This article contends that ghosts and gangsters are not merely popular genres in the Hong Kong film industry; they are also legitimate participants in the film production process itself, influencing financial, creative, and logistical resources and decisions. Film personnel's accounts of the possession and protection of their bodies by members of the cosmological and criminal underworlds, particularly in location filming in graveyards and gangster turf as well as ritual payments and appeasements made to the underworlds, reveal the diverse risks and cultural practices in film production. This article argues that despite the rationalization of commercial filmmaking, "enchantments" in the form of religion and feudalistic crime linger within capitalist production.


This study examines the strategies employed in justifying counter-arguments against answers provided in Q&A (question and answer) discussion. The study also explores how information sources are used in support of such arguments. The findings draw on the analysis of 100 discourse episodes focusing on global warming – a controversial topic eliciting competing answers from the participants. The empirical data were downloaded from Yahoo! Answers. Four strategies were identified. Of them, questioning the validity of answers and questioning the background assumptions of answers were used most frequently. While justifying counter-arguments, the participants also drew on emotional appeals and questioned the contributor's motives. To support the counter-arguments, the participants mainly drew on internet-based sources of information. The controversial nature of the discussion topic was reflected in the debate about the most authoritative information sources: persuasive material advocating a particular viewpoint to global warming vs objective research reports.


ABSTRACT In situ identification of whole fixed bacterial cells by hybridization with fluorescently labeled, rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes is often limited by low signal intensities. In addition to an impermeability of the cell periphery and a low cellular rRNA content, the three-dimensional structure of the ribosome may hinder the access of oligonucleotides to their target sites. Until now, a systematic study on the accessibility of 16S rRNA target sites had not been done. Here, we report fluorescence intensities obtained with more than 200 oligonucleotide probes (mostly 18-mers) used with whole fixed cells ofEscherichia coli DSM 30083T. Two overlapping sets of adjacent oligonucleotides, 171 in total, were designed to cover the full length of the 16S rRNA. The two sets are shifted by 5 to 13 nucleotides. The probes were labeled with carboxyfluorescein, and signal intensities of hybridized cells were quantified by flow cytometry. Care was taken that the signal intensity of cells was dependent solely on the in situ accessibility of probe target sites. The brightest signal resulted from probe Eco1482, complementary to positions 1482 to 1499. With this probe, the fluorescence was 1.7 times brighter than that of the standard bacterial probe EUB338 and 44 times brighter than that of the worst probe, Eco468. The distribution of probe-conferred cell fluorescence in six arbitrarily set brightness classes (classes I to VI; 100 to 81%, 80 to 61%, 60 to 41%, 40 to 21%, 20 to 6%, and 5 to 0% of the brightness with Eco1482, respectively) was as follows: I, 4%; II, 14%; III, 21%; IV, 29%, V, 19%; and VI, 13%. A more detailed analysis of helices 6, 18, and 23 with additional probes demonstrated that a shift of the target region by only a few bases could result in a decline of cell fluorescence from >80 to <10%. Considering the high evolutionary conservation of 16S rRNA, the in situ accessibility map of E. coli should facilitate a more rational selection of probe target sites for other species as well.


"If you are explaining, you're losing" —Ronald Reagan

There remains a widespread conviction among most neurointerventionists and many non-interventional neurologists that mechanical thrombectomy is a life- and function-saving procedure in appropriately selected patients with acute ischemic stroke from large vessel occlusion (LVO). However, this has yet to be confirmed in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for mechanical thrombectomy. While critical analyses of recent published RCTs provide insight into how they failed to demonstrate a benefit for thrombectomy, they do not negate their impact upon our field.1 Until we provide conclusive data in support of mechanical thrombectomy, our ability to offer this procedure to patients remains in constant jeopardy. In addition, as a larger volume of negative data accrues, our opportunities to conduct RCTs in this area will ultimately dissipate. For these reasons, now—more than ever—we must carefully and thoughtfully design future trials which will investigate, and potentially validate, the utility of endovascular stroke therapy in that patient population with the greatest potential for benefit.

Designing such a trial presents a challenge from the standpoint of equipoise, as many physicians believe it unethical to randomize a 'likely to benefit' patient to no treatment. However, given the negative data generated to date, it would be ill-conceived to dispense with equipoise for such patients. There are many past examples where treatment advocates were equally convinced of a lack of equipoise and subsequent RCTs demonstrated no benefit for intervention (eg, SAMPRIS, ECIC Bypass, COSS).2 ,3 In fact, one might posit that, in an appropriately designed RCT, it is better that the participating interventionists are believers in the benefits of the intervention and possibly have some reservations regarding procedural equipoise, but are still committed to the trial. Indeed, we believe firmly in the role of mechanical thrombectomy in appropriately selected patients while …


[1] In part 1 of this series, techniques for generating quantitative information on fine airborne particulate-size and chemically resolved mass concentration from an Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometer were introduced. Presented here are the results generated using these techniques from sampling U. K. urban air with such an instrument in Edinburgh during October 2000 and in Manchester during July 2001 and January 2002. Data on the total mass concentrations and size-resolved mass distributions of nitrate, sulfate, and organic compounds were obtained for all three campaigns and compared with data from other sources, including a micro-orifice uniform deposit impactor, total particle numbers, CO and NOx concentrations, local wind speed and temperature, and back trajectory analysis. All three locations showed evidence for emissions from local transport, with a mass modal aerodynamic diameter of around 100-200nm. This mode was dominated by hydrocarbons showing little evidence of oxidization. The three sites also exhibited a larger mode consisting of inorganic chemicals and oxidized organics, which appeared to be governed by sources external to the cities and showed evidence of internal mixing. The mass modal aerodynamic diameter varied between approximately 200-500 nm during the winter and 500-800 nm during the summer. The summer also showed an increased mass loading without an increase in total particle number. Evidence of material building up and ageing in the atmospheric surface layer during periods of low wind speeds was also observed.


Based on the ratio between the sum of two terminal-voltage phasors of the transmission line and that of two terminal-current phasors of the same line, which is defined as integrated impedance in this study, a novel transmission line pilot protection principle is proposed. When an external fault of the transmission line occurs, the imaginary part of the integrated impedance which reflects the capacitance impedance of the line is negative and with a great modulus. When an internal fault of the transmission line occurs, the imaginary part of the integrated impedance of faulty phase which generally reflects the impedance of the system source and the line is either positive or negative and with a relatively small modulus. According to such a characteristic, the external fault and the internal fault of transmission line can be distinguished. The criterion proposed in this study is not affected by the capacitive current. It can be applied to the line with or without shunt reactor. Moreover, the threshold of the criterion can be easily set. Simulation results of electro-magnetic transient program (EMTP) and dynamic physical test data both verify the high sensitivity and reliability of the proposed principle.


The composites of expanded ghaphite with ZnO (EG/ZnO) have been prepared in the method of impregnation, and their degradation performance for crude oil have been investigated by the means of UV-Vis and FT-IR. The morphology and crystal structure of the EG/ZnO composites have been characterized by the means of SEM and XRD. The results are shown as follows: the EG/ZnO composites keep the laminated and microporous network structure of EG. ZnO particles in the composites are hexagonal crystal system, and they widely distribute in the cavities and the network pores of EG. In the UV-Vis spectra, there is a blue shift about 13 nm, which is from 255 nm to 242 nm at the biggest absorption peak. That indicates the component of the crude oil has already changed. Meanwhile, the results of FT-IR spectra show that a degradation reaction occurs obviously in the crude oil after irradiated by ultraviolet ray, and the degradation products possibly include alkone, aldehyde, alcohol, and so on. Thus, it can be inferred that the prepared EG/ZnO composites would be a new kind of functional material integrated strong adsorption property and degradation property into itself.


Twitter sentimental analysis is the way to examine polarity in tweeted opinions. The computational process involves implementing machine learning classifiers to categorize the tweets into positive, negative and neutral sentiments. To identify a suitable classifier for the task is a prime issue. In this paper we have presented the performance comparison of base classification techniques like Decision Tree, Random Forest, Naive Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbour and Logistic Regression on analysis of tweets. The results thus obtained show Logistic Regression analyze tweets with highest accuracy rate of 86.51% and the least performer comes out to be K-Nearest Neighbour with an average accuracy rate of 50.40%.


Total hip arthroplasty (THA) for osteoarthritis secondary to development dysplasia of the hip (DDH) is facing increasing levels of complexity with increasing grade of deformity. The dysplastic acetabulum is characterized by diminished bone stock with decreased lateral coverage. Therefore, it is challenging to restore the anatomic center of rotation and ensure adequate acetabular component ixation. Surgical strategies include a medialization of the acetabular component, a higher hip center, lateral structural bone grafting and the selection of smaller component sizes to improve native bone coverage. Excessive femoral anteversion is commonly encountered in patients with developmental dysplasia. Moreover, the intramedullary canal is narrow and the neck often aligned in valgus. Modular implants are helpful to address the altered femoral anatomy and also facilitate femoral shortening osteotomies in patients with high hip dislocation. Although clinical results are comparable to primary total hip replacement in primary osteoarthritis, the risk for revision surgery due to dislocation and loosening is increased. The current chapter reviews classiication, preoperative planning, and surgical strategies for patients undergoing THA for osteoarthritis secondary to developmental dysplasia.


Leptospirosis outbreak in calves from Corrientes Province, Argentina. Leptospirosis is an infectious disease resulting in significant economic losses in livestock production. This disease causes abortion, embryo death, death of calves within the first few days of life and mastitis. We report a leptospirosis outbreak in calf growing and fattening. Histopathological and hemoparasite studies, immunofluorescence, and bacterial cultures were performed. A strain of Leptospira interrogans serovar Pomona was isolated from samples collected from dead calves.


Composite Crosslinked nanofibrous membranes of chitosan, ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDE) and polyethylene oxide was successfully prepared with bead free morphology via electrospinning technique followed by heat mediated chemical crosslinking. Architectural stability of nanofiber mat in aqueous medium was achieved by chemical crosslinking of only 1% EGDE, and tensile strength tests revealed that increasing EGDE content has considerably enhance the elastic modulus of nanofibers. The structure, morphology and mechanical properties of nanofibers were characterized by Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Instron machine, respectively. Skin fibroblasts and endothelial cells showed good attachment, proliferation and viability on crosslinked electrospun membranes. The results indicate a good biocompatibility and non-toxic nature of the resulted membrane.


Third BioEcon Workshop May 22 – 25, 2003 Abstract Among the in-situ and ex-situ conservation options available to conserve crop genetic resources (CGRs), on-farm conservation has recently attracted massive attention from concerned organizations. To make this option operational, placing incentives and removal of perverse incentives are believed to be crucial so that landraces of no immediate interest to farmers can be conserved. However, before placing sound incentives and designing contracts with farmers, we have to understand farmers' motives for managing portfolio of traditional varieties and the opportunity costs they face when they are expected to use landraces. This paper empirically examines farmers' incentives and generates the opportunity costs they are facing based on a household survey data collected from 198 sorghum growing farmers in Eastern Ethiopia. To study farmers' incentives to maintain native varieties, we have adopted a utility-based model that considers on-farm diversity as a positive externality of farmers' livelihood decisions. Accordingly, on-farm diversity is considered as the derived outcome of farmers' revealed preferences subject to their concerns and constraints. Using such a framework, Poisson regression model is estimated. Opportunity costs are generated using different homogeneous treatment statistical models and further they are examined using switching regression model. As usual the paper concludes outlining the policy implications of the empirical findings to design contracts for on-farm conservation of CGRs.


Presents a new method to match a 2D image to a translated, rotated and scaled reference image. The approach consists of two steps: the calculation of a Fourier-Mellin invariant (FMI) descriptor for each image to be matched, and the matching of the FMI descriptors. The FMI descriptor is translation invariant, and represents rotation and scaling as translations in parameter space. The matching of the FMI descriptors is achieved using symmetric phase-only matched filtering (SPOMF). The performance of the FMI-SPOMF algorithm is the same or similar to that of phase-only matched filtering when dealing with image translations. The significant advantage of the new technique is its capability to match rotated and scaled images accurately and efficiently. The innovation is the application of SPOMF to the FMI descriptors, which guarantees high discriminating power and excellent robustness in the presence of noise. This paper describes the principle of the new method and its discrete implementation for either image detection problems or image registration problems. Practical results are presented for various applications in medical imaging, remote sensing, fingerprint recognition and multiobject identification. >


Principles of freedom, independence and differentiation are shaping a new education landscape that includes new schools like free, charter and academy schools. Paradoxically, the reforms are justified on the basis of a rights and equalities discourse, yet they lead to greater competition through increased involvement of private interests. Critics of privatised schooling highlight its effects upon social inequalities. Looking to schooling in the fee-paying private sector reveals that there are a few schools whose strong ideological drivers resist competitive social relations. The ideas of Durkheim and Dewey on developing individuality in relation to a social good suggest it is theoretically possible that some of the new state-funded schools will also operate from their own social values to further social equity and make contributions to a more just society. This paper explores such a possibility by comparing newly established free schools in England with existing cases of democratic schooling to theorise how in a deregulated market a school might act upon the social field of schooling to promote social responsibility and minimise commitments to economic drivers, showing also the challenges a school might face in so doing.


ABSTRACT Given the high metabolic cost required to generate ribosomes, it has been assumed that proteins involved in ribosome synthesis might establish functional cross talk with other intracellular processes to efficiently couple ribosome production and cell growth. However, such interconnections have remained elusive due to the difficulty in separating the intra- and extraribosomal roles of ribosome biogenesis factors. Using a yeast functional screen, I have discovered that Rrp12, a conserved protein involved in ribosome maturation and export, plays roles in the cell cycle and the DNA damage response. These results indicate that Rrp12 participates in a karyopherin Kap121-dependent import route that is crucial for nuclear sequestration of ribonucleotide reductase subunits and, thereby, ensures the proper kinetics of deoxyribonucleotide production during the cell cycle. Within this route, Rrp12 acts as a cofactor important for the full functionality of Kap121. This activity is mechanistically different from the known roles of Rrp12 in ribosome biogenesis. I propose that the functional duality of Rrp12 may couple the control of ribosome production to the regulation of other cellular processes during cell cycle progression.


Competition between co-existing heteroclinic cycles that have a common heteroclinic connection is considered. A simple model problem, consisting of a system of ordinary differential equations in R4 with Z24 symmetry, is analysed. The differential equations possess four hyperbolic fixed-points xi 1, xi 2, xi 3, and xi 4, with heteroclinic connections joining pairs of fixed points to form a 'heteroclinic network'. The network contains two heteroclinic cycles xi 1 to xi 2 to xi 3 to xi 1 and xi 1 to xi 2 to xi 4 to xi 1, each of which is structurally stable with respect to perturbations that preserve the Z24 symmetry of the problem. Local analysis, valid in the vicinity of the heteroclinic cycles, shows that while neither cycle can be asymptotically stable, there are conditions under which both cycles have strong attractivity properties simultaneously. For example, it is possible for both cycles to have the property that trajectories that pass through an open neighbourhood of one or more (but not all) of the heteroclinic connections in the given cycle are asymptotic to that cycle. The stability results depend on the strengths of the contracting and expanding eigenvalues of the flow linearized about each of the fixed points and on the validity of certain nondegeneracy conditions. The possible stability properties of the network and the cycles within it are determined.


Purpose: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery (IDS) is an alternative treatment option, compared to the current standard of care primary debulking surgery for treating advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). We present our institute experience of neoadjuvant chemotherapy strategy in the management of EOC which is one of the largest single institute experience. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer who were treated in our institute between 2000 and 2006. Patient with advanced disease by clinical and imaging were treated with 3 cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and then taken up for interval debulking surgery (IDS) who had static or partial or complete response to chemotherapy. The remaining chemotherapy is delivered after the surgery. Patient who had limited disease had primary debulking surgery and then adjuvant chemotherapy according to institute protocol. Outcomes in terms of disease free and overall survival were analysed. Results: This retrospective analysis included 59 patients with limited disease who had primary debulking surgery and 283 patients with advanced disease who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The median age was 50 years and majority are in the 50-59 years age group. Age more than 60 years represent 14.5%. Postmenopausal women were55.3 % and premenopausal women were 44.7 %. Multiparity is higher 70.2% than the uniparity 16.4% ornulliparity 11.7%. Abdomen distension 42% and pain 25 % are the most common symptoms. Advanced stage was the most common presentation 71% with stage III-56.1% and stage IV-14.9%. Among the neoadjuvant chemotherapy group 126/283(44.5%) had optimal cytoreduction, 44/283 (15.5%) had suboptimal cytoreduction and 113/283 (40%) not suitable for IDS. The 5 year disease free and overall survival was 30.8% and 41.5% in the NACT group with advanced disease and 58.5% and 75.8% in the primary cytoreduction group who had limited diseaserespectively. The 5 years overall survival among the IDS group with optimal cytoreduction was 57.1% and 11.7% for the suboptimal cytoreduction group. The 5 years survival was not affected by the number of neoadjuvant chemotherapy cycles delivered before surgery in the IDS group. Patient who received paclitaxol + carboplatin as first line chemotherapy had better survival than carboplatin alone or cyclophosphamide + cisplatin. Conclusion: NACT as an alternative option to primary debulking surgery in operable EOC is still debatable. But for patient with high disease burden where optimal cytoreduction is not possible NACT strategy is a valid option. Recent randomised controlled trials from Europe had shown the noninferiority of neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by IDS when compared to the primary debulking surgery in operable advanced EOC.


Aim: This study was carried out to quantify risk of seizure recurrence after discontinuation of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) after varying duration of seizure remission in children with epilepsy and to assess the variables modifying the risk of seizure recurrence. Materials and Methods: Randomized controlled trials that evaluate withdrawal of AEDs after varying periods of seizure remission in pediatric epilepsy patients, which could be unblinded, single-blind, or double-blind. The database searching included Cochrane Epilepsy Group Specialized Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, WHO Clinical trial register, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Two independent authors extracted the data and assessed trials for quality. Results: The pooled relative risk ratio (RR) for early AEDs withdrawal and late AEDs withdrawal was assessed as 1.22 (95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.94-1.57), for type of epilepsy pooled relative risk was 1.52 (95% CI: 0.96-2.41), electroencephalogram (EEG) relative risk was assessed as 1.65 (95% CI: 1.08-2.51) and the underlying etiology relative RR was assessed as 1.65 (95% CI: 1.08-2.51). Conclusion: The high-grade evidence of this study supports that discontinuing AED medication prior to at least 2 seizure free years is associated with higher seizure recurrence risk than waiting for two or more seizure free years in children.


The slag-alkali is used to activate the activity of higher calsium fly ash. By the designs of the mixture ratio and the quadratic regression orthogonal design, the best combination is sought out. Several mixture factors which affect the rule of the concrete material properties and long term performance are researched. The mathematic models which are set up by the mixture ratio design with the quadralic regression orthogonal design can be effective. The precision is high. The strength of the concrete of slag-alkali fly ash was still increasing after 8 year. The dispersion degree of those specimens is small. The SEM photo of cracked specimen and early concrete specimen shows the surface of fly ash in 7 days concrete is slick and that in 8 years old specimen has been enwrapped tightly by much hydrate plant.


Various soil health indicators that measure a chemically defined fraction of nitrogen (N) or a process related to N cycling have been proposed to quantify the potential to supply N to crops, a key soil function. We evaluated five N indicators (total soil N, autoclavable citrate extractable N, water-extractable organic N, potentially miner-alizable N, and N -acetyl- β - D -glucosaminidase activity) at 124 sites with long-term experiments across North America evaluating a variety of managements. We found that 59%–81% of the variation in N indicators was among sites, with indicator values decreasing with temperature and increasing with precipitation and clay content. The N indicators increased from 6%–39% in response to decreasing tillage, cover cropping, retaining residue, and applying organic sources of nutrients. Overall, increasing the quantity of organic inputs, whether from increased residue retention, cover cropping, or rotations with higher biomass, resulted in higher values of the N indicators. Although N indicators responded to management in similar ways, the analysis cost and availability of testing laboratories is highly variable. Further, given the strong relationships of the N indicators with carbon (C) indicators, measuring soil organic C along with 24-h potential C mineralization could be used as a proxy


Destruction of auditory hair cells results in a subsequent loss of auditory neurons. In situ hybridization and neuronal cell culture studies as well as analyses of the inner ears of neurotrophin and neurotrophin receptor gene knockout mice have shown that NT-3 and BDNF mediate both the development and survival of auditory neurons. In this study guinea pigs were exposed to the ototoxic combination of an aminoglycoside antibiotic and a loop diuretic and then received 8 weeks of intracochlear infusion of either NT-3, BDNF or NT-3 + BDNF to determine whether site-specific application of these neurotrophins could prevent the loss of auditory neurons that follows a loss of auditory hair cells. Infusion of either NT-3 or NT-3 + BDNF into the scala tympani resulted in a > 90% survival of auditory neurons while BDNF infusion yielded a 78% survival rate, compared with a 14–24% neuronal survival rate in untreated ototoxin-exposed cochleae. These results show that loss of auditory neurons that occurs subsequent to a loss of auditory hair cells can be prevented by in vivo neurotrophin therapy with either NT-3 or BDNF.


Many programmers have had to deal with an overwritten variable resulting for example from an aliasing problem. The culprit is obviously the last write-access to that memory location before the manifestation of the bug. The usual technique for removing such bugs starts with the debugger by (1) finding the last write and (2) moving the control point of execution back to that time by re-executing the program from the beginning. We wish to automate this. Step (2) is easy if we can somehow mark the last write found in step (1) and control the execution-point to move it back to this time.
In this paper we propose a new concept, position, that is, a point in the program execution trace, as needed for step (2) above. The position enables debuggers to automate the control of program execution to support common debugging activities. We have implemented position in C by modifying GCC and in Java with a bytecode transformer. Measurements show that position can be provided with an acceptable amount of overhead.


Separation logic is a recent extension of Hoare logic for reasoning about programs with references to shared mutable data structures. In this paper, we provide a new interpretation of the logic for a programming language with higher types. Our interpretation is based on Reynolds's relational parametricity, and it provides a formal connection between separation logic and data abstraction.


[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to clarify the recomendable activities for post-stroke patients. [Subjects and Methods] A survey of 60 stroke patients living at home was conducted by post. The questionnaire comprised 21 questions on activity, psychological adjustment to disability, and quality of life. [Results] The results of cluster analysis divided patients into three types: diverse activity, low activity, and functional recovery specialist types. The diverse activity subjects had the highest scores for the factors of acceptance of psychological adjustment to disability, and feelings of self-efficacy, as well as quality of life. Compared to the low activity subjects, the functional recovery specialist subjects had higher scores for the factors of acceptance of psychological adjustment to disability, and feelings of self-efficacy. [Conclusion] The results suggest that, when providing support encouraging greater activity, with objective of improving quality of life, it is important to encourage the performance of some activities for low activity type subjects, and the performance of activities other than those related to functional recovery for functional recovery specialist type subjects.


Kouhi thyme is belonged to Lamiaceae family and widely used in pharmacy, cosmetics and Food industries of developed countries; it is a strong disinfectant with antioxidant. Study about the effects of environmental conditions such as harvesting times (phonological stages) on herbage yield and quantity/quality of essential oil is very important goal to obtain maximum productivity of this valuable medicinal plant. Therefore, in order to determine the effects of phenological stages on herbage yield and quality/quantity of oil in Kouhi thyme (Thymus kotschyanus Boiss. & Hohen.), this study was conducted in research farm of Khorasgan (Isfahan) branch of Islamic Azad University in 2009-2010 years using a randomized complete blocks design with three replications. Plants were harvested in five phenological stages, i.e. in the vegetative stage, beginning of blooming, 50% blooming, full blooming and fruit set stages. Oils were extracted by hydrodistillation for 3 h, of the aerial parts using Clevenger-type apparatus. Thymol percentage was determined by GC/MS. Results showed the significant effects of phenological stages (harvesting times) on fresh and dry herbage yield, essence and thymol yield and percentage. Mean comparison showed that 50% blooming has the highest essence percentage (1.48%). According to GC/MS analysis, thymol was the main compound of oil in allphenological stages. The highest fresh and dry herbage as well as essence and thymol yields were obtained from fruit set stage. In conclusion, it is recommended to harvest this plant in fruit set stage to gain the highest essence yield, thymol yield and fresh and dry herbage.


The ventriculo-gallbladder (VGB) shunt is employed rarely as an alternative to the ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt. The VGB shunt is primarily used in place of the VP shunt when complications such as peritoneal infection, shunt contamination, shunt obstruction, or surgical adhesions limit the effectiveness of the VP shunt, or when contraindications to alternative forms of ventricular drainage exist. Retained foreign body in the common bile duct is another rare entity. Therefore, a retained distal portion of a remotely removed VGB shunt is an extremely rare finding. Here, we report the case of a retained metallic fragment of a VGB shunt leading to the formation of an obstructive bile calculus discovered in the common bile duct of a young woman presenting with cholangitis. A pertinent literature review is included.


The thesis examines the operation of multistakeholderism in the Brazilian Internet governance system. It investigates how multistakeholderism operates in Internet policy-making processes and what are the effects of this operation in governance and regulatory instruments. The thesis focuses on and unpacks the elements and interactions that constitute and support the operation of multistakeholderism in Internet policy-making in Brazil. It looks at key governance structures, practices and processes analysing policy-making processes operated under a multistakeholder perspective to identify and explain the underlying elements, rationale and effects of this innovative policy-making approach. To investigate in depth what elements and configurations underpin the operation of multistakeholderism in Internet policymaking, the thesis explores, under a case study perspective, three governance practices where the operation of multistakeholderism was developed in the Brazilian Internet governance context. It observes multistakeholderism policy-making operational rationale in an international scenario influenced by the need to develop a soft-law regulatory instrument and the behaviour of stakeholders with different cultural, economic and legal values. Borrowing ideas and findings from socio-legal studies on governance and on Internet governance and applying a multi-dimensional policy-making approach, the thesis analyses these three governance practices and identifies that the operational rationale supporting multistakeholderism policymaking is based on mechanisms combining and balancing three interconnected elements: inclusion, expertise and consensus. The thesis also suggests that this policymaking mechanism is heavily influenced by a consensual orientation rationale able to mediate the contrasting tensions between inclusion and expertise at the same time that it stimulates policy cross-fertilisation and governance innovation. Unpacking these observations and findings, the thesis proposes the term 'multistakeholderism generativity' in order to illustrate its suggestion that multistakeholderism, when operated under optimal conditions, instrumentalise policy-making practices to support more innovative and legitimate governance and regulatory processes.


Error in Reported Data for Dense Breast Notifications: In the Research Letter entitled "Content, Readability, and Understandability of Dense Breast Notifications by State" published in the April 26, 2016, issue of JAMA,1 there was an error in the reported data in the Table, which also affected the Figure and the text. In the Table, under the Mandate Language column, check marks needed to be added for Nevada and Oregon (Oregon only mandates language for women with extremely dense breasts); under the Increased Risk of Cancer column, check marks were added for New Jersey and Louisiana; under Supplemental Screening column, footnote "m" was removed from Oregon, the check mark and footnote "k" was removed from New Jersey, and check marks were added for California, Tennessee, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. In the Results section of the text, second sentence, first paragraph, "19, 83%" was changed to "21, 91%"; in the fourth sentence, "15 (65%)" was changed to "20 (87%)"; and in the fifth sentence, "15" was changed to "20." This article was corrected online.


Background and Objective: Phenol and phenol derivatives in industrial wastewater are among the pollutants with priorities. The high cost and low efficiency of some routine treatment processes of industrial wastewater has limited their use. One of the new methods under consideration is, nowadays, adsorption using carbon nanotubes. This study was conducted in order to evaluate the application of alumina-coated multiwall carbon nanotubes in eliminating phenol from synthetic wastewater. Materials and Methods: This study was performed in laboratory at batch scale. Multi-wall carbon nanotubes were coated with Alumina. The concentration of phenol was determined by spectrophotometer through photometry. The effect of pH changes, dosage of adsorbent, contact time, the initial concentration of phenol, temperature, and the concentrations of different salts on the efficiency of absorption was evaluated. Then, the absorption results were described using the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms and the synthetics of absorption. Results: It was found that absorption efficiency increased significantly by decreasing the initial concentration of phenol and pH and by increasing the carbon nanotube dosage, temperature, and contact time. On the other hand, the maximum elimination of phenol from the solution (98.86%) occurred at 4 mg/l phenol concentration, under acidic conditions (pH=3), at adsorbent dosage of 0.05 g/l, at temperature of 45°C, and contact time of 10 min. Evaluation of the regressions isotherms showed that the process follows the Langmuir model and second-degree synthetic absorption. Conclusion: The high efficacy (98%) of the adsorption process in this study showed that aluminacoated multiwall carbon nanotubes have a good capability in eliminating phenol and can be used as an appropriate and new method for eliminating phenol and its derivatives from wastewater. Keyword: Carbon nanotube, Alumina, Hydroxy Benzene, Adsorption kinetic, Wastewater treatment D ow nl oa de d fr om ij he .tu m s. ac .ir a t 2 1: 54 IR S T o n F rid ay J an ua ry 1 0t h 20 20


Abstract Background: Alcohol is a major risk factor for head and neck cancer (HNC). The metabolism of ethanol can disrupt the metabolism of retinoic acid because the two pathways share some key enzymes. Retinoic acid is involved in cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis, which when dysregulated may lead to the development of cancer. A previous genome-wide association study reported an association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two retinol transporter genes (TTR and RBP4) and serum retinol level (1). The current study evaluates the interaction between alcohol consumption and SNPs in TTR and RBP4 on the risk of HNC. Methods: 223 incident cases of HNC and 214 sex- and age- matched controls were recruited from the department of otolaryngology and department of stomatology. In-person interviews were conducted to collect information on the use of alcohol, cigarette, and betel quid. Three tag-SNPs of TTR and 8 tag-SNPs of RBP4 were genotyped using the Taqman-based real-time PCR method or mass spectrometry-based detection method. Unconditional logistic regression was performed to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of HNC risk associated with each SNP and to evaluate the joint influence of SNPs and alcohol consumption on HNC risk, adjusted for age, sex, education, cigarette smoking and betel quid use. Results: No significant association between HNC risk and any of the 11 tag-SNPs was observed. However, three SNPs of RBP4 appeared to modify the relationship between alcohol consumption and HNC risk. After combining the three SNPs into a polygenic risk score, the results showed that those who drank alcohol daily had a different risk of HNC, depending on the number of variant alleles (0 to 2 variant alleles: OR=1.2, 95% CI: 0.7-2.1; 3 or more variant alleles: OR=2.9, 95% CI: 1.1-7.9; interaction P-value = 0.01) Conclusion: The association between HNC risk and alcohol consumption is modified by the polymorphisms of RBP4. Citation Format: Jeffrey S. Chang, Jenn-Ren Hsiao, Tung-Yiu Wong, Sen-Tien Tsai, Chun-Yen Ou, Hung-I Lo, Cheng-Chih Huang, Wei-Ting Lee, Ken-Chung Chen, Jehn-Shyun Huang, Yi-Hui Wang, Ya-Ling Weng, Han-Chien Yang. Interaction between retinol transporter genes and alcohol on the risk of head and neck cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Post-GWAS Horizons in Molecular Epidemiology: Digging Deeper into the Environment; 2012 Nov 11-14; Hollywood, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(11 Suppl):Abstract nr 15.


ii Summary. Spectral methods refer to the use of eigenvalues, eigenvectors, singular values and singular vectors. They are widely used in Engineering, Applied Mathematics and Statistics. More recently, spectral methods have found numerous applications in Computer Science to " discrete " as well " continuous " problems. This book describes modern applications of spectral methods, and novel algorithms for estimating spectral parameters. In the first part of the book, we present applications of spectral methods to problems from a variety of topics including combinatorial optimization, learning and clustering. The second part of the book is motivated by efficiency considerations. A feature of many modern applications is the massive amount of input data. While sophisticated algorithms for matrix computations have been developed over a century, a more recent development is algorithms based on " sampling on the fly " from massive matrices. Good estimates of singular values and low rank approximations of the whole matrix can be provably derived from a sample. Our main emphasis in the second part of the book is to present these sampling methods with rigorous error bounds. We also present recent extensions of spectral methods from matrices to tensors and their applications to some combinatorial optimization problems.


Recent controversial decisions to terminate several large clinical trials have called attention to the need for developing a sound ethical framework to determine when trials should be stopped in light of emerging efficacy data. Currently, the fundamental rationale for stopping trials early is based on the principle that equipoise has been disturbed. We present an analysis of the ethical and practical problems with the "equipoise disturbed" position and describe an alternative ethical framework based on the principle of nonexploitation. This framework acknowledges the need for balancing the dual ethical obligations of clinical research, the protection of human subjects and the generation of new medical knowledge. Based on this framework, we put forward a proposal to make early stopping guidelines more stringent under specified conditions. The temporary withholding of apparent benefits in certain circumstances is justified by achieving a fair contract with the research participants, one that protects them from undue harm and exploitation while reducing the many uncertainties surrounding new investigational treatments that arise when trials are stopped prematurely.


Racial and ethnic differences in associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) were investigated using data from population-based cancer registries in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program in the United States. The study included 8,383 ALL cases diagnosed at age ≤19 years in 2000-2010. Census tract-level composite SEP index in quintiles was assigned based on residence at the time of diagnosis. Incidence rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals associated with SEP and race/ethnicity, adjusted for sex, age, and year of diagnosis, were estimated using Poisson regression models. The incidence rate of childhood ALL was negatively associated with SEP among Hispanics but was positively associated among children of other races/ethnicities. As compared with the lowest SEP, the adjusted incidence rate ratios for children with the highest SEP were 1.29 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.15, 1.44) for non-Hispanic whites, 1.67 (95% CI: 1.20, 2.34) for non-Hispanic blacks, 1.57 (95% CI: 1.17, 2.09) for Asians/Pacific Islanders, 2.33 (95% CI: 0.93, 5.83) for American Indians/Alaska Natives, and 0.70 (95% CI: 0.60, 0.81) for Hispanics. The findings of a reverse association in Hispanics need to be confirmed and further explained in future studies using different measures of SEP.


We discuss the issues and the related study methodologies raised by the data linkage among different Istat archives to provide information on the employ- ment status of Italian graduates. To this aim many different administrative archives are integrated with data from sample surveys on university graduates' vocational integration. From this integration, a very complex situation emerges which must be analysed and correctly interpreted. In this paper in order to show the feasibility of our method, we discuss the comparison among these sources and we present the strategy of constructing appropriate indicators.


This paper describes RightSpeed, a task-based speed and voltage scheduler for Windows 2000. It takes advantage of the ability of certain processors, such as those from Transmeta and AMD, to dynamically change speed and voltage and thus to save energy while running more slowly. RightSpeed uses PACE, an algorithm that computes the most energy efficient way to meet task deadlines with high probability. Since most applications do not provide enough data about tasks, such as task deadlines, for PACE to work, RightSpeed uses simple and efficient heuristics to automatically detect task characteristics for such applications. We show that RightSpeed has only 1.2% background overhead and its operations take only a few microseconds each. It even performs PACE calculation, which is quite complicated, in only 4.4 us on average due to our extensive optimizations. We show that RightSpeed is effective at meeting performance targets set by applications to within 1.5%. We show that although the PACE calculator does not save energy for the current generation of processors due to their limited range of worthwhile speed and voltage settings, we expect future processors to have greater such ranges, enabling PACE to reduce CPU energy consumption by 6.1-8.7% relative to the best standard algorithm. Finally, we show that with PACE, giving a processor the ability to run at additional, higher speeds and voltages reduces overall energy consumption.


While few-shot learning as a transfer learning paradigm has gained significant traction for scenarios with limited data, it has primarily been explored in the context of building unimodal and unilingual models. Furthermore, a significant part of the existing literature in the domain of few-shot multitask learning perform in-context learning which requires manually generated prompts as the input, yielding varying outcomes depending on the level of manual prompt-engineering. In addition, in-context learning suffers from substantial computational, memory, and storage costs which eventually leads to high inference latency because it involves running all of the prompt's examples through the model every time a prediction is made. In contrast, methods based on the transfer learning via the fine-tuning paradigm avoid the aforementioned issues at a one-time cost of fine-tuning weights on a per-task basis. However, such methods lack exposure to few-shot multimodal multitask learning. In this paper, we propose few-shot learning for a multimodal multitask multilingual (FM3) setting by adapting pre-trained vision and language models using task-specific hypernetworks and contrastively fine-tuning them to enable few-shot learning. FM3's architecture combines the best of both worlds of in-context and fine-tuning based learning and consists of three major components: (i) multimodal contrastive fine-tuning to enable few-shot learning, (ii) hypernetwork task adaptation to perform multitask learning, and (iii) task-specific output heads to cater to a plethora of diverse tasks. FM3 learns the most prominent tasks in the vision and language domains along with their intersections, namely visual entailment (VE), visual question answering (VQA), and natural language understanding (NLU) tasks such as neural entity recognition (NER) and the GLUE benchmark including QNLI, MNLI, QQP, and SST-2.


Abstract
Flow cytometry is a well known investigation for detecting the cluster of differentiation (CD antigens) in leukemic cells. It has the capability in a short time to measure multiple parameters on each single cell, which is sufficient to diagnose types, subtypes and even estimate to some the future prognoses.
Objective: To evaluate Prevalence of uncommitted antigens and lymphoid markers in acute myeloid Leukemia flow cytometric results for a patient's diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia.
Method and material: Results of flow cytometry for 163 patients, between January 2006 and December 2011 who were newly diagnosed as having acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were retrospectively revised, 110 patients were male and 53 patients were female with male to female ratio close to 2: 1. And age distribution as 35 pediatric patients in comparison to 128 adult patients.
Results:
Most of patients were adult (128/ out of 163 patients (78.5%), and 110/163 (67.5%) were males. Among all AML Among all AML results showed 6patients M0(3.7%),32 patients M1 (19.6%), 47 patients M2 (28.8%), 15 patients M3 (9.2%), 38 patients M4 (23.3%),15 patients M5(9.2%),4 patients M6(2.5%), and 6 patients (3.7%)M7.
In our study 6.2% of AML pts showed negative for myeloperoxidase, CD34 negative 48/141 pts (34%), and CD117 negative 21/142 pts (14.8%). while CD7 was positive in 28/130 (21.5%).
 Conclusion:-
• Flow cytometry is an informative test in diagnosis and identify AML subtypes.
• Having single uncommitted Antigens may suggest less differentiation and
• Positive lymphoid Antigens marker (especially CD7) in AML patients do not change their diagnosis, although make them more badly prognosis phenotypically.
• Negative myeloperoxidase is not against diagnosis of AML.


: Mibolerone, a synthetic anabolic steroid, prevented estrus in domesticated cats when orally given a daily dose of 50 microng over a 180-day period. Doses of 20 microng daily and 50 microng given once a week failed to prevent estrus. Treatment with the 50-microng dose each day for 6 months had no apparent effects on subsequent estrus, mating, queening, or litter size. Kittens born to queens which had been treated did not have obvious developmental defects. Systemic metabolic changes produced by treatment were detected only in thyroid function, as revealed in dose- and time-related changes in serum cholesterol concentrations, thyroid gland weights, and thyroid histology. Clinical evidence of thyroid dysfunction was not apparent during the 6 months of treatment. Clinical and microscopic evidence of slight masculinization was apparent in cats after 3 months of treatment with 20 or 50 microng per day. Masculinizing changes consisted of thickening of the cervical dermis and clitoral hypertrophy. Behavioral changes were not observed. The apparent mechanism of action of mibolerone in the cat is the suppression of the release of pituitary luteinizing hormone.


Diagnosis of early stage angiogenic tumours is fundamental for cancer therapy. In this study we present the synthesis and characterisation of functionalised HPMA-copolymers with optimal molecular weights that meet the demands of the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. Rhenium tricarbonyl complexes of the tripodal ligands bis(2-pyridylmethyl)benzylamine (1a) and bis (2-pyridylmethyl) -4-vinylbenzylamine (1b) were prepared and characterised by H-1 NMR and IR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and X-ray diffraction. Ligand 1b was copolymerised with N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA), and the resulting copolymer was treated with (nBu(4)N)(2)Re(CO)(3)Br-3] to yield a Re(CO)(3)-labelled copolymer. ((c) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim., Germany, 2007).


Anode for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) was fabricated on Nafion 117 membrane by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) method. An ethanol suspension containing Pt-Ru/C and Nafion ionomer was utilized, in which Pt-Ru/C and Nafion ionomer formed composite particles. The prepared electrode was tightly attached to the membrane without mechanical pressing and heat treatment. The electrode composition, i.e., the ratio between Pt-Ru/C and ionomer in the electrode, was controllable by Nafion content in the suspension, and strongly influenced on the DMFC performance. Accordingly, the anode with ionomer fraction of 26% exhibited the highest performance, which was more than twice as high as the performance attained in a standard electrode fabrication (hot press method).


Greenspaces in the urban environment are widely recognised for their importance in the creation of healthy and sustainable communities. Greenspace establishment on reclaimed brownfield land is an important mechanism for reviving the urban environment. However, greenspace establishment impacts not only social but also environmental, ecological, economical and cultural dimensions. The identification of successes and failures within brownfield regeneration, through qualitative and quantitative evaluation, is paramount for demonstrating whether projects have attained their primary objectives, offer value for money and are sustainable. Currently, tools available for such evaluation fail to evaluate the true plethora of impacts of greenspace establishment and, hence, sustainability. This paper summarises over 110 identified impacts which could be used as evaluation criteria. The development and implementation of a toolbox based on the evaluation criteria is discussed, that would offer a means of determining monitoring needs on a site by site basis and a viable means of evaluating local or national impacts for a variety of urban greenspaces. The final product would provide a defensible mechanism by which redevelopments could be shown to have succeeded, according to a composite of individual functional aspirations and impacts. The lessons learnt through implementation of our toolbox would benefit future projects, enable Best Practice to be demonstrated and improved upon, and identify areas where benefits are not being fully realised.


Senescent cells interact with the surrounding microenvironment achieving diverse functional outcomes. In addition to autocrine and paracrine signalling mediated by factors of the senescence-associated secretory phenotype, we have recently identified that NOTCH1 can drive 'lateral induction' of a unique form of senescence in adjacent cells through specific induction of the NOTCH ligand JAG1. Here we show that NOTCH signalling can modulate chromatin structure both autonomously and non-autonomously. In addition to senescence-associated heterochromatic foci (SAHF), oncogenic RAS-induced senescent (RIS) cells in culture exhibit a massive increase in nucleosome-free regions (NRFs). NOTCH signalling suppresses both SAHF and NFR formation in this context. Strikingly, NOTCH-induced senescent cells, or cancer cells with high JAG1 expression, also drive similar chromatin architectural changes in adjacent cells through cell-cell contact. Mechanistically, we show that NOTCH signalling represses the chromatin architectural protein HMGA1, an association found in a range of human cancers. Thus, HMGA1 is involved not only in SAHFs, but also RIS-specific NFR formation. In conclusion, this study identifies that the JAG1-NOTCH-HMGA1 axis mediates the juxtacrine regulation of chromatin architecture.


Auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) refers to the interference of a second sound on recognition of another sound presented earlier in time. The influence of musical meaning on recognition of the first sound was investigated using the stimuli where the pitch relationship between the first and second sounds composed a triad. Four complex tones consisting of three tones differing in pitch were presented as stimuli. The frequency relationship of two complex tones composed a triad. The others did not compose a triad. One of the three tones of the complex tones was employed as a first sound. The others were employed as a second sound. The task was to label the stimuli as one of the four complex tones. The effect of the differences in the stimuli was evaluated using the percentage of correct responses as a function of ISI. Backward recognition masking was observed with the two sounds that did not compose a triad. The performance was better when the two sounds composed a triad rather than when they did not compose a triad. The results indicated that interference of a second sound on recognition of a first sound is reduced when there is musical meaning in the pitch relationship between the first and second tones.


The current research explores how intermediaries seek information from patrons, in particular by analyzing intermediaries' elicitation utterances through three dimensions--linguistic forms, utterance purposes, and communicative functions--to determine whether indeed any dimension appeared consistently, to be called "elicitation styles." Five intermediaries from four academic libraries (three national university libraries, one private university library) and one research institute library participated in the study. Thirty patrons with 30 genuine search requests were recruited; thus, 30 patron/intermediary information retrieval interactions making a total of 30 encounters were collected. Video/audio data were taped. Dialogues between patron and intermediary were transcribed. Statistical analysis revealed three types of elicitation styles among the five intermediaries, labeled, (1) situationally oriented, (2) functionally oriented, and (3) stereotyped. This study seeks an explanation for different elicitation styles. Qualitative analysis was applied to investigate "inquiring minds." An inquiring mind is termed to represent a mentality or tendency that one elicits certain threads of questions influenced by professional beliefs, individual characteristics, tasks, goals, and interactional contexts in conversation. The results of qualitative analysis specified three modes of inquiring minds of the intermediaries, namely: (1) information problem detection, (2) query formulation process, and (3) database instructions.


This article constitutes a meta-analysis of sociological surveys conducted between 1967 and 2010 on the attitudes of Poles towards Jews. This analysis covers factual knowledge about Jews, like/dislike feelings, social distance, cognitive schema, and views regarding Polish–Jewish history. The results reflect a general nonacceptance of strangers as well as a specific type of anti-Semitism with strong roots in and encompassing a broad spectrum of Polish society. In this respect, Poland and some of the other Central Eastern European countries are much alike and distinguish themselves negatively in comparison to Western Europe. Nevertheless, in the last decade a positive shift in Polish attitudes towards Jews has been manifesting itself: feelings of closeness are increasing while disapproving cognitive schemes are decreasing. Further changes depend upon the reconstruction of Polish national identity as well as on the public debates delving into Polish–Jewish relations past and present.


Mental health after bariatric surgery during adolescence has been little explored. This is a sensitive period in terms of self‐image on which bariatric surgery could have negative effects because of the rapid and significant changes in morphology it induces. Previous studies have explored mental effects using questionnaires and only related to psychopathological disorders. The objective of our study was to complement these studies by exploring, via in‐depth interviews, the adolescents' views on changes after bariatric surgery at psychological as well as socio‐emotional levels. Fourteen adolescents with obesity were recruited in a French hospital 6–43 months after surgery. They participated in one‐on‐one interviews lasting an average of 45 minutes. A lexical analysis (using ALCESTE software©) of their speech highlighted the most positive effects, particularly in terms of social relationships, physical activities, self‐esteem and reduced stigma, along with less positive effects in terms of eating behaviour and skin. In terms of clinical implications, this study confirmed the value of bariatric surgery for adolescents at psychological and social levels and its contribution to their mental health. However, it also highlighted the importance of pre‐ and post‐operative support.


: Heparin ability to interfere significantly with the passage of antibodies from the antibody-forming cells was shown in vitro on CBA/C mice, using a 2 percent erythrocyte suspension as an antigen. A partial restoration of the plaque formation ability was observed in vitro by the supplement of substances possessing the features of "Triton" X-100 detergents, deoxycholate to the suspension of spleen plaque forming cells treated with heparin. Hence, it was concluded that heparin was capable of interacting with the outer membrane of immunocompetent cells inhibiting the passage of synthesized antibodies to the milieu.


Large pretrained language models can easily produce toxic or biased content, which is prohibitive for practical use. In order to detect such toxic generations, existing methods rely on templates, real-world data extraction, crowdsourcing workers, or automatic generation to construct adversarial contexts that are likely to induce toxic generations. However, what type of context is more likely to induce unsafe responses is still under-explored. In this paper, we identify that context toxicity and context category (e.g., \textit{profanity}, \textit{insult}, \textit{drugs}, etc.) are two important factors to cause safety issues in response generation. Hence, we propose a method called \emph{reverse generation} to construct adversarial contexts conditioned on a given response, with the flexibility to control category, toxicity level, and inductivity of the generated contexts. Via reverse generation, we augment the existing BAD dataset and construct a new dataset BAD+ which contains more than 120K diverse and highly inductive contexts in 12 categories. We test three popular pretrained dialogue models (Blender, DialoGPT, and Plato2) and find that BAD+ can largely expose their safety problems. Furthermore, we show that BAD+ can greatly enhance the safety of generation and reveal the key factors of safety improvement. Our code and dataset is available at \url{https://github.com/thu-coai/Reverse_Generation}.


We propose a coarse-graining procedure for describing the superhorizon dynamics of inflationary tensor modes. Our aim is to formulate a stochastic description for the statistics of spin-2 modes which seed the background of gravitational waves from inflation. Using basic principles of quantum mechanics, we determine a probability density for coarse-grained tensor fields, which satisfies a stochastic Fokker-Planck equation at superhorizon scales. The corresponding noise and drift are computable, and depend on the cosmological system under consideration. Our general formulas are applied to a variety of cosmological scenarios, also considering cases seldom considered in the context of stochastic inflation, and which are important for their observational consequences. We start obtaining the expected expressions for noise and drift in pure de Sitter and power-law inflation, also including a discussion of effects of non-attractor phases. We then apply our methods to describe scenarios with a transition from inflation to standard cosmological eras of radiation and matter domination. We show how the interference between modes flowing through the cosmological horizon, and modes spontaneously produced at superhorizon scales, can affect the stochastic evolution of coarse-grained tensor quantities. In appropriate limits, we find that the corresponding spectrum of tensor modes at horizon crossing matches with the results of quantum field theory calculations, but we also highlight where differences can arise. ar X iv :2 20 1. 10 33 3v 1 [ he pth ] 2 5 Ja n 20 22


We consider an extension of the Standard Model within the framework of Noncommutative Geometry. The model is based on an older model [C. A. Stephan, Phys. Rev. D79, 065013 (2009)] which extends the Standard Model by new fermions, a new U(1)-gauge group and, crucially, a new scalar field which couples to the Higgs field. This new scalar field allows to lower the mass of the Higgs mass from ~170 GeV, as predicted by the Spectral Action for the Standard Model, to a value of 120–130 GeV. The shortcoming of the previous model lay in its inability to meet all the constraints on the gauge couplings implied by the Spectral Action. These shortcomings are cured in the present model which also features a "dark sector" containing fermions and scalar particles.


Leishmania sp. are obligate intracellular protozoa that infect and replicate within mammalian macrophages. Macrophages, neutrophils and other phagocytic cells are key components of the antimicrobial and tumoricidal immune responses. These cells are capable of generating large amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). To examine antioxidant status and lipid peroxidation in cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) patients, activities of two ROS scavenging enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH‐Px), and the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO·) have been studied in serum. Blood samples were taken from CL patients before treatment (n = 27) and after the treatment (n = 18). NO· and MDA levels, SOD and GSH‐Px activities were compared between untreated and treated CL patients and control subjects (n = 23). There was a significant decrease in SOD and GSH‐Px activities in the CL patients (P < 0.0001). Significantly higher levels of serum MDA and NO· levels were found in CL patients, compared to controls and treated patients. It may be suggested that the overproduction of ROS and RNS results in oxidative stress and the acceleration of lipid peroxidation in CL patients, resulting from altered enzymatic antioxidant activities.


The RAD3 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae encodes an ATP-dependent 5'-3' DNA helicase, which is involved in excision repair of ultraviolet radiation damage. By hybridisation of a Schizosaccharomyces pombe genomic library with a RAD3 gene probe we have isolated the S. pombe homologue of RAD3. We have also cloned the rad15 gene of S. pombe by complementation of radiation-sensitive phenotype of the rad15 mutant. Comparison of the restriction map and DNA sequence, shows that the S. pombe rad15 gene is identical to the gene homologous to S. cerevisiae RAD3, identified by hybridisation. The S. pombe rad15.P mutant is highly sensitive to UV radiation, but only slightly sensitive to ionising radiation, as expected for a mutant defective in excision repair. DNA sequence analysis of the rad15 gene indicates an open reading frame of 772 amino acids, and this is consistent with a transcript size of 2.6 kb as detected by Northern analysis. The predicted rad15 protein has 65% identity to RAD3 and 55% identity to the human homologue ERCC2. This homology is particularly striking in the regions identified as being conserved in a group of DNA helicases. Gene deletion experiments indicate that, like the S. cerevisiae RAD3 gene, the S. pombe rad15 gene is essential for viability, suggesting that the protein product has a role in cell proliferation and not solely in DNA repair.


In modern business world, companies need to attract a large number of shareholders because of the large amount of required capital. In these companies, shareholders hire managers to direct the firm and make decisions on behalf of them because they cannot have a full control over the firm's activities. Therefore, managers have the competitive advantage of information within the firm rather than the shareholders which leads to asymmetry of information between managers and shareholders. In addition, agency theory assumes an opportunistic behavior that managers want to maximize their own expected interest disregard of shareholders right. In other words, managers may not necessarily make decisions in the best interests of shareholders because of conflict of interest and hence impose the agency costs on the firm. Agency theory suggests that corporate governance (CG) as an effective information system can monitor the management and align the interests of executives with those of shareholders to mitigate the agency costs. In addition, auditors must work with other factors in CG structure to ensure that stakeholders receive the highest quality of financial reports as well as help to protect the interests of stakeholders. Since CG and external audit services are complementary and the purpose of both is to protect stakeholders' interest this study aims to explore the perceptions of professional auditors on the consideration of CG in an audit engagement. Applying a semi-structured interview with two certified public accountants (CPA), this study obtains the opinion of experts how to consider CG in their efforts. Analyzing of interviewees' response suggests that auditors consider CG mechanism as a system of supervision to control the opportunistic behavior of individuals and monitor the financial reporting process. They use CG information in planning stage more than other stages to define the extent of efforts for audit process. Weaker CG mechanism increases the control risk and required auditors to make more efforts in their audits. Among different aspects of CG the board of directors is more considered by auditors. They believe that audit committee is an important mechanism in CG but board of directors affects it and hence board of directors has the most power to make decisions regarding financial reporting quality. Other characteristic of CG mechanism which can be considered by auditors is ownership structure and compensation committee.


The study carried out in Tri Ton district, a southern part of Vietnam, was to detect land-use change during the period of almost four years using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing; and to examine socioeconomic factors which were significantly associated with farmer's income and triggering land-use change. The fundamental materials and data types used for the assessment consisted of temporal Landsat ETM Plus imageries, primary socioeconomic and other published and unpublished agricultural reports. The results indicated that the area under irrigated rice had quickly increased from 25 percent in 2000 to 57.5 percent in 2005 due to conservation of idle land into cropland. Upland crops and Melaleuca cajuputi had been lessened in its areas due to due to unstable marketing channels of low input – low output production systems. Besides, the major factors underlying changes in land use were associated with farmer's pressing basic needs, in which significant income determinants were noticed driving forces. The results of this study may contribute to an improved knowledge of land-use change and its determinants for land-use planers when formulating strategic interventions towards long-term suitability of land resources.


In this presentation I want to comment on what I see as the location of Personal Construct Psychology within the field of psychology more generally, and particularly in relation to the theoretical perspective that has come to be known as social constructionism. But it is also an account and a history of my own intellectual journey over a period of nearly 20 years. The reason why I have decided to present my thoughts in this narrative way is that I do not hold with the hard science view that the academic and personal are separate realms. One's intellectual sympathies are very personal, and are intimately connected to one's experience, biography and at a superordinate level one's values and beliefs. This presentation, then, is just one person's construction.


Author(s): John, Grace Patricia | Advisor(s): Sack, Lawren | Abstract: Plants provide invaluable ecosystem services to urban centers. Yet, these services cannot be decoupled from the cost to maintain landscaping plants. Costs are particularly difficult to quantify in urban ecosystems, like Los Angeles, where a combination of mild climate and a legacy of landscape design driven by social and economic factors has produced unprecedented species diversity. As these plants subsist entirely on irrigation water, the resulting 'global common garden' is ideally suited for testing anatomical and physiological scaling hypotheses across many diverse species to inform generalized predictive models for other species and ecosystems. My dissertation seeks to uncover relationships between leaf anatomy and function to build models estimating water use and drought tolerance in Los Angeles.I first analyzed allometric slopes describing relationships between the dimensions of leaf cells and tissues and found cell sizes, cell wall thickness and leaf thickness scale together across tissues and species. I then created a mathematically explicit model that predicted leaf mass per area (LMA) from its constitutive anatomy and composition with unprecedented explanatory power. Cell size, the number of mesophyll cell layers, and cell mass density principally drove species differences in LMA and had strong impacts on the Leaf Economics Spectrum. I linked leaf structure with physiology by resurrecting a classic method for quantifying loss of rehydration capacity in dehydrating leaves, placed associated thresholds in the sequence of drought response (e.g. stomatal closure, turgor loss), and tested their relationship with structure and composition. I found leaves to be considerably more vulnerable than previously believed. This prompted a study in which I tested canopy stomatal conductance across minor shifts in vapor pressure deficit (VPD) modeled from plant traits against empirical sap flux and leaf area data collected in urban trees. Finally, I found enormous variation in functional traits across Los Angeles species, influenced by climates of origin, growth forms, leaf habit and canopy position (i.e., sun versus shade leaves). The vast trait diversity in Los Angeles urban trees demonstrates the need for integration of species information into predictive models in urban ecosystems and highlights Los Angeles as an invaluable resource for future ecophysiological study.


With the advent of affordable and high-quality smartphone cameras, any significant events will be massively captured both actively and passively from multiple perspectives.This opens up exciting opportunities for low-cost high-end VFX effects and large scale media analytics. However, automatically organizing large scale visual data and creating a comprehensive 3D scene model is still an unsolved problem. State of the art 3D reconstruction algorithms are mostly applicable to static scenes, mainly due to the lack of triangulation constraints for dynamic objects observedby unsynchronized cameras and the difficulties in finding reliable correspondences across cameras in diverse and dynamic settings. This thesis aims to provide a computational pipeline for high-quality 3D reconstructionof the dynamic scene captured by multiple unsynchronized video cameras in the wild. The key is to exploit the physics of motion dynamics, shape deformation, scene semantics, and the interplay between them. Toward this end, this thesismakes four enabling technical contributions. First, this thesis introduces a spatiotemporal bundle adjustment algorithm to accurately estimate a sparse set of 3D trajectories of dynamic objects from multiple unsynchronized mobile video cameras. The lack of triangulation constraint on dynamic points is solved by carefully integrating physics-based motion prior describing how points move over time. This algorithm takes advantage of the unsynchronized video streams to estimate 3D motion reconstruction in the wild at much higher temporalresolution than the input videos. Second, this thesis presents a simple but powerful self-supervised framework toadapt a generic person appearance descriptor to the unlabeled videos by exploiting motion tracking, mutual exclusion constraints, and multi-view geometry without anymanual annotations. The adapted descriptor is strongly discriminative and enables a tracking-by-clustering formulation. This advantage enables a first-of-a-kind accurateand consistent markerless motion tracking of multiple people participating in a complex group activity from mobile cameras in the wild with further application tomulti-angle video cutting for intuitive tracking visualization.Third, this thesis creates a framework for 3D tracking of the rigidly moving objects even in severe occlusions by fusing single-view unstructured tracklets and multi-view semantic structured keypoints reconstruction. No spatial correspondences are needed for the unstructured points. No temporal correspondences are needed for the structured points. The imprecise but accurate 3D structured keypoint is compensated by the sparse but precise 3D unstructured tracks, leading to improvements in both structured keypoints localization and motion tracking of the entire object.Fourth, this thesis presents a single-shot illumination decomposition method for dense dynamic shape capture of highly textured surfaces illuminated by multiple projectors. The decomposition scheme assumes smooth shape deformation and can accurately recover the illumination image of different projectors and the texture imagesof the scene from their mixed appearances.


Abstract The T-bar rheometrical tool (Brookfield Engineering Laboratories, Inc.) is a slender rod which is placed in a material and rotated horizontally about its short axis by a vertical shaft. The torque on the shaft from laminar flow of material around the rod is determined by the material's rheological properties. T-bar experiments for a Newtonian liquid are shown to agree closely with existing theory. For yield stress materials an approximation is derived for the torque on a rotating T-bar which is supported by experiments on a range of materials. The torque for very slow rotational speed is insensitive to boundaries beyond a few T-bar diameters and is shown to correlate with the material's yield stress and other non-Newtonian parameters. A step-decrease in torque for each half-revolution of the T-bar was shown by some materials and possible origins of this effect are discussed.


ABSTRACT Species of the cricetid genus Oligoryzomys are found across most Neotropical biomes, and several of them play important roles as natural reservoirs of hantaviruses and arenaviruses. Here we demonstrate that O. mattogrossae, previously considered a junior synonym of O. microtis, is a valid species, and that it is the oldest available name for specimens previously identified as O. fornesi from Brazil and northern Paraguay. Comparative morphology and phylogenetic analyses based on mitochondrial (cytochrome b) and nuclear (intron 7 of beta-fibrinogen) genes show that O. mattogrossae differs from its sister species O. microtis and from other forms of the genus, corroborating previously published karyological data. Oligoryzomys mattogrossae occurs in Cerrado and Caatinga habitats throughout central and northeastern Brazil and Paraguay, whereas distribution of O. fornesi is apparently restricted to southern Paraguay and northernmost Argentina. Specimens of O. mattogrossae were found to be the natural reservoir of the Anajatuba genotype of hantavirus in northeastern Brazil. Therefore, continuing efforts to delimit Oligoryzomys species and facilitate their identification are important for zoonotic monitoring.


How nitrogen (N) deposition impacts ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungal communities has been little studied in deciduous forests or across spatial scales. Here, it was tested whether N addition decreases species richness and shifts species composition across spatial scales in temperate deciduous oak forests. Combined molecular (terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), sequencing) and morphological approaches were used to measure EM fungal operational taxon unit (OTU) richness, community structure and composition at the spatial scale of the root, soil core and forest during a 3-yr N fertilization experiment in Quercus-dominated forests near Chicago, IL, USA. In N treatments, significantly lower OTU richness at the largest but not smaller spatial scales and a different community structure were detected. The effects of N appeared to be immediate, not cumulative. Ordination indicated the composition of EM fungal communities was determined by forest site and N fertilization. The EM fungi responded to a N increase that was low compared with other fertilization studies, suggesting that moderate increases in N deposition can affect EM fungal communities at larger spatial scales in temperate deciduous ecosystems. While responses at large spatial scales indicate that environmental factors can drive changes in these communities, untangling the impacts of abiotic from biotic factors remain limited by detection issues.


Abstract:This article examines the campaigns against sex tourism and sex trafficking that have emerged with the advent of several mega-sporting events in Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Natal, one of the twelve host cities of the 2014 World Cup, it focuses on the appeal to emotions in mobilization against sex trafficking and sex tourism. Despite the recent turn to emotions in social sciences, including the role of emotions in politics, there is a dearth of study examining the intersections of emotions and moral panics. Yet expressions of disgust, anger, rage, or outrage commonly accompany moral panics issues. This article engages with how campaigns against sex tourism and sex trafficking associated with the 2014 World Cup materialize through emotional tropes iterated and reiterated in public spaces, or sex panics scripts. More specifically, this article identifies various scripts—the sexually innocent yet violated child, the bad gringo, and the enslaved woman—and points to what gives them their traction. Taken together, these emotional tropes are constitutive of an affective logic that both conflates justice with punishment and repression, and makes certain oppressive interventions and fraught alliances "feel right"—that is, publicly thinkable, possible, and acceptable.


This paper describes the results of an experiment designed to understand task-directed human explorative behaviour in a large music collection. The subject's task was to compile a music programme preferred in a specific context-of-use, e.g., romantic evening, party. Experimental conditions were defined in which subjects were provided with no music recommendations, randomly drawn recommendations, or algorithmically determined recommendations while carrying out the task. The provision of recommendations meant to improve performance in the compilation task. When recommendations were provided, subjects systematically selected, played back, and compiled fewer items by themselves, but instead made use of the recommendations. This observation was not coupled with a reduction in the amount of time spent on the compilation task. But when asked for their preference, subjects chose the provision of algorithmically determined recommendations above the provision of randomly drawn recommendations or no recommendations.


This document identifies a need for and proposes improvement of the
unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRPF) techniques (see RFC 3704) for
detection and mitigation of source address spoofing (see BCP 38). The
strict uRPF is inflexible about directionality, the loose uRPF is
oblivious to directionality, and the current feasible-path uRPF
attempts to strike a balance between the two (see RFC 3704). However,
as shown in this document, the existing feasible-path uRPF still has
shortcomings. This document describes enhanced feasible- path uRPF
(EFP-uRPF) techniques, which are more flexible (in a meaningful way)
about directionality than the feasible-path uRPF (RFC 3704). The
proposed EFP-uRPF methods aim to significantly reduce false positives
regarding invalid detection in source address validation (SAV). Hence
they can potentially alleviate ISPs' concerns about the possibility
of disrupting service for their customers, and encourage greater
deployment of uRPF techniques. This document updates RFC 3704.


Abstract Length-growth analysis of fish cannot be completed without age information. Age study on skipjack has been done through analysis of its first-hard dorsal fin. Sampling was done using 11 fish specimen taken from UPT P2SKP Pondokdadap Sendangbiru, from January to February 2018. Species identification follows the FAO standard procedure (species identification sheet) published 2001. A specimen was deposited at Depository Ichtyologicum Brawijaya with code DIB.FISH 111103. The first hard spine of 11 fish samples were cut with IsoMet low speed cutting machine at 50 mm thickness. The preparates were then analyzed using biological binocular microscope at 40x magnification. The results showed differences in number of growth annuli (annual growth-ring) at different fish length (FL). The number of annuli varied between 4 - 6+ age year at fish length (FL) variation between 38 and 62 cm. These values were closely related to those with other methods such as Modal Progression Analysis (MPA). The number of samples successfully analyzed (5 specimen) were not sufficient for analysis of length-growth parameters (L ∞ , k and t 0 ). Also, this technique did not apply for age less than yearly unit, but quite affordable (Rp.50.000,- per sample) for a fairly variable amount of specimens.


We present a 3D shape-based object recognition system for simultaneous recognition of multiple objects in scenes containing clutter and occlusion. Recognition is based on matching surfaces by matching points using the spin image representation. The spin image is a data level shape descriptor that is used to match surfaces represented as surface meshes. We present a compression scheme for spin images that results in efficient multiple object recognition which we verify with results showing the simultaneous recognition of multiple objects from a library of 20 models. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robust performance of recognition in the presence of clutter and occlusion through analysis of recognition trials on 100 scenes.


The performance of a preemptive task migration algorithm implemented in a portable parallel programming environment is reported. The experiments were conducted using the ELMO system which extends languages like C with migratable parallel tasks. Preemptive task migration support has been provided for checkpointing of tasks during debugging and replay in the Intrepid environment, as well as for transparent checkpointing and recovery support for dynamic reconfiguration upon failure. However its implementation is general, and can be used transparently by the system for other purposes like load redistribution and adaptive scheduling on workstation networks. The performance of task migration on a variety of application programs on the nCUBE/2 is reported.


Agency workers have been heavily criticized over their handling of alleged ritual child sexual abuse cases, particularly in respect of their assessments and interventions. However, a study of referrals to police and social service departments revealed that agency workers raised suspicions of ritual abuse in respect of both child victims and adult survivors very rarely. Furthermore, they did this only after an assessment which showed the cases to possess a number of troubling features. While agency workers believed that all the child victims had been subject to serious sexual abuse, virtually all of them were circumspect as to whether this had occurred in a ritual context. Initially, agency workers were generally open-minded as to the experiences of adult survivors, but by the end of their assessments, they tended to be more concerned about their mental health and less concerned about issues of ritual abuse. Finally, agency workers appeared to act appropriately in terms of the types of intervention they used and the way in which they applied these. These results suggest that there should be more confidence in the ability of agency workers to respond to cases of alleged ritual abuse.


In this study, we introduce EdgeSegNet, a compact deep convolutional neural network for the task of semantic segmentation. A human-machine collaborative design strategy is leveraged to create EdgeSegNet, where principled network design prototyping is coupled with machine-driven design exploration to create networks with customized module-level macroarchitecture and microarchitecture designs tailored for the task. Experimental results showed that EdgeSegNet can achieve semantic segmentation accuracy comparable with much larger and computationally complex networks (>20x} smaller model size than RefineNet) as well as achieving an inference speed of ~38.5 FPS on an NVidia Jetson AGX Xavier. As such, the proposed EdgeSegNet is well-suited for low-power edge scenarios.


PURPOSE Liquid biopsies in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) provide a unique approach to understand the molecular basis of treatment response and resistance. This is particularly important in the context of immunotherapies, which target key immune-tumor interactions. Unlike metastatic tissue biopsies, serial real-time profiling of mRCC is feasible with our noninvasive circulating tumor cell (CTC) approach. METHODS We collected 457 longitudinal liquid biopsies from 104 patients with mRCC enrolled in one of two studies, either a prospective cohort or a phase II multicenter adaptive immunotherapy trial. Using a novel CTC capture and automated microscopy platform, we profiled CTC enumeration and expression of HLA I and programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1). Given their diametric immunological roles, we focused on the HLA I to PD-L1 ratio (HP ratio). RESULTS Patients with radiographic responses showed significantly lower CTC abundances throughout treatment. Furthermore, patients whose CTC enumeration trajectory was in the highest quartile (> 0.12 CTCs/mL annually) had shorter overall survival (median 17.0 months v 21.1 months, P < .001). Throughout treatment, the HP ratio decreased in patients receiving immunotherapy but not in patients receiving tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Patients with an HP ratio trajectory in the highest quartile (≥ 0.0012 annually) displayed significantly shorter overall survival (median 18.4 months v 21.2 months, P = .003). CONCLUSION In the first large longitudinal CTC study in mRCC to date to our knowledge, we identified the prognostic importance of CTC enumeration and the change over time of both CTC enumeration and the HP ratio. These insights into changes in both tumor burden and the molecular profile of tumor cells in response to different treatments provide potential biomarkers to predict and monitor response to immunotherapy in mRCC.


BACKGROUND
Immunosuppressive therapy must be guided by therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in paediatric liver (LT) and kidney transplantation (KT) patients to prevent under- and overdosing, which have clinical consequences.

AIM
The purpose of our study was to analyse TDM results in our institutions and evaluate factors associated with blood level stabilisation after LT and KT.

METHODS
Blood levels of immunosuppressants were measured by immunoassay analysis. We compared blood level stabilisation between LT and KT, and evaluated associated factors in a retrospective study in two Swiss university hospitals.

RESULTS
Forty-six patients (27 LT [median age 1.0 y], 19 KT [15.1 y]) were included. During the first month after transplantation, 32.8% (LT) and 41.2% (KT) of tacrolimus, and 22.1% (KT) of ciclosporin trough levels (measured before the next dose) were within target. In KT, trough levels stabilised earlier for tacrolimus than for ciclosporin (p = 0.02). Intensive care and hospital discharge occurred earlier in KT patients (p <0.001). Living-donor LT was associated with an earlier intensive care discharge compared with deceased donor (5.5 vs 11 days, p = 0.02). Primary metabolic disease and graft/recipient weight-ratio ≥0.03 was associated with earlier tacrolimus level stabilisation (14 vs 18 days, p = 0.01 and 15 vs 22 days, p = 0.05, respectively). In KT, recipient age (≥15.1 years) and weight (≥39.4 kg) were associated with an earlier trough level stabilisation (both 13 days vs not reached, p <0.001), and age with earlier hospital discharge (10 vs 14 days, p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION
Immunosuppressant trough levels were often outside the target range in the first month after LT and KT. Organ-specific factors were associated with trough stabilisation.


Inductance is one of the fundamental defined parameters in electromagnetics and it takes on a variety of formulations and definitions in the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) community. The concept of inductance in its many definitions, uses, and caveats was central among Dr. Clayton R. Paul's contributions to the EMC community. In this paper, we discuss the various aspects of inductance which Dr. Paul helped to pioneer. In particular, the concepts of partial inductance and internal inductance (including skin effect) were two of his passions. This paper will both serve as a summary of Dr. Paul's work on inductance as well as show how his work helped pioneer new research in this area.


Distinguishing between local, anthropogenic nutrient inputs and large-scale climatic forcing as drivers of coastal phytoplankton biomass is critical to developing effective nutrient management strategies. Here we assess the relative importance of these two drivers by comparing trends in chlorophyll-a between shallow coastal (0.1–16.5 km) and deep offshore (17–700 km) areas, hypothesizing that coastal regions influenced by anthropogenic nutrient inputs may have different spatial and temporal patterns in chlorophyll-a concentration from offshore regions where coastal inputs are less influential. Quarterly conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) fluorescence measurements collected from three southern California continental shelf regions since 1998 were compared to chlorophyll-a data from the more offshore California Cooperative Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program. The trends in the coastal zone were similar to those offshore, with a gradual increase of chlorophyll-a biomass and shallowing of its maximum layer since the beginning of observations, followed by chlorophyll-a declining and deepening from 2010 to present. An exception was the northern coastal part of SCB, where chlorophyll-a continued increasing after 2010. The long-term increase in chlorophyll-a prior to 2010 was correlated with increased nitrate concentrations in deep waters, while the recent decline was associated with deepening of the upper mixed layer, both linked to the low-frequency climatic cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. These large-scale factors affecting the physical structure of the water column may also influence the delivery of nutrients from deep ocean outfalls to the euphotic zone, making it difficult to distinguish the effects of anthropogenic inputs on chlorophyll along the coast.


The use of statistical significance and p-values has become a matter of substantial controversy in various fields using statistical methods. This has gone as far as some journals banning the use of indicators for statistical significance, or even any reports of p-values, and, in one case, any mention of confidence intervals. I discuss three of the issues that have led to these often-heated debates. First, I argue that in many cases, p-values and indicators of statistical significance do not answer the questions of primary interest. Such questions typically involve making (recommendations on) decisions under uncertainty. In that case, point estimates and measures of uncertainty in the form of confidence intervals or even better, Bayesian intervals, are often more informative summary statistics. In fact, in that case, the presence or absence of statistical significance is essentially irrelevant, and including them in the discussion may confuse the matter at hand. Second, I argue that there are also cases where testing null hypotheses is a natural goal and where p-values are reasonable and appropriate summary statistics. I conclude that banning them in general is counterproductive. Third, I discuss that the overemphasis in empirical work on statistical significance has led to abuse of p-values in the form of p-hacking and publication bias. The use of pre-analysis plans and replication studies, in combination with lowering the emphasis on statistical significance may help address these problems.


Epistemological racism occurs in college classrooms through pedagogies that marginalize or exclude knowledge about and from people of Color . Uprooting epistemological racism in higher education classrooms requires the use of pedagogies that centralize the needs of the oppressed and work with all students to develop their critical race conscience. This dissertation explores the meaning of critical race conscience in relationship to the development of pedagogies that work against oppression and toward liberation. Utilizing a noetic approach to understanding consciousness, this dissertation advances a theoretical and practical understanding of critical race conscience centering morality in the development of all structures of consciousness. I apply this theory to the analysis of a critical race participatory action research study with three faculty on the development of transformative pedagogy in higher education. In this analysis, I uncover some of the disciplinary narratives that inhibit faculty from teaching for racial justice and I illuminate the role of consciousness in developing a transformative pedagogical practice. By outlining the structures of a critical race conscience and demonstrating the role of each in teaching for liberation, this study encourages reconsideration of faculty development and classroom learning.