The philosophy of deep ecology originated in the 1970s with the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess and has since spread around the world. Its basic premises are a belief in the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature, a belief that ecological principles should dictate human actions and moral evaluations, an emphasis on noninterference into natural processes, and a critique of materialism and technological progress.This book approaches deep ecology as a philosophy, not as a political, social, or environmental movement. In part I, the authors compare deep ecology's philosophical ideas with other positions and debates in environmental philosophy and to other schools of thought such as social ecology, ecofeminism, and moral pluralism. In part II, they investigate the connections between deep ecology and other contemporary world views, such as continental philosophy, postmodernism, and non-Western philosophical traditions. The first anthology on deep ecology that is not primarily the work of the movement's followers, Beneath the Surface offers a rigorous assessment of deep ecology's strengths and weaknesses as a philosophical position.Contributors : John Clark, Deane Curtin, Arran Gare, William Grey, Mathew Humphrey, Knut Jacobsen, Eric Katz, Andrew Light, Jonathan Maskit, Val Plumwood, David Rothenberg, Ariel Salleh, Bron Taylor, Michael Zimmerman.


Matrix-free finite element implementations for large applications provide an attractive alternative to standard sparse matrix data formats due to the significantly reduced memory consumption. Here, we show that they are also competitive with respect to the run time in the low order case if combined with suitable stencil scaling techniques. We focus on variable coefficient vector-valued partial differential equations as they arise in many physical applications. The presented method is based on scaling constant reference stencils originating from a linear finite element discretization instead of evaluating the bilinear forms on-the-fly. This method assumes the usage of hierarchical hybrid grids, and it may be applied to vector-valued second-order elliptic partial differential equations directly or as a part of more complicated problems. We provide theoretical and experimental performance estimates showing the advantages of this new approach compared to the traditional on-the-fly integration and stored matrix approaches. In our numerical experiments, we consider two specific mathematical models. Namely, linear elastostatics and incompressible Stokes flow. The final example considers a non-linear shear-thinning generalized Newtonian fluid. For this type of non-linearity, we present an efficient approach to compute a regularized strain rate which is then used to define the node-wise viscosity. Depending on the compute architecture, we could observe maximum speedups of 64% and 122% compared to the on-the-fly integration. The largest considered example involved solving a Stokes problem with 12288 compute cores on the state of the art supercomputer SuperMUC-NG.


Shrinkage can be critical factor for the design of structural members due to the length changes by the time-dependent deformation. In this investigation, two self-consolidating concrete (SCC) and two high-performance concrete (HPC) mixtures with target 56-day compressive strengths of 55 and 69 MPa and having 18-hour release strengths of 34.5 MPa and 43 MPa, respectively, were used to cast four full-scale AASHTO-Type II girders measuring 9.44-m in length. For each strength level, the SCC and HPC mixtures were proportioned with the same water-to-cementitious materials ratio (w/cm) and binder type. The high-range water-reducing admixture (HRWRA) dosage was adjusted to obtain a slump flow of 680 ± 20 mm for the SCC mixtures and a slump of 160 ± 20 mm for the HPC mixtures. The constructability and shrinkage of full-scale girders cast with SCC and HPC mixtures used in precast prestressed girders were investigated and compared. Results of tests on full-scale girders indicated that, SCC placement was successfully carried out by casting the concrete from location at the midspan of the 9.44-m long girders. Both HPC and SCC mixtures developed similar autogenous shrinkage for the mixtures made with the similar w/cm; the two SCC mixtures developed about 20% greater drying shrinkage than the comparable HPC mixtures after 112 days of drying.


Background & Aim: Marriage is one of the most important events in people's lives. Premarital counseling sessions have significant impact on better recognition of young people about their future spouses. Some individual features of couples are important in continuation of marriage. Thus, this research is conducted to study of demographic characteristics of couples referring to premarital counseling center in Torbat Heydariyeh during 2014-2015. Methods: This is a descriptive/cross-sectional study which carried out on 4384 marrying couples by convenience sampling. Demographic information includes age, education, sex and residency. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 21 software. Results: Research subjects ranged from 9 to 45 years old. The most frequent age range in women and men was 16-20 Years (44 %) and 21-25 Years (48%), respectively. Moreover, 40% of couples referring to counseling center were engaged and the rest were in initial dating steps. Conclusion: According to the results of this study and high percentage of couples who engaged before referring to premarital counseling center, it is necessary to pay more attention to family education especially young people.


The article examines the cultural situation in Europe and Russia between 1914 and 1945 and its understanding by Russian intellectuals who belonged to the artistic sphere. The analysis of the concepts and discourses of national identity is inscribed in the pan-European process, characterized by Trencheni as a "conservative revolution" and "quasi-imperial paradigm". The author states that the collapse of the Russian Empire and the reformatting of the imperial idea in the 1920s and 1930s were the main factor that caused the formation of nation-building concepts. Based on the concept of "imperial modernization", Arnason described the main directions of artistic strategies in the period of Stalinism. The inseparability of the ideas of cultural / aesthetic nationalism in the late imperial period (1905-1917), the search for national identity among the emigrants and the nationalist turn in Stalinist cultural policy on the eve of World War II are revealed. The author also demonstrates the close connection of imperial and nationalistic discourses in the late imperial and Soviet periods of Russian history. It is proved that the symbolic resource of philosophical and aesthetic modernism during the Russian Silver Age was actively used in the Stalinist cultural policy on the eve of the World War II. The author analyzes the intelligent ideas of "Eurasianism" (P. Suvchinsky, A. Lurye, A. Losev, N. Trubetskoy, etc.) born by the Revolution, Civil War and World War I as a reaction to the Soviet project of nationbuilding and global expansion and as an alternative to them. At the same time, the author finds that the anti-Western, anti-bourgeois trend of thoughts of the "Eurasians" in substantiating the national specifics of Russian culture and the special international mission of Russia was very close to the aesthetic and political content of the works of the leading masters of the late 1930s, such as Sergey Prokofiev and Sergey Eisenstein. doi 10.17072/2219-3111-2017-4-136-147


Abstract Only three years after the 1864 Convention — historically the "first" Geneva Convention — was adopted, proposals were made to amend the text by introducing provisions on the National Red Cross Societies. However, the result of this procedure — the 1868 Additional Articles — was never ratified by any of the parties to the original treaty. In the years that followed, no less than five proposals were circulated by the ICRC, none of which led to new treaty provisions until, in 1906, the States adopted a new Convention to replace the original 1864 treaty. Although the proposed texts originated in Geneva — drafted by General Dufour and Gustave Moynier — the ICRC remained sceptical about the wisdom of amending the original Convention. The fear of losing what had been gained in 1864 was stronger than the expectation that new progress would be made in protecting war victims. In an annex to this article the various drafts are published for the first time.


BACKGROUND
There are few epidemiologic data describing the long-term incidence of hypertension in people with diabetes.

METHODS
In a population-based study performed in southern Wisconsin, 765 individuals diagnosed as having diabetes when they were younger than 30 years and taking insulin participated in baseline, 4-year, and 10-year examinations. Blood pressure was measured by standardized protocols,and hypertension was defined as a mean systolic blood pressure of 160 mm Hg or more ( > or = 140 mm Hg in those younger than 25 years) and/or mean diastolic blood pressure of 95 mm Hg or more ( > or = 90 mm Hg in those younger than 25 years) and/or history of hypertension with the use of antihypertensive medication.

RESULTS
The prevalence of hypertension at baseline was 17.3%. The 10-year incidence of hypertension was 25.9%. The incidence of hypertension was greater with older age, longer duration of diabetes, higher glycosylated hemoglobin level, proteinuria, more severe retinopathy, and male gender. After other risk factors were controlled for, the 10-year incidence of hypertension was significantly related to higher glycosylated hemoglobin level (odds ratio, 1.23 per percentage increase; 95% confidence interval, 1.13 to 1.34) presence of gross proteinuria (odds ratio, 3.64; 95% confidence interval, 2.26 to 5.85), longer duration of diabetes (odds ratio, 1.03 per year of diabetes; 95% confidence interval, 1.01 to 1.04), and being male (odds ratio, 1.93; 95% confidence interval, 1.34 to 2.77).

CONCLUSION
These data suggest that control of hyperglycemia and prevention of gross proteinuria may lead to a reduction in the long-term incidence of hypertension.


Herein, we research the possibilities of assisting visually impaired pedestrians moving in traffic situations by using camera-based detection of relevant objects in their immediate surroundings. Therefore, we use and adapt algorithms from the field of driver assistance. We present a road background segmentation based on watersheds, whose results are used as input for the presented crosswalk and lane detection algorithms. The crosswalk detection is based on the application of two 1D mean filters and the lane detection on local computations of the EDF (Edge Distribution Function). In our evaluation, the described algorithms achieved good hit rates of 99.87% (road segmentation), 98.64% (crosswalk detection), and 97.89% (lane detection).


Current trends in the microelectronic industry suggest that by the mid-1990s successful thermal management will require removal of as much as 500 W and 100 W/cm2 from a single chip and in excess of 10 kW and 10 W/cm3 from a multichip module. These cooling requirements pose a serious challenge to today's cooling technology and have spurred extensive research and development of advanced thermal control techniques for microelectronics. The choice of the thermal management strategy for an electronic product has a large impact on its cost, reliability, operating environment, and performance. Thus, while thermal control is just one of several enabling packaging technologies, it deserves and often receives special attention in the development of leading-edge electronic systems. Many observers believe that direct cooling with inert, dielectric liquids may become the method of choice for electronic systems of the late 1990s. This presentation begins with a review of the trends in IC technology and the state-of-the-art in single chip packages and multichip modules. It then examines the packaging development process and defines the future requirements, options, and limits of thermal management techniques. Attention is then turned to direct liquid cooling, including implementation schemes, governing phenomena, research issues, and prospects for widespread implementation.


Global signal regression (GSR) is a commonly used albeit controversial preprocessing approach in the analysis of resting-state BOLD fMRI data. While the effects of GSR on resting-state functional connectivity measures have received much attention, there has been relatively little attention devoted to its effects on studies looking at the relation between resting-state BOLD measures and independent measures of brain activity. In this study we used simultaneously acquired EEG-fMRI data in humans to examine the effects of GSR on the correlation between resting-state BOLD fluctuations and EEG vigilance measures. We show that GSR leads to a positive shift in the correlation between the BOLD and vigilance measures. This shift leads to a reduction in the spatial extent of negative correlations in widespread brain areas, including the visual cortex, but leads to the appearance of positive correlations in other areas, such as the cingulate gyrus. The results obtained using GSR are consistent with those of a temporal censoring process in which the correlation is computed using a temporal subset of the data. Since the data from these retained time points are unaffected by the censoring process, this finding suggests that the positive correlations in cingulate gyrus are not simply an artifact of GSR.


BACKGROUND
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) may utilize the CXCR4 coreceptor (X4 virus), the CCR5 coreceptor (R5 virus), or both (dual/mixed [DM] virus). We analyzed HIV-1 coreceptor tropism in Ugandan infants enrolled in the HIVNET (HIV Network for Prevention Trials) 012 trial.

METHODS
Plasma or serum was analyzed using a commercial coreceptor tropism assay. HIV env subtype was determined by phylogenetic methods.

RESULTS
Tropism results were obtained for 57 samples from infants collected 6-14 weeks after birth. Fifty-two infants had only R5 virus, and 5 had either X4 or DM virus. The mothers of those 5 infants also had X4 or DM virus. In infants, subtype D infection was associated with high-level infectivity in CCR5-bearing cells and also with the detection of X4 or DM strains. High-level infectivity in CCR5-bearing cells was associated with decreased infant survival, but infection with X4 or DM virus was not. HIV clones from infants with DM viral populations showed different patterns of coreceptor use. V3 loop sequence-based algorithms predicted the tropism of some, but not all, env clones.

CONCLUSIONS
Complex patterns of HIV tropism were found in HIV-infected newborn infants. Subtype D infection was associated with X4 virus and with high-level replication in CCR5-bearing cells. High-level replication of R5 virus was associated with decreased infant survival.


BACKGROUND: Treating multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains challenging. However, the determinants and timing of poor outcomes during MDR-TB treatment are still poorly understood.METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study on all adult MDR-TB patients treated at Persahabatan Hospital, Jakarta, Indonesia, between January 2013 and December 2016. Risk factors for poor outcomes were analysed using Cox regression.RESULTS: Death occurred at a median time of 6 months (IQR 4-14) and loss to follow-up (LTFU) at 7 months (IQR 3-11). In multivariate analysis, advanced age (aHR 2.91, 95% CI 1.21-6.96; P = 0.017 for age >60 years), having diabetes mellitus (aHR 2.18, 95% CI 1.25-3.82; P = 0.006) and HIV co-infection (aHR 3.73, 95% CI 1.14-12.23; P = 0.030) were predictive of poor outcome in the first 7 months of treatment, whereas history of LTFU (patients who were LTFU once: aHR 2.14, 95% CI 1.33-3.47; P = 0.002; patients who were LTFU more than once: aHR 3.61, 95% CI 1.68-7.77; P = 0.001) and baseline body mass index <18.5 kg/m² (aHR 1.98, 95% CI 1.10-3.56; P = 0.022) predicted poor outcome after 7 months of treatment.CONCLUSION: Different subsets of patients with MDR-TB are at risk of poor outcome at different times during treatment.


The structural, dynamical and thermodynamic properties of antimony sulfoiodide (SbSI) and antimony sulfobromide (SbSBr) are investigated by using an ab-initio pseudopotential method applying density functional theory (DFT) within the local density approximation (LDA). The dynamical properties, such as the phonon dispersion and the phonon density of states, are calculated. Making a factor group analysis we classify the phonon modes. Moreover, the thermodynamic properties, such as the entropy and the constant-volume specific heat, as functions of temperature and the phonon contribution to the free energy and the internal energy are calculated.


ABSTRACT Headwaters contribute a substantial part of the flow in river networks. However, spatial variations of streamflow generation processes in steep headwaters have not been well studied. In this study, we examined the spatio-temporal variation of streamflow generation processes in a steep 2.98-ha headwater catchment. The time when baseflow of the upstream section exceeded that downstream was coincident with the time when the riparian groundwater switched from downwelling to upwelling. This suggests that upwelling of the riparian groundwater increased considerably in the upstream section during the wet period, producing a shift in the relative size of baseflow between the upstream and downstream sections. The timing of fluctuations among hillslope soil moisture, hillslope groundwater and streamflow reveals that the hillslope contributed to storm flow, but this contribution was limited to the wet period. Overall, these results suggest that streamflow generation has strong spatial variations, even in small, steep headwater catchments. EDITOR A. Castellarin ASSOCIATE EDITOR X. Chen


Abstract. This paper analyses the hydrological functioning of the Bange-L'Eau-Morte karstic system using classical and original techniques, recession curves, correlation and spectral analyses, noise analysis and wavelet analyses. The main characteristics that can be deduced are the recession coefficients, the dynamic volume of storage, the response time of the system, the quickflow and baseflow components and the snowmelt characteristics. The non-stationary and timescale-dependent behaviour of the system is studied and particular features of the runoff are shown. The step-by-step use of these different techniques provides a general methodology applicable to different karstic systems to provide quantifiable and objective criteria for differentiation and comparison of karstic systems. Keywords: karstic hydrology, Bauges mountains, recession curves, correlation and spectral analysis, wavelet analysis, snowmelt


Abstract. We show that a fire plume injected into the lower stratosphere at high northern latitudes during the Canadian wildfire event in August 2017 partly reached the tropics. The transport to the tropics was mediated by the anticyclonic flow of the Asian monsoon circulation. The fire plume reached the Asian monsoon area in late August/early September, when the Asian monsoon anticyclone (AMA) was still in place. While there is no evidence of mixing into the center of the AMA, we show that a substantial part of the fire plume is entrained into the anticyclonic flow at the AMA edge and is transported from the extratropics to the tropics, and possibly the Southern Hemisphere particularly following the north–south flow on the eastern side of the AMA. In the tropics the fire plume is lifted by ∼5 km in 7 months. Inside the AMA we find evidence of the Asian tropopause aerosol layer (ATAL) in August, doubling background aerosol conditions with a calculated top of the atmosphere shortwave radiative forcing of −0.05 W m−2. The regional climate impact of the fire signal in the wider Asian monsoon area in September exceeds the impact of the ATAL by a factor of 2–4 and compares to that of a plume coming from an advected moderate volcanic eruption. The stratospheric, trans-continental transport of this plume to the tropics and the related regional climate impact point to the importance of long-range dynamical interconnections of pollution sources.


Bistable composite laminates have exhibited enormous potential in morphing and energy harvesting followed by a wide range of application in aerospace, power generation and automobile industries. This study presents the fatigue analysis of bistable laminates in terms of stiffness degradation and loss of bistability. Moisture saturation of the specimens are ensured by keeping them in a controlled laboratory environment for an extended period of time. Mass of the specimens have been measured to quantify the moisture saturation. Fatigue tests are performed at 1 Hz frequency, and R = −1 stress ratio which is the ratio of minimum stress to maximum stress. Specimens are tested for 3 million cycles in displacement control. Load-displacement plot from the test is divided into 5 stiffness regions. A piecewise study of each region has demonstrated good agreement with existing analytical model. Stiffness degradation in 4 regions corresponding to 2 stable configurations follows general trend for composites up to the second stage of damage in three stage damage progression model while the remaining region corresponding to unstable configuration is not considered in this analysis. Test results have been reproduced with minor discrepancy at the specified environmental and loading condition, ply configuration, and size of the laminate. Test protocols, results, and damage analysis presented in this study can be utilized to evaluate the fatigue performance of multistable CFRP structures subjected to higher amplitudes and frequencies.


This is an account of the history of mathematics as it is revealed in the lives and writings of the most distinguished practitioners of the art, such as Archimedes, Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Gauss, Hamilton and Einstein. In his account of their lives, the author introduces and explains the part these figures have played in the development of mathematics and how their work relates to the discipline. While the emphasis in his survey is primarily biographical, the author also discusses major historical themes and explains new ideas and techniques. Stuart Hollingdale assumes on the part of the reader no mathematical knowledge beyond GCSE level.


ABSTRACT The effects of itraconazole on ergosterol biosynthesis were investigated in a series of 16 matched clinical Candida albicans isolates which had been previously analyzed for mechanisms of resistance to azoles (D. Sanglard, K. Kuchler, F. Ischer, J. L. Pagani, M. Monod, and J. Bille, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother., 39:2378–2386, 1995). Under control conditions, all isolates contained ergosterol as the predominant sterol, except two strains (C48 and C56). In isolates C48 and C56, both less susceptible to azoles than their parent, C43, substantial concentrations (20 to 30%) of 14α-methyl-ergosta-8,24(28)-diene-3β,6α-diol (3,6-diol) were found. Itraconazole treatment of C43 resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of ergosterol biosynthesis (50% inhibitory concentration, 2 nM) and accumulation of 3,6-diol (up to 60% of the total sterols) together with eburicol, lanosterol, obtusifoliol, 14α-methyl-ergosta-5,7,22,24(28)-tetraene-3βol, and 14α-methyl-fecosterol. In strains C48 and C56, no further increase of 3,6-diol was observed after exposure to itraconazole. Ergosterol synthesis was less sensitive to itraconazole inhibition, as was expected for these azole-resistant isolates which overexpress ATP-binding cassette transporter genes CDR1 andCDR2. In addition to 3,6-diol, substantial amounts of obtusifolione were found after exposure to itraconazole. This toxic 3-ketosteroid was demonstrated previously to accumulate after itraconazole treatment in Cryptococcus neoformans andHistoplasma capsulatum but has not been reported inCandida isolates. Accumulation of obtusifolione correlated with nearly complete growth inhibition in these azole-resistant strains compared to that found in the susceptible parent strain, although the onset of growth inhibition only occurred at higher concentrations of itraconazole. ERG25 and ERG26 are the only genes assigned to the 4-demethylation process, of which the 3-ketoreductase is part. To verify whether mutations in theseERG25 genes contributed to obtusifolione accumulation, their nucleotide sequences were determined in all three related isolates. No mutations in ERG25 alleles of isolates C48 and C56 were found, suggesting that this gene is not involved in obtusifolione accumulation. The molecular basis for the accumulation of this sterol in these two strains remains to be established.


Small and medium sized companies are important to the European economy and considered as the true backbone of the European economy, being primarily responsible for wealth and economic growth. Further, the purchasing function of small and medium sized companies had become more and more important to firms within the creating of competitive advantages. Additional, former research emphasizes the need of companies to engage in closer relationships in order to survive in nowadays business environments. These three issues, SMEs, its purchasing performance and the relationships the small and medium sized firms are engaged with are interrelated and therefore the essences of the thesis. The thesis is limited to the manufacturing industry due to the potential wide area of small and medium sized companies. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the purchasing practices of small and medium sized enterprises with a focus on strategic considerations and supplier relationships. The research project is developed with four single case studies. Participating companies were two small sized manufacturing companies and two medium sized manufacturing companies, defined according to the definition of the European Commission. The study is built on a critical review of former literature and research findings within the purchasing area and the area of small and medium sized companies. The findings from literature review (frame of references) and the findings from the empirical study were connected in order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis as well as the developed research questions. In the analysis, the characteristics of SMEs purchasing process were outlined. Evidence for strategic consideration were found and the characteristics of the companies relationships where established. Small and medium sized enterprises have developed its purchasing performance positively in the comparison to former research findings. By using business technology systems, strategic planning and deliberations and finally through building close and long-term relationships, manufacturing SMEs found a suitable ways to perform its purchasing activities successful and found its place in sophisticated supply chains.


Preeminent historian of medicine Owsei Temkin brought to his writing an awesome range of scholarship, for he was at home in the classical, the medieval, and the modern eras. The essays gathered in this volume deal with all the topics that Temkin considered most important in his work. They were widely commended for their originality, intelligent analysis, and impressive continuity of thought. Temkin explores the history of basic medical sciences, of health and disease, and of surgery and drug therapy, as well as general questions concerning the historical and philosophical approach to medicine from antiquity to the early twentieth century. In a retrospective introduction which gives the book its name, Temkin relates his writings to his career as a scholar in Germany and the United States. He situates the writings against the background of the development of the study of medical history and provides recollections of such prominent figures as Karl Sudhoff, Henry E. Sigerist, William H. Welch, and Richard H. Shryock.


How to exploit application semantics to improve the performance of a real-time data-intensive application has been an active research topic in the past few years. Weaker correctness criteria and semantica-based concurrency control algorithms were proposed to provide more flexibility in reordering read and write events. Distinct from past work, this paper exploits the trade-off between data consistency and system workload. The definition of similarity is combined with the idea of transaction skipping to provide a theoretical foundation for reducing the workload of a transaction system. We also propose guidelines to adjust the execution frequencies of a static set of transactions and prove their correctness. The strengths of this work were verified by simulation experiments on an air traffic control example.


We address in this study the problem of modeling weighted networks through generalized stochastic block models. Stochastic block models, and their extensions through mixed-membership versions, are indeed popular methods for network analysis as they can account for the underlying classes/communities structuring real-world networks and can be used for different applications. Our goal is to develop such models to solve the weight prediction problem that consists in predicting weights on links in weighted networks. To do so, we introduce new mixed-membership stochastic block models that can efficiently be learned through a coupling of collapsed and stochastic variational inference. These models, that represent the first weighted mixedmembership stochastic block models to our knowledge, can be deployed on large networks comprising millions of edges. The experiments, conducted on diverse real-world networks, illustrate the good behavior of these new models.


Time hardly mattered in the village of Mucker, the birthplace of poet and writer Patrick Kavanagh. Full of wry humour, Kavanagh's unsentimental and evocative account of his Irish rural upbringing describes a patriarchal society surviving on the edge of poverty, sustained by the land and an insatiable love of gossip. There are tales of schoolboy skirmishes, blackberrying and night-time salmon-poaching; of country-weddings and fairs, of political banditry and religious pilgrimages; and of farm-work in the fields and kicking mares. Kavanagh's experiences inspired him to write poetry which immortalized a fast-disappearing way of life and brought him recognition as one of Ireland's great poets.


Abstract: Lichens are often important photosynthetic organisms in oligotrophic environments where high-quality fodder plants are rare. A strong herbivore defence and/or low nutritional quality allows the accumulation of a high lichen biomass in such areas. However, it is not known how N deposition influences lichen palatability. This study analyzes possible changes in gastropod grazing preference after 3 months simulated N deposition on 3 foliose (Lobaria scrobiculata, Platismatia glauca, and Xanthoria aureola) and 1 pendulous lichen species (Alectoria sarmentosa). Lichens were daily irrigated in the field with rainwater containing 1.625 mM NH4NO3 from June to September, equivalent to a deposition of 50 kg N·ha-1·y-1. Irrigations applied at night, morning, or noon simulated different C-gain regimes. Afterwards in the lab, we offered 2 common lichen-feeding gastropods the choice between N-fertilized thalli and control thalli irrigated with artificial rainwater. The gastropods clearly preferred the unfertilized thalli of the 3 foliose species. For the pendulous A. sarmentosa, the gastropods preferred N-enriched thalli (irrigated at night) to controls. In conclusion, N-enrichment changes the palatability of lichens in species-specific ways. Nomenclature: Lid et al., 2005; Gilbert, James & Wolseley, 2009.


Many Aboriginal and other Remote Communities in Western and Northern Australia have drinking water which fails to meet acceptable health guidelines. These drinking water supplies are obtained from underground bores, many of which have high levels of salinity, nitrates and fluorides.

For may of these communities, the only options are to import water from other areas or move to another location, perhaps away from areas of cultural significance. A newer option is to use reverse osmosis desalination technology powered by alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Before this technology can be widely used, many technical difficulties must be overcome. The major drawback of reverse osmosis systems is the decline of fresh water output with time. This is caused by fouling of the reverse osmosis membranes.

This thesis examines various methods to reduce fouling of a Reverse Osmosis desalination system driven by a standard farm windmill and bore pump. The emphasis is placed on careful design and astute use of construction materials. The modelling of the windmill to various site conditions is examined.

A Windpowered Reverse Osmosis Prototype was designed, built and field tested to assess the utility of the technology for remote areas.


Background: A CAM is a fully parallel operating device. For high speed data searching functions CAM provides very efficient hardware architecture1. Statistical Analysis: This paper presents novel developments in the recent design of high capacity Content Addressable Memory (CAM) and Pre-computational Based CAM (PB-CAM). A graphical analysis has been shown between PB-CAM using static parameter circuit and proposed parameter circuit for power, delay and power-delay product in 90nm CMOS technology. Findings: There are many techniques made for designing a CAM by taking in mind to get lowpower, low-noise, high-speed, less hardware cost and less data comparisons and with minimum number of transistors and gates. There are, Traditional Dynamic CAM architecture, Ones-Count PB-CAM, Parity function PB-CAM, Remainder function PB-CAM, Block-XOR PB-CAM and Master–Slave Match Line (MSML) design. In this paper we have compared 9T and 7T CAM cell operations. Static parameter circuit is compared with proposed parameter comparison circuit for powerdelay product in 45nm CMOS technology. Applications: CAM function can be used in broader applications, such as data compression, LAN bridges, data comparison, switches, Lookup tables, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switches, databases, communication devices, communication networks, tag directories and high speed Ethernet etc.


This study examines whether application of IFRS by non-US firms results in accounting amounts comparable to those resulting from application of US GAAP by US firms. IFRS firms have greater accounting system and value relevance comparability with US firms when IFRS firms apply IFRS than when they applied domestic standards. Comparability is greater for firms that adopt IFRS mandatorily, firms in common law and high enforcement countries, and in more recent years. Earnings smoothing, accrual quality, and timeliness are potential sources of the greater comparability. Although application of IFRS has enhanced financial reporting comparability with US firms, significant differences remain.


Basil the Great in the fourth century AD argued that all material entities are constantly carried away by motion. He spoke of the flow of existence as "ever pressing on and passing away and never stopping in its course." His general conjecture in respect with spatiotemporal existents was that motion and time constantly shift and twist their ephemeral selves, leading them to annihilation. Hence, no entity that is subject to time persists so as to preserve its essential core. The Body of Christ in its temporal dimension, i.e. the visible Body, may also follow a sort of current. It may also experience constant change. The lack of ontological stability is the main characteristic of all unredeemed existents. The Body of Christ, on the other hand, is not a mere temporal entity. It has an eschatological self that will never be destroyed. This eschatological unity will never fade away. It is ordered by a different kind of time. This article aims to shed light on certain foundational aspects of Basil's theory of eschatological unity and of the changing self. It endeavors to explicate Basil's eschatological threads presented in the Hexameron. It attempts to demonstrate that Basil's subtle and nuanced analysis of the subject offers an explanatory framework capable of making sense of more recent events in ecclesiastical history.
 Keywords: Saint Basil the Great, Unity of Church, Eschatology, Body of Christ, Eastern Orthodoxy


The partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) provides a general framework for modeling an agent's decision process with state uncertainty, and online planning plays a pivotal role in solving it. A belief is a distribution of states representing state uncertainty. Methods for large-scale POMDP problems rely on the same idea of sampling both states and observations. That is, instead of exact belief updating, a collection of sampled states is used to approximate the belief; instead of considering all possible observations, only a set of sampled observations are considered. Inspired by this, we take one step further and propose an online planning algorithm, Adaptive Online Packing-guided Search (AdaOPS), to better approximate beliefs with adaptive particle filter technique and balance estimation bias and variance by fusing similar observation branches. Theoretically, our algorithm is guaranteed to find an (cid:15) -optimal policy with a high probability given enough planning time under some mild assumptions. We evaluate our algorithm on several tricky POMDP domains, and it outperforms the state-of-the-art in all of them. Codes are available at https://github.com/LAMDA-POMDP/AdaOPS.jl.


We present a new method for multi-agent planning involving human drivers and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in unsignaled intersections, roundabouts, and during merging. In multi-agent planning, the main challenge is to predict the actions of other agents, especially human drivers, as their intentions are hidden from other agents. Our algorithm uses game theory to develop a new auction, called GamePlan, that directly determines the optimal action for each agent based on their driving style (which is observable via commonly available sensors). GamePlan assigns a higher priority to more aggressive or impatient drivers and a lower priority to more conservative or patient drivers; we theoretically prove that such an approach is game-theoretically optimal prevents collisions and deadlocks. We compare our approach with prior state-of-the-art auction techniques including economic auctions, time-based auctions (first-in first-out), and random bidding and show that each of these methods result in collisions among agents when taking into account driver behavior. We additionally compare with methods based on deep reinforcement learning, deep learning, and game theory and present our benefits over these approaches. Finally, we show that our approach can be implemented in the real-world with human drivers.


Anopheles (Nyssorhynchus) darlingi is the primary vector of human malaria in South America. Immune responses in mosquito vectors of malaria are mainly regulated by genes of the Toll and IMD pathways through the transcription factors NF-kappa-β, Rel1 and Rel2, which are controlled by the negative regulatory genes Cactus and Caspar. We measured the expression levels of Rel1, Rel2, Caspar and Cactus genes, which are related to the immune system, in adult females of A. darlingi after blood feeding compared to adult females without blood feeding (controls) due to their possible effects on the ability of becoming infected with species of Plasmodium and spreading malaria. Quantitative expression was determined by real-time PCR, using the reference genes GAPDH and β-actin. The expression levels of Rel1, Rel2, Caspar and Cactus varied significantly at 4, 8, 14 and 24 h in mosquitoes that had fed on blood compared to control insects (0 h), with significantly greater expression at 24 h after blood feeding. Relative expression levels among these genes varied at the different post blood feeding times. This information adds to our understanding of the insect immune


Continued demand for the miniaturization of consumer electronics has driven the reduction of passive component sizes from 1210 and 1206 in the 1980's, to 0402 and 0201 in the late 1990's, to the new and emerging 01005 size of today. The use of 0603 and 0402 components have been prevalent for a number of years. These component sizes have been run in high volume applications at very high yields, so the assembly manufacturing processes are quite mature and reliability data is readily available. The latest generations of wireless products are requiring increasingly more functionality in less space, with lower weight, less power consumption, and at higher frequencies, and this is driving the utilization of smaller passives for system-in-package (SIP) modules. Recently, 0201 components have been implemented in very high-density applications for mobile phone, blue tooth, and wireless LAN applications. Capacitor and resistor manufacturers are now sampling or offering low volume quantities of 01005 components, and some semiconductor companies and electronic assembly manufacturers are gearing up to develop and qualify manufacturing processes, assemblies and components for their respective applications. The goal of this paper is to summarize previous design, assembly and reliability issues encountered in developing and implementing 0201 components for high volume manufacturing of high density wireless SIP modules using Pb-free solder. Lessons learned from 0201 development and manufacturing implementation is applied towards the present 01005 development project, including design, material and process parameter optimization. 01005 manufacturing yields (e.g. pick rate, placement position accuracy), defects (e.g. tombstoning, solder bridges, solder beading), quality (e.g. joint shape, solder appearance, solder volume) and reliability assessment data of component shear strength are included in this report. Due to the lack of time thermal-mechanical fatigue, shock and impact resistance, moisture and reflow sensitivity testing would not be provided, but if completion of these test is completed by the time of paper presentation, these results are included in June'2005, presentation.


A novel optical delay line based on total reflection of lightwave in two dimensional photonic crystal waveguides (PCW) is introduced. The performance of this novel structure is compared to several proposed arrangements for compact delay lines in photonic crystals. Furthermore, it is shown that replacing PCWs with coupled defects can significantly increase the time delay (by at least a factor of five) without decreasing the output power. Using full-wave analysis, it is demonstrated that time delays longer than 5.25 ps can be achieved in a device size less than 25 m, while transmission loss is kept as low as 0.12dB


Educational video games have the potential to be used as assessments of student understanding of complex concepts. However, the interpretation of the rich stream of complex data that results from the tracking of in-game actions is so difficult that it is one of the most serious blockades to the use of educational video games or simulations to assess student understanding, and there is currently no systematic approach to extracting relevant data from log files. This study attempts to determine whether data mining techniques can be used to extract information from log files that allows for the formation of testable hypotheses. The log files in this study come from an educational video game teaching students about the identification of fractions. The three data mining techniques used in this study were: cluster analysis, sequence mining, and classification.Cluster analysis was used to examine the individual actions each student took in a given attempt to solve each game level. This led to the identification of valid solution strategies students used and mathematical errors and game-related errors students made as they tried to solve game levels. Sequence mining was used to examine the change in strategy use as each student moved through the game levels. This led to the identification of strategy sequences representing different paths students took to arrive at the correct solution. Classification was used to examine the change in the number of attempts each student required to solve the levels in each stage. This led to the identification of performance trajectories representing improvement, decline, or lack of change in performance over time. To demonstrate the usefulness of the extracted information and provide initial evidence that the interpretation of the extracted information was valid, testable hypotheses from the results of each data mining technique were generated examining whether the grouping of students resulting from each of the three data mining techniques differed significantly on paper-and-pencil pretest scores, posttest scores, or the gain in scores between pretest and posttest. The groups resulting from each of the three data mining techniques differed significantly on pretest and posttest scores, with students in groups interpreted as representing lower performance demonstrating lower performance on the tests and students in groups interpreted as representing higher performance demonstrating higher performance on the tests. However, none of the three techniques led to the identification of groups of students that differed significantly on the gain in scores between pretest and posttest.


We consider lattice equations on Z 2 which are autonomous, affine linear and possess the symmetries of the square. Some basic properties of equations of this type are derived, as well as a sufficient linearization condition and a conservation law. A systematic analysis of the Lie point and the generalized three-and five-point symmetries is presented. It leads to the generic form of the symmetry generators of all the equations in this class, which satisfy a certain non-degeneracy condition. Finally, symmetry reductions of certain lattice equations to discrete analogues of the Painlevé equations are considered.


Most existing fingerprints-based indoor localization approaches are based on some single fingerprint, such as received signal strength (RSS), channel impulse response, and signal subspace. However, the localization accuracy obtained by the single fingerprint approach is rather susceptible to the changing environment, multipath, and non-line-of-sight propagation. In this paper, we propose a novel localization framework by Fusing A Group Of fingerprinTs (FAGOT) via multiple antennas for the indoor environment. We first build a GrOup Of Fingerprints (GOOF), which includes five different fingerprints, namely, RSS, covariance matrix, signal subspace, fractional low-order moment, and fourth-order cumulant, which are obtained by different transformations of the received signals from multiple antennas in the offline stage. Then, we design a parallel GOOF multiple classifiers based on AdaBoost (GOOF-AdaBoost) to train each of these fingerprints in parallel as five strong multiple classifiers. In the online stage, we input the corresponding transformations of the real measurements into these strong classifiers to obtain independent decisions. Finally, we propose an efficient combination fusion algorithm, namely, MUltiple Classifiers mUltiple Samples (MUCUS) fusion algorithm to improve the accuracy of localization by combining the predictions of multiple classifiers with different samples. As compared with the single fingerprint approaches, our proposed approach can improve the accuracy and robustness of localization significantly. We demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the proposed algorithm through extensive simulations as well as via real experimental data using a Universal Software Radio Peripheral platform with four antennas.


NewsOver the past 3 decades, total U.S. spending on cancer care has more than quadrupled, reaching $125 billion last year, or 5% of the nation's medical bill, according to a recent estimate. By 2020, it could grow by as much as 66%, to $207 billion. Multiple forces are driving the spiral: a growing and aging population, more people living longer with cancer, and new "personalized," or "targeted," therapies that can come with sticker-shock prices of $50,000 or more per patient. New and more costly, however, haven't necessarily meant better. Although targeted treatments have helped improve survival rates for many cancers, some extend life for just a few weeks or months (see p. [1542][1]). And the prices can be sobering: more than $1.2 million to extend a lung cancer patient's life for 1 year in one scenario involving a costly but common drug. That example is unusual, but such numbers have sparked a growing—and sometimes feisty—debate over how best to calculate the benefits of new cancer treatments, whether their use will lower or raise per-patient expenses, and who should decide whether using them is worth the cost.

 [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1542.full


The sharing economy, underpinned by digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber, which pair
individuals' needs and wants, from accommodation to rides, is on the ascent. These new
business models, where capital and labour are provided by several dispersed individuals
rather than by a single centralized entity, defy the operational structure of comparable
traditional activities. In the sharing economy, in fact, the personal and the professional
spheres blur, and selfish motivations mingle with altruistic aims, while transactions span
the whole market-to-gift spectrum. Against this background, in which the classification
of individuals and transactions is less straightforward, the article intends to assess the
practical feasibility of specific EU VAT notions such as "taxable persons" and "taxable
transactions", as interpreted by the ECJ and the VAT doctrine. In addition, the research
seeks to test these concepts against a framework of selected tax principles.


The prevalence of atopic diseases has increased rapidly in recent decades globally. The administration of probiotics to reduce gastrointestinal inflammation has been popular, but its role in the prevention or treatment of allergic disease remains controversial. This study evaluated the effectiveness of prenatal and postnatal probiotics in the prevention of early childhood and maternal allergic diseases.


We explore the use of certain image features, blockwise hist ograms of local orientations, used in many current object recognition algorithm s, for the task of handwritten digit recognition. Existing approaches find that po lyn mial kernel SVMs trained on raw pixels achieve state of the art performance. H owever such kernel SVM approaches are impractical as they have a huge comple xity at runtime. We demonstrate that with improved features a low complexity classifier, in particular an additive-kernel SVM, can achieve state of the art pe formance. Our approach achieves an error of 0.79% on the MNIST dataset and 3.4% error on the USPS dataset, while running at speeds comparable to the f astest algorithms on these datasets which are based on multilayer neural network s and are significantly faster and easier to train.


Environmental conditions may influence the presence and strength of competitive interactions between different life forms, thereby shaping community composition and structure, and corresponding fuel dynamics. Woodland and shrubland communities of the Mediterranean climate region of South Eastern Australia contain a varied mixture of herbaceous and woody plants. The ratio of herbaceous to woody plants changes along gradients of temperature, moisture and soil fertility. This study aimed to experimentally examine the relative importance of, and interactions between environmental controls (moisture and soil fertility) on the balance of dominant herbaceous (Triodia scariosa) and woody plants (e.g. Acacia ligulata and Leptospermum coriaceum) and their ultimate effects on fuel and fire regimes. The results suggest that environmental determinants of the growth of T. scariosa are likely to be more important than interactions with shrubs in controlling the distribution of T. scariosa. The growth of T. scariosa was consistently higher under hot temperatures and on the less fertile yellow sands, which dominate the south of the region. The results suggest that there is strong potential for the distribution and abundance of T. scariosa to be altered in the future with changes in temperature associated with climate change. The distribution of soil types across the Mediterranean climate region of South Eastern Australia may be predisposed to favour the southerly expansion of T. scariosa-dominated communities in the future under a warmer climate.


This article offers an interpretation of Freire's concept of pedagogical love in a word to world— theory to practice—approach. We offer a definition of the term love; then present coauthor's Steven's narrative as an illustration of a real life experience of Freirean pedagogical love. The goal is to begin a conversation about the transformative value of an instructional model rooted in Freire's pedagogy of emancipatory love; and to seek ways in which this model is applicable to writing centers and other educational settings—not just in colleges, but also K-12 environments.


There are some factors that can be taken to gain a success of English instruction curriculum. One
of them is a textbook. Textbooks have appeared to play important role in teaching learning
process, as they are the main sources of material for language teachers. If nit chosen
appropriately and evaluated properly it can have a very negative effect on learning. Writers and
publishers started competing to produce new textbooks when the new curriculum is released in
our educational program. Teacher and student may find them in certain parts, if not all parts,
irrelevant to the curriculum or not satisfactorily complete. Then they may try to give other
instructions in order to adapt to the curriculum. Although all the competences have important
roles, teacher as the component has an important role to teach English as second or foreign
language, especially linguistic this is one of the competences that must be mastered by the
student to get English very well. Because linguistic competence is one of competence in
Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), it can show the quality of any textbook as it refers to the
ability of applying and understanding the elements of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and
spelling in the text properly.
This study is designed to obtain answer of whether the textbook meets the criteria of "CBC" in
term of linguistic competence. Research design used in this thesis is descriptive because it was
concerned the analysis of the content. The subject in this research is Textbook published by
National Education Department. In order to collect the data, the writer utilized documentation.
Based on Competence based Curriculum (CBC), there are 41 items of linguistic competence that
must appear in a textbook. Therefore, a good textbook should contain them. The analysis of the
textbook published by National Educational Department showed that several items were not
presented by the writer. This textbook provides 29 items. It means that this textbook provides
only 70.73% of the 41 items as prescribed by the Competency Based Curriculum. From the table
of evaluation of presented materials, the writer found that several materials on linguistic
competence are not provided in this textbook. For clause/sentence material there is no material about special form, adverb and compound sentence. For kind of sentence, there is no material about exclamatory sentence. For nominal phrase, there is no material about adjective clause. For preposition, there is no material about multiple. In addition, on vocabulary material, the writer
did not find material about standard phrase. For phonological material, writer find spelling and
punctuation mark material in each unit.


Achieving and detecting a globally consistent state is essential to many services in the large
and extreme-scale distributed systems, especially when the desired consistent state is critical
for services operation. Centralised and deterministic approaches for synchronisation and
distributed consistency are not scalable and not fault-tolerant. Alternatively, epidemic-based
paradigms are decentralised computations based on randomised communications. They are
scalable, resilient, fault-tolerant, and converge to the desired target in logarithmic time with
respect to system size. Thus, many distributed services have adopted epidemic protocols
to achieve the consensus and the consistent state, mainly due to scalability concerns. The
convergence of epidemic protocols is stochastically guaranteed. However, the detection of
the convergence is probabilistic and non-explicit. In a real-world environment, systems are
unreliable, and epidemic protocols cannot converge to the desired state. Thus, achieving
convergence by itself does not ensure making a system-wide consistent state under dynamic
conditions.
The research work presented in this thesis introduces the Phase Transition Algorithm
(PTA) to achieve distributed consistent state based on the explicit detection of convergence.
Each phase in PTA is a decentralised decision-making process that implements epidemic data
aggregation, in which the detection of convergence implies achieving a global agreement. The
phases in PTA can be cascaded to achieve higher certainty as desired. Following the PTA,
two epidemic protocols, namely PTP and ECP, are proposed to acquire of consensus, i.e. for
the consistency in data dissemination and data aggregation. The protocols are examined
through simulations, and experimental results have validated the protocols ability to achieve
and explicitly detect the consensus among system nodes.
The research work has also studied the epidemic data aggregation under nodes churn and
network failures, in which the analysis has identified three phases of the aggregation process.
The investigations have shown a different impact of nodes churn on each phase. The phase
that is critical for the aggregation process has been studied further, which led to propose
new robust data aggregation protocols, REAP and REAP+. Each protocol has a different
decentralised replication method, and both implements distributed failure detection and
instantaneous mass restoration mechanisms. Simulations have validated the protocols, and
results have shown protocols ability to converge, detect convergence, and produce competitive
accuracy under various levels of nodes churn.
Furthermore, distributed consistency in continuous systems is addressed in the research.
The work has proposed a novel continuous epidemic protocol with the adaptive restart
mechanism. The protocol restarts either upon the detection of system convergence or upon
the detection of divergence. Also, the protocol introduces the seed selection method for
the peak data distribution in decentralised approaches, which was a challenge that requires
single-point initialisation and leader-election step. The simulations validated the performance
of the algorithm under static and dynamic conditions and approved that convergence and
divergence detection accuracy can be tuned as desired.
Finally, the research work shows that combining and integrating of the proposed protocols
enables extreme-scale distributed systems to achieve and detect global consistent states even
under realistic and dynamical conditions.


We report a case of bladder cancer recurrence in fossa navicularis of urethra 17 months after cystourethrectomy for bladder cancer. A 75-year-old man had undergone cystourethrectomy preserving between fossa navicularis and external meatus, and ileal conduit urinary diversion for advanced bladder cancer on June 24, 2002. Histopathological findings showed urothelial carcinoma, G2>G3, pT1N0. The patient had been followed regularly for 17 months without evidence of recurrence until he suffered the onset of hemorrhagic urethral discharge. Endoscopic examination of the residual urethra showed multiple, papillary sessile tumors which almost filled the fossa navicularis. He was admitted to our hospital on December 15, 2003. The urethral wash cytology revealed urothelial carcinoma. Since computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and bone scintigraphy showed no evidence of lymph node and distant metastasis, partial penectomy was performed. Histopathological findings showed urothelial carcinoma pTa, G2>G3, which was identical to primary tumor. Tumor had not invaded the corpus cavernosum. Careful follow-up of the patients with preservation of fossa navicularis is important.


Current research has highlighted that magnesium and its alloys as biodegradable material are highly suitable for biomedical applications. The new material fully degrades into nontoxic elements and offers material properties matching those of human bone tissue. As biomedical implants are rather small and complex in shape, the metal injection molding (MIM) technique seems to be well suited for the near net shape mass production of such parts. Furthermore, MIM of Mg-alloys is of high interest in further technical fields. This study focusses on the performance of MIM-processing of magnesium alloy powders. It includes Mg-specific development of powder blending, feedstock preparation, injection molding, solvent and thermal debinding and final sintering. Even though Mg is a highly oxygen-affine material forming a stable oxide layer on each particle surface, the material can be sintered to nearly dense parts, providing mechanical properties matching those of as cast material. An ultimate tensile strength of 142 MPa, yield strength of 67 MPa, elastic modulus of 40 GPa and 8% elongation at fracture could be achieved using novel organic polymer binders for the feedstock preparation. Thus, first implant demonstrator parts could be successfully produced by the MIM technique.


Recognizing a long‐standing need for standard materials to calibrate acoustic measurement equipment, Wayne Reader initiated a Working Group with the title ''Characterization of the Dynamic Properties of Viscoelastic Polymers.'' The Working Group was organized under Standards Committee S2 of the Acoustical Society of America and was given the designation S2‐79. The desirable qualities for the materials were: Ready availability, wide range of acoustic properties, stable with time, reproducible from lot to lot, and thermorheologically simple. He drew Group members from government, private industry, and universities, both in this country and abroad. Under his leadership, the Working Group progressed to the point that its work is nearly complete. This presentation will give an overview of the results from various laboratories on the most promising candidates. Emphasis will be given to a high loss polyurethane, for which the most data is available. In contrast, data for a low loss polyurethane will be presented...


Background: Although many studies have recently been published on the value of serious games for medical education, little attention has been given to the role of dark play (choosing unacceptable actions in games). Objective: This study aimed to investigate potential differences in the characteristics of medical students who have the opportunity to choose normal or dark play in a serious game. This study also aimed to compare their reasons for choosing a play strategy and their perceptions of what they learned from their game play. Methods: We asked undergraduate medical students to play a serious game in which they had to take care of a patient with delirium (The Delirium Experience). After getting acquainted with the game, students could opt for normal or dark play. Student characteristics (age, gender, experience with caring for older or delirious patients, and number of completed clerkships) were collected, and the Delirium Attitude Scale and Learning Motivation and Engagement Questionnaire were administered. Reasons for choosing normal or dark play were evaluated with an open-ended question. Information on lessons they had learned from the game was collected using an open-ended question and self-reported knowledge on delirium. Results: This study had 160 participants (89 normal play, 71 dark play). Male students (26/160, 56.5%) chose dark play significantly more often than female students (45/160, 39.5%; P=.049). We did not find significant differences in student characteristics or measurement outcomes between play strategies. Participants' main reason for choosing normal play was to learn how to provide care to delirious patients, and the main reason for dark play was to gain insight into what a delirious patient has to endure during delirious episodes. All participants learned what to do when taking care of a delirious patient and gained insight into how a patient experiences delirium. We found no differences in self-reported knowledge. Conclusions: When medical students have the opportunity to choose dark play in a serious game, half of them will probably choose this play strategy. Male students will more likely opt for dark play than female students. Choice of play strategy is not affected by any other student characteristic or measurement outcome. All students learned the same lessons from playing the game, irrespective of their learning strategy. (JMIR Serious Games 2020;8(3):e18479) doi: 10.2196/18479 JMIR Serious Games 2020 | vol. 8 | iss. 3 | e18479 | p. 1 http://games.jmir.org/2020/3/e18479/ (page number not for citation purposes) Buijs-Spanjers et al JMIR SERIOUS GAMES


Genes encoding subunits of complex I (EC 18.104.22.168) of the mitochondrial respiratory chain vary in their locations between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes in different organisms, whereas genes for a homologous multisubunit complex in chloroplasts have to date only been found on the plastid genome. In potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), the gene coding for the mitochondrial 76 kDa iron-sulphur protein is identified in the nuclear genome. The gene is transcribed into polyadenylated mRNA which is most abundant in flowers, and more frequent in tubers than in leaves. The amino acid sequence is well conserved relative to the nuclear-encoded 75 kDa and 78 kDa subunits of Bos taurus and Neurospora crassa, respectively, and to the Paracoccus denitrificans homologue, most prominently in the region presumed to carry the iron-sulphur clusters. Polyclonal antibodies directed against the 78 kDa complex I subunit of N. crassa recognise the 76 kDa polypeptide in potato mitochondrial complex I, and additionally a polypeptide of 75 kDa in solubilised stroma thylakoids from spinach chloroplasts. The 32 amino acid residues long presequence of the potato mitochondrial 76 kDa complex I subunit targets the precursor polypeptide into isolated potato mitochondria but not into isolated chloroplasts. These results suggest that chloroplast stroma thylakoids contain a protein similar in size and antigenicity to, but genetically distinct from, the mitochondrial subunit.


We consider full-wave optimizations of photonic crystals (PhCs) involving dielectric rods to obtain desired output patterns for given excitations. Starting from a full grid, each rod is kept or extracted in order to maximize the power density at different output locations. PhCs are modeled as three-dimensional structures, which are analyzed via surface integral equations and the multilevel fast multipole algorithm, in order to investigate realistic problems without resorting to infinite-length assumptions. MLFMA is integrated into genetic algorithms that enable flexible cost functions for the optimizations. Numerical results involving different structures demonstrate the capabilities of the optimization environment.


Abstract. This study reports NO, NO2 and O3 mixing ratios and flux measurements using the eddy covariance method during a 7-month period over an oilseed-rape field, spanning an organic and a mineral fertilisation event. Cumulated NO emissions during the whole period were in agreement with previous studies and showed quite low emissions of 0.26 kg N ha−1 with an emission factor of 0.27 %, estimated as the ratio between total N emitted in the form of NO and total N input. The NO emissions were higher following organic fertilisation in August due to conditions favouring nitrification (soil water content around 20 % and high temperatures), while mineral fertilisation in February did not result in high emissions. The ozone deposition velocity increased significantly after organic fertilisation. The analysis of the chemical and turbulent transport times showed that reactions between NO, NO2 and O3 below the measurement height occurred constantly throughout the 7-month period. Following organic fertilisation, the NO ground fluxes were 30 % larger than the NO fluxes at the measurement height (3.2 m), while the NO2 fluxes switched from deposition to emission during certain periods, being negative at the surface and positive at the measurement height. This phenomenon of apparent NO2 emissions appears to be significant during strong NO emissions and high O3 ambient mixing ratios, even on a bare soil during August.


Congenital heart disease is considered as one the most common groups of congenital malformations which affects 6 − 11 per 1000 newborns. In this work, an automated framework for detection of cardiac anomalies during ultrasound screening is proposed and evaluated on the example of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a sub-category of congenital heart disease. We propose an unsupervised approach that learns healthy anatomy exclusively from clinically confirmed normal control patients. We evaluate a number of known anomaly detection frameworks together with a new model architecture based on the α-GAN network and find evidence that the proposed model performs significantly better than the state-of-the-art in image-based anomaly detection, yielding average 0.81 AUC and a better robustness towards initialisation compared to previous works.


We report white-light-emitting Mn-doped ZnSe nanocrystals (NCs) that are synthesized using modified nucleation doping strategy. Tailoring three distinct emission mechanisms in these NCs, which are MnSe-related blue emission (410 and 435 nm), Zn-related defect state green emission (520 nm), and Mn-dopant related orange emission (580 nm), allowed us to achieve excitation wavelength tailorable white-light generation as studied by steady state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. These NCs will be promising as single component white-light engines for solid-state lighting.


Abstract The factors that influence spatial use and movement patterns in ectotherms may have important fitness consequences. To examine the effects of sex and condition on spatial use, we used radio telemetry to observe the movement of 18 adult Nerodia sipedon in a southwest Missouri lake. Snakes generally remained in close proximity (<5 m) to aquatic habitats throughout the summer. Home range size estimates differed according to calculation method. Monthly total home range sizes peaked in mid-summer, possibly in response to increased amounts of vegetative cover, although core area sizes were consistent across the season. Contrary to previous studies of snakes, mean movement rates and home range sizes of male and gravid female N. sipedon were statistically indistinguishable and highly variable. Body size and condition influenced spatial characteristics of females, but only appeared to influence movement frequency of males. When compared to other populations, we found that our population of N. sipedon tended to occupy similarly-sized shifting core areas associated with aquatic vegetation. Future studies should focus on the measurement of resource distribution to further understand the factors influencing variation in snake movements and spatial patterns.


The ZigBee tree routing is widely used in many resource-limited devices and applications, since it does not require any routing table and route discovery overhead to send a packet to the destination. However, the ZigBee tree routing has the fundamental limitation that a packet follows the tree topology; thus, it cannot provide the optimal routing path. In this paper, we propose the shortcut tree routing (STR) protocol that provides the near optimal routing path as well as maintains the advantages of the ZigBee tree routing such as no route discovery overhead and low memory consumption. The main idea of the shortcut tree routing is to calculate remaining hops from an arbitrary source to the destination using the hierarchical addressing scheme in ZigBee, and each source or intermediate node forwards a packet to the neighbor node with the smallest remaining hops in its neighbor table. The shortcut tree routing is fully distributed and compatible with ZigBee standard in that it only utilizes addressing scheme and neighbor table without any changes of the specification. The mathematical analysis proves that the 1-hop neighbor information improves overall network performances by providing an efficient routing path and distributing the traffic load concentrated on the tree links. In the performance evaluation, we show that the shortcut tree routing achieves the comparable performance to AODV with limited overhead of neighbor table maintenance as well as overwhelms the ZigBee tree routing in all the network conditions such as network density, network configurations, traffic type, and the network traffic.


Person re-identification (re-id) is a fundamental technique to associate various person images, captured by differentsurveillance cameras, to the same person. Compared to the single image based person re-id methods, video-based personre-id has attracted widespread attentions because extra space-time information and more appearance cues that can beused to greatly improve the matching performance. However, most existing video-based person re-id methods equally treatall video frames, ignoring their quality discrepancy caused by object occlusion and motions, which is a common phenomenonin real surveillance scenario. Based on this finding, we propose a novel video-based person re-id method via self paced weighting (SPW). Firstly, we propose a self paced outlier detection method to evaluate the noise degree of video sub sequences. Thereafter, a weighted multi-pair distance metric learning approach is adopted to measure the distance of two person image sequences. Experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over current state-of-the-art work.


Two major challenges in the rapid deployment of automated natural language call routing system are the minimization of the manual effort in tagging data and reducing the impact of speech recognition errors on the call classification. In this paper we explore some novel approaches which target at these two challenges. One of our approaches enriches the training set with additional speech recognition hypotheses, automatically splits the neighboring data with its original classes, retags the training data based on a similarity measure, and elects the final result among multiple classifiers which are trained from the split data; the other approach incorporates the acoustical confusable information into call classifier to reduce the impact of the speech recognition error on the call classification accuracy. The experimental results show that our new approaches can reduce the classification error rate of an automated natural language call routing system by relative 10% in the end to end performance, using the live data collected from an enterprise call center.


Aims: The aim was to establish a baseline prevalence of skin conditions of public health importance in the general population and taking the validity of the questions into account. Our model is intended for future surveillance of skin conditions. Methods: The suggested questions have for the first time been used in Swedish population surveys. A random sample was taken from the general population aged 16 to 84 years of the participating areas. Results: During the past 12 months, hand eczema was reported by 9.4%, childhood eczema by 15.7% and nickel allergy by 13.7% of the population. Hand and childhood eczema questions have previously been validated. Taking the validity into account, the actual population prevalence of hand eczema (11.7%) is underestimated, and the prevalence of atopic childhood eczema (10.0%) is overestimated based on the results of the questionnaire. In addition to presenting prevalence, population survey results can be used for risk analyses. A 10-fold risk of hand eczema in individuals with childhood eczema and self-reported nickel sensitivity is shown in our study. Conclusions: Questionnaires can be used for epidemiologic surveillance so long as the questions are validated and that the validity is taken into account when estimating the occurrence of the conditions. Public health surveys such as this one lay the basis for future epidemiological surveillance of skin conditions that can be subject to interventions. We propose that these, or similar, questions should be used regularly in population surveys and supplemented by questions on skin exposure.


Article history: Received July 2, 2012 Received in revised format 28 October 2012 Accepted 11 November 2012 Available online November 14 2012 A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is considered as an autonomous network, which consists of mobile nodes, which communicate with each other over wireless links. When there is no fixed infrastructure, nodes have to cooperate in order to incorporate the necessary network functionality. Ad hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol is one of the primary principal routing protocols implemented in Ad hoc networks. The security of the AODV protocol is threaded by a specific kind of attack called 'Black Hole' attack. This paper presents a technique to prevent the Black hole attack by implementing negotiation with neighbors who claim to maintain a route to destination. Negotiation process is strengthen by apriori method to judge about suspicious node. Apriori algorithm is an effective association rule mining method with relatively low complexity, which is proper for MANETs. To achieve more improvement, fuzzy version of ADOV is used. The simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol provides more securable routing and also more efficiency in terms of packet delivery, overhead and detection rate than the conventional AODV and fuzzy AODV in the presence of Black hole attacks. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


We address the problem of MAC-layer misbehavior in distributed multi-channel MAC protocols. We show that selfish users can manipulate the protocol parameters to gain an unfair share of the available bandwidth, while remaining undetected. We identify optimal misbehavior strategies that can lead to the isolation of a subset of frequency bands for exclusive use by the misbehaving nodes and evaluate their impact on performance and fairness. We develop corresponding detection and mitigation strategies that practically eliminate the misbehavior gains. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt in characterizing the impact of misbehavior on multi-channel MAC protocols.


Background and Aims VLBW infants require intensive care in the neonatal period and to discharge. The aim of this investigation was to study the extent to which surviving children with birth weight (BW) < 1500 g was in need of medical specialist healthcare services as well as drug treatment after discharge to home. Methods The study was conducted as a retrospective cohort study where four cohorts (1997, 1998, 2004, and 2007) of VLBW infants were followed. Data on perinatal factors that could contribute to increased risk for future health care needs, hospital admissions and outpatient visits as well as drug prescriptions after discharge were obtained from patient records. The study included 152 infants. Results The study shows that VLBW infants have a significant need for later health care resources, particularly the first 4–7 years after discharge. During the first 4 years 70% of infants had been hospitalized with 3.6±6.0 admissions. They spent 25±29 days in hospital the first year decreasing to 6.5±9 days the fourth year. A significant higher admission rate was found for male infants, infants with BW < 1.000 grams, infants with broncopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), and infants treated for patent ductus arteriousus (PDA). Drugs were prescribed to 52.5% of infants with 1.5±1.8 drugs/year. Infants with BPD and PDA and BW < 1000 grams had significantly more drug prescriptions. Conclusions Surviving VLBW infants have an increased need for health care resources several years after discharge. Emergency admissions and high admission rates in some infants might reflect suboptimal follow-up.


In remote sensing applications, the traditional procedure for registering a pair of images requires the manual selection of ground control points at significant landmarks of the images. The primary drawback of this approach is that a trained expert is needed to manually select each individual ground control point in the remotely sensed images. This is very laborious and time consuming. In this paper, a new feature-based approach to automate image-to-image registration is proposed for remote sensing applications. This new approach exploits the nonsubsampled contourlet transform to automatically extract a set of control points across spatial and directional resolutions where misalignment between images can be expected to appear. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed algorithm.


Low‐technology cycle modifications available for improving gas turbine performance are still largely unexploited. Among those proven modifications, steam injection is found to be the most effective in boosting both the output capacity and thermal efficiency while reducing NOx emissions. It further improves part load performance under varying ambient conditions. Intercooling is another low‐technology modification which can improve performance of simple and steam injected gas turbine cycles. Because of the uncertainties relating to an efficiency comparison of steam injected and simple cycle designs, the decision as to whether it is worthwhile to give more emphasis to steam injected cycles should be made on grounds other than efficiency alone. Therefore, this study comparatively evaluates simple, intercooled, steam injected (STIG), and intercooled steam injected (ISTIG) gas turbine cycles from the points of efficiency, network output, economics, and pollutant emissions using an advanced validated thermoenvironomic model. Optimum cycle parameters are investigated. Economic feasibility of steam injection and intercooling on simple and intercooled cycles are evaluated using an updated plant cost data. Total and environmental costs as well as profit of the plant owner are estimated for varying fuel costs and varying cycle parameters such as pressure, steam injection, and equivalence ratio. Results of our analysis based on the characteristic cycle parameters show that network output increases up to 22.2% and 14% respectively, when steam injection is implemented on simple and intercooled gas turbine cycles which correspond to up to 6.7% and 4.4% decrease in specific fuel consumption. Steam injection decreases NOx emissions of simple and intercooled cycles up to 67.2% and 65.2% respectively, and provides up to approximately 126.3% increase in net profit of intercooled cycle at the expense of an increase in total cost by 3.3%.


An efficient frequency domain soft interference cancellation (FD-SIC) scheme is proposed for turbo frequency domain equalization (FDE) in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. It is designed that at the receiver the inter-antenna interference (IAI) is cancelled by prior information in terms of data expectation. It can improve the input signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) for the equalizer. Then block (data of one transmit antenna) wise frequency domain minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization is implemented. Later a low complexity algorithm on the basis of single frequency tone (SFT) is deduced. Symbol Log-likelihood ratio (LLR) is calculated from the output of equalizer. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has better link performance than traditional algorithms.


In 2005, roughly 45% of the total populations of Bangladesh living below the poverty line and of them 53% are rural poor people. Therefore, a significant gain in rural poverty reduction will be crucial for Bangladesh to reach the national poverty reduction target. As 63% of the total employed people engage in some kind of agricultural activities, without pro-poor agricultural growth it is impossible for a country like Bangladesh to reduce poverty. This article attempts to analyse the impact of agricultural growth on rural poverty reduction by using time series analysis in Bangladesh during 1973 to 2003. The study shows that rural poverty reduction is possible by increased agricultural production, for which again efficient spending of government budget and skilled human capital are crucial factors. Also findings suggest that, increased the share of non-farm activities will help to poverty alleviation in rural Bangladesh.


This paper explores how the stochastic accretion of planetesimals on to white dwarfs would be manifested in observations of their atmospheric pollution. Archival observations of pollution levels for unbiased samples of DA and non-DA white dwarfs are used to derive the distribution of inferred accretion rates, confirming that rates become systematically lower as sinking time (assumed here to be dominated by gravitational settling) is decreased, with no discernable dependence on cooling age. The accretion rates expected from planetesimals that are all the same mass (i.e., a mono-mass distribution) are explored both analytically and using a Monte Carlo model, quantifying how measured accretion rates inevitably depend on sinking time, since different sinking times probe different times since the last accretion event. However, that dependence is so dramatic that a mono-mass distribution can be excluded within the context of this model. Consideration of accretion from a broad distribution of planetesimal masses uncovers an important conceptual difference: accretion is continuous (rather than stochastic) for planetesimals below a certain mass, and the accretion of such planetesimals determines the rate typically inferred from observations; smaller planetesimals dominate the rates for shorter sinking times. A reasonable fit to the observationally inferred accretion rate distributions is found with model parameters consistent with a collisionally evolved mass distribution up to Pluto-mass, and an underlying accretion rate distribution consistent with that expected from descendants of debris discs of main-sequence A stars. With these parameters, while both DA and non-DA white dwarfs accrete from the same broad planetesimal distribution, this model predicts that the pollution seen in DAs is dominated by the continuous accretion of 35 km objects (though the dominant size varies between stars by around an order of magnitude from this reference value). Furthermore, observations that characterize the dependence of inferred accretion rates on sinking time and cooling age (including a consideration of the effect of thermohaline convection on models used to derive those rates), and the decadal variability of DA accretion signatures, will improve constraints on the mass distribution of accreted material and the lifetime of the disc through which it is accreted.


The deregulation of the existence and recognition modes of contemporary art works is influenced by neoliberal models of the financial economy, which directly impact artistic creation. The art work economy cannot be identified to criteria coming from outside, which result in the confusion observed in definitions, norms and borrowed values. The role of actors is thus profoundly modified. The market of speculative art, by segmenting itself, demonstrates these drifts. JEL codes: Z11, D43


Minimization of the concentration and mobility of trace metals is a primary concern when considering the land application of wastewater sludges. The effects of pelletization/drying, composting, incineration, and N-Viro chemical stabilization on composition and mobility of trace metals and P were compared. One day's production of dewatered digested sludge (Syracuse, NY) was used as the sole feedstock so that observed differences would solely be a result of the process used. Mobility was determined using the toxic characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP). Analyte concentrations were essentially constant during dewatered sludge production with mean values (mg kg TS) of 5.6 Cd, 10.7 Co, 130 Cr, 587 Cu, 49.7 Mo, 35.8 Ni, 26 880 P, 132 Pb, and 545 Zn. Concentrations in pellets were similar to dewatered sludge, but were reduced in composted sludge and N-Viro product by the addition of amendments. Incineration concentrated all analytes except Cd and Pb, which experienced volatilization losses. The mode of processing had widely ranging effects on mobilities. The TCLP-mobile fraction (percent of total) of analytes in dewatered sludge was <3% except Ni (7.1%), P (6.0%), and Zn (11.2%). Composting slightly increased Cd mobility, but reduced that of Ni and P. Pelletization increased the mobility of Cd (7.9%), Cu (3.8%), Ni (15.4%), and Zn (15%). The N-Viro process substantially increased mobilities of Cu (43%), Mo (50%), and Ni (24%) at elevated pH. Incineration increased mobilities of Cd and Mo, but reduced Ni, P, and Zn mobility. These results, with those of longer term in situ studies, can be used to guide the selection of sludge processes that minimize potential metal and P mobility.


This brief showcases the lessons learned from the Africa Round Table (ART), a collaborative forum that has brought together countries from east, west, and southern Africa. The forum has led to more than five distinct insolvency reforms that have helped strengthen countries' credit environments. By leveraging their joint capacities, IFC and the World Bank have helped Sub-Saharan African countries address the challenges of the financial crisis, strengthen ties across professions, and in the process create a guiding example for evoking lasting change in a country.


Many workflows are inherently distributed over large-scale enterprise networks. These workflows involve many collaborating partners that interact in an autonomous and event-driven manner. Managing these workflows in an efficient and reliable manner is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose and evaluate the design for a distributed workflow management system that runs according to a set of protocols which utilize a content-based publish/subscribe messaging substrate. The novel features of our framework include elastic management of resources and flexible re-location of management entities to ensure cost-effective and low-latency management operations. Our experimental evaluation shows that the distributed and event-driven approach scales and maintains constant response time for varying management workloads. The average response time for management operations was reduced by 25% using our elastic management cluster approach compared to a fixed management cluster. Management requests were processed up to 10 times faster. Categories


Two methods to achieve super-resolution with complex masks displayed in one-phase-only liquid crystal display (LCD) are described. The first method decomposes the complex mask into two phase-only elements with a posterior recombination using an interferometer, and the second method simultaneously encodes the amplitude and the phase by modulating the amplitude of the carrier phase. Experimental results are presented using a liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator under reflection.


A new method of computing of normal distributions [1] on rotation groups is suggested. Monte Carlo method allows to calculate the orientation of grains function (ODF) and correspondent pole figures (PFs) using approximation by normal distributions [2]. The developed Monte Carlo method is applied for construction of PFs mathematical statistical model corresponding to experimental measurement. This model is based on statistical simulation of normal distributions on SO(3) group for discrete representation of pole figures. It is possible to calculate effective physical properties of polycrystals using the given discrete representation. The mathematical simulation for texture with two components of polycrystalline sample with hexagonal symmetry is developed. Two experimental PFs } 0 1 10 { and } 0002 { for Be measured by X-ray experiment are being used. For this case the effective property as a tensor of elastic compliance was calculated. The mathematical simulation of PFs also allows to determine the statistical errors of pole figures measurement.


Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the current state and trends of health-related research on foreign migrants living in Korea. Methods: Among 85 articles identified via PubMed and RISS and additional 7 articles by ancestry search, 28 were selected for the review. Two authors independently reviewed the articles using a literature review matrix and examined together the three aspects of the studies: research methods, research topics, and research results. Results: Most of the articles were published between 2005-2009, and only 3 studies used an interdisciplinary approach. Most were exploratory and there were 4 intervention studies: three of them examined the effect of an art therapy on acculturative stress and mental health among marriage migrant women. The lack of information on informed consent, approval of institutional review board, and the validity/reliability of the translated instruments were noted. Conclusions: Research is needed to examine migrants' health behaviors, the prevalence of chronic illness among migrants, and the influence of acculturation on the use of health resources, health behaviors, and health status. Researchers should be aware of ethnic issues when they work with foreign migrants.


ABSTRACT Space cooling is a significant energy consumer in office buildings in the subtropical climate zone. An adequate energy policy for indoor spaces should accordingly incorporate both energy conservation and an acceptable level of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This study investigates the cooling energy consumption for IEQ acceptance in Hong Kong offices adopted for four space-cooling strategies: the ventilation strategies of conventional constant air volume (CAV) systems with a fixed fresh air flow rate; demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) by indoor CO2 concentration; adaptive comfort temperature (ACT) set-point adjustment; and a combination of DCV and ACT operations. Numerical equations and multiple regression formulae were used to evaluate the cooling energy consumption and IEQ acceptance in the target offices, respectively. The results show that systems equipped with DCV are more energy efficient than conventional CAV systems, while a temperature set-point adjusted between 22°C and 23°C should satisfy the occupants' thermal requirements at a reasonable rate of energy expenditure. Meanwhile, the DCV + ACT method was found to be an effective ventilation strategy in terms of its energy saving potential (21.4%--24.3%) and an "average" IEQ acceptance, as presented in the sample office. The results of this study could be useful for the promotion of energy saving measures with IEQ consideration in air-conditioned office buildings in Hong Kong.


Obesity is a public health problem that affects both the developed and the developing countries. Its aetiology includes genetic factors and lifestyle (diet and physical activity). The studies of its prevalence in different strata and localisations of the Latin American countries varied between 22-26% in Brazil, 21% in Mexico, 10% in Ecuador, 3-22% in Peru, 22-35% in Paraguay and 24-27% in Argentina, although these data should not be extrapolated to the general population. The comparative national studies made it possible to establish that: 1.- The prevalence of preobesity plus obesity was above 20% in 17 of the 20 countries. 2.- There is a trend to increase in the prevalence of obesity. 3.- The relation of obesity between women/men is significantly higher in females in the majority of countries. In any case, although the validity of these rates must be examined with care, since the goals of evaluation and comparison with the corresponding patterns might differ, it can be observed that the epidemiological transition in these countries leads to a growing number of persons with obesity.


The chili plum (Spondias purpurea L.) is an exotic fruit with a climacteric pattern of respiration belonging to the Anacardiaceous family and is consumed in both the fresh and processed states. The fruit has a yellow pulp, pleasant aroma, sweet sour taste with vitamin A content being higher than cashew, guava, some papaya and mango cultivars. However, a relatively short shelf-life of 5-6 days at ambient temperatures for harvested fruits and widespread incidence of fruit-fly infestation are two major limitations for increased utilization of this fruit. Fruits can be successfully stored up to 14 days at 12.5oC. Fruits stored at 12.5oC and then subsequently transferred to 30-32oC ripened normally with a shelf-life of 4 days. Storage at temperatures below 9-10oC resulted in the occurrence of chilling injury damage accompanied by an inhibition of ripening. Chili plums have a caloric density of 74 kcal/100 g-1 edible portion which is significantly higher than the 39 to 58 kcal/100g-1 for peach, apricot, and mango and cherry. The higher caloric density is attributed to its total carbohydrates of 19.1% and fructose, glucose and sucrose which together account for 65% of the soluble matter. Unlike the other fruits, chili plum retains a fair amount of starch in the mesocarp. It is a moderate source of potassium (250 mg/100g-1 edible portion) and an excellent source of vitamin C (48 mg/100g-1 edible portion). Analysis of volatile flavour compounds showed 2-hexenal to be the main flavour compound present.