Anxiety symptoms can often be experienced as a silent struggle in adolescence, as many anxious adolescents do not exhibit outward symptoms. Identifying adolescents who are struggling with subthreshold anxiety symptoms can be even more difficult. As adolescence is a time where friendships become primary sources for emotional support, youth who experience anxiety symptoms and associated distress may have trouble navigating close relationships with peers. The current study aims to investigate the relations between adolescents' anxiety symptoms and their friendship functioning, as well as the impact of their anxiety symptoms on friends' emotional adjustment. Data were taken from a larger project on adolescent friendships and emotional adjustment, approved by the University of Maine Institutional Review Board (IRB). Participants (N = 186) were nested within 93 same-gender friendship dyads and were between 13 and 19 years of age. Dyads' emotional adjustment and friendship functioning were assessed concurrently and after 3 months. Self-report measures of anxiety symptoms, friendship quality, and depressive symptoms were gathered. Descriptive statistics, mean-level gender differences, and correlations among study variables were computed, and dyadic data analyses tested primary hypotheses of interest. Results indicated that anxiety symptoms were not associated with lower levels of positive friendship quality. Additionally, although friends were similar to one another in terms of anxiety symptoms, results did not support evidence of anxiety contagion over 3 months. Future research should test for anxiety contagion across a longer period of time (e.g., 1 year), and studies of adolescent anxiety should continue to control for depressive symptoms to account for the overlap in symptomatology between depressive and anxiety symptoms. This study contributes to the existing literature on the impact of adolescents' internalizing symptoms on friendships and the emotional adjustment of friends.


Ethnography is the chosen methodology for this study. The research participants are a
group of clinical nurses undertaking a Post-registration Perioperative Nursing Course.
As Co-ordinator of this course I introduced reflective practice as a teaching/learning
strategy with the aim of providing these clinical nurses with an opportunity to
individually and collectively reflect on their practice. The intention of the research is to
explore the role of reflective practice as a teaching/learning strategy to promote critical
thinking, to engage these nurses in a reflective process through which they can explore
the nature of perioperative nursing practice and what it means for them to be
peri operative nurses and to discover the possibilities of this reflective process in terms
of its potential to develop critical consciousness.
Data for this research is in the form of journal entries written by these nurses and
myself and my observations as a participant observer during reflective practice
discussions. The common themes which emerge from the data are explored and
discussed. The process of critical reflection in which these clinical nurses are engaged
unfolds through the larger narrative of peri operative nursing culture.


Part of the NEW Ginn History series, these colourful KS2 pupil books cover key moments in world history. The series includes Victorian Britain, Ancient Greece, Explorations and Encounters and Britain since 1930. Photography, cartoons and illustration bring the past to life while questions at the end of each chapter provoke further thinking and a Glossary reinforces key words and concepts.


Digital technologies enable more functionality and new attractive products at faster pace. What are the challenges faced in the development? How must the processes change? How must the tools change? How must the businesses change? What are the strategic questions to be answered? The author gives consideration to this.


With this study, it is aimed to reveal that Gülten İmamoğlu's paintings have established a what kind of relationship with the concept of "time", and created what kind of universe as a result of this relationship. This study is significant because of that it is an analysis that reveals the relationship which underlying of how a painter handles "time" in her paintings. This research performed as a case study in a qualitative pattern. This study is an existing analysis study by using document analysis and the technique of interview. The case studies base on the questions of "how" and "why" and enable to examine the depth of an event or event that the researcher cannot control. This research look for an answer "What is going on?" with a explicitive approach. Collected data was resolved with content analysis. The investigation process was carried out by the researcher. Traditional man; with the belief of "eternal return", he repeats archetypes and myths throughout the ages and realizes the interest of non-religious time. The relevance of non-religious time has eliminated the temporality of time and a sense of "time" where everything is finite. This is prevented from drifting to a "nihilist" end of man. Humanity which adopted social and spiritual integrity is protected by a "time" insight through the ages. This approach enabled man to see himself as a part of the cosmos and positioned him in a coherent existence with cosmic rhythms. In Mircea Eliade's book "The Myth of the Eternal Return", the concepts of "repeat", "archetype" and "myth" are discussed. The thinker went for a comparison by putting forward the characteristics of the traditional understanding of "time" and the historical approach of "historic", and made conclusions. It can be said that the idea of "time" reflected in the paintings of Imamoglu is fed from the same source with the understanding of "time" determined by Eliade in the "The Myth of the Eternal Return". This work is an attempt to interpret the artist's paintings on this plane. It is suggested that the paintings of Gülten İmamoğlu should be handled in the context of the "chaos", "orgy", "dark" and "water" archetypes as well as their relationship with time. Keywords: Gülten İmamoğlu, Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, the eliminated of time, archetype, myth, culture, time


In this article a fault classification algorithm based on a robust linear discrimination scheme, for the case of a squirrel-cage three phase induction motor, will be presented. The suggested scheme is based on a novel feature extraction mechanism from the measured magnitude and phase of current park's vector pattern. The proposed methodology has the merit to diagnose different types of faults such as: (a) broken rotor bar, and (b) short circuit in stator winding. The novel feature generation technique is able to transform the problem of fault detection and diagnosis into a simpler space, where direct robust linear discrimination can be applied for solving the classification problem. Robust linear discrimination has been one of the most widely used fault detection method in real life applications, as this methodology seeks for directions that are efficient for discrimination and at the same time requires a straight forward implementation. The efficacy of the proposed scheme will be evaluated based on multiple simulation results for different fault types.


Freeze-thaw (FT) and moisture dynamics within the soil active layer are critical elements of boreal, arctic and alpine ecosystems, and environmental change assessments. We evaluated the potential for detecting dielectric changes within different soil layers using combined L- and P-band radar remote sensing as a prerequisite for detecting FT and moisture profile changes within the soil active layer. A two-layer scattering model was developed and validated for simulating radar responses from vertically inhomogeneous soil. The model simulations indicated that inhomogeneity in the soil dielectric profile contributes to both L- and P-band backscatter, but with greater P-band sensitivity at depth. The difference in L- and P-band responses to soil dielectric profile inhomogeneity appears suitable for detecting associated changes in soil active layer conditions. Additional evaluation using collocated airborne radar (AIRSAR) observations and in situ soil moisture measurements over alpine tundra indicates that combined L- and P-band SAR observations are sensitive to soil dielectric profile heterogeneity associated with variations in soil moisture and FT conditions.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To examine the pretreatment symptoms and symptom clusters that women awaiting breast cancer surgery are experiencing and the impact of these symptoms on their quality of life.

BACKGROUND
Most women diagnosed with breast cancer will have surgery as a first-line treatment. The presence of presurgery symptoms may be significant in contributing to distress and impaired quality of life. While it seems that women with breast cancer may experience the symptoms of fatigue, pain, depression and sleep disturbance as a cluster, this has not yet been confirmed by empirical research in the presurgery time period.

DESIGN
A multiple-point prospective longitudinal cohort panel design is used.

METHODS
Presurgery symptoms and quality of life were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Insomnia Severity Index, Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Fatigue, Brief Pain Inventory and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30(3).

RESULTS
Participants (n = 94, age range 30-92) experienced symptoms prior to surgery, with pain being a more prevalent symptom (35%) than fatigue (32%), sleep disturbances (25·5%) or depression (11%). global quality of life was significantly impacted on by fatigue and showed a moderate correlation with emotional functioning and a weak correlation with physical and social functioning. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified the presence of five clusters with symptoms present in differing intensities in each cluster.

CONCLUSION
In this cohort of women, healthy other than having a diagnosis of breast cancer, symptoms were impacting on quality of life. It is evident that clusters of symptoms are present presurgery that must be assessed and managed.

RELEVANCE TO PRACTICE
Healthcare delivery systems must ensure that early symptoms are addressed effectively in the presurgery period to improve quality of life and reduce adverse outcomes postsurgery.


During casting and homogenisation of aluminium the microstructural fundament for further processing is made. Particle structure (dispersoids and primary particles), grain structure and level of elements in solid solution govern the mechanical and annealing properties of the material. In 3xxx-alloys, Mn in solid solution and Mn-containing dispersoids formed during homogenisation play an important role in controlling the recrystallization behaviour of the material [e.g. 1, 2, 3]. Other elements, such as Si, will have an influence on the formation of dispersoids [4, 5]. Hence, to control the annealing behaviour of the material, it becomes important to control the particle structure. In the present investigation, an AA3103 alloy, and modified versions of this alloy, have been investigated. Various homogenisation treatments have been performed and the resulting material has been studied. Electrical conductivity has been measured and microstructural investigations have been carried out.


New communication technologies and constructivist pedagogy have the great potential to build very powerful paradigm shifts that enhance Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) in distance education. Therefore, the main purpose of this chapter is to explore the new concerns, issues and potentials for the IPTV delivery of distance education to multicultural populations. In this study, the design strategies and principles of how to build social networking based on constructivist learning theory are discussed in order to generate a theoretical framework that provides everyday examples and experiences for IPTV in distance education. This framework also shows the needs, expectations and beliefs, and strengths-weaknesses of IPTV in distance. In short, this framework concentrates on discussing the main characteristics of IPTV in distance education and describes how those characteristics can help build constructivist online communities.


Abstract. The purpose of this study was to describe the means, variability, internal consistency reliability, and structural validity evidence of the ClassMaps Survey, a measure of student perceptions of classroom learning environments. The ClassMaps Survey is a 55-item student rating scale of eight important classroom characteristics. The survey provides a brief, relevant, and conceptually simple appraisal of students' perceptions of the classroom conditions that contribute to academic engagement. Participants were 345 third- fourth-, and fifth-grade students drawn from a public school in the Midwest and a second in the Northeast. Results demonstrated that 53 of the 55 survey items loaded onto their predicted subscale, subscale alphas were at or above .75, and the survey means were relatively consistent across grade and gender. Results suggest that the ClassMaps Survey is a promising measure that captures students' perspectives of classroom environments so they can be used to plan and implement classwide interventions.


Detection and eradication of fur mite infestations in mouse colonies can present a challenge to a laboratory animal facility.  In 2011, an outbreak of Myobia musculi occurred in the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Science Park animal facility, and the current case study describes the treatment with moxidectin, its effectiveness in controlling the outbreak, and the subsequent development of a PCR-based detection protocol.  Methods of DNA collection using sterile swabs and fecal pellets were also evaluated.  Results from the first mite check after the treatment indicated that moxidectin was highly effective in killing mites, but evidence of the infestation (mite body parts and eggs) was clearly visible throughout the duration of the monitoring period.  Results from the PCR assay on swab samples were directly correlated with those of the conventional hair pluck samples, indicating that swabbing could be added to routine QA hair pluck monitoring procedures to increase the chances of detecting mites in laboratory mice.  However, it is essential to keep in mind that positive PCR results may not necessarily indicate an active infestation but only the presence of mite DNA in the hair coats of mice.


An extensive body of literature exists on the student's attitude about using power point presentation and the data refers to the importance of a standard power point presentation usage. The present study was based on evaluating the quality of power point presentations used during teaching in Babul Dental School. This cross- sectional study was performed on all faculty members at Babul Dental School. The Forty six percent of participants were male and 54% were female. In addition, the mean age of members was 37.94 ± 7.56 with 2 months to 20 years academic experienced. Then a checklist was designed according to the guidelines of a standard power point presentation and it was filled out by researchers while reviewing each power point files used during teaching. Furthermore, descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, percent and count the items in each index was used for central Index. The quality of power point presentations according to age, gender and years of teaching were also analyzed by nonparametric tests (Mann-Whitney). The data demonstrated P 0.05). Regarding to qualitative questions, 48% of participants used one kind of animation which reflected a significant relationship with years of teaching (p<0.05). According to the results, it indicated the quality of power point presentations utilized by study's population was relatively desirable, moreover, it was suggested to hold power point presentation workshops to improve the ability of academic members in preparing perfect power point presentations.


Background: The effect of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) on the voice features in Parkinson's disease (PD) is controversial. No study has evaluated the voice features of PD underwent STN-DBS by the acoustic, perceptual, and patientbased assessments comprehensively. Furthermore, there is no study to investigate prosodic features before and after DBS in PD. The current study aimed to assess the efficacy of STN-DBS on the voice and prosodic features by acoustic, perceptual and self-reported evaluations in PD. Methods and Analysis: An experimental prospective cohort pretest-posttest group has been designed to survey patients with PD candidates for STN-DBS surgery. All participants will be evaluated by a speech and language pathologist before and after surgery in four different conditions as follow: pre-surgery: Medication On/ Medication Off; post-surgery: Stimulation On/ Stimulation Off. To compare pre-surgery and post-surgery conditions paired- samples T Test or Wilcoxon signed-rank test will be used. A 95% confidence interval (p value of <0.05) will be considered to be statistically significant. This study protocol is approved by the Ethical Committee of Teheran University of Medical Sciences, and the results of the study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at national congresses.


Financial innovations are a common explanation for the rise in credit card debt and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers' risk of default and a fixed cost of developing each contract lenders offer. Innovations that ameliorate asymmetric information or reduce this fixed cost have large extensive margin effects via the entry of new lending contracts targeted at riskier borrowers. This results in more defaults and borrowing, and increased dispersion of interest rates. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances and Federal Reserve Board interest rate data, we find evidence supporting these predictions. Specifically, the dispersion of credit card interest rates nearly tripled while the "new" cardholders of the late 1980s and 1990s had riskier observable characteristics than existing cardholders. Our calculation suggest these new cardholders accounted for over 25% of the rise in bank credit card debt and delinquencies between 1989 and 1998.


Many studies in recent years focused on the efficiency of bilingual education in different school settings. If a school pursues a regular implementation of CLIL modules instead of the establishment of proper CLIL streams, the student group that is affected by this teaching approach is much more diverse when compared to the preselected CLIL stream groups. In this regard, also students with high English anxiety and low self-efficacy will have to participate in the modules and it is particularly interesting to see how these student types deal with teaching units held in a foreign language. The study at hand presents results from an intervention at German schools with two biology units taught in English. Students aged 15 to 16 rated the affective effects of these modules by filling in a pre-post-follow up questionnaire. Results show that English anxiety can indeed be lowered, while students' self-efficacy increases due to this intervention. Obviously, more research has to confirm whether this is the case for other age groups and subjects as well. Nonetheless, it is a good start to recommend employing CLIL modules on a greater scale since the effects are substantial even if students do not willingly choose to take part in CLIL.


With the fast development of the natural gas industry, volcanic gas reservoirs have been paid an increasing attention. Many deep gas wells in volcanic reservoirs have special characteristics, such as high temperature, high pressure and high level of CO2 with strong corrosion effect, which brings great challenge to the safety of the tubing. Therefore, the mechanical analysis of tubing in deep gas wells in volcanic reservoirs is helpful to design the strings, optimize operation parameters and predict service life. In this paper, based on the buckling analysis, a mechanical model of tubing is established and solved by stepwise iterative algorithm. Physical properties of tubular strings and fluid are taken into consideration in new model, as well as the pitting corrosion of CO2. A program also developed for practical purposes. The results can be applied for the safety assessment and life prediction of the tubing in deep gas wells in volcanic reservoirs.


Abstract:We observed the nature of parents' writing support and studied their reports about their parenting practices. Participants were 130 middle socioeconomic status parent–preschooler dyads in the United States and Israel (69 American). Parents were videotaped while helping their children write an invitation to a birthday party in English in the United States and in Hebrew in Israel. We analyzed the degree to which parents helped children segment words into their respective sounds (graphophonemic support) and print letters independently (printing support). Parents also filled out a parenting-practices questionnaire about their home learning environment (HLE); warmth, autonomy support, and expectations (WSE), and management/discipline (MD). Across cultures, parents valued WSE the most, followed by MD and HLE. In both cultures, parents prioritized WSE most, followed by MD and HLE. Across cultures, higher MD related to higher writing (graphophonemic and printing) support. Our findings stress the importance of cross-cultural studies when investigating how parents guide and support young children's early literacy development.


Abstract. Cores cut in the research boreholes at Viernheim and Parkinsel P34 and P35 in Ludwigshafen were analysed to investigate their fossil content, and particularly the remains of molluscs. The selected material was suitable for reconstructing the palaeoclimatic conditions and simplifies the chronostratigraphic classification of individual beds. Two mollusc species and one rodent species from the Lower Pleistocene (Lower Biharium) were identified in the northern Upper Rhine Graben for the first time (in the Viernheim borehole). The fossils from the Lower Pleistocene sections of the Viernheim borehole are clearly related to the Uhlenberg fauna from Bavarian Swabia dated as Upper Villanium/Tegelen.


The present research examined longitudinal relations of the Big Five personality traits with three core aspects of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Latent growth models and autoregressive models were used to analyze data from a large, nationally representative sample of 16,367 Australian residents. Concurrent and change correlations indicated that higher levels of subjective well-being were associated with higher levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, and with lower levels of Neuroticism. Moreover, personality traits prospectively predicted change in well-being, and well-being levels prospectively predicted personality change. Specifically, prospective trait effects indicated that individuals who were initially extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable subsequently increased in well-being. Prospective well-being effects indicated that individuals with high initial levels of well-being subsequently became more agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and introverted. These findings challenge the common assumption that associations of personality traits with subjective well-being are entirely, or almost entirely, due to trait influences on well-being. They support the alternative hypothesis that personality traits and well-being aspects reciprocally influence each other over time.


The nature of particle precipitations at dayside mid-altitudes can be interpreted in terms of the evolution of reconnected field lines. Due to the difference between electron and ion parallel velocities, two distinct boundary layers should be observed at mid-altitudes between the boundary between open and closed field lines and the injections in the cusp proper. At lowest latitudes, the electron-dominated boundary layer, named the "electron edge" of the Low-Latitude Boundary Layer (LLBL), contains soft-magnetosheath electrons but only high-energy ions of plasma sheet origin. A second layer, the LLBL proper, is a mixture of both ions and electrons with characteristic magnetosheath energies. The Cluster spacecraft frequently observe these two boundary layers. We present an illustrative example of a Cluster mid-altitude cusp crossing with an extended electron edge of the LLBL. This electron edge contains 10–200 eV, low-density, isotropic electrons, presumably originating from the solar wind halo population. These are occasionally observed with bursts of parallel and/or anti-parallel-directed electron beams with higher fluxes, which are possibly accelerated near the magnetopause X-line. We then use 3 years of data from mid-altitude cusp crossings (327 events) to carry out a statistical study of the location and size of the electron edge of the LLBL. We find that the equatorward boundary of the LLBL electron edge is observed at 10:00–17:00 magnetic local time (MLT) and is located typically between 68° and 80° invariant latitude (ILAT). The location of the electron edge shows a weak, but significant, dependence on some of the external parameters (solar wind pressure, and IMF B Z - component), in agreement with expectations from previous studies of the cusp location. The latitudinal extent of the electron edge has been estimated using new multi-spacecraft techniques. The Cluster tetrahedron crosses the electron and ion boundaries of the LLBL/cusp with time delays of 1–40 min between spacecraft. We reconstruct the motion of the electron boundary between observations by different spacecraft to improve the accuracy of the estimation of the boundary layer size. In our study, the LLBL electron edge is distinctly observed in 87% of mid-altitude LLBL/cusp crossings with clear electron and ion equatorward boundaries equivalent to 35% of all LLBL/cusp crossings by Cluster. The size of this region varied between 0°–2° ILAT with a median value of 0.2° ILAT. Generally, the size of the LLBL electron edge depends on the combination of many parameters. However, we find an anti-correlation between the size of this region and the strength of the IMF, the absolute values of the IMF B Y - and B Z -components and the solar wind dynamic pressure, as is expected from a simple reconnection model for the origin of this region.


*** The discrepancy between Lord Brain's lecture and the leading article is less than would at first sight appear, and is partly due to difference in emphasis. In his lecture Lord Brain stressed that a complete investigation with plainx-ray films may give more information about the state of the cervical spine than is generally realized. His conclusion was that the characteristic clinical picture, when combined with typical changes in the plain x-ray films, was usually sufficient for a presumptive diagnosis. It was, however, implied that if surgery were to be contemplated (usually this would be considered if there were comparatively rapid clinical deterioration) myelography was an essential preliminary. At the point in the leading article to which Mr. Treasure refers stress was being laid on the fact that cervical spondylosis may co-exist with other neurological diseases such as disseminated sclerosis and syringomyelia. When diagnostic difficulty arises it can be established with certainty that the patient's symptoms are due to spondylosis only if evidence of compression of the spinal cord is obtained by myelography, while examination of the cerebrospinal fluid (e.g., estimation of the gamma-globulin content) helps in the exclusion of co-existing disseminated sclerosis. Sometimes myelography shows that the size of the disk protrusion is unexpectedly large (or small) when compared with the changes seen in the plain x-ray films. Furthermore, occasional cases are known in which the clinical picture and the changes seen on straight x-ray films seemed diagnostic of cervical myelopathy due to spondylosis but in which rapid clinical deterioration occurred and myelography showed small benign extra-medullary neoplasms, which were then successfully removed. Consequently some authorities usually recommend myelography in order to be certain of the diagnosis of cervical myelopathy, except for elderly and infirm patients and for those whose condition had remained relatively static over a long period of time. Probably everyone would agree with Lord Brain that this examination is essential as a preliminary to surgical treatment; indeed, it is generally difficult to suggest, before myelography, which cases should even be considered for surgery. The leading article might have been better worded: . . examination of the cerebrospinal fluid and opaque myelography are often necessary to establish the fact that the patient's symptoms and signs of spinal-cord disease are due to spondylosis. and are essential if surgery is to be considered."-ED., B.M.J.


This paper examines the struggle in Africa to alleviate and eventually eradicate poverty. It is argued that the most effective way for African countries to deal with poverty is to create wealth. Unfortunately, these countries have not been able to create the wealth that they need to confront poverty. This is due primarily to the fact that since independence, many African countries have not been able to undertake democratic institutional reforms to create and adopt institutional arrangements that guarantee and sustain the rule of law. Within legal systems in which the rule of law is accepted and respected, civil servants and political elites are adequately constrained and hence, cannot easily engage in growth-inhibiting behaviors such as corruption and rent seeking. In addition, these types of institutions enhance peaceful coexistence and provide an enabling environment for wealth creation. So they can effectively deal with poverty and improve the people's living conditions, African countries must engage in reforms to provide themselves with institutional arrangements that guarantee the rule of law.


Since the early 1960s, the ice core community has produced a wealth of scientific results from a still relatively limited number of deep drilling sites in Greenland and Antarctica with the longest record extending back to the last interglacial in Greenland and covering eight glacial–interglacial cycles in Antarctica. Although measurements performed on the first ice cores, Camp Century and Byrd, largely focused on the isotopic composition of the ice as an indicator of climate change, the number of studied parameters has steadily increased encompassing numerous measurements performed on the entrapped air bubbles, on various impurities as well as on the ice itself. The climatic information provided by these various paleodata time is extremely rich. The relationships between forcing factors and climate, about the importance of carbon cycle feedbacks, about the occurrence of abrupt climate variability, and about the interplay between polar climate, ice sheet dynamics, and sea‐level variations are examples that are highly relevant to future climate change. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Sorption to mineral surfaces is an important process controlling the mobility and stability of natural organic matter (NOM) in soil, yet only knowledge of the reversibility of this process enables the prediction of element cycling and NOM-induced transport in soils. We have elucidated the desorption of mineral-bound NOM in batch experiments with amorphous Al(OH) 3 , goethite, and a subsoil low in organic C. These sorbents were equilibrated with increasing amounts of water-extractable NOM from the Oa horizon of a mor forest-floor layer and then extracted with solutions of different ionic strengths, pH, and concentrations of inorganic anions (Cl - , SO 4 2- , H 2 PO 4 - ). Sorbed NOM was extracted after 24, 48, 72, and 120 h. We investigated structural and functional characteristics of the desorbed NOM by XAD-8 (macroporous resin) fractionation and by 13 C-NMR spectroscopy. Desorption of NOM from minerals and soils was negligible (<3%) under solution conditions similar to those during the sorption (hysteresis). It was not influenced by increasing concentrations of noncompeting inorganic anions such as Cl - . Increased concentrations (≤0.1 M) of competing anions like SO 4 2- or H 2 PO 4 - increased the NOM desorption. Though H 2 PO 4 - was most efficient in desorbing NOM, the extractability was only ≤60% at the highest H 2 PO 4 - concentration. The most significant desorption occurred when solution pH was raised. For goethite, NOM desorption reached a maximum at a pH above the point of zero charge (PZC) of the mineral. With increasing surface coverage of the sorbent by NOM, the proportion of desorbable NOM decreased for all extractants. Increased sorption hysteresis was also observed with an increasing time period between sorption and desorption. The desorption was more pronounced for NOM compounds that exhibit hydrophilic properties and have low contents of aromatic structures and carboxyl groups. The irreversible binding of NOM, especially of the lignin-derived portion, to soil minerals seems to result from its polyelectrolytic nature. This may favor the formation of multi-site coordinative bonds and effective shielding of the binding ligands by other parts of the sorbed molecule.


Introduction: Immunosuppressive therapies increase risk of infections 2-fold when compared to naive individuals; however, an observational study found that only 4% of patients with psoriasis who were on or planned to start immunosuppressive therapy were immunized with pneumococcus. Factors positively influencing vaccination uptake include having vaccines available same day in clinic and education about vaccines. Negative influences include no recommendation from the treating clinician and no insurance. Failure to vaccinate occurs by overlooking indication and an uncertainty as to who is responsible for vaccination. Since the early 2000's, vaccinations have been offered in pharmacies. This could result in additional confusion regarding vaccination responsibility. As a result of not being immunized, patients on immunosuppressive medications experience higher rates of preventable infections. We observed that many of our patients' immunizations were incomplete and sought to increase immunization uptake through a quality improvement (QI) project beginning in Fall 2019. We evaluated the project's approach of providing education with immediate onsite immunization availability relative to standard care to determine if vaccination uptake per CDC guidelines can be increased.
Methods: We compared acceptance of CDC recommended pneumococcal immunization for patients on immunosuppressive therapy who were and were not subject to the QI project at the 2 urban dermatology clinics. Patients in the comparison group were under the care of other dermatologists. All patients in the QI group were educated on benefits of immunizations and offered immediate immunizations. Those who had never received the PCV13 or PPSV23 were defined as unimmunized. Patients who had received either vaccination were partially immunized. Patients who received both were completely immunized. We collected demographics and immunization status for all patients. Using Stata 14.2 [StataCorp, College Station, TX], we compared immunization status at baseline and final observations for patients in the QI and comparison groups using a multivariable ordered logit model, and used multiple logistic regression to examine receipt of a vaccination within the QI group.
Results: The QI (N=146) and comparison groups (N=55) did not differ significantly on sociodemographic or clinical characteristics, including baseline immunization. After adjusting for patient characteristics, baseline immunization rates for fully, partially, and unimmunized patients were 9.2%, 28.7%, and 62.1% for the comparison group and 7.7%, 26.1%, and 66.3% for the QI group, respectively. Immunization statuses within the comparison group did not change over time, but at final observation 40.6%, 43.2%, and 16.1% of the QI group were fully, partially, and unimmunized, respectively (Table 1; p<0.001). Of patients in the QI group eligible for vaccination at baseline, 81% (105/129) received a vaccination. There was a significant association between immunization and insurance; uninsured patients in the QI group had significantly lower odds of receiving a vaccination (Table 2; p=0.015).
Conclusion: Providing patients receiving immunosuppressive regimens with education and immediate vaccination access in a dermatology clinic significantly increased uptake of recommended pneumococcal immunization. Widespread use of this practice could reduce vaccine preventable illness and improve population health. Furthermore, there is a clear need for additional interventions targeting uninsured patients.


War on Crime revises the history of the New Deal transformation and suggests a new model for political history--one which recognizes that cultural phenomena and the political realm produce, between them, and idea of "the state." The war on crime was fought with guns and pens, movies and legislation, radio and government hearings. All of these methods illuminate this period of state transformation and perceptions of that emergent state in the years of the first New Deal. This study of the creation of G-men and gangsters as cultural heroes in this period not only explores the Depression-era obsession with crime and celebrity, but it also lends insight on how citizens understood a nation undergoing large political and social changes. Anxieties about crime today have become a familiar route for the creation of new government agencies and the extension of state authority. It is important to remember the original "war on crime" in the 1930s--and the opportunities it afforded to New Dealers and established bureaucrats like J. Edgar Hoover--as scholars grapple with the ways states assert influence over populations, local authority, and party politics while they pursue goals such as reducing popular violence and protecting private property.


A computer model was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to analyze the electricity production, costs, and prices for two geographical regions for a single year. Bulk-power trading is allowed between the two regions and market clearing prices are determined based on marginal costs. The authors used this model, ORCED, to evaluate the market price of power over the year 2000 in the Pacific Northwest and California. The authors found that, absent intervention by the regulators in the Northwest, generation prices would increase 1.1 {cents}/kWh on average, from 1.91 {cents}/kWh for the regulated price to 3.02 {cents}/kWh as the competitive price. If regulators use transition charges and price caps, then customers in the Pacific Northwest need not be penalized by the change to marginal-cost pricing. Customer responses to price changes will increase the transfer of power between regions. A gas price increase of 20%, while only raising the average-cost-based price to 1.95 {cents}/kWh, raised the marginal-cost-based price to 3.56{cents}/kWh. Reductions in hydroelectric resources also dramatically change the price and flow of power.


Modeling natural language inference is a very challenging task. With the availability of large annotated data, it has recently become feasible to train complex models such as neural-network-based inference models, which have shown to achieve the state-of-the-art performance. Although there exist relatively large annotated data, can machines learn all knowledge needed to perform natural language inference (NLI) from these data? If not, how can neural-network-based NLI models benefit from external knowledge and how to build NLI models to leverage it? In this paper, we enrich the state-of-the-art neural natural language inference models with external knowledge. We demonstrate that the proposed models improve neural NLI models to achieve the state-of-the-art performance on the SNLI and MultiNLI datasets.


Tourism has been viewed as an important player for the economic redevelopment of certain rural regions because of the attraction of landscapes, mountain, and the interest in second-home or investment opportunities at lower prices (Jackson & Murphy, 2002). Even with tourism"s potential for development at all levels, there have been very few studies regarding models for estimating the local impact of tourism (Jackson & Murphy, 2006). To enhance understanding of the nature of forecasting in tourism destinations it is valuable to study systematically the possible estimative of influence that tourism destination has on an area. The main objective of this study is to present a set of models for tourism destinations competitiveness, using the Artificial Neural Networks methodology. This study focuses on two Portuguese regions - North and Centre - as tourism destinations offering a large range of tourist products, that goes beyond the beach, the mountains, the thermals not forgetting the rural tourism that has growing in the last years. These tourism destinations offer an interesting alternative to the "mass tourism" and have become more competitive, since the last one is normally associated with negative environmental impacts.


Cosmos caudatus (ulam raja) contains high mineral content and possesses high antioxidant activity which may be beneficial in bone disorder such as postmenopausal osteoporosis. The effects of C. caudatus on bone metabolism biomarkers in ovariectomized rats were studied. 48 Sprague-Dawley rats aged three months were divided into 6 groups. One group of rats was sham-operated while the remaining rats were ovariectomized. The ovariectomized rats were further divided into 5 groups: the control, three groups force-fed with C. caudatus at the doses of 100mg/kg, 200mg/kg or 300mg/kg and another group supplemented with calcium 1% ad libitum. Treatments were given 6 days per week for a period of eight weeks. Blood samples were collected twice; before and after treatment. Parameters measured were bone resorbing cytokine; interleukin-1 and the bone biomarkers; osteocalcin and pyridinoline. Serum IL-1 and pyridinoline levels were significantly increased in ovariectomized rats. Supplementation of C. caudatus was able to prevent the increase of IL-1 and pyridinoline in ovariectomized rats. Besides that, C. caudatus showed the same effect as calcium 1% on biochemical parameters of bone metabolism in ovariectomized rats. In conclusion, Cosmos caudatus was as effective as calcium in preventing the increase in bone resorption in ovariectomized rats.


Multiplications are responsible for most of the computational cost involved in neural network training and inference. Recent research has thus looked for ways to reduce the cost associated with them. Inspired by Mogami (2020), we replace multiplication with a cheap piecewise affine approximation that is achieved by adding the bit representation of the floating point numbers together as integers. We show that transformers can be trained with the resulting modified matrix multiplications on both vision and language tasks with little to no performance impact, and without changes to the training hyperparameters. We further replace all non-linearities in the networks making them fully and jointly piecewise affine in both inputs and weights. Finally, we show that we can eliminate all multiplications in the entire training process, including operations in the forward pass, backward pass and optimizer update, demonstrating the first successful training of modern neural network architectures in a fully multiplication-free fashion.


In order to integrate uncertainty estimates into deep time-series modelling, Kalman Filters (KFs) (Kalman et al., 1960) have been integrated with deep learning models, however, such approaches typically rely on approximate inference tech- niques such as variational inference which makes learning more complex and often less scalable due to approximation errors. We propose a new deep approach to Kalman filtering which can be learned directly in an end-to-end manner using backpropagation without additional approximations. Our approach uses a high-dimensional factorized latent state representation for which the Kalman updates simplify to scalar operations and thus avoids hard to backpropagate, computationally heavy and potentially unstable matrix inversions. Moreover, we use locally linear dynamic models to efficiently propagate the latent state to the next time step. The resulting network architecture, which we call Recurrent Kalman Network (RKN), can be used for any time-series data, similar to a LSTM (Hochreiter & Schmidhuber, 1997) but uses an explicit representation of uncertainty. As shown by our experiments, the RKN obtains much more accurate uncertainty estimates than an LSTM or Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) (Cho et al., 2014) while also showing a slightly improved prediction performance and outperforms various recent generative models on an image imputation task.


Pinning and minor loops are treated in an inclusive macroscopic model of ferromagnetic hysteresis. The model is developed from a Stoner-Wohlfarth approach and includes pinning effects, like the Jiles-Atherton model, Complicated sets of field turning points, typical of the Preisach model, are included. The extensions made here to the Stoner-Wohlfarth model, particularly the pinning effects, constitute a hypothetical study of ferromagnetism within the confines of an idealized numerical model, and do not necessarily correspond to the behavior of known magnetic materials. Computational approaches to two-dimensional calculations are outlined and results are given. The minor loops are seen to exhibit incongruence and eventual closure.


Aluminium-based hybrid composites are a new class of advanced materials with the potential of satisfying the demands in engineering applications. This paper describes the effects of carbon addition on the formation and properties of AMC with SiC nanoparticles reinforcement. The composites were produced via mechanical alloying followed by hot pressing. Three forms of carbon, graphite (GR), multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and, for the first time, glassy carbon (GC), were used for the hybrid composites manufacturing and compared with tribological properties of Al-SiC composite without carbon addition. GC and CNTs enhanced formation of Al-SiC composite particles and resulted in a homogeneous distribution of reinforcing particles. On the other hand, GR addition altered mechanochemical alloying and did not lead to a proper distribution of nanoparticulate SiC reinforcement. Hot pressing technique led to the reaction between Al and carbon as well as SiC particles and caused the formation of Al4C3 and γ-Al2O3. The subsistence of carbon particles in the composites altered the predominant wear mechanisms since the wear reduction and the stabilization of the friction coefficient were observed. GC with simultaneous γ-Al2O3 formation in the hybrid Al-SiC(n)-C composites turned out to be the most effective additive in terms of their tribological behaviour.


Extra-cellular matrix (ECM) tethered morphogen gradients play an important role in tissue development and regeneration. There is currently only a limited set of model systems which can mimic these gradients in an artificial ECM-like environment. We have developed such a system that is able to stably immobilize a microfluidics-generated protein gradient on a poly(ethylene) glycol (PEG) hydrogel. After patterning, the hydrogel can be released from the chip and be directly used for cell culture.


One of the most important issues in financial economics is the capital asset pricing since in this context various models have been introduced and tested in different economies. One of these models is consumption-based capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) which in this model changes in stock returns related to changes in consumption. Housing CCAPM (HCCAPM) is a derivative of CCAPM model that was introduced in 2007 by Piazzesi et al (2007). In this model representative agent's utility is function of aggregate of non-housing consumption and housing service consumption while in the model CCAPM, total consumer expenditure considered as a macroeconomic variable. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate effect of housing services and a non-housing consumption good on stock returns. In this paper HCCAPM and CCAPM model is estimated for quarterly data 1367 to 1391 period of the Iran with generalized method of moments (GMM). The results show that all parameters are significant. Estimation of parameters in both models indicates economic factors are patient and very risk-averse. Comparison of these models using log-linear reduced form and Hansen and Jagannathan (HJ)-distance function indicate that CCAPM model explains stock returns better than HCCAPM model.


BACKGROUND
The purpose was to compare the changes in claudication pain, ambulatory function, daily physical activity, peripheral circulation, and health-related quality of life following a program of exercise rehabilitation in smoking and nonsmoking patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) limited by intermittent claudication. Methods and results Thirty-nine smokers (63 +/- 4 pack-year smoking history; mean +/- SE) and 46 nonsmokers (former smokers who had a 51 +/- 7 pack-year smoking history who quit 14 +/- 2 years prior to investigation) completed the study. The 6-month exercise rehabilitation program consisted of intermittent treadmill walking to near maximal claudication pain 3 days per week, with progressive increases in walking duration and intensity during the program. Measurements were obtained on each patient before and after rehabilitation. Following exercise rehabilitation the smokers and nonsmokers had similar improvements in these measures, as initial claudication distance increased by 119% in the smokers (P <.001) and by 97% in the nonsmokers (P <.001), and absolute claudication distance increased by 82% (P <.001) and 59% (P <.001) in the smokers and nonsmokers, respectively. Furthermore, exercise rehabilitation improved (P <.05) ambulatory function, daily physical activity, peripheral circulation, and health-related quality of life in the smokers and nonsmokers.

CONCLUSION
Exercise rehabilitation is an effective therapy to improve functional independence in both smoking and nonsmoking patients with PAD limited by intermittent claudication. Therefore, smokers with intermittent claudication are prime candidates for exercise rehabilitation because their relatively low baseline physical function does not impair their ability to regain lost functional independence to levels similar to nonsmoking patients with PAD.


The bacterium Escherichia coli is widely used to produce recombinant proteins. To fold properly, many recombinant proteins have to be targeted to the E. coli periplasm, but so far the impact of the targeting pathway of a recombinant protein to the periplasm has not been extensively investigated. Here, we show that the targeting pathway of a recombinant antibody fragment has a tremendous impact on cell physiology, ultimately affecting protein production yields in the periplasm and biomass formation. This indicates that studying the targeting and secretion of proteins into the periplasm could be used to design strategies to improve recombinant protein production yields. ABSTRACT Many recombinant proteins that are produced in Escherichia coli have to be targeted to the periplasm to be functional. N-terminal signal peptides can be used to direct recombinant proteins to the membrane-embedded Sec translocon, a multiprotein complex that translocates proteins across the membrane into the periplasm. We have recently shown that the cotranslational targeting of the single-chain variable antibody fragment BL1 saturates the capacity of the Sec translocon leading to impaired translocation of secretory proteins and protein misfolding/aggregation in the cytoplasm. In turn, protein production yields and biomass formation were low. Here, we study the consequences of targeting BL1 posttranslationally to the Sec translocon. Notably, the posttranslational targeting of BL1 does not saturate the Sec translocon capacity, and both biomass formation and protein production yields are increased. Analyzing the proteome of cells producing the posttranslationally targeted BL1 indicates that the decreased synthesis of endogenous secretory and membrane proteins prevents a saturation of the Sec translocon capacity. Furthermore, in these cells, highly abundant chaperones and proteases can clear misfolded/aggregated proteins from the cytoplasm, thereby improving the fitness of these cells. Thus, the posttranslational targeting of BL1 enables its efficient production in the periplasm due to a favorable adaptation of the E. coli proteome. We envisage that our observations can be used to engineer E. coli for the improved production of recombinant secretory proteins. IMPORTANCE The bacterium Escherichia coli is widely used to produce recombinant proteins. To fold properly, many recombinant proteins have to be targeted to the E. coli periplasm, but so far the impact of the targeting pathway of a recombinant protein to the periplasm has not been extensively investigated. Here, we show that the targeting pathway of a recombinant antibody fragment has a tremendous impact on cell physiology, ultimately affecting protein production yields in the periplasm and biomass formation. This indicates that studying the targeting and secretion of proteins into the periplasm could be used to design strategies to improve recombinant protein production yields.


Numerical experiments with a 2.5-layer and a 2-level model are conducted to examine the mechanism for the planetary scale selection of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). The strategy here is to examine the evolution of an initial perturbation that has a form of the equatorial Kelvin wave at zonal wavenumbers of 1 to 15. In the presence of a frictional boundary layer, the most unstable mode prefers a short wavelength under a linear heating; but with a nonlinear heating, the zonal wavenumber 1 grows fastest. This differs significantly from a model without the boundary layer, in which neither linear nor nonlinear heating leads to the long wave selection. Thus, the numerical simulations point out the crucial importance of the combined effect of the nonlinear heating and the frictional boundary layer in the MJO planetary scale selection. The cause of this scale selection under the nonlinear heating is attributed to the distinctive phase speeds between the dry Kelvin wave and the wet Kelvin–Rossby wave couplet. The faster dry Kelvin wave triggered by a convective branch may catch up and suppress another convective branch, which travels ahead of it at the phase speed of the wet Kelvin–Rossby wave couplet if the distance between the two neighboring convective branches is smaller than a critical distance (about 16 000 km). The interference between the dry Kelvin wave and the wet Kelvin–Rossby wave couplet eventually dissipates and ''filters out'' shorter wavelength perturbations, leading to a longwave selection. The boundary layer plays an important role in destabilizing the MJO through frictional moisture convergences and in retaining the in-phase zonal wind–pressure structure.


In the Arabian Peninsula, the Dhofar region is rich in camels. This national wealth has always been administered by traditional nomadic pastoral management, which must have evolved in Oman with the introduction of camels as domesticates in prehistoric times. In this region, camels have always depended on the free grazing system which is governed by tribal territoriality. Today, Dhofar is experiencing an extensive process of development. Land value has increased immensely, to the extent that it cannot be used for camel pastoralism. Furthermore, traditional camel management has always been directed to meet requirements of a subsistence economy. It has never managed to convert to the organization of political economy. This paper intends to raise the alarm that national wealth is endangered by certain challenges. The paper proposes certain ideas that might assist in safeguarding and investing in a national asset.


The off-state drain current leakage characteristics of 130 nm CMOS technology are investigated using x-ray irradiation and operating temperature as variables. Radiation-induced interface traps in the gate oxide to gate-drain overlap region strongly enhance the off-state leakage as a function of gate bias. Due to the thin gate oxide in these 130 nm devices, we find that drain-edge direct tunneling is more plausible than conventional gate-induced-drain-leakage in explaining the observed increase in drain leakage. Radiation-induced traps in the shallow trench isolation oxide create parasitic channels in the p-well and produce another source of off-state drain leakage with increasing total dose. The drain current increase from both the gate overlap region and the shallow trench edge are enhanced with increasing total dose and suppressed by cooling


Building upon a continuous-time model of search with Nash bargaining in a stationary environment, we analyze the effect of changes in minimum wages on labor market outcomes and welfare. While minimum wage increases invariably lead to employment losses in our model, they may be welfare-improving to labor market participants using any one of a number of welfare criteria. A key determinant of the welfare impact of a minimum wage increase is the Nash bargaining power parameter. We discuss identification of this model using Current Population Survey data on accepted wages and unemployment durations, and demonstrate that key parameters are not identified when the distribution of match values belongs to a location-scale family. By incorporating a limited amount of information from the demand side of the market, we are able to obtain credible and precise estimates of all primitive parameters, including bargaining power. Direct estimates of the welfare impact of the minimum wage increase from $4.25 to $4.75 in 1996 provide limited evidence of a small improvement. Using estimates of the primitive parameters we show that more substantial welfare gains for labor market participants could have been obtained by doubling the minimum wage rate in 1996, though at the cost of a perhaps unacceptably high unemployment rate.


The specificity of statutes is important when the statute provides for criminal penalties. This Essay examines a cryptocurrency fraud prosecution, looking at the issue of whether cryptocurrency is included in securities fraud statutes. It also looks at proposed legislation that would omit cryptocurrency as a security, but then calls for enhanced regulation and tax relief. Additional clarification is needed to ascertain whether cryptocurrency fraud can be prosecuted under current securities fraud statutes. This Essay questions such prosecutions when the location of key definitions rest within agency regulations. Although specificity may not be needed to account for every imaginable type of fraud, when it comes to cryptocurrencies, Congress needs to provide more direction.


The spatial organization of RNA within cells is a crucial factor in a wide range of biological functions, spanning all kingdoms of life. However, a general understanding of RNA localization has been hindered by a lack of simple, high-throughput methods for mapping the transcriptomes of subcellular compartments. Here, we develop such a method, termed APEX-RIP, which combines peroxidase-catalyzed, spatially restricted in situ protein biotinylation with RNA-protein chemical crosslinking. We demonstrate that, using a single protocol, APEX-RIP can isolate RNAs from a variety of subcellular compartments, including the mitochondrial matrix, nucleus, bulk cytosol, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER), with higher specificity and coverage than do conventional approaches. We furthermore identify candidate RNAs localized to mitochondria-ER junctions and nuclear lamina, two compartments that are recalcitrant to classical biochemical purification. Since APEX-RIP is simple, versatile, and does not require special instrumentation, we envision its broad application in a variety of biological contexts.


BACKGROUND
Health risks associated with subclinical hypothyroidism in older adults are unclear. Our objective was to compare the functional mobility of people aged 70 to 79 years by thyroid function categorized by thyrotropin (TSH) level as euthyroid (>or=0.4 to <4.5 mIU/L), mild subclinical hypothyroid (>or=4.5 to <7.0 mIU/L), or moderate subclinical hypothyroid (>or=7.0 to <or=20.0 mIU/L with a normal free thyroxine level) cross-sectionally and over 2 years.

METHODS
A total of 2290 community-dwelling residents participating in the year 2 clinic visit (July 1998-June 1999) of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study, who had measured TSH level, had the capacity to walk 20 m unaided, and were not taking thyroid medication or had TSH levels consistent with hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism. Main outcome measures included self-reported and performance-based measures of mobility (usual and rapid gait speed and endurance walking ability) assessed at study baseline (year 2) and 2 years later.

RESULTS
In age- and sex-adjusted analyses, the mild subclinical hypothyroid group (vs the euthyroid group) demonstrated better mobility (faster mean usual and rapid gait speed [1.20 vs 1.15 m/s and 1.65 vs 1.56 m/s, respectively; P < .001] and had a higher percentage of those with good cardiorespiratory fitness and reported walking ease [39.2% vs 28.0% and 44.7% vs 36.5%, respectively; P < .001]). After 2 years, persons with mild subclinical hypothyroidism experienced a similar decline as the euthyroid group but maintained their mobility advantage. Persons with moderate subclinical hypothyroidism had similar mobility and mobility decline as the euthyroid group.

CONCLUSION
Generally, well-functioning 70- to 79-year-old individuals with subclinical hypothyroidism do not demonstrate increased risk of mobility problems, and those with mild elevations in TSH level show a slight functional advantage.


Fungal diversity in agro-ecosystems is influenced by various factors related to soil and crop management practices. However, due to the complexity in fungal cultivation, only a limited number has been extensively studied. In this study, amplicon sequencing of the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region was used to explore their diversity and composition within long-term farming system comparison trials at Chuka and Thika in Kenya. Sequences were grouped into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at 97% similarity and taxonomy assigned via BLASTn against UNITE ITS database and a curated database derived from GreenGenes, RDPII and NCBI. Statistical analyses were done using Vegan package in R. A total of 1,002,188 high quality sequences were obtained and assigned to 1,128 OTUs; they were further classified into eight phyla including Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Chytridiomycota, Glomeromycota, Calcarisporiellomycota, Kickxellomycota, Mortierellomycota and unassigned fungal phyla. Ascomycota was abundant in conventional systems at Chuka site while Basidiomycota and Chytridiomycota were dominant in conventional systems in both sites. Kickxellomycota and Calcarisporiellomycota phyla were present in all organic systems in both sites. Conventional farming systems showed a higher species abundance and diversity compared to organic farming systems due to integration of organic and inorganic inputs.

 Key words: Long-term farming systems, fungi, internal transcribed spacer (ITS), diversity, Illumina sequencing.


Using yeast two-hybrid screens, we have defined an interaction group of six Tra proteins encoded by the F plasmid and required by F (cid:1) cells to elaborate F pili. The six proteins are TraH, TraF, TraW, TraU, TrbI, and TrbB. Except for TrbI, these proteins were all identified as hallmarks of F-like type IV secretion systems (TFSSs), with no homologues among TFSS genes of P-type or I-type systems (T. Lawley, W. Klimke, M. Gubbins, and L. Frost, FEMS Microbiol. Lett. 224:1-15, 2003). Also with the exception of TrbI, which is an inner membrane protein, the remaining proteins are or are predicted to be periplasmic. TrbI consists of one membrane-spanning segment near its N terminus and an 88-residue, hydrophilic domain that extends into the periplasm. Hence, the proteins of this group probably form a periplasmic cluster in Escherichia coli . The interaction network identifies TraH as the most highly connected node, with two-hybrid links to TrbI, TraU, and TraF. As measured by transcriptional activation of lacZ , the TrbI-TraH interaction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae requires the TraH amino acid segment from residues 193 to 225. The TraU and TraF interactions are localized to C-terminal segments of TraH (amino acids 315 to 458 for TraF and amino acids 341 to 458 for TraU). The TrbI-TraH interaction with full-length (less the signal peptide) TraH is weak but increases 40-fold with N-terminal TraH deletions; the first 50 amino acids appear to be critical for inhibiting TrbI binding in yeast. Previous studies by others have shown that, with the exception of trbB mutations, which do not affect the elaboration or function of F pili under laboratory conditions, a mutation in any of the other genes in this interaction group alters the number or length distribution of F pili. We propose a model whereby one function of the TraH interaction group is to control F-pilus extension and retraction.


The primary functions of corporate headquarters in multi-business firms are for entrepreneurial value creation and administrative loss prevention. A prominent way in which firms can renew their resources and capabilities is through divestitures. While the positive effects of divestitures on parent companies are well documented, we know relatively less about the comparative assessment of different divestiture governance modes. To address this research gap, we focus on a comparative assessment of two divestiture governance modes – corporate spin-offs and equity carve-outs – and examine under what conditions each divestiture governance mode is more likely to benefit the parent company. Five divestiture corporate goals are identified: address business unit under-performance; recover from corporate parent funding deficit; reduce liability risk; parent company's managerial refocus; and respond to third parties' interactions. We also explore two boundary conditions that influence the corporate parent's divestiture governance mode choice, namely potential economic holdup problems between the parent company and the divested business unit; and uncertainty in divested business unit performance. We organize these managerial goals and boundary conditions within four transaction cost economics and real options themes, i.e., adaptability, contract law, incentive intensity, and intertemporal spillovers to explain and predict corporate parents' divestiture governance mode choice, and suggest research opportunities to further join transaction cost economics and real options theory for explaining corporate strategy more generally, and the parent company's divestiture governance mode choice of corporate spin-offs and equity carve-outs, in particular.


Science and Religion have always observed the events from their exclusive viewpoint. It was necessary the arising of a bond that would make possible the unification of them. This bond was revealed in the last decades by Quantum Physics, which has shown us that some physical laws extend beyond the material world, pointing to the existence of the spiritual world. Thus, the spiritual world exists now no longer as supernatural one, but as world as real as our material world. This discovery marked the beginning of the understanding of the spiritual world nature and its relationship with the material world. Starting from this knowledge, here widely detailed, it is now possible to understand the eternal puzzles: where have we come from, because here we are, and where do we go.


Chemical inhibitors of histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity are used as experimental tools to induce histone hyperacetylation and deregulate gene transcription, but it is not known whether the inhibition of HDACs plays any part in the normal physiological regulation of transcription. Using both in vitro and in vivo assays, we show that lactate, which accumulates when glycolysis exceeds the cell's aerobic metabolic capacity, is an endogenous HDAC inhibitor, deregulating transcription in an HDAC-dependent manner. Lactate is a relatively weak inhibitor (IC50 40 mM) compared to the established inhibitors trichostatin A and butyrate, but the genes deregulated overlap significantly with those affected by low concentrations of the more potent inhibitors. HDAC inhibition causes significant up and downregulation of genes, but genes that are associated with HDAC proteins are more likely to be upregulated and less likely to be downregulated than would be expected. Our results suggest that the primary effect of HDAC inhibition by endogenous short-chain fatty acids like lactate is to promote gene expression at genes associated with HDAC proteins. Therefore, we propose that lactate may be an important transcriptional regulator, linking the metabolic state of the cell to gene transcription.


Volume I From the beginnings of European settlement to the effects of political independence: colonists as a chosen people the covenant idea - Maylower compact, the Charleston Church compact, half-way covenant, William Penn Church organization, discipline and dissent popular beliefs Christianity and Native Americans Christianity and African-Americans religious pluralism - growth and tensions colonical Anglicanism and Presbyterianism the Great awakening religion and revolution some effects of revolution. Volume II Religion in the new nation - revolution to reconstruction: the separation of Church and state development of religious rationalism the voluntary principle in operation the second great awakening and revivals religion and antebellum reform outside the Protestant mainstream religion and Romantic culture Native American religion religion, the Civil War and reconstruction. Part III Modern American religion since the late-19th century: scene setting - urban revivalism and immigrant religiosity new immigrants - Catholicism new immigrants - Judaism religion in urban industrial society moral behaviour and political action - religion and prohibition faith in a changing world new thought and therapeutic religion black Churches and sects religion and race relations Eastern religions in America modern evangelicism, radical and conservative Christianity.


In riverine forest of Chitwan National Park, Nepal, Bhellar or trewia (Trewia nudiflora) is one of the most abundant tree species. Similarly, chital (Axis axis) is the most abundant and widely distributed deer species. We documented the potential role of chital in seed dispersal of trewia tree in Chitwan. We observed the trewia seeds regurgitated by chital at the Gharial Conservation and Breeding Center (GCBC), Kasara, Chitwan. The trewia seeds were recorded the following morning of the chital sheltering the GCBC. A detailed study is suggested to understand trewia the seed germination success and trewia-chital relationship.


Objective: To identify and learn the psychological and social factors that help determine the reasons why individuals practice yoga or have difficult in practicing yoga in the United States. Method: Seven hundred individuals who practice yoga at least once a week by attending a yoga class and/or practicing yoga on their own were surveyed in this study. Results: Findings showed that yoga practitioners placed a high value was placed on advantages of yoga practice (improved relaxation, flexibility, balance, and strength) along with a strong belief that facilitating factors (having the resources of time, money, and convenient yoga class times) help individuals overcome challenges to practice regularly (not having enough time, money, or convenience). Conclusion: Individuals that regularly practice yoga more than once a week belief they have enough facilitators to overcome the barriers to practice along with strong social support and that the advantages exceed the disadvantages of practicing yoga.


Hierarchically porous transparent silica coatings combine large specific surface area with enhanced pore accessibility for optical biosensing. This paper describes a versatile approach to fabricate optically transparent silica coatings with multiscale porosity. Thin films (around 1 μm in thickness) of an aqueous suspension of primary silica aggregates form a mesoporous, interconnected matrix, and sacrificial polymer particles template well‐defined, discrete macropores with high structural integrity. The total surface area achieved is around 200 m2 g−1 with mesopore sizes of 20–40 nm and macropores of 250 nm, with a total porosity of 84%. The macro/meso dual range of porosity allows enhanced biocatalyst loadings of l‐lactate dehydrogenase for detection of lactate. The functionalized films showed a linear response within the range of interest of 1–20 × 10−3m of lactate. These biosensing coatings therefore strongly enhance sensitivity, speed and reliability of optically based lactate detection as compared to classical thin films with monomodal mesopore structure. Particle‐based simulations and experiments reveal that both the location and connectivity of the macropores control the biosensing performance. The coatings and procedure presented here are versatile, scalable, inexpensive, and are therefore compatible with a wide range of deposition techniques suitable for industrial and health care applications.


Movement is necessary for the survival of most animals. The spinal cord contains neuronal networks that are capable of motor coordination and of producing different movements. In particular, a very reduced neuronal network in the spinal cord can produce simple rhythmic outputs even in the absence of descending or sensory inputs. This basic circuit was discovered by Thomas Graham Brown (reported in 1911) and is termed central pattern generator. For over a century a large number of studies have been carried out in order to identify the neuronal components that are part of these networks.In project 1 we focused on Renshaw cells, which are a population of spinal interneurons expressing the alpha-2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (Chrna2). Renshaw cells are the only identified central targets for motor neuron inputs, and in turn they mediate inhibition of the motor neurons. We analyzed the activity pattern of Renshaw cells on a cell-population level in neonates when the circuit is still developing. At segment 1 of the lumbar spinal cord, Renshaw cells show significantly greater activity response to functional sensory and motor inputs from rostral compared to the caudal segments. Contrarily, the suppression of the monosynaptic stretch reflex was more pronounced when caudal roots were stimulated. Our data underline the importance of sensory input during motor circuit development and help to understand the functional organization of Renshaw cell connectivity.Several neurons that play distinct roles in locomotor central pattern generation have been identified with the help of genetics. For instance, the V0 population of spinal interneurons are identified by the expression of transcription factor developing brain homeobox 1 (Dbx1). V0 neurons are necessary for producing an alternating rhythm at all locomotor speeds. In project 2 we have looked at a population of dorsally derived ventrally projecting interneurons that express the transcription factor doublesex and mab-3 related transcription factor 3 (Dmrt3). On a behavioral level Dmrt3 neurons are involved in regulating coordination across different locomotor speeds. On a microcircuit level, we have shown that individual Dmrt3 neurons show distinct frequencies of oscillations for a constant locomotor rhythm. In addition, removal of inhibitory neurotransmission from Dmrt3 neurons results in uncoupling of rhythm in motor neurons.In project 3 the activity patterns in populations of flexor related motor neurons are characterized during fictive locomotion in neonatal mice. An interesting and intriguing finding in project 3 is the presence of multiple rhythmicities in motor neurons. Multiple rhythmicities are seen even when the locomotor output shows a constant frequency.


OBJECTIVE
To determine and compare rates of homotypic continuity of childhood- and adolescent-onset depression into adulthood.

METHOD
This was a naturalistic, prospective cohort study of children and adolescents receiving psychiatric care at all community mental health centers in Madrid, Spain, from January 1986 to December 2007. Data were obtained from a regional registry wherein all psychiatric visits to public mental health centers are recorded. Patients received their first diagnosis of an ICD-10 F32 or F33 depressive disorder between 6 and 17 years of age and were at least 20 years old at the time of their last visit. Subjects whose first diagnosis was in childhood (aged 6-12 years: depressed-child group) and subjects whose first diagnosis was in adolescence (aged 13-17 years: depressed-adolescent group) were compared in terms of demographic characteristics, psychiatric comorbidity, and rates of homotypic continuity in adulthood.

RESULTS
Five hundred twenty-eight patients with depressive disorders met inclusion criteria. The depressed-adolescent group had a higher proportion of girls (60.3%) compared to the depressed-child group, but did not differ on other demographic or clinical variables. Most subjects who later received treatment in adult mental health facilities (n = 243; 57.2%; 95% CI, 50.9-57.2) continued to be diagnosed with a depressive disorder. High rates of anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and psychotic disorders in adulthood were observed among subjects from both groups. The absence of psychiatric comorbidity prior to age 18 years was associated with homotypic continuity of depressive disorder into adulthood.

CONCLUSIONS
Subjects with adolescent-onset depression and subjects without comorbid psychiatric disorders in youth appear to have a higher level of homotypic continuity into adulthood. Both children and adolescents with depressive disorders are at risk for other psychiatric disorders in adulthood.


This study investigates the reliability of ultrasonographic screenings for detecting fetal malformations in pregnancy. The data from 1505 screening examinations of pregnant women who underwent routine checks at the Department of Obstetrics of the University of Vienna, were compared with the anomalies diagnosed in the newborn of the same collective. Fetal malformations were diagnosed in 28 screening cases. The statistical distribution of these anomalies is shown for the different organ systems. In 5 newborn malformations were found, which had not been diagnosed sonographically. Another 23 newborn had minor malformations in regions that are not included in the routine screening ultrasound. The results show a high accuracy of the sonographic screening examination, with the exception of the median facial region and the large vessels of the base of the heart. The fact that not all of the cardiac malformations were diagnosed prompts the performance of an extended sonographic inspection of the fetal heart within the framework of routine screening.


A Frobenius group is a transitive permutation group that is not regular and such that only the identity fixes more than one point. A digraphical, respectively graphical, Frobenius representation, DFR and GFR for short, of a Frobenius group $F$ is a digraph, respectively graph, whose automorphism group as a group of permutations of the vertex set is $F$. The problem of classifying which Frobenius groups admit a DFR and GFR has been proposed by Mark Watkins and Thomas Tucker and is a natural extension of the problem of classifying which groups that have a digraphical, respectively graphical, regular representation. In this paper, we give a partial answer to a question of Mark Watkins and Thomas Tucker concerning Frobenius representations: "All but finitely many Frobenius groups with a given Frobenius complement have a DFR".


To study the serum levels of 19-hydroxyandrostenedione (19-OH-A), known as an obligatory intermediate of estrogen biosynthesis and considered to be one of the hypertensinogens, a method using GC-MS with application of synthesized [7,7-d2]androstenedione (A), [7,7-d2] 19-OH-A and [9,11-d2]estrone(E1) as internal standards was newly developed. Normal pregnant women and pregnant women complicated with hypertension near term were selected for the study. The levels of 19-OH-A and E1 increased significantly as gestation progressed [19-OH-A; 224.7 +/- 72.1 (1st trimester), 655.5 +/- 325.4 (2nd trimester). 1517.8 +/- 543.6 (3rd trimester)pg/ml], and a positive correlation was found between the levels of the two steroids. No apparent change was observed in A levels during the course of pregnancy. The mean levels of 19-OH-A in pregnancy complicated with hypertension at 2nd and 3rd trimester were 761.7 +/- 348.9 and 1473.0 +/- 491.4 pg/ml, which were compatible with those in normal pregnancy. The levels of 19-OH-A at delivery in maternal vein (MV) were 1735.1 +/- 683.9 pg/ml. Significantly higher levels of 19-OH-A were found in umbilical vein (UV) (1977.2 +/- 564.9 pg/ml) than those in umbilical artery (109.7 +/- 49.1 pg/ml). 19-OH-A concentration in term placental tissue was 16.3 ng/g.w.w. tissue. This is the first report to demonstrate the serum 19-OH-A levels measured by GC-MS and also to demonstrate the levels in the cord blood. The results indicate that 19-OH-A may be the product of pregnancy and may be derived from the feto-placental compartment.


INTRODUCTION
This study compared tobacco use and cessation for African Americans (AA), Asians/Pacific Islanders (API), Hispanics/Latinos (H/L), American Indian/Alaskan Natives (AI/AN), and non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) in the United States (US) to California (CA), the state with the longest continually funded tobacco control program. The purpose of this study was to identify tobacco use disparities across racial/ethnic groups across time.

METHODS
Cigarette use prevalence (uptake and current use), consumption (mean number of cigarettes smoked per day [CPD]), and quit ratios were calculated across survey years and trends were examined within each race/ethnic group and comparing between CA and the US utilizing the 1992-2019 Tobacco Use Supplements to the Current Population Survey.

RESULTS
Prevalence decreased for all race/ethnic groups. Current use among CA NHW showed significant decline compared to US counterparts, while US H/L showed greater decline than CA counterparts. CPD decreased by approximately 30% across race/ethnic groups, with CA groups having lower numbers. The greatest decrease occurred among AA in CA (average 10.3 CPD (95% CI: 10.3,12.6) in 1992/93 to 3 CPD (95% CI: 2.4,3.7) in 2018/19). Quit ratios increased from 1992/93 to 2018/19 for CA H/L 52.4% (95% CI: 49.8,53.0) to 59.3 (95% CI: 55.8, 62.5), and CA NHWs 61.5% (95% CI: 60.7, 61.9) to 63.8% (95% CI:63.9, 66.9).

CONCLUSIONS
Although overall prevalence decreased over time for each racial/ethnic group, declines in CA outpaced the US only for NHWs. Reductions in CPD were encouraging but the quit ratio points to the need to increase tobacco control efforts toward cessation.

IMPLICATIONS
The successes in reduced cigarette use uptake and prevalence across time for both California and the rest of the US were observed largely among non-Hispanic White populations. While reductions in the number of cigarettes smoked per day are a notable success, particularly among the Californian African Americans, efforts to support quitting across racial/ethnic groups, especially marginalized groups, need to be prioritized.


The official conditions in those who work of internal affairs bodies are characterized by a very prolonged working day, stresses, a life risk, nocturnal work, tension during the working day in combination with poor working conditions in the official premises and negative behavioral factors (smoking, alcohol, dietary imbalance). In the general morbidity of the officials, respiratory, digestive, and circulatory diseases rank first, second, and third, respectively.


This paper reports several characterization methods of the properties of the uncured woven prepreg during the preforming process. The uniaxial tension, biasextension, and bending tests are conducted to measure the in-plane properties of the material. The friction tests utilized to reveal the prepreg-prepreg and prepreg-forming tool interactions. All these tests are performed within the temperature range of the real manufacturing process. The results serve as the inputs to the numerical simulation for the product prediction and preforming process parameter optimization.


ABSTRACT Eciton burchellii is a Neotropical army ant that influences the ecology of many associated animal species, including their prey and species that attend the ant's foraging raids. At least 29 bird species are obligate specialists on foraging at army ant raid fronts, and additional species across diverse avian orders follow army ant raids in a facultative manner. These facultative ant-following birds include species of raptors in Accipitriformes, Strigiformes, and Falconiformes. The most frequently documented raptors that follow raids are forest-falcons in the genus Micrastur. Micrastur falcons add a unique type of predation to raids, catching larger arthropod species that would otherwise likely escape the ants, and also prey on small fleeing vertebrates, such as lizards and other ant-following bird species. Here we present an observation of a Collared Forest-falcon (Micrastur semitorquatus) attending an E. b. parvispinum raid and flying toward a Ruddy Woodcreeper (Dendrocincla homochroa) at the raid front, as well as capturing a fleeing snake from the raid front. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a snake falling prey to a raptor at an army ant raid front.


The automobile brake-by-wire (BBW) system, which is also called the electromechanical brake system, has become a promising vehicle braking control scheme that enables many new driver interfaces and enhanced performances without a mechanical or hydraulic backup. In this paper, we survey BBW control systems with focuses on fault tolerance design and vehicle braking control schemes. At first, the system architecture of BBW systems is described. Fault tolerance design is then discussed to meet the high requirements of reliability and safety of BBW systems. A widely used braking model and several braking control schemes are investigated. Although previous work focused on antilock and antislip braking controls on a single wheel basis, we present a whole-vehicle control scheme to enhance vehicle stability and safety. Simulations based on the whole-vehicle braking model validate a proposed fuzzy logic control scheme in the lateral and yaw stability controls of vehicles.


Branched chain amino acids (BCAA), with vitamin B6 have been reported to improve fat metabolism and muscle synthesis. We hypothesized that supplementation with BCAA and vitamin B6 would result in more weight loss and improve body composition and blood markers related to cardiovascular diseases. Our aim was to determine whether the mentioned supplementation would affect weight loss, body composition, and cardiovascular risk factors during weight loss intervention. To this end, we performed a placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial in 42 overweight and obese women (BMI = 25-34.9 kg/m2). Taking a four-week moderate deficit calorie diet (-500 kcal/day), participants were randomized to receive BCAA (6 g/day) with vitamin B6 (40 mg/day) or placebo. Body composition variables measured with the use of bioelectrical impedance analysis, homeostatic model assessment, and plasma insulin, Low density lipoprotein, High density lipoprotein, Total Cholesterol, Triglyceride, and fasting blood sugar were measured. The result indicated that, weight loss was not significantly affected by BCAA and vitamin B6 supplementation (-2.43 ± 1.02 kg) or placebo (-1.64 ± 1.48 kg). However, significant time × treatment interactions in waist to hip ratio (P = 0.005), left leg lean (P = 0.004) and right leg lean (P = 0.023) were observed. Overall, supplementation with BCAA and vitamin B6 could preserve legs lean and also attenuated waist to hip ratio.


We consider the spectrum of Andreev bound states (ABSs) in an exemplary four-terminal superconducting structure where four chaotic cavities are connected by quantum point contacts to the terminals and to each other forming a ring. We nickname the resulting device 4T-ring. Such a tunable device can be realized in a 2D electron gas-superconductor or a graphene-based hybrid structure. We concentrate on the limit of a short structure and large conductance of the point contacts where there are many ABS in the device forming a quasicontinuous spectrum. The energies of the ABS can be tuned by changing the superconducting phases of the terminals. We observe the opening and closing of gaps in the spectrum upon changing the phases. This concerns the usual proximity gap that separates the levels from zero energy as well as less usual "smile" gaps that split the levels of the quasicontinuous spectrum. We demonstrate a remarkable crossover in the overall spectrum that occurs upon changing the ratio of conductances of the inner and outer point contacts. At big values of the ratio (closed limit), the levels exhibit a generic behavior expected for the spectrum of a disordered system manifesting level repulsion and Brownian "motion" upon changing the phases. At small values of the ratio (open limit), the levels are squeezed into narrow bunches separated by wide smile gaps. Each bunch consists of almost degenerate ABS formed by Andreev reflection between two adjacent terminals. We study in detail the properties of the spectrum in the limit of a small ratio, paying special attention to the crossings of bunches. We distinguish two types of crossings: (i) with a regular phase dependence of the levels and (ii) crossings where the Brownian motion of the levels leads to an apparently irregular phase dependence. We work out a perturbation theory that explains the observations both at a detailed level of random scattering in the device and at a phenomenological level of positively defined random matrices. The unusual properties of the spectrum originate from rather unobvious topological effects. The topology of the first kind is restricted to the semiclassical limit and related to the winding of the semiclassical Green function. It is responsible for the closing of the proximity gaps. The topology of the second kind comes about the discreteness of the number of modes in the point contacts and is responsible for the smile gaps. The topology of the third kind leads to the emergence of Weyl points in the spectrum and is not discussed in the context of this article.


In this paper a novel experimental investigation into the vortex formation in the wake of a fixed and an oscillating circular cylinder is presented. The aim of the study is to acquire a better understanding of the complex three-dimensional vortex flow around the cylinder at high Reynolds numbers, as well as to set up a method for the validation of CFD for riser VIV applications. The Reynolds number in the experiments ranged from 40,000 to 200,000. A 200 mm rigid cylinder of 3.4 m length was towed at constant speed in a 210 m long towing basin. The fluid loads on the cylinder were measured and state-of-the-art 3 component Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements were carried out in a 2-D plane of 400 x 700 mm in the downstream wake of the cylinder. A fixed cylinder and a oscillating cylinder were tested. The range of amplitudes and frequencies was tested for the oscillating cylinder in the lock-in region. The tests give new insight in the vortex synchronisation and will provide a valuable set of data for future CFD-code validation.


In previous studies, we have introduced marked-controlled net rewriting systems and a subclass of these called marked-controlled reconfigurable Petri nets. In a marked-controlled net rewriting system, a system configuration is described as a Petri net, and a change in configuration is described as a graph rewriting rule. A marked-controlled reconfigurable Petri net is a marked-controlled net rewriting system where a change in configuration amounts to a modification in the flow relations of the places in the domain of the involved rule in accordance with this rule, independently of the context in which this rewriting applies. In both models, the enabling of a rule not only depends on the net topology, but also depends on the net marking according to control places. Even though the expressiveness of Petri nets and marked-controlled reconfigurable Petri nets is the same, with marked-controlled reconfigurable Petri nets, we can easily and directly model concurrent and distributed systems that change their structure dynamically. In this article, we present MCReNet, a tool for the modeling and verification of marked-controlled reconfigurable Petri nets.


Local-global solvers such as ADMM for elastic simulation and geometry optimization struggle to resolve large rotations such as bending and twisting modes, and large distortions in the presence of barrier energies. We propose two improvements to address these challenges. First, we introduce a novel local-global splitting based on the polar decomposition that separates the geometric nonlinearity of rotations from the material nonlinearity of the deformation energy. The resulting ADMM-based algorithm is a combination of an L-BFGS solve in the global step and proximal updates of element stretches in the local step. We also introduce a novel method for dynamic reweighting that is used to adjust element weights at runtime for improved convergence. With both improved rotation handling and element weighting, our algorithm is considerably faster than state-of-the-art approaches for quasi-static simulations. It is also much faster at making early progress in parameterization problems, making it valuable as an initializer to jump-start second-order algorithms.


The number of CI users has grown rapidly, resulting in an increased workload for CI centres and a need for new and innovative ways to provide healthcare to users of a CI. A telehealth application was developed with a functionality to self-administer speech recognition tests at home, which was evaluated in 10 newly-implanted patients. Speech recognition in quiet and in noise improved steadily during the first few weeks of rehabilitation, after which it stabilized. The home tests provided a good alternative to testing in the clinic for newly-implanted patients who were able and willing to perform part of their CI care from home, and felt confident in using the technology required. Frequently administered speech recognition self-tests provide fine-grained progress details which enable clinicians to monitor their CI user's speech recognition ability over time without the need for users of a CI to visit the clinic. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


SIR,-As a practising gynaecologist I, like I am sure many of my colleagues, have read accounts of the debate in the House of Lords on Lord Silkin's Abortion Bill (12 February, p. 430) with great interest yet with a good deal of genuine disquiet. Mr. W. G. Mills's letter on abortion law reform (5 February, p. 355) has rightly drawn attention to the fact that the controversy on thedeliberate termination of pregnancy has not yet been resolved within the medical profession. The unreserved support of 55 gynaecologists out of 68, with only three definitely against his circulated memorandum against abortion law reform, demonstrated the fact that many gynaecologists-and they are the people ultimately concerned-feel that the medical profession is able to reach a proper decision in each case as the law now stands. Nowadays therapeutic abortion is performed relatively rarely for organic disease, and the indications are largely psychiatric with often associated secondary social factors. Whilst some clarification of the old law may be necessary in order that all can understand the situation, we must beware lest in refraining the law this results in the opening of the floodgates in the demand for termination on more liberal grounds. The sanctity of life, whether actual or potential, must be guarded carefully by us all in the medical profession in accordance with our longestablished ethical standards and basic training to preserve life. It would be interesting to hear views of other gynaecologists in this important matter before the politicians finally decide the issue for us.-I am, etc.,


This paper looks at the role of textile exports in Japan and China's economic development in the period of 1868–1930 as a major explanation for the "Little Divergence" between the two countries in the context of the "Great Divergence" between Europe and Asia. Because of textiles' large weighting in proto-industrialization gross domestic product (GDP), we postulate that China's initial 20-year lag in textiles vis-a-vis Japan turns out to be fatal for its industry and that it eventually ordains totally different development patterns for the textile industry in the two countries, which ultimately led to different growth patterns for the overall economy. Although both countries saw rapid growth of textile exports, the nature of those exports and the entailed position of each country in the industry value chain of trade were quite different. We then use Granger causality tests to show that in one case (Japan) it is in support of the export-led-growth hypothesis (ELG) while in another (China) it is not. Our study then also explains why Japan's industrial revolution took place much earlier than China's.