Turkey's Transformation and American Policy, ed. by Morton Abramowitz. New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2000. vii + 266 pages. Notes to p. 281. Index to p. 295. Contribs. to p. 298. $24.95. This edited volume is an excellent overview of Turkey's transformation during the last two decades and the effect of these changes on USTurkey relations. Contributors include prominent scholars and analysts on Turkey, as well as former diplomats of the US State Department who share first-hand experiences with the readers. The task of the book is quite monumental, and the authors succeed in giving the readers a thorough account of the domestic and external challenges Turkish leaders face. These include political and socioeconomic developments, Turkey's foreign policy and security concerns, the impact of the end of the Cold War on Turkey's relations with her Allies and neighbors, and a discussion of what the future holds. The book is organized logically into two parts, with the first three chapters analyzing domestic challenges and the last four chapters examining Turkey's external relations with a special focus on American policy. The chapter by Heath Lowry explores Turkey's changing political structure and cleavages, which hold the key to the country's future stability. His candid assessment of the Turgut Ozal decade is refreshing. The author correctly points out that economic liberalization in Turkey was put in place "without any meaningful legal infrastructure or controls to regulate and limit its excesses" (p. 27). This is indeed the root cause of socioeconomic inequality that came to characterize Turkey's economic liberalization in the 1980s. Subsequent voter realignment and the socio-political problems of the 1990s can be viewed as byproducts of Ozal's economic policies. Philip Robins' chapter is an in-depth look at how the Kurdish question evolved into a multidimensional complex problem that divides the country. Its domestic implications touch on identity issues, social and economic inequality, and difficulties faced with political mobility channels (e.g., political parties) through which Kurds could voice their aspirations. It is disappointing, however, that the question of how this problem affects Turkey's external relations receives little attention, i.e., some reference to the European Union (EU) and the Middle East (pp. 73-75). Robins then provides three very important and plausible scenarios for how Turkey's Kurdish problem might play out in the foreseeable future. They are realistic and thought provoking. The economic shortcomings of Turkey's transformation follow in a chapter by Ziya Onis. …


Triage is the most important requirement of Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) where monitoring the vital signs of casualty is the crucial aspect to assess the severity of their current medical conditions. One of the most significant challenges in the triage center is to provide effective remote monitoring of vital signs of mass casualties. To overcome this challenge, there is a necessity to design a dynamic routing protocol that supports data-centric quality parameters such as delay and reliability as well network-specific quality parameters such as throughput and network lifetime over an ad hoc network. The proposed protocol handles data-centric quality parameters by jointly considering the link and node cost of the neighboring nodes. Further, the protocol handles network-specific quality parameters by including load distribution along with buffer management based on the medical condition of the casualties and beaconless routing mechanism. Furthermore, the proposed approach focuses on the transmission of vital signs of critical casualties while also avoiding network congestion and extending network lifespan. The experimentation results show that the proposed protocol is efficient in handling end-to-end delay, the packet transmission ratio of the critical casualties vital signs as compared to the existing state-of-the-art approaches.


The lack of studies on children's education in peatlands in Kalimantan, Indonesia, inspires researchers to examine in depth about the various local wisdoms that must be internalized to future generations. The purpose of this study is to understand the various local wisdoms that exist in peatland communities, which can be transmitted and preserved through education to elementary school age children. The method used in this research is qualitative research, with a grounded research approach. The study was conducted in the Kalampangan sub-district, Sabangau sub-district, Palangka Raya City in January-August 2019. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and participatory observation. The validity of the data is obtained by prolonging the stay at the study site, using data triangulation, both checks, checks, and crosses. Data were analyzed using four steps ranging from data collection, data reduction, data classification, and drawing conclusions. The results of the data analysis show that: 1) a lot of local parish can be internalized to elementary school-age children in preserving peatlands, such as not burning peat, not hurting peat soil, using peat wisely, and keeping peat friendly, 2) local wisdom values that can be learned by elementary school children are, the value of independence living in peat areas is, the value of creativity, the value of love for the environment, cultural values, the value of togetherness or values of mutual cooperation, the values never give up with the state of the natural environment , and the value of independence.


We propose to explore a new problem called audio-visual segmentation (AVS), in which the goal is to output a pixel-level map of the object(s) that produce sound at the time of the image frame. To facilitate this research, we construct the first audio-visual segmentation benchmark (AVSBench), providing pixel-wise annotations for the sounding objects in audible videos. Two settings are studied with this benchmark: 1) semi-supervised audio-visual segmentation with a single sound source and 2) fully-supervised audio-visual segmentation with multiple sound sources. To deal with the AVS problem, we propose a novel method that uses a temporal pixel-wise audio-visual interaction module to inject audio semantics as guidance for the visual segmentation process. We also design a regularization loss to encourage the audio-visual mapping during training. Quantitative and qualitative experiments on the AVSBench compare our approach to several existing methods from related tasks, demonstrating that the proposed method is promising for building a bridge between the audio and pixel-wise visual semantics. Code is available at https://github.com/OpenNLPLab/AVSBench.


The spleen is an important lymphoid organ, involved in immune responses against all types of antigen that appear in the circulation. Its complex anatomical organization, with distinct compartments containing specialized cell types, provides a microenvironment which allows different cell-cell interactions and determines the direction of developing immune responses. In this review we evaluate the vast amount of in vitro data dealing with antigen presentation, cell-cell interactions, T and B cell activation, and the immunoregulatory role of cytokines, as suggested to be involved in immune responses. As a basis for understanding of in vivo processes, these in vitro data will be related to discrete phenomena of in vivo immune responses, such as antigen localization/trapping, cell migration patterns of immunocompetent cells, cytokine production, and antibody formation in the different compartments of the spleen. Finally, we try to bring order to the sequence of events that occur in the spleen after antigenic challenge by presenting an in vivo model for T cell dependent and T cell independent immune responses.


Lovers of the music of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Etta James, and hundreds of other recording artists whose records were made before February 15, 1972, may soon have a hard time hearing these great artists on any satellite or Internet radio service. Recently, two federal district courts have found that state laws were violated when satellite radio broadcaster Sirius XM Radio included pre-1972 sound recordings in its broadcasts without the owners' permission, but these courts did not consider – and the parties did not argue – how the Supremacy Clause applies to those state law claims. This article argues that state laws purporting to grant digital performance rights to pre-1972 sound recordings are necessarily preempted by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. This article contends that enforcement of those state laws would create a serious obstacle to "the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress" in enacting the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 ("DPRA"). The DPRA reflects Congress' careful balancing of interests and recognition of the need for an easily administrable system of licensing, which Congress established through a complex and comprehensive compulsory licensing system. The Supremacy Clause thus preempts all state laws purporting to require licenses for digital performance rights or payment of royalties for the use of such rights by Internet or satellite radio stations beyond what is expressly provided for in the compulsory licensing system established by the DPRA, because permitting countless owners of individual pre-1972 sound recordings to assert claims for royalties and other damages outside of the compulsory licensing system would frustrate Congress' goals in establishing that system. Part I of this article provides a brief overview of the federal rights at issue and the (very) brief history of performance rights in sound recordings, noting the absence of any express state law recognition of a performance right in sound recordings throughout most of the 20th century (other than short-lived decisions in two states over seventy-five years ago that focused on notices stamped on records purporting to prohibit a purchaser's use of sound recordings on radio rather than a true performance right). It is only in very recent cases that courts in New York and California have recognized state law performance rights. However, they did so without considering Supremacy Clause preemption or how any state law performance rights might conflict with the federal statutory compulsory license regime established by the DPRA.Part II of the article explains the relevant legislative history and provisions of the DPRA governing the comprehensive licensing system. That statutory license and rules governing it were established to provide an efficient mechanism for digital Internet and satellite radio services to operate in compliance with their legal obligations. In Part III, the article explains Supremacy Clause doctrine and distinguishes the Supreme Court's opinion in Goldstein v. California, which rejected a Supremacy Clause challenge to a state record piracy law in 1973. It demonstrates why neither the Court's decision in Goldstein nor the language of the Copyright Act's express preemption clause, which exempts state laws governing pre-1972 sound recordings from statutory preemption, precludes conflict preemption under the Supremacy Clause in the context of digital radio services that are subject to the federal compulsory license.Part IV of the article acknowledges that preemption of state law protection for digital performances of pre-1972 sound recordings raises equitable concerns, as it leaves some of this nation's most treasured musical artists uncompensated for use of their works by Internet and satellite streaming services while the authors of more current works are compensated. However, given the delicate balancing that has gone into Congress' recognition of a limited digital performance right and creation of a compulsory statutory licensing system, any remedy for the inequity to owners of pre-1972 sound recordings must be left to Congress. Allowing individual courts in individual states to craft a patchwork of inconsistent remedies would disrupt the balance struck by Congress and interfere with the functioning of the compulsory license system for digital sound recording performances. This is a result that the Supremacy Clause does not permit.


There is a substantial body of research on student satisfaction, retention and student engagement in higher education; however, there is limited research on student image or perception of a university and factors contributing towards choosing a particular university. In the current, highly competitive environment universities are seeking to identify exactly what differentiates them from other institutions. In particular, it is important to understand what attracts prospective students to one university rather than another, and to ensure that these expectations are met once they enrol. Failure to meet student expectations may result in student withdrawal, which limits students' chances to participate in higher education. Fierce competition between universities and private higher education facilities provides opportunity for students to enrol in institutions better able to listen to student voices and able cater for students' needs. Students' image or perception of a university and reasons for choosing to study in a particular university could be based on various characteristics and attributes of the university. Such image or perception may differ based on the diverse student groups such as recent school leavers, mature age adults and international students. This article is based on a study conducted in a large Australian university and outlines the key findings that include: key factors influencing student choice to study with a university, student perception of the first preferred institution compared with their perception of four other Australian metropolitan universities.


In the Fall of 2000, the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program dramatically changed the menu of college prices offered to residents of the District of Columbia. The program allowed residents of D.C. to attend public institutions in Maryland and Virginia and pay the same tuition as residents of those states. Between 1998 and 2000 (the first year of the program), the number of D.C. residents attending public institutions in Virginia and Maryland more than doubled. When public institutions in other states were included in subsequent years, the number of D.C. residents attending these institutions also nearly doubled. The increases were largest at non-selective public 4-year institutions in the mid-Atlantic states, particular predominantly black public institutions in Maryland and Virginia. College entry rates by D.C. residents also seemed to increase. The number of first-time federal financial aid applicants, the number of first-year college students receiving Pell Grants and the number of district residents reported as freshmen by colleges and universities nationwide all increased by 15 percent or more, while the number of graduates from D.C. public high schools remained flat.


The author describes the three ways mental health services may be provided in a health maintenance organization (HMO)--by an internal department of psychiatry, by one or more unrelated external autonomous care providers, or by an external autonomous group of providers. He proposes that the latter type is the best model, offering many of the advantages of the internal department while delivering more personalized, higher quality care at lower cost to the HMO. However, certain conditions must exist, including convenient location, regular conferences with other HMOR physicians, and the provision of educational and preventive services, if the superiority of this model is to be maintained.


AIMS
The aim of this study is to profile the family caregivers of people living with heart failure, to determine the perceived and real time devoted to daily care and to identify the factors associated with caregivers' overestimation of time dedicated to care.

BACKGROUND
The time spent by family caregivers on daily care is related to overload, but there are differences between real and perceived time spent. The reason for this difference is unknown, as is its impact on the caregiver.

DESIGN
Multicentre, cross-sectional study.

METHODS
This study forms part of a longitudinal, multicentre, ambispective cohort investigation. The study population was composed of 478 patient-family caregiver dyads and the data were collected over 2 years from 2014 - 2016.

RESULTS
The mean time perceived to be spent on daily care was 8.79 hr versus a real value of 4.41 hr. These values were positively correlated. A significant correlation was also found between the overestimation of hours spent and the age of the caregiver, the duration of the caregiving relationship and the number of people providing support and with the patient's level of dependence and self-care.

CONCLUSION
The overestimation of time dedicated to care seems to be related to patients' and caregivers' characteristics, such as functional status, caregiver burden, age and cohabitation. These patterns should be considered by nurses when carrying out assessment and care planning with these patients and their caregivers.


Permanent magnet linear synchronous motor (PMLSM) driven inverted pendulum is a new member of present similar devices, various unexpected disturbances such as lag effect of a belt attached to a cart and errors caused by a rotary encoder while detecting the position of a cart can be eliminated or reduced to a small range.In this paper, ironless permanent magnet synchronous linear motor driven inverted pendulum experiment platform is developed. The plant is hardware in the loop real time simulation control development system (Hardware-in-Loop, HIL)based on TMS320F2812DSP and MATLAB, it can use simple and efficient way to achieve linear motor driven inverted pendulum real-time control. Long design time for programming and debugging difficulty are avoided for traditional programming language. Control algorithm can be investigated directly on MATLAB/Simulink, and can be generated automatically control code to control single and double -stage inverted pendulum system. The real performance of the driven inverted pendulum is researched in this paper, the results showed that the controllability of the driven inverted pendulum is fine.


Background: Cervical cancer survivors often experience significant diminution in health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We aimed to investigate the overall HRQoL, determine the role of the stage of disease and type of treatment received on HRQoL, and evaluate predictors of HROoL among cervical cancer survivors in Kumasi, Ghana. Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 153 cervical cancer patients who completed curative treatment between January 2004 and December 2018 at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer core questionnaire (EORTC QLQ C-30) supplemented with the cervical cancer-specific (EORTC QLQ-CX24) module was used. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine the effect of the stage of cervical cancer and the type of treatment received on mean scores of the different domains of HRQoL. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify predictors of HRQoL. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The mean global health score (GHS) was 79.7 (+/-16.2), and it differed significantly with International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, with 84.1 76.2, and 79.9, for stages I, II and III respectively (p=0.012). Financial burden was higher in participants with FIGO stage II compared to stage I disease (45.4 vs 20.8, p=0.012.). The mean GHS scores for surgery, chemoradiation and radiation only were 85.2, 75.9, and 82.1 respectively (p=0.027). Compared to participants who were treated with Chemoradiation, those treated with surgery had lower financial difficulties (12.1 vs 41.6 , p=0.019), better body image (95.7vs 79.5, p =0.039) and better symptom experience (5.9 vs 12.0, p =0.043).The likelihood that survivors' GHS is affected is decreased with illiteracy (AOR = 0.30, 95% CI=0.09–1.00), and increased with complaints of pain (AOR=5.50, 95%CI=1.68-18.29), loss of appetite (AOR=13.24, 95% CI=2.71– 64.67) and diminution in body image perception (AOR = 6.04, 95% CI=1.67–21.83). Conclusion: Cervical cancer survivors in Kumasi, Ghana have overall satisfactory HRQoL. Surgical treatment is associated with improved HRQoL and less financial burden. Efforts to enhance HRQoL should also be focused on maximizing survivors' body image and managing pain and loss of appetite. Educating women about expected impacts on their quality of life, and strategies to manage and mitigate these impacts, is essential.


The high overhead of generic protocols like TCP/IP provides strong motivation for the development of a better protocol architecture for cluster-based parallel computers. Reconfigurable computing has a unique opportunity to contribute hardware level protocol acceleration while retaining the flexibility to adapt to changing needs. Specifically, applications on a cluster have various quality of service needs. In addition, these applications typically run for a long time relative to the reconfiguration time of an FPGA. Thus, it is possible to provide application-specific protocol processing to improve performance and reduce space utilization. Reducing space utilization permits the use of a greater portion of the FPGA for other application-specific processing. This paper focuses on work to create a set of parameterizable components that can be put together as needed to obtain a customized protocol for each application. To study the feasibility of such an architecture, hardware components were built that can be stitched together as needed to provide the required functionality. Feasibility is demonstrated using four different protocol configurations, namely: (1) unreliable packet transfer; (2) reliable, unordered message transfer without duplicate elimination; (3) reliable, unordered message transfer with duplicate elimination; and (4) reliable, ordered message transfer with duplicate elimination. The different configurations illustrate trade-offs between chip space and functionality.


This paper presents a concept of enhancing a microscopic traffic simulator, Hutsim, towards a more detailed driver behavior. The model presented here is expected to give more detailed information on drivers' behavior and safety issues. Basic structure of the model and measurements needed for calibration are presented. The focus of the model presented is on car following and driver pedestrian interactions. The issues considering the detailed driver (human) modeling are also discussed.


Aging is accompanied by a loss of muscle mass and function, termed sarcopenia, which causes numerous morbidities and economic burdens in human populations. Mechanisms implicated in age-related sarcopenia or frailty include inflammation, muscle stem cell depletion, mitochondrial dysfunction, and loss of motor neurons, but whether there are key drivers of sarcopenia are not yet known. To gain deeper insights into age-related muscle loss, we performed transcriptome profiling on lower limb muscle biopsies from 72 young, elderly, and frail human subjects using bulk RNA-seq (N = 72) and single-nuclei RNA-seq (N = 17). This combined approach revealed changes in gene expression that occur with age and frailty in multiple cell types comprising mature skeletal muscle. Notably, we found increased expression of the genes MYH8 and PDK4, and decreased expression of the gene IGFN1, in aged muscle. We validated several key genes changes in fixed human muscle tissue using digital spatial profiling. We also identified a small population of nuclei that express CDKN1A, present only in aged samples, consistent with p21cip1-driven senescence in this subpopulation. Overall, our findings identify unique cellular subpopulations in aged and sarcopenic skeletal muscle, which will facilitate the development of new therapeutic strategies to combat age-related frailty.


Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine C J Dickinson & J Marks (ed) pp 380 £8.95 Lancaster: MTP Press 1978 This splendid volume records the feast of modern cardiovascular research organized at the Royal College of Physicians to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Harvey's birth and 350th of the publication of De Motu Cordis. It ranges widely from scholarly surveys of Harvey's times by Trevor Roper, Gweyneth Whitteridge and a fascinating account by Roger Short of how Harvey, in 'de Generatione Animalium', was frustrated in his immense efforts to relate conception to coitus by the delayed implantation of the ovum in the red deer. Guyton gives a splended integrated description of circulatory regulation, and Braunwald gives an equally masterly account of heart failure. Modern physiology of cardiac contraction is summarized by Jewell and the electrical accompaniments by Durrer, Krikler and Noble. Echocardiography by Hugenholtz demonstrated modern visualization of heart valve movements. New questioning about the continuing value of digitalis in sinus rhythm is aroused and perhaps this will stimulate further enquiry for the coming bicentenary of William Withering's 'Foxglove' in five years time. This is a splendid banquet of cardiovascular knowledge for modern scholars and scientists which will repay efforts made in assimilating each contribution. It reflects great credit on the College and the organizers of an occasion worthy of William Harvey. SIR JOHN MCMICHAEL Emeritus Professor of Medicine University of London


Organic farming is not only a sustainable farming systems but also have a great potential to provide the world with healthy, high-quality food. However, several factors like low yield and increased production costs may halt the adoption of natural farming style. The current study was planned to investigate the adoption of organic farming and its profitable factors in Pakistan.  A survey was conducted in this perusal, where six different administrative units of Pakistan were considered. Interviews were conducted from 150 individuals per region using specifically developed questionnaire. Farmers were asked to respond regarding variables like education, farming land, organic market place, annual gross income (organic) etc. Descriptive statistics and regression modelling (linear) were applied to understand data trends and correlations. Nine out of 16 variables found significantly different among regions. The results depicted that farmers doing organic farming in peri urban areas like Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) spend more money in terms of irrigation, hence increasing investment loads in the region. However, opportunities of market access helped these farmers to gain increased annual income. The data reflected small land holing by organic farmers as most of them owned < 5 acres. This could be one of the important factors in adoption of organic farming in Pakistan. Only 44% of the farmers sold their products at premium prices, which indicates lack of specialized market structure dedicated to organic products. Therefore, it could be concluded from our results that markets should be developed in order to boost the adoption of organic farming. Keywords : Organic farming, Premium price; Farmer Economy; Livelihood; Certified Farming


The study investigated the awareness and sources of climate change information
among the secondary school students in Nairobi County. The objectives of the
study were to find out whether students and teachers are aware of climate change
and their sources of information on climate change. It also investigated the extent
to which climate change information has been covered in the integrated
environmental education. The study applied the descriptive survey design. The
target population consisted of secondary schools students and teachers in Nairobi
County and curriculum development officer from KIE. The sample consisted of
792 students, 198 teachers from 18 secondary schools and I officer from Kenya
institute of education. The sample was drawn using stratified, purposive and
simple random sampling techniques .The reliability of instruments was ensured
by conducting three pilot surveys. The data was collected through the use of
questionnaires for the students and the teachers and an interview schedule for the
Kenya institute of education officer. Data was analyzed using the statistical
package for social sciences (SPSS). Chi- square Test was used to determine
relationship between variables (p<0.05). The finding revealed a low level of
climate change awareness among students of secondary schools in the study area.
The student's knowledge of causes and effect of climate change were inadequate.
There was significant association between student's knowledge on climate change
and willingness to be involved in climate change mitigation activities (p=0.000).
Although majority of the teachers were aware of global climate change their
knowledge on climate change is inadequate to teach it. There was significant
association between students and teachers sources of information on climate
change and gender (p=0.001I).The media was the main source of climate change
information for both the students and the teachers. Climate change topics were not
adequately covered in integrated environmental education. The study
recommends that climate change awareness activities be included in the existing
Environmental clubs in schools so as to mobilize the students on the importance
of bracing up to the challenges of climate change and also creating climate change
awareness. The schools should be equipped with relevant learning materials to
ensure students have an access to correct information on climate change. The
teachers should be in- serviced to able to effectively teach climate change topics.
The integrated environmental education should be reviewed to include more
climate change topics. Further research on students awareness and sources of
climate change information in other counties, how the media influence students
perception of global climate change, teachers awareness of climate change issues
in other county and efforts made by different institution in creating climate
change awareness in Kenya.


This study estimates the influence of proximity to water bodies and park amenities on residential housing values in Knox County, Tennessee, using the hedonic price approach. Values for proximity to water bodies and parks are first estimated globally with a standard ordinary least squares (OLS) model. A locally weighted regression model is then employed to investigate spatial nonstationarity and generate local estimates for individual sources of each amenity. The local model reveals some important local differences in the effects of proximity to water bodies and parks on housing price.


In this paper, first generation back-contact back-junction (BC-BJ) silicon solar cells with cell efficiencies well above η = 20% were fabricated. The process sequence is industrially feasible, requires only one high-temperature step (codiffusion), and relies only on industrially available pattering technologies. The silicon-doping is performed from pre-patterned solid diffusion sources, which allow for the precise adjustment of phosphorusand boron-doping levels. Based on the investigated process technologies, BC-BJ solar cells with gap and without gap between adjacent n+ - and p+ -doped areas were processed. On the one hand, a strong reduction of the process effort is possible by omitting the gap regions. On the other hand, parasitic tunneling currents through the narrow space charge region may occur. Hence, deep doped areas were realized to avoid tunneling currents in gap-free BC-BJ cells. This paper finishes with a detailed characterization of the manufactured cells including important cell measurements like I-V, SunsVOC, quantum efficiency, and an analysis of the cell specific fill factor losses.


ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyse processes of domestication as collective enactments, using online game playing of World of Warcraft as a case. We study how groups of players – guilds – develop practices and sense-making with respect to the technologies they use in their shared endeavours in raids to battle monsters. Previous studies of domestication have mainly focused on single-actor strategies and relatively little attention have been given to the impact of concerns for particular domestication outcomes, for example in competitive situations or with goals related to efficiency. This paper contributes to domestication theory by analysing what we call collective domestication in a performance-oriented setting, to see how domestication may produce compatible outcomes for individuals that need to act together. The paper is based on a one-year participant observation and qualitative interviews with players. Three types of players were identified – hardcore, casual and moderate – representing three rationales of play: a high level of performance, social benefits, or a combination of the first two. In the analysis, we compare how these three types of player groups' domesticated the game. A main finding is that collective enactments of technology need extensive managerial efforts unless the group share a coherent and uncontested rationale for playing, thus being a moral community.


The aim of this study is to identify some traditional practices used for the newborn babies in Turkey and to discuss the possible effects of these practices upon the health of the babies. The traditional care practices (salting, swaddling, holluk, starting breastfeeding late, practices against newborn jaundice, making the forties, etc.) reported to be most prevalent between January 2008 and October 2012 were examined. Possible risks of these practices were identified as follows: Hypernatremia due to salting the newborn, tetanus because of wrapping the newborn in holluk, hypoglycemia owing to starting breastfeeding late, hip dysplasia due to tight swaddling of the newborn, and kernicterus as a result of delaying the medical treatment of jaundice. Making the forties was regarded positive in terms of psychological relief but negative in terms of infection.


Over the past several years, plantings of California native plant nursery stock in restoration areas have become recognized as a pathway for invasive species introductions, in particular Phytophthora pathogens, including first in the U.S. detections (Phytophthora tentaculata, Phytophthora quercina), new taxa, new hybrid species, and dozens of other soilborne species. Restoration plantings may be conducted in high-value and limited habitats to sustain or re-establish rare plant populations. Once established, Phytophthora pathogens infest the site and are very difficult to eradicate or manage—they degrade the natural resources the plantings were intended to enhance. To respond to unintended Phytophthora introductions, vegetation ecologists took a variety of measures to prevent pathogen introduction and spread, including treating infested areas by solarization, suspending plantings, switching to direct seeding, applying stringent phytosanitation requirements on contracted nursery stock, and building their own nursery for clean plant production. These individual or collective actions, loosely coordinated by the Phytophthoras in Native Habitats Work Group ensued as demands intensified for protection from the inadvertent purchase of infected plants from commercial native plant nurseries. Regulation and management of the dozens of Phytophthora species and scores of plant hosts present a challenge to the state, county, and federal agriculture officials and to the ornamental and restoration nursery industries. To rebuild confidence in the health of restoration nursery stock and prevent further Phytophthora introductions, a voluntary, statewide accreditation pilot project is underway which, upon completion of validation, is planned for statewide implementation.


In this demo, we show how Hyperdimensional(HD) computing can be used to recognize the language of a user-input sentence. Hyperdimensional computing (HDC) [1] is one promising brain-inspired computing approach that relies on representing entities using high dimensional (up to 10,000 dimensions) vectors called hypervectors. Similar to the brain, where representations are given by thousands of randomly originated neurons, a set of (pseudo)random quasi-orthogonal hypervectors forms the basis in the HDC framework. These hypervectors are then combined and compared using a well-defined set of algebraic operations to derive representations for composite entities and to find similarities, respectively.


Abstract : In early 2003, a Reson 8125 high-resolution, multi-beam bathymetric sonar system was installedon the DRDC Atlantic remote mine-hunting vehicle. The Dorado vehicle, a component of the Remote Mine-hunting System (RMS), is a semi-submersible, remotely controlled drone designed totow an actively stabilized sidescan sonar towfish. The multi-beam sonar processor was integrated with the on-board data telemetry system, taking advantage of existing vehicle position and attitude sensors. The RMS and multi-beam sonar were then tested in a field trial near Brest, France in Mayand June, 2003, as part of a larger collaborative mine-hunting demonstration. The multi-beam sonar was successfully used to chart the bathymetry of the approaches to Brest Harbour, and for high resolution surveys of a shipwreck, and a practice minefield. Processed results of these surveys are presented demonstrating basic capability of the system for mine detection, obstacle avoidance and as a mission planning tool. The integration of high-resolution bathymetric information has the potential to improve mine-hunting operation in areas such as survey route planning and sidescan image slope correction.


Genetic diversity in the Finnsheep breed was analyzed by quantifying the demographic trends, the depth of known pedigree, effective population size, and the amount of inbreeding, as well as identifying candidate rams within the current population for future breeding and conservation purposes. Pedigree records of 148,833 animals with a pedigree completeness coefficient > or =0.60 and born from 1989 to 2006 were used to estimate the parameters. Mean inbreeding coefficient increased by 0.10% (P < 0.001) and 0.15% (P < 0.001) per annum in all animals and breeding (i.e., reproducing) animals, respectively. Average relationship coefficients among rams, among ewes, and between rams and ewes in breeding animals increased over time and reached 1.67, 1.45, and 1.46% in the 2005 cohort, respectively. The average for breeding rams was above the other 2 averages in almost all birth years. The observed generally low average relationship coefficients between rams and ewes indicate that no extra restrictions on the use of the breeding animals are needed in the near future. Average generation interval was 2.85 yr in the studied period, and the effective population size was estimated to be 119 and 122 using different methods. Relationship coefficients of rams with other breeding rams and rams with breeding ewes are suggested to aid in situ and ex situ conservation decisions on maintaining genetic diversity of Finnsheep.


To compare IVF outcome in single versus two blastocyst transfer in good-prognosis patients. Design: Retrospective data analysis. Setting: University-based IVF practice. Patient(s): Assisted reproductive technology outcome was compared in 41 patients who underwent elective single blastocyst transfer and 66 patients who underwent two blastocyst transfer. Intervention(s): None. Main Outcome Measure(s): Implantation rates, clinical pregnancy rates, cumulative pregnancy rates, twin pregnancy rates. Result(s): Blastocyst cycles between January 2003 and August 2004 (n = 238) were reviewed. Criteria for elective single embryo transfer established by our clinic were applied retrospectively to blastocyst cycles. Patients who met the criteria were divided into two groups, those who underwent elective single embryo transfer (eSET)-and those who underwent two embryo transfer (2ET). Patient and cycle characteristics were similar for both groups. There were no differences in implantation rate (76% vs. 66% ) or pregnancy rate (76% vs. 79% ) between the eSET and 2ET groups. There was a significant difference in the number of twin pregnancies (3.2% vs. 62% ) in the eSET versus 2ET group. Cumulative pregnancy rates were found to be 83% for both groups. Conclusion(s): Single blastocyst transfer can be performed in good-prognosis patients without compromising pregnancy rates. Twin pregnancy rates can be significantly reduced with eSET.


I. INTRODUCTION When an individual investor opens an account with a securities broker, the customer often must sign a standard-form contract as a precondition of conducting business with the broker.' This nonnegotiable contract, referred to as a Customer Agreement, generally contains an arbitration clause under which the parties agree to submit any future disputes to arbitration conducted by one of the securities industry's self-regulatory organizations ("SROs").2 Proceedings initiated under the broad and inclusive arbitration clause are subject to the arbitration guidelines established by the SROs, a group which includes all the major stock exchanges.3 Virtually all brokers are members of an SRO.4 The National Association of Securities Dealers ("NASD"), the leading SRO, conducts between eightyfive and ninety percent of all customer-broker arbitrations.5 Although the parties to a securities dispute usually submit to SRO arbitration in accordance with the terms of the agreements some parties resist arbitration.7 The resisting party (usually the securities broker)8 typically turns to the courts for an initial ruling on whether the arbitration must proceed.9 Meanwhile, the party that initially submitted its claim to arbitration (usually the customer) tends to resist resolution of the issue by the courts, arguing that the arbitrators themselves should decide whether arbitration is the appropriate means of resolving the dispute.10 The question in these cases thus becomes whether courts or arbitrators should decide if a particular dispute is arbitrable. This is referred to as the arbitrability question.ll In response to this threshold inquiry, the Supreme Court has adopted a "clear and unmistakable" standard. 12 In two separate opinions, the Court has held that unless the parties clearly and unmistakably agree to arbitrate the issue of arbitrability, the question is one for courts, not arbitrators, to decide.13 In other words, when a question of arbitrability arises, the parties will not be required to submit to arbitration unless there is clear and unmistakable evidence in the arbitration agreement itself that the parties intended to have arbitrators decide arbitrability issues.14 This "clear and unmistakable" standard, however, is not very clear at all. Indeed, the Supreme Court's articulation of the clear and unmistakable standard has been extremely unclear. Because the Court has failed to specify what contractual language satisfies the "clear and unmistakable" requirement, lower courts have been left to their own devices in defining the parameters of the standard.15 Although the lower courts almost uniformly recognize that application of the "clear and unmistakable" standard to arbitrability questions is a matter of contract interpretation, they have not reached a consensus as to which particular contract principles should be applied in the interpretation.16 Much of the controversy surrounding the "clear and unmistakable" standard has focused upon the proper interpretation of the relationship between Customer Agreements and the NASD Code of Arbitration Procedure ("NASD Code" or "Code"), particularly Rule 10324.17 Briefly stated, the disagreement over Rule 10324 is whether its language, when adopted by the parties to a Customer Agreement, provides clear and unmistakable evidence of an agreement to submit the arbitrability question to arbitration.18 The relevant language in the Rule provides that "[a]rbitrators shall be empowered to interpret and determine the applicability of all provisions under this Code and to take appropriate action to obtain compliance with any ruling by the arbitrator(s). Such interpretations and actions to obtain compliance shall be final and binding upon the parties." Unfortunately, due to the Supreme Court's ambiguous articulation of the clear and unmistakable standard and the arguably broad language of Rule 10324, a circuit split developed, further muddling the issue. …


With the rapid growth of online sharing media, we are facing a huge collection of videos. In the meantime, due to the volume and complexity of video data, it can be tedious and time consuming to index or annotate videos. In this paper, we propose to generate temporal descriptions of videos by exploiting the information of crowdsourced time-sync comments which are receiving increasing popularity on many video sharing websites. In this framework, representative and interesting comments of a video are selected and highlighted along the timeline, which provide an informative description of the video in a time-sync manner. The challenge of the proposed application comes from the extremely informal and noisy nature of the comments, which are usually short sentences and on very different topics. To resolve these issues, we propose a novel temporal summarization model based on the data reconstruction principle, where representative comments are selected in order to best reconstruct the original corpus at the text level as well as the topic level while incorporating the temporal correlations of the comments. Experimental results on real-world data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and justify the idea of exploiting crowdsourced time-sync comments as a bridge to describe videos.


The coil-in-the-box problem is a variation of a difficult problem in mathematics and computer science, known as the snake-in-the-box problem, that was first described by Kautz in the late 1950's [7]. Coil-in-the-box codes have many applications in electrical engineering, coding theory, and computer network topologies. Generally, the longer the coil for a given dimension, the more useful it is in these applications [9]. By applying a relatively recent evolutionary search algorithm known as a population-based stochastic hill-climber, new lower bounds were achieved for the longest-known coil in each of the dimensions nine through eleven.


The aim of the study is to verify the psychometric qualities and factor structure of SIS (Specialty Indecision Scale), which assesses difficulties with career decision-making. The scale consists of subscales detecting the level of readiness, information, identity, barriers, indecisiveness as a state and self-doubt to a make decision about career path. The psychometric qualities of the questionnare were on the survey sample80 high-school students verified. We focused on the reliability by using the Cronbach α coefficient and test-retest. The construct validity was via measurment tool CDS (Lounsbury, 2011), which is intended for assessing the decidedness as a actual state detected. The exploration factor analysis of the items and corrected item-total correlations were conducted. The satisfying psychometric qualities were found. When using a questionnaire that is suitable for research purposes, we recommend taking into account its specifics, which proved to be considerable in this work. It is recomended to apply the SIS questionnaire in its 6factor structure and to verify its construct convergent validity.


We consider a wireless communication system formed by a single cell with one base station and K user terminals. User channels are characterized by frequency-selective fading due to small-scale effects, modeled as a set of M parallel block-fading channels, and a frequency-flat distance-dependent path loss. We compare delay-limited systems with variable-rate systems under fairness constraints, in terms of the achieved system spectral efficiency C (bit/s/Hz) versus Eb /N0. The considered delay-limited systems impose "hard-fairness": every user transmits at its desired rate on all blocks, independently of its fading conditions. The variable-rate system imposes "proportional fairness" via the popular Proportional Fair Scheduling (PFS) algorithm, currently implemented in 3G wireless for data (delay-tolerant) applications. We find simple iterative resource allocation algorithms that converge to the optimal delay-limited throughput for orthogonal (frequency-division multiple access (FDMA)/time-division multiple access (TDMA)) and optimal (superposition/interference cancellation) signaling. In the limit of large K and finite M we find closed-form expressions for C as a function of Eb/N0. We show that in this limit, the optimal allocation policy consists of letting each user transmit on its best subchannel only. Also, we find a simple closed-form expression for the throughput of PFS in a cellular environment, that holds for any K and M. Finally, we obtain closed-form expressions for C versus Eb/N 0 in the low and high spectral efficiency regimes. The conclusions of our analysis in terms of system design guidelines are as follows: a) if hard fairness is a requirement, orthogonal access incurs a large throughput penalty with respect to the optimal (superposition coding) strategy, especially in the regime of high spectral efficiency; b) for high spectral efficiency, PFS does not provide any significant gain and may even perform worse than the optimal delay-limited system, despite the fact that the imposed fairness constraint is laxer; c) for low to moderate spectral efficiency, the stricter hard-fairness constraint incurs in a large throughput penalty with respect to PFS


Criticism is a vital part of the practice of design, architecture, and art. It's extremely difficult to establish rules for making good art or designing a new object. Criticizing a work means applying the standards to identify weaknesses and suggest improvements. Critiquing can be a useful tool for teaching, developing better techniques, and deeper thinking about visualization.


Plasticity of CD4+ lymphocyte Th17/regulatory T cell (Treg) subsets is involved in the pathogenesis of chronic airway inflammatory diseases, such as asthma. Reversal of Th17/Treg cell balance towards Treg cells may be beneficial for the suppression of chronic Th2 cell‐mediated inflammatory diseases, such as asthma. However, the effect of the combination of corticosteroids and a statin on the ratio of Treg/Th17 cells is unknown.


Since 1868 to the present day, the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Culture (MEXT) has implemented many reforms to enhance English education in Japanese universities. However, much still remains to be done to improve the situation and one of the biggest hurdles is the fact that there are many unmotivated students in Japanese university EFL classrooms. This thesis explores the reasons for this problem by focusing on inter- and intra-relations between teachers and students in this context. Data were collected through classroom observations, interviews and questionnaires. The study employs both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and uses space and methodological triangulation in order to overcome parochialism. My conclusions are that: 1) Visible and invisible inter-member relations exist between members of university classes and their teachers; 2) The teacher's behaviour affects the students' behaviour and impacts on their learning; and 3) Cooperative learning has a positive influence on language acquisition; 4) Japanese university students may not perceive how little interaction they have with their teacher; 5) Students exhibit gender differences in terms of the types of problems encountered and the ways in which they deal with them, but some problems are dealt with negatively by female and male students alike; and 6) Teachers appear not to perceive the problems and when they do they often deal with them by using negative strategies.


Since serum GH in normal subjects displays a circadian variation with a major and consistent surge after the onset of sleep we examined whether the time of GH administration in GH-deficient patients had any impact on its action. Eight GH-deficient patients all underwent 3 4-week study schedules in random order: 1) evening (2000 h) sc GH injections, 2) morning (0800 h) sc GH injections, and 3) no GH administration. At the end of each period the patients were admitted to hospital for 24-h measurements of hormones and metabolites. For comparison, 10 age- and sex-matched healthy untreated subjects were hospitalized once under identical conditions. Mean (+/- SE) GH availability, i.e. the area under the curve (AUC; micrograms per L/12 h) for 12 h after injection was significantly greater after evening injection than after morning injections [83.3 +/- 25.4 (evening) vs. 46.0 +/- 10.6 (morning); P less than 0.01]. This might be due to higher skin and sc temperatures when in bed. The 2000-0800 h AUC after evening injection was similar to the corresponding AUC in the reference group. Mean 24-h serum insulin-like growth factor-I levels (micrograms per L) were similar after evening (189.8 +/- 2) and morning (179.5 +/- 5.3) injections (P = 0.8), but the latter displayed a circadian variation suggesting that a steady state had not been reached. Both were significantly lower than the stable reference value (248.4 +/- 3.6 micrograms/L). Blood glucose profiles after morning and evening GH did not differ from that of the reference group, whereas blood glucose decreased when the patients received no GH (P less than 0.01). Daytime (0800-2400 h) insulin levels were increased after morning injections (P less than 0.05). Nighttime levels of lipid intermediates were below normal in the untreated state and after morning injection (P less than 0.05), whereas nighttime blood alanine tended to be above normal after morning GH injection (P = 0.08). Highly significant inverse relationships between circadian lipid intermediates and both blood alanine and lactate concentrations were observed in the reference group and in the patients after evening injections. These relationships disappeared after morning injections. We conclude that the metabolic effects of sc GH injections are clearly influenced by the time of administration and that the closest similarity to normal hormone and metabolite patterns and relationships is reached by GH injection in the evening in GH-deficient patients.


Background and Objectives: Some studies have shown that body fat distribution pattern, and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), which differentiate between gynoid (hip) and android (abdominal) obesity, have a more important role in identification of diseases' risk compared to body mass index (BMI). This study was conducted aiming at determining the association between type of obesity and level of changes in obesity indices following weight-loss diet. Methods: This study was performed on 301 women with overweight (BMI>25) and obesity (BMI>30), and according to WHR criteria for measuring abdominal obesity, the subjects were divided into three groups: 1) 102 subjects with WHR 0.85, women with severe abdominal obesity (android). Then, the effect of one month diet with a fixed ratio of macronutrients was assessed on the changes of obesity indices, including weight, BMI, waist circumference (WC), and hip circumference (HC). To investigate obesity indices in the three groups, one-way analysis of variance test was used. The level of significance was considered 0.05. Results : By following this diet, significant decreases were seen in weight (p<0.007), BMI (p<0.005), and waist circumference (p<0.002) in subjects with severe abdominal boundary obesity (android), compared to those with hip obesity (gynoid). Conclusion : In this study, weight loss diet with a fixed ratio of macronutrients showed that weight loss and body size is associated with type of obesity, this means that the higher is the abdominal obesity, the greater is this difference.


High dependency on biomass has been associated with energy poverty in Uganda with successful intervention to modern energy expected to results to economic transformation. This paper examines utilization of various forms of cooking energy sources among households using data from the 2005/6 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS). Results indicate that utilization of modern energy sources was only by 4 percent of households. A multinomial probit model (MNP) was used to estimate coefficient of determinants of energy choices. Determinants of household energy choices were observed as consumption expenditure welfare, residing in urban or rural areas, household size, achievement of education levels beyond primary level and regional location of a household. The study recommended deliberate efforts by government to intervene in addressing low adoption of modern energy especially now that the country has oil and gas reserves. The government should implement policies to encourage private sector involvement in provision of modern energy alternatives, provision of micro-credit for buying equipments and availing modern energy in smaller quantities.


This study examines a group of prospective teachers' reflections upon the way they were taught (Set 1) and the way they want to teach (Set 2) through drawings which respectively describe their past learning experiences as students and their future plans as teachers. The purpose of this study is to identify: (a) the emerging themes that appear in each set of drawing data, (b) the possible factors that influence prospective teachers' drawings, and (c) the implications for mathematics teacher educators. Overall, prospective teachers showed predominantly negative or mixed feelings about their past experiences as mathematics students. In response to their own past negative experiences and struggles, the prospective teachers tended to highlight emotionally supportive classroom environment and versatile instructional teaching strategies in their future plans. This study suggests that this activity of reflecting past experience and planning future teaching assimilates prospective teachers' identities as math students and math teachers and provides a window into the thinking of others.


A densimeter technique was used to make a kinetic analysis of the rate of swelling of human erythrocytes suspended in 1% NaCl following successive additions of NH4Cl. Two series of experiments were performed, one in the absence of and the other in the presence of 6 x 10-4 M NaHCO3. An analysis of the data using Widdas's equations gave a family of curves in each instance. When LeFevre's equation was used with a value of o = 1.3 isotones, a straight line was obtained with both series of data. It is concluded that this system shows carrier kinetics.


While large pretrained language models (PLMs) demonstrate incredible fluency and performance on many natural language tasks, recent work has shown that well-performing PLMs are very sensitive to what prompts are feed into them. Even when prompts are semantically identical, language models may give very different answers. When considering safe and trustworthy deployments of PLMs we would like their outputs to be consistent under prompts that mean the same thing or convey the same intent. While some work has looked into how state-of-the-art PLMs address this need, they have been limited to only evaluating lexical equality of single- or multi-word answers and do not address consistency of generative text sequences. In order to understand consistency of PLMs under text generation settings, we develop a measure of semantic consistency that allows the comparison of open-ended text outputs. We implement several versions of this consistency metric to evaluate the performance of a number of PLMs on paraphrased versions of questions in the TruthfulQA dataset, we find that our proposed metrics are considerably more consistent than traditional metrics embodying lexical consistency, and also correlate with human evaluation of output consistency to a higher degree.


Background: Language development during early childhood is crucial to a child's overall
development. The socioeconomic status (SES) is a major contributing factor to development,
whose impact on language is less explored in young children especially in a multicultural
country like India. This research focussed on assessing the semantic language of children from
lower socio-economic (LSE) and higher socio-economic (HSE) status.
Method: Sixty typically-developing Kannada speaking children between 2 and 5 years of age
were classified into 3 groups (Group I: 2.0 – 2.11, Group II: 3.0 – 3.11, and Group III: 4.0 – 4.11
years), with each group being further divided into HSE and LSE subgroups. Language samples
were collected using a picture description task and were analyzed for the semantic (total number
of words and different words-TTR) measures. Descriptive statistics was done to determine mean
and SD of both measures for each of the participants of the HSE and LSE subgroups. Nonparametric
tests determined the level of significance between and across the HSE and LSE
subgroups (between each of the 3 groups).
Results: The results indicated a significant difference (p<0.05) across the HSE (I-HSE, II-HSE,
and II-HSE) and LSE (I-LSE, II-LSE, and III-LSE) subgroups for the semantic measures.
Comparison between the HSE and LSE subgroups indicated a significant difference (p<0.05)
only between the 3 year-olds.
Conclusion: These findings provide an insight into how early and to what extent SES impacts
language development in 2, 3, and 4 year-old children.


OBJECTIVE
To find out the combination of the extracts from Paeonia lactiflora Pallas (PL), Reh- mannia Glutinosa var. Purpurea Makino (RG), Perilla Frutescens var. Acuta Kudo (PF) to increase endometrial receptivity.

METHODS
Herbal medicines were extracted with boiling water and polysaccharides were removed. We examined the effect of PL, RG, and PF (PRP), a most effective herbal formula deduced from constitutive ingredient herbs of Antai Yin which is composed of PRP, on the leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) expression and endometrial receptivity.

RESULTS
The combination of the extracts from PRP induced the LIF expression in Ishikawa cells and increased the adhesion between Ishikawa and JAr cells. In addition, PRP-induced attachment of JAr cells onto Ishikawa cells and expression of adhesion molecules, ITGAV, ITGB5, CD44s, and L-selectin, are significantly reduced by knock-down of LIF expression.

CONCLUSION
Induced by the combination of the PRP extracts, the adhesion between trophoblast and endometrial cells are mediated by expression of LIF and adhesion molecules. Thus, we suggest the combination of the PRP extracts may be a novel therapy for enhancing embryo implantation rate.


This paper is focused on the application of descriptive
geometry methods on the construction of several types of
communications. Project solution in designing communications
and routes for fieldwork is illustrated on examples. The
examples are presented by figures and description of procedure.
In the paper there is presented construction of horizontal,
straight rising communication, horizontal curved communication,
direct evenly ascending communication, direct
disproportionately ascending communication and
disproportionately ascending curved communication.


Mathematical optimisation of technological forming processes requires expensive simulations to evaluate objective function and constraint values as well as their derivative and Hessian informations. Therefore numerical linearisation methods like the finite difference method or the BFGS‐update are necessary. In this work the effects of these approximation techniques are studied. (© 2012 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


Learning materials serve as major learning resources for distance learners, and quality learning materials help students learn effectively at a distance. This paper addresses comprehensive aspects of design, development, production, and quality assurance of multi-media learning materials, based on the experience of Indonesia's Universitas Terbuka (UT). A course team approach is used to design and develop UT learning materials, involving content experts from partner universities, UT's own academic staff, instructional designers and media specialists. Preparation for production of printed learning materials are done internally, while the large-scale reproduction is outsourced externally, and for the non-printed materials all production and reproduction processes are done internally. The learning materials go through a systematic quality assurance mechanism in each stage of design, development and production, in order to ensure that distance students have high quality learning materials for use in their autonomous and independent as well as structured and guided learning activities throughout the course of their learning endeavour at a distance.


Indoor air quality typically encompasses the ambient conditions inside buildings and public facilities that may affect both the mental and respiratory health of an individual. Until the COVID-19 outbreak, indoor air quality monitoring was not a focus area for public facilities such as shopping complexes, hospitals, banks, restaurants, educational institutes, and so forth. However, the rapid spread of this virus and its consequent detrimental impacts have brought indoor air quality into the spotlight. In contrast to outdoor air, indoor air is recycled constantly causing it to trap and build up pollutants, which may facilitate the transmission of virus. There are several monitoring solutions which are available commercially, a typical system monitors the air quality using gas and particle sensors. These sensor readings are compared against well known thresholds, subsequently generating alarms when thresholds are violated. However, these systems do not predict the quality of air for future instances, which holds paramount importance for taking timely preemptive actions, especially for COVID-19 actual and potential patients as well as people suffering from acute pulmonary disorders and other health problems. In this regard, we have proposed an indoor air quality monitoring and prediction solution based on the latest Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and machine learning capabilities, providing a platform to measure numerous indoor contaminants. For this purpose, an IoT node consisting of several sensors for 8 pollutants including NH3, CO, NO2, CH4, CO2, PM 2.5 along with the ambient temperature & air humidity is developed. For proof of concept and research purposes, the IoT node is deployed inside a research lab to acquire indoor air data. The proposed system has the capability of reporting the air conditions in real-time to a web portal and mobile app through GSM/WiFi technology and generates alerts after detecting anomalies in the air quality. In order to classify the indoor air quality, several machine learning algorithms have been applied to the recorded data, where the Neural Network (NN) model outperformed all others with an accuracy of 99.1%. For predicting the concentration of each air pollutant and thereafter predicting the overall quality of an indoor environment, Long and Short Term Memory (LSTM) model is applied. This model has shown promising results for predicting the air pollutants' concentration as well as the overall air quality with an accuracy of 99.37%, precision of 99%, recall of 98%, and F1-score of 99%. The proposed solution offers several advantages including remote monitoring, ease of scalability, real-time status of ambient conditions, and portable hardware, and so forth.


Abstract   Title: Prevalence of bacterial infection among hospital traumatic patients in relation to ABO blood group. Background: There are many studies demonstrated a correlation between blood group antigens and susceptibility to infectious diseases such as bacteria, parasites and viruses. Objectives: To assess the prevalence of bacterial infection among patients in the trauma hospital, and to assess the susceptibility of ABO blood groups to the isolated bacteria.   Methods and Findings: 166 samples included, wound swabs, sputum and midstream urine were received for routine culture diagnostic procedures from the in-patients at Abosleem Traumatic Hospital and ABO group was obtained from Blood bank documented system for each patient. A correlation between isolated organisms and ABO system was determined.  51% patients were infected during their stay in the hospital by one of the following isolates: Pseudomonas (22%); Klebsiella (9%); Staphylococci (15%); and Streptococci (4%). The majority of in-patients belong to blood group O (45%), preceded by group A (37%); B (14%) and AB (4%). The distribution of different blood group within four main bacterial isolates was determined as following: 43% of blood group A patients were susceptible to pseudomonas; (27%) Klebsiella; (36%) Staphylococci; and (29%) Streptococci. While, group B individuals were infected with these organisms: 16% with Pseudomonas, 13% with Klebsiella, 8% with Staphylococci, and 29% with Streptococci.  Meanwhile, blood group O patients had following strains: 38% Pseudomonas, 53% Klebsiella, 52% Staphylococci, 42% Streptococci. Only, 3% of Pseudomonas, 7% of Klebsiella, and 4% of Staphylococci infected in-patients who expressed blood group AB. Conclusion: The most common bacterial infection among traumatic patient was Pseudomonas, Staphylococci and Klebsiella respectively and individuals of blood group A were found more susceptible to Pseudomonas infection while blood group O more susceptible to Klebsiella and Staphylococci among traumatic patient.


Introduction: It should be regarded that being buried in accordance with one's religion and traditions in a grave that bears one's own name a human right. Thus with regard to unrecognizable corpses its identification is of high importance and when all other identification mechanisms fail, the process of forensic facial reconstruction has to be adopted. Objective: Introduction of a more efficient, semi-automated 3D Computer graphics based technique of facial reconstruction was the aim of this study. Method: The process involved capturing a 3D model of the skull and digitally sculpting facial muscles on the model with the aid of forensic facial markers. Different facial components were added to the completed face model in order to improve the identification process. Separate analyses were also conducted for both facial tissue thickness and facial component variations in Sri Lankans to achieve an improved result. Females of the age category 20-30 of average weight were used in this study. Results: The facial tissue thickness analysis conducted by the research team confirmed that tissue thickness data of other countries cannot be adopted for facial reconstruction in the local context and that Sri Lankans have a different facial soft tissue thickness mainly in the following areas; Gonion, Sub M2, Supra M2 and the area beneath the chin. The facial feature analysis discovered the mean values of the nasal and eye indexes which were then modeled in to the final output. The outputs were thoroughly evaluated using a number of techniques. Conclusion: Based on the evaluation results and the cost analysis, adopting the suggested novel application and establishing the first unit for facial reconstruction in Sri Lanka to uphold the rights of deceased and their relatives would be highly recommended. Galle Medical Journal, Vol 18: No. 1, March 2013:Page 16-25 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/gmj.v18i1.5517


Aiming at automated security test on communication protocols, this paper proposes an automated manipulation mechanism of testing procedure based on FSM (Finite State Machine), and designs an automated packet generation mechanism based on a protocol template library. The practical experiments and applications show that the automated security testing platform of communication protocols based on this mechanism can implement the correct evaluations, be convenient to construct the testing procedure, generate automatically test packet sequence and have smaller packet control granularity. It can be used for the systematic and efficient infiltrative security test.


Three pathways of exposure (sediment, seawater and food) were examined to determine transfer of 110mAg and 57Co in juvenile cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Additional experiments were conducted on adult cuttlefish and their eggs/embryos in order to assess bioaccumulation patterns at different stages of the organism¹s life cycle. Eggs, juveniles and adults readily accumulated both Ag and Co from seawater. In eggs, both metals were predominantly adsorbed onto the capsule membrane (≥60% for Ag and ≥99% for Co), indicating that the latter may act as an effective shield to limit exposure of embryos to soluble metals. Adult cuttlefish incorporated waterborne radiotracers mainly in their muscular tissues (≥60% of the whole-body burden); subsequent metal retention was greater for Co (biological half-life, Tb1/2 = 34 d) than for Ag (Tb1/2 = 7 d). Turnover of Co ingested with food was much more rapid in juveniles (Tb1/2 = 5 d) than in adults (Tb! = 990 d), suggesting that the functional maturation of the digestive gland was not complete in the juveniles. With ingested Ag, retention was roughly similar for juveniles and adults (Tb1/2 = 13 and 9 d, respectively). Transfer from sediments was negligible for Co and Ag. Regardless of the exposure pathway, the digestive gland of juveniles and adults contained the major fraction of incorporated metal either following uptake or after depuration. This observation demonstrates that substantial metal transfer takes place from several organs to the digestive gland, and further highlights the major role this organ plays in metal storage and detoxification processes in these cephalopods.


A method for building model data for CAD and CAM purposes from physical instances using threedimensional sensor data is presented. These techniques are suitable for Reverse Engineering of industrial parts, and can be used as a design aid as well. The nature of the reverse engineering task is quantitative, and the emphasis is on accurate recovery of the geometry of the part, whereas the object recognition task is qualitative, and aims to recognize similar shapes. The proposed method employs multiple representation to build a CAD model for the part, and to produce useful information for part analysis and process planning. The model building strategy is selected based on the obtained surface and volumetric data descriptions and their quality. A novel, robust non-linear filtering method is presented to attenuate noise from sensor data. Volumetric description is obtained by recovering a superquadric model for the whole data set. A surface characterization process is used to determine the complexity of the underlying surface. A substantial data compression can be obtained by approximating huge amount sensor data by B-spline surfaces. As a result a Boundary Representation model for Alpha-1 solid modeling system is constructed. The model data is represented both in Alpha-1 modeling language and IGES product data exchange format. Experimental results for standard geometric shapes and for sculptured free-form surfaces are presented using both real and synthetic range data. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-92-70. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/478 Rapid Prototyping Using Three-Dimensional Computer Vision MS-CIS-92-70 GRASP LAB 332 Visa Koivunen Ruzena Bajcsy University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science Computer and Information Science Department Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389


– This work measures how sparsity can make neural networks more robust to membership inference attacks. The obtained empirical results show that sparsity improves the privacy of the network, while preserving comparable performances on the task at hand. This empirical study completes and extends existing literature.


146Sm decays to 142Nd with a relatively short half‐life (∼68 Ma). The142Nd/144Nd of modern terrestrial mantle‐derived lavas is 18 ± 5 ppm higher than the chondrite reservoir. The difference in142Nd/144Nd between Earth and chondrites likely owes to Sm/Nd ratios 6% higher in the accessible Earth that arose within the first 30 million years following accretion. In order to constrain the early history of the mantle domains sampled by ocean island basalts (OIB) and mid‐ocean ridge basalts (MORB), we present high‐precision142Nd/144Nd measurements on 11 different lavas from five hot spots, and one lava each from the Indian and Atlantic ridges. The lavas examined in this study bracket much of the known Sr‐Nd‐Pb‐He isotopic variability the in mantle. These data complement existing high‐precision142Nd/144Nd data on MORB and OIB lavas. In agreement with previous studies, we find that MORB and OIB lavas examined for high‐precision142Nd/144Nd exhibit ratios that are indistinguishable from the terrestrial standard and are 15–20 ppm higher than the average obtained for ordinary and enstatite chondrites. The uniform, superchondritic 142Nd/144Nd data in OIB and MORB are consistent with derivation from a common, early formed (<30 Ma after accretion) progenitor reservoir with Sm/Nd ∼6% higher than chondrites. If there exists any variability in 142Nd/144Nd in the OIBs and MORBs examined to date, it is too small to be resolved with the precision currently available.


Parasol ganglion cells of the magnocellular (MC) pathway form the physiological substrate of a luminance channel underlying photometric tasks, but they also respond weakly to red-green chromatic modulation. This may take the form of a first-harmonic (1F) response to chromatic modulation at low temporal frequencies, and/or a second-harmonic (2F) response that is more marked at higher frequencies. It is shown here that both these responses originate from a receptive field component that is intermediate in size between center and surround, i.e., a discrete, chromatic receptive field is superimposed upon an achromatic center-surround structure. Its size is similar to the receptive field (center plus surround) of midget, parvocellular cells from the same retinal eccentricity. A 2F MC cell chromatic response component is shown to be present under cone silent substitution conditions, when only the middle- (M) or long-wavelength (L) cone is modulated. This and other features suggest it is a rectified response to a chromatic signal rather than a consequence of non-linear summation of M- and L-cone signals. A scheme is presented which could give rise to such responses. It is suggested that this chromatic input to MC cells can enhance motion signals to red-green borders close to equiluminance.


BOSTON-- Two former Harvard University researchers face up to 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for allegedly conspiring to steal Harvard-owned trade secrets and for shipping university property across state lines. The defendants were arrested last week and are in jail in California pending extradition to Massachusetts. But some researchers have expressed sympathy for the defendants and worry that the government is overreacting.


A method is developed for isolation at the preparative scale of chorionic alpha 2-microglobulin from extracts of placenta of the first trimester of pregnancy using absorption chromatography on silica gel and aluminium hydrophosphate. Yield of the placenta protein was equal to 24% and the purity of the preparation obtained was about 90%.


Colloid stability of the suspensions of Ni nanoparticles has been investigated with adding polymeric dispersant in various organic media. We characterized the dispersion stability of Ni nanoparticles by means of visual inspection, transmission profiles measured by Turbiscan, the particle size distribution, and the zeta potential. 0.01 wt% of Ni nanoparticles were found to be optimally dispersed in ethanol among various organic media employed in this study with adding the dispersant (0.6 wt%-2 wt%). As the concentration of the dispersant increased, the particle size decreased in size from 300 nm to 200 nm due to less coalescence. The zeta potential values of the Ni nanoparticles in suspensions with the dispersant were greater than -40mV. Such stable Ni nanoparticle suspensions are attributed to the electrosteric effect of the polymeric dispersant.


The aim of this study is to assess the relative efficiency of Iranian forest management units using the non-parametric method Data envelopment analyses (DEA). To this end, DEA as a well-known and robust technique for measuring the relative efficiency of organizations is used. The relative efficiency of comparable forest plans was calculated with the most frequently used DEA models – CCR, BCC and SE[LO1] . According to the results of global technical efficiency (CCR) and local pure technical efficiency (BCC), the efficiency averages were 0.83 and 0.93, respectively. The results of scale efficiency (SE) discussed a worrying aspect of these units' efficiency; namely, there were only 3 efficient forestry plans (Shafaroud, Nav and Fiyab). However, using the Scale Efficiency Index (SEI) or FGL-DEA model brings out some interesting points; there were approximately 58% (7 units out of 12) under Increasing Returns to Scale (IRS). Thus, the managers of forest plans should more focus on forest plans under IRS so that they have the opportunity to become more efficient through growth, otherwise managers will not be able to promote their overall productivity.


The aim of the research was to investigate the magnitudes of the losses of some volatile organic compounds from the solid adsorbents, Carbotrap and Chromosorb 106 due to back diffusion during long-term diffusive sampling of volatile organic compounds in the environment. Experiments were performed by loading the compounds to be tested on the adsorbent tubes and leaving them in an outdoor environment to simulate the real life sampling conditions over a 14 day period. The losses due to back diffusion were investigated for both the high and the low initial concentrations of the fourteen compounds covering a wide range of volatilies namely acetone, dichloromethane, pentane, hexane, benzene, heptane, toluene, octane, ethylbenzene, m- xylene, o- xylene, nonane, decane and undecane.


"Primary dysmenorrhea is the most common gynecological complaints among adolescents. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effect of vitamin-D in reduction of pelvic pain in women suffering primary dys-menorrhea. This double blind randomized clinical trial was performed on women suffering from primary dys-menorrhea. For case group (n=27), vitamin-D was prescribed as a single dose of 300 000IU starting 5 days be-fore the beginning of menstruation, for three consecutive cycles. For control group (n=27), a Placebo was pre-scribed. Pain severity was evaluated using Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). There was a reduction of the pain score in the first month for both groups (mean score of 5.3±2.24 for group-A and 5.21±2.35 for group-B). In the next two months pain reduction continued for group-A, but for group-B pain scores grows higher than the first month. In-dependent student t-test showed that pain score was significantly lower in group-A than group-B after beginning of therapy in the second and third month (P= 0.023 and 0.001 respectively).There was no significant difference between two groups in the level of vitamin-D in follicular and luteal Phase. Vitamin-D causes significant pain re-duction in primary dysmenorrhea that due to its safety can be a simple treatment for this problem."


Mercosur countries have witnessed a boom of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows since the early 1990s. However, regional integration, viewed in isolation, was not sufficient for the subregion to regain its attractiveness to FDI. FDI growth in individual Mercosur countries was closely related to reform efforts on the national level.The pattern of EU FDI in the subregion reveals some significant changes, notably in terms of its major sources and its sectoral composition. Furthermore, EU investors pursued strategies that differed from those of other foreign investors. Yet, the character of EU FDI has essentially remained unchanged so far. Whether efficiency-seeking FDI by the EU in Mercosur will gain prominence in the future depends critically on Mercosur's trade policy.


A number of socio-technical aspects that influence interorganizational research collaboration are embedded in local work contexts. Thus, they should be a main concern for the design of virtual research environments. A review of forty papers from different research fields provided an understanding of the influence of eleven socio-technical aspects grouped according to the following categories: nature of work; common ground; collaboration readiness; management style and leadership; technology readiness. There are five main implications for the design of virtual research environments. Emphasis is placed on the importance of consulting the stakeholders so that they suggest solutions and ideas, and imbue the collaborative environment with the values required for it to be sustainable.


The Abadan crisis was the initial phase of the protracted crisis in Anglo-Persian relations 1951–54, precipitated by Persia's nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in May 1951. For many in the Tory party, it provided the test run of British policy in the Middle East. It seemed to demonstrate what should be the appropriate British response to the challenge of indigenous nationalism to British strategic and commercial interests in the region: namely, a robust assertion of British interests by all means necessary, including the use of force. This article examines Conservative perceptions and behaviour during the Abadan crisis, as the experience proved a vital formative influence upon the later Suez Group, the vociferous Tory backbench pressure group which played a contributory role in the Eden government's decision to confront Nasser in 1956. It seeks to show how the crisis contributed to the emergence of a clearly identifiable faction of imperial-minded Conservative MPs who cared passionately about Britain's place in the world, and specifically in the Middle East. The article looks at the relationship between the Conservative leadership and the nascent backbench faction and considers whether Conservative front bench policy and behaviour in this crisis in any way contributed to the emergence of the Suez Group.


We visualize the elemental zoning in an alumina-supported cobalt molybdenum sulfide (CoMoS) catalyst with scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM). We use the Canadian Light Source beamline 10-ID's (SM) unique combination of soft X-ray and tender X-ray STXM to determine the spatial variation of Co, Al, Mo, and S species. The results clearly show the correlation between cobalt and molybdenum and the anticorrelation between cobalt and alumina, confirming that Co is closely associated with the MoS2 phase. The tender X-ray STXM images show that the fresh catalyst particle contains a 50 nm ring of molybdenum oxide encapsulating the supported MoS2 phase. After the reduction at 200 °C with H2, this oxide rim disappears and a uniform MoS2 distribution is found. Upon oxidation at 400 °C, the sulfur disappears from the catalyst sample and molybdenum is oxidized from a MoIV sulfide to a mainly tetrahedral MoVI oxide, while cobalt keeps its divalent nature and changes from a CoII sulfide to a CoII oxide.


Objectives Reduced susceptibility to penicillin G in Neisseria meningitidis is mainly due to alterations in PBP2 encoded by the penA gene. However, this phenotype was not associated with reduced susceptibility to third-generation cephalosporins (C3Gs). We aimed to study the emergence of meningococci with reduced susceptibility to C3Gs (MIC >0.06 mg/L) in France since 2012. Methods Invasive meningococcal isolates were typed by MLST and penA sequencing and their antibiotic susceptibility was tested. Results Isolates with reduced susceptibility to C3Gs represented 2% of all invasive isolates from 2012–15, but were absent before. They harboured a new penA allele, penA327, that was also detected in isolates from urethritis cases and in gonococci. Conclusions Surveillance of these isolates should be enhanced as they may jeopardize the use of C3Gs in the management of invasive meningococcal disease.


Social exclusion may arise from a single cause, but there are some groups in a higher risk of get- ting it, because they are exposed to several different circumstances at once. Inclusion in the labor market is a key element to avoid it, since unemployment can drive to isolation and poverty. If this situation is combi- ned with the lack of proper training, it hampers the possibilities of getting a job, and as consequence, going away of the spiral that leads to exclusion becomes more complex. For inmates it is common to find several potential reasons for exclusion, frequently related to the crime committed. This paper analyzes the situa- tion of people serving sentences in both prisons and social insertion centers in Galicia (Spain), through a quantitative analysis focused on the possibilities of inclusion of the prison population, when they get back to society, by their attitudes and skills. We have found that this attitude is related to inmate's educational level and training as well as their social networks or with their own awareness of their actual situation.


Coaching is a challenging profession that requires the coaches to reconcile the often contrary goals of developing winning athletic programme and providing positive personal and academic experiences for their athletes. In at least all the games and sports, about 50% is the role of a coach to prepare a team/athlete to give high performance in national and international competitions. The pressure to win, coming up to the expectation of the people and ever present interpersonal demands can lead to stress and render coaches susceptible to burnout. Persons with hard personality can easily and constructively cope with acute stress and burnout. Personality hardiness of an individual has relationships with his burnout and competitive trait anxiety. The coaches who are higher in personality hardiness are less susceptible to burnout. Personality hardiness is defined as multidimensional personality construct comprising three characteristics, control, commitment and challenge. Burnout refers to the loss of enthusiasm, excitement and essence of mission in one's work. It also causes feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, depression, meaninglessness, negative self concept and attitude towards work, life and other peoples. Burnout leads to emotional stress and physiological problems. Burnout is thought to be a consequence of prolonged exposure to stress and perception of an imbalance between situational demands and the resource available to meet these demands. Sport competition anxiety is another dimension related to sport performance hardness and burnout among athletes and coaches is quite a new topic in research on which researchers have started working in the last two decades. The investigator who has been national level cyclist, swimmer observed and felt lack of motivation, enthusiasm interest and dedication among coaches. The study was conducted with a purpose to determine the status of Indian athletics and wrestling coaches pertaining to their personality hardness, burnout and sport competition anxiety. The subjects of the present study were 30 athletes and 30 wrestlers. The short version of the hardness scale developed by Kobasa and Maddi (1982) was used to assess the hardiness of the subjects. The scale contains 36 items in all that assess the attitude of the subject on the three personality dimensions that is, commitment, control and challenge, Competitive trait anxiety was measured by administrating Sport Competition Anxiety Test by Rainer Marten (1986). Maslach burnout inventory (Maslach and Jackson 1986) was administered to assess the burnout status of the athletics and wrestling coaches. The inventory assesses the three aspects of burnout syndrome that is, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and lack of personal accomplishment. Coefficient of correlations were computed among various variables with regard to athletes and wrestlers, mean, SDs and 't' values were computed in all variables between athletes and wrestlers. Significant correlation between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, between emotional exhaustion and competitive anxiety, between commitment and control, commitment and challenge, commitment and total scores of hardiness, control and total scores of hardiness, challenge and total scores of hardiness in case of athletic coaches and wrestling coaches were observed. Athletic coaches were found to be significantly younger, significantly greater in control disposition of personality hardiness and having significantly lesser amount of competition anxiety when compared with the wrestling coaches.


European and US emission legislation on diesel compression ignition engines has pushed for the development of new types of combustion concepts to reduce hazardous pollutants and increase fuel efficiency. Partially premixed combustion (PPC) has been proposed as one solution to future restrictions on emissions while providing high gross indicated efficiency. The conceptual idea is that the time for the mixing between fuel and air will be longer when ignition delay is increased by addition of high amounts of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). Increased air-fuel mixing time will lead to lower soot emissions and the high EGR rates will reduce both NOx emissions and combustion flame temperature, which decreases the overall heat transfer.
 Previous research in heavy-duty gasoline PPC has mostly focused on emissions and efficiency at low and medium load in single-cylinder engines. In this paper a Volvo D13 heavy-duty single-stage VGT engine with a newly developed Wave piston was run at medium and high engine load with a variation in fuel injection pressure. The Wave piston was specifically designed to enhance air-fuel mixing and increase combustion velocity. Two fuels were used in the experiments, PRF70 and Swedish MK1 diesel. Soot-NOx trade-off, combustion characteristics and efficiency were compared for both fuels at 1000 and 2000 Nm engine torque. The results show that at high load the combustion behavior with respect to rate of heat release and heat transfer is very similar between the fuels and no major difference in indicated efficiency could be observed. Peak gross indicated efficiencies were reported to be around 49 % for both fuels at 1000 Nm and slightly above 50 % at 2000 Nm. The new Wave piston made it possible to obtain 1 g/kWh engine-out NOx emissions while still complying with Euro VI legislation for particulate emissions. Soot emissions were generally lower for PRF70 compared to MK1 diesel. We could also conclude that gas exchange performance is a major issue when running high load PPC where high Λ and EGR is required. The single-stage VGT turbocharger could not provide sufficient boost to keep Λ above 1.3 at high EGR rates. This penalized combustion efficiency and soot emissions when reaching Euro VI NOx emission levels (0.3–0.5 g/kWh).


Developing leadership among early childhood professionals has become increasingly important as investing in children's early years has been championed as a public and private national and international priority. Two case studies present how oral inquiry and specifically, the Prospect Center's Descriptive Review of a Professional Dilemma of Practice, was used to support early childhood professionals to develop their leadership by strengthening the skills and dispositions they need to critically reflect upon, explore and negotiate the complex dilemmas they face in the context of their daily practice. Research on the use of inquiry to address uncertainty, the development of reflective practices, relational logics of effectiveness and social justice leadership inform discussion of the findings. Implications suggest the promise of using oral inquiry to support leadership development for early childhood professionals.


The rapid development of Chinese megacities in the last decades have been mainly characterized by top-down planning and large-scale urban development and redevelopment, as well as by using place-making as a tool for city branding. This approach has also been used in other countries and has been constantly criticized for replacing old neighborhoods. In recent years, alternative development modes and participative approaches in urban regeneration practices have emerged in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. This paper investigates participative urban regeneration cases in Yangpu District, located in Shanghai, and the Dalang subdistrict in Shenzhen. Both case studies are located at the urban-rural interface, where past industrialization processes have resulted in complex sociospatial conditions. The primary focus was to analyze the governance aspects in the cases, such as the enabling factors that allow the participative approach to emerge in these projects and their governance model. This paper concludes on the importance of civil society organizations and the incorporation of social objectives in emerging participative regeneration practices.


This paper deals with the quantification of GMO regulations on bilateral trade flows. A composite index of the 'complexity' of such regulations for sixty countries as well as an 'objective' score for six GMO regulatory sub-dimensions has been developed. Using a gravity model, we show how bilateral 'similarity' in GMO regulations, affect trade flows for the composite index and its components. Results show that bilateral distance in GMO regulations negatively affect trade flows, especially as an effect of labeling policies, approval process and traceability systems. Interesting, the trade reduction effect induced by GMO standards increase by a factor of four when GMO regulations is treated as endogenous to trade flows. This pattern is consistent with an international environment where large importing countries 'dictate' the rules of the game to developing countries.