Abstract This essay considers American Catholics who, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, reflected seriously on the religious significance of technology in general, and space science in particular. American Catholics, while no more immune from the belief that space science would create fundamental changes in human life than their Protestant, Jewish, and secular counterparts, nevertheless sought to understand the Space Age in their own distinctive terms. Catholic discussion of these issues revolved around the contributions of two theologians. From the earliest moments of the Space Age, Thomas Aquinas provided a justification for the work of Catholic scientists and astronauts within a Cold War framework. However, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's cosmic vision helped American Catholics integrate feelings of wonder and hope with darkly realistic fears about the military consequences of the space race. Thomas and Teilhard, fundamentally optimists, helped Catholics elaborate a vision of a way forward through the very real threats Americans confronted in the "long 1960s," a vision they developed in books, articles, and speeches, but also in art, liturgy, and fiction. Ultimately, however, both extreme hopes about cosmic unification and extreme fears about total annihilation modulated, and like their fellow Americans interested in space flight during the 1960s, American Catholics turned in the early 1970s to a renewed focus on the Earth.


In this paper we extend the bivariate hazard ratio to multivariate competing risks data and show that it is equivalent to the cause-specific cross hazard ratio. Two approaches are proposed to estimate these two equivalent association measures. One extends the plug-in estimator, and the other adapts the pseudo-likelihood estimator for bivariate survival data to multivariate competing risks data. The asymptotic properties of the extended estimators are established by using empirical processes techniques. The extended plug-in and pseudo-likelihood estimators have comparable performance with the existing U-statistic when the data have no tied events. However, in many applications, there are tied events in which all the three estimators are found to produce biased results. To our best knowledge, we are not aware of any association analysis for multivariate competing risks data that has considered tied events. Hence we propose a modified U-statistic to specifically handle tied observations. The modified U-statistic clearly outperforms the other estimators when there are rounding errors. All methods are applied to the Cache County Study to examine mother–child and sibship associations in dementia among this aging population, where the event times are rounded to the nearest integers. The modified U performs consistently with our simulation results and provides more reliable results in the presence of tied events.


Purpose: To retrospectively determine the profile of the sinus membrane (SM), potential factors affecting SM thickening (SMT), and the correlation between SMT and sinus augmentation (SA) complications. Materials and Methods: In the patients who received lateral SA, SMT was classified in sagittal sections of cone-beam computed tomography according to its thickness and morphology. The correlation between SMT and the following factors was analyzed: age, sex, endodontic and periodontic statuses of neighboring teeth, and shape of the sinus inferior border. The association between SMT and SA complications was investigated. Results: SMT of ⩽2 mm was prevalent (60%). Irregular SM was mostly observed for SMT of >2 mm. There was no statistically significant association between SMT and the included factors. SMT did not significantly correlate with either perforation or postoperative complications. There was a statistically significant increase in implant failure when SMT was >2 mm, but it was hard to determine that the failure was solely affected by SMT. Conclusion: SMT was not influenced by the factors included in this study, and it might not be a risk factor for SA and implant failure.


* Hundley, Heather L. and Andrew C. Billings (eds.) (2010). Examining Identity in Sports Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 279. In an era of news media cutbacks, layoffs, and closures, the sports mass media segment of the industry is booming. Ratings for programming on sports cable channels are on the rise, and sports-oriented social media sites are expanding. Experts tout increased sports coverage and team-centered, subscriber-based Web sites as ways for newspapers to "rejuvenate themselves," as veteran journalist Tim McGuire put it recently. At colleges and universities, professors are putting sports communication front and center in research programs, and students are clamoring to get into sports writing and sports promotions classes. Here at the University of Alabama, the single largest specialty interest among journalism and broadcast news students - men and women alike - is sports reporting. My colleagues across the country report that we're not alone in this trend. Into this environment comes Examining Identity in Sports Media, edited by Heather L. Hundley and Andrew C. Billings. Although many books on the market cover sports reporting, writing, broadcasting, and public relations, few look at the intersection of sport, media, and society. This book does just that. The focus on identity, which is often just a chapter or a small section in other texts, makes the book ideal for students in sports communication and sports media courses. The overlapping dimensions examined in the book also make it appropriate for a broader range of classes, including those in diversity, gender, identity politics, sociology, American studies, and media criticism. Hundley and Billings, two scholars widely published in this area, have assembled twelve chapters from some of the leading researchers in a variety of disciplines. From mass communication, contributors include Kim Bissell, Bryan Denham, and Marie Hardin. Other contributors include communication studies scholar Kelby Halone, management professors Benjamin Goss and Andrew Tyler, and kinesiology and health professor Mary McDonald. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributors is one of the book's strengths. All chapters blend a broad overview of the literature, a great resource for undergraduate students, with original empirical research, which will pique the interest of budding researchers in graduate programs. Many books of this type simply include a series of case studies, which can be interesting to read but may present only one approach for investigating issues. Examining Identity in Sports Media, in contrast, includes studies from a variety of methods - content analysis, survey research, rhetorical analysis, and critical/cultural approaches. "We contend that identity is an extensive negotiation that is always changing, always being interpreted and reinterpreted, and always contested by various entities," Billings and Hundley write in the introductory chapter (p. …


The correlation of the outputs of two dc-SQUIDs connected to the same solid washer was studied. A dedicated electronic system was used in order to operate both SQUIDs at the same time. It was found that the temporal correlation of the SQUID outputs is strongly dependent on the geometry of the SQUID loop. For a solid washer, the flux noise is mainly due to vortices located close to the SQUIDs. However, by surrounding the SQUID loop with a hole patterned in the superconducting solid washer, it is possible to drastically reduce the flux penetration around the loop. The resulting flux noise becomes dominated by vortices located inside the washer far from the SQUIDs. Magneto-optical images were also used to visualize the flux penetration inside the washer around the slit of such SQUIDs. These confirm previous descriptions of vortex penetration deduced from the electrical measurements.


The Earth observation sensor web enables multiple-way interaction between earth observing sensors, sensor networks, Earth science models, and decision support systems. To achieve this goal, flexible and reliable integration between these disparate components is needed. In this study, a middleware-based, message-driven integration paradigm is proposed and implemented with the Land Information Sensor Web (LISW), to link a high-performance land surface modeling system with sensor simulators and other sensor web components, under a service-oriented architecture. OGC Sensor Web Enablement standard is adopted for interoperability. The middleware played a key role in enabling an integrated real-time sensor web with demonstrated simplicity, resilience and flexibility. We recommend that middleware-based integration should be adopted as a standard model in a wide range of sensor web applications, to replace the conventional point-to-point, client-server model.


Tocopherols and tocotrienols, collectively known as tocochromanols, are lipid-soluble molecules that belong to the group of vitamin E compounds and are essential in the human diet. Not surprisingly, most of what is known about the biological functions of tocochromanols comes from studies of mammalian systems, yet they have been shown to be synthesized only by photosynthetic organisms. The last decade has seen a radical change in the appreciation of the biological role of tocochromanols in plants thanks to a detailed characterization of mutant and transgenic plants, including several Arabidopsis thaliana mutants, the sucrose export defective1 (sxd1) maize mutant, and some transgenic potato and tobacco lines altered in tocochromanol biosynthesis. Recent findings indicate that tocopherols may play important roles in plants beyond their antioxidant function in photosynthetic membranes. Plants deficient in tocopherols show alterations in germination and export of photoassimilates, and growth, leaf senescence, and plant responses to abiotic stresses, thus suggesting that tocopherols may influence a number of physiological processes in plants. Thus, in this review not only the antioxidant function of tocochromanols in plants, but also these new emerging possible roles will be considered. Particular attention will be paid to specific roles attributed to different tocopherol homologues (particularly alpha- and gamma-tocopherol) and the possible functions of tocotrienols, which in contrast to tocopherols are only present in a range of unrelated plant groups and are almost exclusively found in seeds and fruits.


Abstract Objectives The mortality rate associated with community-acquired pneumonia is still considered high as it occupies a leading position among all infectious diseases. The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation of the respiratory bacterial culture sampling in the clinical practice of the Russian Federation's therapeutic departments and its impact on inpatient care. Methods The study included 1,344 patients with community-acquired pneumonia. The analysis of the obtained data was performed using the statistical software package SPSS 23.0 (IBM SPSS Statistics). The description of quantitative indicators was carried out with an indication of the median (25; 75 percentile). Qualitative with an indication of the absolute and relative frequencies n (%). Results It was noted that a third of the sample did not pass through the first stage (bacterioscopy). We noticed the predominance of oropharyngeal flora in the results. The sputum collection was carried out on average 3 (1; 5) days after the start of hospitalization, while antibiotic therapy was prescribed to all patients on the first day, the results of the bacteriological study were ready on average 6 (4; 8th) calendar days after hospitalization, while in 20 (1.5%) cases, the patient was already discharged. Due to the inefficiency of the starting regimen, antimicrobial agents have changed in 84 (6.3%) patients and averaged 5.5 (4.0; 10.0) days from the start of hospitalization. Conclusions The violation of the technique and the time of sputum collection resulted in a reduction in the method's value.


In this paper, we demonstrate a low-temperature aqueous solution process, based on a continuous flow reactor design, for the long-duration continuous growth of ZnO epitaxial layers at a constant growth rate without interruption. Using a strategy of site-controlled epitaxial growth of ZnO, we grew patterned ZnO mesas having hexagonal honeycomb structures on top of lattice-matched patterned ZnAl2O4 buffer layers. Subsequently, we applied the continuous flow reactor for long-duration lateral epitaxial overgrowth (LEO) of ZnO layers on the honeycomb-patterned ZnO mesas. Dislocation etch pit analysis suggested a dislocation density for the coalesced LEO-grown ZnO layer of approximately 108 cm−2. X-ray diffraction revealed that the combination of LEO and a hexagonal honeycomb geometry is a promising approach for preparing wing-tilt-free thick ZnO layers displaying substantial strain relief. The micro-photoluminescence spectra of the overgrown wings featured a more intense band edge emission, confirming the significant improvement in crystalline quality in the wing regions.


Annexin A1 (ANXA1) is cleaved at the N terminal in some activated cells, such as macrophages, neutrophils, and epithelial cells. We previously observed that ANXA1 was proteolytically cleaved in lung extracts prepared from a murine OVA-induced asthma model. However, the cleavage and regulatory mechanisms of ANXA1 in the allergic response remain unclear. In this study, we found that ANXA1 was cleaved in both Ag-induced activated rat basophilic leukemia 2H3 (RBL-2H3) cells and bone marrow-derived mast cells. This cleavage event was inhibited when intracellular Ca 2+ signaling was blocked. ANXA1-knockdown RBL-2H3 cells produced a greater amount of eicosanoids with simultaneous upregulation of cytosolic phospholipase A 2 (cPLA 2 ) activity. However, there were no changes in degranulation activity or cytokine production in the knockdown cells. We also found that cPLA 2 interacted with either full-length or cleaved ANXA1 in activated mast cells. cPLA 2 mainly interacted with full-length ANXA1 in the cytosol and cleaved ANXA1 in the membrane fraction. In addition, introduction of a cleavage-resistant ANXA1 mutant had inhibitory effects on both the phosphorylation of cPLA 2 and release of eicosanoids during the activation of RBL-2H3 cells and bone marrow-derived mast cells. These data suggest that cleavage of ANXA1 causes proinflammatory reactions by increasing the phosphorylation of cPLA 2 and production of eicosanoids during mast-cell activation. The Journal of Immunology , 2012, 188: 000–000.


I find that there is something very rewarding and comforting about doing the same tasks over and over. Or spending time in a place with only a limited number of elements, absorbing the environment slowly. This allows for a mental space where the daily processes can become routine, and create an intimacy and immediacy that is otherwise hard to achieve. A familiarity with the surroundings is due to a certain choreography of repeating gestures. In many ways Roithmayr's collages at Tenderpixel behave the same way, they were born out of following simple rules, approaching things again and again, playfully and patiently, until they found their final shape from an infinite number of possibilities.

In a place like that described, a ritual of repeating movements is enacted, almost the same each day. As a result, slight changes start to occur in the surfaces over time, through coming in contact with the body in specific ways. Touch begins to shape the objects perhaps in similar ways to making a mark and manipulating surfaces while creating artworks. Everything has a place without having to consciously think about it anymore. However, even a place with such comfortingly familiar shapes sometimes feels ultimately unknowable. Any material – even after centuries-old practices using them; or any person – even after decades of a close relationship, no matter how much time we spend with them, they still hold secrets and ultimately remain something infinitely distant and strange.

Plaster specifically has a long history, with techniques largely unchanged, yet how we relate to it is different and contemporary each time. Roithmayr combines his intimate knowledge of the material with unpredictability, as he set up some experiments, teasing out unexpected results. To a certain extent, he is giving over control in this hidden operation, deliberately allowing space for accidents in order to learn from them through these processes. His work is about generating and tracking changes in the material. The ambition in his practice is to register the consequences of one surface or material yielding another through capturing the unexpected gestures that occur in the gap between mould and cast. His work consists of materials that create each other the moment they are put together.


In postmenopausal osteoporosis, the administration of alfacalcidol to women resulted in an increase in trabecular bone mineral density (BMD), prevention of cortical bone loss, and a significant reduction in the incidence of further vertebral fractures. There is now robust evidence that alfacalcidol may be particularly active in conditions characterized by an increased rate of bone loss. Alfacalcidol 1 microg/day fully prevented vertebral bone loss over 3 years in women after the first year of menopause. In a large cohort of individuals starting treatment with high dose corticosteroid (CS, 46.6 mg equivalent prednisolone per day), the spinal bone loss observed in untreated patients was fully prevented by administration of 1 microg/day alfacalcidol. In patients with established CS-induced osteoporosis, with or without prevalent vertebral fractures, 1 microg/day of alfacalcidol, given for 3 years, increased lumbar spine density, reduced back pain, and showed a significant reduction in the rate of new vertebral fractures, compared to native vitamin D. In cardiac transplant recipients, alfacalcidol and calcium reduced spinal and femoral bone loss, compared to a control group treated with etidronate and calcium. Alfacalcidol-treated patients experienced fewer new vertebral fractures over the 2-year followup. When alfacalcidol and vitamin D3 were compared in elderly women with radiologic evidence of vertebral fracture, fractional calcium absorption was increased after 3 months with alfacalcidol but was unchanged with vitamin D3. In a recent metaanalysis of 14 studies of native vitamin D and 19 studies of D-hormone analogs (alfacalcidol and calcitriol), the D-analogs exerted a higher preventive effect on bone loss and fracture rates in patients with no exposure to CS. In head-to-head studies comparing D-analogs and native vitamin D in patients receiving CS, this metaanalysis identified significant effects favoring D-analogs for femoral neck BMD and spinal fractures. In conclusion, improvement in bone turnover, increase in BMD, and reduction in fracture rates have been described during alfacalcidol treatment in situations characterized by a high rate of bone loss, including CS-induced osteoporosis, early postmenopausal bone loss, and organ transplant. Compared to plain vitamin D, alfacalcidol exerts higher bone-protective effects, thus allowing the doses to be minimized and lowering the risk of adverse effects, including hypercalcemia.


This paper proposes new strength models to predict compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths of steel, synthetic and hybrid fiber reinforced concretes. The strength models depending on fiber reinforcing index, concrete compressive strength, and fiber volume fraction have been developed by multiple regression analyses of the experimental results obtained from a comprehensive experimental program. Twenty‐five concrete batches, one control and 24 fiber reinforced concrete with target compressive strength of 40 MPa were produced. Steel and synthetic fibers, namely hooked‐end steel (HF) and polyamide (PA) synthetic fibers of total volume of 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75% were added in single and hybrid forms to concrete mixes. Moreover, the predictions of the proposed strength models have been compared with the existing strength models in the literature. The test results clearly showed that the predictions of the proposed strength models are more accurate than the existing strength models for compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths of all the fiber types. Although the existing strength models may be applicable to the prediction of compressive strength of steel, synthetic, hybrid fiber reinforced concrete (FRC), they may not be safely used for splitting tensile and flexural strength of steel, synthetic and hybrid FRC.


This briefing paper examines the rights of women and adolescents to access contraceptive information and services. It provides practical guidance for activists scholars UN agencies nongovernmental organizations governments and other actors working in the area of sexual and reproductive health to integrate human rights into programs and policies. The paper assesses the benefits of contraceptive access lays out the human rights framework underpinning this right identifies the normative elements of this right and provides an overview of how to apply a human rights-based approach to the provision of contraceptive information and services.


This study examines how highly polarized issues can be interrupted and renegotiated through a rhetorical device that we call dialectical innovation. We analyze three popular texts—a South Parkepisode called Imaginationland, an Oprah Winfrey Show segment on freeganism, and a blog and book titled Stuff White People Like—to explore the commonly polarized topics of terrorism, the environment, and race. Drawing from the theory of dialectical disorientation, we illustrate how these artifactsuniquely interrogate polarized perspectives and open up a rhetorical space for audience membersas individual agentsto pursue their own generative possibilities. Facilitating this process is a rhetor within the texts who unsettles polarization and encourages generative rhetorical responses.


Pharmacists are the hearts of health care team and independent prescribers in United Kingdom and
 other developed countries. Nowadays pharmacists oriented to patient care rather traditional mercantile
 products orientation. Clinical Pharmacy is the combined agreement between physician and pharmacist
 in which pharmacist prescribing and providing patient care. The health care team is fragile in the
 absence of pharmacist, literature supported prescription by pharmacists and the members include
 physicians, stakeholders and patients, but some physicians not supported them due to loss of dignity,
 deskilled junior physicians and some considered them deficient of well diagnostic skills. Provision of
 drug therapy without competent clinical pharmacist is impossible and incomplete. The implementation
 of pharmacists prescribing can effectively decrease burdens and workload from the shoulders of
 physicians to provide them time for complex diseases, facilitate pharmacists regarding jobs issues
 instead of five years degree of Doctor of Pharmacy, patient counseling and educations, reduction of
 polypharmacy and iatrogenic diseases as well as to stabilize the health care triangle.


The Greater than Class C (GTCC) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluated the potential impacts from the construction and operation of a new facility or facilities, or use of an existing facility, employing various disposal methods (geologic repository, intermediate depth borehole, enhanced near surface trench, and above grade vault) at six federal sites and generic commercial locations. For three of the locations being considered as possible locations, consulting tribes were brought in to comment on their perceptions on how GTCC low level radioactive waste would affect Native American resources (land, water, air, plants, animals, archaeology, etc.) short and long term. The consulting tribes produced essays that were incorporated into the EIS and these essays are in turn included in this collection. This essay was produced by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.


Gene-Culture Coevolution (GCC) theory is an intriguing new entry in the quest to understand human culture. Nonetheless, it has received relatively little philosophical attention. One notable exception is Kim Sterelny's (2006) critique which raises three primary objections against the GCC account. Most importantly, he argues that GCC theory, as it stands, is unable to resolve "the paradox of cultural accumulation" (151); that while social learning should generally be prohibitively expensive for the pupils, it nonetheless occurs as the principle means of disseminating novel information through a culture. Sterelny holds that this is best explained by supplementing the GCC models with strong cultural group selection pressures. I argue that this is not needed. To show this I elaborate upon Joseph Henrich and Francisco Gil-White's (2001) information goods theory, developing it in terms of the market pressures that one would expect to find in an information economy. I indicate how such pressures contribute to an individual-level explanation of cultural accumulation that answers Sterelny's concerns.


Practical philosophy is dominated by two pictures of human agency: the Kantian image of a rational, empirically unaffected will and the Humean image of instrumental reasoning from desires, aims, values, or interests. Because Kantian and Humean accounts of agency emphasize the individual over the social, they lack explanatory resources important to understanding how others can matter to us as agents in the right way. Insufficiently social conceptions of agency, I argue, risk depicting agents as alienated from one another, leaving mysterious how we can get a normative grip on one another. Taking inspiration from GWF Hegel and Iris Murdoch, I develop a conception of agency on which it constitutively depends on standing in relations of mutual recognition with other agents. I argue that a crucial part of becoming an agent is becoming reflectively self-conscious of our sociality—of the historically conditioned nature of mutually recognitive relations. A significant upshot of the picture of agency that emerges is a new perspective on individual moral progress. It's not the purely personal achievement suggested on the Kantian and Humean accounts of agency. Rather, individual moral progress is a political achievement, bound up in both the inner struggle to achieve moral clarity and the social struggle for an ethical form of life.


Eutheria includes one of three major clades of mammals, the extant members of which are referred to as placentals.

With almost 4800 extinct and extant genera, including 1135 extant (living) genera and over 5000 extant species arrayed in 20 extant orders, placentals (extant eutherians) are the most taxonomically diverse of the three branches of extant mammals. Eutherians appear in the fossil record by 105 Ma (million years ago) and possibly by 160 Ma. Extant orders of eutherians (placentals) do not occur in the fossil record until after dinosaur extinction 65–66 Ma. Molecular studies generally agree with these dates for the origin of placental orders, but place the origin of Eutheria at approximately 190 Ma and groups related to living orders of mammals by 100 Ma. Placentals vary greatly in size (whales down to shrews), in locomotion (flying, swimming, climbing, burrowing, running, etc.), and diet (meat, leaves, fruit, termites, etc.). They have a high resting temperature (homiothermy) and produce this heat internally (endothermy). They have a chorioallantoic placenta that allows a long gestation for development.

Key Concepts:

Eutherian mammals arose somewhere between 105 and 190 Ma.

Extant eutherian mammals, known as placentals, may have originated as long as 100 Ma based on molecular studies.

Placental orders first began to appear and diversify approximately 65 Ma (±10 My) based on both molecular and fossil studies.

There are 20 orders of placentals comprised of 1135 living genera and over 5000 species.

Placentals have a high resting temperature (homiothermy) and produce this heat internally (endothermy).

Placentals have a chorioallantoic placenta that allows a long gestation for development, hence their name.

Placentals are arguably the most ecologically diverse group of living vertebrates as they vary greatly in size, locomotory types, and diet.

Keywords:

placenta;
chorion;
allantois;
amnion;
incisor;
canine;
premolar;
molar;
corpus callosum;
endothermy


The use of stainless steel reinforcement in concrete structures has increased in recent years, particularly in applications where corrosion and chemical resistance is desirable such as bridges, retaining walls and tunnels. Stainless steel has a wide range of attractive properties including excellent mechanical strength, fire resistance, durability and also a long life-cycle compared with carbon steel. However, it is also has a higher initial cost, and therefore needs to be used carefully and efficiently. The existing material models provided for the structural analysis of reinforced concrete members in current design standards, such as Eurocode 2, are not appropriate for stainless steel reinforced concrete and lead to overly conservative (or indeed unconservative in some cases) predictions of the section capacity. Generally, there is a lack of data in the public domain regarding the behaviour of concrete beams reinforced with stainless steel, mainly owing to this being a relatively new and novel topic. In this context, the current paper provides a detailed background of the existing information on stainless steel reinforced concrete, as well a discussion on the potential advantages and challenges. Then, attention is given to analysing the behaviour of stainless steel reinforced concrete beams by developing the Continuous Strength Method to predict the bending moment capacity. A finite element model has been develop in order to further assess the performance, and this is also used to conduct a parametric study of the most influential properties. It is concluded that the proposed analytical models provides a reliable solution for predicting the capacity of concrete beams reinforced with stainless steel.


Recent advances in machine learning and computer vision are revolutionizing the field of animal behavior by enabling researchers to track the poses and locations of freely moving animals without any marker attachment. However, large datasets of annotated images of animals for markerless pose tracking, especially high-resolution images taken from multiple angles with accurate 3D annotations, are still scant. Here, we propose a method that uses a motion capture (mo-cap) system to obtain a large amount of annotated data on animal movement and posture (2D and 3D) in a semi-automatic manner. Our method is novel in that it extracts the 3D positions of morphological keypoints (e.g eyes, beak, tail) in reference to the positions of markers attached to the animals. Using this method, we obtained, and offer here, a new dataset - 3D-POP with approximately 300k annotated frames (4 million instances) in the form of videos having groups of one to ten freely moving birds from 4 different camera views in a 3.6m x 4.2m area. 3D-POP is the first dataset of flocking birds with accurate keypoint annotations in 2D and 3D along with bounding box and individual identities and will facilitate the development of solutions for problems of 2D to 3D markerless pose, trajectory tracking, and identification in birds.


Communities sometimes hold private property rights in or adjacent to a protected area. Section 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 (the Constitution) protects a person's private property in that the state may not unfairly deprive or expropriate such private property. The interest in the environment are protected by section 24 of the Constitution which entails that every person has the right to an environment that is not harmful to one's health or well-being and also that the environment has to be preserved for present and future generations. National parks are the most valuable natural resource in terms of nature conservation that South Africa has, as these parks harvest natural resources to be preserved for present and future generations. The question that arises is which restrictions are placed on owners in respect of nature conservation, and what the constitutionality of such restrictions is. The answer this question is somewhat difficult as both the right to property and the right to a safe and clean environment are both fundamental rights in the Constitution, and these rights deserve protection. That being said, it is important to understand that no right in the Bill of Rights is an absolute right and all rights are subject to limitations. Such limitations should adhere to the requirements set out in section 36 of the Constitution. A limitation of any constitutional right will be accepted if it is proportional. Section 36(1) of the Constitution amounts to a general proportionality test to ensure that any right contained in the Bill of Rights is only limited by a law of general application and if such limitation is reasonable and justifiable. The National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 (NEMA) as well as the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act 57 of 2003 (NEMPA) can be seen as laws of general application. NEMPA especially implies that private property holders may be deprived of their property, if it is situated in or adjacent to a protected area in order to conserve the environment, and this will also not be arbitrary as the private property holders are still allowed to reside on the land in question. NEMA as well as NEMPA makes provision that property may be expropriated for environmental purposes subject to compensation and the provisions of the Expropriation Act 63 of 1975. Limitation of property rights in order to protect and conserve the environment can thus not be seen as unconstitutional or unfair.


A protocol was developed for in vitro plantlet regeneration of mangosteen (Garcinia Mangostana L.) from shoot tip, stem and seed explants. Shoot tip explants produced the highest mean number of shoots per explant on media supplemented with 1.0 mg/L 6-benzylaminopurin (BAP) and 0.05 mg/L kinetin (KIN) (73.3). On medium containing 0.1 mg/L BAP and 0.05 mg/L KIN, the highest mean shoot height reached 1.2 cm. The highest percentage of callus formed (90%) was obtained in treatment containing 0.20 mg/L KIN. The effect of BAP in combination with α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) was also studied. On half seed explants, the combination of 4 mg/L (w/v) of BAP with 0.2 mg/L (w/v) of (NAA) produced the highest number of shoots per explant (75). In medium containing 2 mg/L (w/v) of BAP and 0.2 mg/L (w/v) of NAA, the mean shoot height reached 1.79 cm also The highest percentage of callus formation (90%) was obtained on treatment containing 0.5 mg/L (w/v) of NAA. For rooting, pretreatment in different indol-3-butyric acid (IBA) and NAA concentrations and comparison of MS salt strengths were evaluated. Identical pattern occurred on medium containing one-quarter strength MS salt and the highest mean number of roots per explant (1.17) was produced in treatment with 2 mg/L IBA. The highest percentage of root formation was obtained on one-quarter strength MS salt medium containing 0.1 mg/L NAA (90.4%). Rooted plantlets were acclimatized on medium composed of soil + sand + organic matters + vermiculite according to the ratio (2: 2: 1: 1).


The increasing ubiquity of the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to drastically alter the way healthcare systems are utilized at home or in a care environment. Smart things offer new ways to assist in general patient wellness, such as promoting an active and healthy lifestyle and simplifying treatment management. We believe smart health things bring new requirements not typically addressed in traditional IoT systems, and that an architecture targeting these devices must address such requirements to fully utilize their potential and safe usage. We believe such an architecture will help improve adoption and efficacy, closing gaps between the variety of emerging health IoT systems. In this paper, we present a number of requirements we consider integral to the continued expansion of the digital health IoT ecosystem (Health IoT). We consider the current landscape of IoT in relation to these requirements and present solutions that address two pressing requirements: 1) democratizing mobile health apps (giving users control and ownership over their app and data), and 2) making mobile apps act and behave like any other thing in an IoT. We present an implementation and evaluation of these Health IoT requirements to show how health-specific solutions can drive and influence the design of more generalized IoT architectures.


Investigates the automatic classification of the 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) into different pathophysiological disease categories. The ECG database used in this study contained 926 recordings, with 500 records classified with 100% accuracy and 426 records classified with 75% accuracy. Each record contained a simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG of 8-10 s duration. Each record is classed as either (i) normal; (ii) left, right or bi-ventricular hypertrophy; or (iii) anterior, inferior or combined myocardial infarction. A baseline classifier was trained using a single beat from the 500 classified recordings and resulted in a 7-way classification test-set accuracy of 55%. The following techniques were used for improving the classification performance: (1) multi-beat data, (2) regularisation of the covariance matrix, and (3) utilisation of inaccurately classified data in the training process. Combining these three techniques resulted in a classifier with a test-set accuracy of over 75%.


Abstract The development of computer technology is very influential in terms of business. For the moment everything can be found in the intenet, is no exception with an online trading system called e-commerce. In this study made sales website batik-Based E-Commerce. The purpose of this website is to create a website sales and information about batik. Where this website is equipped with a sales transaction system that is practical as well as provide information about batik fairly complete, this website was made using the programming language PHP (Hypertext prepecessor) and MySQL for databases and assisted by the editors for web designing is Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. Data collection methods using secondary data obtained from the web and literature review. The method of system development information system using waterfall method, describe the functional model and ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) to describe the data model. The purpose of this study was to determine the ease Provides information about the types of produk Batik is up to date and provide information so that the growing variety of batik batik knowledge of areas. With the built website can assist consumers in making purchases online that can be done anywhere and anytime. Keywords: Information Systems, Batik , E-commerce .


Technology is increasing the complexity in the role of today's nurse. Healthcare organizations are integrating more health information technologies and relying on the electronic health record for data collection, communication, and decision making. Nursing faculty need to prepare graduates for this environment and incorporate an academic electronic health record into a nursing curriculum to meet student-program outcomes. Although the need exists for student preparation, some nursing programs are struggling with implementation, whereas others have been successful. To better understand these complexities, this project was intended to identify current challenges and success strategies of effective academic electronic health record integration into nursing curricula. Using Rogers' 1962 Diffusion of Innovation theory as a framework for technology adoption, a descriptive survey design was used to gain insights from deans and program directors of nursing schools involved with the national Health Informatics & Technology Scholars faculty development program or Cerner's Academic Education Solution Consortium, working to integrate an academic electronic health record in their respective nursing schools. The participants' experiences highlighted approaches used by these schools to integrate these technologies. Data from this project provide nursing education with effective strategies and potential challenges that should be addressed for successful academic electronic health record integration.


Thus far, the role of the Escherichia coli signal recognition particle (SRP) has only been studied using targeted approaches. It has been shown for a handful of cytoplasmic membrane proteins that their insertion into the cytoplasmic membrane is at least partially SRP-dependent. Furthermore, it has been proposed that the SRP plays a role in preventing toxic accumulation of mistargeted cytoplasmic membrane proteins in the cytoplasm. To complement the targeted studies on SRP, we have studied the consequences of the depletion of the SRP component Fifty-four homologue (Ffh) in E. coli using a global approach. The steady-state proteomes and the proteome dynamics were evaluated using one- and two-dimensional gel analysis, followed by mass spectrometry-based protein identification and immunoblotting. Our analysis showed that depletion of Ffh led to the following: (i) impaired kinetics of the biogenesis of the cytoplasmic membrane proteome; (ii) lowered steady-state levels of the respiratory complexes NADH dehydrogenase, succinate dehydrogenase, and cytochrome bo3 oxidase and lowered oxygen consumption rates; (iii) increased levels of the chaperones DnaK and GroEL at the cytoplasmic membrane; (iv) a σ32 stress response and protein aggregation in the cytoplasm; and (v) impaired protein synthesis. Our study shows that in E. coli SRP-mediated protein targeting is directly linked to maintaining protein homeostasis and the general fitness of the cell.


GEOPHYSICS
The greatest depth of the ocean, more than 11 km, is at the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific. One reason is that here some of the oldest, and thus coolest, ocean crust is subducted westward beneath Guam, and the trench is not filled with sediment. But the deepest part of the Marianas Trench, the Challenger Deep, is not southwest of Guam but southeast, where the trench bends to the west and much younger ocean crust is being subducted. Fryer et al. provide new geophysical data to explain why the Challenger Deep is so deep. Their data imply that the subducting ocean crust is torn here, not that there is a large strike-slip fault, as was previously thought. This tear has further influenced the deformation and dynamics of the overriding plate, and together these features have deepened what is already a deep subduction zone.— BH

Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 211 , 259 (2003).


H-theorem states that the entropy production is nonnegative and, therefore, the entropy of a closed system should monotonically change in time. In information processing, the entropy production is positive for random transformation of signals (the information processing lemma). Originally, the H-theorem and the information processing lemma were proved for the classical Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy and for the correspondent divergence (the relative entropy). Many new entropies and divergences have been proposed during last decades and for all of them the H-theorem is needed. This note proposes a simple and general criterion to check whether the H-theorem is valid for a convex divergence H and demonstrates that some of the popular divergences obey no H-theorem. We consider systems with n states Ai that obey first order kinetics (master equation). A convex function H is a Lyapunov function for all master equations with given equilibrium if and only if its conditional minima properly describe the equilibria of pair transitions Ai ⇌ Aj . This theorem does not depend on the principle of detailed balance and is valid for general Markov kinetics. Elementary analysis of pair equilibria demonstrate that the popular Bregman divergences like Euclidian distance or Itakura-Saito distance in the space of distribution cannot be the universal Lyapunov functions for the first-order kinetics and can increase in Markov processes. Therefore, they violate the second law and the information processing lemma. In particular, for these measures of information (divergences) random manipulation with data may add information to data. The main results are extended to nonlinear generalized mass action law kinetic equations.


Mass-transport complexes (MTCs) can significantly modify the seascape by eroding the substrate and depositing thick hetherolithic packages that can behave as hydrocarbon seals or reservoirs. MTC erosion can affect the integrity of underlying reservoir units, and affect subsequent sediment dispersal. Moreover, the irregular seabed profiles resulting from MTC erosion and emplacement can affect the distribution and architecture of subsequent sediments. This study uses a 1900 km2 3D seismic volume from the southern Magdalena Fan, offshore Colombia to investigate: i) the relationship between changes in the size, distribution and provenance of the MTCs and the evolution of tectonic structures; ii) the relationship between and the distribution of MTCs, the geometries of their basal erosion surfaces and their internal characteristics, with the morphology and composition of the seabed, and iii) the effects of MTC-related bathymetric irregularities on the architecture and development of channel-levee complex sets and avulsion lobes.
The size, distribution and provenance of MTCs changed through time with the oldest MTCs being smaller (9-100 km2 in area) and sourced and from local collapse of the growing anticlines. Younger MTCs are larger (more than 200-300 km2) and sourced from the shelf, postdating the main phase of folding and faulting in the study area. These changes were used to propose a model of the tectono-stratigraphic evolution of the study area, demonstrating that MTCs can be used to constrain the timing and style of tectonic deformation in time and space. Additionally, the local morphology of the MTC basal surfaces reflects compositional changes in the underlying units, with deeper erosion occurring above channel axes deposits and more subtle slope changes across different levee units. MTC dispersal was influenced by a combination of structural and depositional relief: channel-levee complex sets channelized, diverted or blocked the subsequent mass-flows depending on the orientation of the channel-levee complex sets with respect to the direction of the flow, and the height of the levees with respect to flow thickness. Within the largest MTC, the distribution of the seismic facies was influenced by the underlying bathymetry, with internal contraction occurring updip of bathymetric highs, erosion and bypass above higher gradient slopes, and increased disaggregation towards the margins. Moreover, MTC erosion left behind an erosional remnant ridge upon which a younger channel-levee complex-set developed irregular levee geometries that led to levee collapse and channel avulsion. Map-view geometries and seismic-amplitude extractions suggest that the initial avulsion lobes were mud-prone and evolved to form sand-prone lobes. The distribution, morphology and evolution of the avulsion lobe complexes were influenced by megaclasts protruding on the MTC top surface.
This study demonstrates that: i) the architecture, geometries and distribution of MTCs, channel-levee complex sets and avulsion lobes are strongly influenced by bathymetric irregularities on the seabed at various scales; ii) flow-pathways, geometries, distribution and internal characteristics of MTCs can be affected by the properties of the substrate; iii) the stratigraphic evolution of the Magdalena Fan is characterised by the interaction between MTCs and channel-levee complex sets. The learnings from this study can be applied to deeper intervals that are less well imaged and to other margins dominated by MTCs and channel-levee complex sets.


Aphids are economically important insect pests, which feed on phloem sap using stylets.
Aphids cause significant losses of crop yield, through draining plant resources and vectoring
over 275 plant viruses. In plant-pathogen interactions, basal plant defense involving
pathogen associated molecular pattern (PAMP) triggered immunity (PTI) and effector
triggered immunity (ETI) effectively fends off the majority of plant pathogens. I aimed
to discover whether these mechanisms are also involved in the plant response to aphids.
I found that elicitors present within aphids can evoke PTI/ETI defense responses. In Arabidopsis
thaliana, perception of aphid elicitors requires the Leucine-Rich Repeat Receptor-
Like Kinase (LRR-RLK) BAK1, which is required for multiple PTI responses via interaction
with other RLKs. I identified two RLKs which may detect aphid elicitors and provide specificity
to aphid detection.
Successful aphid colonization of plants is thought to involve the suppression of PTI and
ETI via effectors, leading to effector-triggered susceptibility (ETS). I investigated a Myzus
persicae effector, Mp10, and found that it was required for success on Arabidopsis and
could block immune signalling. A plant target for Mp10 was identified via a yeast twohybrid
screen. Further investigations suggest that the Mp10 target has previously unknown
roles in immune receptor trafficking.
Mp10 induces ETI-like responses when expressed in plants, which I found were not
dependent upon Mp10 effector action or salicylic acid. A yeast two-hybrid screen of candidate
aphid effectors revealed interactions with plant resistance proteins, which may play
a role in the aphid-plant interaction. Aphid effector proteins were also found to interact
with each other, suggesting a role in the regulation of effector action and delivery into plants.
Taken together, the research described in this thesis has elucidated the roles of PTI,
ETS and ETI in insect-plant interactions and identified specific plant and aphid proteins
that are involved in these.


The eye is an easily accessible, highly compartmentalised and immune-privileged organ that offers unique advantages as a gene therapy target. Significant advancements have been made in understanding the genetic pathogenesis of ocular diseases, and gene replacement and gene silencing have been implicated as potentially efficacious therapies. Recent improvements have been made in the safety and specificity of vector-based ocular gene transfer methods. Proof-of-concept for vector-based gene therapies has also been established in several experimental models of human ocular diseases. After nearly two decades of ocular gene therapy research, preliminary successes are now being reported in phase 1 clinical trials for the treatment of Leber congenital amaurosis. This review describes current developments and future prospects for ocular gene therapy. Novel methods are being developed to enhance the performance and regulation of recombinant adeno-associated virus- and lentivirus-mediated ocular gene transfer. Gene therapy prospects have advanced for a variety of retinal disorders, including retinitis pigmentosa, retinoschisis, Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration. Advances have also been made using experimental models for non-retinal diseases, such as uveitis and glaucoma. These methodological advancements are critical for the implementation of additional gene-based therapies for human ocular diseases in the near future.


Investigations on the Talchir sediments of Auranga Coalfield have yielded well preserved plant fossils from Jaitri river section situated about 1·5 km northeast of Latehar town of Palamau District, Bihar. The assemblage is represented by the species of Gangamopteris (G. cyclopteroides, G. fibrosa, G. clarkeana, G. major; G. angustifolia, G. karharbariensis, Gangamopteris sp.) and Glossopteris (G. talchirensis, G. indica, G. communis, G. stenoneura, G. tenuifolia, G. spatulala) besides a number of scale leaves and equisetalean-stem axes. The known records of plant fossils from the Talchir Formation indicate dominance of Gangamopteris leaves (10 sp.) whereas, Glossopteris leaves are recorded by only two species. The present report of occurrence of six species of Glossopteris and seven species of Gangamopteris demonstrates simultaneous settlement and diversification 0f the two types of glossopterid leaves i.e., midrib-less forms of Gangamopteris and midrib possessing forms of Glossopteris, during the early phase (The Talchir Formation) of Glossopteris flora.


Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) stimulates the growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells. This study determined the transcriptional activity of an IGF-I-responsive region (IGFRE) of porcine P450 11A (P450scc) after transfection into MCF-7 cells. IGF-I induced transcriptional activity of a porcine P450scc core promoter luciferase construct containing the IGFRE transfected in MCF-7 cells. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay with nuclear protein extract from MCF-7 cells showed two transcription factors binding to the IGFRE. Supershift assay determined that one transcription factor was Sp1. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay and transfection experiments with selected mutations to the IGFRE found that binding of both transcription factors was necessary to confer an IGF-I response. The binding activity of both transcription factors was increased with IGF-I treatment. In conclusion, MCF-7 cells contain Sp1 and another unknown transcription factor, P2, that bind to a known IGFRE (porcine P450scc) and induce reporter gene transcriptional activity with IGF-I treatment. Because Sp1 is a ubiquitous transcription factor, determining the identity of P2 may lead to cell-specific methods to impair breast cancer cell growth as mediated by IGF-I.


The traditional partnership model of general practice is "no longer fit for purpose" and should be phased out in favour of alternative models such as salaried employment, concludes a major parliamentary inquiry.

The report from the House of Lords select committee on the long term sustainability of the NHS concluded that the small business model of general practice was "inhibiting change" and frustrating efforts to deliver more care outside hospitals in response to increasing demand from patients and NHS staff shortages.1

The inquiry, published on Wednesday 5 April, found broad support for general practices working together in federations to deliver an extended range of services. But it said that NHS England and the Department of Health must help GPs do this and work with the profession's leaders to look at alternative contractual models, including "direct employment, which would reflect arrangements elsewhere in the NHS."

In parallel, the committee urged the NHS to tackle its "over-reliance" on the acute care hospital sector, which posed "a serious threat to the long-term …


A heart attack is often a very drastic, sometimes even traumatic, life event for patients, which is frequently associated with fear of death. Not only is the body under enormous stress, a heart attack also means stress for the psyche. "Stressful life events are part of human existence and are compensated for with individual coping strategies or defense mechanisms. However, if the strain is overwhelming or the possible solutions are subjectively exhausted, pathological reactions may occur."(1) From a psychosomatic perspective, an acute myocardial infarction is a "significant biographical breaking point with far-reaching psychological consequences."(2) This pilot study investigates whether a psychocardiological intervention integrated into standard therapeutic care in the form of a structured conversation with a biopsychosocial model (in the sense of the WHO understanding of health), adapted to the patient's level of need, can have a positive effect on quality of life and on psychological comorbidity in the short- and long-term course of recovery. 45 patients with acute myocardial infarction (13 female, 32 male), who were randomly assigned to two intervention groups, were followed for six months after the cardiac event with individualized and collaborative psychocardiological interventions and tested for mental illness. The results of the study show that such individualized care with additional screening for psychological comorbidities in the early phase after a myocardial infarction can significantly help patients to help themselves, provide early indications of the presence of a psychological disorder, and accelerate the initiation of adequate treatment. The integration of a psychocardiological component into the standard therapy of myocardial infarction patients in the early phase after the cardiac event seems to be a valuable contribution to the therapy and should receive encouragement in the future. Furthermore, this pilot study offers new and interesting approaches for future research.


The thesis explored the mechanisms through which banks in Tanzania were affected by the 2008 global economic crisis and the way they responded to the same. The Bank of Tanzania (BoT), Barclays Bank Tanzania Ltd and Tanzania Investment Bank (TIB) were taken as case studies. Secondary and primary data were used to inform the study. It was found that there are over twenty two (22) mechanisms through which banks can be affected by the crisis. The general mechanism through which the banks can be affected is through the impacts of the crisis on their customers. Mechanisms of impacts include defaults, debt re-scheduling, reduced lending and profits, stagnation in assets, more credit risk and reduced liquidity. Generally, BoT responded to the crisis in banking sector through various measures to ensure stability in the sector in the short and long term. Responses by individual banks included but are not limited to more carefull risk assessments, stress-testing, more adherence to regulations, provision of emergency liquidity, discussion with affected customers, capital injection in selected businesses and taking more long term and developmental view of customers. Conclusively, the 2008 economic crisis affected the Tanzanian banking sector through second-round effects of the crisis. It is recommended that authorities and banks should be virgilant in times of economic crisis. They should respond accordingly so as to avoid the danger of such
crises leading into collapse of individual banks and eventually the banking and financial system as a whole.


The direct solution of the many-particle Schrodinger equation is computationally inaccessible for more than very few electrons. In order to surpass this limitation, one of the authors [X. Oriols, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2007, 98 (066803)] has recently proposed a new model to study electron-electron correlations from Bohm trajectories associated to time-dependent wave-packets solutions of pseudo single-particle Schrodinger equations. In the aforementioned paper only the orbital exchange interaction is considered assuming that all electrons have the same spin orientation. Then, the many-particle wave function is a complex Slater determinant of the single-particle wave-packets. In the present work the previous formalism is extended to study many-particle wave functions where the electrons have different spin orientations.The main difficulty to treat N different electron spin orientations with time-dependent wave-packets is that one must study all the possible N!N! products of permutations among spin states. To overcome this computationally inaccessible problem, in this article the total wave function is treated as a separated product of two many-particle wave functions, the first with spin up and the second with spin down. In order to numerically justify this approximation, the Bohm velocity in different antisymmetric total wave-function scenarios is computed. The computational results confirms the accurate validity of our approximation under a large number of cases.


I am not convinced that using the terms cyclonic and non-cyclonic is truly accurate given the way that the synoptic weather observations are used to define these two weather types. While the conditions used to identify the cyclonic type most likely occur during periods of low pressure that may not always be the case. Similarly, the noncyclonic conditions could occur when the station is under the influence of an area of low pressure. I suggest renaming these two synoptic classifications maybe precipitating and non-precipitation would be more accurate (although this is problematic due to the inclusion of diamond dust in the current non-cyclonic category, which I think is appropriate). But I do think this better reflects the distinction between the two synoptic categories being used for this work.


Ants on flowers can disrupt pollination by consuming rewards or harassing pollinators, but it is difficult to disentangle the effects of these exploitative and interference forms of competition on pollinator behavior. Using highly rewarding and quickly replenishing artificial flowers that simulate male or female function, we allowed bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) to forage (1) on flowers with or without ants (Myrmica rubra) and (2) on flowers with or without ant scent cues. Bumblebees transferred significantly more pollen analogue both to and from ant-free flowers, demonstrating that interference competition with ants is sufficient to modify pollinator foraging behavior. Bees also removed significantly less pollen analogue from ant-scented flowers than from controls, making this the first study to show that bees can use ant scent to avoid harassment at flowers. Ant effects on pollinator behavior, possibly in addition to their effects on pollen viability, may contribute to the evolution of floral traits minimizing ant visitation.


A split-pole write head design for thermally assisted recording is presented. The split-pole design allows the heat source to be located anywhere along the down-track axis. The recording performance of the head is evaluated using micromagnetic simulations and compared to a conventional design. The effect of Curie temperature distributions in the recording medium is investigated and found to be particularly detrimental to recording performance under some circumstances.


Public and patient involvement (PPI)—engaging the public in designing and delivering research—is increasingly expected in health research, reflecting recognition of the value of "lay" knowledge of illness and/or caring for informing research. Despite increased understanding of PPI experiences within the research process, little attention has been paid to the meaning of PPI in other areas of contributors' lives, and its value as a broader social practice. We conducted repeated narrative interviews with five experienced PPI contributors from the United Kingdom to explore how meaning is constructed through narratives of PPI in relation to their broader "life-worlds." Narratives were extremely varied, constructing identities and meanings around PPI in relation to family and social life, career and employment, financial status, and wider social agendas, as well as health. This emphasizes the importance of recognizing PPI as a social practice with diverse meaning and value beyond health research.


Although predicted theoretically, excitonic phase transitions have never actually been observed. Recently it has been claimed that they can occur in some strongly correlated materials. We study the possibility of an excitonic transition in a two-band model and show that a true phase transition never occurs in the presence of hybridization. We suggest an alternative interpretation for these experiments based on the opening or closing of a hybridization gap at a critical pressure.


It is essential for academic staffs to keep track of their publication records. Publication is seen to be the main resource for evaluation in the academic world. Besides, the publication criteria are mainly being evaluated for promotion and to access research grants from the institution or the government entities. The basis of this research is to unveil personal, behavioral and environmental factors using social cognitive theory (SCT) and by implementing the Viable System Model (VSM) as the diagnostic tool using cybernetic concept which is more viable to changes in the organization, which relate to key performance indicators (KPI) delivery on scholarly publications (SP). Thus, this study is aimed at investigating factors associated with publication productivity among the research university academic staffs by integrating VSM and SCT. This study applies qualitative method triangulated with quantitative method. The findings show that the most influential factors for the SP of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) are age, gender, experience, rank, teaching load, collaboration, funding, resource, discipline and skill. The model was evaluated for the SP KPI monitoring process, which further can be used by public and private universities to improve the performance of their institution's publication.


A concept of social responsibility reflects public concerns and issues for a specific time, and these change with time. Various stakeholders as consumers, customers, employees, trade unions, communities, non-governmental organizations, foundations, donors, investors are more and more interested in the activities of companies (organizations), and influence on them in a variety of ways. Companies, for their part, also look for ways to meet the expectations of the public in the area of social responsibility. Corporate social responsiveness is an ability of business to respond to social pressure. The article analyzes the implementation of social responsiveness initiatives as organizational programs. Social responsiveness is understood as action dimension of corporate social responsibility. The paper deals with implementation of social responsiveness initiatives in Lithuania. Researched the socially responsiveness initiatives as organizational programs, the authors found that an active development of corporate social responsiveness positively influences on businesses and society relationship and contribute to sustainable development of region or country.


Hospitals often set protocols based on well defined standards to maintain quality of patient reports. To ensure that the clinicians conform to the protocols, quality assurance of these reports is needed. Patient reports are currently written in free-text format, which complicates the task of quality assurance. In this paper, we present a machine learning based natural language processing system for automatic quality assurance of radiology reports on breast cancer. This is achieved in three steps: we i) identify the top level structure of the report, ii) check whether the information under each section corresponds to the section heading, iii) convert the free-text detailed findings in the report to a semi-structured format. Top level structure and content of report were predicted with an F1 score of 0.97 and 0.94 respectively using Support Vector Machine (SVM). For automatic structuring, our proposed hierarchical Conditional Random Field (CRF) outperformed the baseline CRF with an F1 score of 0.78 vs 0.71. The third step generates a semi-structured XML format of the free-text report, which helps to easily visualize the conformance of the findings to the protocols. This format also allows easy extraction of specific information for other purposes such as search, evaluation and research.


The bone loss induced by ovariectomy (ovx) has been linked to increased production of osteoclastogenic cytokines by bone marrow cells, including T cells and stromal cells (SCs). It is presently unknown whether regulatory interactions between these lineages contribute to the effects of ovx in bone, however. Here, we show that the T-cell costimulatory molecule CD40 ligand (CD40L) is required for ovx to expand SCs; promote osteoblast proliferation and differentiation; regulate the SC production of the osteoclastogenic factors macrophage colony-stimulating factor, receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand, and osteoprotegerin; and up-regulate osteoclast formation. CD40L is also required for ovx to activate T cells and stimulate their production of TNF. Accordingly, ovx fails to promote bone loss and increase bone resorption in mice depleted of T cells or lacking CD40L. Therefore, cross-talk between T cells and SCs mediated by CD40L plays a pivotal role in the disregulation of osteoblastogenesis and osteoclastogenesis induced by ovx.


We revisit the relationship between trade and growth taking into account the recent expansion of global value chains (GVCs). We develop a new instrument for trade based on gravity estimations. Our instrument exploits a recent transportation shock: the sharp increase in the maximum size of container ships, which has more than tripled between 1995 and 2007. This shock has an asymmetric impact on different bilateral trade flows, based on the ex-ante presence of deep-water ports across countries, since these are the only ports that can accommodate the new larger ships. Our empirical set-up allows us to obtain instrumental variables not only for gross trade flows, but also for the different value added components of exports, for which we run separate gravity estimations based on WIOD data. We find that trade has a positive effect on GDP per capita, both in levels and in growth terms. Evidence at the country and industry level suggests that the effect works through both productivity improvements and capital deepening. We show that the effect of exports on income is crucially moderated by differences in their value added composition. In particular, we find evidence of stronger export effects on growth for countries that upgrade their positioning or improve their participation to GVCs more than others over time.


WITHIN the past few years there has been increased attention given to the psychiatric emergency division of teaching hospitals. The advances in patient care and the increased interest in crisis management have stimulated all professions to review the services offered to patients who come to a psychiatric emergency division. 1-6 Often in the past the psychiatric emergency has been a clearing house in which patients were hospitalized, referred to outpatient clinics, or other community resources. The resulting problem of waiting lists for therapy and the increasing demands for service have promoted the exploration of theoretical concepts for crisis management and short-term psychotherapy. More psychiatric emergency divisions are adding staff, such as psychiatric caseworkers and psychiatric nurses, with the realization that the patient is not only at odds with himself but with his environment. The areas of social work competence have been viewed


With the rise of smart phones, lifelogging devices (e.g. Google Glass) and popularity of image sharing websites (e.g. Flickr), users are capturing and sharing every aspect of their life online producing a wealth of visual content. Of these uploaded images, the majority are poorly annotated or exist in complete semantic isolation making the process of building retrieval systems difficult as one must firstly understand the meaning of an image in order to retrieve it. To alleviate this problem, many image sharing websites offer manual annotation tools which allow the user to "tag" their photos, however, these techniques are laborious and as a result have been poorly adopted; Sigurbjornsson and van Zwol (2008) showed that 64% of images uploaded to Flickr are annotated with < 4 tags. Due to this, an entire body of research has focused on the automatic annotation of images (Hanbury, 2008; Smeulders et al., 2000; Zhang et al., 2012a) where one attempts to bridge the semantic gap between an image's appearance and meaning e.g. the objects present. Despite two decades of research the semantic gap still largely exists and as a result automatic annotation models often offer unsatisfactory performance for industrial implementation. Further, these techniques can only annotate what they see, thus ignoring the "bigger picture" surrounding an image (e.g. its location, the event, the people present etc). Much work has therefore focused on building photo tag recommendation (PTR) methods which aid the user in the annotation process by suggesting tags related to those already present. These works have mainly focused on computing relationships between tags based on historical images e.g. that NY and timessquare co-exist in many images and are therefore highly correlated. However, tags are inherently noisy, sparse and ill-defined often resulting in poor PTR accuracy e.g. does NY refer to New York or New Year? This thesis proposes the exploitation of an image's context which, unlike textual evidences, is always present, in order to alleviate this ambiguity in the tag recommendation process. Specifically we exploit the "what, who, where, when and how" of the image capture process in order to complement textual evidences in various photo tag recommendation and retrieval scenarios.

In part II, we combine text, content-based (e.g. # of faces present) and contextual (e.g. day-of-the-week taken) signals for tag recommendation purposes, achieving up to a 75% improvement to precision@5 in comparison to a text-only TF-IDF baseline. We then consider external knowledge sources (i.e. Wikipedia & Twitter) as an alternative to (slower moving) Flickr in order to build recommendation models on, showing that similar accuracy could be achieved on these faster moving, yet entirely textual, datasets. In part II, we also highlight the merits of diversifying tag recommendation lists before discussing at length various problems with existing automatic image annotation and photo tag recommendation evaluation collections.

In part III, we propose three new image retrieval scenarios, namely "visual event summarisation", "image popularity prediction" and "lifelog summarisation". In the first scenario, we attempt to produce a rank of relevant and diverse images for various news events by (i) removing irrelevant images such memes and visual duplicates (ii) before semantically clustering images based on the tweets in which they were originally posted. Using this approach, we were able to achieve over 50% precision for images in the top 5 ranks. In the second retrieval scenario, we show that by combining contextual and content-based features from images, we are able to predict if it will become "popular" (or not) with 74% accuracy, using an SVM classifier. Finally, in chapter 9 we employ blur detection and perceptual-hash clustering in order to remove noisy images from lifelogs, before combining visual and geo-temporal signals in order to capture a user's "key moments" within their day. We believe that the results of this thesis show an important step towards building effective image retrieval models when there lacks sufficient textual content (i.e. a cold start).


We introduce LifeQA, a benchmark dataset for video question answering that focuses on day-to-day real-life situations. Current video question answering datasets consist of movies and TV shows. However, it is well-known that these visual domains are not representative of our day-to-day lives. Movies and TV shows, for example, benefit from professional camera movements, clean editing, crisp audio recordings, and scripted dialog between professional actors. While these domains provide a large amount of data for training models, their properties make them unsuitable for testing real-life question answering systems. Our dataset, by contrast, consists of video clips that represent only real-life scenarios. We collect 275 such video clips and over 2.3k multiple-choice questions. In this paper, we analyze the challenging but realistic aspects of LifeQA, and we apply several state-of-the-art video question answering models to provide benchmarks for future research. The full dataset is publicly available at https://lit.eecs.umich.edu/lifeqa/.


Previous phrase-based approaches to Automatic Post-editing (APE) have shown that the dependency of MT errors from the source sentence can be exploited by jointly learning from source and target information. By integrating this notion in a neural approach to the problem, we present the multi-source neural machine translation (NMT) system submitted by FBK to the WMT 2017 APE shared task. Our system implements multi-source NMT in a weighted ensemble of 8 models. The n-best hypotheses produced by this ensemble are further re-ranked using features based on the edit distance between the original MT output and each APE hypothesis, as well as other statistical models (n-gram language model and operation sequence model). This solution resulted in the best system submission for this round of the APE shared task for both en-de and de-en language directions. For the former language direction, our primary sub-mission improves over the MT baseline up to -4.9 TER and +7.6 BLEU points. For the latter, where the higher quality of the original MT output reduces the room for improvement, the gains are lower but still significant (-0.25 TER and +0.3 BLEU).


Reversing DNA methylation abnormalities and associated gene silencing, through inhibiting DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) is an important potential cancer therapy paradigm. Maximizing this potential requires defining precisely how these enzymes maintain genome-wide, cancer-specific DNA methylation. To date, there is incomplete understanding of precisely how the three DNMTs, 1, 3A, and 3B, interact for maintaining DNA methylation abnormalities in cancer. By combining genetic and shRNA depletion strategies, we define not only a dominant role for DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) but also distinct roles of 3A and 3B in genome-wide DNA methylation maintenance. Lowering DNMT1 below a threshold level is required for maximal loss of DNA methylation at all genomic regions, including gene body and enhancer regions, and for maximally reversing abnormal promoter DNA hypermethylation and associated gene silencing to reexpress key genes. It is difficult to reach this threshold with patient-tolerable doses of current DNMT inhibitors (DNMTIs). We show that new approaches, like decreasing the DNMT targeting protein, UHRF1, can augment the DNA demethylation capacities of existing DNA methylation inhibitors for fully realizing their therapeutic potential.


Theory and observations suggest that low frequency variation in marine plankton populations, or red noise, may arise through cumulative integration of white noise atmospheric forcing by the ocean and its amplification within food webs. Here, we revisit evidence for the integration of stochastic atmospheric variations by comparing the power spectra of time series of atmospheric and oceanographic conditions to the population dynamics of 150 plankton taxa at Station L4 in the Western English Channel. The power spectra of oceanographic conditions (sea surface temperature, surface nitrate) are redder than those of atmospheric forcing (surface wind stress, net heat fluxes) at Station L4. However, plankton populations have power spectral slopes across trophic levels and body sizes that are redder than atmospheric forcing but whiter than oceanographic conditions. While zooplankton have redder spectral slopes than phytoplankton, there is no significant relationship between power spectral slope and body size or generation length. Using a predator-prey model, we show that the whitening of plankton time series relative to oceanographic conditions arises from noisy plankton bloom dynamics in this strongly seasonal system. The model indicates that, for typical predator-prey interactions, where the predator is on average 10 times longer than the prey, grazing leads to a modest reddening of phytoplankton variability by their larger and longer lived zooplankton consumers. Our findings suggest that, beyond extrinsic forcing by the environment, predator-prey interactions play a role in influencing the power spectra of time series of plankton populations.


The article reviews distribution records of Deroceras invadens (previously called D. panormitanum and D. caruanae), adding significant unpublished records from the authors' own collecting, museum samples, and interceptions on goods arriving in the U.S.A. By 1940 D. invadens had already arrived in Britain, Denmark, California, Australia and probably New Zealand; it has turned up in many further places since, including remote oceanic islands, but scarcely around the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt and Crete are the exceptions), nor in Asia. Throughout much of the Americas its presence seems to have been previously overlooked, probably often being mistaken for D. laeve. New national records include Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, with evidence from interceptions of its presence in Panama, Peru, and Kenya. The range ap pears limited by cold winters and dry summers; this would explain why its intrusion into eastern Europe and southern Spain has been rather slow and incomplete. At a finer geographic scale, the occurrence of the congener D. reticulatum provides a convenient comparison to control for sampling effort; D. invadens is often about half as frequently encountered and sometimes predominates. Deroceras invadens is most commonly found in synanthropic habitats, particularly gardens and under rubbish, but also in greenhouses, and sometimes arable land and pasture. It may spread into natural habitats, as in Britain, South Africa, Australia and Tenerife. Many identifications have been checked in the light of recent taxonomic revision, revealing that the sibling species D. panormitanum s.s. has spread much less extensively. A number of published or online records, especially in Australia, have turned out to be misidentifications of D. laeve.


The Lena Delta – located at the Laptev Sea coast of northeast Siberia – is a key region for the understanding of the basic processes of the dynamic and development of permafrost in the Siberian Arctic. In the frame of the Russian-German scientific co-operation under the umbrella of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Russian Ministry of Science and Education projects System Laptev Sea, System Laptev-Sea 2000 and The Dynamics of Permafrost in the Laptev Sea important scientific results for the understanding of carbon dynamics and involved microbial processes and communities, of the energy and water budget of Arctic tundra, of the development of the ice-rich permafrost and of Arctic coastal dynamics could be elaborated. The obtained results are the necessary data and information base for the prognosis of the impact of possible climate changes to the sensitive ecosystems of the Arctic.
For long-term investigations of the processes of permafrost formation and decay, transformation and emission of green house gases (CH4, CO2, N2O, H2O), thermal and hydrologic studies on the active layer and – not at least – as a logistic base for field investigations of the environment, formation and development of the Lena Delta and the relict late Pleistocene permafrost, the small research station Samoylov of the Lena Delta Reserve (LDR) was used and has been developed further under contribution of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) into an ideal location for coastal and terrestrial polar research.
Within this context Samoylov Station has been the base and starting point for numerous international expeditions in the Siberian Arctic like the expeditions Lena 1999 through Lena 2005, the expedition COAST I as well as many sub-projects of some marine expeditions to the Laptev Sea (e.g., RACHOLD & GRIGORIEV 1999, PFEIFFER & GRIGORIEV 2002, SCHIRRMEISTER et al. 2004).
In this paper the unique situation of Samoylov Station as a research station and a base for multi-disciplinary studies in the high Arctic of northeast Siberia will be represented. It is aimed to give an overview of the station's facilities and research opportunities. During the last years Samoylov Station has become an important component of the Russian-German co-operation in the field of coastal and terrestrial polar research.


A series of abrasion tests on high Cr-V-Nb cast irons revealed that the addition of MC type carbide formers, V and Nb, remarkably enhances the abrasion resistance of high Cr cast iron, and the abrasion resistance becomes higher with the increase in MC type carbides[1]. Therefore, hyper eutectic Fe-4.7%C-15%Cr-7%V-5%Nb-5%Mo alloy melt was poured into 30kg and 1kg sand mold castings to distribute different sizes of primary and eutectic carbides in hardenable matrix. The abrasion test specimens cut from each casting were austenitized at 1323K for 1h then cooled in air. These specimens were tempered at 773K for 1h followed by air cooling. The hardness of specimens was 1015-1018HV50. The rubber wheel abrasion test, a typical 3 body type one, was performed on these quenched and tempered specimens with 56-107, 107-150 and 297 μm dia. silica grit. The testing load was 86.3N and 172.5N, and the rubber wheel rotation speed was varied from 1s-1 to 4s-1. Though the higher testing load increases the wear loss, the wear rate expressed by the wear volume/( testing load × wear distance) changes depending on the wear condition and the microstructure. In case of 30kg cast specimen, the silica grit preferentially attack and scrape off the matrix, and the wear rate increases with the increase in the testing load. The fine carbides in 1kg cast specimens effectively protect the matrix from the attack of silica grit, and the wear rate decreases with increasing load which causes silica grit blunt and fracture. However, fine carbides tend to be fractured by silica grit and diminish the protective effect. Based on the worn surface structures, the abrasion mechanism is discussed comparing those of steel and eutectic 25%Cr cast iron.


Rubus subgen. Rubus (bramble) is one of the large plant genera in Europe, consisting of only a few sexual biological species and at least 700 apomictic lineages. In this thesis, it is argued that the stabilised apomict lineages should best be regarded species, even if their distribution area doesn't meet the requirements of a regional species as defined in several publications by Weber. Included is a checklist of Dutch bramble species, comprising 191 species belonging to Rubus subgen. Rubus. In the Netherlands, 97 of the 191 species are classified as regional species, with a distribution area diameter under 500 km. On the basis of distribution data of bramble species in Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, 12 phytogeographical bramble-regions are distinguished. Although ecological factors play a role in the realisation of these regions, it is argued that the found patterns are primarily the result of evolutionary processes. The density and species composition of Rubus scrubs in the Netherlands is studied using landscape transects. At landscape scale, the  bramble species in the scrubs are not randomly distributed, causing a spatial clustering of floristically similar bramble scrubs. It was concluded that only a part of the diversity of Rubus scrubs was accounted for in the Dutch national vegetation classification, and a new scrub type (the Rubetum taxandriae) was described on the basis of these findings. Rubus scrubs are an important biotope for rare shrub species and endemic Rubus species. Additionally, scrubs rich in bramble species are important because they provide foraging and nesting habitats for numerous vertebrates and invertebrates. It is recommended to include the apomict Rubus species in biodiversity accounts, for instance in the national standard list of plant species, as well as the Red List.


In this study, the specificity and the sensitivity of the immunomagnetic separation (IMS) technique were determined in a model system.The efficiency of the conventional cultural method (USDA) with and without IMS was compared both in spiked and naturally contaminated foods. Both methods were used to isolate Escherichia coli O157:H7 from 111 food samples sold in markets of Ankara, Turkey. In an evaluation using 8 spiked food samples, the conventional cultural method with IMS showed no difference in performance.The result of the analysis of 103 naturally contaminated foods showed that the conventional cultural method with IMS enabled the detection of 3 (2.9%) EHEC positive samples whereas the conventional cultural method without IMS detected only one (0.9%). Although poultry products are not believed to be a potential source of EHEC, we did isolate this pathogen in 2 of 57 poultry products by conventional cultural method with IMS.


Visual dialog (VisDial) is a task of answering a sequence of questions grounded in an image, using the dialog history as context. Prior work has trained the dialog agents solely on VisDial data via supervised learning or leveraged pretraining on related vision-and-language datasets. This paper presents a semi-supervised learning approach for visually-grounded dialog, called Generative Self-Training (GST), to leverage unlabeled images on the Web. Specifically, GST first retrieves in-domain images through out-of-distribution detection and generates synthetic dialogs regarding the images via multimodal conditional text generation. GST then trains a dialog agent on the synthetic and the original Vis-Dial data. As a result, GST scales the amount of training data up to an order of magnitude that of VisDial (1.2M → 12.9M QA data). For robust training of the synthetic dialogs, we also propose perplexity-based data selection and multimodal consistency regularization. Evaluation on Vis-Dial v1.0 and v0.9 datasets shows that GST achieves new state-of-the-art results on both datasets. We further observe the robustness of GST against both visual and textual adversarial attacks. Finally, GST yields strong performance gains in the low-data regime. Code is available at https:/github.com/gicheonkang/gst-visdial.


In this study bead-on-plate tests on 3 mm-thick Ti6Al4V sheets were performed using a Yb:YAG thin disk laser in continuous mode to evaluate the effects of focus position on the bead characteristics. Among the various solid-state lasers, the disk laser has better beam quality than conventional rod geometries thanks to the absence of thermal lensing effect. An experimental plan was conducted using nine focus positions with constant power and welding speed. The beads were characterised in terms of geometry, defects, hardness and microstructure. This work is a preliminary study to select the best values of the focal position for subsequent butt welding tests. Analysing the results obtained, the best value of defocusing was -4 mm because, among full penetrated beads, it showed lower undercut and excessive penetration, lower melted area and smaller grain size in the melted area.


Multicellular organisms need a tightly controlled regulation of cell proliferation and of cell specialization together with a controlled cell death to maintain their integrity. A family of evolutionarily conserved proteases, called caspases, plays a central role in regulating apoptosis in animals. The discovery of p35, a baculovirus caspase inhibitor, has led to the characterization of the first lepidopteran caspase, Sf-Caspase-1, from Spodoptera frugiperda. Studies on the Sf-Caspase-1 mode of activation suggested that apoptosis in Lepidoptera also requires a cascade of caspase activation, as demonstrated in many other species. We identified 66 sequences encoding putative caspases, distributed among 27 species. Phylogenetic analyses showed that Lepidoptera possess at least 5 caspases, for which we propose a unified nomenclature. According to their homology to their Drosophila counterparts and their primary structure, we proposed that Lep-Caspase-1, -2 and -3 are effector caspases, whereas Lep-Caspase-5 and -6 are putative initiators. The likely function of Lep-Caspase-4 remains unclear. We found that Caspase-1 and -2 have complementary expression profiles during larval development, suggesting a differential regulation. Caspase-3 and -6 are upregulated upon immune challenge, suggesting a role in the imd pathway. Caspase-5 is upregulated during pupation and upon induction with 20-hydroxyecdysone, supporting the hypothesis of Caspase-5 playing a similar role as Dronc in developmental apoptosis in Drosophila. In an attempt to obtain further insights into the molecular pathway underlying apoptosis in lepidopteran insects, we used 2D DIGE to identify 13 proteins, for which relative abundance was altered during apoptosis of H. armigera derived cells, induced by actinomycin D. Among these 13 proteins, we identified the putative effector Caspase-1, 3 chaperone proteins and several pro-apoptotic proteins, such as actin and a voltage dependant anion channel.


The increasing test-data volumes needed for the testing of system-on-chip (SOC) lead to long test times and high memory requirements. We present an analysis to highlight the fact that the impact of a test-data compression technique on test time and compression ratio are method-dependant as well as TAM-width dependant. Therefore, we propose a technique where compression-technique selection is integrated with core wrapper design, test architecture design, and test scheduling to minimize the SOC test time and the test-data volume.


This is an interesting publication. The theory provided in the first three pages covers about what the beginning student should have. Throughout are clever drawings which should be interesting to children. The notes are easy to read. Sharps are introduced first, which is the correct way of doing it. There are accompaniments to all exercises and the student is introduced to a variety of keys. Like all other publications, this one has a few disadvantages, also. The bowings, W.B., L.H., an,d U.H., are not marked. The first fingering exercises are on the "E" string, which practice many teachers believe will produce a bad position. Two-part work is introduced quite early, on page 17. If the class is small and the instruments are kept well in tune, this will work out nicely. However, if the class is large and atmospheric conditions not too ideal so that the instruments get out of tune, this may be a little hard to work. Eighth notes are introduced quite early, on page 3. Three-four time, which for some children is a little hard to bow, is introduced on page 9. The F natural on the "E" string, which is quite a "mean" note on a fiddle, is introduced on page 28. The book is for violins alone. Personally, I would rather teach the violas and cellos in the same class and thereby start the instruments of the quartet from the first. There are no illustrations of how to hold the bow and the instrument, excepting for three views of the correct standing posture. Like the use of all other books, it is the teacher that matters most. This book in the hands of capable teachers could make violin playing very interesting to small children. I believe the book would be at its best with only very small children.


Introduction Anogenital granulomatosis (AGG) is a recently recognised cause of genital lymphoedema 1–3 an association of CD with AGG has been noted in previous case reports. 1,3 It presents with genital erythema and swelling, and flares are frequently misdiagnosed as cellulitis. We present a large case series. Methods Patients were identified from referrals to the regional to the Lymphoedema Service at St George's Hospital after failure of antibiotics and topical steroids to improve symptoms. Demographic, clinical and endoscopic finding were correlated in patients with histological features of AGG in patients. Results Sixteen patients (15 male, 1 female; aged 34.8 ± 15.0 yr (mean ± s.d.)), were referred with AGG. 14 of 16 patients initially presented with genital swelling whilst 2 others presented with buttock swelling. Swelling of additional sites was noted in several patients (mons pubis – 25% of patients; natal cleft – 25%; peri-anally – 19%; buttocks – 12.5%). Although initially intermittent (15/16 patients), genital swelling was typically well established and irreversible by the time of presentation to the Lymphoedema Clinic. Flares involved erythema and deterioration of swelling which failed to return to baseline. Established swelling was associated with an increased risk of cellulitis in addition to the non-cellulitic flares. Histological examination of the affected areas demonstrated dermal (and one case of intra-lymphatic) non-caseating granulomas in 12 patients with the remainder diagnosed clinically. Gastroenterology review, including colonoscopy, confirmed a diagnosis of Crohn's disease in 37.5% of patients. Treatment of AGG has proven difficult. Initial treatment with compression garments and prednisolone showed a reduction (but not elimination) of scrotal and penile shaft swelling in 9/11 patients. Antibiotics reduced the frequency of flares in only 3/11 patients. Steroid-sparing immunosuppression was successful in 4/11 patients. In 6 patients, lymphoedema of the foreskin caused difficulties in micturition and therefore circumcision was successfully utilised to improve urinary flow. Debulking surgery has been used in only a small number of our cases to date. Conclusion AGG should be considered in all patients (especially male) presenting with isolated genital lymphoedema and may unusually be the presenting feature of Crohn's disease. Early diagnosis allows for prompt initiation of systemic immunosuppression therapy which is currently the treatment of choice. We hypothesise that swelling is precipitated by non-infective granulomas blocking lymphatic vessels, research in this regard is in progress. References Van de Scheur et al . Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol . 2002;17:184–9 Saracino et al . Aus J Dermatol . 2012;Epub Gordon et al . Int J STD AIDS . 2013;Epub Disclosure of Interest None Declared.