The story of the arrest and imprisonment of Vladimr Komrek sheds valuable light on relations between Czechoslovakia and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Komrek, who had worked as an intelligence officer against the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1950s, was a U.S. citizen traveling to the Soviet Union on business when he was dramatically captured by the Czechoslovak authorities. Pressure from the U.S. government and private individuals, as well as conflicts between the Czechoslovak secret service and other, more liberal, elements in the Czechoslovak government, ultimately led to Komrek's release. Czechoslovakia's eventual willingness to cooperate in the Komrek case signaled a new approach to relations with the West, an approach that would have significant consequences during the Prague Spring of 1968.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the shaping of public libraries as an infrastructure for a sustainable public sphere through a comprehensive literature review.

Design/methodology/approach
In order to capture the whole picture of this research field, we utilize comprehensive review methodology. The major research questions are: first, to what extent have research topics regarding libraries as public sphere institutions expanded and diversified? Which theoretical perspectives inform research? Second, which challenges and topics does the research focus upon, such as: social inclusion and equal access to information; digital inequalities; censorship and freedom of expression; and access to places and spaces with a democratic potential and the role of libraries in that respect? Third, what influence has social media exerted on libraries in the context of the expanding digital world?

Findings
The authors identified mainly four themes regarding the public library and public sphere, such as: the importance of public libraries by using Habermas's theory; the function of meeting places within the public library and setting those places in the center of the library in order to enhance and encourage democracy; the relationship between social inclusion and public libraries and its functions in current society such as diminishing the digital divide; and the emerging electronic resources and arena of SNS in public libraries and utilizing them to reach citizens.

Originality/value
Capturing the recent history of this research field through comprehensive review is valuable.


With the increase of ubiquitous data all over the internet, intelligent classroom systems that integrate traditional learning techniques with modern e-learning tools have become quite popular and necessary today. Although a substantial amount of work has been done in the field of e-learning, specifically in automation of objective question and answer evaluation, personalized learning, adaptive evaluation systems, the field of qualitative analysis of a student's subjective paragraph answers remains unexplored to a large extent. The traditional board, chalk, talk based classroom scenario involves a teacher setting question papers based on the concepts taught, checks the answers written by students manually and thus evaluates the students' performance. However, setting question papers remains a time consuming process with the teacher having to bother about question quality, level of difficulty and redundancy. In addition the process of manually correcting students' answers is a cumbersome and tedious task. In this paper, we put forth the design, analysis and implementation details along with some preliminary results to build a system that integrates all the above mentioned tasks with minimal teacher involvement that not only automates the traditional classroom scenario but also overcomes its inherent shortcomings and fallacies.


The Little House series introduced millions of readers to the beloved world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. From her very young days on the prairie to her golden years with her husband, Almanzo, Laura has become a friend to all who read her classic books. Here, noted Wilder historian William Anderson takes a fresh look at Laura in the days of her youth, and gives a detailed account of the events her cherished books describe. In these pages we learn what historic events inspired Laura to write her stories and what happens to her after the last Little House book ends. This book is sure to satisfy the most curious fans who long to know even more about Laura's adventurous pioneer life!


Machines, not humans, are the world's dominant knowledge accumulators but humans remain the dominant decision makers. Interpreting and disseminating the knowledge accumulated by machines requires expertise, time, and is prone to failure. The problem of how best to convey accumulated knowledge from computers to humans is a critical bottleneck in the broader application of machine learning. We propose an approach based on human teaching where the problem is formalized as selecting a small subset of the data that will, with high probability, lead the human user to the correct inference. This approach, though successful for modeling human learning in simple laboratory experiments, has failed to achieve broader relevance due to challenges in formulating general and scalable algorithms. We propose general-purpose teaching via pseudo-marginal sampling and demonstrate the algorithm by teaching topic models. Simulation results show our sampling-based approach: effectively approximates the probability where ground-truth is possible via enumeration, results in data that are markedly different from those expected by random sampling, and speeds learning especially for small amounts of data. Application to movie synopsis data illustrates differences between teaching and random sampling for teaching distributions and specific topics, and demonstrates gains in scalability and applicability to real-world problems.


This study aimed at assessing the Effects of Professional Diverging on Work Performance in Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA). The study has focused on identifying the factors affecting career choices of college students enrolled at VETA institutions, examining the factors that influence VETA students to deviate their professionals after their studies, examining the extent to which the employees have adequate knowledge regarding professional diverging on work performance and examining the parent"s attitude towards professional diverging on work performance. The study used a sample of 100 respondents and employed cross sectional exploratory survey design. Both simple random sampling and purposive sampling were employed to select a sample. Questionnaires with open and closed end questions as well as 5 likert scale were employed while semi structured interview was also used. The study has revealed that several factors like interested on the course, advises from experts, opportunities to get a good job after completing the studies, anticipation of a good pay in future, ability for a family to finance a student and easy of the course motivate students to choose the career for study. Furthermore, it was revealed that several factors like unemployment, low payment obtained from job, lack of starting capital, income inequalities and few industries having few employment opportunities influence graduands to deviate from their professional careers. It was recommended that the ministry of works and youth should find job opportunities to accommodate graduands with variety of professional careers.


Abstract Conventionalized positive images of Hungary have been overemphasized in political caricatures ever since the nineteenth century (Tamas 2012, 2014). The present article explores the multimodal representations of hungary in cartoons in the period between 1989 and 1990, during which negative images of Hungary became prominent due to the weak financial situation of the country and the political system change. The corpus involves seventy-five cartoons from the satirical magazine Ludas Matyi. Two major claims are justified by adopting Paula Perez-Sobrino's (2017) multimodal identification procedure: (1) the interpretation of verbal elements (e.g., labels, verbal texts, and verbal symbols) in political cartoons influences the identification of multimodal conceptual patterns; (2) the dominant patterns that structure the representation of hungary in political cartoons are metonymy-based visual and multimodal metaphors, and both of them occur in metaphorical scenarios. The corpus analysis indicates that the two main target frames, financial crisis and political changes, appear through the sources of human body and object in metaphorical scenarios, such as ordinary scenes, motion, hospital, sport, tale, love, feast, stunt, begging, and church scenes. Apart from identifying the representations of Hungary, visual metonymies as well as textual cues need to be revealed in order to understand what metaphtonymy scenarios are intended in the cartoons.


Background Under certain circumstances, isoflurane is associated with coronary artery vasodilation. The objective of the current study was to ascertain whether the rate of administration of isoflurane influences its vasodilating effect in the coronary circulation. Methods Seven open‐chest dogs anesthetized with fentanyl and midazolam were studied. The left anterior descending coronary artery was perfused via either of two pressurized (80 mmHg) reservoirs; reservoir 1 (control) was supplied with arterial blood free of isoflurane, and reservoir 2 was supplied with blood from an extracorporeal oxygenator, which was provided with 95% Oxygen2 /5% CO2 gas that passed through calibrated vaporizer. Coronary blood flow (CBF) was measured with Doppler flow transducer. In each dog, isoflurane was administered according to two protocols; abrupt (isoflurane‐A) or gradual (isoflurane‐G). In isoflurane‐A, the left anterior descending coronary artery was switched from reservoir 1 to reservoir 2 after the latter was filled with blood previously equilibrated with 1.4% (1 MAC) isoflurane. In isoflurane‐G, the left anterior descending coronary artery was switched to reservoir 2 with vaporizer set at 0% isoflurane; then the vaporizer was adjusted to 1.4% isoflurane, which produced a gradual increase in isoflurane concentration within reservoir 2 that reached a level equivalent to that in isoflurane‐A (as evaluated by gas chromatography) by 30 min. CBF during maximally dilating, intracoronary infusion of adenosine served as a reference to assess effects of isoflurane. Results Isoflurane‐A caused marked increases in CBF, which, at constant perfusion pressure, reflected pronounced reductions in vascular resistance. These increases in CBF were 80% of those with adenosine. Although isoflurane‐G also caused increases in CBF, the increases were only 45% of those caused by isoflurane‐A. Conclusions The current findings demonstrate that the extent of coronary vasodilation by isoflurane was not dependent only on its blood concentration but also on the rate at which this blood concentration was achieved; a gradual increase in blood concentration blunted the vasodilator effect. Differences in the rate of administration of isoflurane likely contributed to its widely variable coronary vasodilating effects in previous studies.


This article reads Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (2006) as a rewriting of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's assumption, which interprets In Search as a complex exercise in decoding signs, the article claims that Fun Home stages the attempt of its protagonists, Alison and her father Bruce, to understand the truth about each other. In particular, it addresses the issues of sexual identity, spatiality, and death as some of the crucial motifs in In Search that Bechdel retrieves in Fun Home. The protagonists' "experiment in decoding" turns out to be a failure, due to the impossibility of understanding and deciphering the signs of each other's intimate truths.


Background: Under-nutrition is a fundamental factor which resulted in delayed cognitive development and underachievement of academic performance later in children's life at school. The extent of under-nutrition in Ethiopia has been established well but there are insufficient evidences about its relationship with the educational achievement of school-age children.
Objective : To assess the correlation of nutritional status with academic performance among public primary school children
Method: - An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted over 399 primary school children in Debre-Tabor Town, Amhara Regional State North-Central Ethiopia, 2018 after selecting them with simple random sampling. The nutritional status was assessed using the anthropometric measurement of WHO 2007 reference as Height for Age Z-score (HAZ), Weight for Age Z-score (WAZ) and Body Mass Index for Age Z-score (BAZ). Academic performance was assessed by calculating two semesters of overall subjects' average score. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation test, and linear regression were used for statistical analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24 and nutritional status was analyzed using WHO AnthroPlus version 1.0.4 (5-19 years).
Result: - Almost half of study participants were male 209(52%), 291(73%) comes from married family, and 177(44%) were comes from family having more than five members. The mean age of the study participants were 11.85. The prevalence of stunting, wasting, underweight and overweight was 22%, 32.4%, 24.3%, and 1.3% respectively. The prevalence of any form of malnutrition was 56.14% and the mean academic performance for study participants was 71.65(±12.63 SD). There was a statistically significant positive relationship between academic achievement and HAZ. Age of child and absenteeism were associated negatively while attending preschool, the type of head of the house, and having breakfast habits associated positively with the educational achievement of the study participants.
Conclusion:- The prevalence of under-nutrition among study participants was high. Considering the correlation of absenteeism, skipping breakfast, having preschool education and HAZ, nutritional interventions should be considered at prenatal, infancy and preschool period to sustain positive impact and reducing negative factors.
Key Terms: Nutritional status, Academic performance, primary school, child1.


The report consist of individual test-run reports by participating teachers and consortium-level observers that gathered qualitative and quantitative data through short interviews, surveys and QA questionnaires mostly with students, but also among themselves. A joint evaluation is delivered and a "lessons learned" compendium published, offered digitally through the project's dissemination system (mostly newsletter and website-promotion), and spread locally through the teaching communities – also partly entering the professional article as "experience report" (see next deliverable). These reports and the "lessons learned" were discussed and confirmed in the below structure at the September 2013 meeting, organised by P4. Notably, a total of three sceintific or porfessional articles were (to be) published (as separate deliverables) refereing to the lessons learned in this project, refering to the summative experience of the project.


Abstract. Interpreting the ages of supergene mineralogical phases in
laterite is complex because they consist of polycrystalline mixtures of
different phases at the microscopic scale that could be crystalized at
different epochs. Among the geochronometers, the (U-Th)/He method on
hematite and goethite is more often used, but ages can be difficult to interpret
due to phases mixing. To resolve this issue, this study proposes a
methodology for performing detailed mineralogical analysis of hematite and
goethite single grains prior to their dating using the (U-Th)/He method.
Strictly non-destructive mineralogy of single grains is not achievable by
classical tools, such as conventional powder XRD (X-ray diffraction; requiring at least some milligrams
of powder) or SEM (scanning electron microscopy; that can contaminate the grain by coating or fixing).
Therefore, we performed X-ray diffraction patterns of single grains using
high-flux X-ray beams from both a rotating anode (XRD_rotat)
laboratory diffractometer and a synchrotron beamline (XRD_synch) and compared the results in order to design a method based on
XRD_rotat only. For this purpose, two samples from the
pisolitic facies of a Brazilian ferruginous duricrust (Alto Paranaíba
region, Minas Gerais State, Brazil) were chosen because they presented a
usual heterogeneity. Rietveld refinements of the XRD patterns obtained from
both XRD_rotat and XRD_synch yielded similar
results for the weight percentage ratio of the main phases and mean coherent domain
sizes and less similar results for Al substitution rates, thus validating the
XRD_rotat approach. No beam damage was observed when
increasing X-ray exposure time, neither on XRD patterns nor on (U-Th)/He ages. Hence, sub-millimeter, undisturbed grains can be used to analyze the
mineralogy of ferruginous duricrusts by XRD_rotat with a
short exposure, and the same grains can subsequently be dated by (U-Th)/He geochronology analysis. The (U-Th)/He dating of pisolitic core and cortex
grains also provided meaningful ages: they revealed two evolution phases of
the ferruginous duricrust, which occurred at or before the Oligocene for
the pisolitic core and middle Miocene for the pisolitic cortex, agreeing with the
previous model for the development of pisolites. The mineralogy of single
grains selected for dating is helpful for discussing the crystallization
ages, and the high-flux XRD approach may be applied to other supergene
mineral parageneses used for absolute dating.


A clone of murine neuroblastoma (N1E‐115) was shown to have functional receptors for the nonapeptide bradykinin. These receptors mediated a large, rapid (about 1 min to peak) and calcium‐dependent increase in cyclic GMP. The median effective concentration (EC50) averaged 1.4 nM. In addition, this event was inhibited by quinacrine, 5,8,11,14‐eicosatetraynoic acid, and nordi‐hydroguaiaretic acid, suggesting involvement of phospholipase A2 with subsequent formation of lipoxygenase metabolites of arachidonic acid. [3H]Bradykinin binding to intact cells, investigated under conditions nearly identical to those used in the cyclic GMP assay, yielded binding sites with KDs of 0.83 pM, 1.0 nM, and 4.9 nM with respective Bmax values of 12, 160, and 250 fmol/106 cells. Apparently, the cyclic GMP response was associated with the binding site in which the KD= 1.0 nM. Peptide analogs of bradykinin stimulated cyclic GMP with EC50s nearly identical to their respective KDs determined in binding assays with [3H]bradykinin, thus providing evidence for receptor specificity of this response. This finding of a biochemical response of bradykinin promises to make N1E‐115 cells a convenient model system for study of neuronal bradykinin receptors.


Abstract Exploiting a natural experiment involving the imposition of a technical regulation by Germany on Indian leather and textile industries in 1994, a firm-level data set is used to study the trade, adaptation and discontinuity effects and how they vary by firm size. It is found that: (a) regulation significantly increases the export revenues of a firm through use of new technology and high-quality imported raw materials – indicating a possible signalling effect; (b) this gain is concentrated only on the upper half of the firm size distribution, i.e., in the 3rd and 4th quartiles; (c) use of imported raw materials significantly explains low exit probabilities of a firm; and (d) there is evidence of a sorting effect – regulation significantly affecting the operation of small firms.


Introduction Young employees have self-certified 1–3 day sickness absence (SA) more often than their older counterparts, but the burden of self-certified SA and its occupational class differences have only little previous evidence. We examined the changes in self-certified SA among young employees from 2002 to 2016 and the magnitude of occupational class differences during that period. Methods All 18–34 year-old employees of the City of Helsinki, Finland were included (2002–2016, n=~11 725 per year). Employer's personnel and SA registers were used. Occupational class was categorised to four groups: managers and professional, semi-professionals, routine non-manuals and manual workers. Changes in the self-certified SA spells and days from 2002 to 2016 were analysed with joinpoint regression and the magnitudes of occupational class differences were estimated with the relative index of inequality (RII). Results Most of the trends first increased and turned to decrease in 2007/2010. Managers and professionals had the least amount of self-certified SA, but steadily increasing trends were observed among men. Self-certified SA followed only partially the typical socioeconomic gradient, as routine non-manuals had the highest levels of SA. The magnitude of occupational class differences in self-certified SA was stable during the study period only among women. Self-certified SA and occupational class differences have increased in recent years among men in the lower occupational classes. Conclusion Socioeconomic differences exist in self-certified SA among young employees, but gradient is only partial. Overall, high amounts of self-certified SA especially in the lower occupational classes are in need for further studies and preventive measures.


We propose a means to relate properties of an interconnected system to its separate component systems in the presence of cascade-like phenomena. Building on a theory of interconnection reminiscent of the behavioral approach to systems theory, we introduce the notion of generativity, and its byproduct, generative effects. Cascade effects, enclosing contagion phenomena and cascading failures, are seen as instances of generative effects. The latter are precisely the instances where properties of interest are not preserved or behave very badly when systems interact. The goal is to overcome that obstruction. We will show how to extract mathematical objects from the systems, that encode their generativity: their potential to generate new phenomena upon interaction. Those objects may then be used to link the properties of the interconnected system to its separate systems. Such a link will be executed through the use of exact sequences from commutative algebra.


Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of synthetic halogenated organic compounds used in numerous polymer-based commercial and household products such as textiles, furniture, and electronics, to increase their flame ignition resistance and to meet increasingly strict fire safety standards. Release of PBDEs to the environment can occur during manufacturing and processing operations, throughout the service life of articles containing PBDEs, and when articles that contain PBDEs are disposed of. Within highly populated areas, elevated concentrations in air, water, sediment, and soil are associated with proximity to manufacturing, recycling, and waste disposal facilities, signifying that these may serve as point sources of PBDEs in abiotic media. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) can be transported in the environment for long distances from their primary sources and pose a risk to human health and the environment. There is increasing regulation and phasing-out of production of PBDEs due to their widespread presence in the environment and potentially deleterious effects on ecosystems and human health. According to the regulations of the Minister of the Environment in Poland, PBDEs are in the group of priority substances for which environmental quality standards have been established. In many cases the determination was not performed due to the lack of standardized methods. The main issue addressed in this paper – the potential occurrence of PBDEs in waters in the hypergene zone – was investigated based on available information about PBDE levels in surface waters, soils, and sediments. Levels of PBDEs in aquatic environments presented in the article and based on the review of the cited paper, reveal that the threat of PBDEs in Poland could be real. However, the current expertise in this field is still too limited to allow a reliable assessment of the scale of the problem.


Blood pressure increases with age in all US population groups that have been studies, but does so faster in African Americans. Evidence from extensive microscopic renal vascular studies at autopsy supports the view that blood pressure increases with age because of progressive fibroplasia of renal interlobular arteries and arterioles that leads to incrementally escalating renal ischemia. This process precedes the development of hypertension and progresses, on average, faster in African Americans compared with whites. The etiology for fibroplasia of the renal vasculature and the reasons for its faster progression in African Americans remains unknown.


Summary Semliki Forest virus preparations of different degrees of purification were sprayed into atmospheres of different relative humidity. Inactivation of airborne virus was greatest at high relative humidities and it decreased gradually as the relative humidity was decreased. Removal of salts from the sprayed suspension resulted in improved survival over the whole range of relative humidity tested. Extraneous protein was essential for survival at high relative humidities. Polyhydroxy-compounds protected airborne virus very well in conditions of low relative humidity.


Conjugation is a key mechanism for horizontal gene transfer in bacteria. Some plasmids are not self-transmissible but can be mobilized by functions encoded in trans provided by other auxiliary conjugative elements. Although the transfer efficiency of mobilizable plasmids is usually lower than that of conjugative elements, mobilizable plasmids are more frequently found in nature. In this sense, replication and mobilization can be considered important mechanisms influencing plasmid promiscuity. Here we review the currently available information on two families of small mobilizable plasmids from Gram-positive bacteria that replicate via the rolling-circle mechanism. One of these families, represented by the streptococcal plasmid pMV158, is an interesting model since it contains a specific mobilization module (MOBV) that is widely distributed among mobilizable plasmids. We discuss a mechanism in which the promiscuity of the pMV158 replicon is based on the presence of two origins of lagging strand synthesis. The current strategies to assess plasmid transfer efficiency as well as to inhibit conjugative plasmid transfer are presented. Some applications of these plasmids as biotechnological tools are also reviewed.


Recently, machine learning (ML) has established itself in various worldwide benchmarking competitions in computational biology, including Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) and Drug Design Data Resource (D3R) Grand Challenges. However, the intricate structural complexity and high ML dimensionality of biomolecular datasets obstruct the efficient application of ML algorithms in the field. In addition to data and algorithm, an efficient ML machinery for biomolecular predictions must include structural representation as an indispensable component. Mathematical representations that simplify the biomolecular structural complexity and reduce ML dimensionality have emerged as a prime winner in D3R Grand Challenges. This review is devoted to the recent advances in developing low-dimensional and scalable mathematical representations of biomolecules in our laboratory. We discuss three classes of mathematical approaches, including algebraic topology, differential geometry, and graph theory. We elucidate how the physical and biological challenges have guided the evolution and development of these mathematical apparatuses for massive and diverse biomolecular data. We focus the performance analysis on protein-ligand binding predictions in this review although these methods have had tremendous success in many other applications, such as protein classification, virtual screening, and the predictions of solubility, solvation free energies, toxicity, partition coefficients, protein folding stability changes upon mutation, etc.


While much is known about adult obesity in nonhuman primates, very little is known regarding development of childhood adiposity. As small monkeys that are easy to handle and have a relatively fast life history, common marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) offer interesting opportunities to examine the question of fat versus lean mass growth in a nonhuman primate. This article provides an overview of our understanding of early life growth in mass in marmoset monkeys, based primarily upon our past 20 years of research, culminating in our recent findings on early life obesity in this species. Common marmosets display variance in early life growth patterns that is related to both pre- and postnatal factors and the marmoset uterine environment is exquisitely designed to reflect resources available for the gestation of multiple offspring, making them an interesting model of developmental programming. We have demonstrated that obesity can be generated in very early life in captive marmosets, with excess adiposity evident by one month of age, making this species a potentially valuable model in which to study pediatric obesity and its sequelae. Birth weight is associated with adiposity in animals vulnerable to obesity. Early life exposure to higher fat diets enhances the chances of postweaning obesity development. However, overall higher food consumption is also associated with obesity development at later ages. One unexpected finding in our studies has been the relatively high body fat percentage of neonatal (12-18%) marmosets suggesting that hypotheses regarding the uniqueness of high human neonatal adiposity merit further examination.


Based on the Upper Echelons Theory that suggests the demographic characteristics of executives are linked to organisational processes and outcomes, the paper proposes that strategic decision-making processes mediate the relationship between board members' demographic characteristics and corporate innovation relating to product, process and organization. Based on questionnaires completed by 101 CEOs of Greek listed firms, the findings confirm that reporting and formalization as decision processes mediate the effect of board characteristics on innovation. Sound financial and formal mechanisms encourage Greek executives to take risks and invest in product or service innovation. Findings show that the executives' educational level is positively associated with financial reporting and rule formalization activities due to the changes that have been occurred in the Greek education system over recent decades. Functional background is found to influence only financial reporting activities. Finally, the managerial implications of this study are discussed.IntroductionAcademic interest in how executives influence strategic decisions and organizational outcomes has always been high in strategic management literature. Previous studies have portrayed the upper echelons' characteristics as determinants of strategic choices and their outcomes on organizational performance (Hambrick, Cho and Chen, 1996; Hambrick and Mason, 1 984; Smith et al., 1 994). Based on the Upper Echelon Theory, the executives' background and experiences have also been examined for their specific effects on strategic decisions, namely content (e.g. Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Damanpour and Schneider, 2006) and context (e.g. Bantel, 1993; Papadakis and Barwise, 2002). Content decisions refer to decisions that executives make either to select a core business that offers a competitive advantage or to exploit new opportunities in the market place (Hitt and Tyler, 1 99 1). Content decisions are associated with portfolio management activities, diversification, mergers and acquisitions and innovation strategies. However, context decisions are described as a process during which executives determine appropriate actions and directions for the firm (Elbanna, 2006).Building on the fact that, firstly, strategic decision-making processes remain something of a "black box 'within the innovation literature and, secondly, limited research that has been carried out on the mediating effect between executives' characteristics and strategic outcomes (Hambrick, 2007), this study empirically investigates whether the strategic decision-making processes of financial reporting and rule formalization influence the relationship between the executives' demographic characteristics and innovation. It provides academics and business practitioners with a clear understanding of the specific strategic decision-making processes that mediate the relationship between executives' attributes and innovation strategies.The study contributes to the existing literature and research on strategic management in several novel ways. Firstly, it proposes an integrative framework of potential strategic determinants of innovation, incorporating decision-making processes and managerial characteristics. This is the first study to the best of our knowledge that theoretically and empirically examines strategic decision-making processes as a mediator between executives' characteristics and firms' innovation. Secondly, although previous studies in the field (Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981) have conceived innovation adoption either as a multi-phase process or as an outcome of dichotomous decision, in this study, the construct of innovation captures product, process and organizational innovation strategies. Finally, based on a sample of 101 questionnaires completed by Greek CEOs, the study aims to identify the key influences on innovation in Greek companies as a contribution to addressing Greece's relatively low levels of innovation. …


OBJECTIVE
To investigate effects of exercise on hematologic and biochemical values (especially markers of inflammation and muscle damage) in Spanish Greyhounds used for hunting without previous training.

ANIMALS
32 Spanish Greyhounds and 31 dogs of other breeds.

PROCEDURES
Hematologic variables and concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) and other biochemical markers were compared in samples obtained from Spanish Greyhounds 24 hours after exercise (eg, a hunting race) and 2 months after exercise (ie, at rest) and from non-Spanish Greyhounds at rest. All dogs were healthy. Hematologic and biochemical analyses were performed within 24 hours after samples were obtained, and results were compared by means of a Student t test.

RESULTS
CRP concentration and muscle enzyme (creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, and aspartate aminotransferase) activities were significantly higher and serum iron concentration was significantly lower for Spanish Greyhounds after exercise than at rest. The WBC and neutrophil counts were significantly higher after exercise then at rest. Plasma alanine transaminase activity and total protein, calcium, and phosphorus concentrations were significantly higher after exercise than at rest. Spanish Greyhounds at rest had higher RBC counts, PCVs, and hemoglobin concentrations and lower WBC, neutrophil, and lymphocyte counts, compared with values for non-Spanish Greyhounds at rest.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Exercise of Spanish Greyhounds without prior training activated an acute-phase response represented by an increase in serum CRP concentration and decrease in serum albumin and iron concentrations. These changes, along with leukocytosis and neutrophilia, were indicative of a subclinical inflammatory state in Spanish Greyhounds.


Objectives: To determine the frequency and types of Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) in patients having ascites secondary to liver cirrhosis. Material and Methods: This study was conducted in Medical E Unit of Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar and Rehman Medical Institute, Peshawar from 19th March, 2009 to 18th September, 2009. Patients with liver cirrhosis and ascites, aged 13 years and above and of both sexes presenting with fever, chills, abdominal pain, recent increase in abdominal distension, confusion or coma, rebound tenderness or signs of hepatic encephalopathy were included. Results: SBP was detected in 128 (52.24%) patients out of 245 patients aged between 18 and 72 years included in study. Among the group of patients with SBP, 77(60.15%) were male and 51 (39.84%) were female. Classical SBP was present in 50 (39.06%), Bacterascites in 6 (4.68%) and Culture Negative Neutrocytic Ascites (CNNA) in 72 (56.25%) patients. The ascitic fluid mean total leukocyte count in patients without SBP was110.23 /mm and in patients with SBP was 2314.76 /mm. The mean ascitic fluid Polymorphonuclear (PMN) cell count in non-SBP group was 30.21/mm and in SBP group was 1760.56/mm. Conclusion: Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis is quite a common and potentially life threatening complication of liver cirrhosis with ascites.


Recently, the direct detection of gravitational waves from black hole (BH) mergers was announced by the Advanced LIGO Collaboration. Multi-messenger counterparts of stellar-mass BH mergers are of interest, and it had been suggested that a small disk or celestial body may be involved in the binary of two BHs. To test such possibilities, we consider the fate of a wind powered by an active minidisk in a relatively short, super-Eddington accretion episode onto a BH with ∼10–100 solar masses. We show that its thermal emission could be seen as a fast optical transient with the duration from hours to days. We also find that the coasting outflow forms external shocks due to interaction with the interstellar medium, whose synchrotron emission might be expected in the radio band on a timescale of years. Finally, we also discuss a possible jet component and the associated high-energy neutrino emission as well as ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray acceleration.


This study attempts to delineate the boundaries of the spheres of interest in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia established under the Russo-Japanese accords of 1907 and 1912. Although the agreements are well known, there have been few efforts to reconstruct these spheres cartographically. Two existing maps offer contradictory interpretations. These partition agreements had a major impact on diplomacy, railway policy, and strategic planning during the decade they held force between 1907 and 1916, and the precise location of the Russo-Japanese sphere boundaries in this contested region was a matter of no small consequence. The author proposes a revised boundary map based on an examination of textual and cartographic sources, including maps produced by the army command of the Kwantung government-general. At the same time, the author seeks to highlight the potential value of cartographic analysis as a mode of historical inquiry into the record of Japanese imperialism. Cartography was an indispensable tool for modern empire builders in bringing a measurable territoriality to their realms and making their lands and subjects politically legible. The mapping entailed in these boundary agreements was important not only in bilateral diplomacy but also in enhancing the legibility of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia to Japanese imperialists themselves.


Understanding the effect of subsidence on fluviodeltaic morphology is important not only to maintain sustainable coastal cities and habitats but also to interpret the information contained in the stratigraphic record. While tectonic steering in alluvial environments has been investigated, similar studies in fluviodeltaic environments are limited to physical experiments and field observations. We perform numerical experiments with a parcel‐based cellular model to analyze the deltaic surface and subsurface responses to regional subsidence. We quantify model results using robust metrics and show that while sediment partitioning and shoreline pattern vary gradually with increasing subsidence rate, channel mobility and stratigraphic connectivity of channel deposits show a threshold transition. Conditions for this transition are captured with a dimensionless filling index β, defined as the ratio between the rates of accommodation creation and sediment supply. A channel‐locking mechanism activates when β exceeds 0.6 and is responsible for the threshold transition.


Error correcting codes have been extremely successful in practice to build storage and communication systems which are resilient to noise and corruptions. They also found several theoretical applications in complexity theory, pseudorandomness, probabilistically checkable proofs and cryptography. Each application requires codes with specific properties. One such property desirable in many applications is 'locality'. Locality refers to the ability to perform operations like decoding/correction/testing in sublinear or sometimes constant time. For example, a constant query locally decodable code (LDC) allows decoding of any message bit in constant time given a corrupted encoding of the message. Much of the work in this thesis is to understand the power and limitations of codes with locality. We show that one can get non-trivial locality and still match the best known rate-distance tradeoffs of traditional error correcting codes (GilbertVarshamov bound). We prove several conditional lower bounds on codes with locality and give new directions for constructing such codes by showing an analytic characterization of LDCs. We also explore applications of such codes to additive combinatorics, information privacy and data storage. We show how to use ideas from existing constructions of LDCs to design 2-server private information retrieval schemes where a user can efficiently and privately query a database replicated among two (non-communicating) servers without revealing any information about their query to either server. We also show limits and improved constructions of maximally recoverable local reconstruction codes which are locally correctable codes designed specifically for distributed data storage applications.


This presentation considers optimal vaccination policies for a SIR (Susceptible - Infected - Recovered) model. The cost is optimized with respect to the vaccination strategies. We show that the value function is the unique viscosity solution of a HJB equation. This allows to find the global optimal vaccination policy. At odds with existing literature, it is seen that the value function is not always smooth (sometimes only Lipschitz) and the optimal vaccination policies are not unique. Moreover we rigorously analyze the situation when vaccination can be modeled as instantaneous (with respect to the time evolution of the epidemic) and identify for the first time the global optimum solutions. We show that the optimal solution divides the space into two regions : into one it is best to vaccinate with maximum effort and outside it is optimal to do nothing. When the vaccination is not compulsory and moreover has some secondary effects the individual decision (to vaccinate or not) may be different from the optimal strategy of the society as a whole. Indeed, in some cases, vaccination would be optimal for the society but not for an individual. We introduce mathematical models that study this difference and propose a structural explanation using a "Mean Field Games" model (a la Lions and Lasry).


The Composite Particles Model (CPM) is characterized by composite Higgs, composite top quark, cancelation of the scalar leading quadratic divergences, and a particular ground state such that top anti-top channel is neither attractive or repulsive at tree level at the Z pole mass. The radiatively generated scalar mass in 2D is m_H=\sqrt((6m_t^2 -M_Z^2-2M_w^2)/3(1+{\pi}/k))= 113 GeV/c^2,143 GeV/c^2,...,230 GeV/c^2 for k = 1,2,...\infty. As first proposed by Nambu in the simplest models with dynamical mass generation and fermion condensate in 4D, one expects the Higgs mass on the order of twice the heaviest fermion mass. Hence, if this is applied to the CPM one could expect scalar mass dynamically generated by top constituent quarks and composite top quarks to be equal to 2 m_t/3 and 2m_t respectively. When Bose-Einstein statistics for kT \cong M_W c^2 is applied to the two lowest energy states in 2D (113 GeV and 143 GeV) and 4D (115 GeV and 346 GeV), the CPM suggests physical Higgs mass equal to m_H \cong 125 GeV/c^2 in both 2D and 4D.


One of the least studied areas of Information Foraging Theory is diet: the information foragers choose to seek. For example, do foragers choose solely based on cost, or do they stubbornly pursue certain diets regardless of cost? Do their debugging strategies vary with their diets? To investigate "what" and "how" questions like these for the domain of software debugging, we qualitatively analyzed 9 professional developers' foraging goals, goal patterns, and strategies. Participants spent 50% of their time foraging. Of their foraging, 58% fell into distinct dietary patterns - mostly in patterns not previously discussed in the literature. In general, programmers' foraging strategies leaned more heavily toward enrichment than we expected, but different strategies aligned with different goal types. These and our other findings help fill the gap as to what programmers' dietary goals are and how their strategies relate to those goals.


SiO2-SiC composite particles were prepared using a sol-gel process. BaTiO3 powders were synthesize through solid-state reaction. They were mixed as microwave absorbents with Fe3O4 powders to obtain the complex absorption. Epoxide resin (EP) was used as matrix and solidified with the mixtures. The techniques of DSC-TG, XRD were used to characterize the composite particles and the obtained compacts. A vector network analyzer was used to measure the reflectivity of the SiO2-SiC-based composites. The effects of the aborbents' contents on the reflection of the microwave absorption materials were disscussed. It was found that SiO2-SiC composites could be prepared using sol-gel process and BaTiO3 powders could be synthesize through solid-state reaction. The results indicated that SiO2-SiC composite is contribute to absorb microwave, where SiO2-SiC: BaTiO3: Fe3O4 = 6:2:2 (vol %), the frequency region in which the maximum reflectivity is more than -10 dB is 5.4-7.6 GHz.


Some weeks ago I received from Mr. J. D. Pasteur at Batavia the pupa of the male (forma maxima) of the above quoted interesting stag-beetle, which I thought worthy to be figured in the »Notes". I received the specimen with the following annotation: »The pupa of Allotopus Rosenbengii (Voll.) I send herewith to you was found by me at Toegoe (West Java) in the mouldered trunk of a long since unrooted forest-tree, which in Western Java is called »Kajoe Pasang." According to Mr. Wigman, Horticulturist of the Botanical Gardens at Buitenzorg, Kajoe Pasang is the collective name for the different species of Javanese oaks Quercus)."


H.264/AVC is a new video coding standard of the ITU-T video coding expert group which has a significant improvement in the rate distortion efficiency compared with the previous standards. However, there is an exhaustive motion search across multiple block sizes and multiple reference frames leading to a linear increase in processing time. Although, the encoding quality is improved, the complexity of the encoder and computational cost are also increased at the same time. In this paper, we reduce the computational cost by reducing the number of candidate pixels required for the sum of absolute difference for each block (SAD) using two early stop search techniques. These techniques are applied on two scan search patterns (raster and spiral search patterns) and compared with the conventional full search (FS), three step search (TSS), and diamond search (DS) algorithms. Results show that there is at least 98% reduction in computations with a maximum loss of 0.1 dB compared with the conventional FS algorithm.


Human β defensin type 3 (hBD-3) is a cysteine rich small peptide, which has 45 residues and a charge of +11. It can form dimer or higher order oligomer in solution. It has a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activities against virus, fungus, and both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria even at high salt concentrations. Its antibacterial activity is believed to depend on its interaction with biological membrane. In order to understand the interaction mechanism of hBD-3 with lipid membrane, in this study, the interactions of hBD-3 dimer with 1 -Palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3 –phosphatidylserine (POPS) bilayer, which resembles negatively charged bacterial membrane and 1 -Palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3 –phosphatidylcholine (POPC) bilayer, which resembles neutrally charged human red blood cell membrane are investigated using all- atom molecular dynamics simulations. Inserting hBD-3 dimer into the center of the POPC lipid bilayer and POPS lipid bilayer, 55 ns all-atom molecular dynamics simulations were performed on each system. Analyzing the RMSD and RMSF on hBD-3 dimer, it is found that hBD-3 dimer is more flexible in POPS lipid bilayer than in POPC bilayer. Calculating the hydrogen bonds formed between hBD-3 dimer and lipids, hBD-3 dimer forms more hydrogen bonds with POPS lipid than with POPC lipid. The insertion of hBD-3 dimer into lipid bilayer causes membrane thinning, which is stronger in POPS lipids around the hBD-3 dimer than in POPC lipid bilayer. Besides that, it is found that almost same number of water molecules transpass through POPS and POPC lipid bilayer.


The breath of Pan resonates across the bright blue oceans, filling the air with a sweet music that multiplies with endless variations from mountainous terrains to boundless deserts.

Psyche grows miraculously tall and sings; her magical voice reverberating across continents, resounding through a million hearts. All who hear the echoing sounds talk of a new dawn.
Love springs into the air; the world is excited at the prospect of starting anew. Timid smiles rise up on the faces of children like a blessing, an offering or a promise of sweet devotion.
Golden sunsets flame in the western skies and adventurers return to their ancient homelands. Poetry, like a kiss, is on every lip; the joy of passion informing every action, every song.


The main goal of change management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for the efficient and prompt handling of changes in IT systems, in order to minimize change-related incidents and service-delivery disruption. To meet this goal, it is of paramount importance reusing the experience acquired from previous changes in the design of subsequent ones. Two distinct approaches may be usefully combined to this end. In a top-down approach, IT operators may manually design change templates based on the knowledge owned/acquired in the past. Considering a reverse, bottom-up perspective, these templates could be discovered from past execution traces gathered from IT provisioning tools. While the former has been satisfactorily explored in previous investigations, the latter - despite its undeniable potential to result in accurate templates in a reduced time scale - has not been subject of research, as far as the authors are aware of, by the service operations and management community. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes a solution, inspired on process mining techniques, to discover change templates from past changes. The solution is analyzed through a prototypical implementation of a change template miner subsystem called CHANGEMINER, and a set of experiments based on a real-life scenario.


Austin, Texas is famous for a thriving music scene. The contemporary scene is apparent to all who travel and move to Austin, yet the rich history and development of the music scene is hidden in various private and public collections. The Austin Music Documentation Initiative (AMDI) intends to increase access and awareness of the music history of Austin by providing a portal through which organizations and individuals can contribute metadata and thumbnails of Austin music history related materials. Under the guidance of the digital archivist at the Perry-Castaneda Library, students from the Spring 2015 section of Digital Libraries at the UT iSchool will create a proof of concept cataloging app for the AMDI. The proof of concept app will be used in support of grant applications. The end goal for this project will include a metadata schema, as well as a form and workflow for uploading metadata to a central directory.


The recent association between IC-170922A and the blazar TXS0506+056 highlights the importance of real-time observations for identifying possible astrophysical neutrino sources.
Thanks to its near-100\% duty cycle, 4$\pi$ steradian field of view, and excellent sensitivity over many decades of energy, IceCube is well suited both to generate alerts for follow-up by other instruments and to rapidly follow up alerts generated by other instruments. Detection of neutrinos in coincidence with transient astrophysical phenomena serves as a smoking gun for hadronic processes and supplies essential information about the identities and mechanisms of cosmic-ray accelerators. In 2016, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory established a pipeline to rapidly search for neutrinos from astrophysical transients on timescales ranging from a fraction of a second to multiple weeks. Since then, over 50 dedicated analyses have been performed searching for associations between IceCube neutrinos and astrophysical transients reported by radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray instruments. We present the event selection, maximum likelihood analysis method, and sensitivity of the IceCube real-time pipeline. We also summarize the results of all follow-up analyses to date. \\


This research concerns usage of strategic messages by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its English-language communications about China's foreign policy, as conveyed via Xinhua. Message usage in Xinhua was tracked over 11 years (2008-2018) with a focus on events, inside and outside of China, that influenced these messages. Analysis revealed that the CCP is not just focused on 'telling its story', but also on having its rhetoric adopted in international agreements and suppressing counter-narratives. This thesis sheds new light on what CCP leadership seeks to communicate and why, and about internal and external factors influencing their foreign policy thinking.


Abstract: Recent evidence indicates that there is a small, demographically isolated, island-associated population of false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) around the main Hawaiian Islands. Although it is known that false killer whales in Hawai'i are sometimes killed or seriously injured in the Hawai'i-based longline fishery, it is not known whether such interactions have resulted in a reduction in population size or whether other factors have been negatively influencing population size. We report the results of an aerial survey in June and July 1989, the purpose of which was to obtain a minimum count of the number of false killer whales around the main Hawaiian Islands. The false killer whale was the third most commonly seen species of odontocete off the island of Hawai'i during the survey, representing 17% of sightings. Groups of more than 300 individuals were seen on three different days, with minimum counts of 380, 460, and 470 individuals in these groups. The encounter rate, relative species ranking, and average group size from the 1989 survey were all substantially greater than those from more recent aerial and ship-based surveys. The largest group observed in 1989 (470) contained almost four times as many whales as estimated for the entire main Hawaiian Islands from recent aerial surveys (121 individuals, CV = 0.47) or mark-recapture analyses (123 individuals, CV = 0.72). Therefore, the population of false killer whales around the main Hawaiian Islands may have declined substantially since 1989. The cause or causes of such a decline are uncertain.


Children working in mining related activities are not uncommon in Sierra Leone. Their involvement has become a matter of increasing global attention and significant measures have been taken at national and international levels to combat the problem. However its prevalence gives reasons for concern. In the case of Sierra Leone it has been argued that there has been a failure to carry out an analysis of the mining sector and engage in the complex realities of the children. This study aims to understand how mining exploitation and cultural aspects to child labour can act as potential obstacles to child labour elimination in the mining sector in Sierra Leone. This study draws upon dependency theory and the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), resource curse and socially constructed childhood to discuss and analyze the child labour issue in Sierra Leones mining sector. Thus, deriving from a research overview this study is based upon secondary data. The study finds that the failure to acknowledge sociocultural aspects embedded in the Sierra Leonean society along with economic exploitation of the mining sector constitutes potential obstacles to the elimination of child labour.


Background: Roughly 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. Individuals with chronic pain frequently experience decreased quality of life due to pain, decline in health, financial burdens with monthly doctor visits, medication expenses and reduced activity in the workforce. Cognitive intervention in an interdisciplinary approach can help patients cope with their pain, improve quality of life, reduce pain medication use, reduce missed workdays and improve their outlook on pain and its impact on their life. Is an adaptation of this approach needed in the outpatient setting with physical therapists and occupational therapists trained in cognitive treatment of illness perceptions in order to provide a more balanced approach to chronic pain management? Methods: An exhaustive search of available medical literature was conducted using Medline-OVID, CINAHL and Web of Science using the keywords: chronic pain, pain management and perception. The bibliographies of the articles were further searched for relevant sources. The search was then narrowed to include only English language articles. Relevant articles were assessed using GRADE. Results: Two studies met inclusion criteria and were included in this systematic review. A randomized controlled trial with 156 participants demonstrated a statistically significant difference between intervention and control groups for the change in patient illness perceptions and patient-relevant physical activities. A retrospective study of 280 participants in a group-based, interdisciplinary chronic pain program demonstrated significant preand post-treatment improvements in ratings of pain severity, pain intensity, functional limitations, pain catastrophizing and self-efficacy. Conclusion: Cognitive treatment of illness perception can improve quality of life for chronic pain patients. Pain management specialties and physical therapists can add cognitive treatment to their armamentarium to provide patients with an additional modality to improve patient outcomes and compliance to treatment regimens in both fields.


Background: The English-speaking Caribbean (ESC) region is experiencing an epidemic of chronic communicable and non-communicable diseases that increases the likelihood of morbidity and mortality-related outcomes, resulting in lower life expectancies for both young and old individuals. In resource-poor ESC countries, economically challenged patients have inadequate access to analgesic drugs and experience unnecessarily painful deaths. This paper addresses the theory and research on the assumptions and benefits of high-quality palliative care. Objectives: This paper reviews the evidence regarding the difficulties encountered by patients and their relatives when dealing with chronic and terminal illnesses. These include: the inadequacies of the public and private hospitals throughout the ESC countries, and the high financial cost to patients and their relatives in accessing medical care. Results: The possible barriers accounting for the underdevelopment of palliative care in this region are discussed. They include: cultural beliefs on the aetiology of diseases, pain management, and on herbal treatment of chronic and terminal diseases, restrictive regulatory drug statutes and the dearth of specialized palliative care providers in the ESC countries. Conclusion: This paper offers recommendations for the development of sustainable, efficient, high-quality, and culturally relevant palliative care services throughout the ESC region. National guidelines and policies are needed on the standards of care, and on pain assessment and symptom and pain management. Well-trained palliative community health-workers and volunteers are recommended. The need for the ESC governments to prioritize the delivery of palliative care by integrating palliative care and hospice care services in the national public health systems is addressed.


Earnings announcement affects respective firms' share prices based on their performances. Financial markets react to the bottom figure of the financial statements, which the authors believe include earnings management components. Similarly, earnings surprise also affects the market share. Therefore, they believe that there is a need for empirical analysis to understand the effects of earnings management and earnings surprises on firms' market performance. The authors use a shorter 3-day window to measure the market-adjusted returns in contrast to the existing literature because they believe that the markets are efficient and will be able to mitigate the shocks in the longer run. A shorter window excludes the likely effects of other events that could affect the returns. They use the discretionary accrual modified model and real earnings management to proxy for earnings management. Earnings management is the management's discretionary choice to manipulate earnings to achieve the financial targets. Earnings surprise is the difference between firms' reported earnings and the Wall Street estimates, which affects individual firms' stock prices around the earnings announcement and in the long run. We apply multivariate-pooled OLS heteroscedasticity-consistent standard error regressions. The study results suggest that the magnitude of earnings management has a positive and significant relationship with firms' market-adjusted return. Similarly, good news also shows a positive relationship, and a significant negative relationship exists with bad news. This indicates that the earnings announcement does indeed have significant effects on firms' market-adjusted returns.


We explore the rationale for regulatory rules that prohibit banks from developing some of their natural activities when their capital level is low, as epitomized by the US Prompt Corrective Action (PCA). This paper is built on two insights. First, in a moral hazard setting, capital requirement regulation may force banks to hold a large fraction of safe assets which, in turn, may lower their incentives to monitor risky assets. Second, agency problems may be more severe in certain asset classes than in others. Taken together, these two ideas explain why, surprisingly, capital regulation, which may cope with risk and adverse selection, is unable to address issues related to moral hazard. Hence, instead of forcing banks to hold a large fraction of safe assets, prohibiting some types of investment and allowing ample scope of investment on others may be the only way to preserve incentives and guarantee funding. In particular, providing incentives to monitor investments in the most opaque asset classes may prove to be excessively costly in terms of the required capital and thus inefficient. We show that the optimal capital regulation consists of a rule that a) allows well capitalized banks to freely invest any amount in any risky asset, b) prohibits banks with intermediate levels of capital to invest in the most opaque risky assets, and c) prohibits undercapitalized banks to invest in any risky asset.


Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) may benefit from utilizing haplotype information for making marker-phenotype associations. Several rationales for grouping single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) into haplotype blocks exist, but any advantage may depend on such factors as genetic architecture of traits, patterns of linkage disequilibrium in the study population, and marker density. The objective of this study was to explore the utility of haplotypes for GWAS in barley (Hordeum vulgare) to offer a first detailed look at this approach for identifying agronomically important genes in crops. To accomplish this, we used genotype and phenotype data from the Barley Coordinated Agricultural Project and constructed haplotypes using three different methods. Marker-trait associations were tested by the efficient mixed-model association algorithm (EMMA). When QTL were simulated using single SNPs dropped from the marker dataset, a simple sliding window performed as well or better than single SNPs or the more sophisticated methods of blocking SNPs into haplotypes. Moreover, the haplotype analyses performed better 1) when QTL were simulated as polymorphisms that arose subsequent to marker variants, and 2) in analysis of empirical heading date data. These results demonstrate that the information content of haplotypes is dependent on the particular mutational and recombinational history of the QTL and nearby markers. Analysis of the empirical data also confirmed our intuition that the distribution of QTL alleles in nature is often unlike the distribution of marker variants, and hence utilizing haplotype information could capture associations that would elude single SNPs. We recommend routine use of both single SNP and haplotype markers for GWAS to take advantage of the full information content of the genotype data.


Nylon comprises a family of man-made substances that were first manufactured in 1935. Nylonases are biological enzymes that can break down nylon oligomers. Although the most prominent nylonases are within the family of enzymes classified as 6-aminohexanoate hydrolases, some enzymes not formally classified as 6-aminohexanoate hydrolases also have the ability to breakdown nylons, and so can also be classified as nylonases. Organisms that encode a nylonase enzyme do not necessarily have the ability to actually survive on a nylon substrate as their sole carbon source. Among the first documented organisms that did have this ability was the soil bacterium Arthrobacter KI72. It has long been thought that nylonase genes and proteins were essentially absent from the biosphere prior to 1935. This belief led to the widespread assumption that any nylonase gene observed in the present must have emerged since 1935. Several authors developed hypothetical models of how a specific nylonase gene (the nylB gene found within Arthrobacter KI72), might have arisen very recently as a de novo gene. In this paper we show that the widely-held assumption that all nylonase genes must have evolved very recently is no longer credible. This is in light of the wide-spread distribution of diverse nylonases throughout the biosphere. Likewise, we show that the early speculations regarding the possible de novo origin of the nylB nylonase gene are no longer credible. Our review of the literature shows that a variety of nylonase-digesting bacteria have been found in extremely diverse natural environments – far removed from any synthetic nylon sources. In addition, we show there are over 1800 organisms with computationally predicted (provisional) 6-aminohexanoate hydrolase/nylonase genes in the NIH-funded UNIPROT database. These 1800 predicted nylonases are not yet experimentally confirmed to cleave nylons, but have significant homology to the experimentally confirmed nylonases. In addition to 6-aminohexanoate hydrolases, proteases like trypsin and certain lipases have been experimentally demonstrated to have nylonase activity. If we include all proteases and lipases that may have nylonase activity, the number of organisms with nylonase activity may exceed ten thousand. The widespread distribution of nylonases and their homologs strongly suggests that nylonases were already widespread prior to 1935. Lastly, we have carefully examined the claims that the nylB gene arose as a de novo gene very recently. The theories of Ohno (the frame shift hypothesis) and Okada (the gene duplication hypothesis), were speculative in nature, and yet were uncritically accepted. In light of new data, these early speculations no longer appear tenable.


Differences in protein requirements for athletes and nonathletes, and different types of athletes (i.e., endurance vs. strength/power) are well acknowledged. This has led many athletes to use protein supplements as a means of achieving required protein intakes. Recent research has begun to examine the importance of protein timing. Specifically, does it make a difference when the protein is ingested in regards to augmenting the acute physiological response to a training session or in enhancing recovery from exercise. This review focuses on the timing of protein intake and its effects on skeletal muscle remodeling.


It is naive to think human dominance of the landscape will stop; however, the way in which habitat restoration is implemented can be changed. Humans have forgotten we exist in a world of codependency and interactivity. Within design, ecological functions of place have not been taken into full consideration or disregarded completely, creating negative impacts to all involved. There is a growing need to find a balance between conservation and landscape architecture to therefore incorporate the wider environment into everyday interactions. Not only does this have an effective impact on connectivity, it reintroduces the opportunity for humans to engage with species and create an extension of identity other than oneself. In a world currently facing a climate change emergency, focus on restoring species habitats has become a strong component within landscape architecture although emphasis on human use of these places has been forgotten. This research examines synergies of habitat and human usewithin the Wellington town belt and experimentally build from the findings to re-imagine a middle ground of conversation and urban design. With aims to apply landscape knowledge to enhance human interaction with native New Zealand bird species, whilst also inspiring border thinking of ecology.


Thompson Sampling has recently been shown to achieve the lower bound on regret in the Bernoulli Multi-Armed Bandit setting. This bandit problem assumes stationary distributions for the rewards. It is often unrealistic to model the real world as a stationary distribution. In this paper we derive and evaluate algorithms using Thompson Sampling for a Switching Multi-Armed Bandit Problem. We propose a Thompson Sampling strategy equipped with a Bayesian change point mechanism to tackle this problem. We develop algorithms for a variety of cases with constant switching rate: when switching occurs all arms change (Global Switching), switching occurs independently for each arm (PerArm Switching), when the switching rate is known and when it must be inferred from data. This leads to a family of algorithms we collectively term Change-Point Thompson Sampling (CTS). We show empirical results in 4 articial environments, and 2 derived from real world data: news click-through[Yahoo!, 2011] and foreign exchange data[Dukascopy, 2012], comparing them to some other bandit algorithms. In real world data CTS is the most eective.


In order to fill fuel in special occasions for actual demand , the turtle-shape shunt taps has been designed on the principle of bionics design. This essay proposed the design concept and overall design ideas and rechecked the parameters of its strength. Finally, SolidWorks was used to make the three-dimensional model of the turtle-shape shunt taps. In addition, COSMOS was adopted to carry out the stress simulation for the turtle-shape taps.


We introduce Neural Contextual Anomaly Detection (NCAD), a framework for anomaly detection on time series that scales seamlessly from the unsupervised to supervised setting, and is applicable to both univariate and multivariate time series. This is achieved by combining recent developments in representation learning for multivariate time series, with techniques for deep anomaly detection originally developed for computer vision that we tailor to the time series setting. Our window-based approach facilitates learning the boundary between normal and anomalous classes by injecting generic synthetic anomalies into the available data. NCAD can effectively take advantage of domain knowledge and of any available training labels. We demonstrate empirically on standard benchmark datasets that our approach obtains a state-of-the-art performance in the supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised settings.


Economic development along with the modernization theory have long been claimed to lead to wards democracy , however oil states seems to be a clear exception . Based on this background, this thesis focuses on Saudi Arabia with the purpose of trying to find out why and in what way oil is inhibiting a democratic development. The country has the world's largest known reservoir of oil which every year brings huge revenues to the government, but despite the economic growt h and the development into a welfare state the dictatorial rule remains strong. The analytical base consists of Michael L Ross (2001) theory on how oil impedes democracy, and focuses on the three casual mechanisms he identifies as possible explanations – t he rentier effect, the repression effect and the modernization effect. Using a qualitative text analysis method, I have applied these three effects on my case, partly as a means of testing the mechanisms but also as a guidance to discover other structures. The study's main findings are that oil has enabled for the royal family to establish contracts, both with its citizens and with the 'commoners', thereby hindering democratic forces by 'buying' them. These contracts and the dominating oil industry have in turn led to the preservation of patriarchal norms and traditions that exclude women at the same time as the male labor mentality have made the country dependent on immigrant labor.


Agriculture in the Indian sub-continent aims at competitive production of higher level of food, vegetables and fruits and industrial raw materials from the existing cultivable land through innovative research and development applications. The land holdings with the farmers are small, not amendable to the mechanized agricultural practices responsible for high crop yields, such as obtained in the developed part of the globe. Production of agriculture per unit area and time is largely dependent on provision of fertilizers and irrigation in ample measure for the adequate expression of genetic potential of improved varieties of food grain, vegetable crops and industrial crops. Urea is the widely used nitrogenous fertilizer. However, it appears that benefits from large level of urea fertilizer can be expanded by increasing the effectiveness of fertilization. Recovery of applied fertilizer urea-N seldom exceeds 50% in many crops; it is yet low in waterlogged paddies. The products of hydrolysis and nitrification are prone to losses through volatilization, and denitrification and leaching. Arrest of N-loss in the crop fields can help increase N utilization. This, if achieved, will provide several advantages: decrease the cost of agricultural production and increase profits to farmers, expand the use of urea in optimal amount over larger cultivated area and contain N- pollution that results from inefficient use of urea-N. Regulation of urea transformation reactions that occur in soil for better utilization of its N by crops has been an active R& D area. Several classes of compounds viz. phosphorodiamidates and triamidates, sulphahydryl reagents, dihydric phenols, aminocresols, catechol, p-benzoquinones, dihydric phenols etc, have been found to restrict hydrolysis of urea in soil. Ammonium polyphosphate and phosphoric, boric and nitric acid have been found to reduce volatilization of ammonia generated from urea. Rapid nitrification or oxidation of ammonium to nitrate in soil catalysed by microbes has been founds to be inhibited by nitrapyrin (2-chloro -6- tricholoro methyl pyridine), BHC, sodium azide, sodium chlorate, dicyandiamide (DCD), ATC (4-amino-1-2-4 triazole), N-serve and certain other compounds. The use of many of these chemicals has been restricted to academic experimental levels because of high cost, lack of availability and adverse side effects. Nitrification inhibitory properties of several plants materials like Karanj (Pongamia glabra), Neem (Azaddirachta indica), and tea (Camellia sinensis) waste have been evaluated by many researchers and their advantages and disadvantages have been reported. Commercial use of these materials has not been possible due to lack of their availability, cumbersome coating process with urea, inefficient promotional activities etc. The recent inclusion of botanicals in the list of plant based materials is the natural essential oils and their by- products. The advantages of these materials are that they are easily available, cheap, eco-friendly and can be cultivated as per their requirement. This paper deals with the different aspects of plants based materials as nitrification inhibitors.


Laboratory models support an inverse association between anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) and breast tumor development. Human studies are lacking; one study (N = 105 cases, 204 controls) with prospectively collected serum reported the opposite—an approximate 10-fold increase in breast cancer risk comparing fourth with first quartile AMH levels. We investigated the relation between serum AMH levels and breast cancer risk in a case–control (N = 452 cases, 902 controls) study nested within the prospective Sister Study cohort of 50,884 women. At enrollment, participants were ages 35 to 54, premenopausal, and completed questionnaires on medical and family history, lifestyle factors, and demographics. AMH (ng/mL) was measured by ultrasensitive ELISA in serum collected at enrollment and log-transformed for analysis. Multivariate conditional logistic regression was used to calculate ORs and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to account for matching on age and enrollment year. Mean age at enrollment was 46.8 years with an average 2.9 years from blood draw to breast cancer diagnosis (SD = 1.9). AMH concentrations were below the limit of detection (0.003 ng/mL) for approximately 25% of samples. Compared with samples below the LOD, women with AMH >2.84 ng/mL (90th percentile among controls) had a 2-fold increase in breast cancer odds (OR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.26–4.02). For each 1-unit increase in lnAMH, overall breast cancer odds increased by 8% (OR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.02–1.15) and odds of estrogen receptor–positive, invasive disease increased by 15% (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.05–1.25). Our findings demonstrate an overall positive relation between AMH and breast cancer. Cancer Prev Res; 8(6); 528–34. ©2015 AACR.


Antibiotic resistance is a serious worldwide threat. Alternative solutions to the limited pipeline of new antibiotics are urgently needed. Nanotechnology and drug delivery can be used to develop new therapies from old antimicrobials by controlling their distribution in the body.

The goal of this thesis was to investigate the formation and activity of polyion complex (PIC) nanoparticles as vehicles for the delivery of two cationic antibiotics: poly(ethylene imine), used as model to develop these nanomaterials, and the FDA-approved antimicrobial peptide polymyxin B. These antibiotics were combined with two types of polyanions to form PIC particles with distinct antimicrobial properties: 1) Anionic peptides, degradable by bacterial enzymes led to bacteria-targeted nanoparticles; 2) Acidic polymers assembled particles
for passive release, which tuned the activity of the antibiotic in the absence of a specific trigger.

All the PIC particles prepared were characterised, and their physiological stability and antimicrobial properties evaluated. To improve the stability and activity of these nanoparticles, several characteristics of their anionic components were optimised: 1) their multivalency, as a function of the peptide's anionic residues and polymer's DP; 2) the acidity of the polymers; and 3) the number of cross-linking residues in the peptides.


: Data from two case-control studies that showed an association between in utero diethylstilbestrol (DES) exposure and clear cell vaginal cancer are evaluated. Neither study considered the cancer risk according to the reasons for prescribing DES and therefore cannot be used to infer any cause-and-effect relationship between DES exposure and vaginal cancer. Neither these studies nor any other studies have specifically evaluated the risk of clear cell cervical cancer to DES-exposed women. For DES-exposed women the risk of vaginal and cervical cancer is 0.5-2.0 cases per 1000 DES-exposed women; comparable data are not available for non-DES-exposed women.


Infrared Focal Plane Arrays have been developed with reductions in pixel size below the Nyquist limit imposed by the optical systems Point Spread Function (PSF). These smaller sub diffraction limited pixels allows spatial oversampling of the image. We show that oversampling the PSF allows improved fidelity in imaging, resulting in sensitivity improvements due to pixel correlation, reduced false alarm rates, improved detection ranges, and an improved ability to track closely spaced objects.


Purpose: Cancer cells recapitulate many behaviors of pluripotent embryonic cells such as unlimited proliferation, and the capacity to self-renew and to migrate. Embryo-cancer sequence A (ECSA), later named developmental pluripotency associated-2 (DPPA2), is an embryonic gene initially isolated from pluripotent human preimplantation embryos. We hypothesized that ECSA/DPPA2 would be quiescent in most normal tissues but expressed in cancers and may therefore be a useful target for immunotherapy. Experimental Design:ECSA/DPPA2 expression was examined in a panel of normal and tumor tissue by reverse transcription PCR, quantitative real-time PCR, and immunohistochemistry. A panel of 110 non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) were further investigated for the presence of ECSA/DPPA2 transcripts and several cancer testis antigens (CTA). Sera from 104 patients were analyzed for spontaneous ECSA/DPPA2 antibody production by ELISA and Western blot. Results:ECSA/DPPA2 transcripts were limited to normal testis, placenta, bone marrow, thymus, and kidney but expressed in a variety of tumors most notably in 30% of NSCLC. Enrichment for CTAs in ECSA/DPPA2-positive NSCLC was observed. Immunohistochemistry confirmed nuclear and cytoplasmic localization in subpopulations of cells with coexpression of the CTA MAGE-A3. Antibodies to recombinant ECSA/DPPA2 protein were detected in the sera of 4 of 104 patients with NSCLC but not in healthy controls. Conclusions: The restricted expression in normal tissues, expression in tumors with coexpression of CTAs, and spontaneous immunogenicity indicate that ECSA/DPPA2 is a promising target for antigen-specific immunotherapy in NSCLC.


Together with theory and experimentation, computational modeling and simulation has become a "third pillar" of scientific inquiry. I am developing a curriculum for a three part, graduate level course on computational methods designed to increase the exposure of graduate students and researchers in the School of Economics at the University of Edinburgh to basic techniques used in computational modeling and simulation using the Python programming language. My course requires no prior knowledge or experience with computer programming or software development and all current and future course materials will be made freely available on-line via GitHub.


Abstract Changes in the room-temperature emission spectrum of chlorophyll (Chl) were analyzed using fast diode-array recordings during the Kautsky effect in mature and in greening barley leaves. In mature leaves, the comparison of FO (basal level of fluorescence yield at transient O) and FM (maximum level of fluorescence yield at transient M) spectra showed that the relative amplitude of total variable fluorescence was maximal for the 684 nm Photosystem II (PSII) band and minimal for the 725 nm Photosystem I band. During the increase from FO to FM, a progressive redshift of the spectrum of variable fluorescence occurred. This shift reflected the different fluorescence rise kinetics of different layers of chloroplasts inside the leaf. This was verified by simulating the effect of screening on the emission spectrum of isolated chloroplasts and by experiments on greening leaves with low Chl content. In addition, experiments performed at different greening stages showed that the presence of uncoupled Chl at early-greening stages and light-harvesting complex II (LHCII) at later stages have detectable but minor effects on the shape of room-temperature emission spectra. When strong actinic light was applied to mature green leaves, the slow fluorescence yield, which declined from FM to FT (steady-state level of fluorescence yield at transient T), was accompanied by a slight redshift of the 684 nm PSII band because of nonphotochemical quenching of short-wavelength–emitting Chl ascribed to LHCII.


Background Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are expressed in immune cells and hepatocytes. We examined whether hepatic Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is involved in the acute hepatic injury caused by the administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (septic shock model). Methods Wild type (WT), TLR4-deficient and chimera mice underwent myeloablative bone marrow transplantation to dissociate between TLR4 expression in the liver or in the immune-hematopoietic system. Mice were injected with LPS and sacrificed 4 hours later. Results Compared to TLR4 deficient mice, WT mice challenged with LPS displayed increased serum liver enzymes and hepatic cellular inflammatory infiltrate together with increased serum and hepatic levels of interleukin 1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) ,Up-regulation of hepatic mRNA encoding TLR4, IκB and c-jun expressions. TLR4 mutant mice transplanted with WT bone marrow were more protected than WT chimeric mice bearing TLR4 mutant hemopoietic cells from LPS, as seen by IL-1β and TNFα levels. We then used hepatocytes (Huh7) and macrophages from monocytic cell lines to detect TLR mRNA expression. Macrophages expressed a significantly higher level of TLR4 mRNA and TLR2 (more than 3000- and 8000-fold respectively) compared with the hepatocyte cell line. LPS administration induced TLR4 activation in a hepatocyte cell line in a dose dependent manner while TLR2 mRNA hardly changed. Conclusions These results suggest that TLR4 activation of hepatocytes participate in the immediate response to LPS induced hepatic injury. However, in this response, the contribution of TLR4 on bone marrow derived cells is more significant than those of the hepatocytes. The absence of the TLR4 gene plays a pivotal role in reducing hepatic LPS induced injury.


The Article vs. the Artists: The Demise of the Definite Article in the Names of Popular Music GroupsThe paper documents and discusses a change in the English language that has not beendescribed yet. The change involves definite article usage in the names of popular music groups and is shown to have started in the 1960s. The description of the change is based on data drawn from the list of hit singles that has been published in the UK every week since 1952. Since the list identifies not only the most popular singles in a given week but also the groups that perform them, from the point of view of linguistics the chart is a large random database of names of popular music groups that can be used for tracking and quantifying changes in the English language. Relying on such data, the paper documents the origins and spread of the change, identifies its key stages and shows that the rate of its progress closely approximates the S curve known to model the spread of linguistic innovations. Relying on recent accounts of article use with English proper names, the paper also discusses factors that may have triggered the change and frames it in a broader perspective of trends in article use.


An Evaluation of Stroke Intensive Care: Results in a Municipal Hospital • One hundred consecutive cases with an admitting diagnosis of cerebrovascular disease treated in a four-bed Stroke Intensive Care Unit were reviewed in regard to final diagnosis and outcome. Eleven had final diagnoses other than cerebrovascular disease. Eighty-one had specific diagnoses as to major type of cerebrovascular disease present. The outcome in these cases was compared with that of 81 control cases matched for diagnosis only and blindly selected from concurrent admissions to an adjacent neurological ward. No significant differences in overall mortality (33% versus 27%) or in mortality by diagnostic category were found. This was true even if deaths in the first 48 hours were omitted from both groups to compensate for the selective admission of more seriously ill patients to the Stroke Intensive Care Unit. These results are compared to those reported by others. We concluded that specialized stroke intensive care units modeled on coronary care units do not have a significant impact on acute stroke mortality. Additional


Objectives Uterine serous carcinoma (USC) involving an endometrial polyp and concurrent extrauterine disease is associated with poor prognosis. We examined the clinicopathological profiles of patients with stage 1A USC with and without polyp involvement and the role of polyp size and lymphovascular invasion (LVI) as prognostic indicators for extrauterine disease in patients with early USC. Methods/Materials From 2002 to 2014, 242 patients with pure USC were identified. Fisher exact test was used for categorical variables. The student t test was used for means. Logistic regression was used to compute the odds ratio for continuous and categorical variables. Results Among stage 1A patients, the odds ratio of developing extrauterine disease for every 1 cm increase in polyp size is 1.368 (95% confidence interval, 1.034–1.810). Polyp size is only significantly associated with advanced stage disease for patients with myometrial invasion. A higher percent of LVI was found in stage 4 patients (31%). There is no survival or recurrence difference for stage 1 patients regardless of treatment or observation. Conclusions Polyp size does not predict extrauterine disease for USC patients with disease in polyp only or disease in polyp and endometrium. Further study is needed to investigate whether presence of LVI is a prognostic factor.


Surface texture is a very important factor affecting the anti-skid performance of pavements. In this paper, entropy theory is introduced to study the decay behavior of the three-dimensional macrotexture and microtexture of road surfaces in service based on the field test data collected over more than 2 years. Entropy is found to be feasible for evaluating the three-dimensional macrotexture and microtexture of an asphalt pavement surface. The complexity of the texture increases with the increase of entropy. Under the polishing action of the vehicle load, the entropy of the surface texture decreases gradually. The three-dimensional macrotexture decay characteristics of asphalt pavement surfaces are significantly different for different mixture designs. The macrotexture decay performance of asphalt pavement can be improved by designing appropriate mixtures. Compared with the traditional macrotexture parameter Mean Texture Depth (MTD) index, entropy contains more physical information and has a better correlation with the pavement anti-skid performance index. It has significant advantages in describing the relationship between macrotexture characteristics and the anti-skid performance of asphalt pavement.


The effects of top-level text structure and signaling on the reading recall of Japanese female junior college students studying English as a foreign language were investigated in this study. One hundred thirty-two subjects were selected from a private female junior college in Tokyo. The students were divided into three groups—high, average, and low reading comprehension levels—based on the results of the Test of Reading Comprehension. The instrument used to measure students' recall ability was developed from expository passages taken from a biology textbook. The passages were rearranged to show identifiable top-level structure, collection of description, causation, problem/solution, or comparison. Each passage was divided into two versions: a with-signaling version, in which top-level structure was explicitly stated by signaling words or phrases, and a without-signaling version, where signaling words or phrases were omitted. After the students were stratified on reading comprehension, they were assigned to eight different versions of text—two of each of the four top-level text structures, one with- and one without-signaling. In the recall test, students were instructed to read the text and to remember as much as they could.


Quota-based bonuses and commissions are the two most common incentive compensation plans. The authors uncover differential effects of these plans from a natural field-based experiment featuring 14,000 monthly observations over three years from 458 sales territories of a pharmaceutical firm that switched from a bonus plan to an equivalent commission plan. The intervention led to significant sales productivity improvement; this effect was heterogeneous across ability deciles, with much larger increases occurring at lower ability deciles. The authors find significant differences across these plans on (1) effort against nonincentivized tasks and (2) output fluctuations induced through "timing games." At this firm, the bonus plan was strictly inferior to the implemented commission plan with respect to short-term revenues and timing games. In contrast, the commission plan induced greater neglect of nonincentivized tasks (tasks not directly affecting observable output). To organize their findings, the authors build a simple theoretical model in the personnel economics tradition. The novel result that multitasking concerns are reduced under bonus plans when the quota has been met provides a nuanced rationale for the widespread existence of lump-sum bonus plans.


Objective: To determine whether age is associated with serious spinal injury in paediatric motor vehicle occupants, after controlling for crash-related factors. Design and Setting: Retrospective record review. Patients and Outcome Measures: All motor vehicle passengers aged 0–16 years treated at two major children's hospitals from 1999 to 2004 with ICD-10 codes for spinal trauma. Injury outcomes were categorised as minor and serious. Minor injuries were analogous to AIS 1 injuries. Serious injuries were those that posed some risk to the integrity of the spinal column or cord. Results: 72 cases were identified (58 <12 years of age, 14 ⩾12 years of age). Using logistic regression to adjust for confounders, including crash severity and crash type, age <12 years was found to be significantly associated with serious spinal injury. Compared to older children, children aged less than 12 years were more likely to sustain serious spinal injury (OR 7.1, 95% CI 1.2 to 42.9). Conclusion: Children up to age 12 have an elevated risk of serious spinal injury in car crashes. This age breakpoint may reflect the adequacy of seat belt fit, and use of adult seatbelts alone before age 12 may increase a child's risk of serious spinal injury. An association between age and serious spinal injury should also be considered in the triage of paediatric motor vehicle occupants.


AbstractDetermination of the Ruteng Recreation Nature Park had caused conflicts over tenure for Colol custom community have been in and around the area since before the establishment. Conflict was due for  access to agricultural land use and timber had closed by the management. The conflict resolution involves three elements, namely the government, customs and religion which are called the three pillars. This study aims to understand the stages of the tenure conflict, relevant stakeholders and the conflict resolution. The study was conducted Colol village in April to May 2016. Acquisition of data using observation, in-depth interviews with a purposive and snowball and secondary data. Analysis of data using conflict tree analysis, stakeholders and mapping conflicts. The results showed that the cause of the conflict is the difference in value systems that implicates disagreement land status and boundaries as well as the uncertainty of access due to rights issues and access. Conflict resolution is required is to build trust between the parties, improve communication to reduce the differences in perception, increased involvement of indigenous peoples in the management of Ruteng Recreation Park, reconstruction of recreation park boundaries involving the parties, especially the major stakeholders and optimizing the coordination and communication between the parties.Colol Custom Community determine their traditional territory option to pull out of the Ruteng Recreation Park.