared to EELS spectra. The fine structure in the two nitrides is very sensitive to the local environment. Very good agreement between ESI and EELS spectra was found. Moreover, this technique allowed analysis of the AlN/GaN interface at a nanoscale. The second example is an application of the technique to construct bonding maps. In this case, maps differentiating AlN nanoprecipitates with either the cubic or the hexagonal phase were created.


Abstract
This article examines the implications of the choice made by the Republic of Lakotah to rely on international treaty law rather than the exercise of self-determination in declaring its independence from the United States in 2007 and 2010. States have long expressed resistance towards the granting of the principle of self-determination to minorities and indigenous groups. States fear that granting this right would lead to groups taking action to secede from the state. This article considers whether state fears of secession are realistic, and whether there is, in fact, a credible claim to external self-determination under international law for indigenous groups, or whether state fears of indigenous self-determination are grounded in other issues.


Abstract Knowledge management is still a difficult issue within law firms. One of the potential barriers to widespread adoption of knowledge management in law firms has been cited as cultural resistance. In order to better understand this obstacle, a Delphi survey was conducted with key knowledge management experts in US and UK law firms. There were six factors that focused on elements of cultural resistance. This article, written by Elana Zeide and Jay Liebowitz, highlights the findings.


Cold‐water coral ecosystems present common carbonate factories along the Atlantic continental margins, where they can form large reef structures. There is increasing knowledge on their ecology, molecular genetics, environmental controls and threats available. However, information on their carbo‐nate production and accumulation is still very limited, even though this information is essential for their evaluation as carbonate sinks. The aim of this study is to provide high‐resolution reef aggradation and carbonate accumulation rates for Norwegian cold‐water coral reefs from various settings (sunds, inner shelf and shelf margin). Furthermore, it introduces a new approach for the evaluation of the cold‐water coral preservation within cold‐water coral deposits by computed tomography analysis. This approach allows the differentiation of various kinds of cold‐water coral deposits by their macrofossil clast size and orientation signature. The obtained results suggest that preservation of cold‐water coral frameworks in living position is favoured by high reef aggradation rates, while preservation of coral rubble prevails by moderate aggradation rates. A high degree of macrofossil fragmentation indicates condensed intervals or unconformities. The observed aggradation rates with up to 1500 cm kyr−1 exhibit the highest rates from cold‐water coral reefs so far. Reef aggradation within the studied cores was restricted to the Early and Late Holocene. Available datings of Norwegian cold‐water corals support this age pattern for other fjords while, on the shelf, cold‐water coral ages are reported additionally from the early Middle Holocene. The obtained mean carbonate accumulation rates of up to 103 g cm−2 kyr−1 exceed previous estimates of cold‐water coral reefs by a factor of two to three and by almost one order of magnitude to adjacent sedimentary environments (shelf, slope and deep sea). Only fjord basins locally exhibit carbonate accumulation rates in the range of the cold‐water coral reefs. Furthermore, cold‐water coral reef carbonate accumulation rates are in the range of tropical reef carbonate accumulation rates. These results clearly suggest the importance of cold‐water coral reefs as local, maybe regional to global, carbonate sinks.


: Fetal mouse metatarsals cultured for 4 days onboard international space laboratory IML-1 (STS-42) were investigated using light microscopy and electron microscopy combined with X-ray microanalysis. Bones cultured in microgravity were equal in length to both ground and inflight (1 g) controls. Three zones: epiphyseal, proliferative, and hypertrophic chondrocytes were distinguished and measured in metatarsals isolated from 16-day-old fetuses. In bone cultures exposed to microgravity, hypertrophic zone tended to decrease and epiphyseal area was increased compared to controls. Proliferative zone has equal length both in bones cultured under microgravity and in controls. The same tendency was observed in bone cultures from 17-day-old fetuses. Metatarsals cultured in microgravity have less spreading calcification zone of diaphysis in comparison with both controls. The results suggest that maturation of chondrocytes and calcification of cartilage, but not cell proliferation, are microgravity sensitive processes in developing bones isolated from the organism.


This research constitutes the analysis of a previously unstudied area, the transformation of Spiritualism from a theological belief system to a media spectacle in contemporary British culture. Exploring modern Spiritualism's theological framework, pointing to its communal belief structure, practices and Seven-Principle doctrine this research articulates its position within society today, exploring notions of re-enchantment where the contemporary individual has become disconnected from formal religious institutions but still possesses a yearning for spiritual nourishment. During early forms of Spiriualism a first-person genuine experience was fundamental to the way in which the spectators framed meaning around what they were viewing. The loss of first person aspect provides a fundamental stance from which to interrogate the shifts that have occurred to Spiritualism as a result of its contemporary representations. Critically the study examines the representation of Spiritualism within the media, particularly on television, where mass audiences experience Spiritualism through the ghost hunting programme.
Using existing postmodernist theoretical approaches, most significantly Baudrillard and the theory of Simulacrum (1994), alongside theories of media spectacle led by Kellner (2003) Darley (2000) and King (2005), this study adopts a qualitative approach to examine this contemporary Spiritualist media phenomenon, using textual analysis to review primary media texts, current literature in the field, magazines and newspapers, and a textual analysis approach to explore the key media representations of Spiritualism within Most Haunted as a primary text.
It is argued that through the technologisation and media coding of Spiritualism, it has become framed by existing forms of media production, and now only exists, and can only be understood as a hyperreal text that prioritises spectacle. The traditional Spiritualist theological belief system has been reduced to an empty set of orchestrated on-screen motifs, severed from their authentic meaning that take only the aesthetic form of Spiritualism but offer none of the authentic communal experiences that pervade both traditional and contemporary first person experiences.
 The textual analysis of Most Haunted confirms the media simulation of Spiritualism but simultaneously reveals the programme's construction of the conventions for all future representations of 'media spiritualism'. The seance, communion with spirit and notions of mediumship are reduced to stylishly edited scenes that play on filmic conventions. Most significantly the thesis establishes that the ghost hunting programme has become a space for ghostly 'visitations' of Victorian devices of Spiritualism. Practices that were once located in the darkened nineteenth century parlour have been 'repatriated' into the darkened locations of media investigations that operate as moments of retrospective hallucination, thus the removal of the theological is complete, the on-screen entertainment and spectacle, devoid of understandings of the communion with spirit has displaced the Spiritualist doctrine.


Mental health is an increasing concern around the world, but there is a substantial gap between Western and non-Western countries in terms of access to quality mental healthcare. To help close this gap and improve the delivery of mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS), the UN's 2016 Grand Bargain declared a new approach of prioritising the localisation of these services. This paper examines the effects of the Grand Bargain on the localisation of mental health and psychosocial support services in non-Western countries, as a means to decolonise mental health.
An outcome evaluation was carried out to measure the amount of funding received by local and national agencies that provide MHPSS services in less economically developed countries. All data was gathered from the UN Financing Track System (FTS) and looked at financial contributions over time in six humanitarian sectors: health; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); gender-based violence; nutrition; protection, and shelter. The results show that local and national agencies received only 3% of international donors' MHPSS-related humanitarian funding between 2017 and 2021. Most localised MHPSS-related funding is driven by country-based pooled funds, with Middle Eastern countries as the primary beneficiaries, and localised MHPSS funding predominantly went to the health, WASH, and protection sectors. The study found limited localisation of MHPSS services in less economically developed countries, and a limited focus on community capacity building through associated humanitarian sectors. Based on this study, it is recommended that humanitarians should advocate for increased localisation and culturally competent practices in the MHPSS space.


This paper proposes a novel approach to shape analysis: using local reasoning about individual heap locations instead of global reasoning about entire heap abstractions. We present an inter-procedural shape analysis algorithm for languages with destructive updates. The key feature is a novel memory abstraction that differs from traditional abstractions in two ways. First, we build the shape abstraction and analysis on top of a pointer analysis. Second, we decompose the shape abstraction into a set of independent configurations, each of which characterizes one single heap location. Our approach: 1) leads to simpler algorithm specifications, because of local reasoning about the single location; 2) leads to efficient algorithms, because of the smaller granularity of the abstraction; and 3) makes it easier to develop context-sensitive, demand-driven, and incremental shape analyses.We also show that the analysis can be used to enable the static detection of memory errors in programs with explicit deallocation. We have built a prototype tool that detects memory leaks and accesses through dangling pointers in C programs. The experiments indicate that the analysis is sufficiently precise to detect errors with low false positive rates; and is sufficiently lightweight to scale to larger programs. For a set of three popular C programs, the tool has analyzed about 70K lines of code in less than 2 minutes and has produced 97 warnings, 38 of which were actual errors.


In this paper we characterize quantitatively the optimal mix of progressive income taxes and education subsidies in a model with endogeneous human capital formation, borrowing constraints, income risk and incomplete financial markets. Progressive labor income taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic income risk and redistributes after tax income among ex-ante heterogenous households. In addition to the standard distortions of labor supply progressive taxes also impede the incentives to acquire higher education, generation a non-trivial trade-off for the benevolent utilitarian government. The latter distortion can potentially be mitigated by an education subsidy. We find that the welfare-maximizing fiscal policy is indeed characterized by a substantially progressive labor income tax code and a positive subsidy for college education. Both the degree of tax progressivity and the education subsidy are larger than in the current U.S. status quo.


Using Suzaku and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), we have conducted a series of four simultaneous observations of the galactic black hole candidate Cyg X-1 in what were historically faint and spectrally hard "low states." Additionally, all of these observations occurred near superior conjunction with our line of sight to the X-ray source passing through the dense phases of the "focused wind" from the mass donating secondary. One of our observations was also simultaneous with observations by the Chandra-High Energy Transmission Grating (HETG). These latter spectra are crucial for revealing the ionized absorption due to the secondary's focused wind. Such absorption is present and must be accounted for in all four spectra. These simultaneous data give an unprecedented view of the 0.8–300 keV spectrum of Cyg X-1, and hence bear upon both corona and X-ray emitting jet models of black hole hard states. Three models fit the spectra well: coronae with thermal or mixed thermal/non-thermal electron populations and jets. All three models require a soft component that we fit with a low temperature disk spectrum with an inner radius of only a few tens of GM/c2. All three models also agree that the known spectral break at 10 keV is not solely due to the presence of reflection, but each gives a different underlying explanation for the augmentation of this break. Thus, whereas all three models require that there is a relativistically broadened Fe line, the strength and inner radius of such a line is dependent upon the specific model, thus making premature line-based estimates of the black hole spin in the Cyg X-1 system. We look at the relativistic line in detail, accounting for the narrow Fe emission and ionized absorption detected by HETG. Although the specific relativistic parameters of the line are continuum dependent, none of the broad line fits allow for an inner disk radius that is >40 GM/c2.


In the second part of this article, the authors outline their proposals for a uniform EU Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) regime. Such a regime would, in the authors' opinion, eliminate problems that would otherwise arise from the necessity for common action on the part of the Member States to resolve difficulties with regard to REITs. A uniform EU REIT regime would also prevent characterization conflicts and would create a level playing field within the Internal Market for real estate investment.


Exercise training ('exercise') and hypocaloric diet ('diet') are frequently prescribed for weight loss in obesity. Whilst body weight changes are commonly used to evaluate lifestyle interventions, visceral adiposity (VAT) is a more relevant and stronger predictor for morbidity and mortality. A meta‐analysis was performed to assess the effects of exercise or diet on VAT (quantified by radiographic imaging). Relevant databases were searched through May 2014. One hundred seventeen studies (n = 4,815) were included. We found that both exercise and diet cause VAT loss (P < 0.0001). When comparing diet versus training, diet caused a larger weight loss (P = 0.04). In contrast, a trend was observed towards a larger VAT decrease in exercise (P = 0.08). Changes in weight and VAT showed a strong correlation after diet (R2 = 0.737, P < 0.001), and a modest correlation after exercise (R2 = 0.451, P < 0.001). In the absence of weight loss, exercise is related to 6.1% decrease in VAT, whilst diet showed virtually no change (1.1%). In conclusion, both exercise and diet reduce VAT. Despite a larger effect of diet on total body weight loss, exercise tends to have superior effects in reducing VAT. Finally, total body weight loss does not necessarily reflect changes in VAT and may represent a poor marker when evaluating benefits of lifestyle‐interventions.


The power spectrum of brain electric field potential recordings is dominated by an arrhythmic broadband signal but a mechanistic account of its underlying neural network dynamics is lacking. Here we show how the broadband power spectrum of field potential recordings can be explained by a simple random network of nodes near criticality. Such a recurrent network produces activity with a combination of a fast and a slow autocorrelation time constant, with the fast mode corresponding to local dynamics and the slow mode resulting from recurrent excitatory connections across the network. These modes are combined to produce a power spectrum similar to that observed in human intracranial EEG (i.e., electrocorticography, ECoG) recordings. Moreover, such a network naturally converts input correlations across nodes into temporal autocorrelation of the network activity. Consequently, increased independence between nodes results in a reduction in low-frequency power, which offers a possible explanation for observed changes in ECoG power spectra during task performance. Lastly, changes in network coupling produce changes in network activity power spectra reminiscent of those seen in human ECoG recordings across different arousal states. This model thus links macroscopic features of the empirical ECoG power spectrum to a parsimonious underlying network structure and proposes potential mechanisms for changes in ECoG power spectra observed across behavioral and arousal states. This provides a computational framework within which to generate and test hypotheses about the cellular and network mechanisms underlying whole brain electrical dynamics, their variations across behavioral states as well as abnormalities associated with brain diseases.


To the Editor: Recently, Chemali et al.1 showed that psychostimulants can accelerate the emergence from propofol anesthesia as evidenced by a faster recovery of the righting reflex and by signs of electroencephalogram activation after the injection of methylphenidate during propofol infusion. The authors believe that methylphenidate can be safely used in a clinical setting to facilitate the awakening from prolonged propofol anesthesia or in patients overly sedated by propofol. In our view, the use of psychostimulants such as methylphenidate as emergence drugs may lead to undesirable consequences, especially in the abovementioned subsets of patients. It has been recently suggested that sequential activation of consciousness, connectedness to the environment, and responsiveness may be prerequisites for the smooth and uneventful emergence from anesthesia.2 Switching on the connectedness or responsiveness before the consciousness is fully recovered from the effect of GABAergic drugs may be a cause of cognitive dysfunction or even delirium on emergence.2,3 Although connectedness to external stimuli is likely to rely on norepinephrinergic signaling,4 responsiveness probably requires the engagement of the basal ganglia and is subject to dopaminergic modulation in the striatum.5 Methylphenidate can increase extracellular levels of both norepinephrine and dopamine in cortical and subcortical areas.6–9 We believe that administering methylphenidate during propofol infusion or immediately after its termination and before the anesthetic is eliminated and consciousness sufficiently restored would interrupt the natural sequential switching-on of consciousness–connectedness–responsiveness and may result in postoperative cognitive dysfunction. We also suspect that accelerated emergence in otherwise uncomplicated anesthesia cases may be unpleasant, similar to sudden and forced awakening from sleep.10 The authors themselves noticed that the electroencephalogram pattern Should We Use Psychostimulant Drugs to Boost the Emergence from General Anesthesia? after methylphenidate injection during propofol infusion was not exactly a return to a normal awake state: rather, the electroencephalogram showed signs of overactivation.1 Administration of methylphenidate at doses comparable to those used in this study causes an increase in locomotion in rats.11,12 If the authors had examined the behavior of rats awakened from anesthesia by methylphenidate and compared it with that of animals allowed to naturally awaken from propofol, they would probably have found increased locomotor activity in the former group. The human equivalent of rat hyperlocomotion may be restlessness and agitation, both of which are undesirable and can complicate the postoperative period. Finally, many stimulant drugs with a dopaminergic mechanism of action, including methylphenidate, lead to the so-called rebound hypersomnolence, evidenced by a period of enhanced compensatory sleep after drug-induced waking.13,14 For methylphenidate, rebound hypersomnolence occurs at about 3 h after its intraperitoneal administration in rats.14 It is unclear whether this phenomenon could be potentiated by residual sedation after propofol anesthesia. However, such potentiation is likely to occur and may have detrimental effects in overly sedated patients and, therefore, should be examined before the drug is used in humans. In conclusion, the results of the study by Chemali et al. certainly enrich our knowledge about the mechanisms of anesthesia and prepare us for possible drug interactions in patients on methylphenidate scheduled for surgery. However, before proceeding to examine the ability of methylphenidate to accelerate the emergence from propofol anesthesia in patients, especially in those with increased drug-induced GABAergic tone, it seems prudent to investigate the effects of methylphenidate on postanesthetic cognitive function in animals. Meanwhile, we can still rely on the natural emergence from anesthesia caused by physiologic elimination of the anesthetic drug. Fortunately, with the ever-improving pharmacokinetic profiles of modern anesthetic drugs, we do not have to wait too long.


The success of organisational change processes depends on a number of factors. Traditional organisational change research has been predominantly concerned with social and human issues. Nevertheless, due to the ever increasing complexity of organisations and their IT-Systems, today good information on the internal structures are indispensable for the required swift changes. Corporate conceptual models have proven to be a suitable way to represent and work with this information in organisational change processes. However, a good and appropriate approach to conceptual modelling for an organisation cannot be established straightforwardly. This is due to a number of interrelated factors from different areas. To find the best way or improve on actual practice a thorough evaluation is necessary which encompasses three perspectives. The 'business process perspective' deals with the strategies and goals, and thereby serves to elicit the business requirements for conceptual modelling. The 'epistemological perspective' defines necessary qualities. The 'human resource perspective' explains key factors in the process of knowledge generation and usage on the basis of conceptual models. The specific advantages and considerations necessary for the usage of conceptual modelling in organisational change are discussed for the most influential factors and a generic framework for their evaluation presented.


This paper aims to investigate how tonogenesis in Seoul Korean affects non-native language acquisition in a multilingual context with L1 Cantonese, L2 English and L3 Korean. We are also interested to examine the source and direction of crosslinguistic influences in the acquisition of VOT and F0 patterns which are used for the stop contrasts. Sixteen L3 Korean learners differing in proficiencies (beginning vs. intermediate) were recorded reading a list of words embedded in carrier sentences in the three languages. Results from acoustic analyses found that the learners did not merge VOTs for the Korean lax and aspirated stop contrast, but they showed the tendency for tonogenesis, such as their heavy use of f0 in producing different Korean stops. Furthermore, comparison between the beginners and the intermediate learners revealed various cross-linguistic influences: regressive transfer of f0 on L1 and L2, bidirectional interaction of f0 values between L2 and L3, and L1 influence on the production of VOT in L2 and L3. These findings suggest that L3 transfer happens in a cue-by-cue manner, i.e. VOT and f0 need to be accounted for separately.


A time-efficient MRI method suitable for quantitative two-dimensional (2-D) mapping of permeability in sedimentary rock cores, and granular media samples is discussed. The images of porosity and mean axial velocity in the plane transverse to the average flow direction are essential to determine 2-D distribution of permeability in a core sample. The 2-D permeability mapping is particularly useful for discrimination of bedding and lamination layers, fractures and fault facies that occur in sedimentary rocks. The proposed method combines the 13-interval APGSTE scheme and centric-scan SPRITE. The APGSTE scheme is known to substantially reduce gradient-related errors in diffusion measurements. The SPRITE method provides quantitative information on fluid content within the core samples. The experiment time is critically reduced when only a few samples near the q-space origin are collected. The APGSTE-SPRITE method is illustrated through mapping of 2-D permeability and 3-D velocity field in naturally heterogeneous sandstone cores. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012


Ensuring fairness of machine learning (ML) algorithms is becoming an increasingly important mission for ML service providers. This is even more critical and challenging in the federated learning (FL) scenario, given a large number of diverse participating clients. Simply mandating equality across clients could lead to many undesirable consequences, potentially discouraging high-performing clients and resulting in sub-optimal overall performance. In order to achieve better equity rather than equality , in this work, we introduce and study proportional fairness (PF) in FL, which has a deep connection with game theory. By viewing FL from a cooperative game perspective, where the players (clients) collaboratively learn a good model, we formulate PF as Nash bargaining solutions . Based on this concept, we propose PropFair , a novel and easy-to-implement algorithm for effectively finding PF solutions, and we prove its convergence properties. We illustrate through experiments that PropFair consistently improves the worst-case and the overall performances simultaneously over state-of-the-art fair FL algorithms for a wide array of vision and language datasets, thus achieving better equity.


The Covid-19 pandemic is widely interpreted as a double-edged crisis between the preservation of health and economic functioning. Considering individuals' perceptions of the pandemic risks, we devised a ten-point tradeoff scale asking people to situate their concern between health and the economy. We administered this question seven times to a representative panel of French residents from April until November 2020, establishing a barometer that tracked changes and heterogeneity between these two concerns. We find overall concern moved in favor of the economy over time. There is substantial heterogeneity across respondents: those reporting risk from Covid-19, lower subjective social status and politically leftwing preferences were more concerned with health than the rest of the population. This partially applies to the less educated, the less wealthy and the young, suggesting the pandemic reinforces preexisting social cleavages. Beyond the pandemic situation, longitudinal tradeoff scales are a promising way to investigate risk perceptions.


Recently, hydrogen (H2) has emerged as a superior energy carrier that has the potential to replace fossil fuel. However, storing H2 under safe and operable conditions is still a challenging process due to the current commercial method, i.e., H2 storage in a pressurised and liquified state, which requires extremely high pressure and extremely low temperature. To solve this problem, research on solid-state H2 storage materials is being actively conducted. Among the solid-state H2 storage materials, borohydride is a potential candidate for H2 storage owing to its high gravimetric capacity (majority borohydride materials release >10 wt% of H2). Mg(BH4)2, which is included in the borohydride family, shows promise as a good H2 storage material owing to its high gravimetric capacity (14.9 wt%). However, its practical application is hindered by high thermal decomposition temperature (above 300 °C), slow sorption kinetics and poor reversibility. Currently, the general research on the use of additives to enhance the H2 storage performance of Mg(BH4)2 is still under investigation. This article reviews the latest research on additive-enhanced Mg(BH4)2 and its impact on the H2 storage performance. The future prospect and challenges in the development of additive-enhanced Mg(BH4)2 are also discussed in this review paper. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review paper that focuses on the additive-enhanced Mg(BH4)2 for solid-state H2 storage.


We use exogenous changes in the probability that firms adopt executive ownership guidelines (EOGs) to measure the influence of board connections on the spreading of executive compensation policy. EOGs require managers to hold pre-specified equity ownership levels, and their use has increased gradually from less than 5 percent of the largest US firms in 1992 to 73 percent in 2013. We use changes in state tax rates as a determinant of adopting EOGs and find that board connections are a significant channel through which EOGs disseminate. This finding highlights the dissemination of compensation policy through the influence exerted by the board of directors, and complements explanations based on similar firms adopting similar compensation policies.


Summary in English The relationship between perceived nativelikeness and scrutinized nativelikeness is examined in very advanced L2 French and L2 Spanish. First, native speaker judges are asked to evaluate the speech of non-native speakers and native speakers of both languages, determining whether they pass as native speakers. Four non-native participants from each language group are then analyzed in more detail. Interviews with these speakers are analyzed with respect to formulaic language use and morphosyntax. No obvious differences between speakers who pass as native and those who do not are found. Subsequently, the short excerpts used in the evaluations are closely analyzed, in search for other possible differences. It is found that speakers who pass as native speakers use regional variation to a larger extent. It is thus proposed that there is no necessary connection between perceived nativelikeness and scrutinized nativelikeness and that 'passing as a native speaker' may be more linked to sociolinguistic competence than linguistic competence.


There is evidence for a genetic component in caries susceptibility, and studies in humans have suggested that variation in enamel formation genes and their interaction with Streptococcus mutans levels may contribute to caries. For the present study, we used DNA samples collected from 173 unrelated children from Istanbul: 91 children with 4 or more affected tooth surfaces and 82 caries-free children. Six single-nucleotide polymorphism markers were genotyped in selected candidate genes (ameloblastin, amelogenin, enamelin, tuftelin 1 and tuftelin interacting protein 11) that influence enamel formation. Allele and genotype frequencies were compared between groups with distinct caries experience. Regression analysis was used for the evaluation of individual gene effects, environmental effects and gene-environment interactions. Overrepresentation of the C allele of the amelogenin marker was seen in cases with dmft scores higher than 8 (p = 0.01) when compared to controls. Also, overrepresentation of the T allele of the ameloblastin marker was seen in cases with dmfs scores higher than 10 (p = 0.05) when compared to controls. In addition, the CT genotype of the tuftelin rs3790506 marker was overrepresented in cases with dmft scores higher than 5 (p = 0.05) and dmfs scores higher than 6 (p = 0.05) compared to controls. The best-fitting model showed that dmfs is increased when the following factors are present: (1) females and both the anterior and posterior teeth are affected simultaneously, (2) when the T allele of the tuftelin rs3790506 is involved, and (3) the C allele of the amelogenin rs17878486 is involved. Our study provides support that genes involved in enamel formation modify caries susceptibility in humans.


Based on 45 interviews conducted in 6 different jurisdictions in Mexico, this article presents a close examination of the distinctive attributes and practices that characterize the Mexican Federal Judiciary (Poder Judicial Federal). Interviewees included typists, clerks and court clerks, judges, and justices, as well as scholars and experts with an in-depth knowledge of this institution. From an insider perspective, the article sheds light on idiosyncrasies, customs, and organizational patterns that are not well known outside the MFJ, such as its strong hierarchical structure, the nature of the work done, employee salaries, the practices of legalism, the risks of drug-related trials, and structural gender inequalities. It also discusses phenomena like influence peddling, cronyism, and nepotism, all of which are widely practiced within the MFJ but kept undisclosed. These practices do not necessarily have a negative connotation within the federal judiciary because they have become normalized due to their widespread use. In fact, the notion of corruption is somehow ambiguous for many judicial employees. Despite all this, the MFJ has become a more professionalized branch where the vast majority of employees performed their job competently and efficiently.


The key story in the 2017 Dutch election campaign so far has been the high levels of support for Geert Wilders' PVV in opinion polls. But what explains the PVV's ability to attract voters? James Dennison, Andrew Geddes and Teresa Talo write that although Wilders' success is frequently linked to hardening views on immigration, attitudes toward immigration in the Netherlands have actually remained fairly stable. The real root of the PVV's support lies in the salience of the immigration issue itself, partially heightened by media coverage of recent increases in the numbers of migrants entering the country.


The recognition that psychosocial risk factors contribute to the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease has led to the development of a new field of behavioral cardiology. The initial impetus for this field was studies performed in the 1980s and 1990s that provided epidemiological evidence and a pathophysiological basis for a strong link between a number of psychosocial risk factors and cardiovascular disease, including depression, anxiety, hostility, job stress, and poor social support. In recent years, additional psychosocial risk factors have been identified, including pessimism; other forms of chronic stress, such as childhood abuse and trauma, and the psychological stress that may be associated with chronic medical illness; lack of life purpose; and the syndrome of "vital exhaustion," which consists of a triad of exhaustion, demoralization, and irritability. New research in the last decade has also established that positive psychosocial factors, such as optimism, positive emotions, a vibrant social life, and a strong sense of life purpose, can have an important health-buffering effect through their favorable influence on health behaviors and promotion of positive physiological functioning. Patients can be screened for psychosocial risk factors in clinical practice through either the use of open-ended questions, which can be integrated into a physician's standard review of systems, or the use of short questionnaires. Physicians can assist in the treatment of psychosocial risk factors in various ways, such as screening patients for psychological distress and making appropriate referrals when indicated, providing patients with practical lifestyle suggestions, and employing office personnel to teach patients behavioral or psychosocial interventions that can promote a sense of well-being and/or reduce stress.


In market-oriented economies, agricultural markets and marketing functions become increasingly important as the food system evolves. This paper focuses on how selected dimensions of markets and marketing functions can be studied and evaluated in Third World settings. The specific purpose of this paper is to review fundamental price and related market analysis techniques which are and can be used in developing country food system applications. In so doing the objective is also to focus on identifying food system problems, techniques for improved interpretation of price analysis results and means of dealing with the all too common problem of data limitations. A second purpose of this paper is to serve as a "Training Manual" to accompany "MSTAT."


Safe reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn policies that satisfy certain constraints before deploying them to safety-critical applications. Previous primal-dual style approaches suffer from instability issues and lack optimality guarantees. This paper overcomes the issues from the perspective of probabilistic inference. We introduce a novel Expectation-Maximization approach to naturally incorporate constraints during the policy learning: 1) a provable optimal non-parametric variational distribution could be computed in closed form after a convex optimization (E-step); 2) the policy parameter is improved within the trust region based on the optimal variational distribution (M-step). The proposed algorithm decomposes the safe RL problem into a convex optimization phase and a supervised learning phase, which yields a more stable training performance. A wide range of experiments on continuous robotic tasks shows that the proposed method achieves significantly better constraint satisfaction performance and better sample efficiency than baselines. The code is available at https://github.com/liuzuxin/cvpo-safe-rl.


In this paper we present a neural-symbolic system for monitoring traces of observations in sofware systems. To this end, we define an algorithm that translates a RuleR rule-based monitoring system (RS) into a rule-based neural network system (RNNS). We then show how the RNNS can perform trace monitoring effectively and analyze its performance, reporting promising preliminary results. Finally, we discuss how network learning could be used within RNNS to embed the system into a framework for iterative verification and model adaptation. It is hoped that a tight integration of verification and adaptation within the neural-symbolic approach will help support the development of self-adapting, self-healing sys-


Recent combined results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) provide a remarkable set of data which requires more accurate and general investigation. Here we derive formulae for the power spectrum P(k) of the density perturbations produced during inflation in the general slow-roll approximation with second order corrections. Also, using the result, we derive the power spectrum in the standard slow-roll picture with previously unknown third order corrections.


Detecting and characterizing the community structure of complex network and social network is fundamental problem. Many of the proposed algorithm for detecting community based on modularity Q which fail to identify modules smaller than a scale community. In this paper, authors propose a new community detection algorithm based on genetic algorithm and modularity density (D value). We test our method on classical social networks whose community structure is already known and the results can be much easier compared with the method. Experiments show the capability of the method to successfully detect the community structure.


"Whatever the consequences, Labour must discharge its historic obligation to defend working people as best it can. At this juncture, it can only do so from within the Government. Connolly's party must stay in and fight on". This is what Jack O'Connor, the President of SIPTU wrote in the latest issue of his union magazine. Ireland's largest union is totally dominated by the Labour Party. Virtually all full-time officials of the union are encouraged to join. The union is a affiliated to the party and each member pays a proportion of their union dues to the Labour Party, unless they explicitly ask to opt out. The union also pays over €90,000 in funds to the party each year. So it is probably no accident then that the internal culture of the union is one of permanently induced pessimism and fatalism. Every defeat is covered with the cry that 'it could be worse'. Every attack by the Irish Independent is taken as proof positive that the union must desperately hold on to the Croke Park deal. Originally, 17,000 jobs were supposed to be cut from the public sector but now it is 30,000 and rising yet still SIPTU clings to its piece of paper.


This essay analyses a recently discovered copy of the first edition of Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek at The Hague filled with annotations and corrections apparently in the hand of its author. This copy shows many of the extensive revisions eventually implemented in the second edition of the novel. Some changes indicated in this special copy were not adopted, however, and a note on the punctuation in a hand not the author's raises the question of whether others edited the work, especially the punctuation. The essay shows how, working with great skill to minimise the labour of resetting type, Lamb appears to have made her text less vulnerable to charges of indecency, blasphemy, and animus towards friends and relations. However, it also shows that the novel's major themes remain substantially unaltered, while the transgressions of Lamb's protagonist, Lady Calantha, are excused as the result of ineluctable passions. The consistency of the substantive alterations and the inconsistency of the punctuational changes suggest that Lamb probably had the final word on revisions.


Background: The most fundamental way to decrease the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is to identify and control their related risk factors. The goal of this study is to determine socioeconomic inequalities in risk factors for NCDs using concentration index based on Non-Communicable Disease Surveillance Survey (NCDSS) data in Kurdistan province, Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005 and 2009. Methods: The required data for this study are taken from two NCDSSs in Kurdistan province in 2005 and 2009. A total of 2,494 persons in 2005 and 997 persons in 2009 were assessed. Concentration index was used to determine socioeconomic inequality. To assess the relationship between the prevalence of each risk factor and socioeconomic status (SES), logistic regression was used and odds ratio (OR) was calculated for each group, compared with the poorest group. Results: The concentration index for hypertension was -0.095 (-0.158, -0.032) in 2005 and -0.080 (-0.156, -0.003) in 2009. The concentration index for insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables was -0.117 (-0.153, -0.082) in 2005 and -0.100 (-0.153, -0.082) in 2009. The concentration index for the consumption of unhealthy fat and oil was -0.034 (-0.049, -0.019) in 2005 and -0.108 (-0.165, -0.051) in 2009. The concentration index for insufficient consumption of fish was -0.070 (-0.096, -0.044) in 2005. The concentration index for physical inactivity was 0.008 (-0.057, 0.075) in 2005 and 0.139 (0.063, 0.215) in 2009. In all the cases, the OR of the richest group to the poorest group was significant. Conclusion: Hypertension, insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables, consumption of unhealthy fat and oil, and insufficient consumption of fish are more prevalent among poor groups. There was no significant socioeconomic inequality in the distribution of smoking, excess weight, and hypercholesterolemia. Physical inactivity was more prevalent among the rich groups of society in 2009. The reduction of socioeconomic inequalities must become a main goal in health-care policies.


Purpose: The principal's job is very essential and governs the equal of student learning consequences. Principal performances are also in line with teachers' output and self-esteem. In this case, it can be said that the principal's working area creates a feeling of comfort for teachers. The principal performances create the feeling at home in encouraging teachers and employees to work in harmony with the rules and programs that have been delineated so that work output becomes great and pupil learning outcomes also upsurge. One of the teachers' productivity can be seen from the teachers' pedagogical proficiency. Pedagogical proficiency is a talent for understanding students and management of educational and dialogical learning. This study targets to determine in what way the impact of the principal's performance on teachers' pedagogical competence.
Research Methodology: The method used is the method of search and review. The review process starts with the search engine, Google scholar and reviewing related articles about principal performance and teachers' pedagogical competence.
Results: The results from 22 reviewed articles are that the role of the principal's performance is very influential in affecting the teacher's pedagogical competence.
Limitations: Since this study includes many cases, further research could include performing to analyze how principal performance could affect teacher pedagogical competence.
Contribution: This study can be useful in Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Lampung University and secondary education level
Keywords: Principal performance, Teacher pedagogical competence, Responsibility


Chemokine receptors and their chemokine ligands, key mediators of inflammatory and immune cell trafficking, are involved in the regulation of both physiological and pathological processes in the lung. The discovery that chemokine receptors/chemokines, typically expressed by inflammatory and immune cells, are also expressed in structural lung tissue cells suggests their role in mediating the restoration of lung tissue structure and functions. Thus, chemokine receptors/chemokines contribute not only to inflammatory and immune responses in the lung but also play a critical role in the regulation of lung tissue repair, regeneration, and remodeling. This review aims to summarize current state-of-the-art on chemokine receptors and their ligands in lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma/allergy, pulmonary fibrosis, acute lung injury, and lung infection. Furthermore, the therapeutic opportunities of chemokine receptors in aforementioned lung diseases are discussed. The review also aims to delineate the potential contribution of chemokine receptors to the processes leading to repair/regeneration of the lung tissue.


Metallothioneins (MTs) are classified as cysteine (Cys) rich, metal binding, low molecular weight [1], ubiquitously expressed [2] and non-enzymatic [3] proteins. First MT to be identified was a Cd-binding protein isolated from horse kidney. Initially, MT protein family was thought to be specific to animals; however, further studies showed that MTs are synthesized also by plant and prokaryotic cells [1]. An MT gene, dmt, was identified in durum wheat and was cloned in E. coli [2]. The protein coded by this gene, dMT which binds Cd2+, has a three-domain structure: the metal binding N- (1-19th residues) and C-termini (61-75th residues) and a long hinge region (20-60th residues). Cys are distributed equally in N- and C-termini with a "Cys-X-Cys" motif, where X is any amino acid other than Cys. Hinge region possesses no Cys. According to these features, dMT has been classified as a Type I plant MT [2]. dMT was expressed in E.coli as a GST (glutathion-S-transferase) fusion protein (GSTdMT) [2] and GSTdMT and the protein cleaved from GST, dMT, were purified and investigated by both biochemical and biophysical methods [4]. In this poster investigations on a mutant dMT, in which the hinge region connecting the two metal binding domains is removed will be presented. Removal of the hinge region and re-linking of the sequences coding for the terminal domains were achieved by PCR and the "chimeric" dMT is inserted into the vector pEGX4T-2 for over expression in E. coli as a GST fusion. Results of cloning and expression studies will be presented and discussed in terms of stability and metal binding properties of dMT.


Handoff plays a pivotal role in wireless communication. It is responsible for providing seamless communication between Base Stations (BSs) when user moves from one cell to another. An accurate handoff decision is very hard because at the cell boundary Mobile Terminal (MT) experiences signal from serving BS as well as from neighbouring BSs. In this situation MT fluctuates between BSs due to which unnecessary handoffs occur and demean the signal quality, which is not acceptable. As an attempt in this direction, a fuzzy logic based controller is developed in this paper to reduce the number of unnecessary handoffs. With the advantage of feedback technology, this controller deals with the impact of indeterminable changes in the received signal strength (RSS) as the user moves. This controller helps to take an accurate decision only when handoff is needed. Simulation results reveal that the proposed controller reduces handoff probability and number of unnecessary handoffs.


The purpose of this study was to examine the possibilities of creating a trail near the town of Alingsas in southern sweden, preferably a round trip connecting all the 5 nature reserves that lies near town. The aim was to investigate the potential of an easily passable trail using mainly existing roads and trails, that at the same time, would pass many interesting nature areas around the town that could give the visitor nature experiences. Another aim was also to examine if there was any area fitting to create a shorter trail, about 10 kilometres long. The passability of trails connecting some of 42 pre-marked areas was studied together with examination of the nature types and the experience these gave in terms of natural and cultural experiences. The results showed that many trails east of the town was hard to pass and gave a low amount of experiences due to heavy forestry. But a few areas contained very high nature and culture experiences instead. Some passages through town gave good experiences but passages through industrial areas was also needed. Areas with good experiences was found south and southwest of the town. A proposal of a 35 kilometre trail connecting the 5 nature reserves was made, outruling some of the studied areas, but still having areas with good experiences. Passability studies showed that it was mostly easy to walk. Areas southwest of Alingsas was recommended for a shorter trail.


First described by Ruggero Oddi in 1887, the sphincter of Oddi (SO) is a smooth muscle valve located in the second portion of the duodenum. It serves to regulate the flow of hepatic and pancreatic substances into the small intestines. Although its function seems simple, it represents a great example of how smooth muscle can be under the regulation by hormones and other signals. The SO serves many purposes in medicine and is often traversed in procedures such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). This sphincter may also become dysfunctional at times requiring either medical or surgical intervention.


Experimental cages started with a mixture of flies at three different ratios (1:9, 5:5, 9:1) from populations having heterosomal and autosomal sex-determining mechanisms were cytogenetically examined over six generations at two different temperatures (25 °C and 35 °C). In general, there was an increase in the frequency of XX males in all competitive population cages. Abnormal testes and intersex appearance, frequent X chromosome aneuploidies and deviation from a 1:1 sex ratio were observed.


The expression profiles of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), transforming growth factor beta2 (TGFbeta2), and transforming growth factor beta2 receptor (TGFbeta2R) were analyzed during the peri-implantation period in regularly menstruating, fertile bonnet monkeys and in animals in which endometrial nonreceptivity was induced by administering an antiprogestin, onapristone. Based on our previous experiences, a dose of 2.5 or 5 mg of onapristone was administered s.c. every third day during the menstrual cycle, because these dosages impair endometrial development without upsetting the normal gonadal endocrine profiles. Endometrial biopsy specimens were collected during the proliferative phase (estradiol levels about 200 pg/ml, n = 5) and peri-implantation period (Day 8 after midcycle peak in estradiol levels, n = 5) from normal ovulatory animals and during the peri-implantation period from onapristone-treated animals (n = 10). The biopsy specimens were processed to determine the expression patterns of LIF, TGFbeta2, and TGFbeta2R by immunohistochemical and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) methods. Levels of both protein and mRNA for LIF, TGFbeta2, and TGFbeta2R (analyzed by immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR, respectively) were greater in the endometrial samples collected during the peri-implantation period compared to samples collected during the proliferative phase in control animals. Treatment with either of the two doses (2.5 or 5 mg) of onapristone caused a significant (P < 0.05) down-regulation in the expression of LIF in the peri-implantation endometria. The endometrial expressions of TGFbeta2 and TGFbeta2R mRNAs were reduced significantly in animals treated with 5 mg of onapristone, but not in those treated with the lower dose. However, immunoreactive TGFbeta2 and TGFbeta2R proteins were significantly (P < 0.05) down-regulated in the endometrial samples from both the 2.5- and 5-mg-treated groups. The alterations observed in the expression patterns of LIF, TGFbeta2, and TGFbeta2R were specific, because the expression levels of epidermal growth factor receptor remained unaffected in the endometria from the treated groups. The present study demonstrates derangement in the expression profiles of LIF, TGFbeta2, and TGFbeta2R during the peri-implantation period in infertile bonnet monkeys. It may be hypothesized that TGFbeta2 function is one of the early steps in the regulation of the progesterone-driven cascade of events leading to endometrial receptivity, and that any aberration in this step may adversely affect the subsequent molecular events (i.e., expression of LIF). These data also suggest that potential aberrations in the functional network of locally produced cytokines and growth factors even may occur in an endometrium exposed to the optimal peripheral hormonal levels.


Highly-efficient two-step recoded and one-step nonrecoded trinary signed-digit (TSD) carry-free adders-subtracters are presented on the basis of redundant-bit representation for the operands' digits. It has been shown that only 24 (30) minterms are needed to implement the two-step recoded (the one-step nonrecoded) TSD addition for any operand length. Optical implementation of the proposed arithmetic can be carried out by use of correlation- or matrix-multiplication-based schemes, saving 50% of the system memory. Furthermore, we present four different multiplication designs based on our proposed recoded and nonrecoded TSD adders. Our multiplication designs require a small number of reduced minterms to generate the multiplication partial products. Finally, a recently proposed pipelined iterative-tree algorithm can be used in the TSD adders-multipliers; consequently, efficient use of all available adders can be made.


We examined the transport properties of graphene oxide nanoparticles (GONPs) in saturated sandy soil, under different solution chemistry conditions and flow velocities. GONPs exhibited high mobility in soil, even at 50 mM NaCl. While at relatively high ionic strength GONPs were less mobile in soil than in quartz sand, the differences were not significant. At a concentration of 0.5 mM, Ca(2+) significantly inhibited the transport of GONPs in soil, but only slightly inhibited the transport in quartz sand. This was because by complexing with the surface O-functionalities of both GONPs and soil components, Ca(2+) could enhance the aggregation of GONPs and bridge GONPs and soil grains. Increasing pH from 4 to 9 only slightly enhanced the transport of GONPs in soil, probably because the mobility of GONPs was already high at low pH. The presence of 10 mg L(-1) Suwannee River humic acid significantly enhanced the transport of GONPs in quartz sand at 35 mM, but only had a small effect for the transport in soil. This was possibly linked to the much smaller grain sizes and much more heterogeneous nature of the soil. Flow velocity had marked effects on the transport in soil, but essentially no effects on the transport in quartz sand. A two-site transport model incorporating both the blocking-affected attachment process and straining effects can effectively model the transport of GONPs. The high mobility of GONPs may have important implications for their environmental fate and effects.


The symmetric and asymmetric fusion reaction systems forming the same compound nuclei 26Al, 30Si, 38Ar and 170Hf are investigated with the frame of improved isospin dependent quantum molecular dynamics model. The entrance channel mass asymmetry dependence of compound nucleus formation is found by analyzing the shell correction energies, the Coulomb barriers and the fusion cross sections. The calculated fusion cross sections agree quantitatively with the experimental data. The results indicate that compound nucleus formation is favorable for the systems with larger mass asymmetry because of the smaller Coulomb contribution to the fusion barrier.


Since the beginning of the financial crisis, urban and ecological social
movements have been comparatively strong and visible in Germany.
On the other hand, strikes and other forms of labor unrest
seem to have vanished or have at least not been covered by the
mainstream media. This does not mean they do not exist: struggles
against precarization and the deterioration of working conditions
are taking place, but in a more decentralized and disarticulated way
than during the four years before the crisis. One of the reasons
consists in the systematic integration of the trade union leadership
and a major part of its rank-and-file members into crisis management
strategies and forms of tripartite corporatism. The article
points out that this might be an ambivalent process that could ultimately
produce further precarization and thus more social conflicts
and labor unrest.


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 45, 2004

3825

TLK286 is a novel glutathione analog cancer prodrug that has shown significant antitumor activity and improved survival in multiple Phase 2 clinical trials in ovarian, breast, non-small cell lung and colorectal cancers. TLK286 is activated by glutathione S-transferase P1-1 (GST P1-1), an enzyme upregulated in many cancers and often over-expressed in tumor cells resistant to chemotherapeutic agents. The activation of TLK286 is catalyzed by GST P1-1 and involves the cleavage of the molecule to release two electophilic moieties, a vinyl sulfone and a phosphorodiamidate, that induce apoptosis mediated through the stress response pathway. Genetic polymorphism of the human GST P1-1 class exists in codons 105 and 114. Two GST P1-1 alleles, designated as GSTP1*A (Ile105/Ala114) and GSTP1*B (Val105/Ala114), account for over 90% occurrence of the polymorphism in the general population. We report the comparison of GST P1-1/Ile105 and GST P1-1/Val105 variants in the activation TLK286. Using HPLC to monitor and quantitate the cleavage of TLK286, both GST P1-1 variants were equally effective in catalyzing the cleavage. These results suggest that individuals with polymorphism at position 105 of GST P1-1 should have similar capability to activate TLK286 to its proapoptotic fragments.


Many popular comedians tell complicated jokes that involve multiple levels of interpretation. The same joke may be perceived as criticizing or reinforcing the societal status quo, depending on perceivers' assumptions about the target of the punchline (e.g., whether the joke is at the expense of high- or low-status groups). We focused on how such jokes are experienced by listeners who are psychologically prone to justifying (versus challenging) the status quo. In a sample of Mechanical Turk workers (N = 179), we explored whether individual differences in system justification would be associated with the appreciation of group-based (stereotypical) humor, depending on the perceived target of the joke. As hypothesized, high system-justifiers found jokes targeting low-status groups (e.g., women, poor people, racial/ethnic minorities) to be funnier than low system-justifiers did. In some cases, low system-justifiers found jokes targeting high-status groups (rich people, European Americans) to be funnier than high system-justifiers did. These results expand upon previous demonstrations that humor appreciation is linked to relatively stable ideological dispositions and suggest that different individuals may perceive complex group-based humor in divergent ways.


Major investments in public transport in the Netherlands are often considered inefficient from a welfare economic perspective. Bakker and Zwaneveld (2010) show that of about 150 social cost–benefit analyses (CBAs) of public transport projects in the Netherlands conducted in the past decades, only one-third of the projects had a positive benefit–cost ratio. These public transport projects were typically not part of an integrated planning approach, and the CBAs examined the costs and benefits of the transport projects only. In particular, the role of spatial planning or spatial developments in these CBAs was ignored or not made explicit (that is, land use is assumed to be fixed or does not differ between project alternatives). In recent years, however, integrated spatial and transport planning has received more attention in Dutch national policy-making. In 2007, a national policy document, Randstad Urgent, was published, aiming to improve cooperation between national and regional governments and create a joint policy decision-making process for different spatial projects and transport infrastructure projects that are to be realized within the same region (Ministry of Transport Public Works and Water Management, 2007). The policy document focused on 40 projects within the Randstad Area, the most urbanized region in the western part of the Netherlands. The aim of this new approach is to speed up the decision-making process and increase the social benefit–cost ratio of the projects. In this chapter, we examine the RAAM project ('Rijksbesluiten Amsterdam – Almere – Markermeer'), the largest integrated policy project included in Randstad Urgent. The project involves adding 60 000 dwellings and 100 000 jobs and major transport investments in the corridor between Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam and Almere, located 30 kilometres east of Amsterdam (see Figure 8.1). Almere would nearly double in size from its current 190 000 to 350 000 inhabitants by 2030. Local governments developed three spatial policy alternatives for the development of Almere with tailored public transport investment programmes. Almere is a new town built on reclaimed land (a polder) with two bridges linking two motorways (A6 and A27) and a railway (parallel to the A6) linking to the mainland. These road connections are already severely congested and rail capacity is insufficient to increase train frequencies substantially. Doubling the population of Almere is not considered feasible without major infrastructure expansion. Transport investments are thus seen of crucial importance to the future population growth of Almere.


Speech applications in noisy and degraded channel conditions continue to be a challenging problem especially when there is a mismatch between the training and test conditions. In this paper, a robust speech feature extraction scheme is developed based on autoregressive moving average (ARMA) modeling that emphasizes high energy regions of the signal with a data driven modulation filter. The peak preserving ability of two dimensional autoregressive (AR) models is used to emphasize the high energy regions in the spectrotemporal domain. The modulation filtering property is achieved by moving average (MA) modeling. The ARMA spectrograms are used to derive features for speech recognition in the Aurora-4 database. In these experiments, the ARMA model features provide significant improvements (relative improvements of 15%) compared to other robust features. Furthermore, the robustness of these features is also verified for language identification (LID) of highly degraded radio channel speech. Here, the ARMA approach achieves relative improvements of up to 20% over the baseline features.


More than any other Beginning French program, Vis-a-vis captures students' attention and engages them as they build a solid foundation of language and culture. The fifth edition of Vis-a-vis achieves this through its unique blending of contemporary culture and digital tools with the building blocks of the four-skills approach. The innovative features of Vis-a-vis engage students and connect them to the content. Students will be intrigued by the cultural content and delighted by the new features such as pronunciation tips and mini-tutorials on French slang. Plus, there is a robust suite of digital components, all conveniently available in one location, Centro, McGraw-Hill s exclusive digital platform."


Dendropsophus nanus, D. sanborni and Lysapsus limellum are three hylid species, similar in body size and frequently coexisting at the same reproductive sites. To determine whether food partitioning occurred during the reproductive phase, both numerical and volumetric analyses of stomach contents were performed on syntopic populations inhabiting a wetland system in Corrientes Province, north-east Argentina. The analyses showed a marked specialization towards Diptera prey in Dendropsophus species, particularly in D. sanborni, and a more generalist habit in L. limellum. The three study species exhibited different foraging modes, with L. limellum belonging to the sit-and-wait predator type, D. sanborni to the forager predator type, and D. nanus exhibiting a mixed foraging mode. The comparison of the feeding strategies adopted by the various species in different habitat types and condition of syntopy showed a noteworthy plasticity. According to Schoener's food size selection strategy model for a syntopic predator species system, the larger species (L. limellum) selected prey bigger in size and the smaller (D. sanborni) ate a larger number of prey specimens, whereas D. nanus showed an intermediate trophic strategy. Although the degree of trophic niche overlap was higher than expected, the study species did not show a clear segregation in terms of use of space, hence the coexistence mechanism during the reproductive period should not be related to competition processes for food resources.


This thesis investigates the feasibility of innovative domestic hot water technology. A heat pump water heater was instrumented and installed to test Canadian Standards Association standard CSA-F379.1 draw profiles under various set-point conditions while drawing heat from the surrounding indoor space at the evaporator of the heat pump. The results of simulations indicated that the operating costs for HPWH units in basement installations would not be heavily affected by the local climate, but instead strongly dependent on local utility cost ratios between electricity and heating fuel. It was found that minimal and similar set-points between the heat pump and booster heater, as well as a utility ratio near the nominal coefficient of performance, would provide the best cost performance for HPWH units.


The 2022 Multilingual Representation Learning (MRL) Shared Task was dedicated to clause-level morphology. As the first ever benchmark that defines and evaluates morphology outside its traditional lexical boundaries, the shared task on multilingual clause-level morphology sets the scene for competition across different approaches to morphological modeling, with 3 clause-level sub-tasks: morphological inflection, reinflection and analysis, where systems are required to generate, manipulate or analyze simple sentences centered around a single content lexeme and a set of morphological features characterizing its syntactic clause. This year's tasks covered eight typologically distinct languages: English, French, German, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Swahili and Turkish. The tasks has received submissions of four systems from three teams which were compared to two baselines implementing prominent multilingual learning methods. The results show that modern NLP models are effective in solving morphological tasks even at the clause level. However, there is still room for improvement, especially in the task of morphological analysis.


Yhe papers in this special section focus on industrial wireless networks. With the rapid advance of wireless technologies, numerous emerging solutions and applications of industrial wireless systems have been developed. The present development of communication in industrial environments drives the need for ubiquitous access to distributed resources and services that are connected to things, devices, and systems. Service completions are typically perfected through smart APPS on wireless data delivery, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and 5G. The occurrence of Internet of Things (IoT) further catalyzes the advent of the wireless era. These papers cover the comprehensive solutions of wireless network developments, industrial applications, and wireless prototype designs.


We have used light microscopy and scanning, scanning transmission, transmission, and high voltage electron microscopy to study the shape and cell surface movements of chick embryo fibroblasts cultured in Vitrogen collagen gels. Cells in gels are less well spread than their counterparts on glass but they retain a dorso-ventral polarity, and move by extending long, narrow lamellar processes. We show here for the first time that cells moving in 3D substrata form perinuclear caps of cross-linked cell surface receptors.


A quantitative method of replicon analysis of DNA fibre autoradiographs has been used to study the relationship between mean rate of DNA chain growth (R) and distance between adjacent replicons (ID) in fibroblasts from cancer-prone conditions. Results are expressed in terms of the mean linear regression R = delta +(K.ID)10-2. When replicon behaviour was examined in cells from patients with ataxia telangiectasia, basal cell naevus and Bloom's syndromes grown at high density after 48 h in culture, no significant differences could be found in replicon behaviour between these syndromes and normal cultures. However when Bloom's cells were grown at low density and examined 24 h earlier, the mean rate of chain growth R was reduced compared to normal cells at the same density. Both cell types at high densities at 24 h showed equal but lower R values than at 48 h after plating the cultures. The lower rate of chain growth in Bloom's was accompanied by a longer S-period and cell cycle. Studies of cell proliferation kinetics using consecutive mitoses after bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR) incorporation and harlequin banding showed that Bloom's cells at low cell density require a longer period to recover a normal cell cycle length after plating than do normal cells at the same density. Plating densities and using conditioned media shorten the recovery period in Bloom's cells, and when foetal calf serum/MEM is replaced by human AB serum/McCoy 5a medium as the growth media, cell cycle behaviour of low density Bloom's and normal cells are equal at a much earlier time. It is concluded that the slow rate of DNA chain growth in Bloom's cells is an artefact introduced by culture conditions and also may be present in normal cells at an earlier period. The behaviour of replicons during this recovery period appears to be similar in Bloom's and normal cells except for the time lag. As recovery proceeds, the DNA chain growth in the associated replicon pairs recover progressively. This alters both the mean R value from 0.4 to 0.8 micron/min, the slope of the regression K from less than 1.0 to approximately 1.0 while the distance between initiation sites (ID) remains constant throughout. Pretreatment of all cultures with fluorodeoxyuridine (FUdR) produced the same differential effect on release from DNA synthesis inhibition, that is a similar increase in the activation of normally inactive replicons and a slightly slower rate of chain growth over all replicons. No evidence of a substance released by Bloom's cells in culture capable of increasing the sister-chromatid frequency in normal cells could be found. Since SCE frequencies were found to increase with fixation time after BUdR introduction it is concluded that some of the reported changes could be due to differences in cell cycle kinetics brought about by the different media conditions.


The research is dedicated to artificial intelligence technology usage in digital marketing personalization. The doctoral theses will aim to create a machine learning algorithm that will increase sales by personalized marketing in electronic commerce website. Machine learning algorithms can be used to find the unobservable probability density function in density estimation problems. Learning algorithms learn on their own based on previous experience and generate their sequences of learning experiences, to acquire new skills through self-guided exploration and social interaction with humans. An entirely personalized advertising experience can be a reality in the nearby future using learning algorithms with training data and new behaviour patterns appearance using unsupervised learning algorithms. Artificial intelligence technology will create website specific adverts in all sales funnels individually.


Cloning is a simple way to create new variants of a system. While cheap at first, it increases maintenance cost in the long term. Eventually, the cloned variants need to be integrated into a configurable platform. Such an integration is challenging: it involves merging the usual code improvements between the variants, and also integrating the variable code (features) into the platform. Thus, variant integration differs from traditional soft- ware merging, which does not produce or organize configurable code, but creates a single system that cannot be configured into variants. In practice, variant integration requires fine-grained code edits, performed in an exploratory manner, in multiple iterations. Unfortunately, little tool support exists for integrating cloned variants. In this work, we show that fine-grained code edits needed for integration can be alleviated by a small set of integration intentions-domain-specific actions declared over code snippets controlling the integration. Developers can interactively explore the integration space by declaring (or revoking) intentions on code elements. We contribute the intentions (e.g., 'keep functionality' or 'keep as a configurable feature') and the IDE tool INCLINE, which implements the intentions and five editable views that visualize the integration process and allow declaring intentions producing a configurable integrated platform. In a series of experiments, we evaluated the completeness of the pro- posed intentions, the correctness and performance of INCLINE, and the benefits of using intentions for variant integration. The experiments show that INCLINE can handle complex integration tasks, that views help to navigate the code, and that it consistently reduces mistakes made by developers during variant integration.


ABSTRACT CP81 is a virulent Campylobacter group III phage whose linear genome comprises 132,454 bp. At the nucleotide level, CP81 differs from other phages. However, a number of its structural and replication/recombination proteins revealed a relationship to the group II Campylobacter phages CP220/CPt10 and to T4-type phages. Unlike the T4-related phages, the CP81 genome does not contain conserved replication and virion modules. Instead, the respective genes are scattered throughout the phage genome. Moreover, most genes for metabolic enzymes of CP220/CPt10 are lacking in CP81. On the other hand, the CP81 genome contains nine similar genes for homing endonucleases which may be involved in the attrition of the conserved gene order for the virion core genes of T4-type phages. The phage apparently possesses an unusual modification of C or G bases. Efficient cleavage of its DNA was only achieved with restriction enzymes recognizing pure A/T sites. Uncommonly, phenol extraction leads to a significant loss of CP81 DNA from the aqueous layer, a property not yet described for other phages belonging to the T4 superfamily.


Summary

Colon cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Compounds present in plant foods have anti-carcinogenic properties that may be metabolised by colonic bacteria thus decreasing or preventing any such beneficial effects. Phytic acid is found mostly in legumes and appears to possess anti-carcinogenic properties. This may be due to a number of factors including the recognised 'binding' properties of phytate. For this to occur successfully it is important that the integrity of phytic acid is preserved in the colon, which is a profuse microbial ecosystem. However, there are few data on the microbial species involved in its metabolism. Studies that define the populations involved may lead towards the use of dietary intervention procedures that can reduce the activities of the microflora involved in phytate degradation, thereby preserving its purported anti-tumour properties.


The art of psychotherapy has been defined as the capacity of the psychotherapist's mind to receive the psyche of the patient, particularly its unconscious contents. This deceptively simple definition implies the enormously complex art of receiving the most disturbed, dissociated, maddening, often young and primitive, frightening, and fragmented aspects of the patient's multiple ages and selves, in the hope perhaps that we might make available to our own mind, to the patient's mind, and within the therapeutic relationship, whatever it is that we discover together, perhaps with the possibility that this may allow that these dissociated, fragmented, lost, and potentially transformative aspects of self might become more accessible to both therapist and patient. The complexity of this process is further intensified when cultural difference is an important aspect of therapeutic engagement. This paper will explore this rich and complex art. It will include exploration of psychoanalytic, relational, and transpersonal psychotherapeutic perspectives as they inform the potentials and mysteries of this deeply receptive process. The paper will consider the potential this receiving of the other might have for the growth of both the therapist and patient within the life span of clinical engagement and will include consideration of implications for cross cultural clinical work. Clinical vignettes illustrating and informing the ideas explored in this paper will be woven throughout the paper.
Whakarāpopotonga
Kua tautuhia te toi whakaora hinengaro ko te kaha o te hinengaro o te kaiwhakaora hinengaro ki te pupuri i te hinengaro o te tūroro, mātuatua nei ko ngā matū maurimoe. E tohu ana te tautuhinga ngāwari nei i te kaha uaua o te mahi pupuri i ngā maramara tirohanga, ngā tau, ngā whaiaro tini o ngā tūroro arā noa atu te wairangi, te noho wehe, te kārangirangi, he taiohi, he māori, whakawehiwehi, i runga i te wawata tērā pea ka tuwhera ki ō tātau ake hinengaro, ko tō te tūroro ki waenga hoki i te whakapiringa haumanu. E kene pea mā te mea ka kitea, e tuku ēnei tirohanga pūreirei, kongakonga, ngaro, ā, ngā tirohanga hurihanga whaiaro e whakamāmā ake ki te kaiwhakaora me te tūroro. Ka kaha ake te auatanga o tēnei hātepe i te mea ko te rerekētanga o te ahurea te wāhanga nui o te mahi haumanu. Ka wheraina e tēnei tuhinga te tirohanga toitaurea mōmona nei. Ka whakaurua te wherawherahanga o te wetewetenga hinengaro, te tātanga, me ngā tirohanga whakaoranga hinengaro wairua i te mea ko ēnei ngā kaiwhakamōhio i ngā pirikoko o tēnei hātepe toropupū tino hōhonu. Ka whakaarohia e te pepa nei te ēkene pea o te whakaurunga mai o tētahi kē atu mō te whakatipuranga o te kaihaumanu me te tūroro i roto i te wā huitahi ai. Ka whakaarohia ake anō hoki ngā hīkaro mō te mahi haumanu ahurea whakawhiti. Ka rarangahia ngā kōrero haumanu e whakaahua e whakaatu ana i ngā whakaaro tūhuraina i roto i tēnei tuhinga.


According to Foucault's dynamic view of power relations, individuals or subjects in every society are free and dynamic. Power produces individuals who act, and are not simply objects upon whom others act. For Foucault individuals and groups are neither preformed before they engage in power relations, nor unchanged by those relations, and this is how our participation in power relations literally makes us who we are. Put differently, an individual is not passive and victim of power relations, but free to succumb to the demands of power relations or use the possibilities before him and practice his own ethics. To Foucault subjects can practice every individual's freedom through applying the strategies of 'care of the self'. Considering such a postmodern hypothesis in mind, this study examines Foucault's stance towards the concept of individuality in Tess and Angel, the protagonists of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urberviles. The study is explored through analyses, but the question of manifestation remains in the realm of speculation because cross-pollination of thoughts can never be proven conclusively.


"At the UWI, Mona, students pursuing the BA in Digital Media Production will develop the skills to both communicate creatively and effectively, solving design and communication problems"