There is an enduring interest in how geographic features influence political interactions and outcomes, and many key factors highlighted in international relations and cross-national research vary spatially within countries. Starting with the pioneering research of Richardson, we show how geographic information systems (GIS) technology and the increasing availability of spatial data can provide new opportunities to answer old and new questions. We focus on key motivations for using spatial disaggregated data and show how such data can be used in current research, drawing on examples from the study of violent conflict.


OBJECTIVES
This paper examines the meanings of classical texts in contemporary East Asian medicine.

METHODS
This study conducted anthropological fieldwork of the Hyungsang Medical Society, the major practitioner association in South Korea, which follows the teachings of Donguibogam (Bogam), one of the most influential texts in contemporary Korean medicine. Field data were collected by long-term observation of clinical practices at member clinics, in-depth interviews with practitioners, and participation in activities of the medical society.

RESULTS
The Hyungsang Medical Society follows Bogam's emphases-such as the fundamental constituents of human beings and the constitutional differences among persons-and actualizes the teachings in Hyungsang medical theory. Hyungsang medicine proposes several person types, based on bodily appearances, that inform a person's inner status. These types illustrate emerging diagnostic methods derived from Bogam. The Jung (essence), Ki (energy), Shin (spirit), and Hyeol (blood) types are developed with a premise that disproportionate composition of the fundamental constituents leads to different face shapes among the four types of persons. A case developed in this study demonstrates that once a patient is identified as one of the types, the practitioner gains an advantageous position to approach the patient's health issues.

CONCLUSIONS
The emerging person-types of Hyungsang medicine illustrate how a new medical practice is taking place in East Asian medicine today through contemporary actors' interpretation and actualization of classical texts, suggesting that classical texts play, and have the potential to play, a continuing role in East Asian medicine.


The post-World War II period gave rise to a large number of social-scientific techniques for investigating and intervening in social reality. A particular group of these, exemplified here by the experiments of Moreno, Lewin, Bion, Milgram and Zimbardo, worked by establishing suggestive micro-realities in which participants were exposed to, or experimented with, selected 'social problems'. We investigate the nature of these techniques – being simultaneously highly artificial and disturbingly realistic – and propose the notion of 'provocative containment' to understand their operation and effects. We point to five ingredients of their characteristic mode of operation – expressionism, incitement, trauma, distillation and technology – and argue that they do not serve to represent a simplified version of social reality, but rather to 'realize' particular forms of social life intrinsic to the medium of provocative containment.


The variations in species composition and assemblage of unmanaged simple-intensive green roofs in Hannover, Germany, were investigated over a thirty year period, in order to assess the persistence of the initial seed mixture and to evaluate floristic changes. The roofs were greened in 1985 with soilbased turf rolls sown with a mixture of five grasses (Festuca rubra, Festuca ovina, Agrostis capillaris, Lolium perenne and Poa pratensis). Three sets of 120 phytosociological relevés, sampled in 1987, 1999 and 2014, have been compared to assess: (1) nestedness vs spatial turnover, (2) functional diversity and (3) the importance of vegetation dynamics on green roof performance and design. Results demonstrated that from 1987 to 1999 the species diversity increased and the species turnover prevailed over nestedness, due to the progressive niche occupation by new species. In contrast, from 1999 to 2014 species diversity remained steady, suggesting that nestedness prevailed over species turnover. The main driver of the observed functional changes was a shift towards relatively more thermoxeric conditions. In terms of plant life strategies, the competitive species sown on the roof gradually gave way to stress-tolerant and ruderal species, along with a progressive increase in species with shortdistance seed dispersal strategies. It is concluded that: (a) to create resilient green roofs, spontaneous colonisation should be accepted and considered as a design factor; and (b) regional plant communities could serve as a model for seed recruitment and installations. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The American pika (Ochotona princeps) appears to have experienced a substantial upslope range contraction in the Great Basin in response to climate warming. In California, models predict range contraction, but whether the species' lower elevational limit has already shifted remains unclear. We located and determined current occupancy at 19 historic pika localities in the northern Sierra Nevada of California, USA, in 2009–2012. We found that 17 localities were currently occupied by pikas at or near the original record location, while at 2 localities pikas appeared extirpated. No strong climate signal was detected in our data; however, the distribution of historic points does not allow us to rule out upslope range contraction in our region. Talus area was closely correlated with pika persistence, consistent with the application of metapopulation theory to pikas. © 2012 The Wildlife Society.


The remoteness of New Zealand, and the long period required for the transmission of specimens to England, together with the very limited information we at present possess of the geology and palæontology of that interesting antipodean colony, impart a certain degree of importance to any accession of knowledge, however slight, relating to the physical structure, and the ancient fauna and flora of those distant islands. These considerations induce me to submit to the Society the following remarks on a large collection of the bones of several species of Dinornis and other birds, of rock-specimens, and of fossil shells, corals, and infusoria, received a short time since from my eldest son, Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington; and although the information afforded by this collection respecting the geological structure of the country is but scanty, I would fain hope that this brief communication will not be deemed an uninteresting supplement to the memoir on the Fossil Birds of New Zealand, which I had the honour to lay before the Geological Society in 1848. The specimens were accompanied by numerous sketches of the country, and a copy of the official report on the colonial capabilities of the eastern coast of the Middle Island, from Kaiapoi to Akaroa in Banks' Peninsula, and thence to the Scotch settlement at Otago, a distance of about 260 miles, made during my son's exploration of that tract in 1848, as Government Commissioner for the final settlement of native claims. Such parts of this report as throw light on


This experimental study aims to investigate the performance of towels. In order to do this, we obtained the relationships between the towel's performance and selected characteristic properties such as pile highness, aerial density, type of softeners, and dyeing process. For this purpose, the selected towel samples were tested in accordance with the determination of degree of hydrophility, softness, and dimensional change after washing; then the results obtained were analysed. In this first part of our investigation, the effects of pile highness and aerial density on the bending resistance or the softness of towels have been discussed.


The title complex, [Ir(C15H9Br2O2)(C13H8NS)2], lies about a crystallographic twofold rotation axis passing through the IrIII atom and the central C atom of the bis(bromophenyl)propane-1,3-dionate ligand. The IrIII atom adopts a distorted octahedral geometry coordinated by two N atoms in the axial positions, and two C and two O atoms in the equatorial plane. The dihedral angle between the two thiazole ring systems in the complex is 77.45 (10)°.


This paper proposes a definition of communicative competence for individuals using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. The proposed definition suggests that communicative competence is a relative and dynamic, interpersonal construct based on functionality of communication, adequacy of communication, and sufficiency of knowledge, judgement, and skill in four interrelated areas: linguistic competence, operational competence, social competence, and strategic competence. Linguistic and operational competencies refer to knowledge and skills in the use of the tools of communication; social and strategic competencies reflect functional knowledge and judgement in interaction. The paper urges future research to validate the proposed definition of communicative competence and suggests some implications for assessment and intervention in the AAC field.


The use of commercially prepared hematite nanoparticles (37.0 nm) was studied as an adsorbent in the removal of Cd(II), Cu(II), Pb(II), and Zn(II) from aqueous solutions. Single‐metal adsorption was studied as a function of metal and adsorbent concentrations, whereas binary metal competition was found to be dependent on the molar ratio between the competing metals. Competitive effects indicated that Pb had strong homogenous affinity to the nanohematite surface, and decreased adsorption of Cd, Cu, and Zn occurred when Pb was present in a binary system. Metal adsorption strength to nanohematite at pH 6.0 increased with metal electronegativity: Pb > Cu > Zn ∼ Cd. Equilibrium modeling revealed that the Langmuir–Freundlich composite isotherm adequately described the adsorption and competitive effects of metals to nanohematite, whereas desorption was best described by the Langmuir isotherm. The desorption of metals from nanohematite was found to be pH dependent, with pH 4.0 > pH 6.0 > pH 8.0, and results showed that greater than 65% desorption was achieved at pH 4.0 within three 24‐h cycles for all metals. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2012;31:86–92. © 2011 SETAC


This paper reports the pilot phase of a three-year project, `Public perceptions of biotechnology', conducted in Perth, Western Australia. The purposes of this pilot investigation were (1) to develop a computer-based method for investigating public perceptions of biotechnology, and (2) to report the perceptions of four `interested publics' about the Flavr Savr™/MacGregor's® tomato, a genetically engineered tomato. By `interested publics' we mean members of groups who are not experts in the field, but have an interest because of their membership of the group. We developed a computer-based database of information about this tomato to stimulate, in interviews, respondents' articulation of their knowledge and perceptions of biotechnology. The database was a multimedia package, based on a HyperCard stack on a Macintosh PowerBook 180C, with information about the tomato in ten different categories. The data suggest that our methodology has the potential to provide a fruitful approach to exploring the background knowledges and perceptions of different publics.


The northern New England region includes the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine and encompasses a large degree of climate and edaphic variation across a relatively small spatial area, making it ideal for studying climate change impacts on agricultural weed communities. We sampled weed seedbanks and measured soil physical and chemical characteristics on 77 organic farms across the region and analyzed the relationships between weed community parameters and select geographic, climatic, and edaphic variables using multivariate procedures. Temperaturerelated variables (latitude, longitude, mean maximum and minimum temperature) were the strongest and most consistent correlates with weed seedbank composition. Edaphic variables were, for the most part, relatively weaker and inconsistent correlates with weed seedbanks. Our analyses also indicate that a number of agriculturally important weed species are associated with specific U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones, implying that future changes in climate factors that result in geographic shifts in these zones will likely be accompanied by changes in the composition of weed communities and therefore new management challenges for farmers.


The syntheses of a new 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane (cyclen) derivative bearing a picolinate pendant arm (HL1), and its 1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane (cyclam) analogue HL2, were achieved by using two different selective-protection methods involving the preparation of cyclen-bisaminal or phosphoryl cyclam derivatives. The acid-base properties of both compounds were investigated as well as their coordination chemistry, especially with Cu(2+), in aqueous solution and in solid state. The copper(II) complexes were synthesized, and the single crystal X-ray diffraction structures of compounds of formula [Cu(HL)](ClO(4))(2)·H(2)O (L = L1 or L2), [CuL1](ClO(4)) and [CuL2]Cl·2H(2)O, were determined. These studies revealed that protonation of the complexes occurs on the carboxylate group of the picolinate moiety. Stability constants of the complexes were determined at 25.0 °C and ionic strength 0.10 M in KNO(3) using potentiometric titrations. Both ligands form complexes with Cu(2+) that are thermodynamically very stable. Additionally, both HL1 and HL2 exhibit an important selectivity for Cu(2+) over Zn(2+). The kinetic inertness in acidic medium of both complexes of Cu(2+) was evaluated by spectrophotometry revealing that [CuL2](+) is much more inert than [CuL1](+). The determined half-life values also demonstrate the very high kinetic inertness of [CuL2](+) when compared to a list of copper(II) complexes of other macrocyclic ligands. The coordination geometry of the copper center in the complexes was established in aqueous solution from UV-visible and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, showing that the solution structures of both complexes are in excellent agreement with those of crystallographic data. Cyclic voltammetry experiments point to a good stability of the complexes with respect to metal ion dissociation upon reduction of the metal ion to Cu(+) at about neutral pH. Our results revealed that the cyclam-based ligand HL2 is a very attractive receptor for copper(II), presenting a fast complexation process, a high kinetic inertness, and important thermodynamic and electrochemical stability.


Adaptive encoding has been shown to be an effective approach to bus power minimization in situations where characterization of the input statistics is not available. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for adaptive bus encoding that, conversely from existing solutions, exploits spatial correlations in the input data being transmitted to increase the accuracy in the dynamic selection of the encoding function. We discuss the encoding algorithm and we describe an architecture for its implementation as bus interface. We present experimental data collected in a realistic simulation framework on a number of meaningful benchmarks, and we compare them to those obtained through the application of existing encoding schemes.


Alcohol abuse is a major problem among adolescents, and has both acute, potentially lethal, and long-term harmful effects. The authors describe an adolescent who was in a subcomatose condition after binge drinking. His serum alcohol concentration was 3.7 g/l. The next morning, before transfer to the paediatric ward, he developed a third-degree atrioventricular (AV) block without cardiac output while his infusion needle was removed. This recovered spontaneously after a precordial thump. Retrospectively, electrocardiography showed an increasing PR prolongation (200–300 ms) before the removal of the infusion needle. ECG recordings several hours later showed a first-degree AV block, which was no longer seen during follow-up, 1 month later. The authors conclude that acute alcohol poisoning has the potential to prolong the PR interval in young, healthy adolescents without pre-existing first-degree AV block and provoke a third-degree AV block after vagal stimulation. It is yet another potential danger of acute alcohol intoxication in this age group.


All-atom molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study the dynamics of aqueous electrolyte solutions confined in slit-shaped silica nanopores of various degrees of protonation. Five degrees of protonation were prepared by randomly removing surface hydrogen atoms from fully protonated crystalline silica surfaces. Aqueous electrolyte solutions containing NaCl or CsCl salt were simulated at ambient conditions. In all cases, the ionic concentration was 1 M. The results were quantified in terms of atomic density distributions within the pores, and the self-diffusion coefficient along the direction parallel to the pore surface. We found evidence for ion-specific properties that depend on ion-surface, water-ion, and only in some cases ion-ion correlations. The degree of protonation strongly affects the structure, distribution, and the dynamic behavior of confined water and electrolytes. Cl(-) ions adsorb on the surface at large degrees of protonation, and their behavior does not depend significantly on the cation type (either Na(+) or Cs(+) ions are present in the systems considered). The cations show significant ion-specific behavior. Na(+) ions occupy different positions within the pore as the degree of protonation changes, while Cs(+) ions mainly remain near the pore center at all conditions considered. For a given degree of protonation, the planar self-diffusion coefficient of Cs(+) is always greater than that of Na(+) ions. The results are useful for better understanding transport under confinement, including brine behavior in the subsurface, with important applications such as environmental remediation.


Ceramic coatings are refractory metal compounds deposited on substrates to reduce thermal loss and to protect components from high temperature. Thermal barrier coatings (TBC) are composite overlay of bond coat and ceramic coat oil a superalloy substrate. Atomised deposition or splat deposition of fine semi-molten particle technique deposits thin coatings of brittle ceramic.

Thermal and mechanical strains arising from service exposure require structural compliance tolerances. This is facilitated by brittle constituent deposition over a ductile substrate. Electron beam, physical vapour deposition and plasma spray technique lead to a tortuous intergranular network of coating Porous deposition technique is applied in all cases instead of cementation or continuous section thickness. Thermal barrier coating is inevitable in aerospace engine sections operating at limiting conditions of strains.

Thermal barrier coatings help in protection of high temperature components for maximum utilisation of component lives, and maximum utilisation of energy by operating at optimum allowable temperature limits. Thermo mechanical behaviour of TBC is optimised by in-silu formation and transformation mechanisms of alumina from aluminium of substrate/bond coat and metastable tetragonal zirconia to stable tetragonal zirconia respectively at temperature of service. While the former produces a volumetric contraction, the latter produces volumetric expansion. In service the composite system provides auto-toughening effects in due course. An intergranular tortuous network of coating forms cracks on exposure of strain and the crack tip blunting forms cubic allotropy from metastable tetragonal phase, resulting in an increase in toughness due to elimination of c/a ratio.

However, a prolonged exposure forms, localised spallation zones, which are initiated by volumetric expansion stresses associated with nickel enrichment of thermally grown oxides (TGO) at bond coat/ceramic coat interface, and auto-sintering.

Bond coat is applied to produce mechanical adherence and stress relaxation effects. Generally M-CrAlY families of bond coating alloys are used for this purpose. Exposure to operating/test temperature produces thermally grown oxides (TGO) at interface. This occupies an intermediate zone in response to property interactions. TGO mainly consists of alumina being catalyzed by chromia and adhered by yttria.

Active research is going oil to study the mechanisms of auto sintering and auto-toughening of TBC. Work is in progress to explore how to decrease thermal expansion mismatch stresses by application of composite. coatings made from functionally graded materials, microlaminated, and multilayered ceramic/ceramic or metallic/ceramic or metallic/metallic coatings. The application of laser scaling or remelting to reduce porosity of free surface and to increase glaze are other avenues to reduce diffusion of reactive gases and to increase internal heat, transfer respectively. The former increases life of bond coat/substrate, whereas the latter increases energy efficiency by maximum utilisation of heat.

The main unsolved problem is spallation of ceramic coating, which is cohesively induced, in either side of interface and spread out to interfaces of adhesion. TBC increases. life more than two-fold for cases of aerospace engines. However localised spallation may rise by high temperature corrosion of bond coat/substrate, TGO stresses, gaseous/liquid contaminant diffusion/impregnation through tolerance networking of voids, and erosion.


The mutual effects of boron (B) and zinc (Zn) on growth, total chlorophyll (Chl), membrane permeability (MP), and nutrient content were investigated in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). The soil was treated with five levels of B (0, 4, 8, 16, 32 mg kg−1) and three levels of Zn (0, 10, 20 mg kg−1). Plant growth was progressively depressed with increasing of B. However, Zn addition had an inhibitory effect on B toxicity and decreased growth reduction caused by excess B. In Zn-untreated plants, B and Zn contents were enhanced by increasing of B; moreover, both Zn and B addition enhanced Zn content. The Chl content decreased and MP increased, resulting from B toxicity; however, Zn addition partially ameliorated the adverse effects of B toxicity on Chl and MP. Increasing B enhanced phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), Zn, copper (Cu), and sodium (Na) contents in peanut shoots.


A recent shift to a more performative and relational understanding of the museum and its practices can be witnessed in the field of museum studies. This shift reimagines the museum as experience, process or performance, and is reflected in what has been termed the 'post-museum'. The post-museum challenges the representational practices of the museum, and introduces a potential 'liqud imaginary' which dissolves the traditional boundaries of what constitutes a museum. While these ideas point to relevant changes in the way museums are perceived and practiced, the field has so far failed to explore the implications of this shift for the practice of museum research.

This study examines the potential of the post-museum for developing new approaches to research practices. It contributes to the field of museum studies by exploring creative research methods that qualify as site-responsive, experimental means of critically engaing with the museum. These creative methods of research are developed on-site at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London. Under-represented in the museological literature, maritime museums provide potent opportunity as sites for experimentation into creative, more-than-representational approaches to museum research.

The study examines creative research methodologies through the embodied mode of inhabitation, which it conceptualises through the notions of dwelling and travelling. Drawing on the concept of the 'mariner's craft' from maritime literary criticism and so-called wet or liquid ontologies from human geography, the research explores the potential of post-museum thinking from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Inhabiting the Museum through creative-experimental doings, the thesis-in-motion maps out an uncertain voyage into the uncharted territories of creative maritime museum research, a voyage of exploration, intervention, and creativity.


: Granulocytic leukemoid reactions (white blood cell counts greater than 50,000 with myelocytes and promyelocytes in the peripheral blood) were documented in 15 per cent of 273 patients with dysentery due to Shigella dysenteriae, type 1 (Shiga bacillus) in Bangladesh. Peak granulocytosis occurred during the second week of illness, when the children were commonly afebrile and diarrhea had ceased or was subsiding. More than half of the patients with leukemoid reactions subsequently developed a fall in hematocrit associated with striking erythrocyte fragmentation on blood smears. Thrombocytopenia occurred during the period of hemolysis in most. Transient oliguric renal failure developed in several patients. Most made a complete recovery. The pathogenesis of the syndrome and the reason for its high incidence were not determined.


In species where advancing sire age is associated with decreased progeny fitness, female resistance to mating with old partners can be expected to evolve. In polyandrous species, such resistance may be contingent on female mating experience: virgins should be relatively indiscriminate to ensure egg fertility, whereas non-virgins can be expected to base their re-mating decisions on the age of their previous versus potential new partners, and 'trade-up' if previously mated with old males. Here, we tested these predictions using a promiscuous and relatively long-living bulb mite (Rhizoglyphus robini), in which old sire age is associated with decreased fecundity of daughters. In a fully factorial design, we applied two male treatments, young and old, and three female treatments, virgin, previously mated to an old male and previously mated to a young male. Consistent with earlier studies, we observed a reduced mating success of old males. However, we found no support for attributing this result to female discrimination, as female behavior in response to male mounting attempts was not affected by the age of the suitor, or by its interaction with the age of the female's previous mate. Interestingly, females were passive during 93% of male mounting attempts observed, suggesting that once they are located by a male, they exert little control over copulation. Old males had lower mate-searching activity and were less efficient in obtaining matings (lower success rate per mounting attempt), suggesting a decreased mate-securing ability because of aging. Overall, our results suggest that in bulb mites, male ability to secure mates declines with age, whereas they do not support the prediction that females actively discriminate against old partners.


This paper assesses the relative importance of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Using a nested logit model we formally incorporate the structured and sequential decision process pupils engage with. Our findings show that, on average, the key drivers of the schooling decision are pupil educational attainment and parental aspirations rather than local labour market conditions. However, there is some evidence that higher local unemployment rates encourage males to invest in education, and that interactions with educational attainment suggest local labour market conditions impact heterogeneously across the pupil population.


Abstract. On 24 September 2013, an Ml 3.6 earthquake struck in the Gulf of Valencia (Spain) near the Mediterranean coast of Castello, roughly 1 week after gas injections conducted in the area to develop underground gas storage had been halted. The event, felt by the nearby population, led to a sequence build-up of felt events which reached a maximum of Ml 4.3 on 2 October. Here, we study the role of static stress transfer as an earthquake-triggering mechanism during the main phase of the sequence, as expressed by the eight felt events. By means of the Coulomb failure function, cumulative static stress changes are quantified on fault planes derived from focal mechanism solutions (which act as both source and receiver faults) and on the previously mapped structures in the area (acting only as stress receivers in our modeling). Results suggest that static stress transfer played a destabilizing role and point towards an SE-dipping structure underlying the reservoir (or various with analogous geometry) that was most likely activated during the sequence. One of the previously mapped faults could be geometrically compatible, yet our study supports deeper sources. Based on this approach, the influence of the main events in the occurrence of future and potentially damaging earthquakes in the area would not be significant.


Purpose Significant increases in the volume of preprint articles due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we examined the reliability of preprint articles compared to their peer-reviewed publications. Materials and Methods Preprint articles evaluating experimental studies of select treatment options (anticoagulation, dexamethasone, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and tocilizumab) for COVID-19 in the critically ill, available in a peer-reviewed publication were screened for inclusion within Altmetric (n = 2040). A total of 40 articles met inclusion criteria, with 21 being randomly selected for evaluation. The primary outcome of this evaluation was a change in a study's reported primary outcome or statistical significance between preprint and peer-reviewed articles. Secondary outcomes included changes in primary/secondary outcome effect size and change in study conclusion. Results One article (4.8%, 95% CI 0.12%-23.8%) had a change in the primary outcome. Seven articles (33.3%, 95% CI 14.6%-57.0%) had a change in the primary outcome's effect measure. Five studies (23.8%, 95% CI 8.2%-47.2%) had changes in statistical significance of at least one secondary outcome. Four studies (19.0%, 95% CI 5.4%-41.9%) had a change in study conclusion. Conclusions In preprint articles of COVID-19 treatments, the provided primary outcome is generally reliable, while interpretation of secondary outcomes should be made with caution, while awaiting completion of the peer-review process.


The article analyses relation between subjective well – being (SWB) expressed as general satisfaction with life and its possible micro level determinants. Many studies have been published that relate macro level determinants (such as GDP or unemployment level) with aggregated national level of SWB. There is a vast amount of economic literature which analyses few or even single demographic, socio-economic, social and attitudinal/cultural variables that influence life satisfaction at an individual level. But it is a rare case that study is done on a rich data set that includes all the aforementioned variables in a single analysis and is nationally representative. Moreover, there is no thorough analysis of micro level determinants of life satisfaction in Lithuania. The present study analyses Lithuanian data of Eurobarometer study on social capital that includes many variables that are considered by theoretical literature as likely determinants of SWB. Micro level analysis shows that most important determinants of general life satisfaction in Lithuania are satisfaction with health and financial situation. Employment status, educational level, marital status, community involvement, presence of children also tend to be significantly related to subjective well-being. The study also revealed that age in contrary to many previous studies should not be considered as an important determinant of SWB as its effect is explained by differences of health and financial satisfaction levels. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to reveal the nature of relations and interdependency of different variables and SWB more deeply. Further analysis of rich data sets that include many countries would also allow to better understand the influence of such variables as country development level or culture. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.24.2.2024


Butt Out for Baby was a smoking cessation intervention guide, aimed at community health workers, that the Child and Youth Health group published in 2003. The literature was released as the chief publication of the Butt Out for Baby Project, a multiple-resource smoking cessation program directed toward young parents and pregnant smokers, following the revelation of a relatively high rate of smoking among that group. The authors published the pamphlet in Adelaide, South Australia, and did not credit themselves individually. Gill Faulkner, the manager for Butt Out for Baby Project, developed Butt Out for Baby in partnership with young South Australian parents and pregnant women, who contributed significantly to its communicative style and recommended approaches. Targeting behavioral counsellors, Butt Out for Baby represented a model publication in the majorly successful South Australian smoking cessation campaign, which reached thousands of young parents and pregnant women to contribute to a significant decrease in youth smokers over the subsequent decade.


The industry of roadway is renowned as a strong pillar in the world of transportation. Lots of studies are already done regarding the roadway transport and it related population in various aspects. However, nothing any specific study has been done to reflect the state of the truckers related to long distance driving in West Bengal. This study has bounded in the logistic hub namely region of Calcutta-Mumbi Tuck Terminal Ltd. (In a side of NH-6), West Bengal, India and its surrounding area. During this study it's observed that most of the truckers are "Upper primary to Secondary (Class-V to Class-X)" qualified and "29 to 39" years aged people. It's also noticed that they are here in this profession from "6 to 10" years. The statistical databases also indicating that highest percentage of truckers are able to drive "7 to 12" hours in a day (at a time) and mostly of the truckers do it "30 days to 90 days" in a year. However, it is also observed that with the respect of capacity of driving "Year of experience" and "Capacity of driving" both issues are related but not inter-depending.


Background Lymph node (LN) metastasis is an important predictor of survival for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the prognostic significance of the extent of LN involvement among patients with N1 disease remains unknown. A study was undertaken to evaluate whether involvement of a higher number of N1 LNs is associated with worse survival independent of known prognostic factors. Methods Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare database, 1682 resected patients with N1 NSCLC diagnosed between 1992 and 2005 were identified. As the number of positive LNs is confounded by the total number of LNs sampled, the cases were classified into three groups according to the ratio of positive to total number of LNs removed (LN ratio (LNR)): ≤0.15, 0.16–0.5 and >0.5. Lung cancer-specific and overall survival was compared between these groups using Kaplan–Meier curves. Stratified and Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between the LNR and survival after adjusting for potential confounders. Results Lung cancer-specific and overall survival was lower among patients with a high LNR (p<0.0001 for both comparisons). Median lung cancer-specific survival was 47 months, 37 months and 21 months for patients in the ≤0.15, 0.16–0.5 and >0.5 LNR groups, respectively. In stratified and adjusted analyses, a higher LNR was also associated with worse lung cancer-specific and overall survival. Conclusions The extent of LN involvement provides independent prognostic information in patients with N1 NSCLC. This information may be used to identify patients at high risk of recurrence who may benefit from aggressive postoperative therapy.


ABSTRACT Educators, docents, and interpreters are considered integral to the learning experiences at many museums. Although there is growing recognition that these staff members need professional development to effectively support visitor learning, there has been little research to describe their work or identify effective facilitation strategies. To address this need, we explored the nature of unstructured staff-facilitated family learning at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, OR, videotaping and inductively analyzing 65 unstructured staff-family interactions. The analysis highlighted the importance of role negotiation between staff and adult family members, particularly during the initiation of interactions, staff and visitor facilitation of family learning, and the introduction of new learning goals by staff members. Aligned with prior research on family learning in museums, adult family members played a critical role in shaping the nature of the interactions and determining the level of involvement of staff members. Findings have important implications for both future research and the professional development of staff.


This paper describes emergent challenges in extending and uniting research in service science and process mining. By combining formal representations of user journeys with process mining constructs, we aim to develop tools for automated capture and analysis of user interactions extending across service systems. Based on the resulting database of actual user journeys and user models, we will use logic-based techniques and machine learning to expose deviations and predict possible behaviours for pre-emptive problem solving and service recovery.


Ireland's dairy sector is characterised by pastoral spring-calving systems and seasonal milk production at national level. This production seasonality initiates various implications at processor level, such as poor plant capacity utilisation off-peak season or a requirement for seasonal labour, which impose extra costs on the processor and limit their options as to which markets can be serviced. An optimisation model was developed to analyse the impact of production seasonality on the Irish dairy processing industry regarding processor gross surplus (Surplus), costs of milk collection and handling, processing, product storage and labour as well as on product mix, plant and labour capacity utilisation and the marginal producer milk price (MPMP). Three scenarios with differing milk intake curves were examined whereby it was found that a flatter intake pattern incurred less variation in the MPMP and capacity utilisation in addition to a higher Surplus and a larger proportion of more profitable products in the product mix vis-a-vis seasonal patterns. As expected, these results suggest that a producer supplying milk in line with a nationally seasonal production pattern receives lower milk payments since the seasonality-related costs are fed back from the processor to the producer via a lower producer milk price.


The mutual dependence between courts and their compliance constituencies is a fundamental feature of judicial power. Actors whose rights and interests are reinforced by court decisions may use these as legal ammunitions while contributing to ensuring that court decisions are effectively implemented. We argue that judgments that contain dissenting opinions are less powerful in this regard, compared with unanimous decisions. The reason is that dissent reduces the perceived legal authority of the judgment. Using data from the international human rights judiciaries in Europe and the Americas, we provide evidence of a negative relationship between judicial dissent and compliance. Our findings have important implications for questions relating to the institutional design of courts, for courts' ability to manage compliance problems, and for understanding the conditions for effective international judicial protection of human rights.


A master-slave configuration used to control the nonlinear behaviors arising in a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) with strong external optical feedback is established. In terms of bifurcation diagram, time and frequency domain, the influence of the continuous optical injection from the master VCSEL on the nonlinear characteristics of the slave is investigated theoretically. For relatively weak injection, the slave still keeps its intrinsic nonlinear state. With increasing the injection strength, these nonlinear behaviors evolve to periodic fluctuation, and at last are replaced by the steady-state (e.g. the critical injection parameter for steady-state is 1.2 when external cavity's reflectivity and length are 4% and 4cm, respectively). During this evolution the bifurcation-contraction phenomena are also observed.


Background
Mental illness is one of the most prevalent health problems globally. In Australia, it is estimated that one in five Australians are diagnosed with a common mental illness each year. In 1992, the decentralisation of mental health services in Australia and the relocation of people living with mental illness from institutionalised care into mainstream society, resulted in a significant increase in the number of patients presenting to primary health care professionals such as paramedics and to emergency departments for assistance with mental illness. The aim of this research was to investigate the attitudes, knowledge and confidence of Ambulance Tasmania (AT) paramedics when assessing and managing patients with mental illness presentations.

Methods
The research comprised a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach with two phases. Phase one of the study was conducted using a semi-structured face to face interview, while phase two was conducted as an online survey. Convenience sampling measures were used to recruit Ambulance Tasmania, Paramedics and Intensive Care Paramedics in phase one and two. The thematic analysis of qualitative data for phase one and two was analysed using two different approaches: the traditional manual method and also by use of Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS). The quantitative datum was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Results
Paramedic education and training in managing patients with a mental illness was found to be inadequate and reported to impact patient care and the paramedic/patient experience. In addition to the impact on paramedic confidence, a deficit of education and training was also linked to increased levels of stigma towards patients with mental illness.

Conclusion
Paramedic education and training in managing patients with a mental illness is paramount to improve the paramedic/patient relationship and positively impact patient care and patient recovery. This research paves the way for the implementation of a national education package and national guidelines to support the development of mental health literacy for paramedics and the delivery of effective care to patients with mental illness.


Despite bulk metal oxide non-stoichiometry often being recognized as a key determinant of catalytic performance, clarifying its catalytic function has remained elusive due in part to the highly complex nature of many catalyst surfaces. In this study, we demonstrate that the non-stoichiometric oxygen (NSO) density for thermally stable nickel oxide cubes can be manipulated without measurable changes in degree of crystallinity, particle size, and morphology. UV-vis spectroscopy, temperature programmed desorption, and H2-temperature programmed reduction analyses all evidence monotonic decreases in NSO density upon thermal treatment; crucially, these decreases persist upon exposure to ethane and oxygen under oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (ODHE) reaction conditions. Such control over NSO density under reaction conditions is used to tune ODHE ethene selectivity; independent of reaction conditions, at isoconversion, ethene selectivity tracks qualitatively with NSO density. These trends in selectivity, however, do not extend to conditions resulting in higher fractional hydroxyl coverages, for example, in the presence of water co-feeds, where primary ODHE selectivities vary only at the highest treatment temperature used in our study. Overall, this study points to (i) the need for well-defined oxide materials that enable (ideally) the exclusive variation of a single physicochemical property, (ii) the importance of using multiple characterization techniques for quantifying various properties, and (iii) the sensitivity of selectivity trends to surface coverages of reaction intermediates prevalent during their measurement. For the purpose of elucidating structure–catalytic property relationships, the approach reported herein involving the use of well-defined thermally stable faceted oxide crystals has the potential to be broadly applicable within the field of bulk oxide catalysis.


In this paper, we investigate possible time correlation of answered call arrivals in sets of real GSM telephone traffic data. Instead of attempting to model the empirical distribution of the call interarrival time, as done in several previous works in literature, we emphasize results obtained by the modified Allan variance (MAVAR), a widely used time-domain quantity with excellent capability of discriminating power-law noise types. The call arrival rate exhibits a diurnal trend, with peak hours in the morning and late afternoon. Besides this diurnal rate change, the number of call arrivals in a second is found perfectly uncorrelated to the number of arrivals in other seconds and Poisson distributed, with good consistency by X/sup 2/- test evaluation. Uniform and accurate whiteness of call arrivals per second is verified in all hours, regardless the time of the day. In all series analyzed, the empirical statistics of both originated and terminated call arrivals proves excellent consistency with the ideal Poisson model with diurnal variable rate lambda(t). This study may be valuable to researchers concerned about realistic traffic modelling in planning and performance evaluation of cellular networks.


This paper aims at improving our understanding of macro-monetary phenomena in developing countries. Specifically, it analyses a six-variable model of the Dominican Republic by implementing the cointegrating VAR framework, using annual data for the period 1950-1999. The inquiry is able to identify money demand and PPP cointegrating relationships that are economically and statistically sensible, displaying half-life persistence profiles of approximately one and three years, respectively. Additionally, generalised impulse response functions observed after shocking the money demand relation suggest that there is scope for activist monetary policy, while those derived from perturbations to PPP show that real exchange rate depreciations generate both contractionary and inflationary developments.


Purpose
Bereavement is far reaching and has a significant impact on many lives as widow(er)s are faced with countless changes to their everyday routines, their relationships and their consumption patterns. It is in this context that the purpose of this study is to examine the links between the meanings of bereavement for widows and the types and sources of social support sought. This deepens the understanding of the reasons for the success or failure of service encounters and thus contributes to consumer well-being.

Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study was carried out to gain more insight into this issue. A total of 24 in-depth interviews were conducted with French widows 59 years of age and older. To fully understand the diversity of bereavement experiences, the authors examined the following factors: life trajectory, life, as the spouse's/partner's death, support received and/or solicited and the success or failure of service encounters.

Findings
The findings suggest that bereavement experiences hold different meanings related to the types and sources of the preferred support. The following six classes were identified: dealing with administrative and financial issues, maintaining parental roles, enduring the memories of the circumstances of the spouse's/partner's death, reorganizing daily life, facing the loneliness of widowhood and expressing the affects of bereavement. These classes help to identify the conditions for the success or failure of service encounters.

Originality/value
The following two avenues emerge that contribute to the well-being of widows: "loss-oriented" and "restoration-oriented" bereavement classes of meanings. The former is embodied by widows primarily seeking "nurturant support" who expect self-oriented and relationship-focused service behaviour on the part of service providers, and the latter by widows primarily seeking "action-facilitating" support who expect "task-oriented" service behaviour from service providers. These results should allow service providers to be aware of when to prioritize the task, the self and/or the relationship, to provide a successful service encounter for consumers of bereavement services.


To investigate the relationship of hepatic signal intensity and T2 with histologic grading in an animal model of oral iron overload and to determine the duration of feeding necessary to produce abnormalities detectable on magnetic resonance (MR) images, hepatic iron overload was induced in 12 rats by feeding them a diet supplemented with 4% car‐bonyl iron for 2–11 weeks. Iron overload seen on MR images was graded independently and blindly by two radiologists as normal, mild, moderate, or severe. The rats were killed, and histologic findings were graded blindly by four pathologists using a similar subjective scale. Hepatic T2 values were estimated from spin‐echo images. In the rats with iron overload, intracellular iron deposition was noted on histologic studies. On MR images, hepatic signal intensity and T2 decreased after only 2 weeks of dietary iron overload, and both continued to decrease with longer duration of feeding. There was significant correlation between iron overload duration and changes on MR images and between MR images and histologic grading (r =.92, P =.0001 for both). The mean T2 of hepatic iron overload decreased with longer duration of feeding.


A combination of biostratigraphic markers (ammonites, inoceramid bivalves) and carbon isotope excursions is employed to establish a high-resolution correlation between the middle to late Cenomanian successions of the Western Interior Basin (USA) and the Anglo-Paris Basin (southern UK). Sequences identified from sedimentologic criteria in the Pueblo succession and elsewhere in the Western Interior Basin are shown to coincide precisely with globally recognized sea-level events and were therefore under eustatic control. This evidence refutes arguments that Cenomanian sequences in the Western Interior Basin were formed by local tectonic events. The interaction of longer-term tectonic movements and more rapid eustatic change may have simply enhanced the amount of erosion associated with sequence boundaries. A crossplot of radiometric ages derived from North American bentonites against an orbitally tuned time scale developed in the Anglo-Paris Basin provides support for the argument that the sequences were controlled by the 405-k.y.-long eccentricity cycle.


In the Atlantic Iberian estuaries, sardines tend to be a minor component of the ichthyoplankton assemblages, with rare occurrence largely restricted to estuarine mouths. However, this was not the case of the Lima estuary (NW Portugal), where sardines were the most abundant and frequently occurring marine taxon of the larval fish assemblages. Abundance of sardines collected during a two-year survey (2002-2004) ranged from 0.5 to 60.8 larvae/100 m3, with the majority still showing yolk and unpigmented eyes. Moreover, 80% of sardines were 8 days old or less and the total length ranged from 2 to 16 mm. Seasonal variations of sardine occurrence in the Lima estuary correlated with temporal variations of salinity and temperature in the water column. The unusually high river-flow observed during the winter of 2002-2003, which preceded the spring-summer abundance peak, seemed to act as a signal for the estuarine recruitment that was encountered. In addition, the estuarine occurrence of sardine larvae was also correlated with the intensity of summer upwelling, which was responsible for coastal depletion of sardine larvae resulting in estuarine low catches during the summer of 2002. The Lima estuary also revealed another peculiarity related to the lack of temporal synchrony between coastal spawning activity and occurrence of larvae within the estuary. The abundance peaks of newly-hatched larvae (autumn 2002 and spring-summer 2003) did not coincide with the winter-spring spawning pattern described earlier for the northern Iberian coast. Modifications of the spawning strategy of the northern Iberian sardine stock are discussed based on these new insights into the early life of S. pilchardus .


BACKGROUND: Present neurosurgical simulators are not portable. OBJECTIVE: To maximize portability of a virtual surgical simulator by providing online learning and to validate a unique psychometric method ("audiovisual capture") to provide tactile information without force feedback probes. METHODS: An online interactive neurosurgical simulator of a posterior petrosectomy was developed. The difference in the hardness of compact vs cancellous bone was presented with audiovisual effects as inclinations of the drilling speed and sound based on engineering perspectives. Three training methods (the developed simulator, lectures and review of slides, and dissection of a 3-dimensional printed temporal bone model [D3DPM]) were evaluated by 10 neurosurgical residents. They all first attended a lecture and were randomly allocated to 2 groups by the training D3DPM (A: simulator; B: review of slides, no simulator). In D3DPM, objective measures (required time, quality of completion, injury scores of important structures, and the number of instructions provided) were compared between groups. Finally, the residents answered questionnaires. RESULTS: The objective measures were not significantly different between groups despite a younger tendency in group A (graduate year −2.4 years, 95% confidence interval −5.3 to 0.5, P = .081). The mean perceived hardness of cancellous bone on the simulator was 70% of that of compact bone, matching the intended profile. The simulator was superior to lectures and review of slides in feedback and repeated practices and to D3DPM in adaptability to multiple learning environments. CONCLUSION: A novel online interactive neurosurgical simulator was developed, and satisfactory validity was shown. Audiovisual capture successfully transmitted the tactile information.


Optic flow has been a research topic of interest for many years. It has, until recently, been largely inapplicable to real-time video applications due to its computationally expensive nature. This paper presents a new, reliable flow technique called dynamic region matching, based on the work of Anandan[1], Lucas and Kanade[10] and Okutomi and Kanade[11], which can be combined with a motion detection algorithm (from stationary or stabilised camera image streams) to allow flow-based analyses of moving entities in real-time. If flow vectors need only be calculated for "moving" pixels, then the computation time is greatly reduced, making it applicable to real-time implementation on modest computational platforms (such as standard Pentium II based PCs). Applying this flow technique to moving entities provides some straightforward primitives for analysing the motion of those objects. Specifically, in this paper, methods are presented for: analysing rigidity and cyclic motion using residual flow; and determining self-occlusion and disambiguating multiple, mutually occluding entities using pixel contention.


: Purpose: The main aim of the research was to assess the international competitiveness of the furniture industry in the EU Member States. The article deals with the interpretation and methods of measuring competitiveness at this level of economic analysis. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study used the measurement model of the international competitiveness of an industry - the proposed methodology allowed for a broad assessment of competitive potential and competitive position. A set of competitiveness indicators and a multidimensional statistical analysis were presented. Findings: The international competitiveness of the EU furniture industry is diversified. The furniture industries in Poland, Italy, and Germany had the most significant competitive advantage by far. These countries have exceptionally high production potential and big export share. Practical Implications: The research can inform furniture manufacturers about the factors that contribute to increase competitiveness. Some strengths and areas for improvement in the operation of the furniture industry from various countries were identified. These may be relevant for building a lasting competitive advantage in the international market. Originality/Value: Competitiveness is a category that is relatively rarely studied at the sector level. The present study performs a broad assessment of the furniture industry's competitiveness, considering both the factor and the result dimensions. The empirical research presented herein has both theoretical and practical value. The employed methodology is universal and can be used to assess various industries and sectors of the economy.


The cooling load and coefficient of performance (COP) characteristic of an energy selective electron (ESE) refrigerator with filter heat conduction operating in the maximum cooling load regime and the intermediate regime (i.e. between maximum cooling load operation and reversible operation) are analyzed in this paper. In the analyses, the analytical formulae for cooling load and COP of the ESE refrigerator are derived for the two operation regimes, respectively. The performance characteristics are obtained by numerical calculations. The influence of the resonance widths on the performance of the ESE refrigerator in the intermediate regime is discussed. It is shown that, in the maximum cooling load operation regime, when the filter heat transfer is taken into account, the cooling load versus COP characteristic change from monotonic curves (without filter heat conduction) to parabolic-like ones (with filter heat conduction); while in the intermediate regime, the cooling load versus COP characteristic are always loop-shaped ones and the heat conduction of the filter does not change the shape of the characteristic curves. The cooling load is a parabolic-like function of resonance width while the COP is a monotonic one of resonance width. With the increase in thermal conductivity, the COP decreases in both operation regimes. The results obtained herein have theoretical significance for the understanding of thermodynamic performance of the micro-nano devices.


Assisted reproductive technologies and genetic technologies can accelerate progress in breeding programs in dairy farming, but it is unclear how consumers will react to the use of these technologies. Using representative questionnaire data on Danish citizens (n = 2,036) this cross-sectional study examined consumer attitudes to the application of advanced technologies in dairy cattle breeding. Attitudes were examined in 2 ways. First, we prompted about general attitudes to assisted reproductive technologies and genetic technologies in dairy cow breeding. Here we found that most of the participants were critical of cow impregnation involving hormone therapy and the insertion of cloned fetuses. Second, we used a vignette experiment to study whether acceptance of and willingness to drink milk varies with the type of technique that farmers use for their breeding work, as well as the traits being bred for. We included 5 breeding methods with differing degrees of technological complexity. Participants were randomly assigned to receive tailored information about 1 of the 5 breeding methods. The information specified that dairy farmers' own use of advanced technologies is limited to using semen in artificial insemination on the farm. The potentially concerning technologies are here not applied at farm level but are represented in the semen used in artificial insemination because they were used by breeders on earlier generations of cows and bulls to develop semen with higher genetic merit. There was much less concern about this indirect use of the technologies. Only 1 in 5 participants thought the most advanced method we prompted about (use of semen from breeding methods involving genetic engineering and cloning) was unacceptable. Unwillingness to drink milk from cows produced through such a breeding method was also modest (18%) and not much higher than the unwillingness to drink milk from a cow produced by natural fertilization (10%). A likely reason for the unexpectedly low level of unwillingness to drink milk is that people regard the genetic engineering as distant from the final product. We also found that high-frequency organic milk consumers were more critical of advanced breeding methods. Thus, 28% within this group were unwilling to drink milk from cows impregnated with semen derived from earlier generations of cows and bulls bred using gene editing and cloning. Further, this share rose if the high-frequency organic consumers were very averse to the manipulation of nature. The organic sector may need to cater to this subgroup (e.g., by ensuring the traceability of the semen that organic farmers use to artificially inseminate their cows).


An arbitrarily oriented anti-plane crack with its tip at the physical weak-discontinuous line of the structure which is made up of homogeneous material and functionally graded materials (FGMs) is studied. The analytic solution of the higher order crack tip fields (similar to the Williams' solution of homogenous material) is obtained by applying the asymptotic series expansion. When non-homogeneous material parameters are degenerated, the solutions become the same as the asymptotic crack tip fields of the homogeneous material. Therefore, the solutions are the basic results of non-homogeneous fracture mechanics, and provide a theoretical basis for solving the fracture problems of one common structure with physical weak-discontinuity.


We present a novel linear clustering framework (DIFFRAC) which relies on a linear discriminative cost function and a convex relaxation of a combinatorial optimization problem. The large convex optimization problem is solved through a sequence of lower dimensional singular value decompositions. This framework has several attractive properties: (1) although apparently similar to K-means, it exhibits superior clustering performance than K-means, in particular in terms of robustness to noise. (2) It can be readily extended to non linear clustering if the discriminative cost function is based on positive definite kernels, and can then be seen as an alternative to spectral clustering. (3) Prior information on the partition is easily incorporated, leading to state-of-the-art performance for semi-supervised learning, for clustering or classification. We present empirical evaluations of our algorithms on synthetic and real medium-scale datasets.


Recently, person re-identification (Re-ID) has achieved great progress. However, current methods largely depend on color appearance, which is not reliable when a person changes the clothes. Cloth-changing Re-ID is challenging since pedestrian images with clothes change exhibit large intra-class variation and small inter-class variation. Some significant features for identification are embedded in unobvious body shape differences across pedestrians. To explore such body shape cues for cloth-changing Re-ID, we propose a Fine-grained Shape-Appearance Mutual learning framework (FSAM), a two-stream framework that learns fine-grained discriminative body shape knowledge in a shape stream and transfers it to an appearance stream to complement the cloth-unrelated knowledge in the appearance features. Specifically, in the shape stream, FSAM learns fine-grained discriminative mask with the guidance of identities and extracts fine-grained body shape features by a pose-specific multi-branch network. To complement cloth-unrelated shape knowledge in the appearance stream, dense interactive mutual learning is performed across low-level and high-level features to transfer knowledge from shape stream to appearance stream, which enables the appearance stream to be deployed independently without extra computation for mask estimation. We evaluated our method on benchmark cloth-changing Re-ID datasets and achieved the start-of-the-art performance.


The editorial board of HepatoBiliary Surgery and Nutrition (HBSN) was honored to have Prof. Stig Bengmark (Figure 1) join the editorial board as one of the founding members when HBSN was launched in 2012. As a world-renowned surgeon in the last few decades, Prof. Bengmark has made great contributions to hepatobiliary surgery and the nutritional field during his career. He has earned numerous titles and honors among which, he was the second surgeon in history to become a member of Academia Europea. Prof. Bengmark was the founder and president of the World Association of Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) Surgery, which afterwards merged with the International Biliary Association (IBA) in 1994 to create the biggest HPB society, currently known as the World HPB Association. He is one of the three greatest European surgeons in recent history who were nick-named the "three Bs" (surnames start with B)—the Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms of hepatic surgery— Bengmark, Bismuth, and Blumgart (once coined by the renowned German HPB surgeon Michael Trede). "Stig has always had unlimited, unexpected, broad-spectrum, bright new ideas based on his unique observations that ordinary researchers would have ignored." said Prof. Yilei Mao, the editor of HBSN, who worked with Prof. Bengmark as his PhD candidate in the early 1990s.


ABSTRACT: Antimicrobial sensitivity and pathogenicity level of 90 strains of Escherichia coli isolated from livers and intestines from commercial layer hens presenting diarrhea were analyzed. To evaluate the antimicrobial susceptibility, all samples were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing using 11 commercial drugs. The results have showed none of the strains was susceptible to all antibiotics tested. All samples showed resistance to two or more drugs. According to the mortality rate of the birds, the in-vivo pathogenicity test classifies the strains into four classes: high, intermediate, low and nonpathogenic. The test has showed 23 (25.5%) of the samples were highly pathogenic, 21 (23.3%) of intermediate pathogenicity, 23 (25.5%) low pathogenic, and 23 (25.5%) non-pathogenic. When the results of the classes of pathogenicity from isolates have been associated with antimicrobial susceptibility, nonpathogenic strains were less sensitive to the antibiotic ampicillin and increased sensitive to streptomycin antimicrobial compared to the others classes of pathogenic. Nonpathogenic strains showed resistance to many antimicrobials, an alert for poultry, since these bacteria might acquire the virulence genes and infect birds, others animals and even human beings.


The semantic web is an open and distributed environment in which it is hard to guarantee consistency of knowledge and information. Under the standard two-valued semantics everything is entailed if knowledge and information is inconsistent. The semantics of the paraconsistent logic LP offers a solution. However, if the available knowledge and information is consistent, the set of conclusions entailed under the three-valued semantics of the paraconsistent logic LP is smaller than the set of conclusions entailed under the two-valued semantics. Preferring conflict-minimal three-valued interpretations eliminates this difference.
Preferring conflict-minimal interpretations introduces non-monotonicity. To handle the non-monotonicity, this paper proposes an assumption-based argumentation system. Assumptions needed to close branches of a semantic tableaux form the arguments. Stable extensions of the set of derived arguments correspond to conflict minimal interpretations and conclusions entailed by all conflict-minimal interpretations are supported by arguments in all stable extensions.


This paper explores transit riders' satisfaction with bus rapid transit (BRT) and compares BRT with conventional bus and metro services using revealed preference data from Guangzhou, China. A trivariate ordered probit model is developed to examine the effects of various service attributes on riders' overall satisfactions with the three types of transit. We find that the top-three influential attributes for satisfaction with BRT are ease of use, safety while riding, and comfort while waiting. Moreover, transit riders are most satisfied with metro, followed by BRT and conventional bus. The top-five attributes that contribute to the difference in the overall satisfaction between BRT and metro are ease of use, comfort while riding, convenience of service, travel time, and comfort while waiting. Based on the findings, we propose specific strategies that can be used to enhance BRT quality of service.


Previous studies have established migration patterns between the geographic location of physicians' residency programs and their first post-training job. Our study explores the patterns of migration of pre-residency education locations with residency and post-residency geography. We analyzed responses to an annual survey administered between 2008 and 2013 to participants of the board examination review courses organized by Galderma Laboratories. Geography of high school (HS), medical school (MS), residency, and first job location were highly correlated. The Midwest and South retained the most residents from HS (70% each), whereas the West retained the lowest percent of residents from HS (33%). The West and Northeast exported about half of their HS graduates to the South and MW for residency. The South retained the largest proportion of its trainees post-residency (75%). Our data revealed that both HS and MS locations are closely related to residents' ultimate employment locations. This information may be useful to training program directors and chairpersons as they manage recruitment and retention of trainees and faculty and may inform plans to address geographic workforce imbalances.


It is acknowledged at present that habitual miscarriage of pregnancy is accompanied by disturbances of hemo-circulation process in vessels of little caliber. In our research we applied the author's variant of medicinal-prophylactic trousers' daily wearing in the course of the third term in women with habitual miscarriage of pregnancy who received traditional saving pregnancy therapy. In our research we applied instrumental, laboratory and statistical methods of investigation. The women wearing medicinal-prophylactic trousers were noted to have the improvement of microcirculation indices in lower extremities. It became possible in the result of the increase of linear systolic bloodstream speed by more than 16.4%, linear average bloodstream speed by more than 50.0%, and average volumetric bloodstream speed by more than 78.0% and level decrease of systolic bloodstream speed by more than 38.0%. The plasma of women with habitual miscarriage of pregnancy wearing medicinal-prophylactic trousers in the course of the third term, was reached to have leveling of existing imbalance of arachidonic acid metabolites on behalf of level decrease of thromboxane B2 and level rise of 6-keto-prostaglandin F1α till the values of the norm. It was accompanied by the rise of nitric oxide summary metabolites nearly till the control level in plasma of the examined women by the end of observation. Daily wearing of medicinal-prophylactic trousers was accompanied by content rise of erythrocytes-discocytes in blood of patients till 85.5 ± 0.18% at the decrease of erythrocytes' reversibly and irreversibly modified forms till 10.9 ± 0.07% and 3.6 ± 0.04%, respectively. At the same time the group of observation reached normalization of erythrocyte aggregation on behalf of erythrocytes' sum decrease in aggregates by 30.8% and quantity of these aggregates-by 29.2% at number increase of non-aggregated erythrocytes by 20.4%. So, at wearing of medicinal-prophylactic trousers in the third term the women with habitual miscarriage of pregnancy reach potentiation of the conducted therapy with normalization of microcirculation indices and erythrocytes' rheological properties. Given alterations can optimize the processes of microhemodynamics and activate trophism in the field of small pelvis promoting successful carrying a baby to full term.


Prion protein gene (PRNP) E219K is a human polymorphism commonly occurring in Asian populations but is rarely found in patients with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Thus the polymorphism E219K has been considered protective against sporadic CJD. The corresponding mouse prion protein (PrP) polymorphism variant (mouse PrP 218K) is not converted to the abnormal isoform (PrPSc) and shows a dominant negative effect on wild-type PrP conversion. To define the conversion activity of this human molecule, we herein established knock-in mice with human PrP 219K and performed a series of transmission experiments with human prions. Surprisingly, the human PrP 219K molecule was converted to PrPSc in variant CJD infection, and the conversion occurred more efficiently than PrP 219E molecule. Notably the knock-in mice with PRNP codon 219E/K showed the least efficient conversion compared with their hemizygotes with PRNP codon 219E/0 or codon 219K/0, or homozygotes with PRNP codon 219E/E or codon 219K/K. This phenomenon indicated heterozygous inhibition. This heterozygous inhibition was observed also in knock-in mice with PRNP codon 129M/V genotype. In addition to variant CJD infection, the human PrP 219K molecule is conversion-competent in transmission experiments with sporadic CJD prions. Therefore, the protective effect of PRNP E219K against sporadic CJD might be due to heterozygous inhibition.


Human groups can perform extraordinary accurate estimations compared to individuals by simply using the mean, median or geometric mean of the individual estimations [Galton 1907, Surowiecki 2005, Page 2008]. However, this is true only for some tasks and in general these collective estimations show strong biases. The method fails also when allowing for social interactions, which makes the collective estimation worse as individuals tend to converge to the biased result [Lorenz et al. 2011]. Here we show that there is a bright side of this apparently negative impact of social interactions into collective intelligence. We found that some individuals resist the social influence and, when using the median of this subgroup, we can eliminate the bias of the wisdom of the full crowd. To find this subgroup of individuals more confident in their private estimations than in the social influence, we model individuals as estimators that combine private and social information with different relative weights [Perez-Escudero & de Polavieja 2011, Arganda et al. 2012]. We then computed the geometric mean for increasingly smaller groups by eliminating those using in their estimations higher values of the social influence weight. The trend obtained in this procedure gives unbiased results, in contrast to the simpler method of computing the median of the complete group. Our results show that, while a simple operation like the mean, median or geometric mean of a group may not allow groups to make good estimations, a more complex operation taking into account individuality in the social dynamics can lead to a better collective intelligence.


This study focused on the awareness, accessibility and factors hindering the utilization of ejournals at the Institute of Finance Management. Specifically the study sought to identify the level of awareness, accessibility and factors affecting students and academic staff in utilizing the e-journals. To achieve these objectives the study employed mixed method research designs in which in-depth interviews and questionnaire were used to collect data from a sample of 141respondents i.e. 100 students and 41 academic staff. The surveyed data has been analysed by using SPSS (20.0) and content analysis for quantitative and qualitative data has been undertaken respectively. Table presentations have been made by using MS word. The study established that the level of awareness of e-journal is high among both students and academic staff. Moreover, the study findings revealed that access to e-journals is mainly through common search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Mamma. Furthermore, the results revealed that the factors hindering students in utilizing electronic journals include: slow internet speed, unreliable power supply, and inadequate computer skills, inadequate number of computers in the library and complexity of database interface. The findings also revealed that academic staffs were hindered by the following factors: high printing cost, inadequate search skills, low internet speed, unstable electrical power supply, unavailability of free full text articles and inadequate number of computers in the library.


The X-ray telescope forms the core of the high energy astrophysics observatory XEUS, currently under study at ESA as a well positioned candidate for its Cosmic Visions 1525 Science Programme, which is presently under formulation. The science requirements of XEUS are particularly demanding, combining a large effective area (10m2 at 1 keV), moderate angular resolution (5" requirement, with a goal of 2"), and a low mass for the optics system. The preferred operational orbit for XEUS is a halo orbit around the Lagrangian Point 2 (L2). Background and costing considerations led to the requirement of a single focal plane location, which in combination with the required broad energy response function, in turn requires a focal length of 50m. The mission design is based on formation flying, with the Mirror Spacecraft (MSC) flying inertially, and the Detector Spacecraft (DSC) actively following the focal point. The ambitious XEUS telescope relies on the novel X-ray technology currently under development in Europe. The X-ray optics technology development activities and status as well as the telescope design in general are addressed.


This paper examines the evolution of a skew distribution of firm sizes from the viewpoint of the 'Bounds' approach to market structure. It confines attention to the role played by non-strategic factors (statistical independence, and cost sideeffects). A model is proposed, which leads to a prediction regarding the least skew size distribution which is likely to be observed. This distribution provides a benchmark relative to which the impact of strategic effects on the form of the size of distribution may be assessed.


Identifying what an object is, and whether an object has been encountered before, is a crucial aspect of human behavior. Despite this importance, we do not have a complete understanding of the neural basis of these abilities. Investigations into the neural organization of human object representations have revealed category specific organization in the ventral visual stream in perceptual tasks. Interestingly, these categories fall within broader domains of organization, with distinctions between animate, inanimate large, and inanimate small objects. While there is some evidence for category specific effects in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), it is currently unclear whether domain level organization is also present across these structures. To this end, we used fMRI with a continuous recognition memory task. Stimuli were images of objects from several different categories, which were either animate or inanimate, or large or small within the inanimate domain. We employed representational similarity analysis (RSA) to test the hypothesis that object-evoked responses in MTL structures during recognition-memory judgments also show evidence for domain-level organization along both dimensions. Our data support this hypothesis. Specifically, object representations were shaped by either animacy, real-world size, or both, in perirhinal and parahippocampal cortex, as well as the hippocampus. While sensitivity to these dimensions differed when structures when probed individually, hinting at interesting links to functional differentiation, similarities in organization across MTL structures were more prominent overall. These results argue for continuity in the organization of object representations in the ventral visual stream and the MTL.


I discuss two recent sound installations that both explore a spectral sound diffusion technique based on partial tracking that allows individual partials of a sampled sound to occupy individual locations in space. The two installations, The Exploded Sound (60 channels) and Significant Birds (12 channels), use similar techniques and modes of presentation to different ends. The former creates an essentially static listening environment, in which the listeners' movements in space allow them to explore the inner structure of sound, while the latter focuses on the aural illusion that results from this approach, presenting decomposed speech as electronic "birdsong", which is reconstructed by the brain into intelligible words. I will discuss technical aspects of the approach alongside the aesthetic aims, describing the research process and some conclusions that have been drawn from experiencing the works in situ. The discussion locates the work within my wider research on navigable sonic structures.


The 10th International Symposium on Advanced Vehicle Control (AVEC10)was held between
22–26th August 2010 in Loughborough, UK. The conference attracted 165 papers, providing
valuable contributions across a wide range of theory and application of Vehicle Control. 230
delegates attended, with approximately 30% of these from industry; AVEC is specifically
intended as a focal point for industry/academic interaction. The conference attracted strong
international support, particularly from Japan, Korea, Germany and China. The AVEC series
of conferences was founded in Japan, and AVEC 12 will be held in September 2012, in Seoul,
Korea...


Children who have survived a lifethreatening disease like cancer benefit from social support from other children with a similar background. However, these children are often geographically dispersed and have little opportunity to meet. We investigate the design and development of Digital Peer Support Services (DPS), which may overcome this problem. Peer support is a kind of social support that brings together peers with similar experiences to help their adjustment to a disease. The aim of this paper is to develop design patterns for social interaction that can be implemented in a DPS for children surviving cancer. We conducted four sets of design workshops with children, from which emerged clusters relating to peer support and friendship that were broken down into triads. From these, six design patterns for social interaction were developed. The patterns delineate different aspects of social interaction for children and are illustrated with examples from DPS prototypes and concepts. The patterns are organized into a hierarchy, comprising the beginning of a design pattern language for social interaction for children. An essential aspect of the patterns is providing users with transparency and control of the extent to which their social interaction is public or private.


In several dicotyledonous species, NAC transcription factors act as master switches capable of turning on programmes of secondary cell-wall synthesis and cell death. This work used an oestradiol-inducible system to overexpress the NAC transcription factor BdSWN5 in the monocot model Brachypodium distachyon. This resulted in ectopic secondary cell-wall formation in both roots and shoots. Some of the genes upregulated in the process were a secondary cell-wall cellulose synthase (BdCESA4), a xylem-specific protease (BdXCP1) and an orthologue of AtMYB46 (BdMYB1). While activation of BdMYB1 may not be direct, this study showed that BdSWN5 is capable of transactivating the BdXCP1 promoter through two conserved binding sites. In the course of Brachypodium development, the BdXCP1 promoter was observed to be active in all types of differentiating tracheary elements. Together, these results suggest that Brachypodium SWNs can act as switches that turn on secondary cell-wall synthesis and programmed cell death.


An unsupervised multiresolution conditional random field (CRF) approach to texture segmentation problems is introduced. This approach involves local and long-range information in the CRF neighbourhood to determine the classes of image blocks. Like most Markov random field (MRF) approaches, the proposed method treats the image as an array of random variables and attempts to assign an optimal class label to each. While most MRFs involve only local information extracted from a small neighbourhood, our method also allows a few long-range blocks to be involved in the labelling process. This alleviates the problem of assigning different class labels to disjoint regions of the same texture and oversegmentation due to the lack of long-range interaction among the neighbouring and distant blocks. The proposed method requires no a priori knowledge of the number and types of regions/textures.


The consumer price index is probably the most widely used measure of inflation. Changes i n the index affect the incomes of a substantial portion of the U.S. population. This report provides background information on the history and concepts of the index. In addition, several factors which may produce biases in the index are analyzed. The objective is to provide an introduction to the CPI f o r the policy maker who wishes to acquire a working knowledge of the concept as an aid in examining economic policy alternatives.


Many cities have viewed the hosting of international sporting events as a unique panacea for leveraging funding from a variety of sources both public and private to tackle long-standing problems of adjustment in the urban economy, in particular, deficits in physical infrastructure. The significant commitment of public resource to such events, clearly reflects this belief. Their hosting necessitates a significant transformation of the urban built environment with new requirements made on urban land and property markets. However, it is far from clear how a time limited exposure on the global media stage can act as a long-term trigger for sustainable urban transformation and property market change. This paper attempts to provide new evidence on these issues through a systematic examination of the recent experience of the Italian city of Turin in hosting the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Turin provides a particularly interesting example as the bid to host the Winter Olympics was a key component of a process of plan-led urban transformation designed to reposition the city in response to very acute problems of economic restructuring associated with the cities previous status as the ecompany cityi of FIAT. The paper examines the Torino 2006 projects within the context of the wider recent and current strategic policy actions to reposition the city and in particular, attempts to assess their property market and urban structure impacts. The analysis will also focus on how the eimplementation structurei - the network of organisations and resources associated with the Torino 2006 projects - and the cities property market fundamentals, play important roles in shaping the magnitude and timing of impacts. The paper concludes with an assessment of the implications of the results obtained for cities contemplating a similar path to urban restructuring.


Aim: To determine the effect of early childhood stimulation with undernourished children and their mothers on maternal depression. Methods: Mothers of 139 undernourished children (weight for age ⩽−1.5 z-scores) aged 9–30 months were recruited from 18 government health centres in the parishes of Kingston, St Andrew, and St Catherine, Jamaica. They received weekly home visits by community health aides for one year. Mothers were shown play activities to do with their child using home made materials, and parenting issues were discussed. Frequency of maternal depressive symptoms was assessed by questionnaire. Child development was also measured. Results: Mothers in the intervention group reported a significant reduction in the frequency of depressive symptoms (b = −0.98; 95% CI −1.53 to −0.41). The change was equivalent to 0.43 SD. The number of home visits achieved ranged from 5 to 48. Mothers receiving ⩾40 visits and mothers receiving 25–39 visits benefited significantly from the intervention (b = −1.84, 95% CI −2.97 to −0.72, and b = −1.06, 95% CI −2.02 to −0.11, respectively) while mothers receiving <25 visits did not benefit. At follow up, maternal depression was significantly negatively correlated with children's developmental quotient for boys only. Conclusions: A home visiting intervention with mothers of undernourished children, with a primary aim of improving child development, had significant benefits for maternal depression. Higher levels of maternal depression were associated with poorer developmental levels for boys only.


In a retrospective survey of 128 adults with Williams–Beuren syndrome (age range 18–62 years) sigmoid diverticulitis was reported in 10 patients (2 f, 8 m). The diagnosis of diverticulitis had been made between the ages of 17.1 and 39.6 years. An additional four patients (age range 23.5–32.2 years) had presented with sigmoid diverticulosis. In eight patients the course of the disease was complicated, some of them having to undergo multiple surgery. Conservative therapy was successful in only one female and one male patient with diverticulitis. Thus, we conclude that there is an increased prevalence of sigmoid diverticulitis in adult patients with Williams–Beuren syndrome (8% vs. 2% in the normal population in the age group below 40 years). © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


In this paper a noise robust speech feature extraction algorithm using wavelet packet decomposition (WPD) of the speech signal is presented. In contrast to the time-frequency signal representation based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT), a computational efficient WPD can lead to good representation of stationary (vowel phonemes) as well as non-stationary (consonants) segments of the speech signal. In the proposed WPD scheme a novel wavelet function is developed and presented. The noise robustness is improved with the application of proposed wavelet based denoising algorithm with the modified soft thresholding procedure. For decorrelation of feature vector elements and dimensionality reduction of final feature vector a principal component analysis (PCA) is used. Automatic speech recognition results on Aurora 3 database show performance improvement when compared to the standardized mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) feature extraction algorithm.


Zeolites are one of the amazing materials available in nature because of their structural pores. Interestingly, these god-gifted properties of zeolite can be used in gas separation and storage application. Actually, hydrogen separation and its storage are now a thrust research area. Hydrogen is considered as a 'clean energy,' which is indispensable for global affluence and alternative energy for future. But hydrogen is not accessible in its pure form during the industrial synthesis process and comes out with some other impurities like CO 2 (GHG) and other gases. So, the production of carbon-free hydrogen and its storage is so much vital. In conventional technologies, few concerns are always existed during gas separation and also in storage process. Recently, membrane-based separation process is a highly demanding technology in the industry and shows some advantages as compared to conventional process. Based on this concept, in this chapter, three different types of zeolites, that is, DDR, SAPO 34, and Bikitaite are highlighted. Here, we described the advanced synthesis process and the mechanism towards the development of high-quality nearly defect-free membranes on cheaper support. Finally, the evaluation of membranes is described through gas permeation and selectivity results of different single gas and mixture gas composition. In addition, storage capacity of H 2 by zeolite/surface-modified zeolites is included in this chapter.


Using examples of several recently constructed Japanese "ribbon bridges", the very idea and the present development tendencies of such structures have been discussed. Some reference to the relevant European development in the past has been done. The purpose of this paper is to bring that idea near to the Polish specialists in design of modern bridge structures.


The smart grid can be seen as a hybrid system composed by many systems. From a large scale point of view, it combines the electric power system itself and a heterogeneous information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. Additionally, these systems are composed by many building blocks that are designed and managed as separated systems which are hard to fully integrate between each other. Relying on the experiences arisen and the knowledge gathered from the partners during the development of the FP7 European projects INTEGRIS (intelligent electrical grid sensor communications) and FINESCE (future internet smart utility services), this paper presents the software defined utility (SDU) concept for the management of the smart grid and its security, which advocates for the migration of the utility infrastructure to software systems instead of relying on complex and rigid hardware based systems. Following this approach, SDU proposes the evolution of power systems' ICT and the usage of programmable commodity hardware, low-cost sensors, and reliable high-speed IP-based communications underneath. More concretely, this paper proposes some building blocks for the deployment of the SDU (flexible data management infrastructure, context-aware security and web of things interface) and evaluates their functionalities and benefits for the smart grids of the future.


The article proposes a framework establishing a disaster resilience index applicable worldwide that accounts for differences between countries in terms of development and in terms of the relevance of several resilience dimensions. To achieve this index, countries were clustered using an indicator that reflected their performance according to the Sustainable Development Goals. For each cluster of countries, a Delphi process was used to obtain scores for every resilience dimension and sub-dimension that were then transformed into weights that varied from cluster to cluster to reflect differences in sustainable development. The article discusses the methodology that led to the quantification of the weights according to the Delphi process, as well as its results. The results highlighted the anticipated differences between different groups of countries, but also reflected cluster-specific features that should be accounted for when analyzing disaster resilience. The article also discusses different applications and possible improvements of the proposed framework based on comments collected during the Delphi process.


Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has consistent 13q chromosomal abnormalities detected by conventional cytogenetics. Using interphase cytogenetics we show deletion of a 1-megabase 13q12.3 locus, encompassing the BRCA2 gene, in 80% of 35 CLL cases studied. Homozygous deletion of BRCA2, located within the minimal deletion consensus, was detected in a significant population of cells in 60% of the cases. Deletion of the previously described 13q14 locus (analyzed with RB1 and D13S25 probes) was seen in 63% of the cases. Homozygous deletion of RB1 was seen in one case. Seven of the cases (32%) with D13S25 deletion had a population of cells with homozygous deletion. Deletions at the 13q12 and 13q14 loci result from distinct events because they were not contiguous. These data provide evidence for the existence of a new tumor suppressor locus in B-cell CLL located at 13q12.3. BRCA2, located within the minimal deletion consensus, is a candidate for the gene whose somatic inactivation could play a role in the initiation and or progression of B-cell CLL.


Energy sustainability, conservation and use have become a more predominant trend globally. In view of the important nature of the energy sectors and the effect it has on national development of any country, there is a growing concern about energy consumption and waste, particularly about electricity consumer's attitudes, behaviour and practices with respect to energy sustainability. Employing the context of cognitive, affective and behavioural components (ABC/Tricomponent Model of Attitude), this work presents the results of a systematic survey and analysis of electricity consumer's attitudes, behaviours and practices towards energy use and sustainability. Using the random sampling method, the perception questionnaires were administered to respondents across the various streets chosen. The results indicate that although there is some level of awareness with regards to the need for energy sustainability and efficient practices, most consumers did not engage in such practices even among the highly educated. Taking consumer's knowledge and use of energy saving devices as a case in point, of the 990 respondents, 78% affirmed to having this knowledge while 11% asserted to not knowing, with another 11% having no knowledge of either energy saving devices or its ability to conserve energy. Furthermore, of the 78 % respondents who asserted to being in the know, only 50.8 % actually used such devices while the remaining 49.2% did not despite being fully aware. Significant also is the fact that for respondents who did not have knowledge of electrical energy conservation, 71% indicated their willingness to learn more about the issue. The study therefore recommended that it is necessary to promote efficient use of electricity in order to benefit various stakeholders and it also submitted that there are energy-related attitudes and energy-saving behaviour that could be practiced and performed at little or no cost. Keywords: Energy efficiency, Energy conservation, Electricity usage, Consumer's behaviour, Sustainability, Energy saving devices