Many sit-and-wait predators use conspicuous displays of color to attract prey. These displays sometimes express discrete polymorphisms; however, the adaptive drivers of such variation are not well understood. Here, we explore a previously unknown color polymorphism in the orb-web spider Gasteracantha fornicata. We discovered that in North Queensland, Australia, female spiders exhibit dorsal bands appearing (to the human observer) either white or yellow and characterized by sigmoidal spectral curves centered on approx. 447 and 496 nm, respectively. Based on sensory drive theory, we hypothesized that morphs may be alternatively favored by the switch in ambient viewing conditions engendered by sunny vs. cloudy skies. We addressed this hypothesis indirectly by studying morph frequencies across a approx. 200 km geographic gradient of solar exposure (a surrogate for cloudiness), and by investigating the phenotypic signature of catch success via a resource stress experiment and in wild spiders. Our data indicate substantial geographic variation in morph frequency, with white morphs dominating at more cloudy northern locations. Rather than a gradual cline, morph frequency inverted mid-way along this range and was closely fit by a logistic relationship with latitude. Experimentally restricted access to larger prey caused spiders to lose more mass than size and to exhibit less bright dorsal markings. Wild-sampled spiders from two localities of divergent morph frequency indicated no differences in residual mass, but intriguingly, the white morph was larger and heavier (than the yellow morph) where it was relatively rare. Our data hint at negative frequency dependence, but remain broadly consistent with a sensory drive explanation based on cloudiness, and we suggest these as worthy avenues for closer investigation.


Particulate emissions from two types of helicopter turboshaft engines operated with military JP-8 and paraffinic Fischer-Tropsch (FT) fuels were characterized as an objective of the field campaign held at the Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, GA in June 2007. In general helicopter engines exhaust particles size distributions observed at the engine nozzle and 4.14 m downstream locations showing the geometric mean diameters smaller than 50 nm for all engine power settings investigated in this study. For both locations, the geometric mean diameter increased as the engine power setting increased; this trend also holds true for the emitted particle number concentration. The growth of particle geometric mean diameter was found significant, 7 nm, only in the case of the idle power setting. Sulfur-to-sulfate conversion was found to be independent of the engine power setting. Emissions of both sulfur and sulfate increased as the engine power increased. When JP-8 fuel was used, particles smaller than 7 nm were found to increase in samples taken at the downstream location. The number concentration in this tail increased as the power setting increased. No such observation was found when FT fuel was used implying that the increased formation of nuclei particles in the plume downstream was likely to be caused by the sulfur and aromatic compounds in the JP-8 fuel. Total particulate carbon emissions increased as the engine power setting increased. Use of FT fuel reduced the elemental carbon emissions as it compared to the JP-8 fuel, and organic carbon emission at idle power but not at the higher powers. The reduction of elemental carbon by the FT fuel was attributed to the absence of aromatics (soot precursors) in the fuel. The OC/EC ratio was found to be in the range of 3-50 depending on the engine power setting. The aircraft emitted OC/EC was found to decrease as the engine power increased.


In this study, two topologies are presented for switched-inductor quasi-Z-source inverters, namely a ripple input current switched-inductor quasi-Z-source inverter (rSL-qZSI) and a continuous input current switched-inductor quasi-Z-source inverter (cSL-qZSI). The proposed inverters possess high boost voltage inversion ability and a lower voltage stress across the active switching devices. Compared with a conventional switched-inductor ZSI, the proposed SL-qZSIs for the same input and output voltage provide a continuous input current and a reduced voltage stress on the capacitors. Moreover, the proposed inverters can overcome the startup inrush current problem but a conventional SL-qZSI cannot overcome this. This study presents the operating principles and analysis, and compares them with the conventional ZSIs. In order, to verify the performance of the proposed converters, a 60 W scaled-down laboratory prototype was constructed and, to test both the configurations it employed a 36 V dc input and an ac output line-to-line voltage of 83 V rms . The peak-to-peak input current ripple of the rSL-qZSI and cSL-ZSI is 126.3 and 59.8%, respectively. The experiment results verified that the proposed inverters have high step-up inversion ability, lower voltage stress on the capacitors and lower input current ripple.


PF‐04254644 is a selective kinase inhibitor of mesenchymal epithelial transition factor/hepatocyte growth factor receptor with known off‐target inhibitory activity against the phosphodiesterase (PDE) family. Rats given repeated oral doses of PF‐04254644 developed a mild to moderate myocardial degeneration accompanied by sustained increase in heart rate and contractility. Investigative studies were conducted to delineate the mechanisms of toxicity. Microarray analysis of Sprague–Dawley rat hearts in a 6 day repeat dose study with PF‐04254644 or milrinone, a selective PDE3 inhibitor, revealed similar perturbation of the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (c‐AMP) pathway. PDE inhibition and activation of c‐AMP were further substantiated using PDE3B immunofluorescence staining and through a c‐AMP response element reporter gene assay. The intracellular calcium and oxidative stress signaling pathways were more perturbed by treatment with PF‐04254644 than milrinone. The rat cardiomyocytes calcium assay found a dose‐dependent increase in intracellular calcium with PF‐04254644 treatment. These data suggest that cardiotoxicity of PF‐04254644 was probably due to activation of c‐AMP signaling, and possibly subsequent disruption of intracellular calcium and oxidative stress signaling pathways. The greater response with PF‐04254644 as compared with milrinone in gene expression and micro‐ and ultrastructural changes is probably due to the broader panel of PDEs inhibition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


BACKGROUND
Recurrent pericarditis is a state of repetitive inflammation of the pericardium with intervals of remission. The etiology of recurrent pericarditis is still largely unknown, yet most causes are presumed to be immune mediated. Genetic factors, including human leukocyte antigen (HLA) haplotypes, can be involved in dysregulation of the immune system and as a predisposition to several autoimmune conditions, including recurrent pericarditis. Several diseases are frequently associated with such manifestations. They include systemic lupus erythematosus, familial Mediterranean fever, and tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated periodic syndrome. However, idiopathic recurrent pericarditis remains the most frequently observed clinical condition and the conundrum of this disease still needs to be solved.


The authors describe a modification of the method of transauricular hypophysectomy. Anatomical reference-points suggested permit to direct the extractor directly to the gland without any use of additional instruments (goniometers, apparatus for fixation of the animal head, etc.). A detailed description of the course of the operation and of the instruments used is presented.


Since the days of the first cardiac surgical operations in the previous century, myocardial preservation has been an essential component of the successful outcome of these procedures. Although many different techniques to achieve myocardial preservation and modulation have been described in the past 50 years, this review focuses on the use of glucose, insulin, and potassium (GIK) and its effect on ischemic and postischemic myocardium.


Background: Poor feeding practices with its consequence of malnutrition is a serious impediment to child health, growth and development. Thus, periodic assessment of the nutritional status and factors affecting it among this often neglected group remains imperative. Objective: To assess the feeding practices and determinants of the nutritional status of pupils in a public primary school in Aladinma Owerri, Nigeria. Materials and methods: This was a descriptive cross sectional study of 300 pupils of a selected public primary school in Aladinma Owerri, Nigeria. The sampling was done in two stages. Data was collected using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using statistical package for social sciences version 22.0. Nutritional assessment was done using anthropometric parameters, while Chi-square test was used to identify statistically significant associations between variables. A p value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Results: There were more females 158(52.7%) than males while the mean and median ages were 9.7±0.3 and 10.6±0.3 years respectively. Two hundred and sixty five (88.3%) of them fed at least thrice daily, 92(30.7%) skipped breakfast regularly, while 215(71.7%) had school meals during break period. There were statistically significant associations between Body Mass Index for age (Underweight, Normal and Overweight cum Obese) and [sex (p=0.0121); number of siblings (p=0.013), mothers' educational status (p=0.001) and number of meals per day (p=0.005)] respectively. Conclusions: School's policies and programs that focus on promoting feeding practices and improving childhood nutrition will benefit children.


In recent years, several groups have installed high-frequency sampling receivers in the southern middle and high latitude regions, to monitor ionospheric scintillations and the total electron content (TEC) changes. Taking advantage of the archive of continuous and systematic observations of the ionosphere on L-band by means of signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS), we present the first attempt at ionospheric scintillation and TEC mapping from Latin America to Antarctica. The climatology of the area considered is derived through Ground-Based Scintillation Climatology, a method that can identify ionospheric sectors in which scintillations are more likely to occur. This study also introduces the novel ionospheric scintillation 'hot-spot' analysis. This analysis first identifies the crucial areas of the ionosphere in terms of enhanced probability of scintillation occurrence, and then it studies the seasonal variation of the main scintillation and TEC-related parameters. The results produced by this sophisticated analysis give significant indications of the spatial/ temporal recurrences of plasma irregularities, which contributes to the extending of current knowledge of the mechanisms that cause scintillations, and consequently to the development of efficient tools to forecast space-weather-related ionospheric events.


Aims Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is the most common genetic disorder of lipid metabolism. The gold standard for FH diagnosis is genetic testing, available, however, only in selected university hospitals. Clinical scores – for example, the Dutch Lipid Score – are often employed as alternative, more accessible, albeit less accurate FH diagnostic tools. The aim of this study is to obtain a more reliable approach to FH diagnosis by a "virtual" genetic test using machine-learning approaches. Methods and results We used three machine-learning algorithms (a classification tree (CT), a gradient boosting machine (GBM), a neural network (NN)) to predict the presence of FH-causative genetic mutations in two independent FH cohorts: the FH Gothenburg cohort (split into training data (N = 174) and internal test (N = 74)) and the FH-CEGP Milan cohort (external test, N = 364). By evaluating their area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curves, we found that the three machine-learning algorithms performed better (AUROC 0.79 (CT), 0.83 (GBM), and 0.83 (NN) on the Gothenburg cohort, and 0.70 (CT), 0.78 (GBM), and 0.76 (NN) on the Milan cohort) than the clinical Dutch Lipid Score (AUROC 0.68 and 0.64 on the Gothenburg and Milan cohorts, respectively) in predicting carriers of FH-causative mutations. Conclusion In the diagnosis of FH-causative genetic mutations, all three machine-learning approaches we have tested outperform the Dutch Lipid Score, which is the clinical standard. We expect these machine-learning algorithms to provide the tools to implement a virtual genetic test of FH. These tools might prove particularly important for lipid clinics without access to genetic testing.


This correlation study examined the relationship between gender and the students' attitude and prior knowledge of using one of the mathematical software programs (MATLAB). Participants were selected from one community college, one state university and one private college. Students were volunteers from three Calculus I classrooms (one class from each school) in which MATLAB was used extensively. A survey regarding students' attitude and experience on using the MATLAB program was administered to classes. The findings of the study indicated that gender differences are not related to students' attitude and experience on the program. The results revealed slightly positive correlation between and students' attitude and experience on the program. The implications of this study shows that teachers who use MATLAB in their instruction and classroom practices must pay attention on how much students use it, the obstacles students had to overcome to succeed in its use, and their general issues and concerns regarding MATLAB use.


Several options are currently available to address the challenge of restoring a single tooth in the maxillary anterior region. To select the most appropriate treatment option for each patient, every case should be evaluated individually and all available options reviewed. The learning objective of this article is to review the treatment options and the selection of appropriate treatment modalities. The soft tissue contour around pontics and implants is discussed for efficiency, predictability, and aesthetic excellence. Three clinical cases illustrate and document three different treatment modalities in the maxillary anterior region--a single tooth implant-supported restoration, combined with porcelain laminate veneers; an adhesive bridge, combined with a porcelain laminate veneer; and a conventional porcelain-fused-to-metal bridge.


This book discusses the characteristics of the traditional fairy tale in Europe and North America, and various theories of its development and interpretation. The book deals with the main collections - the Grimm brothers, Hans Andersen, Perrault and Afanes'ev - and with the development of tales in various regions of Europe, including Ireland, Wales, Scandinavia, Germany and Russia, as well as India, where it was once claimed that they originated. The subject of the fairy tale is a controversial one: problems discussed here include the relationship between tales recorded from story-tellers and literary works, the importance of printed works for the spread of the tales, the growth of recent examples with a feminine approach, the spread of popular tales like 'Cinderella', special types like the cumulative tales, possible effects of TV, and the nature of traditional plots and characters. Above all, the collection is concerned with the distribution and long survival of these tales, and the nature of their appeal. SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATHARINE BRIGGS FOLKLORE AWARD 2004.Contributors: GRAHAM ANDERSON, DAVID BLAMIRES, RUTH BOTTIGHEIMER, DEREK BREWER, MARY BROCKINGTON, ANNA CHAUDHRI, HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON, ROBIN GWYNDAF, BENGT HOLBEK, DAVID HUNT, REIMUND KVIDELAND, PATRICIA LYSAGHT, NEIL PHILIP, JAMES RIORDAN, PAT SCHAEFER, TOM SHIPPEY, JOYCE THOMAS.


We investigated a group of male patients with idiopathic infertility to determine the presence of genital infection and to identify the pattern of this infection using a specially designed protocol. A prospective study was carried out on 63 patients and 23 controls. We cultured the first voided urine, semen and swabs taken from the anterior urethra of these patients and controls for bacteria, chlamydia. Ureaplasma urealyticum and Mycoplasma hominis. Two techniques were used for chlamydial isolation and identification. These involved the use of chlamydial culture on McCoy cells with culture confirmation test and the direct fluorescent identification of Chlamydiatrachomatis. The all-liquid media (MYCOFAST ALL-IN) kits were used for the identification of mycoplasma. Our results indicate that there is a significantly higher incidence of genital infection among male patients with idiopathic infertility than in normal fertile controls (P=0.0004). Extensive microbial investigations are indicated when genital infection is suspected to be the cause of the fertile state or cannot be ruled out as a possible cause in case of idiopathic infertility.


Purpose: This study was conducted as a descriptive and comparative study to determine the adjustment level according to family function perceptions of adolescents. Method: The universe of study was 385 students. The sample of study consisted of 275 high school students who agreed to participate to the study Data were collected using socio-demographic questionnaire form, Hacettepe Personality Inventory, and Family Assessment Scale. Data were analyzed through Mean, Standard Deviation, Pearson's Correlation Test, and Student's t-Test. Results: The general adjustment points of students are 100.29 ± 18.67. The adjustment level of 16%of students is low and 84% of his/her isn't low. There are negative correlations between Hacettepe Personality Inventory points with Family Assessment Scale points. Hacettepe Personality Inventory point is low, Family Assessment Scale points is increase and students perceive as unhealthy the family function. Conclusion: The adjustment level of students perceived as unhealthy the family function are low and the adjustment level of students perceived as healthy the family function are non-low. Studies related to social adjustment has demonstrated to be critical impact on children of the family. Therefore, adolescents should be addressed in preventive mental health work and especially, health care workers, nurses are notice the approach related to communication between adolescent and family.


By applying receiver functions technique we studied the crustal thickness and mechanical properties of the Lesser Antilles Arc. We gathered teleseismic data recorded from broadband stations deployed along the arc by different networks. The analysis of P-to-S conversion and crustal reverberations allowed us to estimate the Moho depth and the average crustal Vp/Vs ratio under nine stations. The results were corroborated with forward gravimetric modeling of the long wavelength component of the Complete Bouguer Anomaly along the structure. The Moho depth ranges between 22 and 32.4 km. The distribution of thick and thin crust is closely related to variations of the convergence rate of the subducted lithosphere at the Tiburon fault system. Poisson's ratio ranges between 0.266 (Vp/Vs = 1.777) and 0.3 (Vp/Vs = 1.870). Higher values are consistent with a Mesozoic basement, related to the Greater Antilles Arc, found in the northern section of the Lesser Antilles Arc.


National report — Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) effectively promotes wound healing without causing burn to adjacent tissue, according Lars Hode, D.Sc. The operative principle, known as photobiomodulation, is particularly useful in treating decubitus ulcers, typical of people with diabetes and frail elderly patients who spend long hours in bed. It also has cosmetic applications and can be used for scar revision, as in the treatment of acne scars.


This thesis focuses on matching under ordinal preferences, i.e. problems where agents may be required to list other agents that they find acceptable in order of preference. In particular, we focus on two main cases: the popular matching and the kidney exchange problem. These problems are important in practice and in this thesis we develop novel algorithms and techniques to solve them as combinatorial optimisation problems. The first part of the thesis focuses on one-sided matching on a bipartite graph, specifically the popular matching. When the participants express their preferences in an ordinal order, one might want to guarantee that no two applicants are inclined to form a coalition in order to maximise their welfare, thus finding a stable matching is needed. Popularity is a concept that offers an attractive trade- off between these two notions. In particular, we examine the popular matching in the context of constraint programming using global constraints. We discuss the possibility to find a popular matching even for the instances that does not admit one.
The second part of the thesis focuses on non-bipartite graphs, i.e. the kidney exchange problem. Kidney transplant is the most effective treatment to cure end-stage renal disease, affecting one in every thousand European citizen. Motivated by the observation that the kidney exchange is inherently a stochastic online problem, first, we give a stochastic online method, which provides an expected value estimation that is correct within the limit of sampling errors. Second, we show that by taking into consideration a probabilistic model of future arrivals and drop-offs, we can get reduce sampling scenarios, and we can even construct a sampling-free probabilistic model, called the Abstract Exchange Graph (AEG). A final contribution of this thesis is related to finding robust solutions when uncertainty occurs. Uncertainty is inherent to most real world problems.


The meaning of student success differs according to the goals, interests and roles among prospective students, their parents and extended family, educators, scholars, employers, legislators and other stakeholders. Despite this wide variation, accountability for student success has been mostly equated with readily available measures like degree completion rates, time to degree and credit accumulation. Recently, especially in the United States, where the student assumes a large cost burden for attending college, interest has increased regarding the amount of debt incurred and the employment and wages obtained post-graduation to enable students to pay off that debt. There are many from within and outside the academy who criticize these simplistic measures of student success and seek evidence about how a college education develops students intellectually and morally, preparing them to lead lives as productive citizens and members of the 21st Century workforce. In this article, we review the key concepts of student success that have emerged from the U.S. higher education research literature, as well as major U.S. policy initiatives related to improving student success. The purpose of this analysis is to develop an organizing framework that enables scholars and policy makers to place their work within a broader context as related to the discourse on student success in the early 21st Century, especially within the United States, but with increasingly common elements internationally.


Nitric oxide synthase (NOS) (EC 1.14.23) catalyzes the oxidation of L-arginine to citrulline and nitric oxide. The complex reaction carried out by NOS, which involves NADPH, O2, and enzyme-bound FAD, FMN, and tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), has only recently begun to be elucidated. Herein we report the characterization of the pterin requirement of murine macrophage NOS. Although purified NOS activity was not dependent on BH4, activity was significantly enhanced by BH4 in a concentration-dependent fashion. NOS purified in the absence of added BH4 was found to contain substoichiometric concentrations of enzyme-bound pterin, where increased concentrations of bound pterin correlated with an increase in activity when assayed in the absence of exogenous BH4. However, NOS purified in the presence of BH4 followed by gel filtration exhibited a 1 mol of pterin:1 mol of NOS 130-kDa subunit stoichiometry and activity that was essentially independent of exogenous BH4. Experiments to probe a redox role for the pterin were carried out using pterin analogues. 6(R,S)-Methyltetrahydropterin was found to increase NOS activity in enzyme purified in the absence of BH4. However, the deaza analogue, 6(R,S)-methyl-5-deazatetrahydropterin, was not only incapable of supporting enzymatic turnover but also inhibited citrulline formation in a concentration-dependent manner. Overall, these results support a role for BH4 in the NOS reaction that involves stabilization of the enzyme and redox chemistry wherein a 1:1 stoichiometry between bound pterin and NOS subunit results in maximum activity.


ABSTRACT Streptococcus mutans belongs to the viridans group of oral streptococci, which is the leading cause of endocarditis in humans. The LraI family of lipoproteins in viridans group streptococci and other bacteria have been shown to function as virulence factors, adhesins, or ABC-type metal transporters. We previously reported the identification of the S. mutans LraI operon, sloABCR, which encodes components of a putative metal uptake system composed of SloA, an ATP-binding protein, SloB, an integral membrane protein, and SloC, a solute-binding lipoprotein, as well as a metal-dependent regulator, SloR. We report here the functional analysis of this operon. By Western blotting, addition of Mn to the growth medium repressed SloC expression in a wild-type strain but not in a sloR mutant. Other metals tested had little effect. Cells were also tested for aerobic growth in media stripped of metals then reconstituted with Mg and either Mn or Fe. Fe at 10 μM supported growth of the wild-type strain but not of a sloA or sloC mutant. Mn at 0.1 μM supported growth of the wild-type strain and sloR mutant but not of sloA or sloC mutants. The combined results suggest that the SloABC proteins transport both metals, although the SloR protein represses this system only in response to Mn. These conclusions are supported by 55Fe uptake studies with Mn as a competitor. Finally, a sloA mutant demonstrated loss of virulence in a rat model of endocarditis, suggesting that metal transport is required for endocarditis pathogenesis.


Imagine driving to the store with friends, but while en route, you are shot and beaten by the police so severely that random citizen witnesses intervene to stop the police brutality. Next, envision recovering from these injuries and awakening from a coma chained to your hospital bed informed that you are under arrest for attempted murder of a police officer. Then, consider waiting over five years for the opportunity to tell your story to the court, believing justice will be served, but instead you discover that the trial is more influenced by the revelation of your prior criminal record than the knowledge of the serious injuries that the police inflicted upon you. These facts introduce the real police encounter experienced by Mr. Theodore Dukes, an ex-felon, in Miami-Dade County. This shooting incident stemmed from an investigation of Mr. Dukes for the misdemeanor of driving with an unauthorized license plate. The criminal and civil obstacles Mr. Dukes faced after his shooting represent a particularly troublesome scenario that many ex-felons experience in police brutality cases. Police brutality victims must confront two very challenging situations: 1) how to successfully overcome the government's criminal allegation that the suspect/victim aggressed the police, and 2) simultaneously preserve the right ability to bring a civil rights violation as a plaintiff/victim against the police for the true brutality suffered. The victim's ex-felon status significantly increases the stakes regarding any potential punishment on the criminal side and greatly diminishes the likelihood of success or damage recovery on the civil side.


Objectives: To investigate the chemopreventive potential and antilipidperoxidative effects of ethanolic root extract of Tephrosia purpurea (Linn.) Pers. (TpEt) on 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA)- induced hamster buccal pouch carcinoma. Materials and Methods: Oral squamous cell carcinoma was developed in the buccal pouch of Syrian golden hamsters, by painting with 0.5% DMBA in liquid paraffin, thrice a week, for 14 weeks. The tumor incidence, volume and burden were determined. Oral administration of TpEt at a dose of 300 mg/kg, b.w., to DMBA (on alternate days for 14 weeks)- painted animals significantly prevented the incidence, volume and burden of the tumor. Results: TpEt showed potent antilipidperoxidative effect, as well as enhanced the antioxidant status in DMBA- painted animals. Conclusion: TpEt has potent chemopreventive efficacy and significant antilipidperoxidative effect, in DMBA-induced oral carcinogenesis. Further studies are needed to isolate and characterize the bioactive principle.


Disturbance of the special senses are rarely described as being associated with poliomyelitis. 1,2 This has been true in spite of demonstrable central nervous system lesions that would suggest such a possibility. As early as 1894 Redlich 3 stated that, of all the pontine structures, the lateral vestibular nucleus (Deiters') and the acoustic nucleus were the most severely damaged in bulbar poliomyelitis. Matzke and Baker, 4 in a report dealing exclusively with the effects of poliomyelitis on the pons, found this part of the brain to be involved in "practically every one" of the 109 cases of bulbar poliomyelitis examined pathologically. This damage consisted primarily of a diffuse interstitial-cell infiltration and neuronal damage. In approximately one-third of the cases there were moderate to severe inflammatory changes within the vestibular nuclei, and in five of these the changes had progressed to actual tissue necrosis. Other reports also deal with damage to


PURPOSE
To discuss the clinical applicability of the speech-evoked Auditory Brainstem Response (speech-evoked ABR) to help identifying auditory processing disorders.

METHODS
We analyzed the records of 27 children and adolescents, aged between seven and 15, who presented abnormal speech-evoked ABR. Then, the data from the behavioral auditory processing evaluation of these individuals were surveyed.

RESULTS
It was observed that, among the 27 children with abnormal speech-evoked ABR, 23 also had auditory processing disorders. Therefore, from this sample, an 85.15% probability of observing abnormal behavioral assessment of auditory processing in a child who presented abnormal speech-evoked ABR was obtained.

CONCLUSION
It is argued that the speech-evoked ABR can be used in clinical practice as an important aid tool in the diagnosis of auditory processing disorder, because, in this study, an abnormal speech-evoked ABR usually represented a deficit in the results of behavioral assessment of auditory processing. Thus, it can be used to obtain information about the perception of speech sounds in children under seven years or with challenging behavioral assessment.


IPSec is a suite of protocols that adds security to communications at the IP level. This suite of protocols is becoming more and more important as it is included as mandatory security mechanism in IPv6. In this paper we provide an evaluation of the hardware resources needed for supporting virtual private networking through IPSec. The target system of this study is a home secure gateway, therefore only the tunnel mode is considered. Focus is on ESP protocol, but also some evaluations on AH are provided. We discuss usage of the AES, HMAC-SHA-1, and HMAC-SHA-2 cryptographic algorithms. In this paper we show that enabling IPSec in a 100 Mbit/s network kills its performance in almost every case. In a 10 Mbit/s network the results obtained for performance and CPU usage are much better. An interesting case within this network configuration is that in which IPComp is enabled and used on compressible data: CPU usage grows to 100%, but network throughput rises over the 10 Mbit/s limit, due to data compression. This performance evaluation leads the conclusion that while a hardware crypto-accelerator is really key in reaching high performance, it may also be useful in small, slow systems (e.g. small embedded systems) where it would help improving performance and security.


Developmental theories suggest that affiliation with deviant peers and susceptibility to peer influence are important contributors to adolescent delinquency, but it is unclear how these variables impact antisocial behavior during the transition to adulthood, a period when most delinquent individuals decline in antisocial behavior. Using data from a longitudinal study of 1,354 antisocial youth, the present study examined how individual variation in exposure to deviant peers and resistance to peer influence affect antisocial behavior from middle adolescence into young adulthood (ages 14 to 22 years). Whereas we find evidence that antisocial individuals choose to affiliate with deviant peers, and that affiliating with deviant peers is associated with an individual's own delinquency, these complementary processes of selection and socialization operate in different developmental periods. In middle adolescence, both selection and socialization serve to make peers similar in antisocial behavior, but from ages 16 to 20 years, only socialization appears to be important. After age 20, the impact of peers on antisocial behavior disappears as individuals become increasingly resistant to peer influence, suggesting that the process of desistance from antisocial behavior may be tied to normative changes in peer relations that occur as individuals mature socially and emotionally.


Background: Lagos rabies virus belongs to lyssavirus genus responsible for meningoencephalomyelitis in mammals that affect millions of people around the world and causes thousands of human deaths every year, to the best of our knowledge there is no peptide vaccine designed for Lagos rabies virus. The resulting peptide vaccine is expected to be more immunogenic and less allergic than conventional biochemical vaccines. The aim of this study was to design an Insilco peptide vaccine for Lagos rabies virus using Immunoinformatic tools. Methods and Materials: Sequences of glycoprotein G of Lagos rabies virus was retrieved from NCBI, the retrieved sequences were then treated using different Immunoinformatic tools for B cell to find out the most conserved, surface and antigenic epitopes, and for T cell to find conserved peptides and to test their binding affinity to different MHC1 and MHC11 alleles. Then population coverage analysis and homology modeling was performed for most promising epitopes to show their structural positions in glycoprotein G. Results and Conclusions: B cell tests were conducted for Bepipred with 22 conserved epitopes, Emini surface accessibility prediction with 12 conserved surface epitopes and Kolaskar and Tongaonkar antigenicity test with only three conserved epitopes being antigenic. 23 conserved epitopes were interacted with different MHC-1 alleles with (IC50) ≤ 500 while 39 conserved epitopes interacted with MHC-II alleles with IC50 ≤ 1000. Among all the tested epitopes for world population coverage the epitope FVGYVTTTF binding to both MHC1 and MHC11 alleles was 97.30% and it was found to bind 13 different alleles that indicate strong potential to formulate peptide vaccine for Lagos rabies virus.


Mindfulness is an individual practice, where one has a heightened awareness of the present moment. An extensive research literature finds links between trait mindfulness and individual-level physical and mental health benefits. A limited but growing amount of research focuses on the association between mindfulness and romantic relationship satisfaction. Though there have been comprehensive reviews, no study has statistically tested the magnitude of the association between mindfulness and relationship satisfaction. Better understanding the value of this practice for relationships can serve to inform community educators and practitioners focused on promoting healthy family relationships. This study used a meta-analytic technique focused on 12 effect sizes from 10 different studies, and found that the relationship between mindfulness and relationship satisfaction was statistically significant with an overall effect size of .27. This finding suggests that higher levels of mindfulness are associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction; therefore, educators can reasonably consider level of mindfulness as an education target.


Magnetic fields are of considerable importance in the study of radio jets: longitudinal magnetic fields are thought to help stabilize the jet as it travels outwards from the nucleus and, since magnetic field and jet plasma are frozen together, changes in jet structure are reflected in changes in magnetic field structure. Polarization measurements provide the only way to study the magnetic field structures in extragalactic radio sources, and, therefore, are the only means of studying magnetic field alignments. From the alignment of magnetic field and jet structures, inferences may be made about dynamical changes occurring within the jet. Magnetic fields appear to be well aligned with the jets in quasars on kiloparsec-scales, but on parsec-scales, the picture is less clear with apparently large misalignments between field and jet seen in a number of sources. This raises the question: are jet magnetic fields becoming aligned on parsec-scales? This thesis presents a VLBI study of the causes of apparently misaligned fields on parsec-scales in the quasar 4C71.07.
The magnetic field alignments in quasar jets may be affected by a number of factors; external and internal Faraday rotation, unresolved changes in jet direction ("wiggles"), asymmetric magnetic field structures and gravitational lensing. Lensing rotates the image, leaving the polarization orientation unchanged, even when the lensing is sufficiently weak that only one image occurs. The jet of quasar 4C71.07 (0836+710) was chosen for this study because it shows a large misalignment (about 35 ° ) between inferred magnetic field and jet direction, and because it has a highly polarized jet with relatively simple structure. Two epochs of polarization-sensitive global VLBI observations at frequencies 5.00Hz and 8.40Hz are presented.
Although observations at two frequencies cannot identify Faraday rotation with certainty, they can be used to test the hypothesis that external Faraday rotation is responsible for the observed misalignment. The results show that external Faraday rotation does not greatly improve the alignments and the largest rotation measures observed are = lOOrad m 2 corresponding to only 20° of rotation at 6cm. Though non-linear internal Faraday rotation from an inhomogeneous medium may be responsible for the observed misalignment, it seems unlikely since the fractional polarization at the two frequencies shows no evidence of depolarization.
Misalignments are significantly reduced if both external Faraday rotation is assumed and the magnetic field compared to the high resolution local jet structure. A pattern of wiggles recurs throughout the jet and the observation of one such kink on the parsec-scale shows a magnetic field structure which follows the jet around the bends. Other instances of misalignment may be due to similar, but unresolved, jet wiggles.
Jet components show a range of apparent velocities from stationary to superluminal. No evidence was found for variations in the polarization properties of components as they move out. One prominent component shows evidence for non-ballistic motion since its linear trajectory does not align with the core position. The inferred magnetic field direction at this component appears to be well aligned with the local ridge-line of the jet rather than to the direction of motion.
Lensing models show that sufficient image rotation of the parsec-scale jet of 4C 71.07 is possible without multiple imaging, given a leusing potential characteristic of an intervening galaxy with mass M - 10 12M® , situated - 1.7 arcseconds from the source and at redshift z = 0.9. However, little observational evidence has as yet been found for such a galaxy. In addition, variations in alignment of magnetic field aloug the parsec-scale jet and the good alignments found on kiloparsecscales
mean lensing by a standard galaxy potential is unlikely to contribute significantly to the observed misalignment in quasar 4C 71.07.
In conclusion, the misalignment of the magnetic field structure in the parsec-scale jet structure of quasar 4C 71.07 is not consistent with an intrinsically longitudinal magnetic field apparently misaligned due to external Faraday rotation. However, alignments are improved when local structural variations are considered and a longitudinal magnetic field appears to follow variations in the structure of the jet. There is little evidence for components 'flowiug" along the wiggles in the jet. Rather, the jet appears to represent a locus of bright features which, upon reaching the parsecscale, move outwards in the same or similar directions. The alignment between the magnetic field and jet directions appears to already be in place when the jet reaches the parsec-scale.


The present study was performed to evaluate the antibacterial potential of camel whey and Rosmarinus officinalis aqueous and ethanol extracts as well as their effect on glutathione-S- transferases (GSTs) enzymes activity. The antibacterial activity of all samples and combinations was tested against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli using micro-broth dilution method. In addition to that, the effect of camel whey and plant extracts on GSTs was studied by spectrophotometric method using 1-chloro-2,4-dinitro-benzene (CDNB) as substrate. The obtained results showed that ethanol extract was the most effective when compared to the aqueous extract and whey proteins. Synergistic antibacterial activity was observed for whey and ethanol extract against E. coli with MBC value equal to 0.39 mg/ml. In contrast, whey combination to aqueous extract showed antagonistic bacteriostatic and bactericidal effect against both bacteria. Moreover, results revealed that all samples with 1 mg/ml concentration increased the activity of GSTs in vitro . The recorded GSTs activity was higher after combination of whey to both extracts. The best results obtained after combining the ethanol extract to whey proteins. The obtained results provided the necessity for further bioactivity studies between active ingredients of both camel whey and plant extracts.


: Erosion bacteria are the main degraders of archaeological wood excavated from waterlogged environments. Light microscopy and analytical pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) were exploited to study waterlogged archaeological wood ( Pinus sylvestris L.) at different stages of bacterial decay. The research explored the biochemical changes related to erosion bacteria degradation of the secondary cell wall in the wood cells and the chemical changes related to abiotic processes induced by the long-term waterlogged burial environment. Erosion bacteria were demonstrated by chemical analysis to cause signi fi cant holocellulose depletion. Detailed analysis of the holocellulose and lignin pyrolysis products revealed only minor chemical changes in the residual structure even after heavy erosion bacteria decay. Chemical changes in the lignin polymer is associated to enzymatic unlocking of the lignocellulose to gain access to the holocellulose fraction of the cell wall. Chemical changes in the holocellulose fraction are suggested to stem from depolymerisation and from alterations in the polymer matrix of the residual wood cell wall structure. Interestingly, a difference was observed between the sound reference wood and the waterlogged archaeological wood without erosion bacteria decay, indicating that long-term exposure in waterlogged environments results in partial decay of the holocellulose even in absence of bacterial activity.


Leadership in Transition: Primary School Principals9 Perceptions of Leadership in a Context of School-Based Management in Israel Submitted by: Beverley Topaz This thesis seeks to increase understanding as to how primary school principals in Israel perceive the impact of school-based management on their leadership practices. The argument underpinning the thesis is that school principals represent the interface between policy makers and policy implementation and as such are the key players in educational reform. This is an interpretive qualitative study, using the collective case study approach. Fifteen in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve primary school principals, leading schools which had undergone a transition to school-based management in a large urban location in Israel. Data were analysed using both a categorical and a contextual approach in order to reach an understanding of the individual principals' perceptions as well as viewing them as a group. The findings reveal that principals are in a transitional stage in educational leadership and are facing new challenges. These are presented through six core themes: autonomy; trust; the corrupting nature of power; unclear lines of responsibility; work overload and stress; and leadership beyond school boundaries. A conceptual framework is developed which underscores principals' differential responses to these challenges. This study validates findings of previous studies and offers two new insights into principals' perceptions of their leadership roles. The first is a perception of an erosion of trust across all levels of the education system. The second is a dilemma between autonomy, power and corruption. The typology developed in this thesis to represent principals' differential responses to school-based management provides a broad conceptual framework to underpin further research into principals' perceptions of their leadership roles.


What is the relation between intelligence and computation? Although the difficulty of defining `intelligence' is widely recognized, many are unaware that it is hard to give a satisfactory definition of `computational' if computation is supposed to provide a non-circular explanation for intelligent abilities. The only well-defined notion of `computation' is what can be generated by a Turing machine or a formally equivalent mechanism. This is not adequate for the key role in explaining the nature of mental processes, because it is too general, as many computations involve nothing mental, nor even processes: they are simply abstract structures. We need to combine the notion of `computation' with that of `machine'. This may still be too restrictive, if some non-computational mechanisms prove to be useful for intelligence. We need a theory-based taxonomy of {\em architectures} and {\em mechanisms} and corresponding process types. Computational machines my turn out to be a sub-class of the machines available for implementing intelligent agents. The more general analysis starts with the notion of a system with independently variable, causally interacting sub-states that have different causal roles, including both `belief-like' and `desire-like' sub-states, and many others. There are many significantly different such architectures. For certain architectures (including simple computers), some sub-states have a semantic interpretation for the system. The relevant concept of semantics is defined partly in terms of a kind of Tarski-like structural correspondence (not to be confused with isomorphism). This always leaves some semantic indeterminacy, which can be reduced by causal loops involving the environment. But the causal links are complex, can share causal pathways, and always leave mental states to some extent semantically indeterminate.


Sensitive long‐wavelength radar observations of absolute velocity never previously published from Jicamarca are brought to bear on the long‐standing problem of radar detection of slow‐moving meteors. Attention is devoted to evaluating the ionization coefficient β(V) in the critically important velocity range of 11–20 km/s in recent laboratory measurements of Thomas et al. (2016). Theoretical predictions for β(V) based on the laboratory data, on Jones (1997), on Janches et al. (2014), and on Verniani and Hawkins (1964) are used to correct the incoming meteor velocities measured with the sensitive Jicamarca high‐power, large‐aperture radar operating at 6 m wavelength. All corrected distributions are consistent with the predictions of the Nesvorný model in showing pronounced monotonic increases down to the escape velocity (11 km/s). Such distributions may be essential to explaining the pronounced ledge in nighttime electron density and the rapid disappearance of electrons in meteor trails in the altitude range of 80–85 km.


Recently, acoustic levitation for non-contact micro-particle manipulation has been attracting great interest in physical, biological, and medical applications. Among the state-of-the-art manipulation technologies, single beam acoustic tweezing exhibits advantages of providing stronger trapping force and deeper penetration depth in tissues, inducing less tissue damage, and a simple configuration involving only one device. However, particle trapping by the single beam acoustic tweezer could only be operated on a smooth two-dimensional substrate, which limits the potential for real applications. Here, we report an initial attempt to acoustically levitate an individual micro-particle stably in water and manipulate the levitated micro-particle arbitrarily two-dimensionally by simply employing a 60-MHz focused ring ultrasonic transducer. The proposed working mechanism agrees well with the phenomenon. This approach could not only acoustically levitate and manipulate a micro-particle on a culture dish and on a mylar film, but could also work properly in levitating and manipulating a micro-particle placed inside the polyimide tube. This simple and low-cost approach is extremely useful for effective non-contact micro-particle manipulation without having critical concerns on the substrate properties.


The research on gait analysis has a drastic growth in recent years for various applications like authentication, video surveillance, health monitoring system and animation. Gait recognition is an emerging intelligent system because of its recognition at a distance and it works well with low resolution videos. This paper provide the various gait features extracted in model based approach and model free approach. This paper describes the survey of gait recognition techniques which include the four major steps such as data acquisition, preprocessing, feature extraction and classification. Descriptions about wearable sensor, Vision base and pathological database is summarized. In recent years, performance of human recognition has been impressively enhanced by deep architectures. This paper offers an up todate survey of deep architectures on gait recognition, mainly focusing on the performance of convolutional neural network combined with other architectures. Furthermore, general challenges faced in gait recognition and directions for future research are discussed.


For over 20 years, forest fuel reduction has been the dominant management action in western US forests. These same actions have also been associated with the restoration of highly altered frequent-fire forests. Perhaps the vital element in the compatibility of these treatments is that both need to incorporate the salient characteristics that frequent fire produced—variability in vegetation structure and composition across landscapes and the inability to support large patches of high-severity fire. These characteristics can be achieved with both fire and mechanical treatments. The possible key to convergence of fuel reduction and forest restoration strategies is integrated planning that permits treatment design flexibility and a longer-term focus on fire reintroduction for maintenance. With changing climate conditions, long-term forest conservation will probably need to be focused on keeping tree density low enough (i.e., in the lower range of historic variation) for forest conditions to adapt to emerging disturbance patterns and novel ecological processes.


The theory of shape grammars defines a formalism to address the ambiguity that quantitative and symbolic computations mostly help us rule out in creative processes. The theory was first launched by Stiny and Gips in 1972 and has evolved into a groundbreaking pragmatist philosophy of shape and design since.
 The course, composed of a 2 hour lecture and an optional one-day workshop for 10-12 participants, introduces the fundamentals of the theory and optionally a venue for attendees to put these to practice in a hands-on workshop. The lecture will focus on giving some basic knowledge of shapes, shape algebras, and shape rules in order to explain how shape grammars translate visual and spatial thinking into design computation. Multiple examples of generative designs produced using shape grammars will be presented. The workshop consists of one exercise where participants will explore spatial relations between a number of shapes, leading to the production of a series of designs to be built by hand, out of a prescribed material such as wooden blocks or paper.


Fethullah Gülen is the leader of a very influential Islamic community in Turkey, one of the most important and most transnational Islamic movements in the world. In Azerbaijan, inspired and influenced by his ideas, many Turkish businessmen and educators have endorsed and supported his movement, most importantly with a huge network of private high schools. When this community arrived in Azerbaijan just after the end of the Soviet Union, its main objective was to encourage Islamic revival in this newly independent state where Islam had been weakened by Soviet anti-religious campaigns. However, after a few years, the movement has changed its strategy, terminating religious activism and limiting its engagement solely and uniquely to secular and modern education. However, through successful, modern education, the movement is able to promote Islamic philosophy and ethics. If the ultimate objectives of the movement are unclear, it is evident that it wants to contribute to future elites from its ranks and to be influential in Azerbaijan. Because of this lack of clarity, the movement constantly attracts controversy.


With the fast growth of information, technology and communication, the number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) engaged in exporting activities has increased rapidly. However, the number of research studies on Vietnamese SMEs is quite limited. In order to fill this gap, this study focuses on exploring exporting behaviours of Vietnamese SMEs. Specifically, this study will address three questions related to export motivations, export barriers and firms' performance. This study provides three main contributions. The first contribution is to add to the existing literature regarding exporting study based on Vietnamese context. The second contribution is to provide selected background data involving exporting activities in Vietnam at the current time. The third contribution is to suggest some recommendations for Vietnamese managers, government and associations to help Vietnamese SMEs to develop their exporting activities and improve their firms' performance. In this study, a literature review on export motivations, export barriers, and firms' performance is provided.  In order to answer these questions, fourteen in-depth interviews of Vietnamese exporting SMEs and eight in-depth interviews of Vietnamese non-exporting SMEs are conducted. Based on interview data, some key findings are identified. In terms of export motivations, exporting SMEs mentioned 22 reasons why they go overseas whereas non-exporters listed 5 reasons. Exporting SMEs' motivations are influenced by both internal and external stimuli. Compared to exporting firms, non-exporting counterparts pay more attention to the influence of internal factors in decision-making. Non-exporters' stimuli are more proactive in nature than exporters' stimuli. When examining Vietnamese export motivations, the researcher may need to take into account the influence of firm's operating sectors and the percentage of export activities. In terms of export barriers, to develop exporting activities, SMEs exporters identified 18 barriers whereas non-exporters suggested eight difficulties to start their exporting activities. The lack of resources to start or maintain exporting activities is the most mentioned barriers whereas the least mentioned barriers are those related to the environmental area. Exporting experience may be applied to provide a better understanding about the level impacts of different export barriers and the number of export barriers. In terms of firms' performance, both exporters and non-exporters proposed to use economic indicators to measure their firms' performance. There are 19 factors and 11 factors that can be used to explain exporters and non-exporters' performance, respectively. In order to understand Vietnamese SMEs' performance, the combination of the resource-based view and institution-based view need to be applied. This study also suggests some recommendations and implications for future research as well as Vietnamese firms' managers, government and associations to improve SMEs' performance and enhance their exporting activities.


The interaction of tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBABr)-based deep eutectic solvents (DESs) with calf thymus DNA (ct-DNA) was investigated by fluorescence and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. The influences of hydrogen bond donors (HBDs), with respect to chain lengths and the presence of OH group were determined through ethidium bromide (EB) fluorescence quenching. Based on the quenching process, it was concluded that hydrophobic interactions were responsible for the DES ability to quench EB from EB-bound DNA. The strong electrostatic attraction between TBA + cation on DES and negative charge phosphate DNA was proved from fluorescence and CD spectroscopy. DNA was able to maintain its double helical structure at 25 °C with a concentration of 25% DES. Keyword: Binding; Deep eutectic solvent; Tetrabutylammonium bromide; Fluorescence quenching; Circular dichroism spectroscopy


This study considers two discrete distributions based on Bernoulli trials: the Binomial and the Negative Binomial. We explore credibility and confidence intervals to estimate the probability of success of each distribution. The main goal is to analyze their performance coverage probability and average range across the parametric space. We also consider point analysis of bayesian estimators and maximum likelihood estimators, whose interest is to confirm through simulation their consistency, bias and mean square error. In this paper the Objective Bayesian Inference is applied through the noninformative Bayes-Laplace prior, Haldane prior, reference prior and least favorable prior. By analyzing the prior distributions in the minimax decision theory context we verified that the least favorable prior distribution has every other considered prior distributions as particular cases when a quadratic loss function is applied, and matches the Bayes-Laplace prior in considering the quadratic weighed loss function for the Binomial model (which was never found in literature). We used the noninformative Bayes-Laplace prior and Jeffreys prior for the Negative Binomial model. Our findings show through coverage probability, average range of bayesian intervals and point estimation that the Objective Bayesian Inference has good frequentist properties for the probability of success of Binomial and Negative Binomial models. The last stage of this study discusses the presence of correlated proportions in matched-pairs (2 × 2 table) of Bernoulli with the goal of obtaining more information in relation of the considered measures for testing the occurrence of correlated proportions. In this sense the Trinomial model and the partial likelihood function were used from the frequentist and bayesian point of view. The Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) was used for real data sets and was shown sensitive to parameterization, however, this study was not possible for the frequentist method since distinct methods are needed to be applied to Trinomial model and the partial likelihood function.


This Article examines the role of the reasonable person as it applies to the Supreme Court's investigative criminal procedure jurisprudence. The Article first explores the Court's concept and use of the reasonable person in the context of Miranda and the Fourth Amendment. The Article then highlights how the Court's view of the reasonable police officer compares to its treatment of the reasonable lay person. Specifically, the Article notes how, in many circumstances, the Court affords the reasonable police officer more room for imperfection in her perceptions, knowledge, emotions, and behaviors; comparatively, the reasonable lay person is far more frequently expected to check her identity and experiences at the door. This Article concludes that the Court's differing applications of the reasonable person allow it to balance interests covertly. However, more forthright treatment of the interests at stake would be healthier for the criminal justice system.


A method of predicting equilibrium scour depths around multiple pile structures
based on pre-scoured bottom shear stress was developed in this study. It was
hypothesized that a relationship exists between the pre-scoured bottom shear stress and
the equilibrium scour depth. A series of hydrodynamic tests were conducted in which
near-bottom flow measurements were made in the vicinity of a variety of multiple pile
structures. The distribution of bottom shear stress was estimated from these flow
measurements. Scour tests were then made in the same flume using the same structures.
A simple relationship between the equilibrium scour depth and the pre-scoured bottom
shear stress was formulated and the data from the two sets of experiments were used to
calibrate and test the formulation. The formulation gives reasonable predictions for the
range of conditions tested. The approach appears promising as an alternative way of estimating equilibrium local scour depths for complex multiple pile structures. In
addition, a number of interesting and useful findings were made regarding the rate at
which a local scour hole forms near complex structures. (Document contains 146 pages.)


The assemblability, which is the probability of successfully assembling the product parts, is directly related to the product cost. Especially, we consider the assembly failures due to tolerances. Because clearances provide the adjustability to part poses in an assembly, the assemblability analysis must be analyzed not only in terms of tolerances but also clearances. In this paper, we propose an analytic approach to the assemblability analysis. Represented by ellipsoids in a deviation space, the propagations of tolerances and clearances are calculated using Jacobian and sweep operations. The simulation results are given using a 2D assembly. The expected contribution of this paper is that the proposed method allows to compute the assemblability of a product in real time.


The heteroepitaxial growth of 3C-SiC films on Si(100) substrates by the hot-mesh chemical vapor deposition (HM-CVD) method using monomethylsilane as a source gas was investigated. From the results of X-ray diffraction spectra, 3C-SiC crystal was epitaxially grown on Si substrates at substrate temperatures above 750°C. The SiC/Si interface was observed by cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy, and was confirmed to be void-free and smooth. The density of hydrogen radicals supplied to the substrate surface during the growth was also estimated measuring the optical absorbance change of tungsten phosphate glass plates. From the dependence of the growth rate on substrate temperature, the mechanism of SiC film growth by HM-CVD was considered.


Objectives: To estimate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and resource impact of faecal occult blood testing (FOBT) and flexible sigmoidoscopy (FSIG) screening options for colorectal cancer to inform the Department of Health's policy on bowel cancer screening in England. Methods: We developed a state transition model to simulate the life experience of a cohort of individuals without polyps or cancer through to the development of adenomatous polyps and malignant carcinoma and subsequent death in the general population of England. The costs, effects and resource impact of five screening options were evaluated: (a) FOBT for individuals aged 50–69 (biennial screening); (b) FOBT for individuals aged 60–69 (biennial screening); (c) once-only FSIG for individuals aged 55; (d) once-only FSIG for individuals aged 60; and (e) once-only FSIG for individuals aged 60, followed by FOBT for individuals aged 61–70 (biennial screening). Results: The model suggests that screening using FSIG with or without FOBT may be cost-saving and may produce additional benefits compared with a policy of no screening. The marginal cost-effectiveness of FOBT options compared to a policy of no screening is estimated to be below £3000 per quality adjusted life year gained. Conclusions: Screening using FOBT and/or FSIG is potentially a cost-effective strategy for the early detection of colorectal cancer. However, the practical feasibility of alternative screening programmes is inevitably limited by current pressures on endoscopy services.


Courts make hundreds of bail decisions every week but we rarely hear about them. In the past month in New South Wales, however, we have heard much about three high-profile decisions granting bail to: Steven Fesus, accused of murdering his wife 17 years ago; Hassan "Sam" Ibrahim, charged with selling illegal firearms across western Sydney (bail was revoked on appeal); and Mahmoud Hawi, charged with the murder of Peter Zervas during a brawl at Sydney Airport in 2009. Each was granted bail under the Bail Act 2013, which came into force on May 20 this year. The allegations these men face are serious but at this stage they are precisely that: allegations. Media coverage of these cases has conflated the role of bail with that of guilt and a desire to condemn and punish. It is suggested the new laws are "soft on crime". The cases demonstrate no such thing. Yet rather than defend the Bail Act, the government has yielded to the media outrage and announced a review after only a month's operation. This vote of "no confidence" in the laws is premature and unfortunate.


An estimated 23% of all premature deaths can be attributed to environmental factors that are modifiable and preventable, a report from the World Health Organization says.

"Many measures can indeed be taken almost immediately to reduce this environmental disease burden," said Maria Neira, WHO's director for public health and the environment.

"A few examples include the promotion of safe household water storage and better hygiene measures, the use of cleaner fuels, and safer, more judicious use and management of toxic substances in the home and workplace."

The study analysed how different diseases—85 of the 102 major diseases—are affected by environmental risks and by how much.

The report concludes: "A better understanding of the disease impacts …


Here is material to which the minister may turn for literary companionship as he struggles with the problems of his own personhood. The author, whose background is that of a college president and teacher as well as that of a preacher, has given this material as lectures to ministers. Perhaps the previous oral delivery explains the somewhat disconcerting style. The short and abrupt sentences may have seemed much different in oral delivery, but they make bumpy reading. A little more variety in sentence structure would have made this book easier to read.


Following the experimental and numerical investigations of the Xi'an demonstration unit in Part I, Part II presents a parametric study on the proposed urban-scale SALSCS by using the validated numerical model. This study is aimed at understanding the influence of different variables on system performance, namely, the solar irradiation, ambient-air temperature and ground temperature at a 2-m depth as ambient parameters, and the inlet and outlet heights of the solar collector, collector width, tower width and tower height as geometric parameters. The effect of pressure drop across the filters on the system flow rate has been evaluated as well. The parameters that considerably influence the system performance have been identified.


In arid regions, such as the North African desert, sandstorms impose considerable restrictions on horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs), which have not been thoroughly investigated. This paper examines the effects of debris flow on the power generation of the HAWT. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models were established and validated to provide novel insight into the effects of debris on the aerodynamic characteristics of NACA 63415. To account for the change in the chord length and Reynolds number along the span of the blade and the 3D flow patterns, the power curves for a wind turbine were obtained using the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method. We present a novel coupled application of the neural network, CFD, and BEM to investigate the erosion rates of the blade due to different sandstorm conditions. The proposed model can be scaled and developed to assist in monitoring and prediction of HAWT blade conditions. This work shows that HAWT performance can be significantly diminished due to the aerodynamic losses under sandstorm conditions. The power generated under debris flow conditions can decrease from 10 to 30% compared to clean conditions.


A summary of research on survivable IP networks overlaid over WDM networks is presented. The WDM networks are part of optical transport service providers, who lease lightpath services to institutions with IP networks. The lightpath services realize IP links for IP networks, and they have different protection grades such as unprotected and protected. The research included considering new network survivability requirements and incorporating them into network design problems. The cost of survivable IP over WDM networks is compared over three scenarios. Each succeeding scenario has the WDM network provide more flexible services, and the IP and WDM networks become more integrated. We consider the problem of setting up lightpaths for an IP network so that the network will remain connected after a fiber link fault. Algorithms to find the lightpaths and minimize cost are given. The network costs under the three scenarios are compared by simulations.


With an estimated 250 ethnic groups, Nigeria, no doubt, has been grappling with the problem of pluralism of ethnic nationalities. It is not news in Nigeria that extreme ethnic consciousness of its citizens has led to the victimization of one ethnic group by another. This victimization has come in the form of exclusions in the distribution of both wealth and power in the country. Amidst all the exclusions, the unity of the country has been ironically regarded as sacrosanct, and should not be negotiated. It is often said that fate brought all the ethnic nationalities in order to form one great country. I subscribe to this belief that fate brought us together for the above purpose, especially now that several countries around the world are merging in one way or the other to form a formidable force to reckon with both politically and economically. Hence, "(ethnic integration) is the integration of capabilities. It develops the capabilities of the workforce… it offers opportunities for better synergy of skills". However, it would be ethically unhealthy for the unity of the country not to be compromised under the present dispensation, which has been compromising in turn the basic moral principle of social justice. There cannot be any moral basis for the continued existence of a country like Nigeria, which as it were, has thrown equality of all citizens to the dogs. Should the country remain united, it must do so by imbibing the culture of regarding all citizens, as well as, all ethnic nationalities as equal, and none should have more privileges than the others. Therefore, how can a plural society like Nigeria remain united as one indivisible country? Rawls has offered some solutions to the problem of stability engendered by the pluralism of ethnic groups in Nigeria. His idea of 'overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines' in his Political Liberalism is capable of bringing back the country to the state of stability. There will be stability, if all forms of exclusion seize to exist in the Nigerian polity.


Most of us probably think of Chad as somewhere dry and dusty in the heart of the Sahara, and it may be a surprise to discover that it has just designated the world's third largest RAMSAR wetland site. The floodplains of the Aouk and Salamat rivers, covering 50,000 km in southern Chad, are the breeding grounds for several migratory water birds and numerous large mammals, including the largest remaining elephant population in the Sahel. This area is not far from the conflict-ridden Darfur region of Sudan, and violence and refugees frequently spill over the border. As Chad also tops Transparency International's list of the world's most corrupt governments, and is fourth from bottom of the UN's Human Poverty Index, the prospects for conservation, and for people, may seem bleak. But Chad has discovered oil, and World Bank funding has been tied to government commitments to spend oil revenues on health, education and rural development (but not the environment). Inevitably the government is backtracking, and the World Bank suspended funding in January. Nevertheless, in the UN Year of Deserts and Desertification (Fisher, 2006) it is a development worth watching. It also prompts a question. Whilst most responsible governments are expected to invest their resources in raising people out of poverty, to what extent does this responsibility extend to big business or, for that matter, to conservationists? Although this was debated extensively in Oryx in 2004 (38: 119–120, 137–147), the answer remains elusive. As with oil companies, international conservation organizations have been criticized over their record on poverty and human rights. Protectionist conservation strategies can impose disproportionate costs on people. Where conservation conflicts with local interests, so the argument goes, local interests lose out, and with them goes any local support for conservation. This is bad for everyone, and there are both ethical and strategic reasons for ensuring that the costs of conservation, whatever they may be, do not fall disproportionately on the poor. Of particular relevance, and highlighted in this issue, is human-wildlife conflict mitigation. Threatened large mammals are rarely loved by the people living with them. Global conservation flagships can be local pests, and if livestock predation and crop raiding are not addressed, such species are persecuted (Altrichter et al., 2006). Fortunately a great deal of conservation science and practice is being brought to bear to find solutions to offset the costs borne by poor rural communities. Two papers in this issue of Oryx focus on crop raiding African elephants, one testing the effects of farm-based crop protection methods (Sitati & Walpole, 2006) and the other exploring the viability of alternative cash crops that are less palatable to wildlife (Parker & Osborn, 2006). Both suggest that local solutions can be found. Tackling the costs of conservation for the poor is one thing, but whether conservation organizations should be involved in poverty reduction remains hotly contested. Every conservation organization is keen to demonstrate how biodiversity conquers poverty, to keep the door to development funding unlocked and ensure that the environment is not the forgotten Millennium Development Goal. Yet for some, pledging to improve lives and livelihoods is straying beyond the conservation mandate into areas where we are ill-equipped to deliver. How far should we go, and under what circumstances is it legitimate to do so? It is clear that poverty and conservation are often interlinked. Two papers in the previous issue of Oryx revealed the importance to poorer rural households in Madagascar of harvesting bats (Goodman, 2006) and crayfish (Jones et al., 2006). A study of turtle harvesting in China in this issue points to the financial benefits of illegal trade in otherwise low-income villages as a powerful incentive to continue the practice (Shiping et al., 2006). It is less clear whether conservation can offer people a genuine route out of poverty, or whether poverty reduction efforts will bring conservation gains. We know that simplistic models that predict benefits for both conservation and poverty reduction are generally unrealistic and unattainable. In some cases conservation efforts can bring benefits to the poor but there are inevitably trade-offs that can shift the balance considerably in the wrong direction. At the same time a dogged adherence to livelihoods-focused initiatives may reduce poverty and increase wellbeing in ways that are counterproductive to conservation if increased affluence and opportunity simply fuel increased resource degradation. Poverty is rarely the only, or even the most urgent, threat to biodiversity.


The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the lived experience of patient prudence in health care. Prudence has previously been defined as good judgement in setting realistic personal goals and using personal resources to achieve those goals. Audiotaped interviews were conducted with 10 hospitalized adults for whom health care providers had previously recommended life style changes for health reasons. Data were analysed using Colaizzi's method. Seventy-seven significant statements were identified and, from their formulated meanings, seven themes emerged that were integrated into a description of the fundamental structure of prudence. From the patient perspective, prudence in health care is a dynamic phenomenon that involves achieving well-being and self-perpetuation within the context of the patient's world of competing values and is experienced with emotions that range from harmony to fear and depression.


Associative classification (AC) is a branch in data mining that utilises association rule discovery methods in classification problems. In this paper, we propose a new training method called Looking at the Class (LC), which can be adapted by any rule-based AC algorithm. Unlike the traditional Classification based on Association rule (CBA) training method, which joins disjoint itemsets regardless of their class labels, our method joins only itemsets with similar class labels during the training phase. This prevents the accumulation of too many unnecessary merging during learning, and consequently results in huge saving (58%-91%) with reference of computational time and memory on large datasets.


Vargas P, Perry T, Robles E, et al. Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol. 2007;99(1):22–28 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY. To examine the relationship of BMI and asthma in children in the Head Start program in Arkansas. STUDY POPULATION. A group of 213 children aged 3 to 5 years with physician-diagnosed asthma were compared with 816 age-matched peer control subjects from the sample of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and with 1024 children in prekindergarten in Arkansas public schools. METHODS. Caregivers of the children with asthma from the Head Start program were interviewed with a structured questionnaire including the Juniper Asthma Quality of Life Survey, and the children's medical charts were reviewed. One hundred forty-one of the 213 children underwent skin-prick testing. One hundred forty-five of the children had urine cotinine levels measured to determine exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. These data were compared with the 2 reference groups in a cross-sectional analysis. RESULTS. The prevalence of obesity (BMI > 95th percentile) was significantly higher in the Head Start children with asthma compared with the NHANES children (P < .001) and the prekindergarten children (P < .05). Compared with Head Start children with a BMI at <85th percentile, Head Start asthmatic patients with a BMI at >85th percentile reported significantly more school days missed, lifetime hospitalizations, emergency department visits, activity limitations, and oral corticosteroid bursts. No significant differences were observed in rescue and controller medications, environmental tobacco smoke exposure, prick-puncture allergy testing, quality of life, or nighttime symptoms. CONCLUSIONS. Obesity (BMI > 95th percentile) was associated with increased asthma prevalence and morbidity. There was no association with the number or type of asthma medications or atopic status. REVIEWER COMMENTS. This is another study showing the association of obesity and asthma. In this study, 18.8% of the Head Start children with asthma had a BMI at >95th percentile, compared with 10.8% of the NHANES and 14.4% of the prekindergarten general-population children. The mechanisms of association have not been clearly established. Both conditions are characterized by chronic inflammation.


Small-scale farmlands are dynamic systems crucial to the food-security and livelihoods of more than two billion people and there is political pressure in many developing nations to consolidate and expand small farms into larger units of management. This could have consequences for agro-ecosystem processes and the ecosystem services and disservices that regulate crop production. This thesis aims to highlight and address these issues in smallholder farming landscapes, which are poorly studied and represent significant knowledge gaps.
Research on pollination and biological control is biased towards large-scale systems, and biological control research shows a strong geographic bias to temperate developed nations, whilst pollination research is geographically more balanced. To have more impact on global issues of poverty and food-security, agricultural ecosystem service research needs to have a greater focus on small-scale farmed landscapes.
In a low-input, small-scale farmed area of Kenya, the response to land-use intensification of insect groups important to ecosystem services and disservices for crop production was examined. Small ecotone pollinators responded negatively to intensification, but larger bees did not. Natural enemies did not show a strong negative response to land-use intensification, which suggested that low pesticide application rates allowed cultural species to persist in croplands. The functional richness of Hymenoptera and Coleoptera was highest in the most intensified land-use context, which provides support for the intermediate landscape complexity hypothesis. Functional evenness and trait-environment associations showed that phytophagous traits increased with land-use intensification and could be linked to increased ecosystem disservice if crops are consumed.
Smallholder interviews showed that ecosystem disservices due to crop-raiding animals were a major problem and that attitudes to wildlife, elephants and protected areas became more negative with increasing proximity to large areas of wilderness. However, increasing the proportion of natural habitat in the vicinity of smallholdings moderated the negative effect of proximity to wilderness on attitudes towards protected areas. Thus, perceived ecosystem disservices may vary with land-sparing at different spatial scales (i.e., conserved habitat).
Whilst this thesis demonstrates that land-use intensification of early stage small-scale farming landscapes affects human perceptions and attitudes towards nature and the taxonomic and functional composition of cropland insect communities, direct quantification of the crop yield and economic consequences of this is sorely needed. Assessment of actual vs. perceived ecosystem disservices would also aid the conservation measures needed to make land-sparing work.


Performance capture is used extensively within the creative industries to efficiently produce high quality, realistic character animation in movies and video games. Existing commercial systems for performance capture are limited to working within constrained environments, requiring wearable visual markers or suits, and frequently specialised imaging devices (e.g. infra-red cameras) both of which limit deployment scenarios (e.g. indoor capture). This thesis explores novel methods to relax these constraints, applying machine learning techniques to estimate human pose using regular video cameras and without the requirement of visible markers on the performer. This unlocks the potential for co-production of principal footage and performance capture data, leading to production efficiencies. For example, using an array of static witness cameras deployed on-set, performance capture data for a video games character accompanying a major movie franchise might be captured at the same time the movie is shot. The need to call the actor for a second day of shooting in a specialised motion capture (mo-cap) facility is avoided, saving time and money, since performance capture was possible without corrupting the principal movie footage with markers or constraining set design. Furthermore, if such performance capture data is available in real-time, the director may immediately pre-visualize the look and feel of the final character animation enabling tighter capture iteration and improved creative direction. This further enhances the potential for production efficiencies.

The core technical contributions of this thesis are novel software algorithms that leverage machine learning to fuse of data from multiple sensors – synchronised video cameras, and in some cases, inertial measurement units (IMUs) – in order to robustly estimate human body pose over time, doing so at real-time or near real-time rates.

Firstly, a hardware-accelerated capture solution is developed for acquiring coarse volumetric occupancy data from multiple viewpoint video footage, in the form of a probabilistic visual hull (PVH). Using CUDA-based GPU acceleration the PVH may be estimated in real-time, and subsequently used to train machine learning algorithms to infer human skeletal pose from PVH data.

Initially a variety of machine learning approaches for skeletal joint pose estimation are explored, contrasting classical and deep inference methods. By quantizing volumetric data into a two-dimensional (2D) spherical histogram representation it is shown that convolutional neural networks (CNN) architectures used traditionally for object recognition may be re-purposed for skeletal joint estimation given suitable a training methodology and data augmentation strategy.

The generalization of such architectures to a fully volumetric (3D) CNN is explored, achieving state of the art performance at human pose estimation using an volumetric auto-encoder (hour-glass) architecture that emulates networks traditionally used for de-noising and super-resolution (up-scaling) of 2D data. A framework is developed that is capable of simultaneously estimating human pose from volumetric data, whilst also up-scaling that volumetric data to enable fine-grain estimation of surface detail given a deeply learned prior from previous performance. The method is shown to generalise well even when that prior is learned across different subjects, performing different movements even in different studio camera configurations.

Performance can be further improved using a learned temporal model of data, and through the fusion of complementary sensor modalities – video and IMUs – to enhance the accuracy of human pose estimation inferred from a volumetric CNN. Although IMUs have been applied in the performance capture domain for many years, they are prone to drift limiting their use to short capture sequences. The novel fusion of IMU with video data enables improved global localization and so reduced error over time whilst simultaneously mitigating the issues of limb inter-occlusion that can frustrate video-only approaches.


COVID-19 has spurred much interest in the therapeutic potential of repurposed drugs. A family of acid-reducing drugs, known as histamine H2 receptor antagonists (H2RA), competitively bind the H2R and block its stimulation by histamine; examples of such drugs are famotidine (e.g., Pepcid) and ranitidine (e.g., Zantac). A dense web of functionalities between histamine and H2RAs, on the one hand, and downstream cellular pathways, on the other hand, links disparate physiological pathways in gastrointestinal contexts (e.g., acid reduction) to the dysregulated inflammatory cascades (cytokine storm) underlying the pathophysiology of COVID-19. Is famotidine beneficial in treating COVID-19? This question remains unresolved, though not for lack of effort: over 10 studies have examined the potential therapeutic value of famotidine in COVID-19, but have found conflicting results (pro-famotidine, anti-famotidine, and neutral). Given the contradictory reports, we have undertaken the new analysis reported herein. Notably, studies published thus far rest upon substantially smaller datasets than drawn upon in the pre-sent work. We analyzed a cohort of 22,560 COVID-19 patients taking H1/H2 receptor antagonists, focusing on 1,379 severe cases requiring respiratory support. We analyzed outcomes for treatment with the H1RAs loratadine (e.g., Claritin) and cetirizine (e.g., Zyrtec), the H2RA famotidine, aspirin, and a famotidine & aspirin combination. For cases that reached the point of respiratory support, we found a significantly reduced fatality risk for famotidine treatment. We did not detect a benefit from dual-histamine receptor blockade (concurrently targeting H1 and H2 receptors). Notably, famotidine combined with aspirin did exhibit a significant synergistic survival benefit (odds ratio of 0.55). The relative risk for death decreased by 32.5%--an immense benefit, given the more than 2.6 million COVID-19-related deaths thus far. We found lower levels of serum markers for severe disease (e.g., C-reactive protein) in famotidine users, consistent with prior findings by others and with a role for famotidine in attenuating cytokine release. The large, international, multi-center retrospective study reported here, sampling over 250,000 COVID-19 cases, hopefully helps clarify the possible value of clinically-approved histamine antagonists such as famotidine. Given these findings, alongside the cost-effectiveness and mild side-effects of popular drugs like famotidine and aspirin, we suggest that further prospective clinical trials, perhaps utilizing the aspirin combination reported here, are advisable.


CONTEXT
Thyroid cancer, the most common endocrine cancer, is on the rise. It is less common in the African American (AA) population in the United States. Few studies have looked at outcome disparities for different patient populations, particularly those involving race.

OBJECTIVE
Using data from the SEER registry, we sought to determine whether five-year survival differed significantly between AA and White patients and, whether differences were due to patient or disease characteristics.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort analysis. Univariate comparisons were made using Student-t tests for continuous variables, chi-square tests for categorical variables. Survivor functions were estimated using Kaplan-Meier curves, and comparisons were made by log rank tests.

SETTING AND PATIENTS
26,902 patients (25,210 White and 1,692 AA) were diagnosed with thyroid cancer between 1992 and 2006.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)
Five-year survival defined as time from diagnosis to death from cancer within five years.

RESULTS
AA had a significantly lower rate of five-year survival compared to Whites (96.5% vs 97.4%, P = .006). AA patients were 2.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with anaplastic disease (Risk ratio [RRI = 2.33 (95% CI: 1.52-3.58), P = .0001), and were also nearly 80% more likely to be diagnosed with follicular disease (RR = 1.78 [95% CI: 1.59-1.99], P < .0001). They were nearly twice as likely to have larger tumors (> or = 4 cm) than White patients (RR = 1.94 [95% CI: 1.78-2.12], P < .0001).

CONCLUSIONS
AA had poorer survival from thyroid cancer relative to White patients; this difference may be explained by differences in disease characteristics such as a relatively higher rate of anaplastic thyroid cancer, follicular cancer and larger tumors at presentation.


A two-strain tuberculosis (TB) transmission model incorporating antibiotic-generated TB resistant strains and long and variable waiting periods within the latently infected class is introduced. The mathematical analysis is carried out when the waiting periods are modeled via parametrically friendly gamma distributions, a reasonable alternative to the use of exponential distributed waiting periods or to integral equations involving ``arbitrary'' distributions. The model supports a globally-asymptotically stable disease-free equilibrium when the reproduction number is less than one and an endemic equilibriums, shown to be locally asymptotically stable, or l.a.s., whenever the basic reproduction number is greater than one. Conditions for the existence and maintenance of TB resistant strains are discussed. The possibility of exogenous re-infection is added and shown to be capable of supporting multiple equilibria; a situation that increases the challenges faced by public health experts. We show that exogenous re-infection may help established resilient communities of actively-TB infected individuals that cannot be eliminated using approaches based exclusively on the ability to bring the control reproductive number just below 1.


The increasing incidence of antibiotic-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections is a global health threat necessitating the development of new antibiotics. Serine hydrolases (SHs) are a promising class of targets because of their importance for the synthesis of the mycobacterial cell envelope. We screened a library of small molecules containing serine-reactive electrophiles and identified narrow spectrum inhibitors of M. tuberculous growth. Using these lead molecules, we performed competitive activity-based protein profiling and identified multiple SH targets, including enzymes with uncharacterized functions. Lipidomic analyses of compound-treated cultures revealed an accumulation of free lipids and a substantial decrease in lipooligosaccharides, linking SH inhibition to defects in cell envelope biogenesis. Mutant analysis revealed a path to resistance via the synthesis of mycocerates, but not through mutations to target enzymes. Our results suggest that simultaneous inhibition of multiple SH enzymes is likely to be an effective therapeutic strategy for the treatment of M. tuberculosis infections.


Abstract The article shows process of the implementation satellite systems in Polish aviation which contributed to accomplishment Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) concept. Since 1991 authors have introduced Satellite Navigation Equipment in Polish Air Forces. The studies and researches provide to the Polish Air Force alternative approaches, modernize their navigation and landing systems and achieve compatibility with systems of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Acquired experience, conducted military tests and obtained results enabled to take up work scientifically - research in the environment of the civil aviation. Therefore in 2008 there has been launched cooperation with Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA). Thanks to cooperation, there have been compiled and fulfilled three fundamental international projects: EGNOS APV MIELEC (EGNOS Introduction in European Eastern Region - APV Mielec), HEDGE (Helicopters Deploy GNSS in Europe), SHERPA (Support ad-Hoc to Eastern Region Pre-operational in GNSS). The successful completion of these projects enabled implementation 21 procedures of the RNAV GNSS final approach at Polish airports, contributing to the implementation of PBN in Poland as well as ICAO resolution A37-11. Results of conducted research which served for the implementation of satellite techniques in the air transport constitute the meaning of this material.


The publication of the OECD report on the PISA 2000 study induced a public outcry in Germany. On average, German students participating in this standardized test performed considerably below the OECD average and substantially worse than those of other European countries, like Finland or Ireland. However, the results presented by the report consist mainly of country averages which do not take into account any other covariates of individual student achievement. This paper provides a comprehensive econometric analysis of the association of the individual-level reading test scores of German students with individual and family background information and with characteristics of the school and class of the 15 to 16 year old respondents in Germany to the survey. The results of several quantile regression analyses demonstrate that many popular explanations, like too much regulation of schools or the substantial share of non-citizens among the participating students, are by no means supported by the data. Rather results point towards a considerable impact of schools aiming at a more homogenous body of students in terms of their educational achievement.