A survey using a questionnaire approach was undertaken in two selected regions (location), Mannar ("M") and Polonnaruwa ("P"), Sri Lanka, to determine the production practices and limitations to buffalo production. The survey showed that over 95% of producers were full-time crop and livestock farmers. Almost all farmers reared indigenous buffaloes which were well adapted to the low input type of farming. Buffaloes were primarily reared to work the fields for rice cultivation and to thresh the grain. They were grazed on any available grass or foliage with no supplementary feeding on a regular basis. Fodder conservation was not practised. Herd size ranged from 21 in "P" to 29 "M" while herds had between eight and nine breeding females. The ratio of males to females ranged from 1:2 in "P" to 1:3 in "M". Although eight to nine calves were born per year, calf mortality was 28-41%. Buffalo females calved at 45 months and calving rate as a per cent of productive females was 94%. Milk production was 317-345 kg per lactation and the lactation length was 6-7 months. Two distinct calving peaks were recognized in both locations. Males and females were used to prepare the fields for rice cultivation and the average ploughing and threshing capacity was 0.2 ha day -1 and 385 kg day-1, respectively. Extending the grazing time and not using them for work in the fields significantly (P<0.05) improved traits such as milk production, calves born, and lactation length while calving interval was reduced. There was no incentive to improve present levels of production in both locations.


The scope of this paper was to determine whether ischemic and reperfusion damage in cardiac surgery can be detected by measurement of electrical bioimpedance (EBI). Conventional pacing wires were replaced by pacing wires with sputtered iridium coating in order to reduce polarization associated with two-electrode impedance measurements. A custom-built bioimpedance analyzer (Osypka Medical GmbH, Berlin, Germany) measured the real part of impedance Re( Z) and the phase (φ) at three frequencies (1, 10, and 1000 kHz) and determined an extracellular space index (EZRI) as the quotient of Re( Z) at 1000 kHz and Re(Z) at 1 kHz. Our study included six patients (conventional coronary artery bypass graft, age 68.1 ± 8.3 years) subject to routine cardioplegic ischemia and reperfusion. Preischemic bioimpedance measurements were not impaired by interference of the beating heart. Intraischemically, bioimpedance at 1 kHz and phase at 10 kHz increased until opening of a bypass graft, which is probably induced by closure of gap junctions and cell swelling processes. After cross clamping, EZRI slowly decreased as an effect of mild cell swelling. After ischemia, values returned almost to baseline measurements, indicating sufficient reperfusion processes. Measurement of EBI correlates with myocardial ischemic injury and is applicable in a two-electrode setup providing low-polarization pacing wires.


Several articles published recently from this institution have dealt with the caries experience of diabetic children who were observed intermittently for long periods. 1 Evidence has been offered to indicate the lessening of the progression of caries in these children through dietary means. The protective effect has been attributed to the completeness of the diet, without attempt to indicate the part which might be played by any single characteristic of the diet. During the course of the reported studies a sharp break in dietetic policy was made, even though the nutritional characteristics of the diets were not changed notably either from a qualitative or from a quantitative standpoint. This change consisted of the replacement of the original high fat diets by diets which offered only half as much fat and twice the amount of carbohydrate. The study herein recorded was designed to determine whether such a change in diet was


Using ethnographic data, this study investigates network building and the transition from school to work in a career center at a nonprestigious university. Now that disadvantaged students have increased their participation in higher education, it is important to investigate the role of the university in these students' transition from school to work. I found competing forces of stratification at work in the college career center and while the center mitigated inequality for some, it reproduced inequality for others. The Career Center staff faced pressures to recruit corporations to build job networks, but disinterest from the hiring organizations. Through their interactions with recruiters, the staff saw that African Americans and Latinos were not the standard for the labor market. Although network building ruled the overarching organizational goals, intersections of race, gender, and nationality became the defining logic of the hiring process. Staff members turned away both qualified and unqualified African- American and Latino men and women, while increasing access for white women and international male students, regardless of their qualifications.


The aim of the present work is to illustrate and discuss an application of rheo-NMR techniques in the investigation of the flow micro-morphology of a rheo-thinning fluid. The viscoelastic material is composed by weakly hydrated nonionic Wormlike Micelles (WM), stabilized by the biocompatible phospholipid in an organic solvent (lecithin organogel). By applying rheo-NMR techniques, such as micro-imaging and flow velocimetry in Couette flow, to lecithin organogels in the concentrated isotropic phase, a new phase nucleating inhomogeneously at the inner rotating cylinder showing periodic fluctuations in space in some cases, has been identified for applied shear rates within the isotropic-nematic stress plateau. On the other hand, evident slippage phenomena have been found in flow regimes consistent with a full shear-induced nematic state. Bulk rheometric investigations executed in oscillatory, steady state and transient mode have been finally carried out to bridge different flow micro-heterogeneities detected by rheo-NMR with a variety of mechanical responses manifested by lecithin WM.


OBJECTIVE
This report presents national estimates of sexual activity, contraceptive use, and births among males and females 15-19 years of age in the United States in 2002 from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Data are also presented from the 1988 and 1995 NSFGs, and from the 1988 and 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM).

METHODS
Descriptive tables of numbers and percents are presented and interpreted. Data were collected through in-person interviews of the civilian noninstitutionalized population in the United States. Interviews were conducted with 7,643 females, 1,150 of whom were teenagers, and 4,928 males, 1,121 of whom were teenagers.

RESULTS
In 2002, about 47 percent of female teenagers (4.6 million), and about 46 percent of male teenagers (4.7 million) had had sexual intercourse at least once. For never-married males, there was a significant decline from 55 percent in 1995 to 46 percent in 2002. Among never-married females, for those aged 15-17 there was a significant decline in the percent sexually experienced, and for those aged 18-19 there was no significant change. Teenagers showed increases in the use of contraceptives. About 3 out of 4 teens used a method of contraception at their first intercourse. About 91 percent of males and 83 percent of females used a method at their last (most recent) sex. Hispanic teens are most likely to have a birth before age 20 and non-Hispanic whites are least likely, with non-Hispanic black teens in the middle.

CONCLUSION
This report documents findings that may be helpful in understanding trends in teen birth and pregnancy, and STD rates.


A model calibration algorithm is developed for the high-purity oxygen activated sludge process (HPO-ASP). The algorithm is evaluated under different conditions to determine the effect of the following factors on the performance of the algorithm: data quality, number of observations, and number of parameters to be estimated. The process model used in this investigation is the first HPO-ASP model based upon the IAWQ (formerly IAWPRC) Activated Sludge Model No. 1. The objective function is formulated as a relative least-squares function and the non-linear, constrained minimization problem is solved by the Complex method. The stoichiometric and kinetic coefficients of the IAWQ activated sludge model are the parameters focused on in this investigation. Observations used are generated numerically but are made close to the observations from a full-scale high-purity oxygen treatment plant. The calibration algorithm is capable of correctly estimating model parameters even if the observations are severely noise-corrupted. The accuracy of estimation deteriorates gradually with the increase of observation errors. The accuracy of calibration improves when the number of observations (n) increases, but the improvement becomes insignificant when n>96. It is also found that there exists an optimal number of parameters that can be rigorously estimated from a given set of information/data. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine what parameters to estimate and to evaluate the potential benefits resulted from collecting additional measurements.


Seamless prediction means bridging discrete short-term weather forecasts valid at a specific time and time-averaged forecasts at longer periods. Subseasonal predictions span this time range and must contend with this transition. Seamless forecasts and seamless validation methods go hand-in-hand. Time-averaged forecasts often feature a verification window that widens in time with growing forecast leads. Ideally, a smooth transition across daily to monthly time scales would provide true seamlessness—a generalized approach is presented here to accomplish this. We discuss prior attempts to achieve this transition with individual weighting functions before presenting the two-parameter Hill equation as a general weighting function to blend discrete and time-averaged forecasts, achieving seamlessness. The Hill equation can be tuned to specify the lead time at which the discrete forecast loses dominance to time-averaged forecasts, as well as the swiftness of the transition with lead time. For this application, discrete forecasts are defined at any lead time using a Kronecker delta weighting, and any time-averaged weighting approach can be used at longer leads. Time-averaged weighting functions whose averaging window widens with lead time are used. Example applications are shown for deterministic and ensemble forecasts and validation and a variety of validation metrics, along with sensitivities to parameter choices and a discussion of caveats. This technique aims to counterbalance the natural increase in uncertainty with forecast lead. It is not meant to construct forecasts with the highest skill, but to construct forecasts with the highest utility across time scales from weather to subseasonal in a single seamless product.


Voltage-gated potassium channel Kv10.2 (KCNH5) is expressed in the nervous system, but its functions and involvement in human disease are poorly understood. We studied a human Kv10.2 channel mutation (R327H) recently identified in a child with epileptic encephalopathy and autistic features. Using multistate structural modeling, we demonstrate that the Arg327 residue in the S4 helix of voltage-sensing domain has strong ionic interactions with negatively charged residues within the S1–S3 helices in the resting (closed) and early-activation state but not in the late-activation and fully-activated (open) state. The R327H mutation weakens ionic interactions between residue 327 and these negatively charged residues, thus favoring channel opening. Voltage-clamp analysis showed a strong hyperpolarizing (∼70 mV) shift of voltage dependence of activation and an acceleration of activation. Our results demonstrate the critical role of the Arg327 residue in stabilizing the channel closed state and explicate for the first time the structural and functional change of a Kv10.2 channel mutation associated with neurological disease.


In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing (fine-tuning) the design parameters of large-scale traffic control systems that are composed of distinct and mutually interacting modules. This problem usually requires a considerable amount of human effort and time to devote to the successful deployment and operation of traffic control systems due to the lack of an automated well-established systematic approach. We investigate the adaptive fine-tuning algorithm for determining the set of design parameters of two distinct mutually interacting modules of the traffic-responsive urban control (TUC) strategy, i.e., split and cycle, for the large-scale urban road network of the city of Chania, Greece. Simulation results are presented, demonstrating that the network performance in terms of the daily mean speed, which is attained by the proposed adaptive optimization methodology, is significantly better than the original TUC system in the case in which the aforementioned design parameters are manually fine-tuned to virtual perfection by the system operators.


Color fastness is a very important indicator to evaluate the quality of textiles. At present, color fastness is tested mainly according to China National Standard (GB/T series) and American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC series). Different standards give different quality results for the same sample. The paper mainly compared the differences of color fastness to water, perspiration and rubbing between GB/T series and AATCC series. Color fastness to water tested according to GB/T5713-1997 was different from AATCC107-2007 in sample size, liner fabric, and time for keeping constant temperature with 4h and 18h, respectively. The differences of color fastness to perspiration of GB/T3922-1995 and AATCC15-2007 were sample size, liner fabric, component and pH value of perspiration, liquor ratio and time for keeping constant temperature. Of which pH value of perspiration showed remarkable difference, GB/T3922-1995 specified two kinds of perspiration with pH value 5.5 and 8.0,while AATCC15-2007 specified pH value with 4.3. Color fastness to crocking stands of GB/T3920-2008 and AATCC8-2007 had little difference, mainly in the moisture of rubbing fabric.


Distribution network connected distributed energy resources (DER) are able to provide various flexibility services for distribution system operators (DSOs) and transmission system operators (TSOs). These local and system-wide flexibility services offered by DER can support the frequency ( $f$ ) and voltage ( $U$ ) management of a future power system with large amounts of weather-dependent renewable generation and electric vehicles. Depending on the magnitude of frequency deviation, other active network management-based frequency control services for TSOs could also be provided by DSOs in coordination with adaptive control of DER. This paper proposes utilisation of demand response based on frequency-dependent HV/MV transformer on-load tap-changer (OLTC) operation in case of larger frequency deviations. The main principle underlying the proposed scheme lies in the voltage dependency of the distribution network connected loads. In this paper, it is also proposed to, simultaneously with frequency-dependent OLTC control, utilise reverse reactive power -voltage (QU) - and adaptive active power -voltage (PU) -droops with distribution network connected DER units during these larger frequency deviations, in order to enable better frequency support service for TSOs from DSO networks. The effectivity and potential of the proposed schemes are shown through PSCAD simulations. In addition, this paper also presents a holistic and collaborative view of potential future frequency control services which are provided by DSO network-connected resources for TSOs at different frequency deviation levels.


The enzymatic degradation of cellulose, by cellulases, is not only industrially important in the food, paper, and textile industries but also a potentially useful method for the environmentally friendly recycling of municipal waste. An understanding of the structural and mechanistic requirements for the hydrolysis of the beta-1,4 glycosidic bonds of cellulose is an essential prerequisite for beneficial engineering of cellulases for these processes. Cellulases have been classified into 13 of the 62 glycoside hydrolase families [Henrissat, B., and Bairoch, A. (1996) Biochem J. 316, 695-696]. The structure of the catalytic core of the family 5 endoglucanase, Ce15A, from the alkalophilic Bacillus agaradherans has been solved by multiple isomorphous replacement at 1.6 A resolution. Ce15A has the (alpha/beta)8 barrel structure and signature structural features typical of the grouping of glycoside hydrolase families known as clan GH-A, with the catalytic acid/base Glu 139 and nucleophile Glu 228 on barrel strands beta 4 and beta 7 as expected. In addition to the native enzyme, the 2.0 A resolution structure of the cellobiose-bound form of the enzyme has also been determined. Cellobiose binds preferentially in the -2 and -3 subsites of the enzyme. Kinetic studies on the isolated catalytic core domain of Ce15A, using a series of reduced cellodextrins as substrates, suggest approximately five to six binding sites, consistent with the shape and size of the cleft observed by crystallography.


Coastal areas play an important role in sustainable development. Subsistence and commercial fishing of marine resources have provided vital source of food, employment, and social stability in coastal communities. However, the fisheries sector is vulnerable to various development activities that dynamically interact with other sectors such as agriculture, forestry, and tourism. It is not yet clear if local governments in disaster risk-vulnerable countries incorporate environmental security components in their disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) plans and recognize vulnerable groups, such as fishermen and farmers. This paper presents the case of a coastal municipality in Iloilo, Philippines. We examine its DRRM plans using a coastal resource management framework. A combination of household survey and secondary information were used to identify the gaps and examine municipality spending to address disasters, estimated household flood damages, and legislation relating to disasters. Results showed that the local government was not using the required disaster spending (i.e., 5% of the internal revenue allotment) despite high and continued flood damages (estimated at PhP 1903 per household per year) in their municipality. General plans relating to environmental integrity were integrated but limited toward business expansion and solid waste management, with little emphasis on coastal sustainability. There are also evidences of well-structured and updated legislation relating to disaster, but they lack focus on marine environment and capacity building of fishing and farming households. Thus, the study recommends reassessing the DRRM plans of the municipality in order to improve the well-being of its residents. *Correspondence Department of Management, College of Management, University of the Philippines Visayas, Gen. Luna St., Iloilo City 5000, Philippines T +63 33 336 5559 E email@example.com


Advances in machine learning (ML) open up possibilities for better supporting the decision making that occurs in high-stakes domains such as air traffic management (ATM). The success of such decision-making systems highly depends upon end users' involvement in their development process. However, most designers face challenges with finding appropriate ways of doing this. This paper presents our ongoing work to investigate design practices by reporting lessons learned from user involvement in the development of an ML-infused ATM decision support system. To explore if and how UX design methods need to be refined when working with ML as a design material, we conducted an online study with domain experts consisting of three iterations. The paper reports the main challenges we faced and our actions to overcome them. Our results can be useful to other designers working with ML-infused systems.


In this paper, top-porous and bottom-tubular TiO(2) nanotubes (TiO(2) NTs) loaded with palladium nanoparticles (Pd/TiO(2) NTs) were fabricated as an electrode for an enhanced photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) activity toward organic dye decomposition. TiO(2) NTs with a unique hierarchical top-porous and bottom-tubular structure were prepared by a facile two-step anodization method and Pd nanoparticles were decorated onto the TiO(2) NTs via a photoreduction process. The PEC activity of Pd/TiO(2) NTs was investigated by decomposition of methylene blue (MB) and Rhodamine B (RhB). Because of formation Schottky junctions between TiO(2) and Pd, which significantly promoted the electron transfer and reduced the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes, the Pd/TiO(2) NT electrode showed significantly higher PEC activities than TiO(2) NTs. Interestingly, an obvious synergy between two dyes was observed and corresponding mechanism based on facilitated transfer of electrons and holes as a result of a suitable energy level alignment was suggested. The findings of this work provide a fundamental insight not only into the fabrication but also utility of Schottky junctions for enhanced environmental remediation processes.


In this study, the developed 7-DOF haptic device (HaP-7) and its virtual reality interface are presented. The design issues, design constraints, and alternative design configurations are discussed and the potential advantages of the HaP-7 are put forward. The kinematic model of the proposed device looks like a simplified human arm kinematic model. The redundant characteristic of the device provides larger workspace and allows for appropriate posture selection for the purposes of maximization of the rigidity, transparency and stability, while minimizing the inertia and power consumption in addition to the singularity and obstacle avoidance optimization.


This paper studies the problem of the blind extraction of a subset of bounded component signals from the observations of a linear mixture. In the first part of this paper, we analyze the geometric assumptions of the observations that characterize the problem, and their implications on the mixing matrix and latent sources. In the second part, we solve the problem by adopting the principle of minimizing the risk, which refers to the encoding complexity of the observations in the worst admissible situation. This principle provides an underlying justification of several bounded component analysis (BCA) criteria, including the minimum normalized volume criterion of the estimated sources or the maximum negentropy-likelihood criterion with a uniform reference model for the estimated sources. This unifying framework can explain the differences between the criteria in accordance with their considered hypotheses for the model of the observations. This paper is first presented for the case of the extraction of a complex and multidimensional source, and later is particularized for the case of the extraction of subsets of 1-D complex sources. The results also hold true in the case of real signals, where the obtained criteria for the extraction of a set of 1-D sources usually coincide with the existing BCA criteria.


There is a rich field in this first review essay of Victorian women poets for Victorian Poetry. Since the impressive anthologies of Victorian women's poetry published late in the last century by Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds, Isobel Armstrong and Joseph Bristow, and Virginia Blain, when a vast array of poems were recovered to critical view, there has been a period of sifting and sorting, as the teaching and research canon adjusted to the new wealth of information about women's poetry in the period. This sense of women's poetry as a classification still in process is ongoing in recent critical work. Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning--treated elsewhere in the Year's Work--perhaps attract the most attention, but research on other Victorian women poets continues to uncover new material, represented by scholarly editions, and also continues to assess the importance of women's poetry, as suggested by monographs exploring less canonical women poets in more depth. In addition, many critics are analyzing women poets alongside their male counterparts and placing women's poetry more securely within wider debates and contexts of the Victorian studies. Rather than being merely a subgroup of Victorian poetry, women poets are beginning to be welcomed and assimilated into the larger field. One of the major publications of last year was Marion Thain and Ana Parejo Vadillo's Broadview edition of Michael Field, The Poet: Published and Manuscript Materials. The poetry of the Michael Field has attracted much deserved attention in the last few years, exemplified by Margaret Stetz and Cheryl Wilson's edited collection of essays Michael Field and Their World (2007), as well as Thain's own "Michael Field": Poetry, Aestheticism and the Fin de Siecle (2007). But research on, as well as classroom teaching of, the poets have been hampered by the lack of an accessible edition of the poetry until now. Thain and Vadillo have admirably plugged this gap, offering a rich selection of the poems from their published volumes--published only "to show the writers as public literary figures and to allow assessment of them within those terms" (p. 48). Selections are included from every edition published by the poets under the name Michael Field, as well as from their projected volume that was published posthumously as The Wattlefold. This edition also is very welcome for its generous inclusion of material from the diaries, which Bradley and Cooper planned to publish, and from the letters, which helped to form a public aesthetic identity. Also offered are a handful of key contemporary reviews, as well as an index of the major artistic and literary figures mentioned in the life-writing, and a chronologu and bibliography. In addition, the editors' introduction provides a welcome overview of Bradley and Cooper's invention of themselves as "Michael Field," as well as their contribution to aestheticism and Catholic poetics. Michael Field: The Poet is an outstanding achievement, a major scholarly edition that places the Fields firmly within their fin-de-siecle circle, and that will transform both teaching and scholarship by finally putting to rest the tradition of the Fields as eccentric, isolated figures. This edition will also redraw the map of late Victorian and early modernism, giving Bradley and Cooper a key position in some of the major debates of the period. It is also to be hoped that this edition will inspire renewed interest in Bradley and Cooper's drama and lead to a further accessible edition of their work in that genre. Criticism on women poets was notable this year for its deep engagements with historical contexts. Linda Hughes's rigorous essay "Discoursing Xantippe: Amy Levy, Classical Scholarship, and Print Culture" (Philological Quarterly 88, no. 3 [Summer 2009]: 259-281) is impressive for its sophisticated examination of Amy Levy's turn to classicism, placing it within "a complex discursive network of British and German classical scholarship, higher criticism, and popular print culture" (p. …


ABSTRACT Consumers are relying increasingly on social commerce for making their purchase decisions, and e-vendors have great interests in applying social commerce features in the traditional e-commerce sites to increase sales. Although the importance of trust has been well recognized in the literature, the previous studies have mainly focused on trust in e-commerce sites and failed to incorporate its multidimensional nature to study consumer behavior. To gain further insights into consumer decision-making, this study aims to develop a social commerce trust-based consumer decision-making framework. Based on the social-technical theory, we conceptualize social commerce trust in a multidimensional view including trust in social media, trust in e-commerce sites, trust in social commerce features, and trust in consumers. Data were collected from an online survey taken by U.S. Amazon consumers. Our results strongly support our new conceptualization of social commerce trust and demonstrate its importance by examining its effects on e-commerce outcomes. Further, trust in consumers and trust in social commerce features have stronger effects than trust in e-commerce sites and trust in social media in the formation of social commerce trust. Our study contributes to the theory by introducing the new conceptualization of social commerce trust and advancing our understanding of how to enhance social commerce trust. Practitioners can gain insights into the implementation of social commerce for building consumer trust and increasing sales.


This study focuses on political and administrative issues in program design in a complex federal system. It examines the rise and fall of Program for Public Security with Citizenship (PRONASCI) in Brazil. This innovative, even radical combination of police reform and social change targeting crime and police practices in the nation's poorest communities was launched as a national policy in a country – like the USA and other large democracies – with a strong federal constitutional framework. Although it was successful in many aspects, it ran afoul of a political and bureaucratic process tugging between innovation and conservatism and eventually collapsed, not on its merits but in the face of policy implementation issues that may be found more generally in the domain of police reform. One lesson of PRONASCI is that the reform process must take into account bureaucratic interests, the stance of the media, and opportunities that emerge at crucial moments in the political process. It also must sustain the commitment of political elites to the necessity of pursuing change.


Electric power grid operation being an ever challenging scientific field is faced with a high variety of optimization problems. Since the future vision of so called smart grids causes higher complexity and new requirements to these problems, sophisticated investigation in suitable optimization algorithms is essential. Here, metaheuristic optimization strategies are proven to be suitable for high dimensional multimodal problems, and are capable of computing good solutions for hard problems in reasonable time. Therefore, a simulation- based optimization approach is introduced forming a highly applicable framework for testing the suitability of metaheuristic algorithms to practical optimization problems in power grid operation. Different algorithms will be experimentally compared to each other based on Optimal Power Flow computation to the standardized IEEE 30-Bus testcase.


Protoporphyrinogen IX oxidase (PPO; EC 126.96.36.199) is an essential enzyme catalyzing the last common step in the pathway leading to heme and chlorophyll biosynthesis. Great interest in PPO inhibitors arises from both its significance to agriculture and medicine. However, the discovery of PPO inhibitors with ultrahigh potency and selectivity is hampered due to lack of structural and mechanistic understanding about the substrate recognition, which remains a longstanding question central in porphyrin biology. To understand the mechanism, a novel binding model of protogen (protoporphyrinogen IX, the substrate) was developed through extensive computational simulations. Subsequently, amino acid residues that are critical for protogen binding identified by computational simulations were substituted by mutagenesis. Kinetic analyses of these mutants indicated that these residues were critical for protogen binding. In addition, the calculated free energies of protogen binding with these mutants correlated well with the experimental data, indicating the reasonability of the binding model. On the basis of this novel model, the fundamental mechanism of substrate recognition was investigated by performing potential of mean force (PMF) calculations, which provided an atomic level description of conformational changes and pathway intermediates. The free energy profile revealed a feedback inhibition mechanism of proto (protoporphyrin IX, the product), which was also in agreement with experimental evidence. The novel mechanistic insights obtained from this study present a new starting point for future rational design of more efficient PPO inhibitors based on the product-bound PPO structure.


Patients with dysphagia require long-term nutritional support. This can be delivered by the enteral route via a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube. Enteral nutrition (EN) bypasses the body's innate defences that prevent the microbial colonization of the proximal gut, which predisposes to microbial overgrowth. A continuous culture model simulating the upper gastrointestinal tract microbiota of EN patients was used to investigate the effects of a synbiotic (Lactobacillus acidophilus DUN-311, Bifidobacterium bifidum BB-02, Bifidobacterium lactis BL-01, Synergy 1) on microbial community structure and metabolism. A PEG tube was inserted into the fermenters to study biofilm formation. The synbiotic delivered in sterile semi-skimmed milk (SSSM) was introduced either 48 h prior to or after PEG tube insertion. The synbiotic reduced biofilm formation on PEG tube surfaces, with suppression of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae when it was added subsequent to PEG insertion. When synbiotic feeding was commenced prior to PEG insertion, colonization by Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans and Candida famata was also inhibited. Lactate production increased in response the synbiotic or control (SSSM). These results indicate that the use of a synbiotic has the potential to reduce pathogen colonization on PEG tube surfaces in vivo, thereby reducing the incidence of biofilm-related infectious complications.


Emergent Rhythmic Structures as Cultural Phenomena Driven by Social Pressure in a Society of Artificial Agents João Pedro Magalhães Martins This thesis studies rhythm from an evolutionary computation perspective. Rhythm is the most fundamental dimension of music and can be used as a ground to describe the evolution of music. More specifically, the main goal of the thesis is to investigate how complex rhythmic structures evolve, subject to the cultural transmission between individuals in a society. The study is developed by means of computer modelling and simulations informed by evolutionary computation and artificial life (A-Life). In this process, self-organisation plays a fundamental role. The evolutionary process is steered by the evaluation of rhythmic complexity and by the exposure to rhythmic material. In this thesis, composers and musicologists will find the description of a system named A-Rhythm, which explores the emerged behaviours in a community of artificial autonomous agents that interact in a virtual environment. The interaction between the agents takes the form of imitation games. A set of necessary criteria was established for the construction of a compositional system in which cultural transmission is observed. These criteria allowed the comparison with related work in the field of evolutionary computation and music. In the development of the system, rhythmic representation is discussed. The proposed representation enabled the development of complexity and similarity based measures, and the recombination of rhythms in a creative manner. A-Rhythm produced results in the form of simulation data which were evaluated in terms of the coherence of repertoires of the agents. The data shows how rhythmic sequences are changed and sustained in the population, displaying synchronic and diachronic diversity. Finally, this tool was used as a generative mechanism for composition and several examples are presented.


Decision making about the emergency medical centres location is a complicated problem which managers of healthcare systems are confronted to. In order to respond to requests as fast as possible, the emergency medical centres should be placed in the best condition. There are some cases that affect on emergency medical service operation, like calls distribution, traffic condition and operative costs. The paper combines the optimisation techniques with simulation in locating the emergency medical centres in order to decrease the operative costs and also increase the quality of medical emergency services. The method first locates the centres using optimisation techniques, and then having assigned the ambulances to the centres, it analyses different scenarios of locating the centres and assigning the ambulances to them in a dynamic method using computer simulation. The proposed method of emergency centres location and ambulance-assignments was implemented in Isfahan (Iran) as a case study and resulted in lower response time. The comparison of results with real situations shows the efficiency of this method.


Recently, point cloud semantic segmentation has attracted much attention in computer vision. Most of the existing works in literature assume that the training and testing point clouds have the same object classes, but they are generally invalid in many real-world scenarios for identifying the 3D objects whose classes are not seen in the training set. To address this problem, we propose an Adversarial Prototype Framework (APF) for handling the open-set 3D semantic segmentation task, which aims to identify 3D unseen-class points while maintaining the segmentation performance on seen-class points. The proposed APF consists of a feature extraction module for extracting point features, a prototypical constraint module, and a feature adversarial module. The prototypical constraint module is designed to learn prototypes for each seen class from point features. The feature adversarial module utilizes generative adversarial networks to estimate the distribution of unseenclass features implicitly, and the synthetic unseen-class features are utilized to prompt the model to learn more effective point features and prototypes for discriminating unseen-class samples from the seen-class ones. Experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate that the proposed APF outperforms the comparative methods by a large margin in most cases.


The catastrophic fire that struck the continuously-inhabited Middle Byzantine Hilandar Monastery, the Imperial Serbian Lavra of the Most Holy Mother of God (Mount Athos, Greece) in March 2004 came, ironically, at the completion of the Serbian authorities' eighteen year conservation plan. Two 12th Century towers, acting as fire-breaks, saved the older south courtyard and katholikon from destruction, but more than half of the monastery's masonry and timber enclosure, 5761sqm, was lost. Major fires have periodically destroyed Athonite monasteries in whole or part, but Hilandar's will be the first wholesale reconstruction in the last century and is, thereby, an unprecedented situation in which a very significant proportion of a World Heritage Site is to be rebuilt anew within the minimal remaining standing masonry walls and substructures. The conservation works of the pre-fire era in the main walled enclosures towers, treasury, refectory, the largely abandoned Saint Basil monastery site, monastic port and hermitages generally set a standard to be emulated The stabilisation, protection and cleaning of the ruins began immediately and work is to be completed ca 2022. The first five year phase of the fire reinstatement of the intramural heritage structures, the focus of this paper, included the completion of: the porter's lodge/portarnice, St. Nicholas chapel/Paraklis Svetog Nikole, (1814), the Range/Konak (1814) and the shell of the 1816–1821 Range/Konak. This Serbian-Greek reinstatement/conservation project necessitates negotiating the balancing of support of the monastery's spiritual and daily life (i.e. rebuilding the destroyed administration offices, medical clinic etc) and work and economy (i.e. bakery, painting restoration lab etc) relating to Hilandar's surviving spaces and moveable heritage, and long-term reinstatement of hostels, work and storage sheds needed in order to initiate this scale of heritage structure reinstatement. For over a century, until 2004, the expert supervision required to cope with the Hilandar's heritage came solely from religious and secular entities in Belgrade, but the extent and value of the recent loss triggered a new protocol led by the Thessaloniki-based Centre for Protection of the Heritage of the Holy Mountain and scrutinized by UNESCO and ICOMOS for 'this Serbian project in Greece'.


Drawing on research into the use of experts in early 19th-century criminal trials, the image of mad alchemists in popular culture representations of science, and the distinction between empirical and contingent "interpretive repertoires" in the discourse of scientific controversies, this article explores the controversy over arsenic-detection technologies prior to the Marsh test. In addition to noting the predictable criticism of incompetent expertise in the service of law, this article highlights implied accusations of hubris and amorality on the part of over-confident experts, both in the early 19th-century and in today's crisis of forensic science.


Advertising of gambling is a potential public health issue if it can be shown that advertising has a direct and material effect on gambling participation or that advertising has a direct affect on problem gambling outcomes (generally or for specific populations). This paper attempts to overview the literature on gambling and advertising. Since there is very little empirical literature in the area, this paper also examines other areas of potential relevance including a brief overview of alcohol advertising and its effects as there may well be lessons and insights that can be learned. It is very clear that the question of whether increased gambling advertising leads to increased gambling problems just cannot be answered on the base of such a small pool of data. It is argued that there has to be a strong commitment to socially responsible behaviour across the gambling industry. Socially responsible advertising should form one of the elements of protection afforded to ordinary customers and be reflected in codes of practice. Furthermore, children and problem gamblers deserve additional shielding from exposure to gambling products and premises, and their advertising.


In sequence to sequence learning, the self-attention mechanism proves to be highly effective, and achieves significant improvements in many tasks. However, the self-attention mechanism is not without its own flaws. Although self-attention can model extremely long dependencies, the attention in deep layers tends to overconcentrate on a single token, leading to insufficient use of local information and difficultly in representing long sequences. In this work, we explore parallel multi-scale representation learning on sequence data, striving to capture both long-range and short-range language structures. To this end, we propose the Parallel MUlti-Scale attEntion (MUSE) and MUSE-simple. MUSE-simple contains the basic idea of parallel multi-scale representation learning, and it encodes the sequence in parallel, in terms of different scales with the help from self-attention, and pointwise transformation. MUSE builds on MUSE-simple and explores combining convolution and self-attention for learning sequence representations from more different scales. We focus on machine translation and the proposed approach achieves substantial performance improvements over Transformer, especially on long sequences. More importantly, we find that although conceptually simple, its success in practice requires intricate considerations, and the multi-scale attention must build on unified semantic space. Under common setting, the proposed model achieves substantial performance and outperforms all previous models on three main machine translation tasks. In addition, MUSE has potential for accelerating inference due to its parallelism.


Web interfaces have been widely used to support user interactions in complex business applications. In a typical design of such an application, the execution is driven by the http requests sent by the Web-browser. Thus, the control of the workflow is encoded by the hyperlinks and buttons embedded in various Web pages that support the user interactions. This Web-driven design makes it hard to reason about and to maintain the workflows, especially when the Web pages are dynamically generated at runtime. This design also increases the complexity in developing rich user interactions for complex workflows. In this paper, we propose a new design that separates the workflow specification from the user interaction specification in a business application. This design is based on a workflow-driven service-oriented architecture pattern. In this architecture, the user interactions are captured by user experience services that can be developed, deployed, and maintained independently of the application. These services can be composed together with other business services by an executable workflow specification to provide the functionalities required by the application. This approach increases the flexibility in the implementation of the user interactions. It also enables a model-driven development approach for implementing the workflows that involve sophisticated user interactions


In this paper we analyze the performance of an important class of MIMO systems that of orthogonal space-time block codes concatenated with channel coding. This system configuration has an attractive combination of simplicity and performance. We study this system under spatially independent fading as well as correlated fading that may arise from the proximity of transmit or receive antennas or unfavorable scattering conditions. We consider the effects of time correlation and present a general analysis for the case where both spatial and temporal correlations exist in the system. We present simulation results for a variety of channel codes, including convolutional codes, turbo codes, trellis coded modulation (TCM), and multiple trellis coded modulation (MTCM), under quasi-static and block-fading Rayleigh as well as Rician fading. Simulations verify the validity of our analysis


The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) is the first new civil rights statute enacted since the "federalism revolution" of 1995-2001, in which the Supreme Court announced new limitations on congressional authority. Among other things, these decisions invalidated civil rights remedies against states, declaring that Congress had failed to amass sufficient evidence of the need for legislation. Although passed in the shadow of these decisions, GINA's limited legislative history makes it vulnerable to attack – potentially limiting its protections for millions of state employees. States will likely attack GINA on two grounds: first, that Congress relied only on its commerce power, and not its Fourteenth Amendment remedial power; and second, that Congress failed to identify a sufficient threat to constitutional rights to justify subjecting states to suit. While there are strong grounds for rejecting these challenges, that outcome is far from certain. The risk of invalidation might have been minimized had Congress developed the rationale for GINA's extension to the states more thoroughly, or alternatively, required states to waive their immunity as a condition of federal grants. These strategies are illustrated by recent proposed civil rights legislation addressing sexual orientation discrimination and racial profiling, as well as by the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Act of 2006, which is currently before the Supreme Court. To ensure the efficacy of future civil rights legislation, Congress should consistently tailor laws to withstand federalism challenges. Future laws should expressly invoke Congress's authority and intent to create remedies against states; be accompanied by a strong and targeted legislative record; expressly require waiver of state immunity; and specifically enumerate remedies.


Fibropapillomatosis (FP) is a neoplastic disease that can result in debilitating tumors in sea turtles. Initially identified in Florida, USA in 1937, it has since been detected in green turtle Chelonia mydas populations globally. FP was first identified and confirmed in Texas, USA in 2010. No FP tumors were documented in Texas prior to that year, though many green turtles were encountered and examined using standardized procedures since 1980. The present study was undertaken to identify temporal and spatial trends of FP prevalence in Texas since 2010. From 2010 through 2018, 1919 stranded or incidentally captured green turtles were documented with FP in Texas. FP prevalence was significantly correlated with year, hypothermic stunning, geographic region, and turtle size, as determined by logistic regression. FP was documented in <4.0% of the green turtles examined in Texas from 2010 to 2015, increasing to 21.6% in 2016, 27.3% in 2017, and 35.2% in 2018. More than twice as many hypothermic stunned green sea turtles had FP tumors as compared to those that were not hypothermic stunned. In Texas, FP was most prevalent in south Texas, particularly in the Laguna Madre, and associated channels. FP was more prevalent in turtles with straight carapace lengths 40.0-69.9 cm. The impact of this disease on green turtle population recovery in Texas is not yet apparent.


Purpose: This multicenter, open-label, phase II study evaluated the safety and clinical activity of axitinib, a potent and selective second-generation inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR)–1, 2, and 3, in patients with metastatic melanoma. Experimental Design: Thirty-two patients with a maximum of one prior systemic therapy received axitinib at a starting dose of 5 mg twice daily. The primary endpoint was objective response rate. Results: Objective response rate was 18.8% [95% confidence interval (CI), 7.2–36.4], comprising one complete and five partial responses with a median response duration of 5.9 months (95% CI, 5.0–17.0). Stable disease at 16 weeks was noted in six patients (18.8%), with an overall clinical benefit rate of 37.5%. Six-month progression-free survival rate was 33.9%, 1-year overall survival rate was 28.1%, and median overall survival was 6.6 months (95% CI, 5.2–9.0). The most frequently (>15%) reported nonhematologic, treatment-related adverse events were fatigue, hypertension, hoarseness, and diarrhea. Treatment-related fatal bowel perforation, a known class effect, occurred in one patient. Axitinib selectively decreased plasma concentrations of soluble VEGFR (sVEGFR)-2 and sVEGFR-3 compared with soluble stem cell factor receptor (sKIT). No significant association was noted between plasma levels of axitinib and response. However, post hoc analyses indicated potential relationships between efficacy endpoints and diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or higher as well as baseline serum lactate dehydrogenase levels. Conclusions: Axitinib was well tolerated, showed a selective VEGFR-inhibitory profile, and showed single-agent activity in metastatic melanoma. Further evaluations of axitinib, alone and combined with chemotherapy, are ongoing. Clin Cancer Res; 17(23); 7462–9. ©2011 AACR.


Human population actively forms noosphere from the biosphere which leads to a change in biological nature of man and the range of diseases that affect him. The use of molecular predictors derived from genome, metabolome, proteome, and microbiome in clinical practice opens up an opportunity to pass to more effective predictive--protective personified medicine.


A lot of well logging on to Jiang Cang coalfield in the past work and achieved good results, but due to differ in age, instrumentation equipment and method were different. In order to understand the application effect of the equipment used in the area now and in order to provide the basis for the future working to choose the appropriate logging parameters and well logging interpretation, we chosed GJS - 1 b intelligent engineering logging system produced by Chongqing geological instrument factory in Jiang Cang mining area, we collected the data when cable were ascending, according to a€Sthe requirements of the rules of coalfield geophysical logginga€‹, JGS - 1 b instrument full hole resistivity logging velocity of 3 m/s, the sampling interval was 5 cm, acoustic logging measurement parameter for the acoustic time, adopt the device of single-emission and double-receiving, detectorsource space was 0.5 meters, 0.7 meters, the full hole velocity was 6 m/s, the sampling interval was 10 cm. In this paper, we introduce the application of multiple well logging method in coalfield geology through to the logging examples in Mu Li Jang Cang coalfield four field  of qinghai province, the effect was remarkable


Net zero energy buildings (nZEB) require the development of innovative technologies such as the use of phase change materials (PCMs) in walls for the energy requalification of low inertia buildings. The presence of a PCM layer in the external building wall, due to the effect of storage and release of latent energy phenomena, modifies the energy behavior, both during the summer and winter periods. This paper addresses the problem of the definition of the energetic behavior of a layer subject to phase change with periodic non-sinusoidal boundary conditions, characterizing the external walls of air-conditioned buildings. In such conditions, the layer is the site of the formation of one or more bi-phase interfaces, which originate on the boundary surfaces, or are always present and fluctuate within the layer. It is also possible that the layer does not undergo any phase change. The study has been developed by a finite difference numeric calculation model which explicitly determines the number and the position of the bi-phase interfaces that originate in the layer and the temperature and the heat flux fields. The surface heat fluxes are used to evaluate the PCM layer energetic behavior in terms of energy transferred through the boundary surfaces and of stored energy in sensible and latent form. The proposed method employs the characteristic day that it is periodically repeated for all the days of the considered month. The use of the characteristic days drastically reduces the computational burden of the numerical calculation and it allows to obtain guidance on the behaviour of the PCM throughout the year, in accordance with the variability of external climatic conditions, in order to select the PCM with the most suitable thermophysical properties. The methodology developed is applied to PCM layers with different melting temperatures and subject to climatic conditions of two locations, one with a continental climate and the second one with a Mediterranean climate. The results obtained allowed us to identify which PCM is more suitable in improving the energetic performances of building walls in the heating or cooling period during the year. In particular, the energy analysis highlighted that, in both localities, during the winter period: the lowest energy exiting from the indoor environment is ensured by a PCM with a melting temperature of 15 °C; the highest contribution of energy entering the indoor environment, mainly due to solar radiation, is recorded for a PCM with a melting temperature of 26 °C. During the summer period: the lowest value of energy entering the indoor environment is obtained by a PCM with melting temperature of 26 °C; the highest value of energy exiting from the indoor environment is ensured by a melting temperature equal to 20 °C. In both locations, a PCM with a melting temperature intermediate between those of the winter and summer set points of the indoor environment is the best compromise between winter and summer energy needs for an air-conditioned environment, as it allows obtainment of the highest values of the yearly total stored energy.


The profile accuracy of the workpiece is mainly determined by the accuracy of abrasive wheel in the form-grinding process. Thus, the shaped wheel dressing becomes one of the key points in the form-grinding process. In order to grind the revolving curved surfaces grooves whose cross-sectional profiles are steep and smooth, a new NC dresser with three NC axes is developed by adding a swing axis on the basis of NC external cylindrical grinding machine. A wheel of any desired convex profile can be dressed when using the Diaform single-diamond dresser and the possible geometrical interference between the single-diamond dresser and wheel can be eliminated. By analyzing the influence of installation accuracy on the profile accuracy, a method of comprehensive error compensation is presented. The comprehensive errors can be diminished greatly to improve the profile accuracy by means of error compensation. It is proved in the experiments that the precision requirements of grinding the formed surfaces grooves can be met.


This paper describes the results of model tests carried out in ice and open water conditions to evaluate performance of the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Heavy Polar Icebreaker (HPIB) indicative design. The resistance, propulsion and manoeuvring performance in ice conditions was evaluated at three different ice thicknesses (4, 6 and 8 ft.) with flexural strength 100 psi using two power setups, 36500 HP and 65000 HP. Calm water resistance and propulsion tests were also performed to evaluate open water performance. Models were constructed and tested corresponding to two indicative designs, one with triple shaft propulsion system and the other with one centre shaft and two wing podded propulsors. The present paper describes only the results for the model with triple shaft propulsion system.


The problem of detecting intensity changes in images is canonical in vision. Edge detection operators are typically designed to optimally estimate first or second derivative over some (usually small) support. Other criteria such as output signal to noise ratio or bandwidth have also been argued for. This paper describes an attempt to formulate a set of edge detection criteria that capture as directly as possible the desirable properties of the detector. Variational techniques are used to find a solution over the space of all possible functions. The first criterion is that the detector have low probability of error i.e. failing to mark edges or falsely marking non-edges. The second is that the marked points should be as close as possible to the centre of the true edge. The third criterion is that there should be low probability of more than one response to a single edge. The third criterion is claimed to be new, and it became necessary when an operator designed using the first two criteria was found to have excessive multiple responses. The edge model that will be considered here is a one-dimensional step edge in white Gaussian noise although the same technique has been applied to an extended impulse or ridge profile. The result is a one dimensional operator that approximates the first derivative of a Gaussian. Its extension to two dimensions is also discussed.


BACKGROUND
As undergraduate nursing students approach their paediatric placement, their anticipation ranges from keen expectation to anxious avoidance. This placement has been described as the most stressful in nursing programmes. While various nurse scholars have attempted to describe the practice and the theory of nursing, it has been the challenge of nurse teachers to weave the theory and practice of nursing together for their students. The nature of this learning is, however, still being explored.

AIM
This paper reports a study whose aim was to describe, and propose a theoretical understanding of, how nursing students learn to care for children.

METHOD
In this grounded theory study, participants were drawn from four consecutive student groups in their third year of a Bachelor of Nursing programme. Data included participant observation, focus groups and student descriptions, from both personal reflective journals and narratives. The qualitative research paradigm and the interlaced, often simultaneous, roles of researcher and teacher defined the design and implementation of the study.

FINDINGS
Data analysis confirmed the complex nature of students' learning to care. The relationships that they established with children and others (families, peers, clinical nurses and lecturers) whom they encountered emerged as key in their learning. The social process that was central to student learning was working out how to connect with a child in their care: puzzling out a connection. Each connection with a child contributed to the next and thus to the student's learning. Each connection also contributed to the student's resources, knowledge and experience base, adding to learning by further equipping the student for the next encounter with a child.

CONCLUSION
The resulting theory contributes towards understanding the complexity of learning to care for children. The relational nature of learning shown in this work can guide the structuring and evaluation of learning environments in child nursing programmes. The context of interpersonal relationships of students when learning to care for children provides evidence for re-examining how nurse teachers facilitate and evaluate student learning in child nursing programmes.


The optimization of submodular functions on the integer lattice has received much attention recently, but the objective functions of many applications are non-submodular. We provide two approximation algorithms for maximizing a non-submodular function on the integer lattice subject to a cardinality constraint; these are the first algorithms for this purpose that have polynomial query complexity. We propose a general framework for influence maximization on the integer lattice that generalizes prior works on this topic, and we demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithms in this context.


The paper examines the following pension reform strategy that aims to defuse the pension time-bomb without giving rise to intergenerational conflict. Let people with rights to public pensions have the option of using a portion of their potential pensions to provide employment vouchers for employers that hire them. The policy is entirely voluntary; only those older workers and those employers who wish to avail themselves of this option will do so. The older workers retain the right to draw their public pensions and the employers have the right not to employ them. In effect, the policy involves taking some of the funds that would have financed public pensions and using them to provide employment subsidies. When a person takes advantage of the PTP over a given period of time, he loses his pension rights over that span and gains improved employment opportunities instead.


Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the reasons why primary care doctors undertake postgraduate diploma studies in a mixed private/public Asian setting. Methods: Twenty four past or current postgraduate diploma students of the family medicine unit (FMU) of the University of Hong Kong participated in three focus group interviews. A structured questionnaire was constructed based on the qualitative data collected and was sent to 328 former applicants of postgraduate diploma studies at FMU. Results: "Upgrading medical knowledge and skills" and "improving quality of practice" were two of the factors that most of the respondents considered to be significant in motivating them to undertake postgraduate diploma studies. "Time constraint" and "workload in practice" were however the most significant demotivating factors. Financial issues were more seriously considered by the junior than the senior doctors. To be able to "expand patient base and/or number" was considered to be a significant factor by the private doctors who were also keen to "improve communication and relationship with patients". Conclusion: These findings suggest that there are mixed reasons for primary care doctors to undertake postgraduate diploma studies. Course organisers should take into consideration these various reasons in planning their programmes.


We investigate the relationship between controversial roll call votes and support for Democratic incumbents in the 2010 midterm elections. Consistent with previous analyses, we find that supporters of health care reform paid a significant price at the polls. We go beyond these analyses by identifying a mechanism for this apparent effect: constituents perceived incumbents who supported health care reform as more ideologically distant (in this case, more liberal), which in turn was associated with lower support for those incumbents. Our analyses show that this perceived ideological difference mediates most of the apparent impact of support for health care reform on both individual-level vote choice and aggregate-level vote share. We conclude by simulating counterfactuals that suggest health care reform may have cost Democrats their House majority.


Background The decline of cognitive function is an important issue related to aging. Over the last few years, numerous mobile apps have been developed to challenge the brain with cognitive exercises; however, little is currently known about how age influences capacity for performance improvement when playing cognitive mobile games. Objective The objective of this study was to analyze the score data of cognitive mobile games over a period of 100 gaming sessions to determine age-related learning ability for new cognitive tasks by measuring the level of score improvement achieved by participants of different ages. Methods Scores from 9000 individuals of different ages for 7 cognitive mobile games over 100 gaming sessions were analyzed. Scores from the first session were compared between age groups using one-way analysis of variance. Mixed models were subsequently used to investigate the progression of scores over 100 sessions. Results Statistically significant differences were found between age groups for the initial scores of 6 of the 7 games (linear trend, P<.001). Cognitive mobile game scores increased for all participants (P<.001) suggesting that all participants were able to improve their performance. The rate of improvement was, however, strongly influenced by the age of the participant with slower progression for older participants (P<.001). Conclusions This study provides evidence to support two interesting insights—cognitive mobile game scores appear to be sensitive to the changes in cognitive ability that occur with advancing age; therefore, these games could be a convenient way to monitor cognitive function over long-term follow-up, and users who train with the cognitive mobile games improve regardless of age.


Knowing the responsiveness of state spending to federal subsidies along different dimensions allows for the optimal design of joint federal-state programs. Welfare is an important case in point: states have the ability to choose both the extent of welfare eligibility and the intensity of benefits provided through the program. This paper estimates the sensitivity of state spending to separate federal subsidies for increasing benefits and for increasing recipients. Because the federal match rate schedule changed several times during the early years that I study, I am able to estimate elasticities in a way that is not biased by the endogenous relationship between income, spending, and federal contributions. I find that state behavior is quite sensitive to these federal subsidies (and much more sensitive than a simple OLS regression would imply). A 10 increase in the cost of benefits causes a 3.8 decrease in benefit amounts, whereas a 10 increase in the cost of recipients causes a 2.8 decrease in the number of recipients. Cross price elasticities are positive, implying a substitutability of extensive for intensive generosity and making an analysis of total spending without such a decomposition misleading. States appear sensitive to their neighbors' benefit levels, and may also use nonincome recipiency requirements to adjust to changes in prices. These results suggest that the federal government has untapped policy instruments at its disposal to affect the nature of welfare spending.


This paper mainly deals with a fuzzy logic proportional-integral-derivative (PID) based controller for a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) system. To greatly improve the dynamic characteristics of the PMSM and refrain from undesired disturbance due to parameter diversification and load disturbance, a novel fuzzy switching algorithm is created and a combined fuzzy PID controller is further developed to ensure smooth transition over a wide range of speeds. Numerical simulation and physical experiments on the PMSM servo system confirm that the proposed controller has been endowed with the advantage of both fuzzy logic controller and PID controller, which yields enhanced dynamic feats and stability.


10 pieces of yellowish green peridot from Jilin province with fine and pure texture were selected to analyze the relationship between frequency drift in middle-infrared band and color appearance, through the replacement of Fe2+. The actual crystal chemical formula of the samples calculated by Oxygen atom method is: (Mg1.84,Fe0.19)2.04[(Si0.982,Al0.001)0.983O4], so prove that it is chrysolite [1] and the replacement of Fe2+ and Mg2+ in the position M, which led to the yellowish green appearance. With the help of Fourier infrared spectrometer TENSOR27 and One Way ANOVA analysis study the infrared spectra of 10 samples and analyze the impact Fe2+ had on frequency drift, getting the Correlation coefficient r between Fe2+ and the wave-number near 1040cm-1, 622cm-1, 522cm-1, and the value of r are -0.896,-0.884,-0.903, therefore, with Fe2+ increasing ,three reflection peaks drift to the lower frequency. Compare the reflectivity in the visible area (360nm ~ 750nm) tested by colorimeter Color i5 with the mafic peridot end of forsterite solid solution, finding that with the reflectance peaks drift to low frequency, reflection of blue and purple light decrease, blue and purple tone in peridot decreasing; reflection of the red and orange light increases, red and orange tone increasing. It is concluded that in the transformation of mafic Peridot end to chrysolite peridot end, reflection peaks in infrared band drift to lower frequency, causing the increase of red and orange tone, decrease of blue and purple tone in Peridot.


P202

 Background:
 Ambulatory procedures have been shown to increase patient's comfort and cost-efficacy. We sought to determine the feasibility of ambulatory carotid stenting in a series of patients undergoing the procedure.
 Methods:
 Patients were electively admitted and discharged the same-day if they had successful uncomplicated carotid stenting and had demonstrated complete vascular access site hemostasis following ambulation 4–6 hours after the procedure. Patients were followed for neurological events and vascular access site complications.
 Results:
 A total of 76 same-day carotid stenting procedures were performed on 73 patients (76 arteries). There were 53 (73 %) males and the mean age was 70 ± 8 years. Seventy-nine percent of the patients were asymptomatic on presentation. Fourteen patients (18 %) had prior ipsilateral CEA, 3 (4%) had prior ipsilateral neck radiation and 6 (8 %) had contralateral occlusions. Successful access site hemostasis was achieved in all patients, using suture-mediated vascular sealing devices in 75 cases (99%). In one case hemostasis was achieved manually after failure of the sealing device. Late follow-up currently available on 62 (98%) patients at a mean of 4 ± 3 months. There have been no neurological events, deaths, repeat procedures or significant access site complications. One patient developed serous discharge from the access site at 6 weeks without evidence of infection or hematoma and was managed conservatively without complications.
 Conclusion:
 Ambulatory carotid stenting is feasible and safe. This approach will foster the applicability of the procedure by increasing patient s comfort and potentially reducing procedural costs.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the value of Research Parties, a new model of supplementary reference in a social environment.

Design/methodology/approach
A survey of multiple choice and open-ended questions was administered to Research Party participants (n = 43) over the course of three semesters to discover the profiles of the undergraduate students who attended and how they heard about the event and to assess the value of the interaction to the student.

Findings
Respondents unanimously agreed that their interactions with librarians at Research Parties were helpful because their information seeking needs, including finding sources, learning how to search databases, gaining clarity into the assignment, writing and citing, were met. Respondents also mentioned attributes of the librarian's disposition or attitude such as enthusiastic conversation, encouragement and patience. Several students reflected on their own learning process and noted that they would seek help from a librarian again.

Practical implications
The results demonstrate that Research Parties are helpful to undergraduate students and a worthwhile model for academic libraries looking to complement their traditional reference services.

Originality/value
While faculty and administrators have verbally expressed excitement about Research Parties, librarian colleagues have anecdotally reported success instituting this model at their institutions, and students have provided informal positive feedback, this is the first time the model has been evaluated more formally to capture its value.


The long terminal repeats of murine intracisternal A particles (IAPs) contain an IAP proximal enhancer (IPE) element that is inactive in murine F9 embryonal carcinoma cells and active in the parietal endoderm cell line PYS-2. The element binds efficiently to a 60-kDa IPE-binding protein (IPEB) present in PYS-2 cells but poorly to F9 proteins, suggesting a role for IPEB in regulating IAP expression. We have purified calf thymus IPEB, which binds to the IPE and transactivates a reporter gene in HeLa cell extracts. Based on the peptide sequence of the purified calf IPEB, we have cloned a 420-bp cDNA and showed that the encoded protein is the homolog of human p54nrb and mouse NonO, which are characterized by the presence of two RNA recognition motifs. We show that p54nrb is an IPE-binding transcription activator with its DNA-binding and activation domains in the N- and C-terminal halves, respectively. The activation domain of p54nrb is active in HeLa, PYS-2, and F9 cells, whereas p54nrb as a whole molecule is active in HeLa and PYS-2 cells but not in F9 cells. Thus, the lack of activity of p54nrb in F9 cells is due to an ineffective DNA-binding domain. We demonstrate that p54nrb also binds to a pre-mRNA. Based on the close sequence relatedness of this protein to PSF, which is required for pre-mRNA splicing in vitro, we discuss the possibility that p54nrb has dual roles in transcription and splicing.


Some fuzzy rule interpolation methods have been presented for sparse fuzzy rule-based systems based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets. However, they have the drawbacks that they can not guarantee the convexity of the fuzzy interpolated result and may generate the same fuzzy interpolated result with respect to different observations. In this paper, we present a new method for fuzzy rule interpolation for sparse fuzzy rule-based systems based on the ratio of fuzziness of interval type-2 fuzzy sets. It can overcome the drawbacks of the existing methods. We also use some examples to compare the fuzzy interpolated results of the proposed method with the results by the existing methods. The proposed fuzzy rule interpolation method gets more reasonable results than the existing methods.


We use creativity theory to analyze the effects of occupational job variety and industry variety on invention quality, and entrepreneurial earnings. We test our ideas with survey data from 770 inventor–entrepreneurs who commercialized their own inventions. Results suggest that occupational and industry variety substitute for each other in positively affecting invention quality whereas a lack of industry variety is associated with greater entrepreneurial earnings. Results are consistent with the idea that high levels of both occupational and industry variety enables the generation and discovery of inventions, but these ideas are usually not technically feasible or financially viable.


Cytoskeletal elements associated with the smooth septate junctions linking the midgut columnar cells of Manduca sexta larvae (Insecta, Lepidoptera) were characterized. Myosin subfragment 1 decoration and immunostaining for actin demonstrated that the filaments associated with the septate junctions were constituted of actin. Moreover, using a combination of immunochemical and immunolocalization techniques, evidence is presented that alpha-actinin, myosin II, and vinculin are localized close to the specialized plasma membranes. The insertion of microfilament bundles into submembranous F-actin/alpha-actinin/vinculin complexes, previously described in vertebrate junctions of adherens type, appears to be a more general organization, including the insect septate junction here examined.


We explore a large number of features for cross-lingual pronoun prediction for translation between English and German/French. We find that features related to German/French are more informative than features related to English, regardless of the translation direction. Our most useful features are local context, dependency head features, and source pronouns. We also find that it is sometimes more successful to employ a 2-step procedure that first makes a binary choice between pronouns and other, then classifies pronouns. For the pronoun/other distinction POS ngrams were very useful.


The Multiscale Law of Requisite Variety is a scientific law relating, at each scale, the variation in an environment to the variation in internal state that is necessary for effective response by a system. While this law has been used to describe the effectiveness of systems in self-regulation, the consequences for failure have not been formalized. Here we use this law to consider the internal dynamics of an unstructured system, and its response to a structured environment. We find that, due to its inability to respond, a completely unstructured system is inherently unstable to the formation of structure. And in general, any system without structure above a certain scale is unable to withstand structure arising above that scale. To describe complicated internal dynamics, we develop a characterization of multiscale changes in a system. This characterization is motivated by Shannon information theoretic ideas of noise, but considers structured information. We then relate our findings to political anarchism showing that society requires some organizing processes, even if there is no traditional government or hierarchies. We also formulate our findings as an inverse second law of thermodynamics; while closed systems collapse into disorder, systems open to a structured environment spontaneously generate order.


E2017:016, Supply chain complexity and variable delivery volumes make purchasing and warehouse logistics key factors for becoming competitive in the grocery industry. This case study elucidates both causes, and likely solutions, to backlog problems occurring at the loading dock of the wholesale grocery company Dagab of the Axfood Group. On-site observations and staff interviews were performed for the study. The purpose of the study was to propose improvements that may lead to more efficient planning of deliveries for storage warehouses in the grocery retail industry. Variation in demand for both the type and quantity of goods was found to be a cause for warehouse complexity, often creating a significant need for logistical flexibility in purchasing, and on the warehouse floor. Large purchases that deviated from the regular flow of goods, for example, sales campaigns or increased holiday demand, proved to be the main cause of loading-dock backlogs. This was especially problematic when individual deliveries converged due to large delivery volumes; these often resulted in problematic truck ques at the loading dock.
Four principal areas of improvement were identified in Dagab's current working methods.
(1) Operational purchasers at Dagab must remain flexible in their purchasing methods and adapt methods according to the period's demand pattern. Increased planning of large delivery volumes both during sales campaigns, and before holidays, would reduce strain within the loading dock. (2) Lack of understanding regarding the entire distribution chain prevented employees from making correct decisions at times when efficiency and productivity was most needed. In many cases this could easily have been avoided if there was more focus on cross-departmental communication. (3) Some goods occupy buffer locations and cause unnecessary handling at the warehouse. It would be advantageous to follow the cost of the goods throughout the whole flow, rather than focusing only on the purchase price. And (4), there is a lack of standardized working methods and routine. A higher standard of common working methods would increase efficiency and simplify many of the processes that tend to cause problems during peak periods. The removal of unnecessary workloads and streamlining of processes would add benefit for the company. The implementation of strategies such as these are likely to alleviate problems regarding variable delivery volumes at the loading dock, which would streamline the movement of goods through Dagab and for similar companies.


Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate how principals (n = 4) and teachers (n = 20) from four lower-secondary schools perceived and evaluated sustainable professional development processes in their schools. To understand their experiences and perceptions, interviews and focus group conversations were conducted at the end of a one-year research and development project and again two years later. All teachers had in common that they taught 9th graders (14–15-year-old students) in Mathematics. Findings indicate that at the end of the common project period, all the participating teachers state that they had experienced professional development. They had made changes to their teaching practice and were collaborating more with colleagues. After two years the teachers still state that the research and development project had contributed to their learning, but that their schools have not been able to maintain a context of sustainable professional development processes. The core finding from this study suggests that if professional development in schools is to be sustainable, teachers should have ownership, work in teams over time and gain necessary support by their leaders and external experts for facilitating the learning processes and to develop new knowledge. Both the principals and teachers in these four schools claimed that to maintain sustainability of a continuing professional development there is a need to find time and structures to reflect on teaching practices and student learning.


Dear Editor: This letter is in regard to our recent article entitled &dquo;The Acromion-splitting Approach for Large and Massive Rotator Cuff Tears&dquo; (May/June 1994, pages 306 to 312). I have recently been questioned concerning our qualification of acceptable results from the UCLA grading system for shoulder surgical results. The UCLA grading system is based on a 35-point scale and rates patients on their pain, functional level, range of motion, and strength. A section on patient satisfaction is included in the grading system, but it is not included in the overall score. The total score from


Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will revolutionize the way people travel by car. However, in order to deploy autonomous vehicles, effective testing techniques are required. The driving quality of an AV should definitely be considered when testing such systems. However, as in other complex systems, determining the outcome of a test in the driving quality on an AV can be extremely complex. To solve this issue, in this paper we explore the application of Quality-of-Service (QoS) aware metamorphic testing to test AVs modeled in MATLAB/Simulink, one of the predominant modeling tools in the market. We first defined a set of QoS measures applied to AVs by considering as input a recent study. With them, we define metamorphic relations. Lastly we assess the approach in an AV modeled in Simulink by using mutation testing. The results suggests that our approach is effective at detecting faults.


Bursera microphylla (BM), one of the common elephant trees, is widely distributed in the Sonoran desert in Mexico. The Seri ethnic group in the Sonoran desert uses BM as an anti-inflammatory and painkiller drug for the treatment of sore throat, herpes labialis, abscessed tooth, and wound healing. Dried stems and leaves of BM are used in a tea to relieve painful urination and to stimulate bronchial secretion. Furthermore, BM is used for fighting venereal diseases. To investigate the effects of the hexane fraction of resin methanol extract (BM-H) on cell growth, the acute myeloid cell line (OCI-AML3) was treated with 250, 25, or 2.5 µg/mL of BM-H. The first 2 concentrations were able to significantly decrease OCI-AML3 cell number. This reduced cell number was associated with decreased S-phase, blockade of G2/M phase of the cell cycle, and increased cell death. Similar results were obtained on all tested tumor cell lines of different origins. We found that blockade of the cell cycle was a result of upregulation of p21 protein in a p53-independent way. Increase of p21 was possibly a result of upstream upregulation of p-ERK (which stabilizes p21 protein) and downregulation of p-38 (which promotes its degradation). Regarding cell death, activation of caspase-3, but not of caspase-8 or -9, was detectable after BM-H treatment. In conclusion, these data suggest that BM-H inhibited proliferation of cell lines mainly by a p21-dependent, p53-independent mechanism and promoted apoptosis through activation of caspase-3 but not caspase-8 or -9.


The polymer gels especially hydrogels have a very special structure and useful features such as unusual volume phase transition, compatibility with biological systems, and sensitivity to environmental stimuli (temperature, pH value, electric field, light and more), which lead to many potential applications in physical and biochemical fields. This research includes: (1) the theoretical and experimental studies of polymer gels on swelling kinetics, spinodal decomposition, and solution convection in gel matrix; (2) applications of polymer gels in wound dressing, tissue-simulating optical phantom and gel display. The kinetics of gel swelling has been theoretically analyzed by considering coupled motions of both solvent and polymer network. Analytical solutions of the solvent and the network movement are derived from collective diffusion equations for a long cylindrical and a large disk gel. Kinetics of spinodal decomposition of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) polymer gel is investigated using turbidity and ultrasonic techniques. By probing movement of domains, a possible time-dependent gel structure in the spinodal decomposition region is presented. Theoretical studies of solution convection in gel matrix have been done and more analysis on dimensionless parameters is provided. To enhance the drug uptake and release capacity of silicone rubber (SR), NIPA hydrogel particles have been incorporated into a SR membrane. This SR/NIPA composite gel has promising attributes for wound dressing and other uses. Tissue-simulating optical phantom has been synthesized and studied using NIPA solution trapped inside a hydrogel. Polymer gels with engineered surface patterns were implemented. NIPA gel deposited on the surface of an acrylamide gel can be used as responsive gel display. A dynamically measurement technique of local shear modulus and swelling ratio of gel is presented based on an engineered periodic surface pattern as square array.


Averaging the anisotropy of each crystal, the macroscopic behavior of polycrystalline materials is isotropic and homogenous in terms of elastic deformation. However, the anisotropic property of each crystal influences on the local stress field ahead of a crack tip if the crack size is not large enough in comparison with the grain diameter. This brings about the change in the crack driving force (CDF) such as stress intensity factors. In the present study, in order to investigate the cause and magnitude of the change in the CDF, the finite element analysis is performed. The calculations are carried out for a single crystal model, a bi-crystal model, and a polycrystal model containing a transgranular or an intergranular semi-circular crack. The results implied that the magnitude of CDF is dependent not only on the crystal orientation but also on the deformation-constraint caused by the difference in elastic modulus of grains near the crack tip. The statistical scatter of CDF due to the random crystal orientation in a polycrystal is examined by a Monte Carlo simulation. The variation in the SIF becomes small as the crack size increases.


This research is investigating the potential for designing digital toys and games as playful cognitive enrichment activities for captive elephants. The new field of Animal Computer Interaction is exploring a range of approaches to the problem of designing user-centred systems for animals and this investigation into devices for elephants aims to directly contribute towards a methodological approach for designing smart and playful enrichment for all species.


Jack Zipes has repeatedly demonstrated that fairy tales have an enormous subversive potential. The nature of subversion, however, may vary radically depending on the society in which fairy tales appear. This essay shows how fairy tales based on the wish-granting motif functioned in the former Soviet Union, a society in which art and literature were strongly subordinated to the official ideology. Through an examination of four stories, it is demonstrated how the Communist ideology permeating the texts came into conflict with their liberating effect and how different narrative strategies were used to subdue the subversive elements.


The glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP-1R) is a member of the family (or class) B G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). The receptor is a regulator of insulin and a key target in treating Type 2 diabetes mellitus. In this investigation, computational chemistry techniques such as molecular docking were combined with in silico ADME/Tox predictions to determine the position and structure of the allosteric binding site, as well as to examine how the allosteric modulators bind to the binding site. In silico evaluation was used to evaluate the ADME/Tox properties of the allosteric modulators. The findings of the ligand docking studies suggest that the allosteric binding site is situated around the transmembrane (TM) domain TM 6 of the receptor in the active state. ADME/Tox characterisation of the allosteric modulators demonstrate that compounds 1–3 (2,6,7-trichloro-3-(trifluoromethyl)quinoxaline, 1-(5-(4-(tert-butyl)phenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl)-6,6-dimethyl-3-(methylsulfonyl)-6,7-dihydrobenzo[c]thiophen-4(5H)-one, 2-((4-chlorophenyl)thio)-3-(trifluoromethyl)quinoxaline, respectively) complied with the traditional method of evaluating drug-likeness; Lipinski's rule of 5. The allosteric modulator compound 4 (3-(8-chloro-6-(trifluoromethyl)imidazo[1,2-a]pyridin-2-yl)phenyl cyclohexanecarboxylate) failed to comply with Lipinski's rule of five as a result of having a logP value of over 5.6. Moreover, molecular docking studies provide insights into potential allosteric binding sites and possible interactions. Finally, the in silico ADME/Tox study results are described as relevant to developing a viable drug candidate.


The Gneering Shoals and Mudjimba Island are coastal rocky-reef communities approximately 250 km south of the Great Barrier Reef. Ten sites from 700 m to 12 km offshore were investigated with the use of video-transects to determine percentage cover of benthic organisms. The marine benthic communities were dominated by hard corals, soft corals and turf algae. Three community types were identified: (1) offshore communities, (2) island-associated communities, and (3) a nearshore algae-dominated community. Inshore sites were dominated by flat encrusting hard corals, whereas offshore sites were dominated by foliose and plating hard corals, particularly Acropora solitaryensis and Turbinaria spp. There was a notable scarcity of branching species, particularly from the Family Acroporidae. Seventy-seven species of scleractinian coral, representing 30 genera in 11 families, have been recorded from the Gneering Shoals region. The Gneering Shoals had low coral species richness relative to the southern Great Barrier Reef (244 species) and Flinders Reef, 50 km to the south-east (118 species). Possible explanations for the relatively low coral species richness in the Gneering Shoals region include the physical attributes of the site and the hypothesized failure of the East Australian Current to be a major influence on the region.


This year is the tenth anniversary of the final decision on al al Kateb v Godwin (2004) HCA 37), a landmark case in Australian migration law. The Australian government sought to indefinitely detain al Kateb, a stateless Kuwaiti, after refusing his application for asylum. The High Court ruled in favour of al Kateb on the basis that indefinite detention of a stateless person is unlawful. Since then, Australian law on statelessness has failed to develop to the extent that the Australian government has not legislated on a determination procedure for stateless people. Australia does not provide protections under United Nations Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons (1954) to which Australia is a signatory. This paper discusses sources Australian Country Advice KWT39495 to describe how concepts about stateless communities might develop within the Refugee and Migration Review Tribunals. It challenges the veracity of the Country Advice information based on its use of sources. It explains the reasoning behind American and UK positions on statelessness in Kuwait in the Country Advice, which influences determinations on asylum claims, in the absence of a procedure to determine and resolve statelessness. It concludes that not only are the Australian Country Advices in need of update, there is also a need for the quality of evidence sourced and the interpretation of that evidence, to be reviewed


The aim of this paper is to show security measures for NFC use cases and devices. We give a brief overview over NFC technology and evaluate currently available devices and their implementation of NFC operating modes. Out of this technology review we derive different use cases and applications based on NFC technology. Based on the use cases we show assets and interfaces of an NFC devices that could be a possible target of an attacker. In the following we apply different attacks against the operation modes to show how applications and devices could be protected against such attacks. The information collected is consolidated in a general threat model giving guidelines on how to improve security and deal with privacy issues. This allows to implement NFC technology in a secure way for the end consumer.


The new slogan "The software is the tool" takes into consideration a new construction principle for the measuring tools and systems, with a brand new architecture. These systems and tools are assembled into a "virtual space" computer programming environment which provides such basic elements of construction. There is a big advantage of this type of measuring system: each human user can build himself an unlimited number of instruments intended to process and to analyze experimental data; these virtual instruments on the basis of dedicated computer applications can meet individual requirements designated to cover an extended domain of analysis. The function of data acquiring of the equivalent real instrument is now taken by a new PC peripheral (DAQ data acquisition interface). The functions of data conditioning, data analysis and control are completely taken by the existing hardware in the computer and the software package in question. The current instrument system, as a whole, is designed and developed as a part of the computer, making possible the direct use of the computing power and the facilities of the PC. The article presents the virtual instrument developed on ICECON S.A. Bucharest on the basis of LabView® ver. 8.5 from National Instruments. The virtual instrument was used to acquire and to process some experimental data from the dynamic tests of the Bechtel viaduct at KM 29+602,75↔KM 29+801,25 on the Romanian Highway A3 ("Transilvania" highway).


Many of today's best classification results are obtained by combining the responses of a set of base classifiers to produce an answer for the query. This paper explores a novel "query specific" combination rule: After learning a set of simple belief network classifiers, we produce an answer to each query by combining their individual responses, using weights based inversely on their respective variances around their responses. These variances are based on the uncertainty of the network parameters, which in turn depend on the training datasample. In essence, this variance quantifies the base classifier's confidence of its response to this query. Our experimental results show that these "mixture-using-variance belief net classifiers" MUVS work effectively, especially when the base classifiers are learned using balanced bootstrap samples and when their results are combined using James-Stein shrinkage. We also found that our variance-based combination rule performed better than both bagging and AdaBoost, even on the set of base classifiers produced by AdaBoost itself. Finally, this framework is extremely efficient, as both the learning and the classification components require only straight-line code.