Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776-1945 by Christopher H. Hamner Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011 281 pages $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The book is an attempt to compare the combat experience of American forces in three wars: the War of Independence, Civil War, and World War II. The author's primary thesis is to explain the role of fear on the part of soldiers as the technologies of war make it an ever deadlier environment. Hamner, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University, opens with a chapter contrasting the Battle of Cowpens during the War of Independence, the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, and the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest during the Second World War from the combat soldier's viewpoint. There is a great deal of interesting factology in the book, but its overall comprehension would have been greatly increased if greater attention had been applied to its editing. For example, if the paragraphs were condensed, the readability would have been markedly improved. There is little question the book makes a number of poignant observations; but in terms of supporting the author's thesis, the book is missing an overarching concept that would link the material together in a cogent manner. The result is a great deal of redundancy of facts and conclusions. The author explores how the soldiers of the three wars experienced fear and what could be done to alleviate it. Hamner makes the point that for every soldier fear, at some point in combat, causes immobilization. A soldier can only fight so long before fear incapacitates him for combat. The reality associated with fear and overcoming it was understood by America's military as it transitioned and adopted its training, conditioning, and leadership from the War of Independence to World War II. Professor Hamner explains that even when the battlefield adapted to new technologies, soldiers often had a difficult time inculcating these changes. He quotes from a 1941 US Army Field Manual to make this point: "Man is the fundamental instrument in war; other instruments change but he remains relatively constant." Hamner believes imagination is one of the leading causes of fear and cowardice in combat. That is why, to teach individuals about the horrors of combat, soldiers received far more innovative training related to the hardships of war during World War II. The thought being that there are actions soldiers can take to decrease fear, thereby increasing their survival in combat. Most interesting is the author's belief that training can help offset fear but it cannot eliminate it to the point where a soldier can fight indefinitely. …


Recently 4 genes (plasminogen activator inhibitor 2, interleukin 1 beta, clone 1, and clone 141) that are transcriptionally or posttranscriptionally responsive to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) have been cloned from a human skin keratinocyte cell line. We determined whether these genes were expressed in the livers of Sprague-Dawley rats following exposure to TCDD and whether there was a relationship between expression and hepatic cell proliferation. TCDD was administered by using a dose loading/maintenance regimen to achieve rapid quasi-steady-state TCDD liver concentrations of 0.03, 30, or 150 ng/g of liver. Gene expression was determined by Northern analysis using polyadenylated mRNA isolated from liver tissue of male and female animals exposed to TCDD for 1 or 14 days and hybridized with the human complementary DNA clone corresponding to one of the four human TCDD-responsive genes. Under low-stringency hybridization conditions, only the expression of clone 1 could be detected. A dose- and time-dependent expression of this gene was observed in the liver of both male and female rats. Expression of clone 1 was not detected in rats subjected to either a two-thirds partial hepatectomy or exposure to a single administration of the hepatic tumor promoters Wy-14643, carbon tetrachloride, or phenobarbital at doses that induce hepatic cell proliferation. Liver:body weight ratios were elevated in rats exposed to the middle and high TCDD doses. Histopathological observation and analysis of serum enzyme levels indicated no evidence of TCDD-induced liver necrosis. Cell proliferation was evaluated immunohistochemically after 7-day 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine administration. No increase in total hepatic labeling index was observed for any of the TCDD-exposed treatment groups compared to controls at week 1 or week 2. An increase in the periportal hepatocyte proliferation labeling pattern was observed in TCDD-treated animals. While these results demonstrate that a human TCDD-responsive gene is expressed in the liver of TCDD-treated male and female Sprague-Dawley rats, the expression of this gene is not linked to hepatic cell proliferation or the sex-specific tumor-promoting activity of TCDD.


The instantaneous static pressure signal has been recorded alongside a single-stage centrifugal compressor impeller shroud tip and at the compressor outlet using four Kulite high-frequency transducers. The compressor inlet duct contained a cassette filter followed by a diagonal inlet guide. Such a design is typical for the machinery utilized for waste water aeration. The aim of the study was to check whether the filter might damp the pressure pulsations inside the compressor duct and thus decrease the unsteady aerodynamic loads on its elements. The signal analysis was held with the use of FFTbased procedure and the measurements were performed within the whole machine operational range. The experiments showed that filter disassembling caused a reasonable increase in pulsation amplitude during compressor unstable operation. The strength of the increase was found to be dependent on the inlet guide vanes setting angle. As for stable operational region, almost no differences were observed.


Behavioral specializations are frequently associated with expansions of brain regions controlling them. Examples of these relationships span sensory, motor, and cognitive abilities and are found across a wide variety of species, suggesting that they represent a general principle of vertebrate brain evolution. Yet, the precise mechanisms by which increases in neuron number underlie behavioral elaborations have seldom been identified and whether this concept can be extrapolated to entire neural pathways is unknown. Birdsong is a complex, learned motor behavior that varies immensely across species but is controlled by an evolutionarily conserved and discrete neural circuit. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we show that the capacity to learn multiple song components is strongly related to the amount of descending control along the song motor pathway and that syllable repertoire size is more accurately predicted by pathway convergence than by its overall number of neurons. Furthermore, the degrees of convergence along serial premotor and primary motor projections are unrelated to each other and account for distinct portions of the behavioral variation. These findings suggest that selection on different aspects of song has driven changes in distinct components of this hierarchical motor pathway. They also elucidate a straightforward mechanism by which evolutionary increases in descending motor control could have underlied increases in birdsong repertoire size.


After years of searching, researchers say they've lastlyidentified a glueball a particle made only of nuclear force. Hypothesized to exist as part of the standard model of particle physics, glueballs have stunned researchers since the 1970s as they can only be spotted indirectly by measuring their procedure of decay. Now, a group of particle scientists in Austria say they've found proof for the existence of glueballs by observing the decay of a particle identified as f0(1710). Protons and neutrons the particles that everyday matter consist of are made of tiny elementary particles called quarks, and quarks are seized together by even minor particles called gluons. [11]


This poster focuses on the different ways —the combined methodology— I used to obtain data for my doctoral research on the experience and management of chronic illness in Spain of adults who are in the prime of their lives, and how I analyzed them. The lived experience of chronicity was explored through illness narratives in a multi-sited ethnography: interviews conducted in the homes of the participants; observation of a therapeutic group in a hospital and in a mutual help group in a patients' association; informal ethnography; autoethnographic books and scientific articles, secondary analysis of other published material; and several digital narratives about personal or collective experiences with diverse chronic conditions located on the Internet. The goal was to show the cultural circulation of meanings attributed to chronicity and the socio-cultural constructions of several chronic illnesses, which was achieved through a thematic analysis. For this purpose, a microsocial sample was chosen according to its significance and theoretically (not statistically) representative ethnographic value concerning the common denominator of a shared experience of chronicity. This combined methodology, which includes 'real' and 'virtual' narratives, oral and written narratives, and primary and secondary data, challenges us to rethink our concepts of data and our methodological approaches to the ethnographic field.


Medical foods, which fall in the gray area between food and drugs, are a necessity for persons with inborn errors of metabolism. Being more expensive than regular foods, some U.S. states have mandated insurance companies to provide coverage for the afflicted community. To investigate the legislative adoption process, this paper develops a political economy model of medical food reimbursement and coverage policy. Analytical cross-state logit regression models confirm the positive influences of metabolic clinics and the political clout of the afflicted community on the probability of adoption. The countervailing interest of the insurance industry and the afflicted community were also confirmed. Results suggest that efforts by medical food companies to influence the political process could yield food market and distribution channel opportunities in states contemplating legislative adoption.


This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare state facing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging across the EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysis of migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies for diversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.


Abstract. A recent coherent chronology has been built for four Antarctic ice cores and the NorthGRIP (NGRIP) Greenland ice core (Antarctic Ice Core Chronology 2012, AICC2012) using a Bayesian approach for ice core dating (Datice). When building the AICC2012 chronology, and in order to prevent any confusion with official ice core chronology, the AICC2012 chronology for NGRIP was forced to fit exactly the GICC05 chronology based on layer counting. However, such a strong tuning did not satisfy the hypothesis of independence of background parameters and observations for the NGRIP core, as required by Datice. We present here the implementation in Datice of a new type of markers that is better suited for constraints deduced from layer counting: the duration constraints. Estimating the global error on chronology due to such markers is not straightforward and implies some assumption on the correlation between individual counting errors for each interval of duration. We validate this new methodological implementation by conducting twin experiments and a posteriori diagnostics on the NGRIP ice core. Several sensitivity tests on marker sampling and correlation between counting errors were performed to provide some guidelines when using such a method for future dating experiments. Finally, using these markers for NGRIP in a five-core dating exercise with Datice leads to new chronologies that do not differ by more than 410 years from AICC2012 for Antarctic ice cores and 150 years from GICC05 for NGRIP over the last 60 000 years.


Modern maintenance strategies increasingly focus on vast amounts of diverse data and multifaceted analytical approaches in order to make efficient use of given resources and unveil hidden potentials. While there is often no universal solution approach to a specific case at hand, it is still possible to observe recurring problem classes for which generic solution templates can be applied and thus the establishment of a reusable knowledge base appears beneficial. To this end, we apply a taxonomy development approach to identify and systematize dimensions and characteristics of recurring data analysis problems in data-driven maintenance scenarios. Our research method integrates findings from a systematic literature review and expert interviews with data scientists from industry. Thus, we add descriptive theory to the field of maintenance analytics and propose a taxonomy that distinguishes between analytical maintenance objectives, data characteristics and analytical techniques.


Nella Cotrupi's "Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Process" sheds a new conceptual light on Frye, successfully bringing him back into the central ring of contemporary critical thought. Challenging the often dismissive view of Frye's work as closed and outdated, Dr. Cotrupi explores the implications of his proposition that the history of criticism may be seen as having two main approaches-literature as "product" and literature as "process." In focusing on Frye's exploration of the process tradition Cotrupi sheds light on the agenda that Frye established for himself, when he noted at the end of Anatomy of Criticism that the reconciliatory task of criticism was to "reforge the broken link between creation and knowledge, art and science, myth and concept." Dr. Cotrupi recontextualizes Frye's thought and shows us how Frye continues to be, not only relevant, but central to a number of the key concerns in the contemporary critical scene. Re-examining Frye's place in the history of critical thought, Dr. Cotrupi builds upon Frye's original vision of the "process" tradition and suggests further directions this exploration may take. Among the current areas of critical engagement which Cotrupi examines are relativism, possible world theory, and postmodernism--making this work of interest not only to Frye scholars, but also to those interested in the debates currently rocking the world of criticism, literature and culture.


The 1996 practice guideline of the Dutch College of General Practitioners (NHG) on vaginal discharge has been updated. Most women who visit their doctor with complaints about vaginal discharge do not have an increased risk of a sexually-transmitted disease. Investigations into vaginal discharge comprise history taking, physical examination and microscopic analysis in the laboratory of the general practitioner. Additional investigation into Chlamydia, gonorrhoea and Trichomonas infection is only necessary if the patient history reveals an increased risk of a sexually-transmitted disease. A Candida infection or bacterial vaginosis should only be treated if the patient experiences bothersome complaints. Treatment of a Candida infection consists of a vaginally applied imidazole compound. Bacterial vaginosis can be treated with oral administration of metronidazole. Patients with vaginal fluor can be examined and, if necessary, treated by their general practitioner. Referral to a gynaecologist is rarely necessary.


This report analyses and compares countries and regions in the evolving international industrial and research landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The evidence presented is based on a unique database covering the years 2009-2018. The database has been specifically built from a multitude of sources to provide scientific evidence and monitor the AI landscape worldwide. Companies, universities, research institutes and governmental authorities with an active role in AI are identified and analysed in an aggregated fashion. The report presents a wide variety of indicators, allowing us to expand our knowledge on issues such as: the size of the AI ecosystem globally and at country level; which are the main global competitors of the EU; what is the level of industrial involvement per country; what are the firms' demographics, profiling of economic agents according to their strengths in innovation and take-up of AI, including their patenting performance; and the degree of internal and external collaborations between EU and non-EU firms and research institutions. The analysis of the AI activities developed by agents in the studied territories provides interesting insights on their areas of specialisation, highlighting the strengths of the EU and its Member States in the global landscape. Each section offers a focus on EU Member States.


Abstract A tax rule whereby losses on a rental property are deductible against personal taxable income (commonly known as 'negative gearing') is an almost uniquely Australian practice. This article explores how this practice is legitimised and justified by politicians despite coherent criticisms that the practice misdirects investment into unproductive asset speculation causing house price inflation and inequality. This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how 'negative gearing' is criticised and legitimised. It is argued that the interests of the property-owning majority and electoral pragmatism determine government housing policy. There is a disjunct between the political imperative of the major parties to maintain high housing prices in order not to erode the wealth of the majority of voters (property owners) and the emerging problem of housing unaffordability. Despite mounting coherent critique coming from economists, and younger cohorts excluded from home ownership, the policy continues due to realpolitik considerations.


As an important field of Distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), multi-agent systems (MASs) have attracted the attention of extensive research scholars. Consensus as an important issue in MAS, good progress has been made in studying the consensus control of MAS, but there are some problems remained largely unaddressed which cause the MAS to lose some useful network structure information. First, multi-agent consensus protocol usually proceeds over the low-order structure by only considering the direct edges between agents, but ignores the higher-order structure of the whole topology network. Second, the existing work assumes all the edges in a topology network have the same weight without exploring the potential diversity of the connections. In this way, multi-agent systems fail to enforce consensus, resulting in fragmentation into multiple clusters. To address the above issues, this paper proposes a Motif-Aware Weighted Multi-agent System (MWMS) method for consensus control. We focus more on triangle motif in the network, but it can be extended to other kinds of motifs as well. First, a novel weighted network is used which is the combination of the edge-based lower-order structure and the motif-based higher-order structure, i.e., hybrid-order structure. Subsequently, by simultaneously considering the quantity and the quality of the connections in the network, a novel consensus framework for MAS is designed to update agents. Then, two baseline consensus algorithms are used in MWMS. In our experiments, we use ten topologies of different shapes, densities and ranges to comprehensively analyze the performance of our proposed algorithms. The simulation results show that the hybrid higher-order network can effectively enhance the consensus of the multi-agent system in different network topologies.


Multiphase topologies are preferably employed in power conversion systems to lessen the per-phase circuit current, conduction losses, devices thermal stresses, and to reduce the output current ripples. A multiphase LLC  resonant dc/dc converter usually possesses a number of magnetic cores equal to the number of phases. These magnetic cores are the major contributors to supply volume, weight, and size. For these reasons, circuit designers tend to select the topologies that have a minimal number of magnetic cores. In this paper, the authors aim to promote the industrial applications of the three-phase LLC resonant converter by integrating three transformers into a single commercially available magnetic core to reduce the volume, weight, and cost of the power converter. A comprehensive magnetic analysis for the three-phase-integrated transformer is conducted. Finite element method (FEM) simulation and experimental tests are carried out to validate the proper operation of the integrated transformer utilized in a 390-/12-V to 500-W prototype. Furthermore, the power losses distribution has been presented. The proposed integrated transformer has been proven effective, and it realized a uniform thermal distribution along the core compared to the three-discrete transformers.


Objectives. The aim of this study was to gather information about the quality and quantity of root canal treatments carried out by general dental practitioners in Turkey. Methods. Questionnaires were given to 1400 dentists who attended the 16th National Congress organized by the Turkish Dental Association. The participants were asked to answer 34 multiple-choice questions. The questions were subdivided into 3 main topics; general information; general approach to endodontic treatment; and cleaning, shaping, and obturation of root canals. The statistical analysis was carried out by an χ 2-test to compare the means at a significance level of P < 0.05. Results. The response rate for this study was 43%. There was a wide variation in the number of root canal treatments completed per month. Nearly 92% of practitioners stated that they never used rubber dam. The most commonly used working length determination technique was radiographic evaluation (P < 0.05). Sodium hypochlorite was the irrigant of choice with varying concentrations and AH Plus was the sealer of choice (P < 0.05). Resin composite was the most frequently used material for final restorations. Conclusions. Endodontic procedures in general practice in Turkey have differences from widely acknowledged quality guidelines. Despite the introduction of new instruments and techniques, most of the general practitioners chose conventional methods.


Image Fusion is an application of digital image processing. Image Fusion is a phenomenon of amalgamating the substantial features from similar pair of images into a single image, where the fused image will be of superior quality than either of the source images. This research work proposes a Pixel level Deep learning method using a 3-Channel convolutional neural network to fuse two multi focus Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images obtain a high definition or high quality fused image. As the environment is in static condition and the radar is in floating, the radar imagery sensor captures source image at different time stamps. Size reduction of the image is performed before the fusion procedure in order to highly reduce the computational time and make the method more immune to noise. In the proposed method, source images are decomposed into pixels using the deep learning framework. After feature extraction, appropriate weights are assigned to all pixels. Then averaging and max pooling of pixel values of both the source images are done to get the resultant features of the fused image. Then smoothening filter is used to minimize noise in the fused image. Experimental results show that the proposed fusion technique demonstrates better PSNR value and less computational time.


Learning signed distance functions (SDFs) from 3D point clouds is an important task in 3D computer vision. However, without ground truth signed distances, point normals or clean point clouds, current methods still struggle from learning SDFs from noisy point clouds. To overcome this challenge, we propose to learn SDFs via a noise to noise mapping, which does not require any clean point cloud or ground truth supervision for training. Our novelty lies in the noise to noise mapping which can infer a highly accurate SDF of a single object or scene from its multiple or even single noisy point cloud observations. Our novel learning manner is supported by modern Lidar systems which capture multiple noisy observations per second. We achieve this by a novel loss which enables statistical reasoning on point clouds and maintains geometric consistency although point clouds are irregular, unordered and have no point correspondence among noisy observations. Our evaluation under the widely used benchmarks demonstrates our superiority over the state-of-the-art methods in surface reconstruction, point cloud denoising and upsampling. Our code, data, and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/mabaorui/Noise2NoiseMapping/


The small GTPase Rap1, which is activated by a large variety of stimuli, functions in the control of integrin-mediated cell adhesion. Here we show that in human megakaryocytes and several other commonly used hematopoietic cell lines such as K562, Jurkat, and THP-1, stress induced by gentle tumbling of the samples resulted in rapid and strong activation of Rap1. This turbulence-induced activation could not be blocked by inhibitors previously shown to affect Rap1 activation in human platelets, such as the intracellular calcium chelator BAPTA-AM (1,2-bis(2-aminophenoxy)ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid) and various protein kinase C inhibitors. Also inhibition of actin cytoskeleton dynamics did not influence this activation of Rap1, suggesting that this activation is mediated by cell surface receptors. Human platelets, however, were refractory to turbulence-induced activation of Rap1. To determine the consequences of Rap1 activation we measured adhesion of megakaryocytes to fibrinogen, which is mediated by the integrin alphaIIbbeta3, in the presence of inhibitors of Rap1 signaling. Introduction of both Rap1GAP and RalGDS-RBD in the megakaryoblastic cell line DAMI strongly reduced basal adhesion to immobilized fibrinogen. This inhibition was partially rescued by the phorbol ester 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate but not by alpha-thrombin. From these results we conclude that in megakaryocytes turbulence induces Rap1 activation that controls alphaIIbbeta3-mediated cell adhesion.


Three independent cell lines were established from primary cultures of LSH hamster embryo cells infected with bovine papillomavirus type 1 (BPV-1). Although these cell lines differed in their in vitro saturation densities, none was capable of colony formation in soft agar. Interestingly, two cell lines (BPV-HE1 and BPV-HE3) were tumorigenic in nude mice, syngeneic hamsters, and allogeneic hamsters, whereas BPV-HE2 was not. All three cell lines contained similar numbers of the BPV-1 genome (approximately 50 to 200 copies per cell). However, the nontumorigenic BPV-HE2 cell line contained very low levels of BPV-specific RNA and only small amounts of the BPV-1 E5 transforming protein. The efficiency and rate of tumor formation by BPV-HE1 and BPV-HE3 correlated directly with the apparent amount of viral E5 protein. This analysis suggests that there is a threshold level of BPV protein synthesis required for tumorigenicity, there is a continuum of tumorigenic phenotypes which may depend upon the level of BPV protein expression, and BPV-transformed hamster cells can withstand allogeneic transplantation.


Earlier studies have shown that the highly penicillin-resistant South African Strains of pneumococci contain altered penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) (S. Zighelboim and A. Tomasz, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 17:434-442, 1980). We now describe a detailed quantitative characterization of the reaction of radioactively labeled penicillin with the PBPs of the penicillin-susceptible and penicillin-resistant pneumococci and several intermediate-resistance-level genetic transformants as well. The altered binding of the antibiotic by the PBPs of resistant cells appears to be due to a combination of two factors: lower drug affinity and change in the cellular amounts of PBPs. No alteration in the rates of deacylation of the penicilloyl-PBPs of the resistant cells was detected.


The development of reliable heat-resistant structural materials requires nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques to evaluate the damage progress during material testing at elevated temperatures. Hence, our optical fiber ultrasonic sensing system with a phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (PSFBG) sensor was improved to a remote AE measurement system at high temperature. The optical fiber was used as an ultrasonic waveguide from an object material in a high-temperature furnace to the PSFBG sensor placed far from the furnace. As a result, AE signals at about 1000°C were successfully detected keeping their precise waveform. Therefore this method will be useful to evaluate the damage progress in heat-resistant materials under high temperature. Furthermore, the remote PSFBG ultrasonic sensing system was incorporated into the receiving part of a laser ultrasonic visualizing inspector (LUVI) for a high-temperature NDE. The LUVI can visualize the propagation behavior of ultrasonic guided waves in complex shape structures. As a result, the improved LUVI with the optical fiber ultrasonic receiver succeeded in clear visualization of the ultrasonic wave propagation in a ceramic plate at 1000°C. Then an artificial damage formed in the ceramic plate was able to be detected by the observation of reflection waves from the damage. Hence, this system has a potential as an effective and intuitive NDE method in high-temperature environments.


Abstract. The direct shortwave radiative effect of aerosols under clear-sky conditions in the Aire Limitee Adaptation dynamique Developpement InterNational – High Resolution Limited Area Model (ALADIN-HIRLAM) numerical weather prediction system was investigated using three shortwave radiation schemes in diagnostic single-column experiments: the Integrated Forecast System (IFS), acraneb2 and the hlradia radiation schemes. The multi-band IFS scheme was formerly used operationally by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) whereas hlradia and acraneb2 are broadband schemes. The former is a new version of the HIRLAM radiation scheme while acraneb2 is the radiation scheme in the ALARO-1 physics package. The aim was to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) system regarding aerosols and to prepare it for use of real-time aerosol information. The experiments were run with particular focus on the August 2010 Russian wildfire case. Each of the three radiation schemes accurately (within ±4 % at midday) simulates the direct shortwave aerosol effect when observed aerosol optical properties are used. When the aerosols were excluded from the simulations, errors of more than +15 % in global shortwave irradiance were found at midday, with the error reduced to +10 % when standard climatological aerosols were used. An error of −11 % was seen at midday if only observed aerosol optical depths at 550 nm, and not observation-based spectral dependence of aerosol optical depth, single scattering albedos and asymmetry factors, were included in the simulations. This demonstrates the importance of using the correct aerosol optical properties. The dependency of the direct radiative effect of aerosols on relative humidity was tested and shown to be within ±6 % in this case. By modifying the assumptions about the shape of the IFS climatological vertical aerosol profile, the inherent uncertainties associated with assuming fixed vertical profiles were investigated. The shortwave heating rates in the boundary layer changed by up to a factor of 2 in response to the aerosol vertical distribution without changing the total aerosol optical depth. Finally, we tested the radiative transfer approximations used in the three radiation schemes for typical aerosol optical properties compared to the accurate DISORT model. These approximations are found to be accurate to within ±13 % even for large aerosol loads.


The claim providing the starting point for this thesis is that most narrative films
are in an overtly dramatic, melodramatic or comic idiom. These modes seem most
adept at tapping the visually expressive potentialities of the art and satisfying the needs
of the audience: the narratives of most films are structured around either confrontation,
or colourful events, or crisis, or periods of significant change, and they are expressed
in a demonstrative visual style. This thesis is interested in the way a few films uncover
profundity by structuring narrative around a range of life experiences unavailable to the
melodramatic mode as it has developed in world cinema; life experiences based in the
everyday, that is in the routine or repetitive, in the apparently banal or mundane, the
uneventful.
The first part of the thesis discusses the nature of the achievement of these
undramatic films which address the everyday: how they help us to understand the
medium of film, its possibilities, and how they enhance our ways of viewing and
appreciating narratives. This section also focuses on the work of Stanley Cavell,
exploring the links between the everyday, film melodrama, and scepticism.
The second half of the thesis looks at the specific achievements of four films.
Here, the thesis continues the expressive tradition of film scholarship which analyses
the communication of meaning through the construction of mise-en-scene, exploring
how the themes, ideas, and happenings of a film are served by their stylistic strategies,
while further highlighting how such strategies may reveal significant possibilities of the
medium. In doing so it follows the approach of writers such as Stanley Cavell, V. F.
Perkins and George M. Wilson whilst redirecting this tradition by applying it to less
obviously expressive films.


Abstract This study challenges the assertion that the influx of Asian international undergraduate students in universities across the United States creates richer educational and social environments. Drawing on qualitative research at a public university with a large number of Asian international students, this article examines how Asian American student leaders and their organization took on the difficult institutional task of actualizing the diversity of these new students in a racially segregated campus. We found that instead of viewing racial segregation practices as possibly tied to racial discrimination and privileges of normative whiteness, students expressed both support and resistance to Asian international students in race-neutral language of comfort and organizational differences that reflects the dominant ideology of colorblindness. We argue that any claims to the benefits of international student diversity must take serious account of colorblind racism and the experiences of racial marginalization and racial segregation among domestic minority and international students.


Laserabrasion has been shown to have limited application in the treatment of acne scarring. Focal laserabrasion used to treat individual pitted acne scars may have broader clinical application. We present 8 patients with pitted acne scars who were treated with either conventional continuous wave carbon dioxide (CO2) laser, or with the superpulsed CO2 laser, or both. Cosmetically acceptable results were attained, particularly in the patients treated with the superpulsed laser.


Requirements engineering (RE) is concerned with the identification of the goals to be achieved by the envisioned system, the operationalization of such goals into services and constraints, and the assignment of responsibilities for the resulting requirements to agents such as humans, devices, and software. The processes involved in RE include domain analysis, elicitation, specification, assessment, negotiation, documentation, and evolution. Getting high-quality requirements is difficult and critical. Recent surveys have confirmed the growing recognition of RE as an area of utmost importance in software engineering research and practice. The paper presents a brief history of the main concepts and techniques developed to date to support the RE task, with a special focus on modeling as a common denominator to all RE processes. The initial description of a complex safety-critical system is used to illustrate a number of current research trends in RE-specific areas such as goal-oriented requirements elaboration, conflict management, and the handling of abnormal agent behaviors. Opportunities for goal-based architecture derivation are also discussed together with research directions to let the field move towards more disciplined habits.


Thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) is a rarely reported complication of acute pancreatitis. The prognosis is generally good, if diagnosis is made early and treatment is adequate. We present the case of a 74-year-old man who visited our emergency department due to acute abdominal pain. He had no history of alcohol abuse or pancreatitis. Blood tests indicated elevated lipase and amylase. An abdominal computerized tomography (CT) indicated mild pancreatitis. After admission, the patient suffered a seizure and developed anemia, thrombocytopenia, elevated lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) and elevated unconjugated bilirubin. A peripheral blood smear indicated fragmented red blood cells. We diagnosed the patient as having TMA. After plasma exchange and plasma infusion therapy, the LDH and platelet levels gradually improved. A differential diagnosis of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and TMA following pancreatitis is necessary because of the different treatment strategies. Our patient had a good prognosis following therapy for TMA. Such therapy may include plasma exchange, plasma infusion, corticosteroid therapy and splenectomy.


Abstract. This paper addresses two major challenges in climate change impact analysis on water resources systems: (i) incorporation of a large range of potential climate change scenarios and (ii) quantification of related modelling uncertainties. The methodology of climate change impact modelling is developed and illustrated through application to a hydropower plant in the Swiss Alps that uses the discharge of a highly glacierised catchment. The potential climate change impacts are analysed in terms of system performance for the control period (1961–1990) and for the future period (2070–2099) under a range of climate change scenarios. The system performance is simulated through a set of four model types, including the production of regional climate change scenarios based on global-mean warming scenarios, the corresponding discharge model, the model of glacier surface evolution and the hydropower management model. The modelling uncertainties inherent in each model type are characterised and quantified separately. The overall modelling uncertainty is simulated through Monte Carlo simulations of the system behaviour for the control and the future period. The results obtained for both periods lead to the conclusion that potential climate change has a statistically significant negative impact on the system performance.


This book provides a comprehensive coverage of one of Australia's most historic elections, which produced a hung parliament and a carefully crafted minority government that remains a heartbeat away from collapse, as well as Australia's first elected woman Prime Minister and the Australian Greens' first lower house Member of Parliament. The volume considers the key contextual and possibly determining factors, such as: the role of leadership and ideology in the campaign; the importance of state and regional factors (was there evidence of the two or three speed economy at work?); and the role of policy areas and issues, including the environment, immigration, religion, gender and industrial relations. Contributors utilise a wide range of sources and approaches to provide comprehensive insights into the campaign. This volume notably includes the perspectives of the major political groupings, the ALP, the Coalition and the Greens; and the data from the Australian Election Survey. Finally we conclude with a detailed analysis of those 17 days that it took to construct a minority party government. Image: Leonard John Matthews / flickr


The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze various aspects of the internal and external operations management of Brazil's electronics sector and to consider the opportunities for and the threats to increasing the competitiveness of its participation in the global supply chain. To address this shortage in the literature, a survey of Brazilian Electric and Electronic Industry Association (ABINEE) companies was conducted. The collected data were complemented with secondary data to establish an overall view of the electronics sector in Brazil. The results suggest that electronics product assembly companies have the opportunity to invest more in information technology to expand process integration, plan and develop products, integrate customers, and maintain rather than expand their supply chain practices. The alignment between internal and external operations management becomes important in this context. The originality of this paper lies in its clarification of operations management in an economically important sector and the insight it provides to academics, practitioners and policy makers involved in the domestic and international electronics sector.


Mapping the relative risk of impact on nature by a human infrastructure at a landscape scale ("sensitivity mapping") is an essential tool for minimising the future impact of new development or for prioritising mitigation of existing impacts. High-voltage power lines ("transmission lines") are known to increase bird mortality by collision. Here we present a method to derive a high resolution map of relative risk of transmission line impacts across one entire country, Belgium, from existing bird distribution data. First, all the bird species observed in Belgium were systematically assessed using literature and casualty records to select those to be included in the sensitivity map. Species were selected on the basis of their intrinsic susceptibility to collision and the conservation relevance of avoiding additional mortality for that species in Belgium. Each of the selected species was included in one or several spatial layer constructed from existing data, emerging from citizen science bird monitoring schemes. The resulting 17 layers were then combined into one final sensitivity map, where a "risk score" estimates the relative collision risk across Belgium at a 1×1 km resolution. This risk score is relatively robust to the subtraction of any of the 17 layers. The map identifies areas where building new transmission lines would create high risk of collision and, if overlapped with existing power lines, helps to prioritise spans where mitigation measures should be placed. Wetlands and river valleys stand out as the most potentially dangerous areas for collision with transmission lines. This sensitivity map could be regularly updated with new bird data or adapted to other countries where similar bird data are available.


Eggs contain high quality protein, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, yet regular consumption is still met with uncertainty. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the effects of consuming two eggs per day or a heart-healthy oatmeal breakfast on biomarkers of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and satiety measures in a young, healthy population. Fifty subjects participated in a randomized crossover clinical intervention; subjects were randomly allocated to consume either two eggs or one packet of oatmeal per day for breakfast for four weeks. After a three-week washout period, participants were allocated to the alternative breakfast. Fasting blood samples were collected at the end of each intervention period to assess plasma lipids and plasma ghrelin. Subjects completed visual analog scales (VAS) concurrent to dietary records to assess satiety and hunger. Along with an increase in cholesterol intake, there were significant increases in both low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol following the egg consumption period (p < 0.01). However, there was no difference in the LDL/HDL ratio, a recognized biomarker of CVD risk, nor in the plasma glucose, triglycerides or liver enzymes, between diet periods. Several self-reported satiety measures were increased following the consumption of eggs, which were associated with lower plasma ghrelin concentrations (p < 0.05). These results demonstrate that compared to an oatmeal breakfast, two eggs per day do not adversely affect the biomarkers associated with CVD risk, but increase satiety throughout the day in a young healthy population.


The purpose of this article is to investigate and determine the factors affecting integration and acquisition activities in Iran. For this purpose, two hypotheses were determined and the annual data of 30 companies of the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2008-2020 were used to test the hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, the neural network method optimized with the Jaya optimization method was used to examine the effect of the studied variables including firm size and growth ability, risk growth, asset return, equity return, and financial leverage. Analysis using neural networks is used to isolate and clarify the effects of each of the studied variables. The analysis of the neural network showed that the three variables, exchange rate, interest rate, and stock price are very important in the process of changes in merger and acquisition activities in the country. Exchange rate fluctuations in particular have a very elastic effect on mergers and acquisitions, indicating that price effects are important in determining the flow of domestic and foreign investment. The stock market index had a positive effect on domestic mergers and acquisitions. Interest rates had a negative effect on mergers and acquisitions.


Design criteria for drinking water systems at recreation developments, particularly summer home type, cause frequent confrontations with regulatory agencies. Developers claim extremely low water use rates due to low occupancy rates, but regulatory agencies are concerned about changes over time from essentially weekend use to more permanent residency and also about occasional peak day water demands similar to those of municipal systems. Little empirical data have been available to resolve such questions. This study included the gathering and analysis of both historic water use measurements and additional daily and instantaneous measurements during peak seasons at 11 Utah and one Wyoming recreation development. The water demand parameters studied included average, peak month, peak day, and instantaneous events at mountain cabins, resort condominiums, marinas, and recreation vehicle campgrounds. The results are compared to existing design criteria of the Utah Division of Environmental Health.


Using of the multiple scattering methods, we characterize the positive and negative multi-refraction and transmission properties of a solid-based phononic crystal composed of coated solid inclusions in view of its applications in tunable multimode filtering. The geometrical parameters are chosen so that a left-handed longitudinal wave mode and a right-handed transverse wave mode, are simultaneously obtained in this three-component phononic crystal. When multimode Gaussian beams are placed transmitting through the phononic crystal slab, both positive and negative refractions are observed. We then study the individual propagation behavior of different modes. The angle dependent transmission beams with different energy distributions are found at the other side of the slab. Transmitted transverse waves coming from different directions incidence finally walk together into four oriented beams. Meanwhile, longitudinal wave incidence with different directions behaves simply as negative refraction in the slab. A far-field longitudinal wave image can be achieved being excited by a longitudinal wave point source. The three-component phononic crystal slab thus can be served as an alternate in tunable multimode filtering devices.


Aims: This study aimed to compare the prevalence in different gambling types as well as problem gambling in the Nordic countries, examining gambling, leisure activities, school truancy, parental relations and consumption of alcohol and other substances as covariates for problem gambling. Methods: Cross-country data were provided by the European Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) 2015. Prevalence of gambling and potential covariates were analysed for Denmark, Finland, Iceland Norway and Sweden (N=13,172 respondents aged 16 years), while analyses regarding problem gambling only included countries that participated in the optional questions on gambling problems (Denmark, Finland and Sweden; N=8108). We tested variables for problem gambling by bivariate logistic regression and multivariate logistic regression. Results: Cross-country differences were found in gambling and problem gambling, as well as differences in covariates for problem gambling. Sweden had the lowest rate of problem gambling. No significant difference was found between Denmark and Finland. Reports of too much gaming, inhalants, slots, betting and online gambling were positively associated with problem gambling, while parental monitoring and parental caring had a negative association. The relevance of the covariates varied across countries. Conclusions: Results indicate that although gambling regulation and its implementation have an important impact on gambling behaviour, we need more research on social, economic and cultural factors and how youth understand and interact with them. Contexts and regulations in other related fields should inform gambling research, policies and interventions.


The automatic generation of medleys, i.e., musical pieces formed by different songs concatenated via smooth transitions, is not well studied in the current literature. To facilitate research on this topic, we make available a dataset called Medley2K that consists of 2,000 medleys and 7,712 labeled transitions. Our dataset features a rich variety of song transitions across different music genres. We provide a detailed description of this dataset and validate it by training a state-of-the-art generative model in the task of generating transitions between songs.


In this study, failure modes of foam core sandwich composites are investigated by using embedded Fiber Bragg Grating sensors. Sandwich specimens with Fiber Bragg Grating sensors, embedded inside the face sheet, are manufactured using vacuum infusion process and then subjected to a static and a cyclic loading under the three-point bending mode. Different failure modes are monitored utilizing the wavelength shift and the spectrum of Fiber Bragg Grating sensors. It is shown that the responses of the Fiber Bragg Grating sensor differ depending on damage modes thereby making structural health monitoring of sandwich structures possible.


When performing canine operant conditioning studies, the delivery of the reward can be a limiting factor of the study. While there are a few commercially available options for automatically delivering rewards, they generally require manual input, such as using a remote control, in accordance with the experiment script. This means that human reaction times and transmission distances can cause interruptions to the flow of the experiment. The potential for development of non-supervised conditioning studies is limited by this same factor. To remedy this, we retrofitted an off-the-shelf treat dispenser with new electronics that allow it to be remotely controllable as well as act as an experiment computation, data storage, and networking center. We present a fully integrated dispenser driver board with a complementary Raspberry Pi. With rather simple modifications, the commercial treat dispenser can be modified into a computer-controlled dispenser for canine cognition experiments or for other forms of canine training or games.


Analyzing intra-annual stream flow can reveal the main causes for runoff changes and the contributions of climate variability and human activities. For this purpose, the Mann–Kendall and cumulative rank difference (CRD) tests, and the double mass curve method, were applied to a time series of hydro-meteorological variables from 1971 to 2010 in the Tajan River basin in Iran. Results indicated that runoff changes in the wet and dry seasons after 1999 had significant respective decreasing and increasing trends, at the 0.01 confidence level, due to dam construction. In the pre-dam period (1991–1998), the results of the double mass curve method showed that climate variability and human activities contributed 57.76% and 42.24%, respectively, to the runoff decrease during the wet season. For the post-dam period (1999–2010), climate variability and anthropogenic activities contributed 24.68% and 75.32%, respectively, to the wet season runoff decrease of 116.55 mm. On the other hand, in the same period during the dry season, climate variability contributed −30.68% and human activities contributed 130.68% to the runoff increase of 41.45 mm. It is evident that runoff changes in both wet and dry seasons were mainly due to human activities associated with dam construction to meet water supply demands for agriculture.


Minocycline is the most commonly used systemic antibiotic in the long-term treatment (weeks to months) of severe acne vulgaris. Currently much attention is being paid in the Dutch and international literature to the safety of minocycline, after several reports on serious adverse events. The clinical efficacy of minocycline in the treatment of acne vulgaris is better than that of tetracycline and equal to that of doxycycline. The serious adverse events of minocycline therapy described consist of hyperpigmentation of various tissues, autoimmune disorders (systemic lupus erythematosus, autoimmune hepatitis) and serious hypersensitivity reactions (hypersensitivity syndrome reaction, pneumonitis and eosinophilia, and serum sickness-like syndrome). In relation to the number of prescriptions, the number of serious adverse events of minocycline described is small. However, it is very important that prescribing doctors should be aware of the possibility of these adverse events occurring during long-term minocycline therapy and able to recognize the characteristic symptoms at an early stage.


Sustainable management of groundwater resources is of crucial importance for regions where freshwater supply is naturally limited. Long-term planning of groundwater usage requires computer-based decision support tools: on the one hand, they must be able to predict the complex system dynamics with sufficient accuracy, on the other, they must allow exploring management scenarios with respect to different criteria such as sustainability, cost, etc. In this paper, we present a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm for groundwater management that optimizes the placement and the operation of pumping facilities over time, while considering multiple neighboring regions which are economically independent. The algorithm helps in investigating the cost tradeoffs between the different regions by providing an approximation of the Pareto-optimal set, and its capabilities are demonstrated on a three-region problem. The application of the proposed methodology can also serve as a benchmark problem as shown in this paper. The corresponding implementation is freely available as a precompiled module at http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/pisa.


The system of higher education that is visible in India is the responsibility of the British and it has no relation to the ancient tradition of our country. Higher education is given in most of the university. This is the foundation of nation and nation building. After the independence, the number of students taking admission in the university and the education in them increased day by day. But the kind of education that was being provided at the university was highly discontented in the public. As a result, the level of education has fallen, students' desire for knowledge has disappeared, problems of unemployment have been present in front of educated people, and above all this education has become unable to fulfill the present and future needs of the country. India is a country of youth. Important plans like Make in India, Digital India are to be successful, so youths have to show them the right path. It is important that our students get better education.


Colonialism may have significantly changed the history of North America, but its impact on Native Americans has been greatly misunderstood. In this book, Neal Ferris offers alternative explanations of colonial encounters that emphasize continuity as well as change affecting Native behaviors. He examines how communities from three aboriginal nations in what is now southwestern Ontario negotiated the changes that accompanied the arrival of Europeans and maintained a cultural continuity with their pasts that has been too often overlooked in conventional master narrative histories of contact. In reconsidering Native adaptation and resistance to colonial British rule, Ferris reviews five centuries of interaction that are usually read as a single event viewed through the lens of historical bias. He first examines patterns of traditional lifeway continuity among the Ojibwa, demonstrating their ability to maintain seasonal mobility up to the mid-nineteenth century and their adaptive response to its loss. He then looks at the experience of refugee Delawares, who settled among the Ojibwa as a missionary-sponsored community yet managed to maintain an identity distinct from missionary influences. And he shows how the archaeological history of the Six Nations Iroquois reflected patterns of negotiating emergent colonialism when they returned to the region in the 1780s, exploring how families managed tradition and the contemporary colonial world to develop innovative ways of revising and maintaining identity. The Archaeology of Native-Lived Colonialism convincingly utilizes historical archaeology to link the Native experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the deeper history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interactions and with pre-European times. It shows how these Native communities succeeded in retaining cohesiveness through centuries of foreign influence and material innovations by maintaining ancient, adaptive social processes that both incorporated European ideas and reinforced historically understood notions of self and community.


Many real‐world analysis tasks can benefit from the combined efforts of a group of people. Past research has shown that to design visualizations for collaborative visual analytics tasks, we need to support both individual as well as joint analysis activities. We present Cambiera, a tabletop visual analytics tool that supports individual and collaborative information foraging activities in large text document collections. We define collaborative brushing and linking as an awareness mechanism that enables analysts to follow their own hypotheses during collaborative sessions while still remaining aware of the group's activities. With Cambiera, users are able to collaboratively search through documents, maintaining awareness of each others' work and building on each others' findings.


This paper describes a software system that can be used to predict the spectral performance of optical access networks. The system can be used by the planners and designers of such networks to assess the spectral performance of existing or proposed optical networks. The software package combines the theoretical models developed in the course of a research programme with experimental data obtained from the devices used in the UK field trials of fibre in the local access network. Using this package, a planner or designer is able to construct networks on actual location maps and then obtain forward and return loss spectral characteristics on any paths throughout the network. Since the development of the system is based on object oriented technology, it is future-proofed to the extent that any changes in the technology of the local access network can readily be incorporated into the existing modelling process.<<ETX>>


This paper proposes a direct three-dimensional (3D) numerical method in time domain for seismic soil-structure interaction (SSI) analysis of spatial grid structure. First, a finite element model including soil, foundation and typical spatial grid structure is developed. Then, the precisions of equivalent viscous-spring artificial boundary element (VSABE) and size effect of site soil region are discussed. Finally, under different site types, time history analyses for models with or without considering SSI effect are implemented respectively under horizontal seismic excitation. The results show that VSABE has the same precision as infinite element boundary and plane size of truncated soil region can be five times of structure plane size for SSI analysis of spatial grid structure. Moreover, except for hard site, it is shown that horizontal acceleration and displacement of spatial grid roof increases substantially when SSI effect is considered. Therefore, it is suggested that SSI influence should be taken into account in engineering design of spatial grid structure.


In this study, grapes and corresponding wines of Merlot /No 022, 025 and 029/ and Cabernet Franc /No 02, 010 and 012/ clones (recently developed) were evaluated regarding the total phenolic content, total anthocyanin content, and radical scavenging activity, aiming to better understand their quality and market potential. The nineteen individual polyphenols were quantified in studied grape samples using UHPLC coupled to a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer. The mother grapes and wines were used as the relevant standards. In the grape, studied characteristics were monitored at three stages of berry development: green berry, véraison and mature berry. The mature grape of clones presented high values of total phenolics (3.81–10.89 g gallic acid equivalent kg-1 frozen weight), anthocyanin content (359.00–1668.18 mg malvidin-3-O-glucoside kg-1 frozen weight) and the radical scavenging activity (41.37–80.48 mmol trolox equivalent kg-1 frozen weight) depending on the clone. Grapes and wines of Merlot No 025 and Cabernet Franc No 010 stood out with the highest values of all three parameters. Generally, the high correlation was observed between TPC and RSA values for green berries and mature grapes, as well as for wine samples. The most abundant phenolics in both Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes were gallic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, ferulic acid, catechin, epicatechin, gallocatechin gallate, catechin gallate, and rutin. Catechin, epicatechin, epigallocatechin, and catechin gallate, typical for the ripe grape of Merlot and Cabernet Franc clones, showed significant correlation with RSA values. Concentrations of individual polyphenols varied depending on the sample being studied and berry development stages. Merlot No 025 and Cabernet Franc No 010 grapes showed particularly interesting attributes for the production of high quality wines.


Abstract The Chaetosphaeriaceae are a diverse group of pigmented, predominantly phialidic hyphomycetes comprised of several holomorphic genera including Chaetosphaeria, the most prominent genus of the family. Although the morphology of the teleomorphs of the majority of Chaetosphaeria is rather uniform, their associated anamorphs primarily exhibit the variability and evolutionary change observed in the genus. An exception from the morphological monotony among Chaetosphaeria species is a group characterised by scolecosporous, hyaline to light pink, multiseptate, asymmetrical ascospores and a unique three-layered ascomatal wall. Paragaeumannomyces sphaerocellularis, the type species of the genus, exhibits these morphological traits and is compared with similar Chaetosphaeria with craspedodidymum- and chloridium-like synanamorphs. Morphological comparison and phylogenetic analyses of the combined ITS-28S sequences of 35 isolates and vouchers with these characteristics revealed a strongly-supported, morphologically well-delimited clade in the Chaetosphaeriaceae containing 16 species. The generic name Paragaeumannomyces is applied to this monophyletic clade; eight new combinations and five new species, i.e. P. abietinussp. nov., P. eleganssp. nov., P. granulatussp. nov., P. sabinianussp. nov. and P. smokiensissp. nov., are proposed. A key to Paragaeumannomyces is provided. Using morphology, cultivation studies and phylogenetic analyses of ITS and 28S rDNA, two additional new species from freshwater and terrestrial habitats, Codinaea paniculatasp. nov. and Striatosphaeria castaneasp. nov., are described in the family. A codinaea-like anamorph of S. castanea forms conidia with setulae at each end in axenic culture; this feature expands the known morphology of Striatosphaeria. A chaetosphaeria-like teleomorph is experimentally linked to Dendrophoma cytisporoides, a sporodochial hyphomycete and type species of Dendrophoma, for the first time.


Should public undertakings be covered by the PSI Directive? The definitions of public sector bodies and bodies governed by public law, to which the PSI Directive applies, are currently taken from the public procurement Directives and public undertakings are not covered by these definitions. Should public undertakings be considered as public sector bodies in the meaning of the Directive? Are there public undertakings holding "interesting" PSI? Are there different definitions of national legislation leading to situations where bodies holding similar (public sector) data are in some Member States considered as public sector bodies falling under the PSI Directive and in other Member States considered as public undertakings? If public undertakings were to be covered by the PSI Directive, how should the definitions of public sector bodies and bodies governed by public law be amended? Should the definitions be detached from the public procurement definitions? Could data be considered as PSI if it was held by a privatised former public sector body?Position Paper no. 2, The Exclusion of "Public Undertakings" from the Re-Use of Public Sector Information Regime, WG1 - Subgroup competition of the European Thematic Network LAPSI (Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information).


A solar powered air heating system using parabolic trough collector was experimentally investigated. In this experimental setup, the reflected solar radiations were focused on absorber tube which was placed at focal length of the parabolic trough. In this setup, air was used as working fluid which collects the heat from absorber tube. To enhance the performance of parabolic trough, collector with different type of reflectors were used. It was observed For Aluminum sheet maximum temperature is 52.3oC, which 24.22% more than steel sheet as reflector and 8.5% more than Aluminum foil as reflector, also efficiency by using Aluminum sheet as reflector compared to steel sheet as reflector is 61.18% more. Efficiency by using Aluminum sheet as reflector compared to Aluminum foil as reflector is 18.98% more. Keywords—Parabolic trough collector, Reflectors, Air flow rates.


In this paper, a quick method for estimating the patch width is presented using CMA. The proposed method can be completed in four steps, based on the relationship between the patch width as the variable and different resonant frequencies, and has been validated using four substrates. This method is advantageous as it facilitates antenna designers in estimating the width of the radiator patch using only CMA without the effects of substrate and excitation. Basically, the generated formula enables the calculation of the actual patch width by simply substituting the width of the patch produced based on one of the CMA's characteristic angle. This parameter which is originally used to find the natural resonant frequency of the structure makes the proposed method time- and resource-efficient. The set of obtained results have been validated to be realistic with satisfactory accuracy.


Introduction In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), food insecurity and undernutrition disproportionately affect women of reproductive age, infants and young children. The disease burden from undernutrition in these vulnerable sections of societies remains a major concern in LMICs. Biomass fuel use for cooking is also common in LMICs. Empirical evidence from high-income countries indicates that early life nutritional and environmental exposures and their effect on infant lung function are important; however, data from sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. Aim To estimate the association between infant lung function and household food insecurity, energy poverty and maternal dietary diversity. Methods and analysis Pregnant women will be recruited in an existing Health and Demographic Surveillance Site in South-West Uganda. Household food insecurity, sources and uses of energy, economic measures and maternal dietary diversity will be collected during pregnancy and after birth. Primary health outcomes will be infant lung function determined by tidal breath flow and volume analysis at 6–10 weeks of age. Infant weight and length will also be collected. A household Food Consumption Score and Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) indicator will be constructed. The involved cost of dietary diversity will be estimated based on MDD-W. The association between household level and mothers' food access indicators and infant lung function will be evaluated using regression models. The Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) will be estimated and used as an indicator of households' environmental exposures. The association between household MEPI and infant lung function will be assessed using econometric models. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approvals have been obtained from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (18-059), the Uganda Virus Research Institute Ethics Committee (097/2018) and Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (SS 4846). Study results will be shared with participants, policy-makers, other stakeholders and published in peer-reviewed journals.


The Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) is used for secret sharing by both Mignotte and Asmuth Bloom in 1983. Then Shyu et al. used Mignotte's scheme in the field of secret image sharing in 2008. However, their method use a Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) with a seed to generate different pixel values for the consecutive secret pixels that have the same value. The need to distribute the seed and PRNG function to participants in order to reconstruct the secret image is a drawback of their method. A modified secret image sharing technique based on Asmuth Bloom's secret sharing scheme is proposed in this paper. It does not require to distribute the seed or PRNG like Shyu et al.'s technique. In addition, PRNG function is not used during decoding. Therefore, drawbacks in Shyu et al.'s scheme is eliminated by the proposed method using Asmuth Bloom's scheme as can be seen in the results.


Objectives: Endorectal endoscopic ultrasound (ERUS) allows highly detailed assessment of the rectal wall layers and visualization of the extraluminal structures. Herein, we study the utility of ERUS fine-needle aspiration (FNA) to evaluate perirectal lesions. Study Design: Forty-nine ERUS-FNAs were retrieved from the cytopathology archives of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. The cytology slides, corresponding histology, immunohistochemistry when available, and clinical data were reviewed. Results: The aspirated material showed malignant (n = 24), benign (n = 19), atypical (n = 3), carcinoid tumor (n = 1), and nondiagnostic conditions (n = 2). The past medical history of 36 cases was significant for carcinomas. The primary site of the tumors included colorectal, urinary bladder, prostate, pancreas, gallbladder, ovary, and female lower genital tract. Statistical analysis for endoscopic ultrasonography FNA showed 87% sensitivity, 100% specificity, diagnostic accuracy of 90%, and a positive predictive value of 100% and a negative predictive value of 77%. Conclusion: ERUS-FNA can be utilized for: (1) accurate staging of colorectal adenocarcinomas by evaluation of nodal metastasis, depth of transmural tumor invasion and local tumor spread to perirectal fat, (2) prevention of aggressive surgical intervention in benign conditions, (3) providing diagnostic material for ancillary studies, and (4) evaluation of perirectal lesions with a more accurate method by combining imaging and histology.


Lung cancer is a multigenic disease where one variant single nucleotide polymorphism may have only a modest independent effect on the disease phenotype, yet in aggregate, multiple biologically relevant single nucleotide polymorphisms may provide a more accurate representation of risk. Polymorphisms in members of the p53 family, such as p53 and p73, that have a functional relevance would be predicted to contribute to the disease phenotype. In this analysis, we used genotype data from 863 lung cancer cases and 852 healthy controls to test for multigenetic effects of polymorphisms at p53 exon 4, introns 3 and 6, and at p73 exon 2. All individuals in this analysis were self-reported non–Hispanic Caucasians. When the p73 and p53 variant alleles were combined and analyzed as a continuous variable, there was a 13% increase [odds ratios (OR), 1.13; 95% confidence intervals (CI), 1.05-1.21] in lung cancer risk for each additional variant allele. Furthermore, when the number of variant alleles was categorized into three groups (zero, one to three, and four or more variants), there was evidence of a gene-dosage effect with increased risks for individuals with one to three variants (OR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.05-1.61) and four or more variants (OR, 1.78; 95% CI, 1.23-2.56). When the data were stratified by smoking status, an increased risk for lung cancer was evident only in current (OR, 2.32; 95% CI, 1.25-4.33) and former smokers (OR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.02-2.94) with four or more variants. Younger individuals with four or more variants were also at a significantly increased risk for lung cancer (OR, 3.15; 95% CI, 1.62-6.12). This study provides support for the multigenetic effects of variant alleles from p53 exon 4, and introns 3 and 6, and p73, and their interplay with smoking, resulting in a significantly increased risk for lung cancer in this Caucasian population. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(1):158–61)


We study a world economy comprising two countries that may differ only in their prior experience in the research lab. Entrepreneurs in each country develop new technologies for varieties of a differentiated product whenever expected profits justify up-front research costs. Research productivity depends upon national stocks of knowledge capital, which accumulate in proportion to local research activity. The countries produce and trade their unique varieties of the differentiated good, as well as a homogeneous, "traditional" product. In this context, we ask whether a country can overcome a late start in research to develop a comparative advantage in the high-technology sector. We also examine the welfare properties of the equilibrium trajectory and of policies that might be used to reverse a country's fate.


Introduction. The objective of the study is to present the experience of "Filantropia" Hospital regarding vaginal delivery after Caesarean-section and to analyze the circumstances when it can be performed. Materials and methods. We conducted a retrospective study of the births performed in "Filantropia" Hospital in women with previous Caesarean-section over a period of 6 months, between January 1st 2014 and June 30th 2014. We used Excell to analyze the data regarding the general characteristics of the group and the outcomes. Results. 1557 births were recorded in the studied interval. 700 Caesarean-sections (47.2%) were performed; an increase in the rate of Caesarean-section was noted (from 31.6% in 2003), which is according to the world trend of this rate. From the total number of Caesarean-sections, 27% were performed due to previous Caesarean section. In 5 cases the uterine scar was opened and there was one case of placenta increta that required Caesarean hysterectomy. 6 patients with previous Caesarean section had vaginal delivery. Conclusions. Previous Caesarean-section remains the most frequent reason for Caesarean birth in our study. Proper counselling of the patients and national guidelines that regulate the management of these patients could increase the number of vaginal birth after a Caesarean-section.


The NF-κB signaling pathway is known to play an important role in the regulation of osteoclastic bone resorption and cancer cell growth. Previous studies have shown that genetic inactivation of IκB kinase (IKK), a key component of NF-κB signaling, inhibits osteoclastogenesis, but the effects of pharmacologic IKK inhibitors on osteolytic bone metastasis are unknown. Here, we studied the effects of the IKK inhibitors celastrol, BMS-345541, parthenolide, and wedelolactone on the proliferation and migration of W256 cells in vitro and osteolytic bone destruction in vivo. All compounds tested inhibited the growth and induced apoptosis of W256 cells as evidenced by caspase-3 activation and nuclear morphology. Celastrol, BMS-345541, and parthenolide abolished IL1β and tumor necrosis factor α–induced IκB phosphorylation and prevented nuclear translocation of NF-κB and DNA binding. Celastrol and parthenolide but not BMS-345541 prevented the activation of both IKKα and IKKβ, and celastrol inhibited IKKα/β activation by preventing the phosphorylation of TAK1, a key receptor–associated factor upstream of IKK. Celastrol and parthenolide markedly reduced the mRNA expression of matrix metalloproteinase 9 and urinary plasminogen activator, and inhibited W256 migration. Administration of celastrol or parthenolide at a dose of 1 mg/kg/day suppressed trabecular bone loss and reduced the number and size of osteolytic bone lesions following W256 injection in rats. Histomorphometric analysis showed that both compounds decreased osteoclast number and inhibited bone resorption. In conclusion, pharmacologic inhibitors of IKK are effective in preventing osteolytic bone metastasis in this model and might represent a promising class of agents to the prevention and treatment of metastatic bone disease associated with breast cancer. [Mol Cancer Ther 2009;8(8):2339–47]


Transformer architecture has become the fundamental element of the widespread natural language processing~(NLP) models. With the trends of large NLP models, the increasing memory and computation costs hinder their efficient deployment on resource-limited devices. Therefore, transformer quantization attracts wide research interest. Recent work recognizes that structured outliers are the critical bottleneck for quantization performance. However, their proposed methods increase the computation overhead and still leave the outliers there. To fundamentally address this problem, this paper delves into the inherent inducement and importance of the outliers. We discover that $\boldsymbol \gamma$ in LayerNorm (LN) acts as a sinful amplifier for the outliers, and the importance of outliers varies greatly where some outliers provided by a few tokens cover a large area but can be clipped sharply without negative impacts. Motivated by these findings, we propose an outlier suppression framework including two components: Gamma Migration and Token-Wise Clipping. The Gamma Migration migrates the outlier amplifier to subsequent modules in an equivalent transformation, contributing to a more quantization-friendly model without any extra burden. The Token-Wise Clipping takes advantage of the large variance of token range and designs a token-wise coarse-to-fine pipeline, obtaining a clipping range with minimal final quantization loss in an efficient way. This framework effectively suppresses the outliers and can be used in a plug-and-play mode. Extensive experiments prove that our framework surpasses the existing works and, for the first time, pushes the 6-bit post-training BERT quantization to the full-precision (FP) level. Our code is available at https://github.com/wimh966/outlier_suppression.


Recent years have seen the emergence and proliferation of "legal highs" or "designer drugs," compounds purposefully designed as legal alternatives to controlled substances of abuse. This article describes methoxetamine, a dissociative drug belonging to the arylcyclohexylamine class including phencyclidine and ketamine. Methoxetamine acts principally on the glutamatergic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor and the serotonin receptor. It is sold as a white or off-white powder. Marketed as a "bladder friendly" alternative to ketamine, preliminary research suggests renal and cystic toxicity similar to ketamine. Methoxetamine is primarily ingested nasally, though also orally, intramuscularly, intravenously, and rectally. Users report dissociative features and, at higher doses, an "m-hole" experience akin to ketamine's "k-hole" described as extreme depersonalization and derealization. The 13 cases of acute methoxetamine toxicity described in the literature are summarized. The toxidrome consists of dissociation/ delirium, sympathetic activation, and cerebellar symptoms. Methoxetamine is not detected in standard urine drug tests and there are no reliable laboratory findings. Management of acute methoxetamine toxicity is supportive, consisting of benzodiazepines, antiemetics, intravenous fluids, and respiratory support as indicated. Should methoxetamine con- form to the observed 2-year lag of designer drugs migrating from Europe to the United States usage may increase in early 2014.


Heat generation of a bearing was studied based in this paper. Computational models of power loss were built. The total heat generation was gotten. Influences on total heating were analyzed at various inner ring rolling velocities and applied loads. The results show that bearing rolling velocity and axial load affect heat generation strongly. Meanwhile sliding friction, which exists between balls and the cage pocket, cages and the surface of outer ring, is the main factors of bearing heating. Bearings with shaft are mainly used in gyro motors of aviation, aerospace, marine navigational systems, which own a long life and high reliability. Heat generated by friction affects its performance, life and reliability, and consequently influences control precision and life of gyro motors. If the rate of heat dissipation is less than the rate of the heat generation, the system temperatures will raise, the hardness of bearing ring and rolling element steel decrease, and resulting in plastic deformations, lubricant deterioration occurs, ultimately, heat imbalance failure leads to breakage of bearing components and bearing seizure[1,2].So precise evaluating heat generation of bearings with shaft is important for design, manufacture and application of bearing. The heat generation of bearing comes from power loss of friction. The traditional methods contain the local method and integral method [3]. Palmgren who used the integral method based on experimental results advanced an empirical formula of total friction moment [4]. The calculation result is lower than the fact because ignoring infection of lubricant flux. Astringe and Smith improved the above formula .But it was just for roller bearing. Harris established a local method for the ball bearing and rolling bearing [5]. Pouly et al [6, 7] analyzed part power loss of the high speed rolling bearing based on local method. Compared with the integral method, the local method calculated heating of all heat sources. The results were more accurate. Liu Zhi-quan, Han Min-zheng et al computed the heat of high speed rolling and ball bearing by the local method [8, 9]. This paper studies heat generation mechanism of bearing with shaft from a gyro motor. Different heat sources from bearings are calculated by a self-made program. All factors which influence heat generation would be gotten by analyzing at different working conditions. It would offer a theoretical basis for optimal design and proper use of bearings with shaft.


Multi-object tracking in videos requires to solve a fundamental problem of one-to-one assignment between objects in adjacent frames. Most methods address the problem by first discarding impossible pairs whose feature distances are larger than a threshold, followed by linking objects using Hungarian algorithm to minimize the overall distance. However, we find that the distribution of the distances computed from Re-ID features may vary significantly for different videos. So there isn't a single optimal threshold which allows us to safely discard impossible pairs. To address the problem, we present an efficient approach to compute a marginal probability for each pair of objects in real time. The marginal probability can be regarded as a normalized distance which is significantly more stable than the original feature distance. As a result, we can use a single threshold for all videos. The approach is general and can be applied to the existing trackers to obtain about one point improvement in terms of IDF1 metric. It achieves competitive results on MOT17 and MOT20 benchmarks. In addition, the computed probability is more interpretable which facilitates subsequent post-processing operations.


This publication is for guidance and gives an overview regarding cold corrosion in large two stroke engines. The publication and its contents have been provided for informational purposes only and is not advice on or a recommendation of any of the matters described herein. CIMAC makes no representations or warranties express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, reasonableness or completeness of the information, assumptions or analysis contained herein or in any supplemental materials, and CIMAC accepts no liability in connection therewith.


DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) is a research infrastructure (RI) under development, which will provide services for the global research community to support and enhance physical and digital access to the natural history collections in Europe. These services include training, support, documentation and e-services. This talk will focus on the e-services and will give an overview of the current status, roadmap and first results as an introduction to the next talks in the session, which focus on some of the services in more detail and the standards work undertaken in Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) to enable them.
 The RI community will provide the envisioned e-services, which will use the novel FAIR Digital Object (FDO) infrastructure serving digital specimens from the European collections. The infrastructure will provide integrated data analysis, enhanced interpretation, annotation and access services for community curation and visualisation. The FDO infrastructure enables specimen data to be (re-)connected with genomic, geographical, morphological, taxonomic and environmental information through the digital specimen, making them Digital Extended Specimens.
 A large number of user stories have been collected through the DiSSCo-linked projects ICEDIG, SYNTHESYS+ and DiSSCo Prepare, to guide which e-Services to build and what functionality to provide. These user stories are publicly available in a github repository. The e-services are developed based on the user stories and prioritization provided by collection providers and the scientific community. A variety of mechanisms are used to collect input: surveys, workshops, roundtables and workpackage meetings, and feedback from users that have already been using beta versions of some of the services. DiSSCo aims to become operational in 2026 but several of the services are already being piloted or implemented. Experimental services and demonstrators are publicly available through DiSSCo Labs for testing and feedback.
 By connecting the specimen data with derived and related information in a FAIR way (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), the e-services will accelerate biodiversity discovery and support novel research questions. The FDO infrastructure has a data model that also integrates the PROV Ontology (PROV-O), which allows for the e-services to capture activities and improve the visibility of researcher contributions. This vision towards FAIR and high quality data is essential for community curation of the specimen data and making better use of the limited number of experts available.
 To provide the DiSSCo e-services in a FAIR way, the data derived from the natural history collections in Europe needs to be integrated as one virtual collection. The data has to be findable and accessible as soon as it is being created for services like a Specimen Data Refinery prior to publication in a facility like GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). This requires new standards for describing collections and specimen data. Standards being created to fill these gaps are TDWG CD (Collection Descriptions) and TDWG MIDS (Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen). The DiSSCo e-Services vision brings the data, standards, and processes together to serve the user community.


Adsorption of catechol from aqueous solution with the hypercrosslinked polymeric adsorbent NDA-100 and its derivatives AH-1,AH-2 and AH-3 aminated by dimethylamine, the commercial resin Amberlite XAD-4 and weakly basic anion exchanger resin D301 was compared. It was found that the aminated hypercrosslinked resins had the highest adsorption capacities among the tested polymers. The empirical Freundlich equation was successfully employed to describe the adsorption process. Specific surface area and micropore structure of the adsorbent, in company with tertiary amino groups on matrix affected the adsorption performance towards catechol. In addition,thermodynamic study was carried out to interpret the adsorption mechanism. Kinetic study testified that the tertiary amino groups on the polymer matrix could decrease the adsorption rate and increase the adsorption apparent activation energy.


The cerebellum plays an important role in both motor control and cognitive functions. Several methods to automatically segment different regions of the cerebellum have been recently proposed. Usually, the performance of the segmentation algorithms is evaluated by comparing with expert delineations. However, this is a laboratory approach and is not applicable in real scenarios where expert delineations are not available. In this paper, we propose a method that can automatically detect cerebellar lobule segmentation outliers. Instead of only evaluating the final segmentation result, the intermediate output of each segmentation step is evaluated and considered using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to produce a global segmentation assessment. For each intermediate step, a state-of-the-art image classification model Bag-of-Words" (BoW) is applied to quantize features of segmentation results, which then serves as observations of the trained HMM. Experiments show that the proposed method achieves both a high accuracy on predicting Dice of upcoming segmentation steps, and a high sensitivity to outlier detection.


INTRODUCTION: Musculoskeletal pain is highly common among the working population. It has been assumed that chronic pain may reduce the activity level in daily life, which in turn may aggravate pain and associated symptoms. However, it is not known whether pain impacts on daily activities among workers. Commonly accepted and validated protocols are needed to gain objective information about possible deviations in physical activity patterns in subjects with chronic musculoskeletal pain. PURPOSE: The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the volume and time-pattern of daily physical activity in workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain compared with healthy controls. METHODS: Twenty-seven workers with chronic muscle pain primarily in the neck-shoulder region, and 27 age- and gender- matched controls participated in the study. Both groups were recruited from the same global manufacturing company within the industrial sector at a site in Sweden. Physical activity and sedentary behaviour were monitored for seven days, both during work and leisure time, using a single tri-axial accelerometer (PAL Technologies Ltd, Glasgow). Time spent walking, standing and sitting/lying and steps were calculated for each hour. The mean metabolic equivalent (MET) was estimated and used as a measure of energy expenditure. The coefficient of variation (CV) between daytime hours was calculated as a measure of variation. RESULTS: For overall daily activity, the mean standing time was significantly higher in the pain group (263 min/day) compared with controls (209 min/day) (p=0.04), whereas no difference was found in energy expenditure or sedentary time. The analyses of time patterns revealed lower energy expenditure in the evening and morning hours among those with pain (mean 1.6 MET/h) compared with the control group (mean 1.8 MET/h) (p<0.05). The pain group showed on average a smaller CV in MET (9%) than the control group (11%) (p=0.02), which indicated a reduced variation in physical activity. There were no significant associations between pain intensity and physical activity. CONCLUSION: Despite a normal level of total physical activity, workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain had an altered activity pattern in terms of reduced variation and a lower activity level in leisure time.


Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in Australia remains a significant problem despite the availability of an inexpensive vaccine. National information about incidence, prevalence, morbidity and the extent of vaccine coverage is incomplete; improved surveillance would allow for better targeting and evaluation of prevention activities. Our estimates indicate that 75%‐90% of cases of vertical transmission of HBV are preventable through vaccination of newborns whose mothers are carriers.


Aim of this 2-year follow-up study was to assess the dental health status and the caries pattern of first permanent molars in German and immigrant children. 300 German and 69 immigrant children living in the Westphalian Ennepe-Ruhr district were involved in this study. The mean age of the population was 8.0 years at the baseline (1997) and 9.8 years at the second examination. The surface-related caries status according the WHO criteria (1997) was completed by recording non-cavitated lesions and the number of sealants in permanent molars. 13 % (1997) and 26 % (1999) of the 8-year old immigrant children had a caries-free mixed dentition; in Germans were recorded 40 % (1997) and 42 % (1999). The caries prevalence in immigrant children (1997: 0.9 DMFS/1999: 1.5 DMFS) was significantly higher compared to the German children (1997: 0.5 DMFS/1999: 0.8 DMFS). Moreover, a significantly lower utilisation of fissure sealants was registered in immigrant children (1997: 0.4/1999: 0.7) compared to their German classmates (1997: 0.5/1999: 1.4). Immigrant children have to be characterized as high caries-risk population. Risk-orientated public dental health programmes involving sealant application seems to be necessary for socio-economically underprivileged children.