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Built in the early 1930s, Allegheny River Boulevard reflected an early stage of America's romance with the automobile -- a time when the journey was as important as the destination. As with other roads built in that spirit (Bigelow Boulevard being another local example), road planners sought to create a road that you wouldn't want to speed along. And so they graced the roadsides with ribbons of greenspace ... and on Allegheny River Boulevard, they built scenic little turnoffs for drivers to stop and admire the view. Scenic views were in short supply in early 20th-century Pittsburgh. But the banks of the Allegheny, with their views of wooded riverbanks and even the occasional island, offered an unrivaled opportunity for local motorists to appreciate their natural surroundings. The only downside: Nature kept getting in the way of our attempts to enjoy it. As the Pittsburgh Press noted in 1929, "[t]he task of cutting a modern boulevard through country where nature made no provision for it" wasn't easy. "[H]alf of the boulevard will be constructed where in some places even a footpath would have been dangerous before," the story read. In fact, a handful of workers had been injured just trying to survey the route. Hillsides had to be blasted, hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of earth had to be moved. When all this construction was finished, county officials decided, people should have the chance to appreciate the environment they'd just blasted the hell out of. A Sun-Telegraph article written in 1931 sums up the spirit, if not the grammar, of the time: "In few places in this district is finer scenery than the river views along the new Allegheny River boulevard. ... Picturesque stone stop-over platforms are situated at intervals along the bolevard [sic] where motorists may park and contemplate the river scenery." The road's 4.5 miles included eight such platforms, often called "observational turnoffs" (a phrase which puts me in mind of drunken couples making out atop Mount Washington). As a statewide preservation group, Preservation Pennsylvania, has put it, the idea was to provide drivers with a route "leisurely paralleling the river [and with] opportunities to park and view the river and its islands." The turnouts included "stone walls, a continuous alley of London Plane trees, picnic areas, and pylons along the road's course." But although it was paved with good intentions, for years the boulevard presented a hellish problem. In their rush to enjoy the scenery, it seems, the county officials who built the road forgot one little detail: They didn't buy the land needed for a crucial link near the intersection with Nadine Road. The Pennsylvania Water Company, which operated a pumping station nearby, hadn't formally agreed to sign over the land. County Commissioner C.C. McGovern called the situation a "bungle," and the word cropped up in newspaper accounts for the next several years. Headlines referred to the story as "Bungle Boulevard," and it took a state law to give the county the power to condemn the land for public use. Reporters, purveyors of human misery that they are, seemed sorry to see the story go: "Now that the Nadine bottleneck ... has been opened, an old reliable item will be missed by newspaper readers," wrote one melancholy account. But by the time the road finally opened, in June 1934, officials just wanted to put the saga behind them. "Let's not celebrate the opening," McGovern urged. "Let's forget all about it." Sadly, over the years, many people forgot all about the turnoffs too. Drivers seemed content with being able to get to Verona as quickly as possible -- really, who can blame them? -- and the turnoffs suffered from neglect. Eventually, they were closed entirely. In the mid-1990s, the road was deemed one of the nation's "10 Most Endangered Scenic Byways," by a nonprofit environmental group. Preservation Pennsylvania also put the roadway on its list of "at risk" assets. Since that time, municipalities have talked about restoring the turnoffs -- and the whole byway -- to its former grandeur. Anyone who's driven to Verona recently knows how far the boulevard still has to go. But maybe down the road, the future of the turnoffs will turn out for the best.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "The quickest way through the wall of snow was on skis... the hotel was silent" - The BBC's James Reynolds reports Rescuers have removed two bodies from a hotel engulfed by an avalanche in central Italy as a desperate search for up to 35 other people continues. Heavy snow and disruption caused by multiple earthquakes have hindered rescue efforts in the rubble of the Rigopiano hotel, in the Abruzzo region. Rescuers say they have heard nothing in the rubble while sniffer dogs are reportedly unable to locate victims. Two people who were outside the hotel at the time of the avalanche survived. Four earthquakes above magnitude five rocked central Italy on Wednesday, with tremors continuing into the night. The quakes compounded problems resulting from snow and freezing weather, with power lines brought down and villages temporarily cut off. Rescue operations are under way across central Italy and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said the EU is ready to help. Interactive See the impact of the avalanche on the hotel January 2017 January 2016 What happened? It appears the guests had gathered on the ground floor of the four-star spa hotel, close to the Gran Sasso mountain, to await evacuation following the earthquakes. Image copyright Hotel Rigopiano Image caption The Hotel Rigopiano was a luxury resort before the avalanche Twenty-two guests and seven staff members were registered as being at the hotel, among them children, but rescuers say the actual number could be 35. The avalanche struck some time between 16:30 (15:30 GMT) and 17:40 on Wednesday, when the first known appeal for help was made. It partially brought down the roof and, according to some reports, shifted the building 10m (11 yards) off its foundations. A guest who was outside the building at the time raised the alarm with his phone. Giampiero Parete, whose wife and two children are missing, said he had gone to get something from his car: "I was covered by the snow but I managed to get out. The car was not submerged and I waited for the rescuers to arrive." A couple was quoted as telling rescuers in a message: "Help, we're dying of cold." Mr Parete, who was taken to hospital with a fellow survivor, continued to make phone calls but it reportedly took until 20:00 before his pleas were acted on by the authorities. Who are the missing? A list of 23 names given by La Stampa newspaper suggests that most are Italians but they include a Swiss national and a Romanian. Three are children aged six, seven and nine, and the oldest person on the list is a man of 60. Image copyright EPA Seven of the missing are from the neighbouring region of Marche. A couple from Marche who are not recorded in La Stampa's list, Marco Vagnarelli and Paola Tomassini, were last heard from at 16:30 on Wednesday, when Marco contacted his brother Fulvio on WhatsApp, Ansa reports. The avalanche had still not started at that point. Marco had told his brother that their departure from the area was being delayed by the bad weather. Why is the rescue work so difficult? Video shows hotel interiors choked with walls of debris and snow. "The hotel is almost completely destroyed," Antonio Crocetta, a member of the Alpine rescue squad who was at the scene, told Reuters news agency by phone. "We've called out but we've heard no replies, no voices. We're digging and looking for people." Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aerial pictures show scores of rescue vehicles lined up as a snow-plough tries to break through The first rescuers only reached the hotel on skis at 04:30 on Thursday morning. A line of rescue vehicles snaked along an approach road as they waited for it to be cleared. Image copyright Reuters Image copyright Vigili del Fuoco/Twitter Earlier on Thursday, Italian media said three bodies had been extracted while, according to an unconfirmed report, a fourth body had been found inside but not yet recovered. But the fire service said only two bodies had been retrieved. How widespread is the damage from the quakes? The tremors caused chaos across central Italy, compounding problems caused by heavy snow and freezing weather. Rescue services initially struggled to reach rural communities in regions like Marche. One man was killed by a falling roof in Marche and another person swept away by a landslide in Abruzzo. People have been evacuated from their homes in some areas. An earthquake rocked central Italy on 24 August, killing 298 people die. Another quake in October killed no-one, as most of the population centres had been evacuated. Analysis: Why so many quakes in Italy? By Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent The Apennines region saw three magnitude-6 tremors between August and October. A succession of quakes like this is often how the geology works. The big picture is reasonably well understood. Wider tectonic forces in the Earth's crust have led to the Apennines being pulled apart at a rate of roughly 3mm per year - about a 10th of the speed at which your fingernails grow. But this stress is then spread across a multitude of different faults that cut through the mountains. And this network is fiendishly complicated. It does now look as though August's event broke two neighbouring faults, starting on one known as the Laga and then jumping across to one called the Vettore. Then came October with a swathe of quakes that broke the rest of the Vetorre. But the stress, according to the seismologists, wasn't just sent north, it was loaded south as well - south of August's event. And it's in this zone that we have now seen a series of quakes in recent days. About a dozen magnitude fours and fives. Read more from Jonathan Are you in the area or have you been affected by this incident? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

Early Access reviews offer our preliminary verdicts on in-development games. We may follow up this unscored review with a final, scored review in the future. Unturned is a DayZ-style survival sim with a Minecraft-inspired art style. I don't blame you if you've already tuned out. PC is awash with DayZ and Minecraft clones. But Unturned is notable in that it's currently the fourth most-played game on Steam, beating Football Manager, Skyrim, and Garry's Mod by many thousands of players— and it was developed by a sixteen year-old. It's an amazing story—the kind only possible on PC—but is the game itself actually any good? You can play it for free, but with the option to pay $5 to access 'gold' servers, which grant you double XP, 'boosted loot drops', and other benefits. So it's possible to play the game without spending a penny, but the business model is clear—get players hooked on the F2P version and they'll eventually reach for their wallets. Free-to-play developers are starting so young these days. The survival elements are what you might expect from a game with DayZ's blood running through its veins: hunger, stamina, and so on. But, unlike Bohemia's game, you don't spend half your time running through the wilderness, only to find a rotten banana. Loot in Unturned is much easier to find, and it was only minutes into my first life that I found a rifle. If you never had the patience for DayZ's drip-feed of rewards, this might appeal, but it does make stumbling across a firearm feel less special. The Minecraftian landscape is chunky and colourful, scattered with towns, military bases, and even a golf course. Here you'll find loot and, naturally, zombies. Hey, this is an indie survival game after all. They're fast and vicious, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by them. But once you've found a weapon, and built yourself a base by harvesting raw materials in the world, you'll last longer and fight harder. It's a structure you'll have experienced in a dozen survival games before, but it works. You can play solo, but the game feels tailor-made for multiplayer. A large number of servers already exist—you can find a list here —although there's no in-game browser yet. Teaming up with friends to battle the hordes and build bases undeniably enhances the experience, although hackers have, predictably, targeted many servers. Developer Nelson Sexton is combating these with frequent updates, as well as fleshing out the core survival and building mechanics. There's no getting around the game's low production values. I mean, a teenager made it in his bedroom, so that's to be expected. You'll have to decide whether you can endure its lo-fi look and feel. If you can, you'll find a game with an impressive amount of features, including driveable vehicles and crafting, but also one that is completely derivative. Everything in Unturned has been done before, and better. But for the competitive price of nothing at all , it's worth a look. If it gets its claws in you might end up handing over that $5, but for now my wallet is remaining firmly in my back pocket. Verdict Unturned has few real ideas of its own, but is a simple, accessible survival simulator. If you can stomach the low production values, you might find something to love around its rough edges. Outlook The runaway success of the game means Sexton will no doubt be updating it frequently. If enough people pay for the gold upgrade, expect more elaborate new features to be added. Details Version reviewed 2.1.3 Reviewed on i5-3570K 3.40GHz, 16GB RAM, HD 7890 Recommended 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 1GB GPU Price Free Publisher Nelson Sexton Developer Nelson Sexton Multiplayer Online Link Steam

TURF-FORMING GRASSES FOR THE TAIGA ZONE Experimental selection studies were carried out in 2016-2018. in the fields of the Narym Department of Breeding and Seed Production of the Siberian Research Institute of Agriculture and Peat (Kolpashevo, Tomsk Region). The purpose of the research was to study collection samples of lawn grasses capable of effectively using the agro-resource potential of the naturaland climatic conditions in the taiga zone of the Tomsk region. The climate in the research area is sharply continental with long, severe winters and short, but hot and often dry summers. The snow cover lasts about seven months (usually from October to April). The frost-free period is short. Annual precipitation is about 500 mm, including more than 300 mm during the growing season. The sum of air temperatures above 10° C is 1300-1600° C. The soils of the experimental plots are sod-podzolic, sandy loam in granulometric composition, with a humus content in the arable horizon of no more than 2%. As experimental material, 21 samples of bluegrass of three species were studied (8 domestic and 13 foreign varieties); 21 samples of pasture ryegrass (domestic varieties - 3, foreign - 18); 10 samples of four species of bent field of foreign origin; 12 samples of five types of fescue (domestic varieties – 5, foreign – 7). Among the experimental cultivars, the following sources of economically valuable traits were identified: high winter hardiness - all investigated cultivars of bluegrass, bent grass, fescue; grade of perennial ryegrass Yuventus (Denmark); short stature - varieties of meadow bluegrass Yaskia, Limonsine (Germany), Barkenta (Netherlands); ryegrass cultivars of pasture Sport (Poland), Fiesta (USA), Yuventus (Denmark); bentgrass wild populations from Mongolia (K14272, K-14273) and bentgrass from Ukraine (K14265); fine texture source - perennial ryegrass varieties Yuventus, Denmark, Primevere, France, K-14233, Poland.

AXAF precision metrology mount The precision metrology mount is the structural "backbone" that supports all AXAF metrology at Hughes Danbury Optical Systems. This mount is currently designed to support P1 and Hi optics, the two outermost elements of the High Resolution Mirror Assembly (HRMA)1 . The mount must offload the mirror deterministically in a one-g field with tolerances established on the gram level. The intent of this paper is to quantify the requirements placed on the metrology mount and then to describe the design philosophy used to meet these demanding performance requirements. Finally and most importantly, the paper describes how each of the metrology mount's specifications were addressed and met from a design vantage point.

Full-aluminum and mainboard-free automobile water tank The utility model discloses a full-aluminum and mainboard-free automobile water tank. The full-aluminum and mainboard-free automobile water tank comprises a left water chamber, a right water chamber, an upper side plate, heat dissipation belts, a plurality of heat dissipation pipes and a lower side plate. The left water chamber and the right water chamber are of a U-shaped structure made of full aluminum alloy. The left end and the right end of the upper side plate and the left end and the right end of the lower side plate are connected with the upper end and the lower end of the left water chamber and the upper end and the lower end of the right water chamber, and a left cavity port and a right cavity port are formed in the inner side of the left water chamber and the inner side of the right water chamber respectively. The two ends of the heat dissipation pipes are flattened to form structures matched with a U-shaped end groove of the left water chamber and a U-shaped end groove of the right water chamber. The heat dissipation pipes are arranged in parallel. The heat dissipation belts are arranged between every two adjacent heat dissipation pipes. The left water chamber is provided with a water inlet pipe, and the right water chamber is provided with a water outlet pipe. The full-aluminum and mainboard-free automobile water tank is simple in structure, the structures of the water chambers and the heat dissipation pipes are changed, the heat dissipation water pipes are directly welded to the water chambers, the structure of the full-aluminum and mainboard-free automobile water tank is simpler, and the production cost is low.

Using a combined blocking procedure to teach color discrimination to a child with autism. A combined blocking procedure was used to teach a child with autism to select two colors on request. First, two color cards were placed at fixed locations on a table and the experimenter repeatedly requested the child to touch one of the colors. After 10 consecutive correct selections, the child was asked to touch the other color. Blocks of trials with each color were systematically thinned until requests were presented randomly with few errors. Subsequently, the location of the selection cards was systematically alternated until the child was able to touch the correct card when both requests and card positions were presented in random fashion.

Salutations Everyone, We're nearing the final hours of the campaign, and we're very pleased to announce a few things! Reward Changes So from the last October 22 update, we've mentioned a few changes that will happen to the rewards today. But there's also good news on top of it, particularly about the TSF Pilot Jackets! Raptor limit will be adjusted to 200. Type-C Superior Collection limit will be reduced from 330 to 150. Major Sponsor Tier limit will increase by 2. TSF Pilot Jackets now has XL and XXL size options. The sizes' specs are also added in the FAQ! These changes will take effect a few minutes after this update is posted! photonflowers* and photonmelodies♮ are now in Steam Greenlight! Please do vote for the games and spread the word! The development of the Photon games will start right after the trilogy localization is finished. With the help of Alternative Projects fan translation team we shouldn’t take too long to release the side stories soon after :) Cheers, The Muv-Luv Team

Trump administration officials have flatly denied two key allegations surrounding the James Comey firing – that the decision came after he asked for more resources for the FBI’s Russia probe, and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later threatened to resign – after the claims gained traction among Trump critics. The denials aren’t attracting anywhere near the media attention of the original allegations. The latest came from Rosenstein himself. The Washington Post initially reported Wednesday night that the senior Justice official threatened to resign after reports began painting him as the primary “mover of the decision” to sack Comey, given his scathing memo condemning the ex-FBI director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe. But aside from White House and DOJ denials, Rosenstein himself told Sinclair Broadcast Group reporter Michelle Macaluso he didn’t threaten to quit and would not be doing so. “No, I’m not quitting,” he said. President Trump also has since shifted the administration’s account of what led to the firing, telling NBC News that he would have fired Comey regardless of any recommendation, after officials pointed to Rosenstein’s memo as the driving force. Meanwhile, The New York Times and other outlets reported in the wake of the Comey ouster that he had recently asked the DOJ for more resources in the bureau’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Fox News also was told that Comey had asked for more resources – however, sources said he discussed that issue with lawmakers. A Justice spokeswoman stressed that Comey never asked Rosenstein himself for more money or resources for the Russia investigation. The denial got high-level backup on Thursday, when Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also denied the reports at a Senate hearing. McCabe said he thinks the probe is “adequately resourced” and noted the FBI normally would not ask for more resources for a single investigation.

Missing another missed opportunity, Captain Dwayne De Rosario (far left) kneels on the pitch in frustration while teammate Maicon Santos (far right) hangs his head. It’s all but over. Toronto FC needed a win to keep their playoff hopes alive but once again the Reds came up short losing 3-2 to the San Jose Earthquakes at BMO Field. San Jose were led by Chris Wondolowski in an impressive performance as he scored a hat-trick, giving him 12 goals on the season, while Captain Dwayne De Rosario, also with his 12th of the season, and Maicon Santos replied for the Reds. Coming into the match, Toronto was only five points behind both Seattle and San Jose for the final playoff spot. Seattle defeated Chicago 1-0 on Saturday and joined San Jose in vaulting over Colorado in the standings, meaning Toronto is seven points behind the Rapids in a quest for a post-season berth. Despite the loss, the team isn’t ready to give up. As long as the Reds are still mathematically alive, the playoffs will remain the goal. De Rosario (right) hustles around a fallen Earthquakes player. “We’re still in it, technically we’re not out,” said goalkeeper Stefan Frei who made six saves in the loss. “If anybody in here would throw in the towel at this point then they shouldn’t be a part of this team because you got a fight until the very end and hopefully everybody is going to feel that way.” Chad Barrett pointed out how his team would now need the help of other teams if they hope to make it to the playoffs. “Well if we were going to drop points we didn’t want to drop points these next two games,” said Barrett. “We didn’t want to drop against San Jose and…Seattle because it’s a six point swing. That happened today and that’s kind of a real killer, a real beat down. We need Seattle and some other teams to really blow it and hopefully they do.” Making his home coaching debut, Coach Nick Dasovic was proud of his team for fighting right to the very end but acknowledged his team’s slow start. After being knocked down, Santos (centre) stares down the loose ball while being surrounded by Earthquake players. “We started slowly,” said Dasovic. “The whole first half was a bit sluggish, I don’t know if it’s from the amount games we played and etcetera, but funny enough we looked a lot sharper in the second half. We kind of got a second wind and fought back to 2-1 and that third goal I think killed us a little bit.” “Unfortunately, when we were chasing the game a bit, that’s when there are gaps that open up and they have got players that are capable. Credit to them, they took their chances and we didn’t, that’s the way it goes.” Down Early While some fans were still rushing into find their seats, the Reds found themselves down 1-0 in the 3rd minute when the Earthquakes were awarded a penalty kick on a questionable call from referee Kevin Stott. Dan Gargan was jostling for the ball with Bobby Convey and knocked down the Quake’s midfielder just inside the box. Convey clearly embellished the fall but the penalty kick was still awarded to San Jose and Wondolowski powered the ball into the top corner for his first goal of the game. Frei was able to get a hand to the ball but the kick was simply too powerful for the goalkeeper to make the save. Despite the early goal and being outshot 5-1 in the first half, TFC were only down 1-0 at halftime. In the second half, goals were in abundance as both teams traded a pair of goals and made for an exciting finish in the final minutes of the match. Toronto FC fans show their frustration towards MLSE for raising next year’s season ticket prices despite the team’s lack of success in 2010. In the 53rd minute, the Earthquakes scored a great goal when five different players got a touch on the ball to pull ahead 2-0. After two quick passes in the midfield, Geovanni put a great ball ahead between two defenders to Ryan Johnson. Johnson then threaded a beautiful pass into the box for Wondolowski, who had no problem knocking the ball past a helpless Frei to finish a great tic-tac-toe passing play. In the 66th minute, Captain Dwayne De Rosario is able to get his team back into the game when his shot from just inside the box floats into the far back corner of the net. The goal left the San Jose goalkeeper stunned and finally gave the crowd something to cheer about. After the goal, the Reds seemed to lose their concentration as San Jose was able to restore their two goal lead less than a minute later. From just outside of the box, Wondolowski unleashed a shot that deflected off the chest of defender Raivis Hscanovics just enough to get past Frei to make it 3-1. In the 79th minute, Toronto is able to close the gap once again with a pretty tic-tac-toe goal of their own. Substitute O’Brian White started the play when he played the ball ahead to Barrett, who quickly flicked the ball into the crease where Santos was able to tap the ball into the gaping net to make the score 3-2. In the 86th minute, with the Reds pushing forward for the equalizer, a turnover lead to a 2-on-1 break for San Jose. In the end, Geovanni is robbed by Frei’s outstretched hand as the Earthquakes squander a great opportunity to seal the victory. In the dying minutes, Toronto is able to put on a lot of pressure as they helmed the ball inside the San Jose end. In the 90th minute, White makes a great pass between two defenders ahead to Jacob Peterson who had an open look at goal, but his shot is fired high and wide of the goal. For TFC it was once again a case of too little too late. Toronto will now switch gears as they host Real Salt Lake on Tuesday night at 8pm for a critical group stage match in the CONCACAF Champions League. Game Notes: Toronto FC (8-11-7): Stefan Frei, Adrian Cann, Nick Garcia, Ty Harden, Raivis Hscanovics (O’Brian White 72’), Julian de Guzman, Dwayne De Rosario, Dan Gargan (Mista 45’), Jacob Peterson, Chad Barrett, Maicon Santos Subs not used: Jon Conway, Nana Attakora, Nick LaBrocca, Nicholas Lindsay, Maksim Usanov San Jose Earthquakes (11-7-6): Jon Busch, Jason Hernandez, Chris Leitch, Brandon McDonald, Tim Ward, Bobby Convey (Joey Gjersten 87’), Sam Cronin, Khari Stephenson (Brad Ring 73’), Chris Wondolowski, Geovanni (Scott Sealy 86’), Ryan Johnson Subs not used: Brian Edwards, Arturo Alvarez, Bobby Burling, Cornell Glen Scoring Summary: SJ: Chris Wondolowski 3’ (PK) SJ: Chris Wondolowski 53’ TOR: Dwayne De Rosario 66’ SJ: Chris Wondolowski 67’ TOR: Maicon Santos 79’ Misconduct Summary: TOR: Dwayne De Rosario 80’ (Unsporting Behavior) SJ: Jon Busch 84’ (Delaying a Restart) Attendance: 20,064 Weather: Cloudy, 61 degrees

When Chelsea Manning announced that she was a woman, lots of media that reported the news kept on calling her "Bradley" and "he." Trans people were rightly upset. But LGBT organizations fell down on the job too. As stories about Manning's announcement started to appear, those whose job it is to educate the public and the media spent their time reissuing old guidance couched in generalities that didn't answer journalists' questions, and then scolding the media for getting it wrong. Reporting on these issues aren't straightforward. At the moment before Manning made her announcement, she was still known to the world as "Bradley Manning." So is it OK to write "Bradley Manning announced that he wishes to live henceforth as a woman called Chelsea," and then call her Chelsea thereafter? If not, why not? What about when reporting on Manning's life before the announcement? Was the soldier who served a tour of duty in Iraq "Bradley" or "Chelsea"? And if you wanted to respect her current choice of pronoun, how would you rewrite the sentence "In Iraq, Manning kept the fact that he was a gay man under wraps"? (Go on, give it a try.) Unless you're already deeply immersed in transgender issues -- and most reporters aren't--you might need help with such questions. All the main LGBT organizations have a section on their websites on how to use pronouns for transgender people. What advice do they offer? Let's take a look. The only pronoun guidance from the National Center for Transgender Equality (TransEquality) consists of quoting the 2000 (!) edition of the AP Stylebook: Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics (by hormone therapy, body modification, or surgery) of the opposite sex and present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly. Manning has not had hormone therapy or surgery and her appearance very much corresponds with her sex at birth, which is to say, male. So according to the AP Stylebook, and therefore TransEquality, Manning is still "he." How about GLAAD? Whenever possible, ask transgender people which pronoun they would like you to use. A person who identifies as a certain gender, whether or not that person has taken hormones or had some form of surgery, should be referred to using the pronouns appropriate for that gender. If it is not possible to ask a transgender person which pronoun he or she prefers, use the pronoun that is consistent with the person's appearance and gender expression. For example, if a person wears a dress and uses the name Susan, feminine pronouns are appropriate. It follows that by quoting a similar extract from the AP Stylebook to the one above. Ambiguous much? Let's look at the Human Rights Campaign: Transgender people should be identified with their preferred pronoun. Often this is the pronoun that corresponds to the gender with which they identify. Not sure? It's appropriate to respectfully ask their name and which pronouns they'd prefer. Some transgender people do not believe in a gender binary and prefer not to use pronouns typically associated with men (e.g. him) and women (e.g. her). Instead, they would prefer if people simply used their names or used a non-gendered pronoun such as "hir" or "they." Fine. But this doesn't answer the questions about how to report on the moment of Manning's announcement, or her life before it. What about the Association of LGBT Journalists, the NLGJA? They'd know better than anyone how to explain this to the media -- right? Things that are simple in most stories get tricky when writing about transgender subjects, particularly names and pronouns. As per AP style, one should use the name and pronouns that someone prefers. It's not about drivers' licenses or birth certificates. Because of Manning's name recognition, we suggest that she be referenced as "US Army Private Chelsea Manning, who formerly went by the name Bradley Again, that tells you how to talk about Manning from now on, but doesn't explain how to describe her past or the moment of her coming-out. OK, you may say, but these are websites. They take time to update. What about Twitter? That's where journalists spend their time these days. Surely these groups were dispensing advice by the boatload on Twitter? On August 22, the day of Manning's announcement, TransEquality issued a grand total of three tweets. One linked to a statement the group gave to the Washington Post on why Manning should be given trans-related surgery in prison. The other two said "We've been a little quiet this morning but we wanted to share that we're working hard to make sure that reporting on Chelsea Manning's transition is accurate and respectful." GLAAD tweeted six times that day. Three of the tweets linked to GLAAD's reference guide, and we've already seen how helpful that is. One linked to a statement specifically about covering Manning, which explained that "All references to Manning should refer to her as Chelsea and use female pronouns, as is consistent with the AP Style Book guidelines [remember those?]. If necessary, a clarifying sentence may be used which explains that Manning was referred to as 'Bradley Manning' during the trial." That was the closest anyone came to giving specific advice on how to address Manning's past. As for the Human Rights Campaign and the NLGJA, they have not tweeted on the subject of Manning at all since she came out. I myself tweeted at GLAAD and TransEquality, asking for advice on this question, and got no response. I ended up getting my answers from individual trans people, via Twitter, which I used to write an entry on trans pronouns for the Quartz in-house style guide. Now, I'm sure the press people of these organizations were hard at work on the phones and email fielding questions from journalists. But the phone and email don't scale: They can only answer one query at a time, and at the pace at which the news moves today, waiting to get through on the phone or for a reply to an email just isn't an option for many journalists.

. Objective To investigate the effectiveness of fixation the posterior malleolus or not to treat different Haraguchi's classification of posterior malleolus fractures. Methods The clinical data of 86 trimalleolar fracture patients who were admitted between January 2015 and September 2019 and met the selection criteria were retrospectively reviewed. There were 29 males and 57 females; the age ranged from 26 to 82 years with a mean age of 55.2 years. According to Haraguchi's classification, 38 patients were in type Ⅰ group, 30 patients in type Ⅱ group, and 18 patients in type Ⅲ group. There was no significant difference in the general data such as gender, age, and fracture location among the 3 groups ( P>0.05). The fixation of the posterior malleolus was performed in 23, 21, and 5 patients in type Ⅰ, Ⅱ, and Ⅲ groups, respectively. The operation time, fracture healing time, full weight-bearing time, postoperative joint flatness, and joint degeneration degree of the patients in each group were recorded and compared. The American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) ankle and hindfoot score was used to evaluate ankle function, including pain, quality of daily life, joint range of motion, and joint stability. The AOFAS scores were compared between fixation and non-fixation groups in each group. Results The procedure was successfully completed by all patients in each group, and there was no significant difference in operation time ( F=3.677, P=0.159). All patients were followed up 12-36 months with a mean time of 16.8 months. At last follow-up, 6 patients were found to have suboptimal ankle planarity, including 2 patients (5.3%) in the type Ⅰ group and 4 patients (13.3%) in the type Ⅱ group, with no significant difference between groups ( χ 2=6.566, P=0.161). The ankle joints of all the patients in each group showed mild degeneration; the fractures all healed well and no delayed union or nonunion occurred. There was no significant difference in the fracture healing time and full weight-bearing time between groups ( P>0.05). No complications such as incision infection, fracture displacement, or plate screw loosening and fracture occurred during follow-up. At last follow-up, the total scores and pain scores of the AOFAS scores in the type Ⅱ group were significantly lower than those in the type Ⅰand Ⅲ groups ( P<0.05), there was no significant difference between groups in the scores for the quality of daily life, joint range of motion, and joint stability between groups ( P>0.05). There was no significant difference in any of the scores between the unfixed and fixed groups, except for the pain and quality of daily life scores, which were significantly lower ( P<0.05) in the unfixed group of type Ⅱ group than the fixed group. Conclusion Haraguchi type Ⅱ posterior malleolus fractures have a worse prognosis than types Ⅰ and Ⅲ fractures, especially in terms of postoperative pain, which can be significantly improved by fixing the posterior malleolus; the presence or absence of posterior malleolus fixation in types Ⅰ and Ⅲ has less influence on prognosis.

The advertisement in question Image: Chris Skiles Recently, we heard about a doctor in Tomball who, like many of his ilk, has a waiting room in his office. In that waiting room, just as in the waiting rooms of many, many physicians in our area, you can often find an issue of Houstonia. And if you can’t find one, there’s a good chance that someone has slipped it into a purse or pocket, this being the sort of magazine whose qualities have often enough seduced upstanding, law-abiding citizens into lives of crime. Still, the remarkable thing about the disappearance of our June issue from Dr. Tomball’s waiting room is not that it was snatched improperly, but that Dr. Tomball himself was behind the improper snatching. This he did, by all accounts, not for the usual reason, i.e., to selfishly reserve its literary glories for himself. Nor was he motivated by a desire to protect his patients from said glories, an impulse we see on occasion, however rarely. No, Dr. Tomball’s action was apparently provoked by something he saw on the very first page of our June issue, in an advertisement by the Ashton Martini Group, a residential real estate agency. The ad, you may recall, featured a family of five Houstonians—a husband and wife, and the couple’s three children—relaxing in the living room of their home. To the lion’s share of our readership, one imagines, such a tableau must have looked almost aggressively typical. Perhaps they observed that the husband is black, the wife is white, and the couple’s three adorable children biracial, but that’s all it was for most, an observation. Not so Dr. Tomball, who on May 26 sent an email to the Ashton Martini Group registering his disapproval. The note, which I have seen, carries the subject “Disgusting Ad,” and explains: “Your ad in the June Houstonia magazine is DISGUSTING! I will not put this magazine in my reception area! If you care to discuss this,” the note concluded, “I am available.” As it happens, we did care to discuss this with Dr. Tomball, who oddly was not available when we attempted to make contact. Exactly one week later, we heard from a second man, this time a resident of the Memorial area, who called to say that although he usually likes Houstonia, he “just can’t go for racial mixing.” The caller—identifying himself only as Fred—voiced his concern that children might see the ad and “get it into their heads that this is okay.” To ensure that that did not happen, the man informed us that he’d taken our June issue straight from the mailbox to the trash can, although he declined our invitation to cancel his subscription altogether. He counts himself among this magazine’s fans, he told us. Well, we are not fans of him. Indeed, if Memorial Fred ever finds the courage to call and give us his full name, we will remove him from our subscription rolls immediately. I’m not sure if Dr. Tomball is a fan of this publication or not. I do know that if so, he will have to go get it himself, as we will no longer be sending copies to his office. Houstonia’s championing of diversity does not extend to bigots, and while we are by definition dedicated to discovering the best things about this city, we’ll never ignore the worst. On the contrary, our magazine’s mission is to maintain standards of quality always and everywhere, in burgers, in bike trails and in readers, Dr. Tomball included. And if he cares to discuss this, I am available. Scott Vogel Editor-in-Chief

Subdermal levonorgestrel implants. Three years' experience in Cairo, Egypt. OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy, safety and acceptability of the subdermal levonorgestrel implant (SLI), a new, long-acting, low-dose, progestin-only contraceptive method for women. STUDY DESIGN A prospective, observational study conducted in the family planning clinic, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ain Shams University Hospital, Cairo, Egypt, as an advanced phase III clinical trial. RESULTS This paper describes three years' experience with the SLI in 350 women. The net three-year cumulative pregnancy rate was 0.98%. Menstrual disturbances, ranging from amenorrhea to menorrhagia, were the major side effects and were present in 25% of women during the third year. These disturbances resulted in 28 removals, 19 of which were because of amenorrhea. Medical complications, including headache, hypertension and non-insulin dependent diabetes; desire for pregnancy; and complications at the insertion site (such as infection, spontaneous expulsion of the capsules and arm pain) were the principal reasons for another 57 implant removals. So far, no gynecologic or breast lesions have developed, and weight changes were not noted. The continuation rate after three years was 65.5%. CONCLUSION The efficacy, safety and acceptability of the implant suggest that it will provide an important addition to the contraceptive armamentarium.

Volatile metabolites produced from agro-industrial wastes by Na-alginate entrapped Kluyveromyces marxianus The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of alginate entrapment on fermentation metabolites of Kluyveromyces marxianus grown in agrowastes that served as the liquid culture media. K. marxianus cells entrapped in Na-alginate were prepared using the traditional liquid-droplet-forming method. Whey and pomaces from processed tomatoes, peppers, and grapes were used as the culture media. The changes in the concentrations of sugar, alcohol, organic acids, and flavor compounds were analyzed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). Both free and entrapped, K. marxianus were used individually to metabolize sugars, organic acids, alcohols, and flavor compounds in the tomato, pepper, grape, and acid whey based media. Marked changes in the fermentation behaviors of entrapped and free K. marxianus were observed in each culture. A 1.45-log increase was observed in the cell numbers of free K. marxianus during fermentation. On the contrary, the cell numbers of entrapped K. marxianus remained the same. Both free and entrapped K. marxianus brought about the fermentation of sugars such as glucose, fructose, and lactose in the agrowaste cultures. The highest volume of ethanol was produced by K. marxianus in the whey based media. The concentrations of flavor compounds such as ethyl acetate, isoamyl alcohol, isoamyl acetate, 2-phenylethyl isobutyrate, phenylethyl acetate, and phenylethyl alcohol were higher in fermented agrowaste based media compared to the control. Introduction At present, there is a great deal of interest in exploring the potential of agrowastes to replace synthetic media in the microbial fermentation of high-value commercial bioproducts. The advantages of using wastes from the food industry include their availability, low cost, and the presence of high levels of compounds that could be utilized by microorganisms. 1,2 In a recent study by Guneser,3 Trichoderma atroviride grown in a liquid fermentation culture containing tomato and pepper pomaces was shown to produce eightcarbon volatiles, including 1-octen-3-ol (a mushroom aroma). Gögüş et al. 4 reported that apple pomace and orange peel may be used as culture media for the production of a polygalacturonase enzyme that serves as a pectolytic enzyme in the industrial production of wine and fruit juices. While the use of agrowastes as raw material reduces the process costs of microbial fermentation, the microbial immobilization technique increases fermentation efficiency. Microbial cells entrapped in various substrates have been used extensively in the commercial bioreactor fermentation for decades, owing to improved stability and quality of products, 5 and the economic advantages that can be accrued via the reutilization of microbial cells such as higher productivity, increased product yield, and easier isolation of the desired metabolites from the culture broths. 6,7 For instance, the use of immobilized cell reactor not only increased the ethanol yield from glucose by approximately 27% but also reduced the fermentation time from 72 h to 24 h. 8 In another study, Djordjevic et al. reported that immobilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae used in raspberry wine fermentation had a shorter lag phase, utilized sugars more rapidly, and produced ethanol more quickly than suspended free cells. 9 Researchers also found that the concentrations of 3-methylbutyl acetate and 2-phenylethyl acetate were higher in raspberry wine fermented with immobilized S. cerevisiae than in that fermented with suspended free cells. Although several studies have discussed the immobilization techniques used in alcoholic fermentation, there is a dearth of research into the potential use of immobilized cells in agrowaste fermentation processes to produce specific bioproducts such as enzymes, microbial pigments, and volatile compounds. This study therefore sets out to evaluate the effects of microbial entrapment on fermentation metabolites of K. marxianus in liquid media composed of agrowaste materials; in particular, an attention has been given to the effect on volatile metabolites. K. marxianus possesses great biotechnological potential due to its metabolic properties such as high specific growth rate, high ethanol tolerance, and the ability to utilize a wide spectrum of substrate. 11 Preparation of agrowastes The plant waste materials were prepared from Polish fruits and vegetables obtained from a Polish market. The fresh material was frozen (−20 • C), then thawed, mashed, and heated to around 60 • C. The juice was separated from the mash by subsequent pressing and decanting. After the decanting procedure, pomaces were obtained. The pomaces were pasteurized (15 min at 85 • C), bottled, and stored at 4 • C until the fermentation experiments. Acid whey was prepared from Polish milk (3% fat) by lactic acid fermentation with commercial yoghurt starter cultures (24 h at 44 • C). Deproteinized whey was obtained by heating (60 • C) followed by filtration. The basic composition of the materials was determined using the methods of analysis as recommended by AOAC. 12 Yeast strain and culture conditions Kluyveromyces marxianus LOCK0024 strain obtained from the LOCK105 Culture Collection of Lodz University of Technology, Poland was used in this study. The yeast strains were maintained on Wort Agar slants (Merck-Millipore, Germany). In order to adapt the yeast strains to the specific environmental conditions, the yeast cells were cultivated in 100 mL of minimal media (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 (3.0 g/L), KH 2 PO 4 (1.0 g/L), K 2 HPO 4 (1.0 g/L), MgSO 4 (0.5 g/L), yeast extract (Merck-Millipore) (0.5 g/L), and glucose (1.0 g/L) supplemented with 10% (w/v) of the agrowastes in 500 mL round bottom flasks. The cultures were incubated at 25 • C on a rotary shaker (Heidolph, Germany) at 220 rpm for 5 days. The concentrations of yeast cells were determined using a hemocytometer, Olympus BX41 (Olympus, Japan) microscope, and a digital camera. Entrapment of K. marxianus The K. marxianus cells were entrapped using a traditional liquid-droplet-forming method from a foamed alginate solution. 13 The resulting beads consisted of micro-spheres approximately 50-300 m in diameter. The foamed beads were kept in a sterile syringe under a mild vacuum at 10 • C for 24 h in a liquid minimal medium of glucose (0.05%, w/v). Yeast fermentation trials Yeast fermentations using both entrapped and free cells were performed in 50 mL minimal medium supplemented with 10% (w/v) of the agrowastes and incubated at 120 rpm for 120 h at 25 • C. The same inoculum was used in both the free and entrapped cells (1.1 × 10 9 cells/50 mL of medium) and was determined beforehand using the microscopic method. Immobilization process control The alginate beads were cut into slices (1 mm thick), and the bead structure and colonization were observed using a light microscope (Olympus BX41). The alginate beads were dissolved in 0.2 M Na 2 HPO 4 with a ratio of 1 bead/mL. The concentration of yeast cells per bead was determined using a hemocytometer and the free cells were counted via microscopic method. 13 HPLC analysis The quantities of sugars, alcohols, and organic acids were measured using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with a Finnigan Surveyor chromatograph (Thermo Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) equipped with an auto sampler system, a refractive index detector (Finnigan Surveyor-RI Plus detector), a diode array detector (Finnigan Surveyor-PDA Plus detector), and a 300 mm × 7.8 mm Aminex HPX-87H column (BioRad, Hercules, CA, USA). HPLC was performed at 60 • C using sulfuric acid (5 mmol/L) as the eluent at a flow rate of 0.6 mL/min and with a sample volume of 10 L. 14 Extraction and analysis of volatile compounds The volatile compounds were extracted using solid-phase micro extraction (SPME). 15 The sample (3 g) was weighed in a 40 mL amber colored screw top vial with a PTFE/silicon septum hole cap (Supelco, Bellafonte, USA), and 1 g of NaCl was added. The vial was incubated at 40 • C in a water bath (GFL, Grossburgwedel, Germany) for 20 min to equilibrate the volatiles in the headspace. An SPME (2 cm to 50/30 m DVB/Carboxen/PDMS, Supelco, Bellafonte) needle was then inserted into the vial. The SPME fiber was held in the headspace of the vial at a depth of 2 cm for 20 min at 40 • C. The flavor compounds were identified using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). 3 17 The volatiles were quantified based on the relative abundances of the compounds. 18 The retention indices were calculated following the method developed by Van den Dool and Kratz. 19 2-methyl-pentanoic acid and 2-methyl-3heptanone were used as internal standards (IS) for acidic and neutral-basic compounds, respectively. Statistical analysis The analysis of variance (one way-ANOVA) was conducted to determine the differences between the pomaces with respect to the quantity of flavor compounds and metabolites produced. 20 Results and discussion The basic chemical composition of the agrowastes including dry matter, ash, and acidity are given in Table 1. The grape pomace recorded the highest dry matter and acidity, while the tomato and pepper pomaces had higher ash content than the others. While grape pomace had 23.83% dry matter, tomato and pepper pomaces had approximately 8.0-9.0% dry matter. Whey had lower dry matter (2.66%) and ash (0.15%) contents. Similar agrowaste compositions have been reported by other researchers. 3,21,22 Guneser 3 reported higher dry matter for tomato (14%) and pepper pomaces (20%). Blaschek et al. 21 found that Cheddar cheese sweet and salty whey, respectively, had 6.6% and 12.4% dry matter. Table 2 shows the growth of free and entrapped yeast cells over 5 days of fermentation. The number of entrapped cells remained stable between 7.38 and 7.59 log CFU/bead, while the number of free cells increased by 1.05-1.79 log CFU/mL, depending on the type of agrowaste employed. Similar growth behavior was observed with entrapped cell fermentation as had been described by Wilkowska et al., 23 for K. marxianus in the production of esters and alcohols -typical flavor compounds -from apple/chokeberry and apple/cranberry pomaces. In the case of free cell fermentation, it was observed that the increase in cell number was also higher with whey and grape pomaces than with pepper and tomato pomaces ( Table 2). The changes in the composition of sugar, acid and ethanol of the agrowastes are shown in Table 4. The sugars (glucose, fructose, and lactose) were only measured in the control samples (non-fermented sample). All sugars were utilized by both free and entrapped yeasts during fermentation. A higher tartaric acid concentration was found in grape pomace fermented by entrapped yeast, while grape pomaces fermented by free yeast had higher levels of malic acid than the other samples (Table 3). No significant differences were observed between fermented and non-fermented tomato and pepper pomaces with respect to the concentrations of other acids (p > 0.05). Ethanol production was only observed in whey. Ethanol fermentation was achieved by both free and entrapped yeast with higher proofs of 45.11 g/L and 46.46 g/L, respectively. Moreover, the control (non-fermented) whey sample had a significantly higher amount of lactic acid than the other samples, although there were no significant differences between the lactic acid contents of whey samples fermented with free and entrapped cells (p > 0.05). There have been numerous studies on the production of organic acids and ethanol using yeast fermentation of various agrowastes. Nzelibe and Okafoagu 24 reported that ethanol could be produced from Garcinia kola (bitter kola) pulp using baker's yeast (S. cerevisiae). A maximum of 70.7 g of ethanol per liter was produced by the acid hydrolysis of Garcinia kola pulp at 30 • C for 120 h. Musatto et al., 25 also produced ethanol with S. cerevisiae from coffee industry waste hydrolysates with a 50.2% efficiency (11.7 g ethanol/L). In a study by Imandi et al., 27 it was found that pineapple waste could be used as a substrate for the production of citric acid using solid state fermentation using the yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica. Similar findings were observed in the present research. Tables 4-7 show the list of different volatile compounds produced by the fermentation of agrowastes using K. marxianus. Significant differences were observed between unfermented and fermented agrowastes in terms of the quantity of volatile compounds (p < 0.05). High levels of esters and alcohols with fruity and floral notes were detected in agrowastes fermented with free and entrapped K. marxianus cells. These flavor compounds were identified as isoamyl alcohol (banana), isoamyl acetate (fruity, banana), phenylethyl alcohol (rose), phenylethyl acetate (floral), phenylethyl butyrate (floral musty), 2-phenyl ethyl propionate (floral), and phenylethyl isobutyrate (balsam). The amount of volatile compounds produced varied depending on whether the K. marxianus was free or entrapped and on the type of agrowaste used. The amounts of ethyl acetate and 2-phenethyl propionate produced were higher in tomato pomace fermented with entrapped cells ( Table 4). The 2phenylethylbutanoate and ␥-decalactone contents (Table 4) were higher in tomato samples fermented with free cells. In pepper and tomato pomaces, no significant differences in terms of the concentrations of volatile compounds (except for ␥-decalactone) were observed when fermented with either entrapped or free cells. The concentration of ␥-decalactone in tomato pomaces fermented with free cells was higher than in tomato pomaces fermented with entrapped cells ( Table 5). The levels of volatile compounds produced in grape pomaces fermented by free and entrapped cells are shown in Table 6. The major volatiles in the samples were esters. Just as with pepper pomaces, there were no significant differences between the amounts of volatile esters produced by both free and entrapped cells. The acid whey fermented by K. marxianus had a similar composition of volatiles to that produced with other agrowastes. Fermentations with both the entrapped and free K. marxianus cells showed higher amounts of ethyl acetate, isoamyl alcohol, and phenylethyl acetate ( Table 7). The levels of volatile compounds produced from the agrowastes were clearly dependent on the metabolism of sugar and amino acids in K. marxianus cells. The results indicate that not all fermentable sugars were detected in the fermented agrowastes. Esters and alcohols are the common volatiles produced by yeasts and have a fruity flavor. While alcohol volatiles can be produced by either the Genevois or Erhlich pathway in yeast metabolism, ester volatiles are formed by an enzyme-catalyzed condensation reaction between acyl-CoA and alcohols. In the Genevois pathway, the fermentable sugars (glucose, fructose, and lactose) are reduced to 2-oxo acids and then decarboxylated to form formaldehydes, which are reduced to the corresponding alcohols. Ehrlich pathways include biochemical reactions involving branched chain amino acids such as transamination, decarboxylation, oxidation, and reduction. Several enzymes play important roles in ester synthesis during yeast metabolism. The alcohol acetyl transferases I and II are well documented enzymes known to catalyze the production of esters in yeasts. 7, Lactones were also produced by both entrapped and free K. marxianus cells in tomato, pepper, and grape pomaces (Tables 5-7). All of the pomaces contained seeds, skin, and seed oil, which could therefore have been related to fatty acid metabolism by K. marxianus. The production of lactone-type volatiles by yeasts is achieved by the ␤-oxidation of fatty acids, especially C18: Ricinoleic acid. 31 Previous studies also reported esters, alcohol, acid, and lactone volatiles to be produced from different agrowastes using different yeast strains. Mantzouridou and Paraskevopoulou 34 investigated the production of esters from orange pulp-containing medium using S. cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae produced isoamyl acetate, phenylethyl acetate, and various ethyl esters (e.g. ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate, ethyl decanoate, and ethyl dodecanoate) from orange pulp by de novo synthesis; this observation is in close agreement with the results obtained in this study. However, in contrast to our results, Lalou et al. 33 reported that S. cerevisiae immobilized on Ca-alginate microbeads produces higher concentrations of phenylethyl acetate, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate, ethyl decanoate, and ethyl dodecanoate than do free cells with orange peel waste hydrolysate. The effect of immobilization on the alcoholic fermentation of whey was previously investigated by Kourkoutas et al. 10 They observed that K. marxianus IMB3 yeast immobilized on delignified cellulosic material (DCM) produced propanol, isobutanol, and n-amyl alcohol at low concentrations, while a higher concentration of ethyl acetate was produced by the same immobilized yeast during fermentation. Mallouchos et al. 36 indicated that a higher level of ester production could be achieved in wine fermentation using S. cerevisiae AXAZ-1 immobilized on DCM. Lee et al. 37 also found that Na-alginate immobilized Sporoidiobolus salmonicolor produced high concentrations of ␥-decalactone in a synthetic media. The productivities of the volatiles depended on the types of agrowaste and fermentation employed (with free or entrapped cells). In general, the productivities of the volatile compounds produced from tomato and pepper pomaces were lower than that with grape and whey pomaces. The highest productivity of flavor in the tomato pomace was for isovaleric acid at 36.16 g/kg of tomato pomace solution per hour. The production of volatile compounds was also higher in grape pomace than with whey and pepper pomaces. In whey, ethyl acetate had a higher productivity than other volatile compounds in fermentations with both free and entrapped K. marxianus cells. The productivities of isoamyl alcohol and phenylethyl acetate in whey were comparable, and their productivities using free and entrapped K. marxianus cells ranged from 6.05 to 7.22 g/kg of tomato pomace solution per hour. Moreover, ␥-decalactone, 2-phenylethyl isobutyrate, and 2-phenyl butanoate had lower productivities in all of the agrowastes used as the media (Tables 4-7). These aroma compounds can have a higher sensory impact on food. Therefore, further studies should be conducted to optimize the fermentation process of these compounds. Conclusions Free and entrapped K. marxianus can ferment tomato, pepper and grape pomaces, and acid whey. The results of this study show that alcohol, esters, and lactone volatiles, including ethyl acetate, isovaleric acid, isoamyl alcohol, isoamyl acetate, 2-phenylethyl isobutyrate, phenylethyl acetate, and phenyl ethyl alcohol can be produced in higher concentrations by entrapped K. marxianus. Because of the several advantages it offers, the entrapment of yeast cells can be an effective method of producing certain volatile compounds which are important in the flavor industry. Further studies should be conduct to evaluate biotechnological approaches in the production of natural flavors using microbial immobilization techniques.

In Focus - Prime Minister John Key has suggested it's easier to count the number of stoats and possums than measure the number of children in poverty. The Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, is urging the National and Labour Parties to work together to cut child poverty rates by 10 percent by the end of next year. The political arguments over just how many children were in poverty needed to stop and more action needed to be taken, Mr Becroft told TV show The Nation at the weekend. Mr Key told RNZ presenter Guyon Espiner on Morning Report today that the government was committed to reducing the number of children in poverty but didn't want to put a figure on it. Asked why the government could set goals to make the country predator-free but not measure the number of children in poverty, Mr Key said it was a complicated area, and the advice the government had been given was it was difficult to have one particular figure. He said it was more binary in terms of whether there was a rat or stoat or possum there, whereas there were a range of different ways of measuring poverty. It was better to focus on factors that contributed to deprivation rather than the exact numbers, Mr Key said. "Isn't it better for the government to say, 'Rheumatic fever's an issue, potentially prevalent with high levels of deprivation and therefore let's focus on that rather than worry too much about the individual measure of poverty?'" Under the material deprivation measure proposed by Judge Becroft as the official benchmark, 149,000 children would be considered to be in hardship. Green Party spokesperson on inequality Metiria Turei said Mr Key may be refusing to commit to clear measurements and a target to avoid admitting the extent of the problem. "That makes him a deeply irresponsible prime minister and unfit for the role," said Ms Turei. "Child poverty is one of the major scourges that this country faces." Labour Party leader Andrew Little said the material deprivation measure classified fewer children as being in poverty than the one Labour used - but the time for quibbling was over. "It doesn't matter what the measure is - let's just have one. And then let's just work on reducing that level of poverty because it's wrong it denies future life opportunities and it's something that a rich country like ours ought to be able to do something about." Susan St John, a member of the Child Poverty Action Group, also wants an end to the long-running debate on how to measure child poverty. "What Judge Becroft is saying is please can we move on and please can we aim to do something about what is a digusting and dreadful situation now."

The future of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man has been in question for some time, as the actor has made it clear that he doesn’t want to overstay his welcome as the character. Now, Mark Wahlberg is throwing his hat in the ring to take over as Tony Stark, saying he’d like to pick up the franchise when Downey Jr. is done. Wahlberg said that although he doesn’t get asked to play superheroes, probably because he likes playing real people, Iron Man is a character he’d be interested in. Furthermore, he also reveals that he was once considered for another iconic comic book character. Check out what he had to say below. “I would like to take over the ‘Iron Man’ franchise for Robert Downey, [but] it’s one of those things where I kind of like playing real people, [so] I’ve never been asked. Once I was kind of being talked about for the Robin role in ‘Batman [Forever] — somebody dodged a bullet!” In June, Downey Jr. signed an extension to play the character in Avengers: Age Of Ultron and The Avengers 3, but after that the future is unknown. Not that there necessarily needs to be more Iron Man after that, as taking a superhero past six appearances is something that only Hugh Jackman has done in recent memory, but if the demand is still there, you can be sure Marvel is going to find a way to get Iron Man to the big screen. That being said, I don’t think Wahlberg is the best choice. Don’t me wrong, Marky Mark is one of my absolute favorite actors of all time. From Fear to The Fighter he’s been a treat to watch in every single movie, but Iron Man has a distinct set of cocky mannerisms that I just can’t see Wahlberg matching. Then again, Downey Jr. is just about perfect as the character, meaning whoever takes his place would be following a nearly impossible act, so why not let Wahlberg try? He’s a talented actor, and I’m sure he could create an enjoyable version of the character, though it would likely be quite different from Downey’s. What do you think of Mark Wahlberg as Iron Man? Is there a superhero you’d rather see him play? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Pandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits. US Senator Rand Paul speaks to supporters during the kickoff of the National Stand with Rand tour on April 7, 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky (AFP Photo/Michael B. Thomas) Rand Paul has a Time op-ed where he digs into his family’s roots as segregationist-types and argues that, rather than share marriage with the gays, it should be privatized. I debunk that argument at Slate, but didn’t have the space to address this weird and pathetic attempt at a “gotcha” that Paul wedges in there: Do consenting adults have a right to contract with other consenting adults? Supporters of the Supreme Court’s decision argue yes but they argue no when it comes to economic liberties, like contracts regarding wages. Further proof that libertarianism is not really a philosophy or ideology so much as a pathetic attempt to make half-baked right wing “gotcha” type arguments seem intellectual when they never, ever are. For those who don’t know what the fuck Paul is talking about—and he declines to explain—he appears to be trying to tie his opposition to the minimum wage to this issue. The argument is that because a law limiting marriage to man-woman marriage and a law setting minimum wage are both laws that put limits on contracts, then you can’t oppose one limit while supporting the other. Either you’re for all limits or none at all. Paul, in classic libertarian (read: 13-year-old Ayn Rand fan) form, is trying to argue that it’s somehow hypocritical to think that laws should be assessed on their merits, as opposed to reduced to this childish black-and-white thinking where you either are for rules or against them. Or, for the TL;DR version: If a dude can marry a dude, why can’t I pay my employees 5o cents an hour? Your move, liberals! Unfortunately, these facile and pathetic attempts at “gotcha” have a tendency to take off in conservative circles, so I suspect this is not the last time we see this gambit. So here’s a quick rebuttal beyond, “Don’t be a dumbass.” The liberal position is completely consistent here. We believe that the government should create sensible regulations on what kind of contracts people can enter into, to protect people and help society flourish. Liberals don’t oppose the idea of an employment contract. We simply believe that there should be limits on what an employer can demand of an employees, to prevent exploitation. More specifically, we believe all employment contracts should have a built-in baseline: Minimum wage, maximum hours, health and safety protections, minimum benefits, that sort of thing. Anything you want to add to it, have at it, but in order for your contract to be valid, it had to fall within these parameters. The marriage contract is exactly the same, in this sense. You and your partner can sign a prenup or have a private agreement where one of you cooks and the other one cleans or whatever. No one cares. But in order to get married, you have to sign off on the standard marriage contract, which comes with certain protections and benefits. Legalizing same-sex marriage doesn’t change any of this. All it does is open up the number of people who can enter a marriage contract. If there was a law banning employers from hiring gay people, liberals would also oppose that law. But if we overturned that law, we would expect that the hiring of gay people happens within the same parameters—minimum wage, health and safety protections, etc.—that controls the hiring of straight people. The fact that one law is illegitimate doesn’t mean all laws are illegitimate. Just because you want marijuana legalized doesn’t mean you think murder should be legal. Paul’s attempt at some kind of intellectual chicanery here is childish and simplistic in the extreme. Adults should understand that the world is a complex place and our legal system sometimes has to be complex in response. However old Rand Paul is on paper, this op-ed makes it clear that intellectually, he’s about 8 years old.

A new multilayer feedforward small-world neural network with its performances on function approximation In this paper, by the use of the research results from complex network, a new multilayer feedforward small-world neural network is presented. Firstly, based on the construction ideology of Watts-Strogatz network model and community structure, a new multilayer feedforward small-world neural network is built up, which heavily relies on the rewiring probability. Secondly, the network model is briefly described by mathematical method. Finally, in order to investigate the performances of new small-world neural network, function approximation and fault tolerance are used to test the network performances. Simulation results show that the new neural network has the best approximate performance when the rewiring probability is nearby 0.1, and the approximate speed comparison also shows that small-world neural network is superior to regular network and random network at this time.

Technologies for exascale systems To satisfy the economic drive for ever more powerful computers to handle scientific and business applications, new technologies are needed to overcome the limitations of current approaches. New memory technologies will address the need for greater amounts of data in close proximity to the processors. Three-dimensional silicon integration will allow more cache and function to be integrated with the processor while allowing more than 1,000 times higher bandwidth communications at low power per channel using local interconnects between Si die layers and between die stacks. Integrated silicon nanophotonics will provide low-power and high-bandwidth optical interconnections between different parts of the system on a chip, board, and rack levels. Highly efficient power delivery and advanced liquid cooling will reduce the electrical demand and facility costs. A combination of these technologies will likely be required to build exascale systems that meet the combined challenges of a practical power constraint on the order of 20 MW with sufficient reliability and at a reasonable cost.

Elven Trance, spell scrolls, grappling, and other rules bits. This month, we touch on several rules questions that have come up quite a few times over the past year. If you have questions for a future installment of Sage Advice, please send them to sageadvice@wizards.com, or reach me on Twitter (@JeremyECrawford). Racial Traits Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? The intent is no. The Trance trait does let an elf meditate for 4 hours and then feel the way a human does after sleeping for 8 hours, but that isn’t intended to shorten an elf’s long rest. A long rest is a period of relaxation that is at least 8 hours long. It can contain sleep, reading, talking, eating, and other restful activity. Standing watch is even possible during it, but for no more than 2 hours; maintaining heightened vigilance any longer than that isn’t restful. In short, a long rest and sleep aren’t the same thing; you can sleep when you’re not taking a long rest, and you can take a long rest and not sleep. Here’s what this all means for an elf. An elf can spend 4 hours in a trance during a long rest and then has 4 additional hours of light activity. While an elf’s companions are snoozing, the elf can be awake and engaged in a variety of activities, including carving a lovely trinket, composing a sonnet, reading a tome of ancient lore, attempting to remember something experienced centuries before, and keeping an eye out for danger. The Trance trait is, ultimately, meant to highlight the otherworldly character of elves, not to give them an edge in the game. That all said, if you’re the DM and you decide to let Trance shorten an elf’s long rest, you’re not going to break the game. You are making a world-building choice if you do so. You’re deciding that elves, on a global scale, are ready to reenter a fight before anyone else, that they heal faster than most humanoids, and that they regain their magical energy faster. Such a choice would make sense in a world where elves are the dominant race, where they not only live longer than others, but also recover faster. Class Features Can a thief use the Fast Hands feature to activate a magic item? No. One of the benefits of Fast Hands is being able to take the Use an Object action as a bonus action, but using a magic item doesn’t fall under Use an Object, as explained in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (p. 141). In contrast, using a nonmagical item, such as a healer’s kit, is in the domain of Use an Object. Adventuring What’s an example of an effect that can reduce exhaustion? The greater restoration spell can reduce exhaustion. Combat What does “melee weapon attack” mean: a melee attack with a weapon or an attack with a melee weapon? It means a melee attack with a weapon. Similarly, “ranged weapon attack” means a ranged attack with a weapon. Some attacks count as a melee or ranged weapon attack even if a weapon isn’t involved, as specified in the text of those attacks. For example, an unarmed strike counts as a melee weapon attack, even though the attacker’s body isn’t considered a weapon. Here’s a bit of wording minutia: we would write “melee-weapon attack” if we meant an attack with a melee weapon. When you use two-weapon fighting, can you draw and throw two weapons on your turn? You can throw two weapons with two-weapon fighting (PH, 195), but that rule doesn’t give you the ability to draw two weapons for free. On your turn, you can interact with one object for free, either during your move or during an action (PH, 190). One of the most common object interactions is drawing or stowing a weapon. Interacting with a second object on the same turn requires an action. You need a feature like the Dual Wielder feat to draw or stow a second weapon for free. Is the grappling rule in the Player’s Handbook usable by a handless creature? The grappling rule (PH, 195) was written for a grappler with at least one hand, but a DM can easily adapt the rule for a handless creature that has a bite or an appendage, such as a tentacle, that could reasonably seize someone. A wolf, for example, could plausibly try to seize a person with its bite, and the animal wouldn’t be able to use its bite attack as long as it held onto the person. Keep in mind that the grappling rule in the Player’s Handbook requires the Attack action, so a creature must take that action—rather than Multiattack or another action in the creature’s stat block—when it uses that rule. A monster, such as a roper, that has a special grappling attack doesn’t follow that rule when using its special attack. Spells Can you cast darkness with a higher level slot to end a spell of 3rd level or higher that creates light? No. The darkness spell can dispel only a light-creating spell of 2nd level or lower, no matter what spell slot is used for darkness. Similarly, the daylight spell can dispel only a darkness-creating spell of 3rd level or lower, regardless of the spell slot used. Can dispel magic end globe of invulnerability? Yes, dispel magic can dispel the barrier created by globe of invulnerability, but not anything inside the barrier. Magic Items Which is correct in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the rule for scrolls or the rule for a spell scroll? They’re both correct. The rule for scrolls (p. 139) is for scrolls in general, including a scroll of protection, and it allows you to try to activate a spell if you’re literate. The rule for a spell scroll is specific to that type of scroll and introduces an additional requirement: the spell on the scroll must be on your class’s spell list for you to read the scroll. A spell scroll can be named in a variety of ways: spell scroll, scroll of X (where X is the name of a spell), or spell scroll of X (where X, again, is the name of a spell). No matter how its name appears, a spell scroll follows the same rule. For you to meet a spell scroll’s requirement, the spell on the scroll needs to be on whatever spell list is used by your class. Here are two examples. If you’re a cleric, the spell must be on the cleric spell list, and if you’re a fighter with the Eldritch Knight archetype, the spell must be on the wizard spell list, because that is the spell list used by your class. Do the AC bonuses from a ring of protection and bracers of defense stack? Yes. In general, bonuses stack, unless they’re from the same spell (see “Combining Magical Effects” in the Player’s Handbook, p. 205). You also can’t benefit from more than one ring of protection, for instance, since you can’t attune to more than one copy of an item at a time. Sage Advice Compendium This month’s questions and answers are now part of the Sage Advice Compendium (version 1.03). About the Author Jeremy Crawford is the co-lead designer of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. He was the lead designer of the fifth edition Player’s Handbook and one of the leads on the Dungeon Master’s Guide. He has worked on many other D&D books since coming to Wizards of the Coast in 2007. You can reach him on Twitter (@JeremyECrawford).

Here’s the thing about birds that nest in tree cavities: not just any hole will do. Many species depend on certain plants for shelter, breeding, and roosting. If the host trees vanish, so could the birds. That’s already happened in some familiar cases, such as the extinction of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which primarily nested in giant cypresses in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida. Once those trees were cut down by loggers, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker disappeared with them. To help other threatened woodpeckers avoid the same fate, the logging industry should require loggers to leave behind the necessary numbers and types of trees the birds need to thrive. Should being the key word there. Current practices merely involve skipping over the large, dead trees, called "snags," that woodpeckers can use for their nests. Science has shown that selective logging does more than just save woodpeckers: Protecting their spaces also offers home security to other animals. Woodpeckers typically abandon their nests after a time, leaving them available for use by other birds, often for decades. This is known as the “nest web”—interactions between species that utilize each other’s nests, kind of like an extensive network of bird timeshares. At least, that’s the way it works in North America. But research in Argentina has revealed that nest webs there may operate differently, and new modeling based on this research has found that these differences in nesting preferences could have important implications for the country's forest management. “Most non-excavator species here do not use woodpecker-made cavities,” says Román Ruggera, a researcher with Fundación CEBio in Jujuy, Argentina. He and his colleagues examined cavities over a 10-year period and discovered that the region’s parrots, owls, woodcreepers, and more rely on natural crannies in living, decaying trees. Unlike in North America, these birds recycle woodpecker nests only nine percent of the time. When Ruggera and his team began their research, they didn't set out to disprove the long-held cavity-sharing behavior; they were interested in seeing how the nest web worked in the few remaining areas of untouched, subtropical piedmont forest in northwest Argentina. The vast majority of the low-lying, deciduous forests in the region, he says, have already been converted to agriculture, pasture, and urban areas, so protecting what's left is essential for preserving the region’s biodiversity. But once the team discovered this surprising information, it decided to investigate the potential impacts further. Published in the journal of Forest Ecology & Management earlier this summer, Ruggera and his coauthors' most recent research examined the behavior of 15 different cavity-nesting bird species in 11 types of trees. Starting with four local types of woodpecker—Cream-backed Woodpecker, Golden-olive Woodpecker, Dot-fronted Woodpecker, and White-barred Piculet—Ruggera and his team performed a series of simulations to see what would happen if the three most important tree species in the area—Castelo boxwood, vilca, and cedro orán—disappeared. All three kinds of wood are heavily valued by loggers, with a 2013 study calling cedro orán severely exploited. The scientists also modeled a second and third scenario to include non-excavator birds, such as owls and woodcreepers. Argentina is losing its forests to clear cutting and other unsustainable logging practices. Photo: Christian Ostrosky/Alamy Again, the researchers uncovered some major differences from the North American pattern. In their simulations, the woodpeckers and owls persisted after the loss of the trees because they depended on many kinds of wood. Seven other bird species, however, were likely to go locally extinct if too many of the live trees were felled: the Streaked Flycatcher, Turquoise-fronted Parrot, Great Rufous Woodcreeper, Scaly-headed Parrot, Black-banded Woodcreeper, Hoy’s Screech Owl, and a local variety of forest falcon. “If a given bird species only uses cavities from a given tree species, and that tree species goes extinct, that bird species goes also extinct,” Ruggera says. At least, according to the model. It’s possible that the birds could find alternatives if their preferred trees vanish, a possibility his ongoing research at other sites aims to answer. Woodpecker researcher and Virginia Tech biology professor Jeff Walters, who was not involved with the research, says the work out of Argentina is important. “Nest webs are a fairly new area of study,” he says. Ruggera's findings have new implications for conservation beyond saving old dead trees for excavators, Walters says. “Now we realize it's much broader. You need to understand the underlying mechanism for tree hole creation.” U.S. Forest Service technician Gina Tarbill, who has studied the woodpecker nest web in the Sierra Nevada region, says this means forestry managers in Argentina may need to go beyond preserving snags. "Woodpeckers are ecosystem engineers in many coniferous forests, so snag recommendations have primarily focused on meeting their needs,” she says. “The authors were wise to point out that this may not be the case in the deciduous forests of South America, and that the conservation of the cavity-dependent community will require retaining both snags and live trees.” Time is not on the birds’ side. A 2015 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office found that Argentina lost 22 percent of its forests over the previous quarter of a century and that it continues to lose another one percent per year. Ruggera says the logging industry needs to adopt new management policies soon to avoid “a fast and drastic biodiversity decline in these forest systems.” But there might be a straightforward solution in this case. The researchers say Castelo boxwood, the most essential of the three tree types, should be considered a priority for conservation, especially when landowners are making plans about what to cut down or preserve on their properties. Ruggera, for one, is hopeful that loggers will welcome this new information and work with conservationists to save the boxwood—and all the birds that call it home.

SMGNN: an entity alignment method based on subgraph matching and graph neural network With the wide application of knowledge graph such as recommendation system and text analysis, it is particularly important to create high-quality knowledge graph, it requires precise knowledge graph fusion. As a key part of knowledge graph fusion, entity alignment can provide more prior knowledge for knowledge graph and improve its usability. In order to obtain a more global graph structure feature, this paper designs a subgraph matching based method for entity alignment, named SMGNN. It based on the two features of map structure information and local relation semantics, and captures relationships between entities through GNN capture. Firstly, the entity is encoded by the subgraph information of the target node through the GNN based on two entity-aligned knowledge graphs. Secondly, the subgraph is the graph composed of the target node and all neighboring nodes connected to the node. Then, the alignment between the two graphs is regarded as a mapping on the hyperplane, and TransH model is used for alignment. Finally, we do experiments on DBP15K, a crosslanguage entity alignment dataset, the results show that SMGNN can effectively improve the alignment accuracy of knowledge graphs.

After enduring a major public-relations tsunami this summer, Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based sandwich shop that’s closed on Sundays, says it will end its decade-long corporate support of culture-warrior groups that oppose gay marriage. "Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. Its charitable arm, WinShape Foundations, gave $2 million to gay-marriage opponents such as Focus on the Family in 2010 alone, according to ABC News. The news emerged from Chicago, from the office of city Alderman Joe Moreno, who helped drive the controversy by vowing to block Chick-fil-A’s application for a building permit in Chicago’s hip Northwest Side ward over statements by CEO Dan Cathy this summer. Mr. Cathy told the Baptist Press in July that he was “guilty as charged” for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.” The comments caused demonstrations and counterdemonstrations, including a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day suggested by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). The Henson Group, of “Muppets” fame, broke off relations with the company over the flap. Many gay acdtivists vowed to shun the restaurant, while conservatives alleged that Mr. Moreno and other politicians were engaging in “thug” politics by punishing a private business for protected speech. With 1,614 restaurants nationally and as sponsor of the Chick-fil-A college bowl – not to mention those highway billboards with the cows – the company is a corporate success story that made a name for itself with tastefully spiced and artfully fried chicken breast served on fluffy buns with a few pickles as the only condiment. Despite considerable public support for the company's right to exercise its free-speech rights, Chick-fil-A evidently saw several reasons to switch course. (Chick-fil-A headquarters said Wednesday that, beside its written statement, it won’t make any more public announcements on the topic.) Some marketing experts say the company, with revenues of about $4 billion, could see a slight dip in business because of the controversy, especially if it remained unresolved in the public’s eye. More immediately, the company’s corporate plans to broaden its reach outside of the South may also be a factor in its policy change. The company's socially conservative management has made news before, but the firm's values seemed in sync with many Southerners' views on church, God, and marriage. But Chick-fil-A's efforts to expand into places like Chicago and cities in California have put those values into the limelight, raising difficulties not only in obtaining construction permits but also vis a vis local and regional consumer attitudes. “Chick-fil-A is part of the South. It’s part of the Southern culture, and they’ve done an outstanding job of expanding over the years,” Greg Sanders, publisher of Food News Media, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July. “But let’s be frank, if they’re new in California, not only are social attitudes possibly different in that part of the country, but there’s also not a bank of good will with that brand being built for up years [as it is] in the South.” For Chick-fil-A, the change in corporate donations may be a small sacrifice. Though some will argue that the company gave in to political correctness, the memo Chick-fil-A vows to send to employees contains the same message that it made public last month – that the company takes pride in treating “every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation and gender.” Yet the funding reversal also highlighted the risks companies and nonprofits take when they take public stances on divisive social issues. After public outcry in January over its short-lived decision to end funding for Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider, the Susan G. Komen Foundation backtracked and shook up its corporate staff. Even so, Komen has seen participation in its annual breast cancer walks drop in some areas. In San Francisco, registration for this month’s walk was down 50 percent from last year. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy Meanwhile, in Atlanta, some of those offended by Chick-fil-A's charitable giving practices reacted positively to its announced course change. “This gay chicken will [now] cross the road for some waffle fries regardless of what you think about me,” writes “Wilbur” in a comment on the Journal-Constitution website.

Clustering in thin silver films upon heating The kinetics of the formation of silver clusters Ag from nanoscale continuous films of Ag on the surface of silicate glass and composite structures from films of Ag with carbon in the form of a continuous film and individual nanoparticles upon annealing in air at temperatures up to 670K is investigated. In the course of the work, the dependences of the surface morphology of silver clusters and absorption spectra in the visible wavelength range were obtained by the methods of atomic force microscopy and optical spectrophotometry. Introduction Plasmon resonance effects on silver and gold clusters are considered as an effective method for increasing the efficiency of photodiodes and thin-film photocells, a mechanism for increasing the capture of light in the visible and near infrared. An active search for nanomaterials with effects and various ways of their integration into real photovoltaic systems (photodiodes and solar cells). There are works , in which the formation of clusters Au and Ag on a transparent conducting contact (TCO) a-Si: H p-i-n structures and in as a return contact for tandem photocells. Silver and gold nanoparticles are used in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy or surfaceenhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy for the analysis of carbon structures and various biomedical applications. Thin solid silver films less than 20 nm thick when heated than 500 K break up into separate clusters having the effect of a localized surface plasmon resonance . During the annealing process, as a result of diffusion processes and the action of surface tension forces, the film is rebuilt, the cohesion is disturbed, the film becomes islet. Superficial plasma absorption occurs in the extrusion spectra, where the center of the absorption band determines the size of the silver nanoparticles. For silver nanoparticles this band is in the range of 300 500 nm. Cluster sizes and optical properties depend on substrate composition, annealing parameters, film thickness . Various methods can be used for the deposition of nanoparticles: deposition from colloidal solutions, lithographic methods, or self-assembly of particles on the surface. Self-assembly into clusters during the deposition of silver can occur either during synthesis during heating of the substrate or during subsequent heat treatment as a result of diffusion processes and the action of surface tension forces. The sizes of silver nanoparticles depend on the composition and temperature of the substrate, annealing parameters, and film thickness . In self-assembly, silver is deposited by thermoresistive evaporation with heating the substrate during deposition or subsequent annealing after deposition or ionic sputtering followed by annealing. With an increase in the film thickness, the size distribution of clusters depends on the thickness and can have both unimodal and bimodal character. The distribution pattern depends on the annealing temperature, substrate thickness, and material. For example, according to the data of , the bimodal character of the distribution is obtained for films with a thickness of more than 10 nm. In addition, with an increase in temperature in a film of the same thickness, the size distribution can change, an increase in the size of clusters, or crystallites, to 300°C, then a decrease from 300°C to 350°C, and again grow at a temperature from 350°C to 450°C with a corresponding change in the area of the occupied substrate surface. In addition, clustering can depend on the crystalline state of the resulting silver film: single-crystal, polycrystalline, or amorphous film. After annealing and clustering, the films exhibit the SPR effect in the range from 400 to 500 nm, which is easily controlled by optical spectrophotometry. According to the microscopic data from , as a result, for thin films, clusters have the shape of flattened spheroids; with a greater thickness, the film is partially destroyed with the formation of cracks. Annealing can be carried out both in vacuum and in any atmosphere. In this work, annealing was carried out in air and low vacuum. The aim of this work is to trace the relationship between the morphology of silver particles formed as a result of annealing and optical transmission spectra. Methodology Pure silver films were prepared by thermoresistive evaporation in vacuum at a pressure of 10 -3 Pa. Films of silver with carbon were prepared by cathode sputtering. Cover glasses for a microscope (optical transparency from 315 nm) were used as a substrate. Cathodic sputtering of silver-carbon films was carried out from a graphite-silver target in argon plasma at a voltage of 2 kV, a current of ~ 30 mA, and a pressure in the working chamber of 9-11 Pa. Changing the silver content on the surface of a graphite target makes it possible to control the carbon content in the film from tens to several percent. After obtaining, the films were annealed in air with heating from 140°C to 400°C and holding at this temperature for 10 minutes and subsequent cooling down to 350°C. The film study was carried out by optical spectrophotometry on a Lambda 25 spectrophotometer in the range 300-800 nm and by atomic-force microscopy on a Solver Next atom in a semi-contact mode with frame sizes ranging from 1x1 µm to 30x30 µm. The thickness of the films prior to annealing was verified by an optical method, by measuring the transmission at a wavelength of 633 nm using the method described in and comparing it with atomic force microscopy data. The accuracy of the thickness determination is limited to 5 nm due to some variability in the film and the error in the transmission method. Figure 1 shows the transmission spectra of silver films obtained by thermoresic evaporation. The characteristic feature of such spectra is that the maximum position of absorption depends on the thickness of the film. At thicknesses greater than 20 nm, the film becomes transparent after annealing, but absorption occurs over the entire wavelength range. At thicknesses of less than 20 nm, an absorption peak is observed, the position of which is determined by Mi theory and depends on the diameter of the particles . Such absorption is characteristic of particles between 5 and 100 nm, and if the thickness increases above 30 nm or decreases below 10 nm the resonant absorption pattern disappears, Figure. 1. The most pronounced resonance is in the area of thicknesses from 15 to 25 nm. At the same time, there is a shift in the maximum absorption position from 468 to 480 nm, accompanied by a change in the mean particle size from 30 to 40 nm, Figure 2 and Figure 3. When the thickness of the films is reduced, in addition to deflection of the maximum position, there is an increase in the absorption peak, which is due to the fact that at such thicknesses clustering is observed with the formation of clusters in the more forked range of sizes from 20 to 100 nm. Еxperimental results When the thickness increases above 30 nm, the temperature is not sufficient to form clusters, or when the film is destroyed, the particles are larger than 100 nm and come into contact with each other, thus blurring the resonance according to Mi's theory or the film does not break down. In Figure 4 shows the transmission spectra of films of silver with carbon (the carbon content in silver is less than 5% by volume). As can be seen from the figure, the position of the absorption Figure 4. The morphology of the surface for films less than 5 nm and 10-15 nm is shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6. As can be seen, the presence of carbon leads to a significant decrease in the particle size. On average, the surface roughness and particle size is less than 5 nm with individual particles less than 20 nm and does not strongly depend on the film thickness. The obtained images of nanoparticles in AFM cannot be explained by the deposition of dust or dirt, since foreign particles are usually much larger, and the results themselves were repeated in several areas of the studied samples. It should be noted that the presence of carbon in some cases leads to an increase in the temperature at which clustering begins. The results obtained with the formation of small nanoparticles less than 5 nm can be interpreted as the initial stage of film crystallization and grain formation. Conclusion The presence of carbon in thin silver films leads to a shift in the absorption peak towards shorter wavelengths from 460-480 nm to 420 nm, which is accompanied by a decrease in the size of the resulting particles.

Successful Curriculum Development and Evaluation of Group Work in an Introductory Mineralogy Laboratory ABSTRACT Mineralogy is a core topic for tertiary geoscience programs worldwide. We report on the use of laboratory group work as an effective and integral part of a new introductory mineralogy curriculum at the University of British Columbia. The new laboratory curriculum was developed by incorporating student feedback with evidence-based pedagogies. These pedagogies include (1) learning goal–based restructuring of content, (2) use of applied topics (e.g., economic mineralogy) and custom projects to promote student engagement, and (3) use of group work and group assessment in order to provide students with opportunities for peer-supported learning and meaningful feedback from teaching assistants (TAs). The new curriculum was evaluated by using a pre- and posttest system and anonymous student surveys in the 2008 and 2009 fall terms. The pre- and posttest results indicate that groups performed better than did individual students, with groups of three and four showing the most positive effects, albeit in different ways. In addition, successful collaboration within groups led to an overall improvement in student performance over the term, with most groups showing an overall larger “success” in the posttest than in the pretest, and the range in student scores within groups getting smaller (by members benefiting from group peer education). Student surveys showed student satisfaction with the new laboratory curriculum and the use of group work and group assessment. Future improvements include the use of a validated instrument in order better understand learning gains and better use or training of TAs to encourage and maintain positive group dynamics.

Research on learning and media Colour is a common feature in computer-aided learning (CAL), though the instructional effects of screen colour are not well understood. This investigation considers the effects of different CAL study tasks with feedback on posttest performance and on posttest memory of the lesson colour scheme. Graduate students (N = 68) completed a computer-based vocabulary lesson that included either multiple-choice or constructed-response study tasks with feedback. Each lesson section used a different colour theme, while the posttest did not use colour. The constructed-response study task was a little more effective for posttest memory of lesson content but was substantially less effective for posttest memory of the lesson colour scheme. These results show a clear interaction of screen colour and lesson study task, a memorycontext effect. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

article Developers of a proposed oil-by-rail terminal that would be the largest in the nation have poured big money into a port commissioner race in Washington state that may shape the project's future. Continue Reading Below Backers of the Vancouver Energy project have given $370,000 in cash to support Kris Greene, who has expressed support for the terminal proposed at the Port of Vancouver, according to filings with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission. That represents the bulk of the cash he has raised in the Vancouver port commissioner's race. His opponent Don Orange is against the proposed $210 million terminal that would handle about 360,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Orange said he would work to end the project's lease at the port. The terminal has been the subject of heated debate in the Northwest. Project developers see it as an opportunity to link domestic crude oil from the Midwest to a West Coast port and bring jobs and money to the region. Critics say it poses too great a risk to people and the environment, and the dangers extend well beyond the facility to include communities along rail lines. Advertisement Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos., operating as Vancouver Energy, have a 10-year lease at the deep-water port about 100 river miles (160.93 river kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean. The proposed terminal would receive an average of four 1½-mile long crude oil trains a day. Oil would be stored on site then loaded onto tankers and ships bound for West Coast refineries. Vancouver Energy said it supports Greene as the candidate with the right experience to lead the port. Company spokesman Jeff Hymas wrote in an email that Greene understands the importance of creating jobs and economic growth in the region. A state energy panel is currently reviewing the project. It will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who will have the final say. The lease between Vancouver Energy and the port allows for changes by either party every 90 days, port spokeswoman Abbi Russell said. People on both sides of the issue see the port commissioner's race as a way to cement support or opposition involving the project. "This race is fundamentally about the terminal," said Mark Stephan, a political science professor at Washington State University Vancouver. "There are a lot of people watching." He called the amount of money in the campaign unusual. "This is a small race among local races. It's not one that gets a lot of attention. This is a significant amount of money," he added. Orange has raised $98,000 in cash, but has also benefited from $297,000 in in-kind contributions, the bulk of which has come from the Washington Conservation Voters Action Fund for voter outreach and staff time. Greene has received $408,000 in cash and benefited from about $181,000 in in-kind contributions, some from Enterprise Washington Jobs, a political action committee whose top donors include Tesoro and BNSF Railway. "Big oil is trying to buy the race. We're trying to protect the river and we're trying to protect clean 21st century jobs," Orange said. "My intent is to do everything legally possible to stop Vancouver from becoming an oil town." Greene sent an email late Thursday saying that "the optics of large contributions is not good — and a challenge for my campaign." He wrote that his opponent was running solely to oppose the terminal before the state energy panel, called the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, completes its review and he disagreed with that. He also noted that if the panel determines the project "is environmentally safe — then I am FOR the project and the economic benefits it will produce for us. If (the panel) determines that the project is environmentally unsafe — then I am against the project."

El Yunque National Forest, formerly known as the Caribbean National Forest,[3][4] is a forest located in northeastern Puerto Rico. It is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Forest System and the United States Forest Service[5] This forest is commonly known as El Yunque, which may be attributed to either a Spanish approximation of the aboriginal Taíno word yu-ke which means "white lands", or the word "anvil," which is yunque in Spanish. The second-tallest mountain within El Yunque is also named El Yunque. El Yunque National Rainforest is located on the slopes of the Sierra de Luquillo mountains, encompassing 28,000 acres (43.753 mi2 or 113.32 km2) of land, making it the largest block of public land in Puerto Rico. The highest mountain peak in the forest rises 3,494 feet (1,065 m) above sea level. Ample rainfall (over 20 feet a year in some areas) creates a jungle-like setting — lush foliage, crags, waterfalls, and rivers are a prevalent sight. The forest has a number of trails from which the jungle-like territory's flora and fauna can be appreciated. El Yunque is also renowned for its unique Taíno petroglyphs. Indigenous people believed that El Yunque was the throne of their chief god Yúcahu, so that it is the Caribbean equivalent to Mount Olympus. El Yunque National Rainforest is currently partially closed until further notice due to Hurricane Maria.[6][7] History [ edit ] El Yunque National Forest map The forest region was initially set aside in 1876 by King Alfonso XII of Spain and represents one of the oldest reserves in the Western Hemisphere. It was established as the Luquillo Forest Reserve on 17 January 1903 by the General Land Office with 65,950 acres (266.9 km2), and became a National Forest in 1906. It was renamed Caribbean National Forest on 4 June 1935.[8] It is home to over 200 species of trees and plants, 23 of which are found nowhere else.[citation needed] The critically endangered Puerto Rican amazon (Amazona vittata), with an estimated wild population of 30 individuals, occurred exclusively in this forest until 19 November 2006, when another wild population was released by the Department of Natural Resources in the municipality of Utuado's Río Abajo State Forest. An executive order signed by President George W. Bush on 2 April 2007 changed the name of the Caribbean National Forest to El Yunque National Forest, better reflecting the cultural and historical feelings of the Puerto Rican people.[9] Climate [ edit ] Because Puerto Rico is south of the Tropic of Cancer, it has a tropical climate. There is no distinct wet or dry season in El Yunque; it rains year round. The temperature and length of daylight remain fairly constant throughout the year. The average temperature in the summer is 80°F(26°C) high and 68°F (20°C) Low and in the Winter 72°F(22°C) high and 58°F(15°C) low, Temperatures can Drop below 50°F(10°C) on clear nights during the Winter, but never below freezing. All of these factors provide a year-round growing season. Skyline of the El Yunque National Rainforest from a trail. Ecology and conservation [ edit ] Coca Falls Its ecosystem is specifically surveyed by the Management Team of Ecosystems (Equipo de Manejos de Ecosistemas), which is led by Pedro Rios.[10] Due to its location in the northeastern part of Puerto Rico, the incoming trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean bash into the mountains, leading to an excess of rainfall registered at about 240 inches (6.1 m) per year.[10] This process is called orographic lift and accounts for the intense rainfall and constant cloud presence in this mountainous region. This constant cloud cover and persistent winds produced by the adiabatic process of air particles rushing up through the mountainside has affected the morphology of El Yunque, but the most effect has been on the bosque enano or dwarf forest.[11] Flora [ edit ] El Yunque is composed of four different forest vegetation areas: Tabonuco Forest, Palo Colorado Forest, Sierra Palm Forest, and Dwarf Forest. The following image shows the green wilderness of El Yunque from one of its peaks; Pico El Yunque. View towards Pico Los Picachos from the top of Pico El Yunque . The visibility for local conditions was exceptional for that day. Dwarf forest [ edit ] The Dwarf forest ecosystem is located at around 3,000 feet (910 m) and composes the smallest sub-region in El Yunque. The forest is characterized by the variation of vegetation that is only found in Puerto Rico. The vegetation shows stunted growth in which the diameter of the trunk is widened and the number of leaves on the branches is lower than expected.[11] Other specific factors that affect the growth of this sub-region are the high level of acidity and poor water runoff from the soil. Although many species have adapted to these harsh environments, five species are frequent in the dwarf forest: Ocotea spathulata, Tabebuia rigida, Calyptranthes krugii, Eugenia borinquensis and Calycogonium squamulosum. The other abundant type of plants in the dwarf forest are epiphytes. El Yunque supports a vast array of animal and plant life that varies depending on the altitude range in the rainforest. The great amount of competition in the canopy does not allow lower level plants to develop and prosper.[12] The characteristic of having a widened tree trunk is ideal for epiphytes that require a host to live. Therefore, a substantial amount of epiphytic plants have cemented their existence in the flora of El Yunque, specifically in the dwarf forest due to the moisture, precipitation and protection from the sun. Fauna [ edit ] Coqui [ edit ] Approximately 16 species of common coqui, members of the diverse neotropical frog genus Eleutherodactylus, are known in Puerto Rico. Of these 16, 13 have been found in El Yunque National Forest.[13] This small frog earned its Puerto Rican common name due to the call of the most common coquí species in Puerto Rico, Eleutherodactylus coqui, which begins as the sun sets and ends in early dawn. This has made it an animal of great endearment to Puerto Ricans. Although the coquí is an amphibian, it possesses some features that are unusual in frogs. These differences are seen mainly in its morphology, reproduction, and developmental stages. In terms of morphology, the coquí does not have webbing between its toes because it is a tree dweller in moist environments. Another significant difference is that it does not have a definite larval stage and the eggs laid by the female are terrestrial instead of aquatic.[13] This means that a miniature frog-let, rather than a tadpole, arises from the incubation period. Puerto Rican Amazon [ edit ] The Puerto Rican parrot is a little parrot that measures 11.0–11.8 in (28–30 cm), the bird is a predominantly green parrot with a red forehead and white rings around the eyes. The species is the only remaining native parrot in Puerto Rico. The total estimated population was 58–80 individuals in the wild and over 300 individuals in captivity. Arthropods [ edit ] Per a study published October 2018, by Bradford C. Lister and Andres Garcia, arthropod biomass in the Luquillo rainforest data taken during the 1970s compared to 30 years later has fallen 10 to 60 times. The study revealed synchronous declines in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods. The study indicated that climate warming is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web. Over the past 30 years, forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] El Portal Rain Forest Center [ edit ] Opened in 1996, the El Portal Rain Forest Center was designed by Segundo Cardona, FAIA of Sierra Cardona Ferrer Architects to give visitors an introduction or beautiful beginning of what the rain forest looks like. Built on a 28,434-acre tropical forest, the Portal was built as a model headquarters for ecotourism and economic development and training, the Center was built to educate those concerned about the wellbeing of the Caribbean National Forest and preserve the unique tropical forest heritage and environment.[23] A walkway set at 60 feet (18 m) above the ground allows for a view of the tops of trees, and another walkway winds along tree bases. Exhibits at the center focus on the plants and animals of the rain forest, the importance of rain forests around the world, and threats to rain forests and efforts to conserve them.[24] The entry experience begins atop an elevated walkway that unites the facility with the surrounding forest and provides views to the mountain peaks, ocean and reforested terrain. The Center contains 9,000 square feet of exhibits, an enclosed theater, conference center classrooms and laboratories, as well as administrative offices. To preserve natural conditions, care was taken to use existing openings for roads, parking areas and buildings while the arrival sequence and parking lots were designed with contours to save existing trees.[25][26] The Portal has survived several major hurricanes including Hurricane Georges on September 21, 1998, Hurricane Maria on September 20, 2017. Miscellaneous [ edit ] America the Beautiful quarter depicting El Yunque National Forest Yokahu Tower There is a common misconception that El Yunque National Forest is the only rainforest in the United States National Forest System (NFS).[note 1] However, this is not the case. There are other rainforests in the National Forest System, including those in Alaska (Example: Tongass National Forest) and the Pacific Northwest (Example: Mount Hood Wilderness) as stated in the US Forest Service website.[27] As El Yunque's own official website states, El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest in the System, but it is not the only rainforest.[28] There are two observation towers including Yokahu Tower and Mount Britton Tower. El Yunque National Forest was chosen to be Puerto Rico's entry in the America the Beautiful Quarters program. Its only National Park Service site, San Juan National Historic Site had already been featured on the District of Columbia and United States Territories Quarters in 2009. In 2002, the U.S. Congress designated areas bounded by the Río Mameyes, Río de la Mina, and Río Icacos in the Caribbean National Forest as components of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.[29] See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]

So public space, even a modest and chaotic swath of it like Taksim, again reveals itself as fundamentally more powerful than social media, which produce virtual communities. Revolutions happen in the flesh. In Taksim, strangers have discovered one another, their common concerns and collective voice. The power of bodies coming together, at least for the moment, has produced a democratic moment, and given the leadership a dangerous political crisis. “We have found ourselves,” is how Omer Kanipak, a 41-year-old Turkish architect, put it to me, about the diverse gathering at Gezi Park on the north end of Taksim, where the crowds are concentrated in tent encampments and other makeshift architecture after Mr. Erdogan’s government ordered bulldozers to make way for the mall. And there’s the hitch. The prime minister has emerged as the strongest leader Turkey has had since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the republic — but he remains not much of an architect or urban planner. Like other longtime rulers, he has assumed the mantle of designer in chief, fiddling over details for giant mosques, planning a massive bridge and canal, devising gated communities in the name of civic renewal and economic development. The goal is a scripted public realm. Taksim, the lively heart of modern Istanbul, has become Mr. Erdogan’s obsession, and perhaps his Achilles’ heel. And it’s no wonder. Taksim’s very urban fabric — fluid, irregular, open and unpredictable — reflects the area’s historic identity as the heart of modern, multicultural Turkey. This was where poor European immigrants settled during the 19th century. It was a honky-tonk quarter into the 1980s, a haven to gays and lesbians, a locus of nightclubs, foreign movie palaces and French-style covered arcades. Gravestones from an Armenian cemetery at Taksim demolished in 1939 were used to construct stairs at Gezi Park, a republican-era project by the French planner Henri Prost that is like the jumble of high-rise hotels, traffic circles and the now-shuttered opera house on the square, named after Ataturk. It is a symbol of modernity. The prime minister’s vision of a big pedestrian plaza, with buried traffic, is intended to smooth out the square — to remake it into a neo-Ottoman theme park. Mr. Erdogan has lately backed away from installing a mall in the faux Ottoman barracks that will go where Gezi is now. But he intends to raze a poor neighborhood nearby called Tarlabasi and build high-end condominiums. Yet another of his projects envisions a hygienic parade ground on the southern outskirts of the city, designed for mass gatherings as if to quarantine protests: the anti-Taksim. The real Taksim is an unruly commons in the middle of the city. Mr. Erdogan has already demolished a beloved cinema and old chocolate pudding shop on Istiklal (Independence) Avenue, the main street and neighborhood backbone into Taksim.

There are many reasons to be sad that Fringe is over. But chief among them is the fact that its passing leaves a conspicuous vacuum: there's just not a lot of science fiction on television any more. Fringe reveled in its science fiction trappings, featuring a mad scientist hero and stories about time travel, future mutants and alternate universes. Now that Fringe is no longer with us, what's left of science fiction on television? And is there any hope that science heroes could make a comeback? Let's take stock. Advertisement So it's not true that there's no science fiction left on television. Here are some shows that are on now or coming soon: U.S. Shows Advertisement Falling Skies is coming back this summer, or maybe late spring. And it's a full-blown show about an alien invasion and a post-apocalyptic world, complete with multiple different alien races that we're just starting to learn about. Also, there's the whole ongoing storyline where most of the children have been fitted with alien "harnesses." Defiance is coming to Syfy in April. This is also a show about the aftermath of a war with aliens, some of whom now live on Earth. It appears to be delving pretty deeply into the aliens and their culture, as well as how the world has changed after the war. And there's an MMO that crosses over with the TV show. Fingers crossed! Advertisement Person of Interest is about the world's first true artificial intelligence, a machine that can see everything that happens via webcams and surveillance cameras and use it to predict future events with astonishing accuracy. As the show has gotten into its second season, we've learned a bit more about the Machine and had more overt discussions about the nature of A.I. Advertisement Revolution is coming back in March. And even though Eric Kripke and company could easily have said all of the world's energy and power was shut down due to black magic — especially with Kripke's Supernatural pedigree — they chose to go with science. We've glimpsed a supercollider, which seems to have something to do with it. Kripke even claims to have vetted the premise with a physicist. Image via Revolution Fancast. The Neighbors is on now — and it's basically your standard Married With Children-style sitcom about family life, except the neighbors are all aliens. Including an alien family, who interact a lot with the human family. We learn dribs and drabs about the aliens' culture in every episode. Advertisement Beauty and the Beast is coming back this week. And it's definitely a show that could have been fantasy — as far as I know, the 1987 show that it's based on was purely magical. But the new show has completely revamped the Beast's origin, making him the result of military "supersoldier" experiments that mutated his DNA. He's sort of like the Hulk, actually. Advertisement Touch is coming back in February, and it's sort of mystical but sort of sciencey — Jake the mute child can see the connections between numbers and see what's going to happen (sort of like the Machine in Person of Interest.) And I guess Jake can see the "pain of the universe" through the numbers, because he understands how everything in the world is connected. Orphan Black is an original show coming to BBC America in March, and it's about a woman who discovers that she's one of a huge set of identical clones. You can see the first trailer for it here. Advertisement Under the Dome is premiering this summer on CBS, and it's an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a small town in Maine that's covered by an impermeable dome. And in the King novel, at least, there are other science fiction elements. Advertisement Various Cartoons. Actually, when it comes to cartoons, science fiction pretty much dominates. Among others, there's Ben 10, who can transform himself into various alien creatures. There are a bunch of science-based superhero shows, including Green Lantern, Young Justice, Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble. There's Star Wars: The Clone Wars. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who have "mutant" right there in their name. And of course, there's Futurama. The Walking Dead. Thanks to Brad Hage for mentioning this one — it's never entirely clear what's turned people into zombies, but it's at least hinted that it's a virus. Advertisement Imports Continuum just started on Syfy, and it's a full-on time travel show about a cop and a bunch of terrorists from the future coming to present-day Vancouver. It wears its science fiction trappings pretty proudly, including supersuits, expandable guns and neural interfaces. Advertisement Doctor Who comes back in April. It's definitely been mining the "fairy tale" vein pretty intensively the past few years, and just today William Shatner insisted the show was "science fantasy" rather than "science fiction." But it's still about a man of science, who has a time machine and finds rational explanations for things. Advertisement Borealis is the show we wish would become an ongoing series — the pilot just aired in Canada on the Space Channel, and we dearly hope they decide to greenlight more of it. It's set in the future and includes some fun technologies like zero-gravity pleasure rooms. But it also talks about important issues like the future of energy and conservation of endangered species. Advertisement Black Mirror is coming back to British TV, hopefully this year. And in just a few potent hours of weird one-off storytelling, Charlie Brooker's show will probably hit us with more science fictional ideas and jarring images than a whole season of most other shows. Primeval: The New World has been airing in Canada recently. It's a spin-off of the British show about time travel that brings monsters from the past and future to the present. Thanks to Blackoak for mentioning this one! Utopia just started airing on Channel 4 in the U.K. — it's set in the future, with a looming famine, and although it's unclear how much of the show's events are supernatural versus super-sciencey, there's still plenty of weird science to go around. Thanks to everybody who brought this one up. Advertisement Misfits features kids with superpowers, which they got via lightning. Weird science? Magic? Kind of hard to say. Is there hope? Right now fantasy is kind of ruling television, with shows like Game of Thrones, True Blood, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Vampire Diaries and various others riding high. Even Syfy seems mostly geared towards fantasy at the moment, especially since they just pulled the plug on the mutant-tastic Alphas. Advertisement A similar thing happened in books at one point — science fiction book sales were tanking, and there was a huge spike in sales of fantasy books. And yet, if you look at this chart, it turns out that spike was a one-year thing, and now both fantasy and science fiction are declining at about the same rate (in print sales, anyway.) If anything, fantasy and science fiction books are converging somewhat — and in e-books, where the growth is, a lot of the popular titles seem to be space opera or post-apocalyptic science fiction. So it's easy to mistake a blip for a trend — and things change all the time. And things definitely go in fads. And of course, science fiction premises are still huge at the movies this year, with most of the big original blockbusters featuring future Earths, giant robots and whatnot. Advertisement I'm guessing the hard part, on television, is sustaining a science fiction-y premise week after week, in a way that feels welcoming to new viewers and unthreatening to people who mostly watch police procedurals. Something like Person of Interest seems to do well, because it has a lot of the elements of a procedural, including a small family of characters that the viewer invests in. A ton of science fiction shows in recent years have tried to go "high concept," with huge mysteries and confusing conspiracies, but a more low-key, character-based approach seems like it might work better for audiences in 2013. And we may not be getting back to the format of "people in polyester trade technobabble for five minutes" storytelling any time soon, but that's okay. Anyway, there are a few trends that seem likely to bring more science fiction to our screens, sooner rather than later... Android cop shows. I've actually lost count of how many android cop shows there are in development. There's the untitled show that Howard Gordon and Josh Friedman are working on, which seems to be still in the works. And Fringe's J.H. Wyman is working on an android cop show with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. I have a feeling there were one or two other android crime shows in the pipeline, but I'm not sure if they still are. In any case, it seems like a decent bet that one of these will get aired. Advertisement Syfy might do a proper space opera again. Syfy hasn't aired a show about spaceships since Stargate Universe — and they chose to turn Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome into a webseries months before airing it. But at some point, they'll want to roll the dice on spaceships again, and they have a couple prospects in the works: the Blake's 7 reboot, with Martin Campbell on board to direct the pilot, and Robert Hewitt Wolfe's Defender. And meanwhile, Stephen DeKnight is still developing his interstellar war show Incursion for Starz. And I could still see us getting a new television Star Trek in the next five years. Superhero shows are on the upswing. It seems pretty likely we'll be watching S.H.I.E.L.D. this fall, and it'll include weird superweapons and insane technology, plus the after-effects of an alien invasion of Earth. And if S.H.I.E.L.D. and Amazon both debut and do well, the networks might take more chances on televising some of the other superheroes who have science-based origins. Martian Manhunter, anyone? Advertisement All it really takes is one or two more shows to hit big with conspicuous science fiction elements, like weird technology, fascinating science, or alien creatures — and we'll probably have a new trend on our hands. In the meantime, there's actually quite a bit for science fiction fans to look forward to.

Advocate Discernment The Spread the Word resistance movement began in 1995 as a call for discernment and action against abuses toward humanity demonstrated by so-called alien entities. With abduction reports on the rise, the nature of the perpetrators is becoming more clear. These entities, specifically the Grays and their associates, are breaking the laws of both humankind and God. They kidnap, rape, implant and traumatize men, women and children repeatedly. They have no compassion for emotions or pain, mirroring the worst of our own behavior. STW has established a voice of resistance through an emblem - the image on our stickers. We are saying NO to the deception, oppression, and passive victimhood. Highly respected researchers of alien resistance are finding that faith, strength of spirit and righteous anger are successfully averting abduction attempts. People need to know and to believe: Resistance works. STW encourages a careful search for the truth. With much confusion and conflicting information clouding the facts, we urge everyone to carefully assess the testimonials, including ours. Think about it, absorb it, search within and find your own truth. Most importantly, take an educated stand. For FREE stickers of this image, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: V2/STW Box 911 Stanwood WA, 98292 USA Help Spread the Word! You get over 200 free 1-inch stickers and 3 free 4-inch stickers with each request. If you are requesting stickers from outside of the USA, please send two or more international postal reply coupons (if available at your local post office) instead of stamps. Stamps from your country, however beautiful, are unusable in the United States. (If IRCs are unavailable, please message us on Facebook to make arrangements for shipping.) Need more stickers? Write again! Extra stamps = extra stickers. Large quantities available. See our STUFF section. News Updates In 1995 the original Resistance Movement against alien oppression was born- Spread the Word- with the first printing of the resistance emblem. Starting with our initial run of 9000 stickers, the keys to P.O. Box 911 (a gift from God), and an ad in an independent magazine, we began sending stickers to anyone who responded. Thousands of stickers soon turned into millions through the miracle of networking with ongoing sticker requests now spanning decades. We are and have been committed to the mission of bringing awareness to all in a language everyone can understand; a universal symbol. These days we often get letters saying "I had your stickers as a kid" with requests for more. Nothing is more gratifying to us than hearing from our old friends. We get many letters thanking us for still being here at the original Resistance Headquarters. Our thanks however, go out to you- all those people all over the planet who have distributed the stickers wherever they go. We couldn't do what we do without you. Now, with the internet and access to social media, the movement continues to take on new forms. Photos and updates will now be posted on our Facebook page as we go forward. As always, send us a stamped business-sized envelope with your address if you'd like a supply of our stickers. We will fill it with stickers and send it back to you. Our endless gratitude to all. Continue to fight the Good Fight! We are now on facebook Previous Posts 15 Years and an Unsung Hero As Spread the Word celebrates 15 years of alien resistance, we would like to acknowledge an Unsung Hero, without whom this campaign could not continue. Our deepest gratitude goes out to the printer of the STW stickers. For years our sticker source has been steadfast in printing and delivering our stix, giving us the best price breaks possible, and never once raising the price in all these years despite what we are sure are mounting costs on their end. Without our generous and compassionate printer, STW would not be able to offer stickers free to everyone. In passing the 23 million sticker milestone, STWHQ wishes to at long last thank our loyal printer and dear friend, affectionately known as "S2". We couldn't do what we do without you! Summer Update Our very best to festival/symposium participants, sticker distributors, and attendees at this year's Roswell events. The quest for truth is, and always has been, a noble one. Congratulations to the Alien Resistance Group/Roswell on their 10th anniversary. To those who have experienced mail delays, we thank you for your patience. Occasionally mail does get lost (or abducted) coming or going so if you do not receive your stix within 3 weeks, please write again and let us know. STW also extends gratitude to the researchers and authors over the years who have sent us their books and their support. Special thanks to those who have included mention of the resistance (or stickers) in their publications. We stand honored and salute you. Mail Delays and Acknowledging the Military Thanks in advance to those requesting stickers for their patience this Spring and into the Summer as operations at STW Headquarters go mobile for a time. Please allow several weeks for delivery of your stickers. Also, STW extends a long delayed expression of gratitude to members of the military who have continued distribution of stickers in Iraq and elsewhere overseas for many years. To all our friends all over the world, we thank you. Keep fighting the good fight! 22 Million Stickers and Continued Activities Worldwide We cannot send enough thanks to our devoted champion in New York City whose fearless efforts there this year have been beyond compare. Through the amazing distribution efforts of this single dedicated individual, inestimable thousands of New Yorkers and visitors to the city have been visually inoculated with the STW emblem. (See photo page.) We are forever indebted to our loyal friend along with newly formed resistance groups in Scotland, Sweden and Belarus. Ongoing appreciation to our heroes in Mexico City. We also thank those who made room in their baggage for stix and distributed them throughout Europe and Canada during summer travels. Our gratitude also extends to faithful resisters who distributed thousands of stickers at the Roswell Festival again this year. Our thankfulness is compounded as Spread the Word has now passed the 22 million sticker mark. STW takes the show on the road! Beginning in May, the STW Crew will be venturing from headquarters and taking frequent road trips. We anticipate these efforts to be fruitful. STW asks for patience with sticker requests in receiving materials as there will be some delays in shipments. As always, we are so grateful for all resistance efforts. Thank you for understanding as this campaign goes forward. 21 Million Stickers and Continued Activities Worldwide Having just passed the 21 million sticker milestone, STW extends a very special thanks once again to our ever-constant and kind friends in Mexico City for their heroic diligence there, despite occasional frustrations with abducted packages. We also wish to acknowledge our brave ally in Bulgaria facilitating sticker distribution in Macedonia and the Balkans. To our old friend in Portugal, thank you for helping to spread the word in your language via the Internet. Anonymous resisters at the Burning Man event in Nevada made the emblem quite visible once again, for which we are extremely grateful, as attendance was near 50,000 this year. Thanks always to all our friends in the music industry worldwide. Continued gratitude to our longtime friend in Texas for ongoing distribution efforts at the local library there. And to our friends who were the voice of resistance at the Roswell Festival this year, we salute you all. Resistance in Action Courtesy of Eclipse Records, STW now has a Street Team! Accolades to Mail Artists and Relay for Life Team STW would like to offer a long delayed extension of gratitude and respect to the worldwide mail art network. Mail artists from around the globe have distributed stickers for over a decade through their own unique and creative web. We are honored to be a part of the mail art community whose correspondences have colored the STW mailbox for many years. Our deep thanks also to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life Team/Florida for their fine efforts supporting both causes this past spring. Well done everyone! Resistance efforts in South America Many thanks to the major record and concert production company in Bogota, Colombia, for its resistance efforts in South America. The company distributes stickers at concerts, and includes a sticker on every event ticket. Through industry magazines, this company has offered networking of resistance materials in conjunction with international band promotion. Spread the Word wishes to extend deepest gratitude to the tour manager/editor who has been behind the alien resistance movement for nearly 10 years. Muchas gracias to our loyal and caring friend for continued and tireless dedication. Resistance activities underway in Kosovo, formerly Yugoslavia. Kosovo is a struggling country with an average monthly salary of $30 and unemployment rate of 60%, yet still wanting participation in world issues. For security reasons, supplies were sent to a contact person in a neighboring country who was kind enough to deliver the stickers across the border to a library in Kosovo, where they will be distributed. STW extends our deep gratitude to the courageous individuals behind this effort. Send in Your Site Translations! Speak another language? We are always willing to post the basic materials of our site in different languages. So if you happen to speak Swedish or some other tongue, we would love to get your translations to post in our WORLD section. We will send you some extra stickers for your trouble. Just mail your translations along with your sticker request to the same address you see above. But before you do, check the world section to see if we already have your language. Thanks! (Now updated with new translations.)

A checklist of ciliate parasites (Ciliophora) of fishes from Mexico. A database with all available published accounts of the ciliate parasite species of Mexican fishes was assembled. This information, along with records derived from own recent research, allow generating a checklist containing all the records, which is a necessary first step to address future questions in the areas of ecology, evolutionary biology and biogeography of these host-parasite associations. The checklist is presented as a parasite-host list, and a host-parasite list. The checklist contains 30 nominal species, from 9 genera and 8 families of ciliate parasites. Most of the primary records were done for exotic fish species, artificially introduced to Mexico for aquaculture purposes; however, recent works have been conducted in diverse species of native fishes. Excepting one, all the ciliate species listed here have been previously recorded for diverse fish species from different localities around the world. Based on the amount of information contained in this checklist, much more effort is necessary to accurately know the diversity of species of this type of parasites in fish fauna of Mexico.

Are We There Yet? Archaeology and the Postmodern in the New Millennium The present text discusses the significance of the postmodern condition in contemporary archaeology. Five themes associated with postmodernism are discussed (a) the relativization of truth, knowledge, and meaning, (b) the fragmentation of the grand narrative, (c) the relation between agency and discourse, (d) pluralism, multivocality, and heterogeneity, and (e) rhetoric and styles of writing. In contemporary debate it has been suggested that postmodernism is a past phase and that these contested issues have become less important. It is, however, argued here that these are by no means resolved, but rather bypassed by shifting focus to archaeology as a contemporary practice or, in theoretical terms, towards particularistic neo-materialist ontologies.

Simple Calls for Flexible Constructs Using the Traditional File API We present the design for a remote qos control interface to the transport protocol based on existing work for similar applications. This puts together the read/write calls from the traditional le system API and an additional primitive. The addition amounts to programming an operating system data-streaming service which may be provided as a system call or otherwise using the standard techniques. Put together these allow much more than the traditional call based control interface. The resulting interface simpli es the mechanisms for distributed control. Parts of this interface have also been implemented in our ongoing experiments with le transfer.

Exploration of the GM1 receptor-binding site of heat-labile enterotoxin and cholera toxin by phenyl-ring-containing galactose derivatives. Cholera toxin (CT) and the closely related heat-labile enterotoxin of Escherichia coli (LT) are responsible for numerous cases of diarrhea worldwide, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality. The B subunits of these heterohexameric AB(5) toxins form a pentameric arrangement which is responsible for binding to the receptor GM1 of the target epithelial cells of the host. Blocking these B pentamer-receptor interactions forms an avenue for therapeutic intervention. Here, the structural characterization of potential receptor-blocking compounds are described based on the previously identified inhibitor m-nitrophenyl-alpha-D-galactoside (MNPG). The structure of a CTB-MNPG complex confirms that the binding mode of this inhibitor is identical in the two homologous toxins CT and LT and is characterized by a glycosyl linkage geometry that leads to displacement of a well ordered water molecule near the amide group of Gly33 by the O1-substituent of MNPG. This glycosyl geometry is not maintained in the absence of a substituent that can displace this water, as shown by a complex of LTB with p-aminophenyl-alpha-D-galactoside (PAPG). New compounds were synthesized to investigate the feasibility of maintaining the favorable binding interactions exhibited by MNPG while gaining increased affinity through the addition of hydrophobic substituents complementary to either of two hydrophobic regions of the receptor-binding site. The structural characterization of complexes of LTB with two of these compounds, 3-benzylaminocarbonylphenyl-alpha-D-galactoside (BAPG) and 2-phenethyl-7-(2,3-dihydrophthalazine-1,4-dione)-alpha-D-galactoside (PEPG), demonstrates a partial success in this goal. Both compounds exhibit a mixture of binding modes, some of which are presumably influenced by the local packing environment at multiple crystallographically independent binding sites. The terminal phenyl ring of BAPG associates either with the phenyl group of Tyr12 or with the hydrophobic patch formed by Lys34 and Ile58. The latter interaction is also made by the terminal phenyl substituent of PEPG, despite a larger ring system linking the galactose moiety to the terminal phenyl. However, neither BAPG nor PEPG displaces the intended target water molecule. Both of the designed compounds exhibit increased affinity relative to the galactose and to PAPG notwithstanding the failure to displace a bound water, confirming that additional favorable hydrophobic interactions can be gained by extending the starting inhibitor by a hydrophobic tail. The insight gained from these structures should allow the design of additional candidate inhibitors that retain both the glycosyl geometry and water displacement exhibited by MNPG and the favorable hydrophobic interactions exhibited by BAPG and PEPG.

The Playstation Portable 2, rumored to have dual analog sticks, a bigger screen and touch controls, will also rival the Xbox 360 in processing power and ditch the UMD format, sources tell Kotaku. Earlier this week multiple sources detailed meetings with Sony during the Tokyo Game Show about the long-rumored PSP2. In those meetings about the portable, we were told, the device was shown to have a touch panel on the back of the system what looked like a mouse trackpad. The PSP2 also had dual analog sticks and a larger display which Sony touted as being "HD." While the device was shown in two form-factors, one that looked like the PSPgo (seen above) and one that looked like the PSP, Sony told attendees that they have not yet settled on the final design for the system. Advertisement Since breaking the news earlier this week, a few more details have shaken loose about the device, which our sources have verified. One of the key ones is that the PSP2 will not have a UMD drive. The UMD (Universal Media Disc) was launched in 2004 for use in the PSP. Initially, the format was used for movies, but slow sales of UMD films lead to studios dropping support for the format. Sony's PSPgo is UMD-free version of the PSP, and sources tell Kotaku that the PSP2 will follow in the footsteps of that portable. Games will be stored on a Memory Stick, according to one source. Though we've also been told that Sony is still puzzling out what the final non-UMD storage solution will be for the PSP2. Advertisement We've also learned that the PSP2 will be a much more powerful gaming device with twice the RAM of the Xbox 360. While we don't yet know all of the portable's system specifications, we have been told that the PSP2 will feature 1 GB of RAM. That's compared to the 64 MB of RAM the PSPgo and PSP 3000 have. Both of those portables use a MIPS R4000 CPU clocked at up to 333 MHz. By comparison the Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM and runs a 3.2 GHZ CPU. The specs for the yet-to-be-released Nintendo 3DS haven't been officially detailed but we've heard it will be as powerful as the Nintendo Wii which features 64 MB of RAM, and a special processor clocked at 729 MHz. Advertisement It's starting to sound like someone at Sony is listening to the murmuring about the Playstation Portable and doing something to fix the issues some have with it. Dual analog sticks. No UMD. A bigger screen. More powerful tech. Touch controls. We're not hearing a single thing we don't like so far.

Gloria von Thurn und Taxis im vergangenen Jahr in der WDR-Talkshow "Ich stelle mich" (Bild: WDR) 12. August 2017, 14:15h, In einem Kommentar für die neueste Ausgabe der "Katholischen SonntagsZeitung" ruft Gloria von Thurn und Taxis zu Gebeten gegen Schulaufklärung über sexuelle und geschlechtliche Vielfalt auf. "Mittlerweile gibt es offiziell 60 verschiedene Geschlechteridentitäten, von Transgender bis Pangender und intersexuell", beklagt sich die 57-Jährige unter der Überschrift "Maria, die Mittlerin der Gnaden" anlässlich des bevorstehenden Festtags Mariä Himmelfahrt am 15. August. "Den Kindern soll bereits in der Vorschule spielerisch beigebracht werden, wie sich sexuelle Vielfalt angeblich positiv auswirkt." Die "Katholische SonntagsZeitung" ist das offizielle Regensburger Bistumsblatt Als Katholikin will Gloria von Thurn und Taxis das nicht hinnehmen: "Es ist heute wichtiger denn je, die Gottesmutter im Gebet anzurufen", heißt es weiter in ihrem Kommentar. "Wir brauchen ihren Schutz, Ihren Rat, aber vor allem die Gnade, uns aus der Unfreiheit zu befreien, damit wir frei als Gotteskinder leben können. Dafür feiern wir sie und dafür pilgern wir zu ihr, damit Sie unser Herz erleuchtet, um nicht unterzugehen in der Unfreiheit unserer Zeit." Die "Katholische SonntagsZeitung" ist das offizielle Blatt des Bistums Regensburg und wird von Bischof Rudolf Voderholzer herausgegeben. Der Dogmatiker ist ein Unterstützer der "Demo für alle" (queer.de berichtete). Die Eheöffnung für homosexuelle Paare bezeichnete Voderholzer als "Abkehr von einer in der Menschheitserfahrung seit unvordenklichen Zeiten hochgehaltenen und vom Grundgesetz ausdrücklich geschützten Institution" (queer.de berichtete). Jahrelanger Kampf gegen Homosexualität Gloria von Thurn und Taxis war bereits mehrfach mit homo- und transphoben Äußerungen aufgefallen. Bei "Menschen bei Maischberger" erklärte sie etwa 2008, dass Homosexualität "contra naturam" sei und warnte Schwule und Lesben davor, dass sie in die Hölle kommen (queer.de berichtete). Einige Tage später meinte sie gegenüber der "Bild"-Zeitung, dass es "reine Homosexualität so gar nicht gibt", dies sei nur eine Modeerscheinung oder ein "Kult" (queer.de berichtete). Im vergangenen Jahr räumte die selbsternannte Fürstin in der Sendung "Ich stelle mich" überraschend ein, dass sie als Kind lieber ein Junge gewesen wäre, und ließ sich zu dem Satz hinreißen: "Ich bin vielleicht eine Transe" (queer.de berichtete). Zum Entsetzen von Opferverbänden hatte Gloria von Thurn und Taxis im Juli den Missbrauchskandal bei den Regensburger Domspatzen relativiert. Der Vorwurf, dass die Institution die Fälle ermöglicht habe, sei "totaler Schmarrn, das ist einfach richtig gemein", erklärte sie gegenüber dem Bayrischen Rundfunk zu den über 500 Fällen von Kindesmisshandlung und -missbrauch. "In jeder Schule, in jedem Sportverein gibt es dieses Phänomen und das wird es auch immer geben. Man geht gerne auf die Kirche los und das ist ein gefundenes Fressen." (mize)

I just read several more horror stories that include, among other things, failed backups. I’ve said it before (at volume, extreme volume), and evidently I have to say it again. Simply creating a backup file is not enough to ensure the protection of your information. In order to attempt to reinforce the importance of this idea, I’m going to introduce a new concept. Maybe it’ll help. I’m calling it “The Three T’s of Backups.” Take ‘Em First, and most important, you have to Take backups. That’s your first “T”. No, disk redundancy through RAID or a SAN or some other setup is not adequate to protect your information. You must take backups. They have to be created and they have to be run regularly. You absolutely should automate this. Test ‘Em Now that you are taking your backups, you need to Test your backups. That’s your second “T”. Simply having a backup doesn’t mean much if you can’t restore it. How do you know if you can restore a backup? You test it. How do you test it? You run the restore process. Not only does this test your backup, but it tests your ability to do the restore. I would strongly recommend automating this as well. Transfer ‘Em With your backups in place and tested, now you need to copy them to a second location, Transfer them offsite. This is your third “T”. Things happen. Fire, flood, wind and extra-solar radiation. Any, or all, of these things and more, can affect your servers. So, let’s take our tested backups and transfer them to a second location (and maybe a third if we’re feeling really paranoid). One onsite and one in the cloud. One in a local data center and one in a distant data center. Oh, and let’s automate transferring the tested backups we’ve taken. The Three T’s Backups: Take ‘Em Test ‘Em Transfer ‘Em Now get out there and make this happen. Take your backups. Test your backups. Transfer your backups. Automate each of these steps and validate that everything is actually working. It’s your information. It’s your business. If you want to protect it, you’ll do the Three T’s. Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit LinkedIn Tumblr WhatsApp Pocket Email

On the Interpolation of Model Atmospheres and High-Resolution Synthetic Stellar Spectra We present tests carried out on optical and infrared stellar spectra to evaluate the accuracy of different types of interpolation. Both model atmospheres and continuum normalized fluxes were interpolated. In the first case we used linear interpolation, and in the second linear, cubic spline, cubic-Bezier and quadratic-Bezier methods. We generated 400 ATLAS9 model atmospheres with random values of the atmospheric parameters for these tests, spanning between -2.5 and +0.5 in , from 4500 to 6250 K in effective temperature, and 1.5 to 4.5 dex in surface gravity. Synthesized spectra were created from these model atmospheres, and compared with spectra derived by interpolation. We found that the most accurate interpolation algorithm among those considered in flux space is cubic-Bezier, closely followed by quadratic-Bezier and cubic splines. Linear interpolation of model atmospheres results in errors about a factor of two larger than linear interpolation of fluxes, and about a factor of four larger than high order flux interpolations. Introduction Even within the framework of classical LTE 1D models, the calculation of a stellar model atmosphere takes a finite amount of time, which can be significant when complex opacities are involved. Massive spectroscopic surveys require large numbers of models spanning a wide range of parameters and can become very time consuming. Depending on the algorithm used, even the analysis of a single star may require many model atmospheres to evaluate the performance of different combinations of parameters. In practice, the need for model spectra for many parameter combinations is satisfied by taking one or several shortcuts that avoids the actual calculation of self-consistent models. The most wideused strategy is some sort of interpolation, either in the model atmosphere (the run with height of the main thermodynamical variables), or in the emerging radiative fluxes or intensities. Different recipes have been used, and codes circulate among researchers, but few have been published and thoroughly tested. In this paper we perform a battery of tests in order to quantify the typical errors incurred when interpolating model atmospheres or the model fluxes calculated from them. Section 2 describes our calculations and §3 our results, with a summary provided in §4. Calculations We generated a regular grid of ATLAS9 model atmospheres with from −2.5 to +0.5 in steps of 0.5 dex, T eff from 4500 K to 6250 K in steps of 250 K, and log g from 1.5 to 4.5 dex in steps of 0.5 dex. We also calculated 400 additional models with random parameters within the boundaries of the regular grid. The microturbulence was chosen to be constant at 2 km s −1 in all our calculations. The relatively small range of T eff is to ensure that all ATLAS9 models are fully converged throughout the entire atmosphere. Since ATLAS9 start to experience convergence problems in the outer layers of the atmosphere below 4250 K and above logg = 4, especially at low metallicities, we chose to omit that region from the calculations. Stars warmer than 6250 K have spectra dominated mainly by hydrogen lines, thus it is expected that interpolation errors will decrease as temperatures increase, and the examples of spectra with 6250 K are good representation of warmer stars. After careful consideration we decided that the above values gave the largest range in all three parameters combined. Two representative wavelength regions were chosen, one in the optical, and including both weak and strong spectral lines (the Mg Ib triplet) between 516.5 and 519.5 nm, and one in the near-infrared, and in particular the H-band window, targeted by the Apache Point Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE, Allende Eisenstein et al. 2011;Wilson et al. 2012), spanning between 1509.1 and 1699.5 nm. We carried out two types of tests, one involving interpolation in the model atmospheres directly, and a second one involving interpolation in the emergent fluxes. In the first type of test, we interpolated models with the chosen random parameters from the grid, and synthesized the emergent spectra. The comparison was made between these and the fluxes calculated from the models with the randomly generated parameters. In the second case, we calculated the emergent spectra for the models generated from the random parameters (true flux), and the evenly distributed models. Then, we interpolated the spectra from the evenly spaced models to the sets of random parameters and examined the differences in continuum normalized flux relative to the true flux. The flux interpolation tests were performed with linear (F(L)), cubic spline (F(CS)), cubic-Bezier (F(CB)), and quadratic-Bezier (F(QB)) methods, while in the case of the model atmosphere interpolations (MA) we only explored the linear algorithm. Model atmosphere calculations Our regularly spaced ATLAS9 model atmospheres were calculated as described by Meszaros et al. (2012). However, there are some differences between these models and those presented by Meszaros et al. (2012) 1 : those used here correspond to different versions of the line data, and an older version of the code, plus a number of other differences regarding the configuration of the input for the ATLAS9 code. The calculations used here are older, and the updated ones are to be preferred, but since these details are irrelevant for the evaluation of the interpolation accuracy, we have chosen to retain the custom-made calculations. The opacity distribution functions (ODFs) and Rosseland opacities needed as input were calculated using the DFSYNTHE and KAPPA9 codes, while the model atmospheres were generated with the linux version of the ATLAS9 code (Kurucz 1979(Kurucz , 1993Sbordone 2004Sbordone , 2005. The ODF calculations followed the method described by Castelli & Kurucz (2003); Castelli (2005), while the model atmosphere calculations are detailed in Meszaros et al. (2012). ATLAS9 gives excellent convergence in the parameter range chosen above. In addition to the regular grid, we made calculations for 400 additional random models. The parameters for these were drawn from random uniform distributions across the chosen ranges. These calculations are fully consistent with the models in the grid. Model atmosphere interpolation We interpolated model atmospheres for the 400 sets of random parameters. For each target model, we identified the 8 immediate neighbors with higher and lower values for each parameter in the grid, calculated by numerical integration the Rosseland optical depth for each, re-sampled all the thermodynamical quantities in the atmosphere (temperature, gas pressure, and electron density) on a common optical depth scale for all models by linear interpolation, and then interpolated, linearly, all the thermodynamical quantities to the parameters (T eff , log g, and ) of the target model. Other quantities included in the models (Rosseland opacities, radiative pressure, etc.) were also interpolated in the same way. The interpolations were carried out using the kmod code. This code has already been used in a number of investigations (Reddy et al. 2003(Reddy et al. , 2006Yong et al. 2013). It is written in IDL and it is publicly available 2 . Calculation of model fluxes We calculated model fluxes for all model atmospheres using the ASSǫT spectral synthesis code (Koesterke et al. 2008;Koesterke 2009) with detailed continuum opacities by Allende and updates from Allende . Line data come mainly from the calculations and compilations by Kurucz (available from his website 3 ), enhanced with damping constants from Barklem (2007) when available. We adopted solar reference abundances as in Asplund et al. (2005), and the compositions used in the calculations of the model atmospheres were consistent with those adopted in the spectral synthesis. We underline, however, that the interpolation tests performed here are fairly insensitive to the particular choices for the reference solar composition and the atomic and molecular data, as long as these choices are reasonable and lead to spectra that resemble approximately the modeled stars. The most critical aspect, is to ensure that the calculations for the models in the grid and those with random parameters used for tests, are completely consistent. Flux Interpolations Flux interpolations are consecutively performed in surface gravity, effective temperature, and metallicity. Quadratic and cubic Bezier interpolation are implemented with control values that make the algorithm identical to Hermite interpolation, and therefore both the interpolating function and its derivatives are continuous. In the case of cubic Bezier interpolation, quadratic Bezier interpolation was forced for those dimensions for which the target parameters where in the intervals adjacent to the edges of the grid. The Bezier interpolations were implemented afresh in the FORTRAN spectral fitting code FERRE (Allende Prieto 2006) following the description by Auer (2003) and references therein. Cubic splines interpolation was included calling a subroutine from the library provided with the book by Chapman (2004), which follows the discussion given in Press et al. (1992). Discussion Before examining the errors in the fluxes, we compared interpolated model atmospheres with the calculated ones. The linear interpolation does a good job at estimating the real atmospheric structure; the temperature differences were between 2 − 3%, the pressure and electron density differences were between 1 − 2%. This translates to 10−30 K average differences in temperature in case of cool atmospheres above log τ Ross < 1, from where all of the spectral lines form. This difference slightly increases as the effective temperature gets higher. To measure the amount of error each interpolation method makes, we calculated the same statistics for each case. In the case of absolute fluxes, we only examined the average differences throughout the whole wavelength range, to track how much the continuum level changes. In the case of optical spectra, the atmosphere interpolation gives 1−5% smaller continuum levels than the direct calculations, and we find that the linear flux interpolation gives -0.3−+0.5% relative differences, usually shifted slightly higher than the true continuum in case of the optical spectrum, but not in the infrared. The errors are smaller in the IR region, 0.5−+1% in the continuum level when atmospheres are interpolated and 0.01−0.1% with linear interpolation in flux. Two examples of the differences between interpolated and direct calculations of continuum normalized spectra are given in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows a metal-poor G-type giant, while Figure 2 shows a metal rich, K-type dwarf -these two cases represent the extremes of our parameters space. The metal-poor spectra only show large differences in the line cores. The average error can be up to 1% in the optical and infrared metal-poor warm spectrum, while in case of the metal-rich cool spectrum this goes up to 5−10% in the optical and 1−2% in the infrared. The differences in the line profile for the cooler atmosphere increase by a factor of 4 in both wavelength regions compared to the metal-poor case due to weak atomic metal and molecular lines very sensitive to small temperature changes in the atmosphere. In the infrared spectra of the G-tpe metal-poor star, the differences are dominated by the hydrogen Brackett lines, while in the optical these are associated with the magnesium triplet lines. This picture changes dramatically in case of the metalrich, cool dwarf (Figure 2), where the Brackett lines disappear and the "noise" increases greatly in the continuum of the IR spectrum due to weak atomic and molecular lines (CN, OH, and CO). Also, relative errors in the line cores are significantly higher than near the continuum. To measure the overall performance of the interpolation methods across the parameter range, the differences respect to the true fluxes were calculated at each wavelength in the continuum normalized spectra. The average, standard deviation and maximum deviation above and below the continuum in the whole wavelength range were determined. The last two of these three parameters track different aspects of the error distribution. The standard deviation gives an estimate of the overall changes in the full flux range, while the maximum deviation shows mainly the differences in the line cores, where errors tend to be largest. The differences vary depending on where one samples the spectrum: they are small in the continuum, but typically larger in the line cores. Figure 3 illustrates how the average differences depend on metallicity, effective temperature and gravity. The errors, both the average errors and the standard deviation, grow with increasing metallicity and decreasing temperature, but they do not depend so much on surface gravity. These correlations are easily understood as a result of an increased number of molecular and atomic absorption lines appearing in the spectrum at high metallicity and low temperature. Both in the model atmosphere and linear flux interpolation methods, it is clearly visible that errors are significantly enhanced for values of the metallicity half way between the nodes of the grid. The evenly distributed models spanned −2.5 to +0.5 in with steps 0.5, and in the vicinity of these values the linear interpolation gives significantly lower errors. Using higher order interpolations makes this effect to disappear. None of the methods is sensitive to this issue along the axis for effective temperature (nodes spaced every 250 K) or log g (nodes every 0.5 dex). The overall results for each test are listed in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 4. In the optical, the average differences are about 0.17±0.19% for the case of MA interpolation, and smaller than 0.07% for all the interpolations in flux. The standard deviation of the relative differences paints a more dramatic picture. The MA method clearly shows the largest deviation up to 1% near the continuum level in the optical and, while F(CB) is the most accurate method with only 0.1% errors. In the infrared all interpolation methods perform well giving much smaller errors than in the optical, close to an average of 0−0.02% differences. The scatter is about four times larger in the case of MA than in any other methods in both optical and infrared. Figure 5 shows the maximum deviation of differences below and above the continuum level in the case of the cubic-Bezier interpolation. At optical wavelengths, the differences are generally higher than in the infrared, but they are usually smaller than 0.01 in ∆ F (1−2%). While a reduction of the errors near the grid nodes was not visible in the average differences, here it is apparent as a function of metallicity below = −1, and the effect increases as decreases. The interpolation gives the highest errors in the line cores, i.e. in the highest atmospheric layers the spectrum is sensitive to. Conclusions We conclude that if model spectra need to be interpolated, the best way to proceed, among those explored, is to use high-order interpolation in continuum-normalized fluxes. Linear interpolation of model atmospheres leads to about a factor of 3−5 higher error than high order interpolations in flux, at about −0.17±0.19% average differences in the optical, and 0.0004±0.038% in the infrared. Linear interpolation in flux space gives a factor of two smaller errors than using model atmospheres, but there is still a factor of two improvments found using high order functions. The most accurate flux interpolation method is cubic-Bezier with average errors of 0.011±0.047% in the optical and 0.0011±0.0075% in the infrared for our grids and random parameters. The cubic spline and quadratic-Bezier interpolations lead to only marginally higher errors than this. We conclude that interpolation errors become visible at S/N =10−20 in the line cores in case of model atmosphere interpolations in the optical, and at S/N =20−40 in the infrared, while the errors from cubic-Bezier flux interpolation will only show up above S/N ∼100−200 in both wavelength ranges. We must stress that only one code for the interpolation of model structures has been tested. Other codes with somewhat different strategies could provide somewhat different performances. We have allowed our high-order interpolations in flux to get to any value, even if artificial extrema are created (see the discussion by Auer 2003). Our tests are restricted to stars with spectral types roughly between F5 and K5. Nevertheless, we expect that the tendencies seen in our study will persist outside this domain. For example, we expect that errors will continue to reduce for the interpolation of stars with warmer temperatures, and to increase at temperatures under 4500 K. Our analysis includes only linear and polynomial interpolation, but more sophisticated schemes are available and their performance could be somewhat different. Further work dealing with principal component analysis (PCA), neural networks, and other algorithms would be a natural followup of this investigation. .-The relative maximum deviation above and below the continuum level, which tracks the largest differences in the line core profiles. Some outliers in the IR plots were not plotted to show the dependence on the physical parameters better.

Buy Photo Downhill and cross country skiiers will have to wait a while longer for Michigan ski resorts to open (Photo: Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo The snow gods have been kind to Michigan ski resorts over the last two years. Not so far this year. Every ski resort in the state is finding it too warm, with too little snow, to open or stay open. All ski resorts in the state except Ski Brule in Iron River are closed this week, according to GoSkiMichigan, which follows conditions at the state's 51 ski areas. "Every year we are dealing with some issue or other. We hope to get the warm out of the way now so that by the day after Christmas, when the ski season really starts, we hope to be up and ready and rocking," says Mickey MacWilliams, executive director of the Michigan Snowsports Industries. What can people do to help make it snow? "Maybe a snow dance would be good." A few big resorts like Nub’s Nob and Boyne Highlands in Harbor Springs and Crystal Mountain in Thompsonville have already revved up their powerful snow-making capacity to temporarily give skiers some fun last weekend. They may reopen again this weekend. See the Nubs Nob live trail cam here. It's a marked contrast to 2013 and most of 2014, when frigid conditions allowed many Michigan ski resorts to open by Thanksgiving and stay open all the way until March. This year, thanks to the weather pattern El Nino, even Big Powderhorn in Bessemer in the western Upper Peninsula reports zero snow accumulation. It lists a tentative opening Dec. 16. Ski Brule has been open since Nov. 22 — but is relying on mostly man-made snow to stay that way. In the northern Lower Peninsula, Boyne Mountain in Boyne City was making snow and planned to reopen Friday. Shanty Creek in Bellaire, where it was 37 degrees today, reported it spent 85 hours snow-making, but it’s not open yet, “waiting on Mother Nature’s cooperation.” Snow-making is really effective only at temperatures of 28 degrees or below. The Cross Country Ski Headquarters in Higgins Lake was also closed, with its trail cam showing green grass and no snow. Downstate, ski resorts Pine Knob, Mt. Brighton and Mt. Holly remain shuttered. Pine Knob reported it is “closed until winter weather returns.” When will that happen? Next week should see much colder temperatures in the Upper Peninsula, between 27 and 35 degrees for a high, and mid-state should see highs in the upper 30s, according to the National Weather Service. That should help those snow-making machines get going as the Christmas holidays near. Downstate, however, temperatures will hit the 50s this week and the 40s next week. Not to worry, says MacWilliams. Decembers can be warm in Michigan, and this year's pattern is not unexpected. "We are used to dealing with Mother Nature on our ski slopes," she said. "Right now it is a little warm. But it will get cold." Contact Detroit Free Press Travel Writer Ellen Creager at ecreager@freepress.com, 313-222-6498. Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1Qr6imN

Orbital ordering of Ir-t2g states in the double perovskite Sr2CeIrO6 The electronic and magnetic properties of monoclinic double perovskite Sr$_2$CeIrO$_6$ were examined based on both experiments and first-principles density functional theory calculations. From the calculations we conclude that low-spin-state Ir$^{4+}$ (5$\textit{d}^5$, S=$\frac{1}{2}$) shows t$_{2g}$ band derived anti-ferro type orbital ordering implying alternating occupations of $\textit{d}_{yz}$ and $\textit{d}_{xz}$ orbitals at the two symmetrically independent Ir sites. The experimentally determined Jahn-Teller type distorted monoclinic structure is consistent with the proposed orbital ordering picture. Surprisingly, the Ir-5$\textit{d}$ orbital magnetic moment was found to be $\approx$ 1.3 times larger than the spin magnetic moment. The experimentally observed AFM-insulating states are consistent with the calculations. Both electron-electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) are required to drive the experimentally observed AFM-insulating ground state. This single active site double perovskite provides a rare platform with a prototype geometrically frustrated fcc lattice where among the different degrees of freedom (i.e spin, orbital, and lattice), spin-orbit interaction and Coulomb correlation energy scales compete and interact with each other. The electronic and magnetic properties of monoclinic double perovskite Sr2CeIrO6 were examined based on both experiments and first-principles density functional theory calculations. From the calculations we conclude that low-spin-state Ir 4+ (5d 5 , S= 1 2 ) shows t2g band derived anti-ferro type orbital ordering implying alternating occupations of dyz and dxz orbitals at the two symmetrically independent Ir sites. The experimentally determined Jahn-Teller type distorted monoclinic structure is consistent with the proposed orbital ordering picture. Surprisingly, the Ir-5d orbital magnetic moment was found to be ≈ 1.3 times larger than the spin magnetic moment. The experimentally observed AFM-insulating states are consistent with the calculations. Both electron-electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) are required to drive the experimentally observed AFM-insulating ground state. This single active site double perovskite provides a rare platform with a prototype geometrically frustrated fcc lattice where among the different degrees of freedom (i.e spin, orbital, and lattice), spin-orbit interaction and Coulomb correlation energy scales compete and interact with each other. Transition metal oxides (TMOs) with orbitally degenerate d electrons exhibit rich electronic and magnetic properties arising from the interplay of spin, orbital, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom. When the number of d electrons (or holes) in a transition metal is smaller than the degeneracy of d orbitals, the d electrons have the freedom to occupy any of them. In such cases, the occupation of d orbitals at one site is often correlated with the occupation at the next site. Therefore, analogous to spin ordering, the orbital degrees of freedom can be locked and particular orbitals are occupied at each site, which is called orbital ordering. This orbital ordering, generally results from the interplay between structural distortion and Coulomb correlation of electrons. Orbital degrees of freedom often couple with spin degrees of freedom and give rise to anisotropic electronic and magnetic interactions. Due to strong correlations between different degrees of freedom, orbital ordering spontaneously drive various exotic phenomena such as reduced dimensionality , structural phase transition , exotic magnetism , Peierls transitions , charge ordering and orbital ordering induced ferroelectricity . The possibility of orbital ordering has been discussed for doubly degenerate e g orbitals of perovskite manganites , cuprates and for the degenerate t 2g orbitals of vanadates . Most studies investigating this aspect have focused on 3d TMOs; much less is known about whether related 4d and 5d oxides can exhibits similar behaviour. Recently, 4d and 5d TMOs have generated significant excitement because of the observation of unexpected orbital ordering and localized transport properties and magnetism in ruthenate and iridate compounds, respectively. Due to the large spatial extension of 5d orbitals, the effects of electron correlation are weaker in 5d oxides than in 3d oxides, while the trend is opposite for the effects of spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Therefore, 5d oxides should exhibit a different balance among the effect of spin, orbital, and charge degrees of freedom. Although the importance of SOC in magnetic materials has been well known, the interplay between SOC and electronic Coulomb interactions in magnetic materials remains a largely unexplored field. The reason for this seems to be the mutually exclusive domain involved in their acting. It is only recently that this separation has been questioned . The 5d double perovskite family is one of the most widely investigated oxides for studies exploring exotic phenomena such as magneto-optic effect , high-T c ferrimagnets , half metallicity , peculiar AFM spin structures , as well as strong SOC driven phenomena such as spin liquid , topological Mott insulator and the Weyl semimetal . In the context of orbital ordering, 5d based systems have been less investigated, because generally for 5d elements such as Os, Ir, the SOC energy scale considerably exceeds the structural distortion energy scale. Strong SOC destroys orbitally degenerate electronic states required for orbital ordering. In this letter we report a particularly striking example of the interplay among SOC, Coulomb interactions and crystal field splitting in the double-perovskite Sr 2 CeIrO 6 , which shows a rare type of orbital ordering originating from the Ir-t 2g states. Using transport and magnetization measurements in addition to densityfunctional theory based first-principles calculations we explored this interesting aspect in the Sr 2 CeIrO 6 double perovskite compound. We propose a rare case of t 2g orbitals derived anti-ferro type orbital ordering in this material at the Ir site with the half filled (5d 5 ) configuration while the Ce remains in the inert configuration. Our proposed t 2g band derived anti-ferro orbital ordering constitute a strong contrast to the most widely known anti-ferro orbital ordering in KCuF 3 originated from the two e g orbitals. Moreover only a few frustrated magnetic materials have been investigated in the context of orbital ordering, such as NaNiO 2 , LiNiO 2 and spinel ZnV 2 O 4 . In this context Sr 2 CeIrO 6 double perovskite is a rare example of a prototype geometrically frustrated fcc lattice where orbital ordering plays a crucial role. Our calculations revealed that the experimentally observed AFM insulating ground state is driven by strong SOC in addition to small onsite electron-electron Coulomb correlation at the Ir site. These particular behaviours make this system a potential candidate for investigating the interplay among the multiple degrees of freedom, such as spin, orbital, lattice, and multiple energy scales e.g. SOC and Coulomb correlations, that interact and compete with each others. Sr 2 CeIrO 6 crystallized in a monoclinic crystal structure with space group P2 1 /n, with the lattice parameters a =5.8255Å, b = 5.8445Å, c = 8.2435Å and β= 90.17 o , these values are very similar to the reported structure . Due to lack of sensitiveness of positions of light atoms such as oxygen in X-ray diffractions based structural analysis, the theoretically optimized structure of Sr 2 CeIrO 6 was obtained by relaxing the atomic po-sitions of all atoms while keeping the lattice parameters fixed at the experimentally determined values. The structure consists of alternating corner sharing IrO 6 and CeO 6 octahedra, in all directions, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The Sr atoms are situated at the void positions between the two types of octahedra. Both IrO 6 and CeO 6 are distorted, the respective six metal-oxygens bond lengths are grouped into three values as shown in Figs The magnetic susceptibilities of Sr 2 CeIrO 6 were measured using a SQUID magnetometer (Quantum Design, MPMS MultiVu Application) in the temperature range from 2 to 300 K in varying field's up to 7 T, see Fig. 2. Inverse magnetic susceptibility data indicated AFM ordering at about 21 K. Fitting the high-temperature susceptibility to the Curie-Weiss law , gave µ ef f = 1.59 µ B with a Weiss constant of θ= -108 K, which are very similar to the previously recorded values . A negative value of θ implies dominant AFM interactions in the system. The observed effective magnetic moment indicates, that Ir 4+ (d 5 ) is in S= 1 2 low-spin state and that µ ef f is somewhat smaller than the expected spin-only contribution for the S= 1 2 state. The inset of Fig. 2 shows the exponential decay of the resistivity as a function of temperature measured in a 0.01 T field with the Quantum Design PPMS MultiVu Application. Fitting the high temperature resistivity data with the semiconducting hopping mechanism, ρ = ρ 0 e Eg 2K B T , resulted in a bulk band gap (E g ) of ≈ 0.3 eV, indicating small gap insulating behaviour of this material. The calculated ferromagnetic (FM), GGA+U density of states (DOS) projected on to Ir-5d states is shown in the top left panel of Fig. 3. The empty Sr states lay far away from the Fermi level (E f ), which is consistent with the nominal Sr 2+ valence state. At the E f only Ir-5d states contribute whereas the Ce-4f states are empty and situated far above the E f , although Ir-5d states show significant mixing with the Ce-4f and O-2p states. We found that in the absence of on-site Coulomb correlation U, the band structure shows a metallic character. The incorporation of small Coulomb correlation U ef f ≥ 2 eV at the Ir site, drove the insulating band structure. To clarify the effect of Coulomb correlation U on the electronic structure we systematically varied U Ir ef f from 0 to 5 eV, as shown in Fig. S2 (in the supplemental mate- at Ir sites, increased with increasing U, while Ce stayed in the nonmagnetic state with zero magnetic moment. The orbital occupancies and spin states remained unchanged across the entire applied U range. Comparing our calculated band structure to the resistivity derived band gap, we choose to use U Ir ef f = 3 eV (which, also is the commonly used U value for Ir in the literature ), for the following calculations. Because of the octahedral environment the five d states were broadly split into t 2g (d xy , d yz , d xz ) and e g (d 3z 2 −r 2 , d x 2 −y 2 ) states as marked in the top left panel of Fig. 3. The Ir-t 2g states were completely filled in the majority spin channel and partially filled in the minority spin channel, whereas the Ir-e g states were completely empty in both spin channels. These findings in addition to the calculated magnetic moment suggest that Ce is in the 4+ (Ce 4+ : ) valence electronic state with zero magnetic moment in the inert configuration, and that Ir is in the 4+ (5d 5 ) low spin valence electronic state with S = 1 2 . These findings are consistent with the experimental magnetization measurements and previous electronic structure results . However in the previous studies one failed to drive the insulating band structure without inclusion SOC. Because of the octahedral distortion, the t 2g and e g states are no longer degenerate. Contraction of IrO 6 octahedra along the c axis splits the triply degenerate t 2g states into a lower d xy band (a 1g symmetry), and upper d yz − d xz bands (e π g symmetry), as shown in the level diagram plot in the right top of Fig. 3. The d xy band is filled in both spin channels and this is electronically inactive. The two e π g bands are filled by two majority spins and one minority spin, which results S= 1 2 state. However the single minority spin has the freedom to occupy any orbital between the double degenerate d yz − d xz bands. Therefore this minority spin experiences orbital degeneracy and drive a definite orbital ordering pattern in the lattice. To clarify this orbital degeneracy we plotted the orbital projected DOS for two Ir sites, Ir-1 (0.5, 0.0, 0.5) and Ir-2 (0.0, 0.5, 0.0), in the unit cell, as shown in the left middle and lower panels of Fig. 3 respectively. The plots show that the d yz state of the Ir-1 site is equivalent to the d xz state of the Ir-2 site, i.e. at the Ir-1 site the d xz state is occupied while for the Ir-2 site, the d yz state is populated by the single minority spin in the e π g bands, which is clearly shown in the energy level diagram of the respective right panels. To visualize the pattern of orbital ordering we plotted the magnetization density within GGA+U(U Ir ef f = 3 eV) as shown in Fig.1(d). This figure shows that crystallographically two non-equivalent Ir sites, i.e Ir-1 and Ir-2 in the unit cell are decorated with the alternating d yz and d xz type orbitals and that these alternating orbital chains run along the body diagonal to the monoclinic unit cell. Because in this case the Ir sites prefer two different types of orbitals, we described this type of orbital ordering as anti-ferro type orbital ordering. Interesting point to be noted is that, aforementioned anti-ferro orbital ordering consisting of two t 2g orbitals is in contrast to the most widely known classic example of anti-ferro orbital ordering as found in KCuF 3 , where alternating sites of Cu are occupied by the two e g orbitals. Therefore Sr 2 CeIrO 6 is a very unique case. The resulted orbital ordering could be understood as an effect of the cooperative Jahn-Teller distortion associated to the IrO 6 octahedra. The individual IrO 6 octahedra are distorted as reflected by the three different types of Ir-O bond lengths in each octaherdon. If we concentrate only on the ab plane Ir-O bond lengths, theses are grouped into two Ir-O bond lengths as short 1.986Å and long 2.033Å. However the crystallographic orientation of short and long bond lengths for the two Ir sites (i.e Ir-1 and Ir-2) are opposite. For Ir-1 the short bond (1.986 A) is along the crystallographic b axis and the long bond (2.033Å) along the crystallographic a axis, while for Ir-2, short bond is along the crystallographic a axis and long bond along the crystallographic b axis, i.e short bond of the Ir-1 octahedron corresponds to the long bond of the Ir-2 octahedron, see right middle and bottom panel of Fig. 3. Therefore this cooperative Jahn-Teller distortion in the IrO 6 octahedra, in terms of crystallographic orientation of Ir-O bond lengths, induces the occupation of two different orbitals in the two neighbouring distorted Ir octahedra. To understand the role of SOC in this orbitally active material, we performed GGA+U+SOC (U Ir ef f = 1-5 eV) calculations. Surprisingly we found that GGA+SOC without onsite U, could not drive the insulating nature of the band structure. We indeed required a small onsite correlation (U Ir ef f ≥ 1 eV) along with SOC to open an insulating gap in the band structure. Because of the orbital degeneracy of Ir, we found that orbital magnetic moment to be larger than the spin magnetic moment at the Ir site, although the value of the orbital and spin magnetic moments depended sensitively on chosen U values. increased. We note that the orbital magnetic moments point in the same direction as the spin magnetic moment which is expected for the more than half filled t 2g occupancies at the Ir sites. Similarly large orbital magnetic moment and a similar µ orbital /µ spin ratio are reported in the literature in the context of an other Ir based perovskite BaIrO 3 . We found that, in the GGA+U (U Ir ef f =0-5 eV) calculations, FM alignment of Ir spins was energetically lower than the different possible AFM configurations. However experiments indicate a clear AFM transition at 17 K. Following the observation of significant orbital moments at both Ir sites, we investigated the possible role of SOC in the magnetic ground states. For this purpose, we conducted GGA+U+SOC calculations for FM and different AFM spin configurations. We found that, with the inclusion of SOC, compared to the other possible FM and AFM configurations, the A-type AFM state became the energetically lowest magnetic state. Our findings perfectly agree with previous electronic structure studies as they also mentioned SOC driven stabilisation of the AFM state. In this A-AFM configuration, Ir spins are aligned ferromagnetically in the ab plane, and were coupled antiferromagnetically in the out-of-plane direction. We note that the experimental band gap (≈ 0.3 eV) agrees qualitatively with the GGA+U+SOC (U Ir ef f = 3 eV) AFM band gap (≈ 0.35 eV). In Fig. S3 (in the supplementary material), we show the GGA+U and GGA+U+SOC band dispersion for the FM and AFM configurations. Because of the increase of Fermi energy for the AFM state over the FM state with the inclusion of SOC, the experimentally observed AFM state becomes energetically lower than the FM state. We confirmed the stability of the AFM state over FM configurations by cross checking our findings across the range of U Ir ef f values from 1 to 5 eV, and we verified the existence of the proposed orbital ordering in the presence of AFM coupling as well. An interesting point to note is that, to obtain the correct magnetic ground state, the inclusion of SOC was mandatory, which reflects the importance of SOC in this Ir compound. We note a similar mechanism was recently suggested for other iridates . Therefore this material may be classified as a Coulomb enhanced SOC driven AFM insulator. It is common believed that strong SOC destroys orbital ordering, however, the present material shows a rare exception. To understand the possible role of competition between SOC and structural distortion in deriving orbital ordering, we compare our results with the isoelectronic Ba variant (Ba 2 CeIrO 6 ) of the present compound. Since Ba 2+ has a larger radius the for the tolerance factor for the later (t=0.991) is close to 1. Therefore Ba form in an ideal cubic crystal structure and the electronic structure does not allow a 1g -e π g splitting required for orbital ordering. Because of the smaller radius of Sr 2+ , the tolerance factor (t=0.935) of Sr 2 CeIrO 6 significantly deviates from 1 and thus a distorted monoclinic crystal structure results that allows the orbital ordering. From the total energy calculations we found that for Ba 2 CeIrO 6 , without inclusion of SOC, the monoclinic structure is lower (by 138 meV/f.u) than the cubic and we found similar orbital ordering as Sr 2 CeIrO 6 . However, inclusion of SOC cubic structure became ≈ 17 meV/f.u lower than the monoclinic. In contrast for the Sr 2 CeIrO 6 both without and with SOC, the monoclinic structure is energetically ≈ 747 meV/f.u lower than than the cubic one. These analyses gave indirect evidence that, since SOC energy scale remains unchanged between two compounds, in Sr 2 CeIrO 6 the structural distortion is strong enough to overcome the negative SOC effect and we do obtain the orbital ordering state, which appears not to be possible for Ba 2 CeIrO 6 . In conclusion, we conducted both experiments and DFT based first-principles calculations to investigate the nature of the orbital ordering in the ordered double perovskite Sr 2 CeIrO 6 , with Ir as a single electronically active site in the geometrically frustrated fcc lattice. We found t 2g band derived anti-ferro type of orbital ordering at the Ir site consisting of d yz and d xz orbitals that were associated by to alternating Ir sites along the body diagonal to the unit cell. Further experiments, such as X-ray resonant spectroscopy, would be helpful to directly probe our proposed orbital ordering pattern. We found that small electron-electron onsite correlation U is also relevant in this 5d-Ir system for obtaining the correct insulating electronic structure. SOC played a very crucial role in this orbitally active material, for stabilizing the experimentally observed AFM ground state in addition to the small correlation effect, and with a large contribution of orbital magnetic moment greater than the spin counterpart. This Ir based double perovskite material has a very striking feature in which both electronelectron interaction and SOC energy scales are important for understanding the electronic and magnetic behaviour. More detailed experiments and theoretical analysis are required to explore this critical energy balance in this interesting material. We thank the helpful discussions with Prof. J. van der Brink. This work is financially supported by the ERC Advanced Grant (Grant No. 291472) * m.jansen@fkf.mpg.de

Galveston police seize 27 horses near riding business Galveston police seized 27 horses from S-n-G Horseback Riding in Jamaica Beach. Galveston police seized 27 horses from S-n-G Horseback Riding in Jamaica Beach. Photo: JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News Photo: JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Galveston police seize 27 horses near riding business 1 / 10 Back to Gallery Galveston woman Terri Glenn is facing charges of cruelty to livestock animals after police on Wednesday seized 27 horses from a pen used by a riding business, the Galveston County Daily News reports. According to S-n-G Horseback Riding's website, Glenn is the owner of the riding business, which is located on the island's Jamaica Beach. A Galveston police officer told the Daily News that because three of the horses were found emaciated and in critical condition, officers had to take possession of the entire herd. They will be transported to Habitat for Horses' facilities for medical care. "There's three that are literally in danger of death or serious bodily injury." Sgt. Joel Caldwell, who oversees the city animal services unit, told the Galveston paper. Records show that Glenn is currently being held in the Galveston County Jail on $7,500 bond.

Declaring that New York’s government faces a crisis of public trust, Gov. Andrew Cuomo challenged the Legislature on Monday to pass a thorough clean-government program in the aftermath of Speaker Sheldon Silver’s arrest and vowed not to sign a budget this year that lacks a full slate of ethics reforms. Scarcely a month into his second term as governor, Mr. Cuomo said it was time for Albany to make a choice: either ban outside income for lawmakers and force the Legislature to work full-time, or enact new rules for disclosing outside pay. And he called for stricter limits on legislators’ use of expense allowances and of their campaign funds. “This has been a difficult month for the state of New York, the reputation of the state of New York,” Mr. Cuomo said on Monday at the New York University School of Law. Alluding to the death of his father on New Year’s Day, he said former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo would have been “outraged and angered” by developments in the capital. Mr. Cuomo called public corruption a decades-old dilemma for New York, and he laid down a list of demands before the Legislature. He urged lawmakers to stop using campaign funds and no-questions-asked per diem allowances to pad their personal incomes, and to pass a constitutional amendment barring all those convicted of felonies from collecting government pensions.

Quota Management in the Commercial Red Snapper Fishery This paper reviews the economic outcomes of quota management in the commercial fishery for red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the Gulf of Mexico. Regulation with a quota on the aggregate catch of red snapper has given fishermen the incentive to fish intensively in each open season to maximize their shares of the overall catch before the quota is reached and the season is closed. This has resulted in a pattern of shorter seasons, market gluts, depressed prices, and more rules in attempt to alleviate the adverse effects of derby fishing.

Lady Gaga and Julianne Moore are speaking out after the horrific terror attack that left at least 58 people dead and 515 injured in Las Vegas on Sunday night. The Hollywood stars both took to Twitter on Monday, demanding that politicians get to work on enacting stricter gun control laws in the wake of the tragedy, which is now the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. take our poll - story continues below Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who? Email * Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to 100PercentFedUp.com updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Trending: THINGS GET UGLY On “The Five”…Greg Gutfeld Tells Juan Williams: “You Say That Again, And I’m Gonna Throw You Off The Set!” [VIDEO] ‘Cheap sound bites don’t protect innocent lives,’ read a tweet on Moore’s account, as she pointed out this is the eighth mass shooting just this year. It’s okay to use guns in violent movies that make money for actresses like the hypocrite, Julianne Moore (see photo below), it’s just not okay with her for everyday Americans to use guns to hunt or in self-defense. Lady Gaga took a more direct approach in getting her message out, tweeting at the President and Speaker of the House while stating that ‘blood in on the hands’ of the men and women of Congress. Prayers are important but @SpeakerRyan @realDonaldTrump blood is on the hands of those who have power to legislate. #GunControl act quickly. https://t.co/bXZQ7enuEp — Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) October 2, 2017 Shortly after Lady Gaga blamed President Trump and Congress for the deaths of at least 58 and over 500 injured concertgoers in Las Vegas, she tweeted that she was trying to “connect us all through inner peace.” Wow! How most Americans don’t need that kind of sick “inner peace.” My intention is to connect us all through inner peace. I believe we can calm inflammation in the world 🌎 by calming each other. #meditation pic.twitter.com/6cUbvdsW09 — Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) October 2, 2017 Gun control Gaga is no stranger to using guns on stage as props, in fact, she’s used them quite regularly, but who’s counting in Hollywood? After all, it’s not about what celebrities do with guns, it’s what the little people (the ones who watch their movies and purchase their music) do with guns that matters to them… Nice gun Gaga… Gaga is clearly crazy for guns on stage… Nice Rolling Stones cover Gaga…where’d you get the guns? In addition to offering up their condolences and prayers, President Trump and Speaker Ryan also ordered that all flags be flown at half-mast to pay tribute to the victims. That was not enough however for Gaga, who when first commenting on the attack wrote: ‘This is terrorism plain and simple. Terror bares no race, gender or religion. Democrats & Republicans please unite now #guncontrol.’ –Daily Mail

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Fears of false flag and foreign funded covert operations designed to influence U.S. policy drove the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch exhaustive investigations and call for warranted enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). A newly declassified March 17, 1961 memo unsealed and released by the National Archives and Records Administration on October 21, 2010 outlined the Senate's rationale for investigating Israel lobbying groups and other foreign agents active across the United States. "In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels.....there have been occasions when representatives of other governments have been privately accused of engaging in covert activities within the United States and elsewhere, for the purpose of influencing United States Policy (the Lavon Affair)." The Lavon Affair refers to a false flag Israeli terrorist bombing plot code named "Operation Susannah" against U.S. targets in Egypt. It was designed to reverse U.S. policy pressuring British withdrawals and reverting control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. Israeli agents infiltrating as Arabs were discovered, arrested and criminally prosecuted in Egypt when their explosives malfunctioned, leading to a crisis in the Israeli government. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which mentioned Lavon twice in the three page memo, expressed concerns about investigating such sensitive matters. "There would undoubtedly (even with care) be instances which would lead to foreign governmental protests, to violent attacks by special groups in the United States..." The declassified files are now available at: http://www.irmep.org/ila/forrel The declassified Senate memo suggested three avenues for investigation. "I. Public receipt of testimony from Department of Justice and Department of State....II. Public receipt of testimony from selected law and public relations firms....III Executive (perhaps public) receipt of testimony on the Lavon Affair, and similar 'grey area' activities..." The Senate investigated the foreign agents of many countries in 1962, held hearings throughout 1963, and published redacted records. Preliminary findings led the Department of Justice to order the American Zionist Council to register and publicly disclose its Israeli-funded clandestine lobbying activities under FARA. The AZC promptly shut down and reorganized within its lobbying division, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which incorporated six weeks after the AZC FARA order, but refused to register as an Israeli foreign agent. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. It retains 1%-3% of the most important documents of business conducted by the United States Federal government. The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila, is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington. SOURCE Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy

. In the course of development of the mouse embryo prosencephalon, the walls of the dorsal and ventral telodiencephalic sulci fuse along their ependymal surfaces. This study is based on 1 mu semithin sections of the prosencephalon and on ultrathin sections of the fusion zone of mice of 13 days postconception. Ultrathin sections of the rostral part of the fusion zone present two rows of junctions (maculae adhaerentes) in opposition belonging to each of the two walls. On either side of these rows of junctions is found a row of cells, many in various stages of mitosis. In the caudal part of the fusion zone, intercellular spaces are wide and are occupied by numerous cytoplasmic prolongations that present mitochondria, granular endoplasmic reticula, and Golgi apparatus. Many of these prolongations establish contacts between themselves and with the cell bodies.

Impression management within the Zulu culture : Exploring tactics in the work context The social identity theory states that individuals tend to categorise themselves into social groups, pertaining to aspects such as their workplace (organisations), culture, religion and/or gender (Hogg & Terry, 2001; Jenkins, 2014; Trepte, 2006). Social identity is based on the premise that people exhibit certain characteristics they perceive as relevant to a certain group they belong to (Hogg & Terry, 2001). Jenkins (2014) states further that individuals consist of different social identities, and therefore individuals adapt their identities to the environment they exist in. It seems that people choose whether to adhere to the rules put down by the specific social group they are functioning in. This statement emphasises Norris’s (2011) notion that people follow diverse norms, values, roles and statuses, which are dependent on the individual’s social group. Therefore, people ultimately modify and alter their behaviour when they perceive that the social situation requires them to do so. Depending on the context, the impression tactics people display may be sincere or deceptive, accurate or inaccurate, depending on the salience of the person’s social and personal identity (Leary & Allen, 2011; Sandal et al., 2014). Individuals are motivated by various elements, and these elements may guide them in what tactics they display (Jenkins, 2014). In any social interaction (with colleagues, friends, family, etc.), people have the tendency to control their images or identities in order to position themselves to achieve specific goals (Jeffrey, Webb & Schulz, 2008). Orientation: Impression management tactics are utilised differently by people depending on the situation and the others around them. Introduction The social identity theory states that individuals tend to categorise themselves into social groups, pertaining to aspects such as their workplace (organisations), culture, religion and/or gender (Hogg & Terry, 2001;Jenkins, 2014;Trepte, 2006). Social identity is based on the premise that people exhibit certain characteristics they perceive as relevant to a certain group they belong to (Hogg & Terry, 2001). Jenkins (2014) states further that individuals consist of different social identities, and therefore individuals adapt their identities to the environment they exist in. It seems that people choose whether to adhere to the rules put down by the specific social group they are functioning in. This statement emphasises Norris's (2011) notion that people follow diverse norms, values, roles and statuses, which are dependent on the individual's social group. Therefore, people ultimately modify and alter their behaviour when they perceive that the social situation requires them to do so. Depending on the context, the impression tactics people display may be sincere or deceptive, accurate or inaccurate, depending on the salience of the person's social and personal identity (Leary & Allen, 2011;Sandal et al., 2014). Individuals are motivated by various elements, and these elements may guide them in what tactics they display (Jenkins, 2014). In any social interaction (with colleagues, friends, family, etc.), people have the tendency to control their images or identities in order to position themselves to achieve specific goals (Jeffrey, Webb & Schulz, 2008). Since the framework is evident, it is also important to understand the perspective of this study. As already stated in the last paragraph of the background, this study focused on the Zulu culture. Consequently, the perspectives of isiZulu participants are identified as well as the impression tactics they utilise. According to Pike (1954), the emic perspective is a culture-specific element that provides meaning to realities from a specific background. The researcher therefore utilised the emic perspective in her study of impression management tactics employed by the Zulu culture (Talti & Özbilgin, 2008). In the following section, impression management is defined and discussed. Impression management Impression management is concerned with individuals' reality of the social situation they find themselves in (Patel et al., 2011). Impression management is an element of social desirability; it is defined by Schlenker (1980, as cited by Ellis, West, Ryan & Deshon, 2002) as a conscious or unconscious effort to control the image that is perceived by others. Soran and Balkan (2013) state further that impression management is the inner motive that affects the view of how others see the individual. Impression management conveys favourable images to the public to encourage positive outcomes as a result (Howle, Jackson, Conroy & Dimmock, 2014). However, impression management can also cultivate negative outcomes for the party that the image is being portrayed to and at times for the individual who is attempting to make the impression. As stated by Stark (2005), the suppressing of invaluable personal traits is referred to as recategorising, and expressing personal valuable traits is viewed as positive distinctiveness. If an individual over-exaggerates his or her positive image, some people might interpret the person's behaviour in the wrong way. It is possible to create and portray a certain image to people, but the reality is that it is not possible to control the response, feedback or ultimate thoughts and reactions of people. Coget (2014) provides examples of some of the most general impression management tactics: the expression of enthusiasm, confidence and discipline; expressing individual excellence; and taking credit for accomplishments. Enthusiasm refers to a positive attitude towards one's work or life situations in general. Employers look for people who are exuberant with a great deal of enthusiasm when hiring individuals, because they believe such people will complete tasks on time (Bye et al., 2011). Confidence is the inner knowledge that whatever the outcome, it will be favourable; therefore the individual expresses confidence through the manner in which he or she behaves, while interacting with others or through the manner in which he or she does work (Coget, 2014). Discipline is regarded as self-control over work or life situations, whereby the expression of individual excellence is the over-emphasis of accomplishments, knowledge or skills (Kacmar & Carlson, 1999). When highlighting their own accomplishments, individuals have the desire to be acknowledged for what they have attained. According to Kacmar and Carlson (1999), the above-mentioned tactics are relevant to individuals who are self-focused. Self-focused individuals are persons who only highlight positive qualities about themselves and talk more about themselves (Kacmar & Carlson, 1999). A person who is focused on others would typically draw on the good and positive aspects of other people by complementing, encouraging and supporting them (Bye et al., 2011). The above-mentioned tactics are just a few that people use to gain the approval of others, whether it is in a formal or informal setting or to achieve certain goals. Impression tactics in the work context Impression management tactics are developed from early childhood (Zook & Russotti, 2012). From a very young age, everyone seeks acceptance and yearns to belong to or to be part of a group (Norris, 2011). As already discussed in the introduction, individuals function in different settings of life, which may include a person's work life or personal life. This means that people adapt to different groups of people on a daily basis, which could include family, friends or colleagues. In this section, more detail will be provided on the types of tactics that may be utilised when people interact in the work context. According to Leonardi and Treem (2012), in the workplace (formal setting), employees may identify a gap between desired and existing views about themselves and therefore feel motivated to alter or regulate the existing information about themselves to others (Leonardi & Treem, 2012). Employees' desire acknowledgement and promotion from their supervisors on the work they do; however, only a few realise these desires (Cheng, Chiu & Tzeng, 2012). It was found in the literature that employees display a sense of appreciation towards their supervisors' accomplishments and achievements, which, in turn, makes them seem more likeable to their supervisor (Gwal, 2015). For instance, to impress a supervisor, some individuals describe their talents and accomplishments to supervisors in order to appear competent and intelligent (Bolino, Klotz & Daniels, 2014). This influences the way the supervisor rates the performance of the employee when conducting appraisals (Cheng et al., 2012). Furthermore, there are gender differences in the tactics utilised by females and males in the workplace. Guadagno and Cialdini (2007) state that in the workplace females utilise the following impression tactics more than males: making excuses, apologies, hedges and using modesty. In contrast, males will embark on self-promotion tactics, acclaiming and favour-rendering. Singh, Kumra and Vinnicombe (2002) state that females display strategies that focus on building good, close relationships with their supervisors, whereas males ensure that they deliver the supervisor's objectives as well as their own. Further examples of impression management tactics utilised by females and males are provided below. According to Guadagno and Cialdini (2007), males apply masculine impression management tactics, whereas females apply more feminine tactics. It was found that males use more aggressive, defensive and intimidation tactics (being controlling over situations and acting independently) when impressing their supervisor, and females use more passive, mutual and compassionate tactics. With regard to impressing colleagues, employees have the ability to use social cues to understand and effectively influence others and as a result to reach positive outcomes in the workplace (Singh et al., 2002). For example, if an individual wishes to be seen as friendly, compassionate or kind-hearted, he or she exhibits the behaviour best associated with these traits in order to enhance the quality of interpersonal relationships with colleagues at work (Howle et al., 2014). Lewis (2005) coined a term for such behaviour, namely self-promotion, which is when an individual draws too much attention to his or her accomplishments, in order to be perceived as capable by others. If an individual is favoured and liked by colleagues, he or she will have better work relations due to cohesion. It is said that people strive to present a good image to other employees, to be communal orientated, since their aim is to orient themselves with others by being connected, and they strive towards cultivating strong relations at work (Howle et al., 2014). Additionally, employees will use exemplification as an impression tactic; here, an individual would go above and beyond what is expected or necessary so that he or she can be perceived as committed and hardworking (Lewis, 2005). An unintentional outcome would be when a person displays a supposedly favourable image, but the response from the people this image is displayed to results in an unfavourable outcome (Van de Mortel, 2008). In a previous study on impression management between employee and supervisor, it was found that using impression management tactics in a way that is discriminatory -in a negative manner -might result in the supervisor seeing the employee as incompetent and unprofessional, when in fact the aim was to create a favourable image (Bolino et al., 2014). Another example is when an employee overemphasises his or her achievements and accomplishments to colleagues (Harris, Kacmar, Zivnuska & Shaw, 2007). This behaviour might be received in a negative light and colleagues might think the employee is trying to brag or thinks too much of himself or herself (Hunter, 2012). Other general tactics used by isiZulu employees in the workplace include displaying extreme competence and striving to complete tasks on time and deliver good and acceptable work (Masuku, 2005). Zulu culture The Zulu culture is centred on the preservation of life through the maintenance of healthy social relationships (Biyela, 2013). Individuals in the Zulu culture apply impression management tactics to some extent to maintain healthy relationships. The Zulu culture highlights some behaviour patterns and attitudes that people display to impress others. According to Ntuli (2012), in an informal setting or social environment of the Zulu culture, it is unacceptable for females to enter a room first or to walk in front of a male, whereas males walk in front of females as a sign of authority and leadership. In Zulu society, bravery, fighting spirit and male power are associated with manliness, whereas vulnerability in males is associated with weakness (Hunter, 2012). Another example is that in the Zulu culture females who have larger bodies are favoured over thin or skinny females (Moyo, 2012). Different cultures perceive people's qualities differently. The Zulu value system does not allow persons to whisper; it is perceived as being rude (Norris, 2011). In Western culture, not making eye contact is seen a sign of disrespect, whereas for the Zulu culture you are expected to look away or have minimal eye contact when being addressed by your elders in the community or superiors in the workplace (Ntuli, 2012). In a workplace, when entering a room, Zulu individuals greet males first before greeting the females in the room. It is common to stand up for superiors as a sign of respect in Western culture, whereas in the Zulu culture standing is deemed disrespectful and sitting is considered correct and respectful (Norris, 2011;Ntuli, 2012). In Western culture, when stepping into the office of a superior person, it is customary to wait to sit down until being offered a seat, whereas in the Zulu culture individuals sit down immediately when they step into the office without seeking permission (Moyo, 2012). For the Zulu individual, that means he or she is displaying respect by not remaining standing. Standing could also be interpreted as looking down at your superior, which is socially undesirable in the Zulu culture (Ntuli, 2012). Thus the above-mentioned patterns of behaviour that are deemed acceptable or not acceptable have an impact on the impression management tactics that individuals display. This article explores the impression management tactics that are prevalent in the Zulu culture, within formal and informal settings. Research design The research design consists of the research approach, research strategy and research method. Research approach A qualitative research design was employed in conducting this study following a phenomenological approach. Phenomenology is an approach utilised in qualitative research that seeks to understand people's lived experiences and their intentions within their 'life world' (Grabtree & Miller, 1999). The researcher steps in as an outsider to gather data objectively on the specific phenomenon being studied, which in this case is the Zulu culture. Bogdan and Bilken (2007) further state that the phenomenological approach aims to find the meaning of certain events and interactions of ordinary people in a particular situation. With this research, the researcher attempts to gather the meaning of certain tactics displayed by individuals in the Zulu culture in both formal and informal settings. Research strategy A case study strategy was utilised in this research study. Robson (2011) defines a case study as the selection of a specific individual, group or institution to be studied by collecting data through a range of data collection methods such as observations, documentary analysis or interviews. The Zulu cultural group serves as the case for this study. A further inclusion criterion utilised within the isiZulu group was that participants needed to be permanently employed within a company consisting of at least 50 employees. This method has numerous benefits, as the researcher is able to gather proper and truthful ideas about behaviour and an indepth description and analysis of this single case (the isiZulu group). It is also the best way to study a phenomenon (i.e. impression management) and one of the best ways to challenge existing theoretical assumptions (Robson, 2011). Research method The research method consists of the literature review, research setting, entrée and establishment of researcher roles, sampling, data collection methods, recording of data, data analysis and strategies employed to ensure quality data, reporting style and ethical considerations. Research setting The interviews took place in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and the interviews were conducted at various organisations. The organisations included consulting organisations, financial institutions, the police force and defence force. The participants' workplaces were used to conduct interviews, and these specific venues included offices or boardrooms for the sole purpose of convenience and privacy. A 'do not disturb' sign was placed on the outside of the door during interviews to avoid interruptions and noise. Entrée and establishing researcher roles The authors were the project planners and data analysts. The first author was responsible for the data collection because she speaks the Zulu language. She was also responsible for capturing the data in Excel and conducting the initial translations into English. A language editor was recruited to inspect and modify the initial translations. All the authors analysed the data, while two independent researchers and a cultural expert were used to evaluate the initial themes, subthemes and responses. Sampling A combination of both purposive and quota non-probability sampling was utilised in this study. Ethnically Zulu individuals (N = 30) aged 18-65 were interviewed for this study. The interviews were conducted in isiZulu. Data collection continued until data saturation was reached. Participants needed to meet the following criteria for the research that was conducted: They had to (1) be ethnically Zulu, (2) be permanently employed in an organisation that employed more than 50 permanently employed individuals, (3) reside in KwaZulu-Natal or Gauteng, (4) differ according to age and gender and (5) be willing to participate in the research project. The sample from this data consisted of 30 participants from various organisations in South Africa. Of the 30 participants, 63% were from Gauteng and 37% were from KwaZulu-Natal; 43% were females and 57% were males. The majority of participants were between the ages of 41 and 50 (37%), whereas 20% of participants were between the ages of 18 and 30, and 26% were between 31 and 40. Only 17% of participants were older than 51 years. The majority of participants (60%) had training in higher education; 33% had training in further education and 7% had training in general education. Data collection methods For this study, data were collected through the use of semistructured interviews. All the participants who formed part of this study were asked the following two questions: • In order to impress colleagues from your work, what features are socially desirable? • In order to impress your supervisor, what features are socially desirable? The questions that were posed to the research participants were all related to impression management in a work context. A trial run, better known as a pilot study, was done before the initial data collection took place, to ensure that the research questions were understood and made sense and to make sure the process was without errors. Five individuals who were ethnically Zulu were used for the pilot study and resided in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Recording of data A tape recorder was used to capture the data provided during the interviews. However, permission was requested from participants to make use of the tape recorder. The identities of participants remained anonymous; the data was collected and safeguarded and was not exposed to the public or accessible to anyone except the researcher. The data that were captured on the tape recorder were transcribed into an Excel sheet for future analysis. Data analysis Thematic analysis was utilised in this study. Fereday and Muir-Cochrane (2006) describe thematic analysis as a form of pattern identification with the data, where the emerging themes result in the categories for analysis. However, Braun and Clarke (2006) state that thematic analysis deals with identifying and reporting repetitive patterns (themes) within the data. The steps in thematic analysis are discussed below: Phase 1: Get acquainted with the data: The research questions were based on impression management tactics in the work context. The authors read through the data and reviewed each interview in order to get a general idea of the data. The first step gave the authors a general idea of the data collected, once the researcher had immersed herself in the data. An accredited language editor assisted with the clarification of terms in the Zulu language. Phase 2: Generating initial codes: The thematic analysis was conducted manually in an Excel program; the program helped with the analysis, reduction and interpretation of the data (Vogt, Gardner & Haeffele, 2012). In this step, the researcher generated codes from the data that were collected. According to Braun and Clarke (2006), coding is about identifying a feature of data, whether it is latent or semantic content that appears interesting to the analyst. To be able to conduct further analyses, initial codes were predetermined, in which data were organised into meaningful groups (Braun & Clark, 2006). Themes within each separate code were identified after analysis. Phase 3: Searching for themes: In this phase, a long list of different codes was presented from the data that were collected. The codes in this phase were sorted to form themes. In this process repetitive codes or codes sharing semantic meaning were identified and clustered together to form unique themes. Co-coders (two independent researchers and an isiZulu cultural expert) assisted in this phase with the classification of themes and subthemes. Phase 4: Reviewing themes: This phase deals with the refinement of themes, and therefore the researcher refined the themes that were developed from the previous phase. In this process, the co-coders and researcher discussed which themes did not correlate and which themes needed to be merged or separated. The researcher once again read through the data thoroughly to ensure that there was no duplication of themes and that the themes selected corresponded with the initially developed codes. Phase 5: Defining and naming themes: During this stage, the researcher defined and further refined the themes that were presented in the analysis. In this phase, the researcher allocated meanings to the themes by making sure there was no overlap between the themes. The researcher allocated proper names to the themes and made sure they reflected the correct content of the data collected. Examples of themes that were identified under impression management tactics at home include the following: active guidance, conscientious, interpersonal amiability and relational action. Phase 6: Producing the report: In this phase, the final writeup and report were produced by the researcher. This article focuses specifically on impression management tactics in the Zulu culture within informal and formal settings. The data in this article are reported in table format. Each code has its own theme, subtheme and a direct response is included for each subtheme in order for the reader to understand how the characteristic was formulated. Strategies employed to ensure quality data Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data. With the assistance of co-coders, data were analysed thoroughly to ensure quality and objectivity. Shenton (2003) proposed the various criteria that were originally initiated by Lincoln and Guba (1999). These constructs have been accepted by many people who conduct qualitative research. Following are the above-mentioned criteria. Credibility: Credibility refers to internal validity, which aims to ensure that the study measures exactly what it intended to measure, and it enquires on the congruence of the findings with reality (Shenton, 2003). A phenomenological approach was followed, as well as a case study strategy. Additionally, a combined quota and purposive sampling procedure was employed in order to validate the generated findings. Transferability: External validity refers to the degree to which the findings of one study can be generalised to other situations (Shenton, 2003). The data collected in this study and the resultant findings are only transferable to full-time employees who are ethnically Zulu. The emic perspective was utilised and assumptions and generalisations were made with regard to this specific group. Conformability: This construct is concerned with objectivity, ensuring that the information captured is not in any manner influenced by the researcher, but instead that all the data gathered represent the truthful ideas and perceptions of participants (Shenton, 2003). Dependability: Dependability addresses the issue of reliability, that if the study were to be conducted again within the same context, with the same group of people, it ought to produce the same results (Shenton, 2003). This means that if this study were to be done again using the Zulu group, the same methodology would need to be used again and the same results should also be reflected. However, in this study, a pilot study was first conducted before the actual research to ensure that the actual data were dependable. Ethical considerations Permission was granted by the affiliated higher education institutions to continue with the study, and the authorities and employees from various organisations also provided consent to conduct the research. Harm can be avoided when it comes to ethical issues in research by applying appropriate ethical principles and including them in the research. These principles include the following: voluntary participation, anonymity, confidentiality, consent and being fully informed about research objectives (De Bod, 2011). In this study, participants were provided with a consent form explaining the background and purpose of the study being conducted; it was also verbally communicated to participants before an interview commenced, or before they signed the consent form, thereby ensuring clarity on the purpose of the study and that there were no misunderstandings. The researchers did not misinform or deceive participants about the study being conducted. Individuals who took part in this study are anonymous and no personal information is revealed in any manner whatsoever. No person was forced to participate in this study. Participants in this study were able to withdraw if they chose to do so during the study. All participants were treated with respect and dignity. Reporting An Excel sheet was used to document the results. Thereafter, themes and subthemes were extracted from the interviews; direct quotations were then used to confirm the data. The interviews were conducted in isiZulu and then translated to English by the first author herself. The translations were checked by a language editor. Findings The different categories (codes), themes and subthemes were extracted from the interview responses, and direct quotations were used to confirm the results. The findings consist of two tables pertaining to the two interview questions, namely 1) impression management features an employee would display to impress colleagues and 2) impression management features an employee would display to impress a supervisor. A discussion of the relevant themes and subthemes follows. Active guidance An individual who gives valuable advice to colleagues is seen as impressive. Conscientiousness A conscientious employee works hard, goes the extra mile and is deliberate with his or her work in good way. It describes an individual who is a go-getter, focused, hardworking, the kind of person that takes initiative, takes responsibility, and is also effective and efficient in his or her work. The employee also adheres to rules, works righteously and is always engaged in and punctual for work. There is a high level of commitment and dedication; such employees strive to meet expectations and to deliver the best work. External control This theme is demonstrated by a person who has the ability to take care of situations. Household chores Actions belonging to this theme include cooking traditional food for colleagues and inviting them for lunch or dinner. Integrity A person who is authentic, honest, trustworthy and reliable, with good ethical behaviour, and who is truthful, is reported as impressive. Interpersonal amiability A person with this quality displays a high level of respect towards colleagues, is compassionate toward others, and easily accepts and creates a happy atmosphere with and for others. Such employees are peacemakers, humble, kind, friendly and loving. Intrapersonal control This theme refers to individuals who are calm, patient, confident, do not gossip and are not judgemental or offensive towards others. Usually they take pride in important things and submit to others. Openness This quality refers to an individual who is adaptable, openminded and accepting of people. Relational action This behaviour is displayed by a team player, who always supports and provides assistance to others and is always http://www.sajip.co.za Open Access Sociable This description fits a person who is open to socialising with others by means of having gatherings or cooking for and inviting colleagues to his or her house. Social skills This theme indicates someone with good communication skills. Soft-hearted This type of person avoids unnecessary conflict and is humble. Task oriented This individual avoids trivial issues and focuses on the task at hand. Traditional This describes individuals who dress in traditional wear. Conscientiousness A conscientious person goes the extra mile in terms of work, has immense discipline and commitment, and works hard. The person is accountable and focuses on career development. Such individuals display cleanliness, diligence and good time management skills and are always punctual, present themselves well and provide quality work. Individualistic driven The kind of individual who is self-sufficient. Integrity Authenticity, honesty and good ethics in the workplace are the characteristics that would be displayed by a person who wanted to impress his or her supervisor. Showing reliability and trustworthiness in the workplace will most likely impress your supervisor. Interpersonal amiability When employees display respect and friendliness towards their supervisor, it impresses him or her. Interpersonal control A person of great confidence, positivity and consistency will impress supervisors. Being able to separate personal life from work life is an impressive feature. Openness Being inquisitive and open to learn more about the work, as well as being adaptable to different work situations, are good qualities that will impress supervisors. Relational action Acknowledging the supervisor's presence and being agreeable on work-related matters will impress the supervisor. Buying gifts for the supervisor's birthday or complementing him or her, as well as being helpful at work and a team player, are tactics that will impress one's supervisor. Additional impression management tactics include being well behaved, well-mannered and helpful to someone who needs assistance. Skilfulness It is believed that when employees display their skills or abilities and show their willingness to learn more, it is likely to impress their supervisor. Additional features that were reported on include the following: being a person who is an initiator, doing more and getting work in order, adding value to your work and being as effective and efficient as possible. Social skills A person who is very well spoken, a good communicator and observant is most likely to impress his or her supervisor. Discussion The general objective of this study was to explore impression management tactics that are prevalent in the Zulu culture within the work context. The two specific objectives of this study were (1) to investigate the features displayed by a person when impressing others in a formal setting (with colleagues) and (2) to investigate the features displayed by a person when impressing others in a formal setting (with a supervisor). Impression management features in a formal setting (with colleagues) Conscientiousness, interpersonal amiability, openness and relational action are the themes that were reported on the most when impressing colleagues. Conscientiousness refers to an employee who is focused, hardworking and who consistently takes the initiative to meet expectations and deadlines. This type of employee is impressive to other colleagues, because they display qualities such as professionalism, punctuality, work engagement, commitment and dedication. Employees who are engaged with their work and who go the extra mile are regarded as an asset to the organisation, because they are willing to do and give more (Aslan & Akarçay, 2014). Masuku (2005) supports this statement as well by stating that Zulu individuals are easy to work with, since they are eager, hardworking and committed to their work. A person who displays the theme interpersonal amiability when trying to impress colleagues will make sure that he or she is friendly, gentle, kind, loving and respectful towards his or her colleagues. These features are closely related to the indigenous concept of ubuntu, which acknowledges that a person is a person because of other people, and therefore the importance of being kind and welcoming towards people is also applicable to the workplace (Chaplin, 2006). To impress co-workers, an employee would make sure that he or she accepts them, shows compassion towards them and always creates a positive working environment, so that they enjoy working with him or her. In order to impress colleagues, an employee would make sure to be open to them with regard to work, and therefore openness as a theme is regarded as a very important feature when trying to impress others. As found in the findings, openness is related to being receptive about collaborative work or ideas. People are willing to learn and adapt to different situations. Pertaining to this theme further, if people can easily communicate with a colleague, it makes it easy to form relations with that person and especially with regard to working together (Sibisi, 1999). Being an open person draws people to want to work and feel comfortable with a colleague and also to believe they can receive anything from the colleague (Miki, 2009). Relational action as a theme pertains to positive actions displayed in the workplace. Such a person would typically be available to help when needed and would make sure to greet and honour their colleagues. Employees use social cues to achieve a certain goal (Singh et al., 2002); therefore employees would share their knowledge and aim to be supportive and team players in order to maintain healthy workplace relationships with colleagues. The other side of the coin is true as well. According to Chaplin (2006), employees may utilise these tactics to gain or retain promotional relations with others in the workplace. Research findings reveal the same information with regard to impression tactics used by Zulu employees. According to Dube (2011), in the Zulu culture helpfulness, supportiveness, availability and sharing knowledge when needed are prominent actions that may spill over to the workplace. Guadagno and Cialdini (2007) also state that Zulu males use masculine tactics such as aggression, defensiveness and intimidation to get what they want and females display the total opposite attitudes to achieve similar goals, such as promotion or recognition. The female tactics include being passive, compassionate and being aware of the well-being of those with whom they work, whether it is a supervisor or colleague (Singh et al., 2002). Their behaviour would include smiling when speaking or being spoken to, as well as offering help and solutions to problems. Impression management features in a formal setting (with a supervisor) The themes that were reported on the most in the formal setting, when attempting to impress a supervisor, include conscientiousness, integrity, relational action and skilfulness. In a formal setting, an individual would display accountability, cleanliness, discipline and good quality work in order to be regarded as conscientious. Supervisors desire employees who are driven to work hard, are disciplined in their work and produce good quality work; this closely resembles the study conducted by Ingold, Kleinmann, Konig and Melchers (2015). However, Luvuno (2004) states that the abovementioned features are regarded primarily as values that individuals need to live by and are secondarily utilised by people as impression management tactics, depending on the circumstances. Integrity as an important theme was reported as the tendency to display behaviour that is authentic, ethical, honest, trustworthy and truthful with a supervisor with regard to issues pertaining to work. Supervisors are seen on the same level as parents and elders in the Zulu culture (Sibisi, 1999). Parents should be shown respect and honour; it is necessary to adhere to their rules and stay true to the ethics of the culture (Sibisi, 1999). This corresponds to this study's findings pertaining to supervisors. It is clear that a supervisor is regarded as an elder in a formal setting (Sibisi, 1999), and therefore the same behaviour that an individual displays at home towards elders is the same behaviour that a Zulu individual (most likely) displays at work. Relational action refers to displaying an attitude of being open to helping and assisting your supervisor when needed and also acknowledging your supervisor's presence. Being the type of employee who is a team player, is understanding, adds value, is a good listener and is well-mannered is said to impress a supervisor. Any organisation would regard an employee who added value with good teamwork skills and good professional behaviour as an asset to the organisation (O'Donnell & Boyle, 2008). Leonardi and Treem (2012) provide the tactics used by employees to impress their supervisors, which include showing good teamwork skills, as well as individual capabilities, and being an individual who listens and delivers what is expected. Displaying a high level of competence is believed to impress the people an individual works with, especially a supervisor. Skilfulness is also one of the themes that were identified as a feature when impressing a supervisor. business with people effectively and results in good client relationships and satisfaction (Hadebe, 2010). As much as impression management tactics are aimed at personal gain, it is evident that they also have a positive influence on organisational objectives. In a positive light, not only do employees excel, but they also have a positive impact on the growth of the organisation. In the next section, the implications of this study are discussed. Practical implications A positive image is important for individuals, especially in the workplace, since social acceptance stems from being received and drawn into a group and is a rewarding and pleasant feeling (De Wall & Bushman, 2011). Every employee wants to maintain a high performance image in the workplace (Rosenfeld, Giacalone & Riordan, 1995). It is vital for supervisors to understand impression management tactics and how employees utilise them within the work setting, so that whichever evaluations take place, the process remains objective and the results are reliable. It is also important to note the importance of distinguishing between impression tactics and employees who are genuinely working hard. Bye et al. (2011) state that it is important to be aware that when a positive image is created by an employee in the light of making others look bad, intentionally being negative towards other employees, such behaviour can result in the development of negative relations. Such tactics should be addressed by management, because they may create negative relations in the workplace. People from the Zulu culture, however, tend to display a sense of extreme hard work and excellence, although not necessarily trying to employ impression management tactics; in the Zulu culture, it is the nature of a Zulu person to work hard, to be self-reliant and independent (Xulu, 2002). Limitations and recommendations of the study The study is not without limitations. The sample size that was utilised in this study was only N = 30. A larger sample could be used for future research and could include participants from across the different provinces, rather than just KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. For future research, it is recommended that the researcher include not only permanent employees, but also economically inactive participants (i.e. scholars, students, homemakers, retired employees). This would result in the possibility of generalising the results to a broader population. Different age groups can be included, as well as an equal number of people from rural and urban areas. Coget (2014) suggests that organisations and supervisors educate corporate recruiters about how cultural values influence impression management tactics in job interviews. Supervisors could also host impression management workshops, where impression management is addressed by experts. In the same workshop, individuals in the organisations could do exercises on how they use impression management tactics. The results of cultures can be gathered into similar cultural groups and similar genders, so that they can compile a profile for each cultural group or different genders. The results of such an exercise could be reported and discussed in the workshop as feedback, so that not only would the supervisor have the information, but employees would also be informed on tactics employed by their colleagues. This feedback would provide the necessary information with regard to tactics utilised by men, women and the different cultures that exist in that specific organisation. Conclusion The overall purpose of this study was to explore the features that people in the Zulu culture will display to impress other people in a work context. Through this study, numerous impression management tactics that are prevalent in the Zulu culture were identified. It is evident that using impression management tactics is a personal choice; however, an individual's personal upbringing or culture can have an influence on the impression management tactics that individual displays. Impression management tactics are regarded as anything that highlights the positive qualities of a person (Kacmar & Carlson, 1999). The following themes were identified in this study: (1) when attempting to impress colleagues, isiZulu individuals would display the following impression management tactics: conscientiousness, interpersonal amiability, openness and relational action; and (2) the themes that were identified when impressing a supervisor include conscientiousness, integrity, relational action and skilfulness.

BBC One, Doctor Who casting announcement, 16 July 2017 Complaint: Some viewers contacted us unhappy that Jodie Whittaker has been cast as the new Doctor. Response: Since the first Doctor regenerated back in 1966, the concept of the Doctor as a constantly evolving being has been central to the programme. The continual input of fresh ideas and new voices across the cast and the writing and production teams has been key to the longevity of the series. The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey and it has been established in the show that Time Lords can switch gender. As the Controller of BBC Drama has said, Jodie is not just a talented actor but she has a bold and brilliant vision for her Doctor. She aced it in her audition both technically and with the powerful female life force she brings to the role. She is destined to be an utterly iconic Doctor. We hope viewers will enjoy what we have in store for the continuation of the story.

Sinus floor elevation with platelet-rich fibrin alone: A Clinical retrospective study of 1-7 years Background Several sinus floor elevation procedures for implant placement have been introduced. The present study aimed to evaluate the implants placed with Platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) alone in atrophic posterior maxillae and survival rates and the potential factors associated with implant loss. Material and Methods This retrospective study evaluated 71 implants in 34 patients after 1-7 years’ follow-up time. Statistical models were used to determine the implant survival and the potential factors associated with loss. Results Overall, 7 implants were lost, and the cumulative survival rate at 7 years by implant-based and patient-bases analyses were 85.5% and 85.7%, respectively. The mean residual bone height (RBH) was 4.26 mm. The implant survival rate was significantly lower at RBH < 4 mm than RBH ≥ 4 mm. Conclusions This retrospective study showed that sinus floor elevation with PRF alone could be applied in cases of lower RBH. However, it should be carefully performed in cases of RBH < 4 mm before surgery. Key words:Platelet-rich fibrin, dental implant, sinus augmentation, retrospective study. Introduction In the posterior maxillary area, several sinus floor elevation procedures for implant placement have been introduced since the 1980s. With the development of sinus elevation techniques, various graft materials for sinus augmentation have been used as filler to maintain adequate space for new bone formation. Although autogenous bone is still considered the gold standard, its use necessarily creates another wound at the donor site, such as the mandibular ramus or symphysis. Autogenous bone is therefore not widely used in clinical practical. Other graft materials, such as allogenic, xenogenic, alloplastic materials or combinations of different graft materials, have been introduced (1). However, these materials also have their limitations, including risk of infection, insufficient bone regeneration and increased overall cost. As such, no graft material appears to be superior to others at present. Autologous platelet concentrates have been used for over 30 years and have the potential to induce wound healing (2). Whitmann et al. first reported the application of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for oral surgery procedures (3). Although several studies of PRP have been reported, PRP application is complicated and associated with risk because of the use of bovine thrombin. In contrast, the application of platelet-rich fibrin (PRF), developed in 2001 by Choukroun et al. as a second-generation platelet concentrate, is relatively simple, cheap and safe (4). Therefore, PRF has been applied for maxillary sinus augmentation. Previous reports have shown that sinus floor elevation with PRF as graft material achieved favorable results. Sinus augmentation using freezedried bone allograft mixed with PRF showed accelerated bone regeneration and reduced healing time (5). PRF and bovine bone graft material combination is also more effective in the first phases of wound healing than bovine bone graft material and collagen membrane combination (6). Recently, the use of PRF as a sole graft material for sinus augmentations with simultaneous implant placement has shown promising results. In 2008, Diss et al. first published the one-year results of implant placement with the osteotome technique using PRF as the only graft material (7). Toffler et al. showed that osteotome sinus floor elevation with PRF was extremely safe and successful at sites 5-to 8 mm residual bone height (RBH) (8). However, the longer-term outcomes of the procedure and failure factors have not been sufficiently examined. The aim of this retrospective study was to test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in failure factors for implants inserted with PRF as the only grafting material for sinus augmentation. Material and Methods -Study design and patient selection A retrospective study design was employed. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee (No. 46-10-0004). The clinical procedures were performed in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration (revised in 2008), and all patients signed the informed consent forms before treatment. The patients treated sinus floor augmentation using PRF as the sole grafting material at , from September 2010 to October 2015 were screened in this study. The patients' medical and dental histories were checked at the initial appointment, and patients were then selected based on following criteria: 1) tooth loss in the maxillary posterior region, 2) good general health or controlled medical conditions, 3) implant placement by sinus floor elevation with PRF alone as the grafting material, 4) informed consent provided and 5) follow-up visit performed after implant placement at our hospital. -Surgical and prosthetic procedure Panoramic radiography and computer tomography (CT) were performed to examine the bone and sinus conditions. Surgery was performance under local anesthesia. A midcrestal incision was made, and the buccal and palatal mucoperiosteal flaps were reflected using a full-thickness approach to expose the posterior maxillary edentulous area. For the crestal approach, implant holes were drilled using the CAS-KIT (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea). In accordance with the manufacturer's guideline, the CAS-drill must be used with a stopper. Once the drill tip reached the Schneiderian membrane, saline was slowly injected into the prepared hole with pumping to detach the Schneiderian membrane by hydraulic pressure using a hydraulic membrane lifter (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea). PRF clots were compressed into a thin membrane in accordance with the protocol of Choukroun et al. (5) and multiple PRF membranes were inserted into the sinus floor elevated site. Implants were inserted simultaneously. For the lateral approach, full-thickness flaps were elevated after a midcrestal incision was made. A lateral window via the buccal maxillary wall was created using the LAS-KIT (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea). After careful elevation of the Schneiderian membrane, the bone window served as a new sinus floor. Two or three PRF clots were inserted into the sinus cavity. The implant sites were prepared with careful drilling, and then the implants were inserted. Finally, the PRF membrane was used to cover bony window site. Furthermore, when performing a lateral approach to sinus floor elevation for delayed implant placement, a full-thickness mucoperiosteal flap was elevated, and then the lateral maxillary wall was carefully removed and the Schneiderian membrane was elevated with sinus curettes. After the intact sinus cavity was created, three or four PRF clots were inserted into the new sinus cavity. PRF membrane was used to cover the bony window site, and the flaps were sutured. After an approximately three-month healing period, implants were placed using the crestal approach. Three different sinus floor elevation procedures which are simultaneously carried out with the crestal and lateral approach, and staged implant placement were classified in this study. After the healing period, implant-supported supra-structures, including single crowns, fixed partial denture and overdentures, were fabricated and delivered to the patients. -Outcome measurements • The implant survival The implant survival criteria suggested by Buser et al. (9) were adopted, as follows: 1) the absence of implant mobility, 2) the absence of pain or any subjective sensation, 3) the absence of recurrent peri-implant infection and 4) the absence of continuous radiolucency around the implants. Implant failure was classified into two groups: early failure before loading, and late failure after loading (10). The implant survival rate was calculated by measuring the time elapsed from implant placement to the last follow-up visit or implant removal. • Radiographic assessment Radiographic assessments were conducted on CT images using a software program (Simplant, Dentsply, MA, USA) on a millimeter scale. Radiographs were analyzed by one examiner (MS). Before surgery, the RBH at the radiographic guides with a marker site was determined. -Statistical analyses The implant survival rate analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier curve. A logistic regression analysis was use to investigate the potential factors influencing implant loss. The independent factors were sex, age, smoking status, site (premolar or molar), and implant length (< 10 or ≥ 10 mm). The SPSS 17.0 software program (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used to perform all statistical analyses, and the significance level was set to p < 0.05. -Patient and implant information Between September 2011 and October 2015, a total of 34 patients (17 male and 17 female), aged 29 to 82 years old (mean age 57.6), underwent sinus augmentation by PRF alone in this study. The average follow-up time was 3.43 years. The patients were treated with 71 implants inserted into 19 premolars and 52 molars. The implants were as follows: 21 POIEX implants, 3.7 to 5.2 mm in diameter and 8 to 10 mm in length (KYOCERA Medical, Osaka, Japan); 45 TSIII implants, 4.0 to 5.0 mm in diameter and 8.5 to 11.5 mm in length (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea); 4 USIII implants, 4.0 to 5.0 mm in diameter and 8.5 to 11.5 mm in length (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea); 1 GSIII implant, 4.5 mm in diameter and 10 mm in length (OSSTEM Implant Co., Busan, Korea). Fifty-four implants were placed simultaneously via the crestal approach, and 15 were placed simultaneously via the lateral approach. Two implants in one patient were placed via the staged approach. The distributions of patient and implant are presented in Table 1. -The implant survival and failures After 1-7 years follow-up, seven implants in four patients were lost. The cumulative survival rates were 85.5% by implant-based analysis and 85.7% by patient-based analysis Table 2. Moreover, the cumulative survival rates were 100% and 69.6% for the RBH ≥ 4 mm group and the RBH < 4 mm group, respectively (Log-rank test: p = 0.004) Figure 1. The details regarding the lost implants are shown in Table 3. Among the seven lost implants, four implants in two patients were lost two years after placement. One of them was removed and replaced with sinus augmentation by PRF alone. Another three implants in two patients were lost before prosthetic loading. -Radiographic assessments The mean RBH before implant placement as measured in the radiographs was 4.26 ± 2.11 mm and ranged from 0.56 to 9.60 mm in this study. -Logistic regression analysis of risk indicators for implant loss Logistic regression for determining the factors affecting implant loss are showed in Table 4. However, implant loss was found for male patients (OR, 2.4) and implant length< 10 mm (OR, 7.3), none of the factors was found be significantly related to implant loss. Discussion Various sinus augmentation procedures have been introduced to overcome the insufficient bone height for implant placement in the posterior maxillae. The procedures with platelet concentrates have been developed. PRP has been widely used as bone graft material in sinus augmentation procedures. However, Lemos et al. found that PRP with bone graft appeared to have no influence on bone formation or the implant survival in maxillary sinus augmentation (11). Furthermore, preparation for PRP is relatively complex, and there are potential risks with this material, as PRP contains synthetic or anticoagulant materials. Therefore, the actual efficacy of PRP is controversial, although it has the ability to release various growth factors to enhance bone regeneration. PRF has several advantages over PRP, including easier preparation and lower cost (6). In addition, although the in vitro conditions do not fully reflect the clinical situation, the biological characteristics of PRF are also superior to PRP (12). Accordingly, there have been some published clinical reports of sinus floor elevation using PRF as grafting material (5,7,8,13). Choukroun et al reported sinus floor augmentation using PRF in combination with a freeze-dried bone allograft (5). In that report, the mixed graft material was able to reduce the healing time. Tanaka et al. also described increased new bone formation in the histological evaluation of sinus augmentation with deproteinized bovine bone mixed with PRF (14). However, combination with these particulate bone materials has been associated with increased costs and risk of infection. Accordingly, sinus floor elevation using PRF as the sole graft material has been recently introduced. Diss *includes multiple responses implants in 110 patients at less than 12 months after placement using a similar procedure (8). These survival rates were 97.1% and 97.8%, respectively (7,8). The present retrospective study evaluated the outcomes of 71 implants in 34 patients treated with sinus augmentation with PRF alone after 1-7 years' follow-up. A 7-year cumulative survival rate of about 85.5% was detected. This result was slightly lower than the values described by Diss and Toffler (7,8). However, in those two studies, the follow-up duration from implant placement was shorter (one year or less) than in the present study. Furthermore, the mean RBH differed from the present study (6.5 and 6.6 mm, respectively, in Diss and Toffler's studies, and 4.3 mm in the present study). For implants placed using sinus floor elevation, the survival rate is affected by the preexisting bone height between the sinus floor and crest (15). Therefore, the lower survival rate of the present study than these reports was affected by the RBH. Grafting bone materials, such as a xenograft, help to maintain the membrane in an elevated position, since they have strong physical properties (16). While whether or not PRF can maintain the membrane in an elevated position is unclear, since they have softer physical properties. Therefore, the volume and the form of PRF placed into sinus cavity might make it difficult to maintain an elevated membrane position. The elevated membrane position sequentially drops down to the implant apex. The implant is similar in appearance to a tent pole. However, Kanayama et al. found that membranes elevated using PRF alone were able to maintain a higher position above the implant apex, a result which may have been influenced by many factors, including the shape of the sinus cavity, the presence or absence of adjacent teeth and other factors (17). Implant-based analysis A logistic analysis was performed to investigated the factors associated with implant loss. There were no significant differences in the sex, age, smoking status, placement site or implant length between cases of failure and success. A previous study reported on the relationship between RBH and implant failure/success with the sinus floor elevation procedure (15,18,19 CI: confident interval also described a favorable prognosis when the RBH was at least 5 mm (18). A study by Toffler using a similar procedure with PRF also described a decreased survival rate when RBH was <5 mm (19). Rosen found that the survival rate decreased to 85.7% when RBH was ≤ 4 mm. 15 These results suggest a potentially favorable prognosis with a line of demarcation between RBH of 4 or 5 mm. Therefore, we classified subjects into two groups (RBH ≥ 4 mm and < 4 mm) and investigated the survival rate. When RBH was ≥ 4 mm, the survival rate was 100%. In contrast, when RBH was < 4 mm, the survival rate dropped to 69.6%. Furthermore, the Therefore, RBH also affects the survival of the implant when sinus augmentation with PRF alone is applied. Implant loss in cases of lower RBH occurs due to difficulty in acquiring implant stability. In addition, three of the four cases of loss in the present study were found to have smoking and bruxism, factors that may be associated with an increased risk of implant loss (20,21). Lundgren et al. first suggested the placement of implants without the addition of any grafting materials (22). Furthermore, four randomized clinical trials and a systematic review for a procedure without bone graft have also been reported and indicated favorable outcomes, such as solicitude regarding remaining graft particles and reduced rates of complications and lower costs (10,(23)(24)(25). However, this graft-free procedure still remains controversial. Nedir showed that sites with RBH < 4 mm allowed implant placement without the use of grafting materials, although a greater amount of new bone formation was gained when grafting materials were used (26). However, in the present study, all cases of failure showed RBH < 4 mm. Therefore, to evaluate how many millimeters of RBH are required without grafting materials, larger samples and longer-term observations are still needed. Regarding the advantage of using PRF over procedures without grafting materials, PRF could enhance bone ge-neration (27). Perforation of the Schneiderian membrane is the most common complication in sinus grafting procedures, occurring in 10% to 60% of cases (28,29). We believe that PRF presents a great advantage with respect to protecting the membrane from perforation when placing implants, acting as a kind of "barrier material". During implant placement without graft materials, there is some possibility of the implant apex perforating the membrane after elevating sinus floor. Since the crestal approach for sinus floor elevation is a blind procedure and it is difficult to confirm whether or not perforation has occurred, the use of any graft materials might not be favorable. PRF also affects membrane repair if sinus membrane perforations occur during the sinus lift procedure (7,30). The present study included a two-stage approach with PRF alone. PRF as a grafting material is responsible for maintaining the Schneiderian membrane position. PRF is absorbed gradually, so PRF as the sole filling material without simultaneous implant placement may not be adequate for maintaining the membrane. However, our previous report disputes this notion (13). That report showed that PRF clots alone can create space between the original sinus floor and the elevated Schneiderian membrane. The volume of PRF may be important for maintaining the membrane. Therefore, PRF clots may be more useful than a PRF membrane. However, the two-stage protocol has several limitations, like a relatively short follow-up period. Further studies are therefore needed to obtain stronger evidence to confirm our findings. Conclusion This 1-to 7-year retrospective study showed that sinus floor elevation with PRF alone is a safe procedure because PRF was able to protect the membrane during implant installation and thereby avoid any perforation of the membrane. The procedure provides favorable results when the RBH is low. However, the risk of implant loss increases when RBH is < 4 mm. These findings suggest that long-term follow-up and a large sample are required to confirm the predictability of this procedure.

Assessing gene length biases in gene set analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have rapidly become a major genetics approach to studying complex diseases. Although many susceptibility variants and genes have been uncovered by single marker analysis, gene set based analysis is emerging as a very promising approach aiming to detect joint association of a set of genes with disease. In the available gene set based methods, it is often the smallest P value of the Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in a gene region is used to represent the gene-level association signal. This approach may introduce strong bias of association signal towards long genes. In this study, we propose a resampling strategy by randomly generating genomic intervals across the accessible genomic region to estimate the background distribution of P values at the gene level. Comparing with the gene-wise P value in real data, the proportion of random intervals could be used to assess the bias that might be introduced by gene length and in turn to help the investigators choose the appropriate gene set analysis algorithms in their GWAS datasets. Our method uses only summarised GWAS data with no need of permutation, thus, it is computationally efficient. A computer program is freely available for the users.

Ironbottom Sound photographed on 7 August 1942 the day Allied forces landed on Guadalcanal and Tulagi. In the center is Savo Island with Guadalcanal at far left. Map of the location of shipwrecks in the Ironbottom Sound wreath laying ceremony at Guadalcanal in 2015 "Ironbottom Sound" (alternatively Iron Bottom Sound or Ironbottomed Sound or Iron Bottom Bay) is the name given by Allied sailors to the stretch of water at the southern end of The Slot between Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and Florida Island of the Solomon Islands, because of the dozens of ships and planes that sank there during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942–43. Before the war, it was called Savo Sound. Every year on the battle's anniversary, a U.S. ship cruises into the waters and drops a wreath to commemorate the men who lost their lives.[citation needed] For many Navy sailors, and those who served in the area during that time, the waters in this area are considered sacred, and strict silence is observed as ships cruise through.[citation needed] Related articles [ edit ] Battles [ edit ] Sunken ships [ edit ] Allied [ edit ] Savo Island 9 August 1942 Cape Esperance 12 October 1942 Duncan (US Gleaves-class destroyer) First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 13 November 1942 Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 15 November 1942 Tassafaronga 30 November 1942 Operation I-Go [Air Raid on Tulagi] 7 April 1943 Other Surface Battles and Aerial Actions 1942-1945 ^Jarvis was briefly involved in the Battle of Savo Island, but did not actually sink in the Sound; she was lost in a separate bomber attack later that day retreating from Guadalcanal. ^^Juneau is usually described as being sunk in the aftermath of the [First] Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; her loss took place away from the Sound in the Solomon Sea to the southeast. Japanese [ edit ] Cape Esperance 11--12 October 1942 First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 13 November 1942 Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 15 November 1942 Tassafaronga 30 November 1942 Other Surface Battles and Aerial Actions 1942-43 Kikuzuki (Japanese Mutsuki -class destroyer) (lost to USN air attack 4 May 1942) (Japanese -class destroyer) (lost to USN air attack 4 May 1942) Tama Maru (Japanese minesweeper) (lost to USN aerial torpedo attack 4 May 1942) (Japanese minesweeper) (lost to USN aerial torpedo attack 4 May 1942) Azumasan Maru (Japanese military transport) (ran aground and lost to air attack 15 Oct 1942) (Japanese military transport) (ran aground and lost to air attack 15 Oct 1942) Hirokawa Maru (Japanese military transport) (grounded and lost to air attack 15 Nov 1942) Kinugawa Maru Kinugawa Maru (Japanese military transport) (grounded and lost to air attack 15 Nov 1942) (Japanese military transport) (grounded and lost to air attack 15 Nov 1942) I-3 (Japanese Type J1 submarine) (torpedoed by USN PT Boat 9 Dec 1942) (Japanese Type J1 submarine) (torpedoed by USN PT Boat 9 Dec 1942) Teruzuki (Japanese Akizuki -class destroyer) (torpedoed by USN PT Boat 12 Dec 1942) (Japanese -class destroyer) (torpedoed by USN PT Boat 12 Dec 1942) I-1 (Japanese Type J1 submarine) (rammed by RNZN ASW Corvettes, ran aground 29 January 1943) (Japanese Type J1 submarine) (rammed by RNZN ASW Corvettes, ran aground 29 January 1943) Makigumo (Japanese Yūgumo-class destroyer) (hit Mine while under attack by PT Boat 1 February 1943) Media [ edit ] The location of the Ironbottom Sound is used in the 2016 animated film KanColle: The Movie. References [ edit ] See also [ edit ] Coordinates:

Kevin Young showed how to create a wonderful asset, which looks like it was taken from World of Warcraft. Introduction I’ve been studying 3D Game Art at Kendall College of Art and Design since January 2016. I’ve been working in 3D for about a year now, specializing in environments. I was taught by both Cory Heald and Brian Olmstead for the majority of my time here and I was also given a great opportunity to intern alongside them both at Underbite Games for the past 9 months, expanding my knowledge vastly. I recently departed from that internship but while there, I worked on video game environment projects for both Super Dungeon Tactics and early development of Sentinels: Age of Heroes as well as some outsource work for a Lego Star Wars project. Source of Fel The project originated when my instructor, Brian Olmstead, asked what I may want to make for our first project for the upcoming Fall semester and I gave him a handful of concepts to choose from. He ended up choosing the Source of Fel project (Concept by Egor Belavsky) for all of us in class to create. I jumped in to start blocking out the model in Modo and I wanted to make sure the major elements of the scene were well conveyed proportionally while adding a functionality to the piece as needed. I also thought to have some fun and change the skeletal hand to a more gruesome fleshy hand. I had also taken notice of a thread on the Polycount forums that used the same concept for the months of January and February as part of their environment challenge project. While I was much too late to participate in their challenge, I took note of the participants’ work to see how they both struggled and succeeded with their own projects, ultimately contributing to my own success with the model. Modeling The modeling began within Modo, blocking out the overall shape of the concept, ensuring that the proportions were adequate. I planned ahead to duplicate the stonework in a radial pattern and sculpted no more than a half-circle of the bricks to save myself some time. I subdivided the model several times within Zbrush to obtain a certain smoothness and detail quality. I paid close attention to the concept for detail and where it was placed to ensure my authenticity. Using Michael Vincente’s brush pack, I was able to easily achieve a hand painted style for both the wood, metal, and stonework. The most challenging part of the sculpt was probably with the rope. I had never before sculpted a rope and while I looked into tutorials that would help me through the process, they were a bit too realistic for the hand-painted approach and I ended up sculpting it entirely by hand, meaning I went through the entire length of the rope making sure each line matched with the last. It was not the most time efficient approach but it certainly matched the hand-painted style I was hoping to achieve within my time constraints. I was, however, given more time effective approaches by Brian to achieve the same look after I completed my sculpt and I plan to use those methods in future projects that require them. Outside of the sculpt, the most challenging aspect to tackle was the retopology of the candles. Truthfully I believe they are the weakest point in my model. I received some great feedback both in class and from the online community though on ways to improve them, which I plan to do in the next few days. Textures The entire project was established in a hand-painted style and while that can be a large topic of it’s own, I’ll attempt to describe the style as best as I possibly can. Before painting anything, I establish that my normal map is correctly applied and I use 3D-Coat’s AO baking to give me a strong depth of shadow. I then apply flat colors and use that as a starting point. I then paint in highlights and blend between them and the base color. Essentially, I use the color picker to choose the in-between color when blending, applied it with a 50% opacity, then again choose the in-between created from other in-between colors and apply it within the blending area. Ultimately I’m just going back and forth between colors. I like to explain painting as the push and pull between color and as an example I like to think of it as waterbending from “The Last Airbender”. Painting is not necessarily creating the perfect shape through the first initial brush stroke, but through repeated motion of back and forth, the proper shape comes to fruition to properly describe the material. It’s difficult to explain but best seen through color blending with actual paint on a canvas. I have a background in traditional painting and it has given me great practice to experiment. With this particular model, I experimented with the use of color in a “thick” application. Using 3D-Coat I didn’t necessarily use any smart materials found in 3D-Coat as it was all hand-painted but I did establish myself as the light source and I found it both fun and empowering. In other words, I placed my camera view from where light would originate and I believe it created some positive results. It was crucial to be mindful of what kind of surface material I was trying to describe though. As an example, while painting metal, I needed to push the bright highlights further than anything else and pay close attention to the shape of the model to determine a believable rate that the light would fall-off. The wood and stone were somewhat easier to paint though as they did not require as much of a reflective quality but the principles remained the same. I’m also interested to begin learning how to texture within Substance Painter too in an attempt to both become more familiar with an industry standard and save myself more time. I already have plans in place to use it for my next project which happens to be a large robot. Setting up in Sketchfab Setting up the light within Sketchfab was actually really quick and easy. It didn’t take any longer than 20 minutes to just use the standard presets Sketchfab provides and tweak a few settings. Correctly applying the alpha channels to give the grass textures their transparency was another small step to take but nothing of extreme difficulty. I feel that Sketchfab has made the process as easy as possible to display models wonderfully. I have certainly thought to add animation to my model and it’s possible I still will. I would like to see the wheel crank go back and forth to raise and lower a bucket into and out of the source of fel. When it comes time for the animation, I’ll have texture space available for the bucket that currently ceases to exist. I also imagine to repurpose my zombie-esque hand and bone to place on the wheel crank itself, as if it’s responsible for raising and lowering the bucket into and out of the well. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the outcome of my project and I’m excited to continue pushing myself as an artist. I’m also super excited to begin my career path in 3D. I haven’t been working in 3D for a very long time and I am thrilled to think that I can only grow from here. I owe a lot of my newly found skill and knowledge to my teachers and I hope they can see how much I appreciate them and their help. It may be cliche to say, but really, I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. Thank you so much for this opportunity, it was really fun to be able to share my work! The 3D community is really great at helping one another and I’m glad to now be a part of something so amazing. Kevin Young, 3D Environment Artist Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev.

Pathogenicity Factors of Vibrio Vulnificus: A Review Introduction: Vibrio vulnificus is an opportunistic microorganism that is part of the natural flora of the coastal marine environment. Consumption of seafood containing V. vulnificus can result in a severe, lightning-fast systemic infection in humans, which can, in its turn, lead to sepsis and even death in susceptible people. Infections caused by V. vulnificus have been reported in various climate zones around the world. Thus, the understanding of factors contributing to pathogenicity of this bacterium in its natural habitat can help develop new methods of disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Objective: To overview and systematize pathogenicity factors of V. vulnificus described in literary sources. Materials and methods: We used data analysis techniques to review scientific studies published in Russian and English in such abstract and citation databases as Scopus, PubMed, Russian Science Citation Index, and on information portals in 1976–2020. The main selection criterion was availability of information on the study of pathogenicity factors of V. vulnificus in the papers. Sixty full-text publications meeting the above criteria were chosen. Results: This review presents the latest achievements in the study of determinants contributing to the pathogenicity of V. vulnificus and examines their roles in pathogenesis. It has been shown that this microorganism, like most pathogens, requires coordinated work of many pathogenicity factors to cause infection. Most of them perform only an auxiliary function in pathogenesis and serve mainly for survival in the environment. However, in the absence of pathogenicity factors such as cytolysins VVH and MARTX, which cause tissue necrosis in the small intestine with subsequent dissemination into the bloodstream and other tissues, V. vulnificus is unable to cause intestinal infection. Conclusion: The understanding of the determinants contributing the most to the infection is extremely important when analyzing strains circulating in the country and assessing the risks of diseases in humans exposed to this pathogen.

KYIV, Ukraine—Europe’s two greatest security challenges, Islamist terrorism and Russian military aggression, have cast a shadow over the French presidential election. Authorities in Paris reported a possible terrorist attack on the Champs-Elysees on Thursday night, throwing the election a last-minute curveball—potentially to the benefit of the far-right National Front party’s candidate, Marine Le Pen. The two candidates who have arguably taken the hardest stand against terrorism and immigration, Le Pen and the conservative Republicans’ François Fillon, are also unabashed admirers of Russian President Vladimir Putin and apologists for the Kremlin’s military intervention in Ukraine. Fillon and Le Pen have both said the European Union should drop its sanctions on Russia, put in place for Moscow’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and ongoing proxy war in eastern Ukraine. “These sanctions are completely stupid, they have not solved any problems, they haven’t improved the situation at all, all they have done is created major economic problems for the EU,” Le Pen told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview, referring to the EU’s sanctions on Russia. “Both are trying to play with fears and they denounce [French President Francois] Hollande’s government for having failed in preventing the terror attacks in Paris and in Nice,” Nicolas Tenzer, founder and president of the Centre for Study and Research for Political Decision, a Paris-based think tank, told The Daily Signal, referring to Fillon and Le Pen. “They are basically anti-American and consider Russia as a counterweight,” Tenzer added. “In their views, Ukraine is likely to be part of Russian empire, or at least sphere of influence.” France is a nuclear power, the world’s sixth-largest economy, and a founding member of the European Union. Consequently, a lot is at stake in the upcoming French vote. The first round of voting is set for Sunday, with the two finalists squaring off in a second round on May 7. Fillon’s candidacy has been rocked by scandal, and widely discounted from reaching the May 7 runoff. Although, according to French news reports, he has made a late surge in the lead up to Sunday’s first round of voting. Le Pen has slipped in the polls, but she is still expected to reach the second round where she will likely face centrist Emmanuel Macron, the current frontrunner. France’s former minister of the economy, the 39-year-old Macron, is running his first political campaign—without the backing of an established party. Macron is expected to edge Le Pen in the final vote. France’s incumbent president, Hollande, a socialist, is not running for re-election. As of this article’s publication, French authorities were investigating whether Thursday’s attack in Paris was an act of terrorism. That attack, and a terrorist plot stymied by French authorities this week, might give Le Pen a late boost in the polls, some say. “It is … certain that the terrorist attack, which has been prevented this week, would have led to a surge in votes for the candidate of the National Front,” Marcel Van Herpen, director of the Cicero Foundation, a Dutch think tank that specializes in Russian and European affairs, told The Daily Signal. “Basically, the barriers between the far right and Les Républicains are falling, and we could also consider that if Fillon doesn’t run for the second round, some of his voters, maybe one-third, polls said, would turn to Le Pen,” Tenzer said. Hybrid War As part of a broader campaign to undermine Western democracies, Putin has exploited the threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as an anti-EU, anti-immigrant populism that has swept across Europe, to find an inroads to influence the French election. For Putin, positioning Russia as an ally to the West in combatting terrorism is a potential bargaining chip to exchange for securing sanctions relief. If Europe dropped sanctions without Moscow backing down on Crimea or eastern Ukraine, it would be a political windfall for the Russian leader as he looks to his own re-election campaign in 2018. For Le Pen, fears of terrorism and anxiety about Europe’s refugee crisis have proven to be political boons of her own. The National Front’s campaign platform taps into French Euroskepticism as well as voter anxieties about Europe’s refugee crisis and radical Islamic terrorism. It’s a message that has struck a chord with the French people after a string of deadly terrorist attacks. “The terrorist attacks have played an important role in Le Pen’s rise to a serious candidate,” Van Herpen said. “They confirmed the already existing idea that migrants from Muslim countries are dangerous and are a threat to the French identity. They also confirm the idea that the European Union … is not the solution, but only a part of the problem.” Le Pen has also shown that she is squarely in Moscow’s corner when it comes to Ukraine. In an interview with the Polish news site Do Rzeczy, Le Pen said, “Regarding Ukraine, we behave like American lackeys.” “The aim of the Americans is to start a war in Europe to push NATO to the Russian border,” she said. In February 2014, pro-European street protests in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city, overthrew a kleptocratic pro-Russian regime that murdered more than 100 of its own citizens in its waning days. Le Pen called the revolution a “coup d’etat.” On Crimea, Le Pen said Russia’s hybrid warfare invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula never happened, and that the Crimean people willingly chose to rejoin the Russian Federation on their own accord. “I absolutely disagree that it was an illegal annexation. A referendum was held and residents of Crimea chose to rejoin Russia,” Le Pen told the French channel BFM TV. The EU and the United States have called the 2014 referendum illegitimate. Le Pen has made several trips to Moscow to meet with government officials, including a meeting with Putin in February 2014 one month before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, according to the French investigative news site Mediapart. On a March 24 visit to Moscow, Le Pen told Putin that she wanted France and Russia to share intelligence related to fighting terrorism. “It is a public secret that the National Front serves the foreign policy of the Kremlin,” Van Herpen told The Daily Signal. Russian banks have financed Le Pen’s National Front party, providing tens of millions of euros in loans. In November 2014, according to French news reports, the National Front received a 9 million euro ($9.8 million) loan from the Russian-owned First Czech-Russian Bank, part of a 40 million euro request. Accusations that the loan was a reward for her position on Crimea were “ridiculous,” Le Pen said. Course Correction As for Fillon, in March the French newspaper Le Canard reported that France’s 63-year-old former prime minister was paid 50,000 euros (about $54,000) by Dubai-based Future Pipe Industries Group Ltd. to set up a meeting between Putin, Lebanese billionaire Fouad Makhzoumi, and Total SA Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2015. In November, Putin said he has a “very good” personal relationship with Fillon. Fillon and Le Pen’s stances on Russia diverge from that of Hollande, France’s current president—but it’s not a complete turnaround. Hollande has steadfastly supported the EU’s sanctions regime against Moscow. He has also been a party to the Ukraine conflict’s cease-fire negotiations. In 2014, the French president canceled a $1.6 billion deal, dating back to 2008, to sell two Mistral warships to Russia. At the time the deal was nixed, more than 400 Russian sailors were already in the French port city of Saint-Nazaire for training, and port facilities were under construction in Vladivostok. However, in the aftermath of the November 13, 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris, there was a warming of Franco-Russian relations. In the days that followed, Hollande reached out to Russia for intelligence on Islamic State targets in Syria for French retaliatory bombing runs. And on Nov. 26, Hollande flew to Moscow to ask for Putin’s help in fighting the Islamic State in Syria. Hollande’s outreach to Russia to combat terrorism underscored France’s tricky relationship with Moscow. For the French people, terrorism is, without question, considered the top security concern. And polling has suggested that anxiety about terrorism has boosted support for the National Front. Less than a month after the November 2015 Paris attacks, the National Front won the first round of France’s regional parliamentary elections that December with 28 percent of the overall vote, effectively upheaving France’s political order overnight. Speaking about the 2015 parliamentary election, Van Herpen said Russia had “a double reason to be satisfied with the [November 2015] terrorist attacks in Paris.” “It made the National Front the biggest party of France,” he said, “and it completely changed the attitude of the French government vis-à-vis Moscow.” Long Time Coming This is an election as much about tectonic shifts to the defining traits of French civilization as it is about the fickle winds of the politics of the moment. Patrick Calvar, head of the French intelligence service, warned in 2016 that France is “on the brink of civil war.” Until the rise of the Islamic State, the Islamist terrorism threat in Europe had mostly been tied to causes anchored outside of Europe such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Algerian civil war, or al-Qaeda’s war on the West. However, the Islamic State’s terrorist attacks across Europe aren’t the consequences of far-off conflicts or distant grievances; they are, in fact, the symptoms of a conflict that has been brewing inside of Europe for decades. These attacks are an expression of rage by European-born Muslims against their homelands. Compounding the threat, some experts say that as the Islamic State loses ground in Syria and Iraq, the thousands of potential recruits the terrorist army was able to gin up every month to join its ranks in the Middle East are now being redirected to launch terrorist attacks in their home countries in Europe and the West. All of the known terrorists who carried out the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris, killing 130, were EU citizens. And at least one slipped back into Europe’s Schengen free travel zone pretending to be a Syrian refugee. In 2015 alone, more than 1 million refugees flooded into Europe—including about 660,000 from the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Consequently, immigration and terrorism are hot-button issues as France chooses its next president. At a campaign rally in Marseille on Wednesday, Le Pen called the election a “choice of civilizations.” “I will be the president of those French who want to continue living in France as the French do,” Le Pen said. Fillon has pledged to punish anyone “who takes up arms against their country” by stripping them of their nationality. When asked how Putin would react to a Le Pen or Fillon victory, Tenzer answered: “Champagne and caviar in the Kremlin!” “It would be a huge success for Putin,” Tenzer said. “It could mean the dismantlement of Europe, the unravelling of security organizations, including maybe NATO, and the [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe], and certainly the U.N. It would give a free hand to Moscow in Europe and in the Middle East, and of course the lifting of sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.” Moscow’s enthusiasm for a Le Pen presidency is not, however, shared by Ukrainian lawmakers. Signaling a potential diplomatic row should Le Pen be elected, Ukraine’s foreign ministry issued a pointed statement in January. “Making statements that repeat Kremlin propaganda, the French politician shows disrespect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and completely ignores the fundamental principles of international law,” the statement said. The statement added: “Such statements and actions in violation of the Ukrainian legislation will necessarily have consequences, as it was in the case of certain French politicians, who are denied entry to Ukraine.” Responding to the Ukrainian statement, a spokesman for Le Pen told Reuters: “Marine Le Pen had no intention of going there (to Ukraine) anyway. This issue will be solved via diplomatic channels when she becomes president of the (French) Republic.”

Dose-dependent elimination of theophylline in rats. The effect of different doses on the rate of metabolism of theophylline in rats was investigated. After doses of 52 or 115 mg/kg, the initial concn. decayed according to a first-order process with an apparent half-life of about four hours. However, after four to eight hours the slope of the curves declined, resulting in elimination half-lives of about 70 min. Similar half-lives of 70 min were also found after doses of 6 or 11 mg/kg. The AUC increased disproportionately with dose, indicating capacity-limited elimination. No differences were observed in capacity-limited elimination of the two major metabolites of theophylline: the ratio between the amounts of 1,3-dimethyluric acid and 1-methyluric acid formed was independent of the dose of theophylline. The initial apparent first-order decay after higher doses resulted from a combination of capacity-limited metabolism and compensatory increased diuresis of unchanged theophylline. It is concluded that linear pharmacokinetics of theophylline in rats apply only to doses not exceeding 10 mg/kg.

Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation in a Patient Undergoing Removal of Humeral Head for Pain Relief Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was recently observed intraoperatively in a patient who required removal of her right humeral head for pain relief. Despite normal preoperative coagulation parameters, the patient developed wound oozing soon after suturing the skin. Coagulation profile revealed decreased platelets, plasma coagulation factors and fibrinogen in association with elevated fibrin degradation products. To manage the DIC, urinastatin and gabexate mesilate, along with blood component replacement, proved effective.

The Department of Computer Science is deeply saddened to report that Prof. Liviu Iftode passed away on February 16, 2017. Liviu was a beloved and highly respected member of the Rutgers CS faculty, and mentored numerous students over the years. Liviu was born and raised in Cristian, Sibiu County, Romania. He graduated from the Gheorghe Lazar High School in Sibiu, and subsequently obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (with Highest Honors) from the Technical University of Bucharest in Romania in 1984. He then worked for several years at Research Institute for Computer Technology, Bucharest, where he was the head of the System U development team. He honed his expertise in operating system kernel development during his time there. Liviu was a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University between 1991 and 1997, from where he earned a Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Kai Li. The work that he did for his Ph.D. thesis as part of Princeton's Scalable High-performance Really Inexpensive Multi-Processor (SHRIMP) project remains to this day a pioneering piece of work on distributed shared memory. Liviu joined the Rutgers Computer Science department in 1998 and has remained here ever since, except for a brief stint on the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2002-03. During his time at Rutgers, he worked on a wide variety of projects in computer systems, pervasive computing, and computer security. He was among an early cohort of researchers to recognize the power of mobile computing and vehicular computing, and led a number of influential projects in these areas. Liviu's work has had an immense impact on these areas, and landed him multiple awards, research grants, and lead to many collaborative efforts, both at Rutgers and beyond. Of all his accomplishments, Liviu was proudest of his legacy as a teacher and mentor. At Rutgers, he frequently taught courses on operating systems and distributed systems. His unique teaching style for operating systems courses, where he delved into the guts of operating system code during class, instilled precision and rigor into his students. He directly supervised the Ph.D. thesis of ten students, in addition to mentoring dozens of people ranging from high-school students to junior faculty colleagues, both at Rutgers and beyond. Liviu's presence on the Rutgers CS faculty drew a number of current and former faculty members to join the department. Liviu is survived by his wife of 33 years, Cristina Iftode. A memorial service was held on February 19th at Princeton Abbey, where a number of students, colleagues and friends shared their remembrances and paid tribute to him. Liviu has left a deep impact on many people, and will be sorely missed.

Centralized Optimal Management of Distribution Resources Considering the Effects of Local Controllers of Generators In order to foster increasing shares of renewable generation at distribution level, it is necessary to introduce control strategies to avoid voltage and loading congestions. Control strategies are also needed to facilitate the provision of ancillary services to the transmission grid by distributed resources. Centralized control solutions are often the best choice for an optimal management of distribution networks, but they usually require monitoring vast network areas and many grid nodes, which is frequently unaffordable. For this reason, some portions of the network (i.e. LV nodes) can be operated in an unsupervised way, and the fundamental control functions are operated by generators local controllers. Of course, these controllers also impact on the supervised network portions, therefore centralized architectures should take their (side) effects into account in order to compensate them. This paper analyses the behavior of a real distribution grid with a hybrid control strategy (i.e. where automatic local controllers are implemented in some portions, while some generators and distribution transformers are controlled by the network operator) and compares it to situations in which either central control only or local controllers only are activated.

Search for Short-Term Periodicities in the Sun's Surface Rotation: A Revisit The power spectral analyses of the Sun's surface equatorial rotation rate determined from the Mt. Wilson daily Doppler velocity measurements during the period 3 December 1985 to 5 March 2007 suggests the existence of 7.6 year, 2.8 year, 1.47 year, 245 day, 182 day and 158 day periodicities in the surface equatorial rotation rate during the period before 1996. However, there is no variation of any kind in the more accurately measured data during the period after 1995. That is, the aforementioned periodicities in the data during the period before the year 1996 may be artifacts of the uncertainties of those data due to the frequent changes in the instrumentation of the Mt. Wilson spectrograph. On the other hand, the temporal behavior of most of the activity phenomena during cycles 22 (1986-1996) and 23 (after 1997) is considerably different. Therefore, the presence of the aforementioned short-term periodicities during the last cycle and absence of them in the current cycle may, in principle, be real temporal behavior of the solar rotation during these cycles. Introduction Temporal variations in the Sun occur on many time scales. The time scales relevant for dynamical process range from minutes (lifetime of small convective elements such as granules) to years/decades/centuries (solar cycles) to billion of years (evolution). Studies of short-term variations in solar activity and their solar cycle dependence may greatly help for better understanding the basic process of solar activity cycle and for predicting the level of solar activity (Krivova and Solanki, 2002;Knaack, Stenflo, and Berdyugina, 2005;Atac andÖzgüc, 2006;Javaraiah, 2008;Forgács-Dajka and Borkovits, 2007;Obridko and Shelting, 2007). The current model is that the solar dynamo, thought to be responsible for the solar magnetic-activity cycle, operates near the base of the convection zone near the interface between convection and radiation zones (Rosner and Weiss, 1992;Ossendrijver, 2003). This so-called Tachocline is a layer of strong radial shear where the solar rotation profile changes from having a latitude dependency in the convection zone to a pure radial profile in the radiative zone (Spiegel and Zahn, 1992). The variation of solar rotation with the 11-year solar cycle is well-established by now. The 11-year torsional oscillations were discovered by Howard and LaBonte (1980), using Mt. Wilson Doppler velocity measurements, and have been confirmed using different data sets and methods. Helioseismic observations show that the torsional oscillations are not just a superficial phenomenon but they extend to at least the upper third of the solar convection zone (Howe et al., 2000a). Variations on the few other time scales in the coefficients of solar differential rotation (Javaraiah and Gokhale, 1995;Javaraiah and Gokhale, 1997;Javaraiah, 1998;Javaraiah, 1999;Javaraiah, 2003;Javaraiah and Komm, 1999;Javaraiah, Bertello, and Ulrich, 2005) and the residual rotation (Brajsa, Ruzdjak, and Wöhl, 2006), including one which is approximately equal to the Gleissberg cycle, have been found using sunspot group data. However, variations in the solar rotation on shorter time scales are more difficult to determine because several observational and instrumental effects can produce spurious peaks with similar periodicities. Howe et al. (2000b) detected a 1.3 year periodicity in the Sun's internal rotation rate near the base of the convection zone, using GONG and SOHO/MDI helioseismic data over the period May 1995 to November 1999. A similar periodicity is found in sunspot activity (Krivova and Solanki, 2002) and in solar-wind speed (Richardson et al., 1994), suggesting that this periodicity may be associated with the basic process of the solar dynamo. In addition, a similar periodicity is also found in the interplanetary magnetic field (Lockwood, 2001) and many other related solar and geomagnetic data, suggesting that, possibly, there exists a direct connection between the basic mechanism of solar activity and that of interplanetary planetary magnetic field (for a recent and comprehensive review see Obridko and Shelting, 2007). Such a connection may be possible through the mediation of the solar wind (Georgieva et al., 2005). Javaraiah and Komm (1999) analysed the sun's surface "mean" rotation rate determined from the Mt. Wilson velocity data (1986 -1994) and found, beside a few other short-term periodicities, a statistically significant 1.2 ± 0.2-year periodicity. This periodicity in the surface rotation data may be related to the 1.3-year periodicity in the solar activity and the internal rotation. However, Howe et al. (2000b) did not find a 1.3-year periodicity in the sun's surface rotation rate determined from the MDI and the GONG data. The aim of this paper is to improve the analysis described in Javaraiah and Komm (1999) by using relatively longer and better calibrated daily data of the equatorial rotation rate determined from the Mt. Wilson Doppler velocity measurements. In addition, we investigated other short-term periodicities and their solar cycle dependence. In the next two sections we describe in some detail the data and the analysis performed. The power spectra of the time series were calculated using both the standard Fourier analysis and the maximum entropy method (MEM). In addition, we have applied the Morlet wavelet analysis to study the solar-cycle dependence of these periodicities. In Section 4 we present conclusions and briefly discuss them. Data and Analysis It is standard practice to summarize solar differential rotation profiles by fitting them to minimize least squares of the residuals with the functional form: where ω(φ) is the solar angular velocity at latitude φ, the coefficient A represents the equatorial rotation rate and the coefficients B and C measure the latitudinal gradient in the rotation rate, with B representing mainly low latitudes and C representing largely higher latitudes. This formula is chosen largely for historical reasons but can be related to a spherical harmonic expansion. We have used the daily values of the equatorial rotation rate (A) derived from the Mount Wilson Doppler measurements during the period 3 December 1985 to 5 March 2007. This period covers solar cycle 22 and most of cycle 23. In the present analysis we have used the data corrected for the scattered-light effect (for a detail see Ulrich, 2001) and removed the very large spikes (viz. > 2σ, where σ is the standard deviation of the original time series). Figure 1 shows both the original (dotted curve) and the corrected (solid curve) time series of A. The time series has data gaps which vary in size, with a maximum gap of 49 days during Carrington rotation numbers 1560 -1608. In order to produce an uninterrupted time series, we have binned the above corrected daily data into 120 consecutive 61-day intervals. The 61-day interval was chosen in order to have a sufficient amount of data in the intervals near a large gap. Figure 2 shows the 61-day binned time series of the sidereal A values. In the same figure the horizontal dotted lines indicate the rms deviation in the rotation rate. The one-year periodicity is found in several solar-activity indices, but its origin is doubtful. That is, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that this periodicity is not due to influence of seasonal effects. Therefore, we removed the 1.0 year periodicity from the times series to determine the short-term periodicities in A shown in Figure 2. scales of the order of a few years to few days. The amplitudes of these variations are significantly larger than the rms deviation at some epochs, before the year 1996. As can be seen in Figure 1 there are some large jumps in the original time series (dotted-curve) of A. A few of these large jumps are associated with the time-intervals during which the following changes were made in the Mount Wilson Spectrograph: During 14 February 1989 to 2 May 1989, fiber-optics were rearranged for "rubber-band" grams. During 1 May 1990 to 4 May 1990, exit slit box was rebuilt with inch-worm and exit slits were realigned. On 4 September 1990, a new grating box was installed. On 16 November 1990, entrance slit was made narrower and spectrograph optics were realigned. On 11 December 1991, Littrow lenses were rotated to reduce astigmatism and reduced the entrance slit width again. On 29 December 1996, Littrow lenses were removed and cleaned. In order to implement this log-book information in the analysis, we first arbitrarily removed some high spikes around these time-intervals. But we found that it increased the inconsistency of the time series, i.e. it increased the number of gaps in the data series and also the sizes of some gaps are found to be increased considerably. Hence, we did not implement the deletions. Moreover, many of those spikes are absent in the corrected time series (the solid-curve of Figure 1) Figure 2. Variation of A in the 61-day intervals of the corrected data obtained after removing the large spikes in the daily data. The horizontal solid line represents the mean and the horizontal dotted lines indicate the corresponding rms deviation, which is about 0.035 deg/day. and the remaining ones are washed out in the aforementioned 61-day averages (Figures 2 and 3). We have computed the fast Fourier transform(FFT), maximum-entropy method (MEM), and Morlet wavelet power spectra of the data shown in Figures 2 and 3. The MEM FORTRAN program was provided to us by A.V. Raveendran, and was also used in the earlier papers (Javaraiah and Gokhale, 1995;Javaraiah and Gokhale, 1997). We have used the wavelet program by Torrence and Compo (1998). The results of these analyses are described in the next section. Figure 4 shows the FFT power spectrum of the variations in A shown in Figure 3. Before computing the FFT, the mean value of the series was subtracted from the data and a cosine bell function was applied to the first and the last 10% of the time series. Because of the requirement of the specific code we used for the calculation of the Morlet wavelet and to keep the consistency between the two analyses, we have padded the time series with eight zeros so that the number of data points (128) corresponds to an exact power of two. The significance level of the peaks in a FFT power spectrum can be computed by assuming that the mean power spectrum can be modeled using either a whitenoise or a red-noise spectrum. For the case of a red-noise spectrum, the discrete Fourier power spectrum is given, after normalization, by FFT Analysis where k = 0, ..., N/2 is the frequency index, N is the number of data points, and α is the lag-one auto-correlation coefficient (when α = 0.0 we obtain the white-noise spectrum). In this case, for a peak to be significant at a given significant level, higher values of power are required compared to the whitenoise background spectrum (Torrence and Compo, 1998). We find α = 0.62 for the time series of A shown in Figure 3. In the FFT power spectrum shown in Figure 4 there are noticeable peaks around the frequencies 21 -7 year −1 , 2.7 year −1 , 1.4 year −1 , 0.668 year −1 (250 day period), and 0.411 year −1 (150 day period). For a white-noise model only the peaks at frequency 21 -7 year −1 are above 3σ level (> 99% confidence level). From the red-noise model we find no peak is significant at a 90% confidence level. We have also determined the FFT power spectra of A during the movingtime-intervals (MTI) successively shifted by 61 days and 365 days. We derived Figure 3. The solid and the dotted horizontal lines represent the mean and 3σ (from the mean) levels, respectively. The dashed and the dashed-dotted curves represent the corresponding mean and 90% confidence red-noise spectra. The corresponding red-noise, α, is 0.62. these MTI series from the data time series shown in Figure 1, in which the spikes above the 2σ level are removed. We did not show these spectra because we found no notable difference between these spectra and the ones shown in Figure 4, in the low-frequency side correspond to the aforementioned periodicities. MEM Analysis A different approach for determining the value of the periodicities in a short time series with higher accuracy is to compute the power spectrum using a maximum entropy method (MEM). An important step in this method is the optimum selection of the order M of the autoregressive process. If M is chosen too low the spectrum is over-smoothed and the high-resolution potential is lost. If M is chosen too high, frequency shifting and spontaneous splitting of the spectral peaks occurs. In order to find the correct values of the periodicities-particularly the ≈ 21 -7 year periodicity seen in the FFT power spectrum, we computed MEM power spectra choosing various values for M in the range (N/3, N/2) as suggested by Ulrych and Bishop (1975), where N is the total number of intervals in the analyzed time series. We find that M = N/3 is suitable in the present MEM analysis (i.e., the peaks are sharp and well separated). Figure 5 shows the MEM power spectra of A. This spectrum shows the values ≈ 7.6 year, 2.8 year, 1.47 year, 245 day, 182 day, and 158 day for the periodicities noticed from the FFT analysis. Figure 5. MEM power spectrum of A correspond to the corrected with one-year period filtered time series (shown in Figure 3). Near each considerably large peak, the value of the corresponding periodicity is mentioned. Wavelet Analysis Wavelet analysis is a powerful method for analyzing localized variations of the power within a time series at many different frequencies (Torrence and Compo, 1998). The short-term periodicities 1.3 year, 150 -160 day, etc. in several solar activity phenomena have been analysed using this technique (e.g., Oliver, Ballester, and Baudin, 1998;Krivova and Solanki, 2002;Prabhakaran Nayar et al., 2002;Ballester, Oliver, and Carbonell, 2004;Knaack, Stenflo, and Berdyugina, 2005;Mendoza, Velasco, and Valdés-Galica, 2006;Chowdhury and Ray, 2006;Forgács-Dajka and Borkovits, 2007). Hence, we used the Morlet-wavelet analysis, which also helps to determine the solar-cycle dependence of the short-term periodicities. Figure 6 shows the wavelet spectra, normalized by 1/s 2 , of the corrected with one-year period filtered time series of A shown in Figure 3, where s 2 is the variance of the same time series. The wavelet spectrum suggests that the 1.47-year and 2.8-year periodicities might have occurred around the year 1990 (and 1995), and the 245-day periodicity might have occurred around 1992, in the variation of A. These periodicities are above the 95% confidence level (corresponding to the green contour level). The ≈ 7.6 year periodicity is inside the cone-of-influence (COI). Therefore, this periodicity is not detected here unambiguously, although it is above the 99% confidence level in the FFT power spectrum (Figure 4). The available data are inadequate to accurately determine the correct value as well as the time dependence of this periodicity. On the other hand, such a periodicity seems present in the rotation rates of magnetic features. Singh and Prabhu (1985) have found a seven-year periodicity in the rotation rate derived from Ca + K plage data during the period 1951 -1981. The existence of an approximate eight-year periodicity is found in both the equatorial rotation rate and the latitudinal gradient of the rotation determined from over 100 years of Greenwich and Solar Optical Observatory Network (SOON) sunspot group data (Javaraiah and Komm, 1999;. Conclusion and Discussion The power spectral analyses of the Sun's surface equatorial rotation rate determined from the Mt. Wilson daily Doppler velocity measurements during the period 3 December 1985 -5 March 2007 suggests the existence of 7.6 year, 2.8 year, 1.47 year, 245 day, 182 day and 158 day periodicities in the surface equatorial rotation rate during the period before 1996. However, there is no variation of any kind in the more accurately measured data during the period after 1995. That is, the aforementioned periodicities in the data during the period before the year 1996 may be artifacts of the uncertainties of those data due to the frequent changes in the instrumentation of the Mt. Wilson spectrograph. Therefore, the results of the present analysis are largely consistent with result of no variations in the solar-surface equatorial rotation rate occur found by Ulrich and Bertello (1996). On the other hand, the temporal behavior of most of the activity phenomena is considerably different during cycles 22 and 23. In several solar-activity phenomena the 1.3 year periodicity has been found to be dominant during cycle 22 and weak or absent in the later period (see Obridko and Shelting, 2007). In addition, recently, Howe et al. (2007) reported that the 1.3-year periodicity in the rotation rate at the base of the convection zone does not persist after 2001. Hence, presence of the short-term periodicities during cycle 22 (1986 -1996) and absence of them in cycle 23 (after 1996) may indicate that the temporal behavior of the rotation is also considerably different between these cycles. Therefore, in spite of the fact that quality of the data during the period 1986 -1995 is poor, the periodicities in A found in this data may represent the corresponding real variations in the surface equatorial rotation rate during the period 1986 -1995 and need to be confirmed from an independent data set.

Product design and development of an aerodynamic hydration system for bicycling and triathlon Proper hydration and aerodynamic performance are both essential needs of a competitive cyclist or triathlete. Several aerodynamic systems have been developed for use on bicycles but few have been designed to be truly aerodynamic or easy to use. This project focused on the design and development of a frame mounted hydration system for cycling and triathlon that offered improvements in usability and aerodynamic performance over the current market solutions. A wind tunnel test validated a viable location on to place the fluid reservoir. Product specifications were derived from consumer needs and concepts were generated to fulfill those needs. Several iterations of CAD models of the entire product were made. The resulting product, a top tube mounted reservoir with a drinking tube and tri-leaf check valve for re-filling the reservoir while riding will be prototyped by the author over the summer of 2007. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Kim B. Blair Title: Research Affiliate

Signaling Neuronal Injury Damage to a nerve terminal or an axon can lead to either neuronal regeneration or neuronal death. However, the mechanisms whereby information about injury to a distal axon are conveyed to the cell body are unclear. Now two groups have shed light on different pieces of this puzzle. Among the early sequelae of axotomy are increases in the activity of the transcription factor c-Jun and appearance of activated c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) in the cell body. Cavalli et al. investigated the hypothesis that Sunday Driver (Syd), a scaffolding protein that binds both JNK and the anterograde molecular motor kinesin-1, participates with JNK in a vesicular system that transports signaling molecules to particular subcellular locations in response to injury. After determining that both Syd and JNK3 from mouse sciatic nerve extracts existed in both membrane-associated and soluble pools, the authors used immunofluorescence to show that Syd was associated with axonal vesicles. High-resolution images of single axons revealed partial colocalization of Syd and JNK, and the two proteins coimmunoprecipitated. Coimmunoprecipitation and high-resolution imaging indicated that Syd also interacted with the dynein-dynactin motor complex (which is involved in retrograde transport). Sciatic nerve ligation experiments showed that Syd and JNK3 were transported in both retrograde and anterograde directions and that injury increased Syd association with membranes. Sciatic nerve injury stimulated an increase in JNK phosphorylation locally and, after a delay, in sensory neuron cell bodies in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Double ligation of the nerve indicated that, following nerve injury, phosphorylated JNK and Syd were primarily transported retrogradely. Nerve injury also appeared to promote association between Syd and the dynein-dynactin complex. Thus, the authors propose that Syd, by transporting activated JNK back to the cell body, may play a critical role in mediating the "injury" signal. In a second study, Perlson et al. implicated the intermediate filament protein vimentin in retrograde transport of activated forms of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) ERK1 and ERK2 (ERK1/2) in response to injury. Injury to mouse sciatic nerve led to an increase in soluble vimentin in axoplasm, which depended on local translation and calpain activity. Injury promoted an increase in phosphorylated ERK1/2 (pERK) and of the association of vimentin with dynein and importin α and β as well as pERK. Both vimentin and pERK were transported retrogradely with dynein after nerve injury, with pERK lost from the complex after arrival at the DRG. The authors used mice lacking vimentin to show that pERK association with the dynein complex depended on vimentin. Moreover, phosphorylation of the transcription factor Elk1 (an ERK target) in response to injury was lost in the vimentin-free mice, and regenerative responses of DRG neurons were attenuated. A similar loss of regenerative capacity was seen in the DRG neurons of rats treated with a synthetic peptide that blocked the association of vimentin with pERK or with a mitogen-activated or extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase kinase inhibitor. Thus, the association of soluble vimentin with pERK and a dynein-importin complex appears to provide a mechanism for the retrograde transport of activated MAPKs in response to injury. V. Cavalli, P. Kujala, J. Klumperman, L. S. B. Goldstein, Sunday Driver links axonal transport to damage signaling. J. Cell Biol. 168, 775-787 (2005). E. Perlson, S. Hanz, K. Ben-Yaakov, Y. Segal-Ruder, R. Seger, M. Fainzilber, Vimentin-dependent spatial translocation of an activated MAP kinase in injured nerve. Neuron 45, 715-726 (2005).

On November 6, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Town of Greece v. Galloway, a case that could decide the fate of invocation prayers at city council meetings. (My summary of the case, the people involved, and the arguments they’ll likely make can be read here.) Earlier today, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed its official brief with the Court — all 78 pages of it — and they responded to the right-wing talking points right up front: This case is not about the ability of legislators to acknowledge God or seek divine guidance. It is about the right of citizens to participate in local government without being required to participate in sectarian prayers. … It is fundamental that government may not press citizens to participate in religious exercises. And whether or not Congress may sponsor sectarian prayers for those of its members who choose to participate — a question that [Marsh v Chambers] did not decide — government may not direct explicitly sectarian or proselytizing messages at the broader citizenry. The practice in Greece violates both of these principles. The brief goes through the number of ways people pretty much have to attend Greece City Council meetings if they want to voice a complaint, request a zoning change, take an oath of office, or accept an award. High school students can even attend meetings to fulfill mandatory “participation-in-government” requirements. When that many members of the community have reason to go to these meetings, there’s even less of a reason to inject prayer in them. It all boils down to this: Petitioner’s prayer practice is unconstitutional for two independent but mutually reinforcing reasons. It puts coercive pressure on citizens to participate in the prayers, and those prayers are sectarian rather than inclusive. Even if the other side argued that atheists (and everyone else who didn’t want to hear the prayers) could skip them, AU says that’s not feasible: Avoiding the prayer would require either exquisite timing and good luck, or a confederate inside the meeting who would leave at the appropriate time to summon the conscientious objector waiting outside. Events proceed seamlessly and in rapid succession: the call to order, Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, awards, swearing in of new employees, public forum. More than 40% percent of the time, there is no one to be sworn in and no award, so the public forum immediately follows the prayer… If no one rises to speak, the forum closes in under a minute… Citizens who attend a single meeting — to receive an award, be sworn in, apply for a permit, or address a pressing issue — would not know the Board’s rhythms and procedures well enough to avoid the prayer. For those who attend regularly, consistent tardiness would soon become apparent to the Board and other regulars. [O]ur constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and the first inaugural address of Washington… down to the present day, has, with a few aberrations, ruled out of order government-sponsored endorsement of religion… where the endorsement is sectarian, in the sense of specifying details upon which men and women who believe in a benevolent, omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the world are known to differ (for example, the divinity of Christ). In a savvy move, they even quote conservative, who once wrote that , while non-denominational prayers might be okay at government meetings, sectarian prayers were “out of order”: So what’s the remedy for all this? Getting rid of government prayer altogether? Nope. AU knows that’s not going to happen. Instead, it advocates for a compromise that would allow non-denominational prayers before government meetings that are strictly voluntary: We assume that some form of prayer will be allowed at meetings of local legislative bodies, and we have not, at any point in this litigation, asked that they be eliminated altogether. If prayers are to be presented, the challenge is to do so with the least violence to constitutional principles and to conscience. Pressure to join in the prayers is inherent in Board meetings; it cannot be eliminated without discontinuing the prayers. But the pressure can be ameliorated. The Board could schedule the prayer a few minutes before meetings are called to order, and make clear that the prayer is only for those who choose to participate. The podium could be turned so that chaplains face the Board. Chaplains could be instructed not to request citizen participation. It’s a solid argument. The question now is whether the justices will see it that way, too. We won’t get any more hints regarding their decision until the oral arguments take place and the justices are able to ask questions to representatives from both sides.

The Originals S01E06: "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" Sometimes in life you have to get your head out of the clouds and just accept the facts. You will never become a world class yachtsman. Your pop music career will remain third-tier at best. Your pet chimp will never learn proper English. And your second-favorite vampire show on The CW may never become whatever you'd hoped it would be (i.e., your #1 favorite vampire show on The CW). But accepting the facts isn't always a bad thing! The best part about finally shaking off unrealistic expectations is that only then can you truly appreciate what you DO have in life. For instance, The Originals. We definitely have The Originals. I don't know about you, but no matter what feelings I have about the series from week to week, I'm glad it exists in general. Especially this week, as "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" was a very good and fun episode! Obviously there were too many moments where one of the poor actors had to recite a lugubrious line of exposition or two or three, but that sort of thing is in the DNA of the show now. It's probably time to stop struggling against this and just accept it. So in the spirit of acceptance, I thought I'd do things differently this week. The Originals might not ever be the show I'd expected or hoped for, but what's good is so good that I think I should just focus on those things. So, in chronological order, here are the ten best things that happened this week! 1. Vampire book club You knew it was going to be a good episode when it began with a pair of thousand-year-old vampires reading thousand-year-old books like a couple of thousand-year-old bookworms. Rebekah called this scenario a "vampire book club," which is why Rebekah is the best. And like any good book club meeting, it had a wonderful spread of hors d'oeuvres. In this case the food was a dead lady, but still. The main thing is that it was wonderful to see Klaus and Elijah just sort of quietly hanging out. I truly don't think we've ever seen that happen before! Love these guys. 2. Hayley's ice cream breakfast As if I needed another reason to like Hayley, she eats ice cream for breakfast. Sure, there was a moment where she complained that the vampires weren't keeping fresh milk in the house (duh, they eat blood), but then Elijah walked in with some milk and made her cereal. Which was nice, but if I know Hayley, I'm pretty sure she just wanted milk to pour into her ice cream and make ice cream soup. Also, check out the counter behind her: Pringles! And not just Pringles, but sour cream and onion Pringles! The best and only kind. Stop complaining about these vampires' shopping lists, they're obviously buying the right items. But a pregnant lady should not have Pringles for breakfast. Pringles are for lunch and dinner. 3. These guys Uh, excuse me? Since when are witches scary? Since now, because look at these witch thugs who kidnapped Sophie Deveraux! We never got to see their faces, not even after we learned they were working for Agnes. Man, they were great. They reminded me of Lord Zedd's putties from Power Rangers. Nobody punched one in the chest and made it explode, but hopefully that will happen in a future episode. 4. Thierry just chillin in The Garden What's that line from Dirty Dancing? Nobody paves Thierry into a corner? I can't remember, but look, The Garden is one of the coolest things about The Originals. An underground perma-prison for misbehaving vampires! I liked that Marcel sort-of exhumed this guy because it means that Marcel isn't a dummy and he WILL get the answers even if it means reversing a previous decision. Also, you know, Thierry was kind of framed. Plus this show needs more non-Mikaelson hunks in general. But yeah, this image of his face popping out of the bricks really made me laugh. We've all been there right? I'm there now basically. 5. Davina's knot trick I love the friendship currently forming between Davina and Elijah. In this episode he kept his promise to share pages from his mother's grimoire, but with the caveat that she had to master this knot trick before he'd let her choose the next spell. This was very smart! For one thing, it was Elijah's way of getting Davina to unbind Hayley from Sophie without hassling Davina too much. Even when Hayley fell super sick after Agnes poisoned Sophie, nobody pressured Davina to get to work; Elijah just trusted that she'd figure out the spell on her own. I liked that. Man, I really like Davina. Team Davina. (Oh, and weren't the special effects in this scene so good? It's rare to see straight-up CGI magic on the show like this, and I found the floating knot effect to be very seamless and borderline beautiful. Good job, computer wizards!) 6. Elijah and Hayley went swimming This was not just because two very hot people got soaking wet and hugged each other. That helped, but the stakes felt real: Hayley was in serious risk of miscarrying and Elijah had to slow her heart by holding her. If that didn't set off fireworks in your ribcage then get back in your pod and go back to outer space, alien. Adding to the pathos, right when Hayley's bind to Sophie was lifted, she and Elijah shared a moment that Rebekah, of course, picked up on. And THAT informed Rebekah that if she'd ever assumed Elijah would want to leave town with her, it would not be happening now. Because of all the tiny invisible hearts floating up off of that swimming pool. 7. Hayley told off Sophie Oh man, this was a tiny moment that was so necessary: Hayley ain't no victim, so when she forcefully threatened to kill Sophie for having bound her in the first place I clapped my hands. (Okay, my one hand and my hook.) Take back the night, Hayley! Also, guys, Sophie just gets worse and worse. I do not like Sophie. Even in this episode when Elijah and Klaus informed her that they'd be unbinding her from a soon-to-miscarry Hayley, she jumped up and shittily whined that then she wouldn't have leverage over them anymore. Uh, duh, loser. That is because you are a terrible witch and this show should not have terrible witches. Terrible witches are so 2009. 8. Elijah's badassery Obviously the highlight of this episode was when Elijah promised Sophie that he wouldn't let Klaus kill Agnes, and then he showed up and murdered EVERYBODY himself. First he killed a couple of henchman. (The third one falling down from the ceiling after such a long time in the air? Amazing.) Then he straight-up MURDERED Agnes. All because these witches had messed with his family! (And future boo.) YES. This was the Elijah I'd been missing. The one who will destroy a vampire coffee shop with a handful of quarters. The one who will karate chop off a vampire's head. Don't get me wrong, I like chivalrous Elijah just fine, but it's excessively satisfying to see him reassert his general dominance from time to time. This guy knows what I'm talking about: 9. Klaus' smile Look at how proud he was of his brother! To be fair, this episode suggested that Klaus may be concerned about Elijah's power and influence going forward, but for the time being he seemed pretty thrilled to share Elijah's goals. Klaus wasn't a huge element of this show, but pretty much every scene he had was electric. His tense showdown with Marcel over where Klaus has been sleeping. Or especially when he fulfilled his promise to Cami and informed her that he'd helped murder the witch responsible for hexing her brother. Cami's response was unexpectedly screechy; something about how Agnes' death would implicate her as a suspect or whatever. I mean, I think Cami had a larger moral issue with what had happened, and earlier confession scene with her uncle suggested that she the compulsion Klaus placed on her was wearing her down mentally. But if she really thinks she's going to declare war on Klaus, then I'm going to have to stop liking her. Back down, lady. He just did you a solid. (Which is teen slang for "a favor" just fyi.) 10. Rebekah keeps an apple in her purse Rebekah decided to leave town now that Elijah's awake and when she tried to say goodbye to Marcel, he mouth-attacked her and then they hugged with their shirts off. But how amazing was it when Rebekah, a creature who eats blood, randomly got an apple out of her purse and offered it to Marcel, another creature who eats blood? I mean, what was that all about? Maybe instead of smoking cigarettes, vampires like to eat apples after sex? I have no idea. Anyway, in my opinion Claire Holt was this episode's MVP of acting because she gave a very stellar monologue about why she needs to leave (because duh, the Originals are too good for this place) and then warning Marcel that a kingdom means nothing if you have nobody to share it with. So sad, but also that is the thesis statement behind this whole show. Rebekah is the best. Did I say that already? Rebekah is the best. That being said, Rebekah needs to be careful about getting apples out of her purse after sex, because Marcel simply smelled the apple and immediately knew where the Mikaelsons were staying. At the former plantation where he'd been a slave! Which, rude. So by episode's end he showed up at their front door and kidnapped Hayley. Which, mega rude. So as much as Rebekah was hoping to leave town, one panicked call from Elijah and that plan was put on hold. And while I am NOT happy about Hayley being in danger, I truly hope this means all three Originals will be shifting into gear next week for a massive rescue mission. Hayley deserves it and so do we. All in all "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" was an elegantly written, forward-moving story with a minimum of flashbacks! Definitely one of the strongest episodes to date. This is a different show than what I expected, but I'm happy for what it turned out to be anyway. Keep it up, nonsentient multimillion dollar television franchise! Kudos. QUESTIONS: ... Did the swimming pool scene make you feel tingly? ... Would you still watch The Originals if Rebekah left town for good? ... Should Elijah rip out more hearts in general? ... Is there an apple in your purse?

The Los Angeles Police Department's South Bureau recorded 45 street robberies, including one deadly, last year that were all tied to e-commerce exchanges.Now the department is setting up safe exchange zones inside the lobbies of nine police stations and nearly a dozen Ralphs grocery stores for buyers and sellers to feel more secure in their transactions.Police also have paired with the online company OfferUp, a mobile marketplace known for its safeguards for those buying and selling.In recent years, police in Los Angeles and around the country have seen a trend of crimes associated with strangers meeting in person to complete transactions that were initiated online. Sometimes those encounters end with an assault and a robbery. In some cases, they have ended with one individual dead. "I think a lot of our victims are coming from outside of Los Angeles and are very unfamiliar with our streets and our neighborhoods and are coming into places that they don't know might be a potential for crime," said LAPD Deputy Chief Dennis Kato.Buyers and sellers should look for the "Exchange Zone" signs, which also note the areas can be used for child custody transfers. The lobbies and zones are available 24-7.

This week our sister site Diabloii.Net is speaking to the ex-game director of Diablo 3 in a special post-mortem series. In the first part which has been posted today, Wilson talks about his influences, the highlights and lowlights of working on Diablo 3 which has been surrounded by all sorts of controversy post and pre-launch, what the job of game director entailed, and how they went about making the game a reality. The series will be running throughout this week covering all kinds of topics. Here’s a quick snip on the misconceptions of the position as game director: “That it’s an all-powerful position. That you snap your fingers and everything moves in the direction you say it should move in. It’s not just making a game, it’s also inspiring and directing a large team, and balancing lots of priorities against one another. There are changes that some of the public asked for that I could have never gotten out of the team even if I wanted them. As Game Director you spend a lot of your time trying to herd everyone’s individual talents and instincts into a cohesive whole. You have to take advantage of the talents of the people you hire, and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses.” Read the first part of the full article here and drop by Diabloii.Net each day this week for more. Update:

After years of public speculation, Kevin Spacey is out of the closet. The actor officially came out as gay after he was accused by actor Anthony Rapp of making a "sexual advance" towards him when Rapp was only 14 years of age. The 58-year-old issued a statement on Twitter on Sunday night, saying that he has had "romantic encounters with men throughout [his] life," and has chosen now to "live as a gay man." He added that he has had relationships with both men and women. In his statement, Spacey said that he was "beyond horrified" to hear Rapp's allegations of sexual misconduct, which appeared in a Buzzfeed story published earlier on Sunday. The House of Cards star said that he did not remember the incident, but if it did happen, he "owes [Rapp] the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour." He also added it was Rapp's story that had "encouraged [him] to address other things about [his] life." However, many on social media were unimpressed by Spacey's coming out, with some saying he was using it to divert attention. I have absolutely no respect for Kevin Spacey. Trying to cover up Anthony's story by coming out? You're trash. — Lauren: Ragnarok (@bionicblanchett) October 30, 2017 Feels kinda gross that you’re turning a story that should be about the victim (s)...into a story about you? Congrats on coming out, I guess? — Jordan (@jordansdiamonds) October 30, 2017 "Kevin Spacey is accused of making inappropriate advances towards a 14 year old male." Spacey: I'm gay. pic.twitter.com/yNfzE9jg43 — W👁ke (@Natural_OneDurr) October 30, 2017 Kevin Spacey : How do I apologize and get my career back on track Lawyer : Use the gay card Kevin Spacey : BINGO — Magnus Lewis (@magnuslewis263) October 30, 2017 Well here it goes, as a gay man I condemn the actions of Kevin Spacey and I do not accept him as a part of this community. — The Original Iramako (@WheresChungy) October 30, 2017 When Kevin Spacey tries to turn child molestation allegations into a heartwarming coming out story. Oh, Hollywood. https://t.co/M91QFQzQIH — Alana Mastrangelo (@ARmastrangelo) October 30, 2017 kevin spacey trying to use coming out of the closet to distract from anthony rapp pic.twitter.com/yfKXNKDbzk — no dana, only zuul (@DanaSchwartzzz) October 30, 2017 That Kevin Spacey statement. Nope. Absolutely not. Nope. — billy eichner (@billyeichner) October 30, 2017 Rapp's allegations date back to 1986, when he was a 14-year-old child actor who had met a then 26-year-old Spacey. Spacey had "invited Rapp over to his apartment for a party, and, at the end of the night, picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance," Rapp, now 46, told Buzzfeed. “He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold," Rapp was quoted as saying. "But I don't, like, squirm away initially, because I'm like, 'What's going on?' And then he lays down on top of me. He was trying to seduce me." Rapp added that he managed to break free, and eventually fled the apartment. According to Rapp, it was the recent accusations of sexual assault and harassment against Harvey Weinstein that had prompted him to speak out against Spacey.

A semi-empirical prediction model for the discharge line temperature of hermetic compressors Predicting the discharge line temperature (DLT) of air conditioning and refrigeration compressors is important to ensure sufficient lubricant properties and proper performance of components that are positioned in the exhaust stream. Understanding the DLT is also necessary for the design of waste heat recovery systems, which are of increasing interest. However, compressor performance information published by manufacturers does not typically include DLT values. Assumptions made in established thermodynamic models result in only modest correlation between predicted and observed DLT values. Numerous comprehensive DLT prediction models have been developed with excellent accuracy, but require many details of a particular compressor. This paper presents an assessment of various thermodynamic DLT prediction methods that do not rely on individual compressor-specific parameters. Prediction methods considered include an entropy-based model, a polytropic model and an energy model. The energy model was expanded to include an empirical component to account for high-side heat transfer and exhibits an accuracy that significantly exceeds the other established methods. The model was evaluated for both traditional refrigeration and air-conditioning operating conditions and translates well to vapor-injected, economizer cycles. Lastly, a study was conducted to determine the robustness of the empirical component by analyzing the relationship between the accuracy of the model and the number of experimental points used to produce the model.

FAIRBANKS — Sound recorders worn by two slain Alaska State Troopers recorded evidence that suspects tampered with their service handguns, investigators testified Monday. The investigators testified in Nenana at the trial of Arvin Kangas, 59, who is charged with evidence tampering and hindering prosecution in the May 1 deaths of Sgt. Scott Johnson and Trooper Gabe Rich outside Kangas' home in Tanana, a village of 250 about 130 miles west of Fairbanks. Tanana's unarmed village public safety officer reported April 30 that Arvin Kangas drove without a license and pointed a shotgun at him. The Fairbanks-based troopers traveled to Tanana to arrest Kangas. According to prosecutors, the officers confronted Kangas outside his home and he tried to go inside. As Kangas struggled with the officers, his son, Nathanial "Satch" Kangas, emerged from the home with an assault rifle and fired seven shots into the backs of the troopers. Prosecutors contend that Arvin Kangas removed the fallen troopers' service handguns from their holsters and cocked them to make it appear as if Nathanial Kangas acted to save his father's life, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. They also say the father and son removed marijuana plants from the home. Body recorders worn by the officers continued to operate after they died, Trooper Ramin Dunford, one of the investigators in the case, testified. The recorders picked up the sound of Johnson's handgun being cocked, he said. "I heard the slide of the service weapon coming forward and the racking of the other gun," Dunford said. "One male voice refers to the other as 'Dad.' Then they leave after moving the plants." Dunford said he heard what sounded like Johnson's pistol hitting keys on his duty belt. The belt was moved and twisted to the right, he testified. Investigator David DeCoeur testified that officers first theorized that the slain troopers had been involved in a gunfight. Defense attorney Jim Cannon asked if the recordings changed DeCoeur's mind. "Absolutely. It's clear it (Johnson's gun) had been manipulated," DeCoeur said. Cannon asked whether DeCoeur thought Johnson had drawn his gun. "I know he didn't," DeCoeur said. Portions of the audio recordings were played for jurors. Prosecutors rested their case after the testimony. The trial was to resume Tuesday afternoon.

* PM aims to retake big city from Islamic State by year-end * Most of the 560 new troops to work out of Qayara air base * It's the second such force increase in under three months * U.S. will help turn damaged air base into logistics hub (Adds more from Carter, debate on Mosul operation, Congress) By Yeganeh Torbati and Stephen Kalin BAGHDAD, July 11 (Reuters) - The United States is stepping up its military campaign against Islamic State by sending hundreds more troops to assist Iraqi forces in an expected push on the city of Mosul, the militants' largest stronghold, later this year. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement on Monday during a visit to Baghdad, where he met U.S. commanders, as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi. Most of the 560 additional troops will work out of Qayara air base, which Iraqi forces recaptured from Islamic State militants and plan to use as a staging ground for an offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city. Government forces said on Saturday they had recovered the air base, about 60 km (40 miles) from the northern city, with air support from the U.S.-led military coalition. "With these additional U.S. forces I'm describing today, we'll bring unique capability to the campaign and provide critical support to the Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight," Carter told a gathering of U.S. troops in Baghdad. The new troops were "ready to come" and it would be a matter of "days and weeks, not months," he said. Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year. TIMING However, there is still debate in Washington about the timing of a move on Mosul. Some U.S. and allied military and intelligence officials warn that aside from its elite counterterrorism force, the Iraqi military is not ready to take on Islamic State militants in Mosul without significant assistance from the Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias. Moreover, Baghdad and Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, do not appear to have agreed on a plan for Mosul, and any significant participation by Kurdish or Shi'ite forces in a Mosul campaign, one U.S. official said, "would create a whole new set of problems that the Abadi government is incapable of managing, or even mitigating." Separately, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said on Monday that President Barack Obama must ask Congress for additional funds to pay for the deployment of more troops to Iraq, as Congress and the White House debate defense spending amid mandatory budget cuts. LOGISTICS HUB Still, the latest U.S. force increase comes less than three months after Washington announced it would dispatch about 200 more soldiers to accompany Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul. Carter told reporters ahead of Monday's trip that the United States would now help turn Qayara into a logistics hub. The airfield is "one of the hubs from which ... Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost envelopment of Mosul," he said. Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of the coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, said the additional troops would fill a variety of roles. "(They are) coming in to help expand the base at Qayara West airfield into a node that can support the Iraqi security forces as they move forward with the Mosul operation, and it'll be an operational air base." U.S. forces have already visited Qayara to check on its condition, and advisors can offer specialised engineering support in Mosul, where Islamic State has blown up bridges across the Tigris, U.S. officials said. Iraqi forces were already improving the base's perimeter in case of a counterattack from the nearby town of Qayara, which Islamic State militants still hold, another U.S. official in Baghdad said. The recapture of Mosul, Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital, from which its leader declared a modern-day caliphate in 2014, would be a major boost for the plans by Abadi and the United States to weaken the militant group. NO FOLLOW-UP PLAN Still, retaking Mosul without a plan to restore security, basic services and governance and the money and personnel to implement it immediately would repeat the mistake the Bush administration made in 2003, by ousting Saddam Hussein with no plan for installing a new government, said three officials from the U.S. and Britain. And as Islamic State militants have lost part of their self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they increasingly have turned to suicide attacks. These included a bombing in the Iraqi capital last week that left nearly 300 people dead, the most lethal bombing of its kind since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted such bombings as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening Islamic State, but critics say a global uptick in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests the opposite. "In fact, it demonstrates (Islamic State's) strength and long-term survival skills," terrorism expert Hassan Hassan wrote in a recent article. "The threat is not going away." (Additional reporting by John Walcott and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Bernadette Baum) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Every week we ask a North Korean your questions, giving you the chance to learn more about the country we know so little about. This week James Kim from Seoul asks: I heard that two South Korean women toured around the country to give public lectures about North Korea where they spoke highly of North Korea by exaggerating positive aspects but failing to address problems such as human rights abuses there. Soon afterwards, they found themselves in the breach of National Security Law. As a North Korean, what’s your view and opinion on this? From time to time, we feel confused or frustrated when our values or beliefs turn out to be far-fetched or wrong. Still, when you realize your beliefs and thoughts are actually wrong, you need to face the truth and abandon them. There’re people who are unable to do so; Hwang Sun and Shin Eunmi are two examples of those people who are unable to face reality. As someone who left North Korea, I don’t feel angry with them. Instead, I sympathize. I do not think that they exaggerate and talk about positive things about North Korea because they really think North Korea is a place they would love to live in. WHO ARE THEY? One member of this female duo who led this “Talk Concert” is Hwang Sun. Hwang Sun is a former deputy spokesperson for the Democratic Labor Party and an active member of the Unified Progressive Party, which was dissolved by the Constitutional Court last December 19. She is married to Yoon Kijin, who was charged with breaking National Security Law and served jail time after being on the run for 10 years. Although both of them were born and raised in South Korea, Hwang Sun gave birth to her daughter in Pyongyang on the Foundation Day of Workers’ Party. She entered North Korea in order to give birth to her daughter on the day celebrating the foundation of Workers’ Party through c-section. Kim Jong Il praised her highly in the national media for this, and she speaks highly of the healthcare system in North Korea and how North Korea is a better place for women to give birth to their children than South Korea. Any sane, moderately educated person would laugh at her claims. Hwang Sun delivered her baby at Pyongyang San Won, the most famous obstetrician’s office in North Korea. Only the chosen wives of top elites can have access to the Pyongyang San Won. I am from Pyongyang and it is almost impossible for ordinary North Korean women to see an obstetrician at Pyongyang San Won. How can she say North Korea’s public healthcare system is far superior? Is it even a public healthcare system if only chosen people can have access to a certain clinic? These days, most North Korean women give births to their babies at homes, not in hospitals. So many women die shortly after giving births to their babies because of infection while giving births to their babies at homes. Does this sound like North Korea has a superior healthcare system? When you’re a foreigner who goes to North Korea as a tourist, you are to be accompanied by a tour guide assigned to you by the North Korean government Now, who is Shin Eunmi? Honestly, I think she sounds more ridiculous than Hwang Sun. Shin Eunmi was born and raised in South Korea until her 40s when she immigrated to the United States and became naturalized U.S. citizen. Shin visited North Korea with her husband several times as tourists. She wrote and published her travelogue on OhMyNews. I read her travelogue. She only went to places where her tour guide took her. When you’re a foreigner who goes to North Korea as a tourist, you are to be accompanied by a tour guide assigned to you by the North Korean government. In her travelogue, she talks about the time when she met a crowd of North Koreans who greeted her by saying things such as “Hello, how are you?” in English. Of course, she talks about those North Koreans who had access to public education system where they learned English and had courage to speak to her in English. But she doesn’t talk about the starving, famished children of North Korea who go about everyday in search of food instead of going to school. In her travelogue, she doesn’t forget to talk about how impressive Grand People’s Study House is. Yes, Grand People’s Study House is grand in scale and there is a wide selection of books and you have the chance to learn foreign languages if you are not one of those famished children who have to walk miles in search of food every day instead of going to school. But she only talks about how mesmerized she was to see such a big size Grand People’s Study House in North Korea. Just because there is one big study house in North Korea and that Shin was impressed by it do not mean that North Korea is such an advanced country and desirable place to study in. When and if she sees North Korea’s Arirang Mass Games, would she be able to think about the agony of North Koreans forced to participate and practice, withstanding the cold and hot weather year round? Would she enjoy it herself if forced against her will to practice for the Arirang Mass Games in rain or snow throughout the year just because the government tells her to do so? She talks about how it broke her heart to see North Korean soldiers who are so scrawny. But doesn’t she think about why they are a lot shorter and skinnier than South Koreans? Doesn’t she ever think about the reason why North Koreans are dealing with such agony and hunger every day? IDOLATRY Personally, what I think is the most ridiculous about this woman is that she claims herself to be Christian. She writes about the time she went to Pyongyang’s Bongsu Church and prayed there. If she were a true Christian, she wouldn’t have visited Bongsu Church or prayed there in the first place. Seriously, is she that naïve to think that ordinary North Koreans can go to this church on Sundays even if they want to? In her travelogue, she goes on to talk about how the pastor at Bongsu Church does his mission work by trying to encourage other North Koreans to convert to Christianity. Trust me, I grew up in Pyongyang and I have never seen a single Christian who was on a mission work. Any monks, pastors or religious organizations you’d see in North Korea are all fake. When I was in North Korea, I have been to North Korea’s famous Mount Chilbo, Mount Guwol and Mount Myohyang. At those mountains, you can go to old Buddhist temples built a thousand years ago. At those mountains, you would see fake monks who haven’t studied Buddhism and wouldn’t be allowed to even if they wanted to. These fake monks are merely employed by North Korean government to act like Buddhist monks. She shouldn’t call herself a Christian if she willfully worships Kim Il Sung, the only god that exists in North Korea She does not stop there. She went on to sing onstage at the April Spring Arts Festival in North Korea. This is one famous festival which is held every spring in North Korea in which the government invites musicians by paying them to perform onstage and pay tributes to Kim Il Sung so that ordinary North Koreans would think people in other countries still remember and respect Kim. She decided to abandon her Christian faith and willingly worshiped Kim Il Sung by singing for him on stage at the festival. She shouldn’t call herself a Christian if she willfully worships Kim Il Sung, the only god that exists in North Korea. I heard that she even went to the extent of paying respects and bowing at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and Mansudae Statues of the Kim family. If you actually look at the founding history of North Korea, you would be able to tell immediately that they turned it into a religious cult by incorporating things they learned from Christianity. In fact, the entire maternal family of Kim Il Sung was Christian. His mother was brought up Christian by her parents. Kim Il Sung’s father went to Sungsil Middle School which once was a famous mission school in Pyongyang. North Korea has Ten Commandments similar to that of Christianity, one of which is: “Know no one but our Great leader, comrade Kim Il Sung.” Isn’t it pretty obvious where he got the idea from? Doesn’t it sound like “You shall have no other gods before me?” If repentance exists in Christianity, North Korea has self-criticism sessions. In the Bible, it is God who created this world and gave life to every creature on earth. In North Korea, it is Kim Il Sung who created socialist Korea and therefore, he is often dubbed the “Great Sun.” This is the very reason why North Korea cannot open its market to the outside world even if it would greatly boosted and advanced North Korean economy. If his people found out about the outside world, they would stop serving Kim. JUST STOP Now, you know why freedom of religion cannot exist in North Korea. In North Korea, you are not allowed to serve any other gods before Kim Il Sung. And yet Shin Eunmi believes that people in North Korea have the freedom to go to this church in Pyongyang and refuse to serve Kim Il Sung because they decided to be Christians? Is it possible for someone be that naïve? When a North Korean defector gets sent back to North Korea, the first thing they try to find out during the interrogation is whether this North Korean defector has converted to Christianity, and whether this person tried to go to South Korea. And you’ll be the most miserable person on earth if you did either. I would like to advise them to be honest and stop lying to the public for once and all I’d like to advise this female duo to have a pinch of conscience and ask themselves if they think they’re telling truths about North Korea. I would like to advise them to look back and reflect on what they did by touring around the country to tell lies and distorted things about North Korea. I would like to advise them to be honest and stop lying to the public for once and all. It is the land where my father and other family members are still alive. It is the land where too many innocent people are serving their time in the political prison camps. I sincerely wish this female duo would stop making a mockery of North Koreans who are living in agony this very moment. There are so many North Korean refugees who have managed to escape from that brutal land but they’re still worried for the remaining people every day. You have freedom to speak highly of North Korea as you’d like. But if you spoke highly of South Korea in North Korea, the best thing you could hope for is deportation. Got A Question? Email it to [email protected] with your name and city. We’ll be publishing the best ones. Translation by Elizabeth Jae Artwork by Catherine Salkeld

BAGHDAD — The graffiti that appeared on a wall near the mosque in Mosul where the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared his caliphate two years ago was a small but symbolic act of rebellion. The spray-painted letter “m” — for the Arabic word “mukawama,” meaning resistance — was part of a campaign by Kitaeb al-Mosul, an underground opposition group in the northern Iraqi city that released a video detailing their efforts this month. ISIL reacted with swift brutality, executing three young men it accused of being involved. The militants released their own video showing the men kneeling in orange jumpsuits before being shot in the head. The letter “m” was sprayed on the wall behind them, a reference to their alleged crime. A spray can lay on the ground beside them, surrounded by blood. In recent months, ISIL has carried out more arrests and executions such as these in a sign of desperation as it faces the prospect of losing Mosul, according to reports from inside the city. Mosul is the largest city under ISIL’s control and is central to its narrative of having restored the Islamic caliphate. It was less than a month after Mosul fell in June 2014 that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared in the mosque there and called on Muslims to follow him. The recapture of the city would be a significant step toward depriving ISIL of its territory and forcing the group back into an insurgency, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. That is only a matter of time, they add. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, and the Iraqi air force dropped 7 million leaflets on the city last week telling residents to prepare for the “zero hour.” As Iraqi forces — and the U.S. troops advising them — move closer, making the recently recaptured Qayyarah Air Base, 25 miles south of Mosul, a logistical hub for the impending battle, ISIL has also been making preparations. Daesh is weaker in Mosul, but it is using methods of oppression like random arrests to try and show it is still in control “Daesh is weaker in Mosul, but it is using methods of oppression like random arrests to try and show it is still in control,” said a representative of Kitaeb al-Mosul. Daesh is an alternative name for ISIL. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. He described the atmosphere in the city as “tense” and said the militants were in a state of “confusion.” The ISIL began carrying out mass arrests after the group began its graffiti campaign two months ago, he said. The militants have constructed new berms around neighbourhoods on the north, east and south sides of the city, he said. In some neighbourhoods, concrete barricades have been erected, he said, speculating that the militants are trying to isolate neighbourhoods because they are concerned that residents may turn against them if Iraqi forces draw near. “Right now they are making arrests with no investigation, in a way they didn’t before,” said Sheikh Mohammed al-Jarba, a tribal leader from the city, who said he is regularly in touch with people there. “I know they are digging new trenches around the city,” he said. “They’ve never stopped digging them.” Internet connections to homes in Mosul have been banned over the past two months, as ISIL attempts to prevent information on its positions from leaking out. Cell networks have been largely cut for more than a year and a half. However, some patches of phone network remain, and those with relatives in Mosul occasionally receive updates from their loved ones, allowing some glimpses of life in the city. There are no accurate estimates of the number of civilians that remain in the city, but the United Nations has said more than a million people could flee Mosul and its surroundings during the offensive. Some Iraqi officials and relatives of residents say that figure could be even higher because thousands of people have arrived in Mosul after offensives in other ISIL-controlled areas. Atheel al-Nujaifi, the former governor of the province, who is now based in the northern city of Irbil, said the displaced had come from areas including Qayyarah, which was retaken by Iraqi forces this month. Some civilians from largely Sunni areas fear how they will be treated by security forces after an area is retaken; others may have sympathies or allegiances to the group or have simply been fleeing the fighting in any direction they could. They say even if it means their houses are destroyed, it will be worth it in the end Nujaifi said people had arrived from as far away as Manbij in Syria, which was retaken by U.S.-backed rebel forces a month ago. The presence of a large number of civilians complicates the offensive, which is expected to rely heavily on coalition air support. The Iraqi government and humanitarian aid agencies are also attempting to prepare for a huge exodus but have warned they lack resources. One former Mosul resident said ISIL has been seizing empty homes to house those displaced, including the house of her grandmother who had left the city. “The number of people has increased a lot,” she said, adding that her friends and relatives had said there had been “searching campaigns” on houses. “They are paranoid, and the number of searches is way more than before,” said the woman, who now lives in the Iraqi city of Dahuk and whose name has been withheld for safety reasons. In the same ISIL video that shows the execution of the alleged spray-painters, the group also executed three men it accused of spying. “Send your agents and spies; our swords are ready for them and are thirsty for their blood,” a militant said, accusing the men of being “the eyes of America.” The U.S. military estimates that around 3,000 to 4,500 militants remain in Mosul. Over the past two months, U.S.-led airstrikes have killed 12 ISIL leaders in Mosul alone, Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition, said in a recent briefing. “These strikes have a disruptive effect on the enemy command and control, which is important in setting conditions for Mosul’s liberation,” he said. Some officials said people who have collaborated with ISIL are attempting to switch sides. “Their own members are trying to deny them,” said Abubaker Kbi, the head of the Sunni Awqaf for Mosul — the official representatives for its mosques. Despite the mosques now being ISIL controlled, he said he is still in contact with people in the city and has heard from ISIL members who want to leave. The former resident said that arrests have also singled out former officers who served in the military under Saddam Hussein. “They know that they still might have connections to some people in the military, and they are afraid that they will cooperate with the army or turn against them,” she said. Another resident who fled Mosul but is still in touch with his brother in the city said former officers had been targeted. One of his distant relatives – a direct relation of a former army officer — had been randomly arrested five days ago, he said. “All the old officers — they are targeting them and their families,” he said. Nujaifi said there are also signs of disarray among ISIL’s ranks, with increasing corruption inside the group. Despite a ban on leaving the city, some residents have been able to escape by paying large bribes. However, many don’t have the means to do so. For them, it is a waiting game. “They say even if it means their houses are destroyed, it will be worth it in the end,” the woman in Dahuk said. “They might be weaker, but Islamic State have a strong fist and they are being harsher than you can imagine.”

ONE year ago today, three Economist journalists sat in a Moscow restaurant discussing the prospects for the Russian economy with a smart Western banker, who argued that our coverage of Russia was far too harsh, and that business was thriving. The smart new restaurant, full of customers, seemed to support his words. A few hours earlier, Sergei Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer representing Hermitage Capital Management, once Russia's largest portfolio investor, died mysteriously in pre-trial detention after being repeatedly denied medical care and in effect subjected to what in most civilised countries would be considered torture. At the time, few people outside the small world of Russian investors and a few human-rights activists had heard of Mr Magnitsky. A year later, his death has become a symbol of the mind-boggling corruption and injustice perpetrated by the Russian system, and the inability (or unwillingness) of the Kremlin to change it. Mr Magnitsky's main client was William Browder, a highly active American-born investor who ran Hermitage, traded shares in Russian firms and complained, loudly, about management practices in the firms in which he invested. Mr Browder was also one of the biggest advocates of Vladimir Putin, Russia's former president, now the prime minister, and, along with a few other foreign investors, applauded the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian business tycoon, in 2003. He saw the move as a sign of the Kremlin's attempt to bring order to Russia and curb the influence of the oligarchs. Soon, however, Mr Browder himself fell victim to Mr Putin's system, where money and power were fused in a much more sinister way than in the 1990s. Mr Browder's “activism”, his probing into firms such as Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas giant, and Surgutneftegaz, a secretive oil producer, did not go down well, and Mr Browder found himself expelled from Russia. The offices of Hermitage and the law firm where Mr Magnitsky worked were raided by police officers. They seized documents, stamps and seals, which were later used to mount one of the most spectacular frauds in Russian history. The fraud involved three subsidiaries of Hermitage that had paid taxes worth $230m. Soon after the police raid, these companies were fraudulently re-registered under new owners, who applied for, and immediately received, a tax rebate of $230m. The documents were stamped with the seals that had been confiscated by the police. In 2008 Mr Magnitsky launched an official complaint alleging that the policemen who had conducted the raid on Hermitage were involved in the fraud. Soon, Mr Magnitsky himself was arrested—by the same Lt Colonel Artyom Kuznetsov who had led the Hermitage raid and was the subject of Mr Magnitsky's complaint. Mr Magnitsky was put in pre-trial detention where, for 12 months, investigators and prison officials pressured him to withdraw his complaint and to testify against Mr Browder, his client. When he refused to co-operate, he was transferred from one Moscow prison to another with worse conditions, denied medical care when he was in pain and, evidence suggests, tortured. His letters of complaints and appeals for justice were left unanswered. A documentary called "Justice for Sergei", made for the anniversary of Mr Magnitsky's death and shown today before six parliaments, including the US Congress and the House of Commons, is a harrowing narrative of an individual's helplessness before a ruthless system. Teatr.doc, a small Moscow theatre, has been staging "One Hour and 18 Minutes", a documentary-style play based on Mr Magnitsky's prison writings. As Mr Magnitsky himself wrote in one of his last letters, “Justice under these circumstances turns into a process of grinding human flesh into mincemeat for prisons and camps, a process in which people can neither effectively defend themselves or even realise what is happening to them. One can only think about when it will end, when one can get rid of this physical and emotional torture.” The torture ended on November 16th 2009. Mr Magnitsky's death caused an outrage among the Russian elite, and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, ordered official investigations. Several high-ranking prison officials were fired, but the crime ultimately remains unsolved. Last week Transparency International, a corruption watchdog, posthumously bestowed on Mr Magnitsky its Integrity Award. Meanwhile, Russian “law-enforcers” have marked Mr Magnitsky's death in their own way. The investigators involved in Mr Magnitsky's case were rewarded for their services and promoted to higher ranks. Russia's interior ministry also tried to shift the blame for the tax fraud on to Mr Magnitsky, who can of course no longer answer them.

IS controls most of Deir al-Zor, a strategically important area that links Raqqa with Mosul, the largest city under the group's control in northern Iraq. The remaining areas under control of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been under siege since last March, and residents are said to face severe food shortages and grim conditions. The SOHR said 63 people, including nine children, were killed in Khesham, a town in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zor. Another 55 people, including 18 children and nine women, were reportedly killed in al-Bolel, al-Kharita, and other villages in the western countryside of of the province. Sixteen children and 13 women were among the 44 people killed in Raqqa, the group said. The UK-based monitoring group said the attacks targeted towns across the countryside in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, and Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS's self-proclaimed caliphate. The SOHR described the bombings as "revenge massacres." Last week, IS reportedly kidnapped an estimated 400 civilians from Syrian government-held areas in Deir al-Zor. Though 270 of the captives were later released, the militants were accused of carrying out beheadings and targeting pro-government fighters and their families. The death toll from a recent wave of attacks by Russian and Syrian warplanes on areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS) has risen to 164 over the past 72 hours, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The dead are said to include 43 children and 25 women. Read more The death toll from a recent wave of attacks by Russian and Syrian warplanes on areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS) has risen to 164 over the past 72 hours, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The dead are said to include 43 children and 25 women. The UK-based monitoring group said the attacks targeted towns across the countryside in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, and Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS's self-proclaimed caliphate. The SOHR described the bombings as "revenge massacres." Last week, IS reportedly kidnapped an estimated 400 civilians from Syrian government-held areas in Deir al-Zor. Though 270 of the captives were later released, the militants were accused of carrying out beheadings and targeting pro-government fighters and their families. The SOHR said 63 people, including nine children, were killed in Khesham, a town in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zor. Another 55 people, including 18 children and nine women, were reportedly killed in al-Bolel, al-Kharita, and other villages in the western countryside of of the province. Sixteen children and 13 women were among the 44 people killed in Raqqa, the group said. Related: Faced With A Russian Onslaught, Syrian Rebels Are Calling for Help From All Muslims IS controls most of Deir al-Zor, a strategically important area that links Raqqa with Mosul, the largest city under the group's control in northern Iraq. The remaining areas under control of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been under siege since last March, and residents are said to face severe food shortages and grim conditions. Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict last September, and the added air power has reportedly turned the military balance in the war in favor of the Assad regime, which is battling both IS and an array of allied rebel groups. In December, Amnesty International released a report that said Russian airstrikes have indiscriminately killed hundreds of civilians and may constitute a war crime. The human rights organization interviewed dozens of witnesses and activists, and reviewed video clips and images of six Russian attacks and their aftermath, disputing the Kremlin's claims that it has only attacked "terrorist" targets. The group indicated "serious failings" by Russia to adhere to international law. "The Russian armed forces appear to have directly attacked civilians or civilian objects by striking residential areas with no evident military objective and even medical facilities, resulting in deaths and injuries to civilians," Amnesty said in its report. "In others, they seem to have attacked military objectives and civilian objects without distinction, or caused disproportionate harm to civilians when striking military targets. Such attacks may constitute war crimes." Related: Russian Bombings Have Killed so Many Syrian Civilians They Could Be a War Crime Follow VICE News on Twitter: @vicenews

Overview of the Shared Task on Hope Speech Detection for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Hope Speech detection is the task of classifying a sentence as hope speech or non-hope speech given a corpus of sentences. Hope speech is any message or content that is positive, encouraging, reassuring, inclusive and supportive that inspires and engenders optimism in the minds of people. In contrast to identifying and censoring negative speech patterns, hope speech detection is focussed on recognising and promoting positive speech patterns online. In this paper, we report an overview of the findings and results from the shared task on hope speech detection for Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, English and Spanish languages conducted in the second workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI-2022) organised as a part of ACL 2022. The participants were provided with annotated training & development datasets and unlabelled test datasets in all the five languages. The goal of the shared task is to classify the given sentences into one of the two hope speech classes. The performances of the systems submitted by the participants were evaluated in terms of micro-F1 score and weighted-F1 score. The datasets for this challenge are openly available Introduction Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube have attracted millions of people to share content and express their opinions. These platforms also serve as a medium for marginalised people who want to receive online help and support from others (Gowen et al., 2012;Yates et al., 2017;Wang and Jurgens, 2018). With the pandemic outbreak, the population from several parts of the world is affected by the fear of losing their loved ones and the loss of access to basic services such as schools, hospitals and mental health care centres (Pérez-Escoda et al., 2020). As a result, people turn to online forums to meet their informational, emotional, and social needs (Elmer et al., 2020). Online social networking sites provide a platform for people to network, feel socially included, and gain a sense of belonging as part of a community. People's physical and psychological well-being, as well as mental health, are greatly influenced by these factors (Chung, 2013;Altszyler et al., 2018;Tortoreto et al., 2019). Although social media platforms have these positive aspects, social media content also has a large amount of spiteful or negative posts due to the lack of any mediating authority (Sampath et al., 2022;Ravikiran et al., 2022;Chakravarthi et al., 2022;Priyadharshini et al., 2022). In order to tackle this problem, social media posts are analysed to identify and control the spread of negative content using methods such as hate speech detection (Schmidt and Wiegand, 2017), offensive language identification (Zampieri et al., 2019;Kumaresan et al., 2021), homophobia/transpohibia detection (Chakravarthi et al., 2021) and abusive language detection (Lee et al., 2018). Technologies focused on curbing hate speech and offensive language have their own drawbacks, such as training data bias (Davidson et al., 2019), and controlling user expression by imposing barriers on modes of speech, thus affecting the principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Therefore, we turn our attention towards spreading positivity rather than curbing individual expression to address negative comments. To this end, last year, we organised the first shared task on Hope Speech Detection for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in EACL 2021 for English and two under-resourced languages Tamil and Malayalam (Chakravarthi and Muralidaran, 2021). The English dataset contained monolingual YouTube comments, while those of Tamil and Malayalam contained code-mixed comments. Continuing our efforts in this direction, this year, we have organised the second shared task on Hope Speech Detection by extending the dataset with two additional languages, Kannada and Spanish. It has been launched at the second workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI-2022), held as a part of ACL 2022. In the context of this shared task, hope speech refers to any social media comment that is positive, encouraging, reassuring, inclusive or supportive that inspires and engenders optimism in people's minds. Hope speech detection refers to the task of classifying a given comment into one of the following classes Hope_speech or Non_hope_speech. The participants of the shared task were provided with development, training and testing datasets in all the five languages. The comments in Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam datasets were code-mixed (Chakravarthi et al., 2020). This is because the dataset consists of YouTube comments and it is very common for speakers of these languages to use code-mixed language in online interactions. We conducted the shared task as a post/comment-level classification task. In this paper, we present the overview of the dataset, the results of the competing systems, and the findings of this shared task. The CodaLab competition website 2 will remain open to allow researchers to access the datasets and build upon this work. Task Description The goal of the proposed shared task is to classify a given social media comment as hope speech or non-hope speech. The participants were provided with training, development, and test datasets in five languages (English, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Spanish). The annotations of the datasets were made at the comment/post level. A comment/post may contain more than one sentence, but the average sentence length of the corpus is one. The participants could choose to take part in classifying one or more languages. Leader-board results were published for each language. Some sample sentences from the datasets and their annotations are provided below. The comments have also been translated into standard English for the benefit of the reader. • Bruh these LGBT people gotta chill with this little girl -Brother, these LGBT people have to chill with this little girl. Non_hope_speech. • Idu charitre srustiso avatara super sir-This is an avatar that is will create history. Superb, sir! Hope_speech • Munbotte yellvidha sawbhagiyavum undakatte-I wish you all the best things in future Hope_speech • Ithu ennada kanndraavi-What kind of nonsense is this! Non_hope_speech • Friendly reminder: las personas #LGTBI, al igual que todas las demás, tenemos derecho de legítima defensa.-Friendly reminder: #LGTBI people, like everyone else, have the right to self-defense. Hope_speech Datasets The corpus provided in this shared task consists of a total of 63,883 social media comments in five different languages. There are 28,424 comments in English,17,715 in Tamil,9,918 in Malayalam,6,176 in Kannada and 1,650 comments in Spanish. Since the datasets consist of comments from social media such as YouTube and Twitter, some sentences contains @ names, repeated letters or words, symbols, special characters, etc. For English, Tamil and Malayalam languages we used the HopeEDI dataset from (Chakravarthi, 2020). The data was collected on a wide range of socially relevant topics such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, including LGBTIQ issues, COVID-19, women in STEM, Dravidian languages, Black Lives Matter, etc. The inter-annotator agreement was verified using Krippendorf's alpha. The Kannada hope speech dataset contains 6,176 posts collected from YouTube video comments on various topics, such as social oppression, marginalisation and mental health, Indo-China border issues, or the banning of mobile apps in India. The details of dataset construction, corpus statistics, interannotator agreement and code-mixing issues are presented in detail in (Hande et al., 2021). The Spanish Hope Speech dataset consists of LGTBI-related tweets that were collected using the Twitter API (June 27, 2021 to July26, 2021). As seed for the search a lexicon of LGBITQ-related terms, such as #OrgulloLGTBI or #LGTB was used. A tweet is marked as HS (Hope Speech) if the text: i) explicitly supports the social integration of minorities; ii) is a positive inspiration for the LGTBI community; iii) explicitly encourages LGTBI people who might find themselves in a situation; or iv) unconditionally promotes tolerance. On the contrary, a tweet is marked as NHS (Non Hope Speech) if the text: i) expresses negative sentiment towards the LGTBI community; ii) explicitly seeks violence; or iii) uses gender-based insults. Table 1 shows the corpus statistics and Table 2 the distribution of the data by class and set, both showing the data in terms of language. The annotated datasets were divided into training, development and test sets to contain approximately 80%, 10% and 10% of the total number of comments. The corpus statistics were calculated using nltk tool (Bird, 2006). There are more non hope speech comments than hope speech. This makes the datasets imbalanced and skewed more towards one class than the other, which the participants had to take into account when developing their classification systems. Training Phase During the training phase, we provided participants with labelled training and development data that they could use to train and validate their models. We released the data for all the languages and the participants were able to whether they wanted to participate in developing models for more than one language. The goal of this phase was to provide the participants with sufficient data that they could used to perform cross-validation for their preliminary evaluations and hyperparameter setting. This ensured that participants were ready for evaluation before the release of the unlabeled test data. A total of 126 participants registered for the shared task and downloaded the datasets in this phase. Testing Phase During the testing phase, the participants were given test data without the gold labels. Each participating team was allowed as many submissions as they could, from which the best result was considered for preparing the leaderboard ranking. The submission outputs were compared with the gold standard labels and the macro and weightedaverage versions of precision, recall and F1-score were reported for all the classes. The ranking list was prepared based on the best performance measured on the macro F1-scores. In this phase, there were 13,7,9,6,7 participants who submitted their results for English, Kannada, Malayalam, Spanish and Tamil, respectively. Systems We begin this section by presenting a brief summary of the baselines established for this shared task based on the submissions received last year. We then briefly describe each of the proposals submitted this year. Readers are encouraged to consult the participants' individual papers for a more detailed understanding. Baseline results from LT-EDI 2021 In 2021, the shared task on Hope Speech Detection as a part of LT-EDI workshop received 31,31 and 30 submissions for English, Malayalam and Tamil, respectively. It was a three-class classification task in which the class labels were "Hope", "Non-hope", and "Not Tamil/ Not English/ Not Malayalam". XLM-Roberta was the popular choice among most of the top performing teams. Other participants (2021) used a voting ensemble approach with 11 models and fine-tuned pretrained transformer models to get an F1-score of 0.93. Transformer methods were proposed with fine-tuned methods such as RoBERTa (Mahajan et al., 2021), XML-R (Hossain et al., 2021), XML-RoBERTa (Ziehe et al., 2021), XML-RoBERTa with TF-IDF (Huang and Bai, 2021), ALBERT with K-fold cross validation (Chen and Kong, 2021) and multilingual BERT model with convolution neural networks (Dowlagar and Mamidi, 2021). (M K and A P, 2021) showed comparable results by using a combination of contextualised string embedding, stacked word embeddings and pooled document embedding with Recurrent Neural Network. Chinnappa (2021) used FNN, BERT and SBERT to classify the comments into one of the two labels after performing language detection which achieved an F1-score of 0.92. Balouchzahi et al. (2021) solved the problem by using character sequences for words in code-mixed Malayalam and Tamil comments and by using a combination of word and character n-grams for English comments to get an F1-score of 0.92 for English. The F1scores do not present the full picture of the quality of these models because none of these models gave an F1-score of more than 0.60 for "Hope" class which means that the high F1-scores were due to the fact that most of the comments in the dataset were in "Non-hope" class. The top scores were 0.61, 0.85 and 0.93 for Tamil, Malayalam and English respectively. From the previous shared task, it was observed that the number of "Non-hope" labels in Tamil dataset is comparable to the number of "Not Tamil" labels in last year's dataset as opposed to English and Malayalam which made the classification in these two languages as a binary classification task instead of three classes. The shared task of this year is a binary classification problem for all the five languages. A summary of each of the submission this year is presented briefly in the upcoming subsection. Systems Description In this section, we summarise the systems submitted by the participants of the shared task. A short discussion on the methodology used in each submission is presented here. CIC@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Balouchzahi et al., 2022) participated in identifying Hope Speech classes in English and Spanish. Their model consists of a basic sequential neural network with the combination of features including Linguistic Enquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and n-grams. They developed a deep learning approach which ranked 2nd in English and 3rd in Spanish for hope speech detection. They also identified psycho-linguistic and linguistic features that work the best for the two languages. They found that the overall Macro F1 scores achieved in the English task was significantly lower than the Weighted F1 score because of the imbalanced classes contrary to Spanish texts where the classes were balanced. LPS@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Ying Zhu, 2022) submitted results for all the five languages. All the data submitted came from the same model framework and the same system architecture which is an ensemble model consisting of three parts. These are LSTM, CNN+LSTM and BiLSTM, respectively. Finally, an attention layer is added before the ensemble of the three-part results. The introduction of the attention mechanism not only helped the model to make better use of the effective information in the input, but also provided some ability to explain the behavior of the neural network model. CURAJ_IIITDWD@LTEDIACL 2022 (Jha et al., 2022) worked on the dataset of English hope speech comments. The studies were conducted using a multilayer neural network, one layer CNN, one layer Bi-LSTM, and one layer GRU, among the deep learning networks. The stacked networks of LSTM-CNN and LSTM-LSTM were also trained. The stacked LSTM-LSTM network and DNN produced the best results with Weighted F1-score of 0.89. All of the experiments were carried out in the Keras and sklearn environment. They used the pandas library to read the datasets. Keras preprocessing classes and the nltk library were used to prepare the dataset. giniUs@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Chinagundi and Surana, 2022) used the transformer-based pretrained models along with the customized versions of those models with custom loss functions. Their best configurations for the shared tasks achieved weighted F1 scores of 0.60 for Tamil, 0.83 for Malayalam, and 0.93 for English. They have secured ranks of 4, 3, 2 in Tamil, Malayalam and English respectively. They experimented with prominently known models namely BERT-Base-Uncased, RoBERTa-Base, RoBERTa-Large. They found that RoBERTa-Large performs the best when the last four layers of the language model are concatenated for a deeper embedding representation, which is then passed through a pre classifier and a RELU activation layer followed by a dropout layer before finally coming across the classification head for the labels that are to be predicted. IDIAP_TIET@LT-EDI-ACL2022 focused on the English comments. Motivated by the efficiency of transformers in NLP, they encoded the comments using the BERT language model and created an embeddings matrix. Further, this embeddings matrix was fed to the attention network, trained to classify for Hope Speech. The proposed model has proven to be remarkable by achieving fourth position on the leaderboard with a difference of 0.04 in F1-score from the top-performing model. IIITSurat@LT-EDI-EACL2022 worked on the English dataset. Their model works in two phases: firs, it uses over-sampling techniques to increase the number of samples and make them comparable in the training dataset, followed by a random forest classifier to classify the comments into hope and non-hope categories. The proposed model achieved a macro F1-score of 0.55 on the test dataset and secured the first place among the participating teams. IIT Dhanbad @LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Gupta et al., 2022) worked on the English dataset. They have used various machine learning algorithms, namely -Logistic Regression, Multinomial Naive Bayes classifier, Random forest classifier and XGBoost. They have used the scikit-learn library for logistic regression, Multinomial NB and Random forest classifiers. The best score as Macro-F1 for the task achieved by the team is 0.6130. The XGBoost system is their best performing model. LeaningTower@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Muti et al., 2022) targeted the task in English by using reinforced BERT-based approaches. The core strategy aimed at exploiting the data available for homophobic and transphobic comment detection to augment the number of supervised instances in the Hope Speech Detection task. On the basis of an active learning process, the team trained a model on the dataset for hope speech detection task and applied it to the dataset for homo/transphobia detection task to iteratively integrate new silver data for hope speech task. Their submission to the shared task obtained a macro-averaged F1 score of 0.53, placing the team in the third rank. MUCIC@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (M D Gowda et al., 2022) dealt with data sets provided in English, Kannada and Tamil. Their methodology used the resampling technique to deal with imbalanced data in the corpus and obtained 1st rank for the English language with an average macro F1-035 score of 0.550 and weighted F1-score of 0.860. SOA_NLP@LT-EDI-ACL2022 participated in the task covering all the languages -English, Spanish, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. The proposed ensemble model combined three machine learning algorithms: (i) Support Vector Machine (SVM), (ii) Logistic Regression (LR), and (iii) Random Forest (RF). The ef-ficiency of different combinations of n-gram charlevel and word-level TF-IDF features were also explored in the identification of hope speech. SSN_ARMM@ LT-EDI-ACL2022 (V et al., 2022) worked on the dataset in English, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. They used the In-dicBERT model which is a multilingual model trained on large-scale corpora covering 12 Indian languages. IndicBERT takes a smaller number of parameters and still manages to give state-of-theart performance. SSNCSE_NLP@LT-EDI-ACL2022 (Srinivasan et al., 2022) participated in the shared task covering English, Malayalam, Kannada and Tamil languages. They employed several machine learning transformer models such as m-BERT, MLNet, BERT, XLMRoberta, XLM_MLM. The results indicated that BERT, and m-BERT obtained the best performance among all the other techniques, gaining a weighted F1-score of 0.92, 0.71, 0.76, 0.87, and 0.83 for English, Tamil, Spanish, Kannada and Malayalam respectively. Results and discussion The total of submissions received for the classification of English, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Spanish datasets were 13,7,9,7 and 6 respectively. Three teams submitted their results for all the languages, while the other participants made their submissions for a subset of the languages. Two teams obtained first rank in English with a macro average of 0.550. One of them (M D Gowda et al., 2022) used a resampling technique to deal with imbalanced data and 1D CNN-LSTM architecture to address the classification problem. The other team used Random Forest Classifier to classify the comments. Transformer-based pretrained models were used in five studies out of which one of them used multilingual IndicBERT model for classifying English, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada languages. This model achieved first and second ranks on Kannada and Malayalam languages respectively. Among other submissions, the popular choice was an ensemble of various Machine Learning classifiers such as Logistic Regression, Multinomial Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Support Vector Machines. However, we observed that the performances of the ML classifiers used for this shared task were slightly lower than the baseline performances of ML models used last year. LSTM, BiL-STM, CNN were used but their performance were not as good as the transformer based models. Conclusion This paper presents the description of the second Shared Task on Hope Speech Detection for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion organized at the second workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (LT-EDI-2022), held as a part of ACL 2022. In the 2021 edition this shared task was organized for English and two under-resourced languages, Tamil and Malayalam, and for this edition, two new languages, Kannada and Spanish, have been incorporated. In total, 126 participants signed up for the for the shared task and finally 13,7,9,6, and 7 teams submitted their results for English, Kannada, Malayalam, Spanish and Tamil, respectively. We hope that this shared task makes a lasting contribution to the NLP field.

Tumor suppressor genes and their underlying interactions in paclitaxel resistance in cancer therapy Objectives Paclitaxel (PTX) is frequently used in the clinical treatment of solid tumors. But the PTX-resistance is a great obstacle in cancer treatment. Exploration of the mechanisms of drug resistance suggests that tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) play a key role in the response of chemotherapeutic drugs. TSGs, a set of genes that are often inactivated in cancers, can regulate various biological processes. In this study, an overview of the contribution of TSGs to PTX resistance and their underlying relationship in cancers are reported by using GeneMANIA, a web-based tool for gene/protein function prediction. Methods Using PubMed online database and Google web site, the terms “paclitaxel resistance” or “taxol resistance” or “drug resistance” or “chemotherapy resistance”, and “cancer” or “carcinoma”, and “tumor suppressor genes” or “TSGs” or “negative regulated protein” or “antioncogenes” were searched and analyzed. GeneMANIA data base was used to predict gene/protein interactions and functions. Results We identified 22 TSGs involved in PTX resistance, including BRCA1, TP53, PTEN, APC, CDKN1A, CDKN2A, HIN-1, RASSF1, YAP, ING4, PLK2, FBW7, BLU, LZTS1, REST, FADD, PDCD4, TGFBI, ING1, Bax, PinX1 and hEx. The TSGs were found to have direct and indirect relationships with each other, and thus they could contribute to PTX resistance as a group. The varied expression status and regulation function of the TSGs on cell cycle in different cancers might play an important role in PTX resistance. Conclusion A further understanding of the roles of tumor suppressor genes in drug resistance is an important step to overcome chemotherapy tolerance. Tumor suppressor gene therapy targets the altered genes and signaling pathways and can be a new strategy to reverse chemotherapy resistance. Background Currently, chemotherapy is the main cancer treatment modality, among which paclitaxel (PTX) is a type of cytotoxic agent and widely used in the first line treatment of lung, ovarian, breast, renal cancers and Kaposi's sarcoma . PTX differs from conventional anti-cancer drugs because it does not affect the DNA or RNA synthesis of tumor cells or cause DNA damage, but interferes with tubulin to stabilize microtubule composition and normal spindle assembly and cell division resulting in cancer cell death . The clinical use of PTX leads to variable responses in different individuals, and the mechanisms of PTX resistance have not been fully elucidated. Some reports suggested that tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) should be important mediators of drug sensitivity . Normally, these TSGs prevent abnormal cells from surviving. However, when the genes are inactivated or reduce expression, the abnormal cells grow uncontrollably, which may lead to cancer formation . In this study, by the analysis of published reports and GeneMANIA network, we reviewed 21 TSGs and 1 putative TSG that contributed to PTX resistance in cancer and provided an overview of the relationship of TSGs with PTX resistance. BRCA1 Tumor suppressor BRCA1 is involved in several cellular functions including DNA damage repair, cell cycle checkpoint activation and transcription . Several preclinical studies indicated that BRCA1 might be an important determinant of response to PTX-based chemotherapy. It was shown that reconstitution of exogenous BRCA1 in the BRCA1-mutant HCC1937 breast cancer cell line resulted in enhanced sensitivity to PTX . In accordance, low BRCA1 mRNA expression in ovarian cancer cell lines resulted in decreased and increased apoptotic response to PTX and platinum respectively and PTXsensitive human brain and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) with acquired cisplatin resistance had high expression of BRCA1 . In order to investigate the underlying PTX-resistance mechanisms conferred by loss of BRCA1, Chabalier et al. reduced BRCA1 protein levels by using small interfering RNA (siRNA) in MCF7 breast cancer cells resulted in PTX resistance through premature inactivation of spindle checkpoint . Sung et al. found that BRCA1 knockdown conferred A549 cells resistance to PTX and sensitivity to cisplatin through improving microtubule dynamics which prevented the formation of stable microtubule for caspase-8 accumulation of PTX induced apoptosis . A further study suggested that BRCA1 might represent an important mediator of the PTX stress-response dependent c-Jun N-terminal kinase/ stress-activated protein kinase (JNK/SAPK) or p38/ mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38/MAPK) pathway . Taken together, these studies provided evidence that BRCA1 mutation or reduced expression could predict the response to PTX-based chemotherapy. BRCA1 deficiency led to increased microtubule dynamics, impaired cell cycle checkpoint and signaling pathway which rendered less sensitivity to PTX-induced apoptosis. Here we consider that BRCA1 may become a molecular marker to predict the PTX resistance. TP53 TP53 is one of the earliest detected tumor suppressor genes and the most frequently mutated gene in carcinoma. More than half of the TP53 mutations found in cancers lead to loss of function. Functional p53 participates in various cellular processes including cell cycle progression, cell motility, aging, apoptosis, genetic instability, DNA repair, anti-angiogenesis and cell metabolism . TP53 gene mutation status has recently been shown to be correlated to PTX-based therapy and prognosis . It was also found that an augmented concentration of intracellular p53 protein sensitized three non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) cell lines to PTX . p53 upregulated modulator of apoptosis (PUMA) is an important regulator of apoptosis and is involved in drug resistance . It was demonstrated that PUMA was downregulated in PTX-resistant ovarian cell line SKOV3/PTX, and delivery of p53 into SKOV3/ PTX could upregulated the expression of PUMA and restored the apoptotic response to PTX . TP53 hot spot mutation (TP53-m273) increased multidrug resistance protein 1 (MDR1, regulating efflux of PTX and doxorubicin) expression and resistance to PTX . In addition, studies suggested that some regulatory factors depended on p53 related pathway may mediated PTX resistance. For example, the up-regulation of inhibitor of apoptosis-stimulating protein of p53 (iASPP), a p53 suppression factor, has been found to affect PTX sensitivity in ovarian cancer by inhibiting both mitotic catastrophe and apoptosis . Astrin, a protein localized with mitotic spindles at M phase, silencing of astrin triggered a p53-dependent apoptotic pathway and induced Hela cells sensitive to PTX . PTEN PTEN, is a negative regulator of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3k/Akt) signaling pathway. Its dysfunction mutation results in reduced dephosphorylation of phosphatidylinositol 3, 4, 5-triphosphate (PIP3), further increasing cell survival, cell migration, cell size and cell proliferation . Recently, reports mainly concentrate on the role of PTEN in the response of human cancer cells to anti-cancer drugs and in multiple drug resistance (MDR) reversion . Several reports showed that PTEN was involved in PTX resistance. Cyclin B1 plays a key role in G2/M transition. Ou et al. detected suppressing of cyclin B1 protein sensitized esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) cells to APC Tumor suppressor gene APC is most commonly mutated and deleted in colorectal cancers, as well as many other epithelial cancers like breast, gastric and lung cancer. The best-known function of the APC protein is the regulation of the Wnt signaling cascade through downregulation of β-catenin can modulate cell cycle progression, however, APC has many Wnt independent roles, such as microtubule dynamic, cytoskeletal organization and cell adhesion . Since PTX is to interfere with microtubule protein stability, the interaction between APC and PTX has been explored. Monica et al. showed loss of APC in breast cancer cells from mouse mammary tumor virus promoter-polyoma middle T-antigen (MMTV-PyMT) mouse lead to increased expression of MDR1 after treatment with cisplatin and PTX . It has been demonstrated that APC expression is regulated by a microRNA 135a (miR-135a) . So it is not surprising that miR-135a is shown to be involved in PTX resistance by downregulation of APC . Moreover, Ling et al. found APC-deficient cancer cells defect in mitotic spindle checkpoint and in cell-cell adhesion and were more resistant to PTX . Consequently, APC deficiency impairs the PTX sensitivity of cancer cells by interfering with the mitotic spindle checkpoint and decreasing apoptosis. CKIs Loss of cell cycle control promotes tumorigenesis, key regulators of the cell cycle are a family of serine/threonine kinases: cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). CDKs act at different stages of the cell cycle and are responsible for the transition from one cell cycle phase to the next . Endogenous cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors (CKIs) are negative regulators of CDKs . There are two families of CKIs: the INK4 families, consisted of p16, p15, p18 and p19 which can inhibit the complex of cyclin dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) and cyclin complex activities. And the CIP/KIP families include p21, p27 and p57, regulate border CDKs . Recently, evidences have showed CKIs family members involved in PTX resistance in human cancers. p21, is required to maintain the G2 arrest after DNA damage , the level of p21 expression has been known to play an important role in determining sensitivity of tumor cells to PTX , and a remarkable induction of p21 in A375P cells after treatment of PTX and apoptosis induction after mitotic arrest with PTX. However, PTX lightly increased the levels of p21 in A375P/Mdr cells, which exhibited strong resistance to PTX . p16, mainly inhibits CDK4 activity, the loss of p16 expression reduced the response of breast cancer cells to PTX by conferring cancer stem cell properties and the tumorsphere formation was not significantly enhanced , those results indicated that CKIs affect PTX efficacy mainly through the cell cycle regulation. Hippo signaling pathway The Hippo signaling pathway, which regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis, is a highly conserved signaling pathway first discovered in Drosophila cells. It also exists in mammals and controls organ size, cell proliferation and apoptosis. The main function of Hippo signaling pathway is to phosphorylate transcriptional co-activator PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) and YAP, preventing them from entering the nucleus and promoting gene transcription which induces cell proliferation, metastasis and invasion . Recent discoveries have identified the Hippo signaling pathway as a new target for cancer chemotherapy resistance . For example, hEx, one of the Hippo upstream signal input factors, a putative tumor suppressor gene, overexpression of hEx dramatically inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation and sensitivity to PTX . RASSF1A, a member of the RASSF1 family, is a downstream regulator of Hippo, there are approximately 50 % of ovarian tumors harbor hypermethylation of RASSF1 , investigations shown that overexpression of RASS-FIA could increase stabilization of microtubules then restore PTX sensitivity . YAP, a nuclear effector of Hippo, has been shown exist in many pathways except in Hippo, it is critical for DNA damage in breast cancer cells as well as in certain types of neuronal apoptosis . It acted as a tumor suppressor in breast cancer and its silencing could induce normal breast epithelia more resistance to PTX effect on cell cycle but not apoptosis . Other TSGs In addition to the TSGs mentioned above, abnormity of ING4, Bax, HIN-1, PLK2, FBW7 . Bax is a proapoptotic Bcl-2 family member that plays a key role in induction of mitochondrial dependent apoptosis. Study found there was an increase of Bcl-2/Bax ratio in PTX-resistant breast cancer cell lines, high ratio reduced the PTX-induced apoptosis in breast cancer and ovarian cancer cells . Hypermethylation downregulated the expression of HIN-1 and weakened the sensitivity to PTX through the PI3k/Akt pathway . Hypermethylation of PLK2 reduced ovarian cancer cells sensitivity to PTX, accompanied by reduced G2-M arrest and apoptosis . Low protein expression of LZTS1 showed little response in patients who received PTX-based chemotherapy in ovarian carcinoma and breast cancer patients, it was a worse prognosis patients outcome , previous study by generating LZTS1 knockout mice, detected accelerate mitotic progression resistance to PTX-induced M phase arrest by decreasing CDK1 activity , indicated cell cycle distribution may be involved in the above two human cancer. Ovarian and colon cancer cells which harbored mutant FBW7 were more resistant to PTX, functional FBW7 is required to degrade myeloid cell leukemia 1 expression by a ubiquitin ligase SKP1-cullin-1-F-box complex that contains FBW7 . Ovarian cancer patients with methylated BLU had significantly shorter progression free survival, in vitro, BLU could decrease the Bcl-2/Bax ratio in ovarian cancer cells when encountered with PTX . TGFBI acts as a tumor suppressor in lung cancer . Irigoyen et al. identified a strong association between elevated TGFBI expression and the response to chemotherapy, TGFBI mediated the susceptibility of NSCLC cells to PTX and this may be the result of direct TGFBI induction of cell apoptosis through the binding of its proteolytic fragments to the β3 integrin, the same phenomenon was proven in ovarian cancer . REST directly regulates Akt2, loss of REST leads to a de-regulation of Akt phosphorylation . Tubulin beta 3 class III (TUBB3) was a biomarker of the resistance of chemotherapies . Gao et al. found REST might suppress the expression of TUBB3 to sensitize ovarian cancer cells to PTX by activating the PI3k/Akt pathway . Phosphorylation of FADD affected both upstream and downstream of the JNK/SAPK pathway, which was critical for sensitivity to PTX-induced apoptosis , and PDCD4 mediated PTX sensitivity through interacting mitotic exit regulation axis, upregulation of micro-RNA 182 (miR-182) accelerated cell cycle process and enhanced chemo-resistance of ovarian cancer cells to PTX through negatively regulating PDCD4 . P33 ING1 , one of the ING1 gene products, could enhance PTX-induced apoptosis in human osteosarcoma U2OS cells by p53-dependent pathway and its target genes p21 and Bax were increased . In cervical squamous cell carcinomas, the expression of PinX1 in patients was significantly associated with the response of the combination of PTX and cisplatin chemotherapy. In vitro, knockdown of PinX1 could dramatically enhance PTX effects, whereas the augment of PinX1 levels substantially enhanced the G2 phase cells through influencing spindle assembly checkpoint . Summarily, the pre-transcriptional (epigenetic/ genetic), transcriptional and post-transcriptional changes of TSGs contribute to PTX resistance in cancer, which may lead to new treatment methods to overcome drug resistance. Actually, the reversion of epigenetic changes of DNA and gene transfer skills (gene therapy) has already proved to be effective in reversing PTX resistance. For example, 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine (a demethylation agent) reversed the sensitivity to PTX treatment in breast cancer and ovarian cancer cells . Exogenous increased levels of p53 significantly improved the sensitivity of PTX providing a basis for gene therapy . For another example, the CDK4/6 inhibitor was shown to downregulate p16/cyclin D1/CDK4/(retinoblastoma protein)Rb signaling pathway and enhance the cytotoxicity of PTX for KRAS mutation-positive lung adenocarcinoma cells . These results encouraged further studies on TSGs associated with PTX resistance in cancers. Moreover, drug resistance was rarely induced by single gene, it was almost caused by two or more genes. For example, tumor suppressor p33 ING1 markedly increased PTX-induced growth inhibition and apoptosis in TP53wild cells, but not in TP53-mutant cells . Twenty two genes were involved in the regulation of PTX resistance in cancers through certain pathways, particularly through cell cycle and apoptosis ( Table 1). The interaction network of the 22 TSGs Bioinformatics analysis has been widely used in nature and life sciences, and it is a feasible and valuable method for gene/protein function prediction. Numerous networks of molecular interactions have made it possible to study gene/protein function using online databases . GeneMANIA is a web-based interface for prediction of gene/protein function on the basis of multiple networks derived from different proteomics and genomic data, and it is fast enough to predict gene/protein function with a significant accuracy rate . The protein interactions of the 22 genes were analyzed using GeneMANIA. The co-localization, co-expression, pathway, shared protein domains and genetic, physical and predictive interactions of the 22 TSGs were shown in Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Genes/proteins are depicted as colored circles and experimentally detected relationships between genes/proteins as connecting lines. Black circles are the 22 TSGs, gray circles are other genes/protein related to the 22 TSGs). In detail, BRCA1 has similar expression level with CDKN2A, participates in the same pathway with TP53, and has physical interactions with CDKN2A and TP53. TP53 has similar expression level with FADD, PDCD4, The cross-interaction of the 22 TSGs demonstrates that these genes may contribute to PTX resistance as a group. Annotated molecular functions of the 22 TSGs according to the protein interaction network The molecular function of the 22 TSGs may be predicted by using GeneMANIA network. By analysis, there were four summarized functions to be possibly close to chemotherapy resistance ( Table 2). The cell cycle-related function covered 12 of the 22 TSGs and additional 10 genes. The cell apoptosis-related function covered eight TSGs and additional seven genes. The protein ubiquitinationrelated function covered six TSGs and additional five genes. The cell growth-related function covered seven TSGs and additional four genes. Since the cell cyclerelated function was annotated with the highest false discovery rate (FDR), the regulation function of TSGs on cell cycle was considered more closely related to chemotherapy resistance than other three pathway functions. Other related genes in the network In the network, 20 other related genes/proteins that mediate the relationship of the 22 TSGs. They have interactions with the 22 candidate genes, and participate in the similar biological process which the 22 genes are involved (Table 2), which indicates that they may be related to PTX or other drug resistance in cancers. Some of them had been studied in drug resistance. For example, tumor protein 63 (TP63), a TP53 family protein, which expressed a variety of isoforms. DeltaNp63alpha belonged to the members of the N-terminally truncated (DeltaN) p63 subfamily, it can trigger anti-apoptotic related pathway result to chemo-resistance in hepatocellular carcinoma . Ovarian cancer cell line with acquired resistance to carboplatin revealed low levels of the gene cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1C (CDKN1C), and demethylation agent can reverse the silencing of CDKN1C and increased the apoptotic response to carboplatin . Bcl-2, is specifically considered as an important anti-apoptotic protein and classified as an oncogene, the expression of Bcl-2 can affect PTX induced apoptosis . The Bcl-2/Bax ratio has shown a significant increase in PTX-resistance cancer cells . Hairy/enhancer-of-split related with YRPW motif protein 1 (HEY1), cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1B (CDKN1B) and fas cell surface death receptor (Fas) acted as a part of signaling pathways involved in drug resistance . Death-associated protein 6 (DAXX) has been shown to regulate PTX-sensitivity in tumor . CDK4 and CDK2 are not only involved in the formation of tumor resistance but also the inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinase which has been the anti-cancer agent used in clinic . Conclusion It is well known that TSGs play an important role in cell cycle, angiogenesis and signal transduction, and currently TSGs are also considered to participate in the formation of chemo-resistance. In this review, we reported an overview of the 22 TSGs associated with PTX resistance in cancer. The status and ways of TSGs to regulate PTX resistance in several types of cancer were integrated in Table 1. Using GeneMANIA, the interaction analysis of TSGs was performed and it was shown that cell cycle might be the main manner for the participation of TSGs in PTX resistance in human cancers, and the 22 TSGs had a direct or indirect relationship with each other and could contribute to PTX resistance as a group. Therefore, profiling the TSGs status of individual tumors, such as mRNA levels and protein levels, is critical in guiding the optimization of personalized medicines to better sensitize the individual patient to specific drugs. Understanding the mechanistic basis and identification of robust biomarkers could also predict optimal use of chemotherapy in patients. We anticipate that in the future such approaches will benefit clinical development of anticancer therapeutics directly or indirectly targeting TSGs.

Hyperuricaemia: more than just a cause of gout? Traditionally, serum uric acid (SUA) has been implicated in acute gouty arthritis or chronic gouty arthropathy. However, SUA also plays a role in other pathological conditions especially in cardiovascular (CV), metabolic and renal disease. This narrative review considers the significant associations of SUA with kidney function, several CV risk factors and vascular diseases, supporting the concept of assessing hyperuricaemia for reasons other than just gout. Several drugs that reduce CV risk also decrease SUA levels, further improving vascular risk. Therefore, selecting SUA–lowering drugs to treat high-risk patients may prove beneficial in terms of reducing CV risk.

Fire sale in financial networks The default of one bank can cause other banks to default through two channels: financial contagion in the inter-bank liability network and fire sale in the asset selling market. When the defaulted bank cannot fully pay its debt, the loss is transmitted to other banks. When banks rush to sell the same asset simultaneously, they may fall into a Nash equilibrium in which banks compete for liquidity and sell their assets at an artificially low price. In this paper, a model that incorporates these two channels is developed and analyzed theoretically. An algorithm for finding the state in which both the inter-bank liability network and the market are in equilibrium is proposed and tested.

Yellow Fever Vaccination, Avian Leukosis Virus, and Cancer Risk in Man Comparison was made between 2659 veterans who died of cancer, during 1950 to 1954 or 1959 to 1963, and matched controls, based on the frequency of yellow fever immunization during World War II. The vaccine was produced from chick embryos that almost certainly contained avian leukosis-sarcoma viruses. Among the veterans, no relation was found between vaccination and leukemia, lymphoma, or other cancer.

Quality assurance responsibilities as defined by the EPA Good Automated Laboratory Practices (GALPs). In December 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Information Resources Management (OIRM) issued a draft of the Good Automated Laboratory Practices (GALP). The GALPs developed from a union of existing Federal and EPA regulations and policies, including: the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) & Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), Good Laboratory Practices (GLP), the EPA Information Resources Management Policy (IRMP), and the Computer Security Act of 1987. The GALPs consolidate the regulations and policies to provide a single source of reference, and sever as an extension of the GLP standards (40 CFR 160 & 792). Whereas the GLPs describe acceptable laboratory management practices, the GALPs describe acceptable automated data management practices, and give guidance for standardizing and implementing procedures to ensure the quality and integrity of automated data collection and storage. The GALPs have been formatted to parallel the structure of the GLPs. Just as the GLPs define the responsibilities of the Quality Assurance Unit (QAU) in maintaining good laboratory practices, the GALPs define the responsibilities of the QAU in maintaining good automated data practices. The QAU is charged with (i) maintaining copies of written procedures for the automated data collection system, (ii) performing inspections of laboratory operations utilizing the automated data collection system and reporting findings, (iii) ensuring authorization and documentation of deviations from written procedures, (iv) auditing data and reports from the automated data collection system to ensure they accurately represent the raw data, and (v) maintaining records of the above-defined QAU functions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Endoscopic treatment of vesico-ureteric reflux in children by subureteric Teflon injection: the Edinburgh experience. This is an audit of 50 consecutive children who were treated in Edinburgh with subureteric Teflon injection (STING) for vesico-ureteric reflux between May 1988 and March 1992. There were 68 ureters treated with a total of 89 injections. Twenty-nine ureters (42.6%) were cured after a single injection and another 20 ureters were cured after a second injection (74.2%). These results revealed a decreasing failure rate with experience and compared favourably with other published works. STING is a well-tolerated, simple, effective alternative to medical and surgical treatment for vesico-ureteric reflux in children.

Effect of storage temperature on the stability of Lassa virus complement-fixing antigen. Inactivated Lassa virus complement-fixing antigen is normally prepared as a wet frozen antigen, and shipped in dry ice from the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, to other laboratories not equipped for handling live Lassa virus. However, with this antigen there is a considerable loss of potency during shipping. In the search for a more stable antigen, inactivated Lassa antigen was lyophilized and subjected to different storage temperatures. Lyophilization did not significantly affect the CF titre, and the lyophilized antigen remained stable for 15 and 28 days at 25 degrees C and 4 degrees C, respectively.

2D Disturbance Map of Low-Power Front-End Circuits in Low Frequency Band —This document presents an evaluation of a near-field contactless inductive link, examined from a radiated disturbance standpoint, whose sources are low-power Analog Front End (AFE) circuits. Two basic types of AFE rectifiers based on Shottky diodes and Mosfet transistors were tested. Due to selective interference measurement, a map of distortions regarding the position of the coil was created. The obtained results referred to the analytical model, providing sufficient convergence to quickly assess the optimum position of the receiving coil. transmitting antenna. Knowledge about this type of relation seems to significantly support the scope of estimation of the optimal position of the coils during the stage of system design, and it is a motivation behind this analysis. This article is organized in the following manner. Section 2 includes a discussion on the principle of operation of the analyzed system. Section 3 demonstrates the details of its models, along with the achieved quality of mapping. Section 4 includes the circuit diagram and its components. Section 5 presents a measuring system in the ALSE chamber, as well as the measurement results that ultimately form a two-dimensional disturbance map. The last section contains a discussion of achieved results, as well as directions for subsequent works. Figure 1 presents the analyzed circuit. The sinusoidal voltage generator with a low level of harmonic disturbances, operating at frequency f O , output voltage U O , and output resistance R O , controls the Tx transmitting coil. The Rx coil is located at (x, y, 0) point, which has the capability to move. The mutual degree of the coils' coupling, which is determined by mutual inductance M and corresponding coupling factor k, results from the position of the receiving coil. An electric circuit consisting of capacitor C R and rectifier is connected to the Rx coil terminals, whose load consists of capacitor C L and resistor R L . The magnetic flux, which is generated by current i 1 , induces a voltage in the receiving coil that causes the flow of current i 2 . Due to the nonlinear nature of the input impedance of the rectifier, current i 2 , in addition to basic harmonic f O , also contains higher harmonics, 2f O , 3f O , . . ., which are treated in this analysis as disturbances. The magnetic fields, H 1 and H 2 , and electric fields, E 1 and E 2 are summed up by the receiving antenna, placed in the Y Z plane at a distance resulting from the accepted measurement standard . The voltage generated in the antenna is subsequently measured by a spectrum analyzer, whose indications depend on the actual position (x, y) of the Rx coil; only for the simplification of the subsequent measurement was the immutability of dimension z assumed. Both the frequencies and distances, at which the circuit is analyzed, allow us to assume the invariance of currents within the windings of each coil and the dominant inductive nature of the near field. Therefore, in accordance with , the total magnetic flux can be calculated OPERATION OF RECTIFIER CIRCUIT where d L is a part of closed contour covering coils Tx and Rx. Further considerations focused on searching for the distorted forms of currents i 1 and i 2 , which are dependent on the fixed position (x, y) as well as their reference to the measurements presented in Section 5. The analysis assumed a quasi-determined circuit state in which transient states of coil currents and capacitor voltages disappeared, while the only stimulation is the generator's harmonic signal. Inductive Coils Serial components borrowed from a typical immobilizer application and practically used in automotive vehicles were used as the Tx transmitting coil and Rx receiving coil. A parallel RLC structure (see Figure 2) was used to model them, which took into account the inter-winding capacity, finite resistance in the state of self-resonance, and losses associated with the resistance of windings . Thus, the admittance of the substitute circuit, which describes the above-mentioned structure, can be expressed as where ω = 2πf 0 Capacitance C p and parallel resistance R p were determined from the condition of self-resonance, i.e., Im{Y } = 0. Due to the proportions of used coils, i.e., (l + h) < 2a, the nominal values of self-inductances were determined from the Wheeler's equation for short coils L = aN 2 13.5 log 10 4.9a l + h (6) where the meaning of individual parameters is defined in Table 1. Measurement of amplitude-phase characteristics of Tx and Rx coils was carried out with the use of R&S ZVC vector analyzer in the 20 kHz-1 MHz band and supplemented by the measurement of winding resistance R s . The measured characteristics of the exemplary coil Tx and its model are presented in Figure 3. Finally, the parameters of coils and their models are shown in Table 1. Mutual Inductance M and Coupling Factor k To determine the mutual inductance, the method presented by Soma et al. and used by in the analysis of the efficiency of inductive energy transfer was applied. The works of are its extension, introducing the possibility of a more precise analysis of multi-winding coils based on replacing the integral from Equation (6) with its development into the Taylor series. In accordance with , the mutual inductance M of two magnetically coupled coils that are separated from each other by (x, y, 0) can be determined as where while G(r) is defined in the following manner where K(r) and E(r) are complete elliptic integrals of the first and second type, respectively. The mutual inductance M is associated with the coupling factor k by formula (12) , which makes it possible to refer it to the inductance values of the Tx and Rx coils. It should be noted that Equation (7) applies to single-winding coils; thus, it is necessary to normalize Eq. (12) in relation to the number of windings N 1 and N 2 . Moreover, dimension x in Equation (8) refers to the distance between the coil centers, which is the case of real coils preventing the juxtaposition of the position x = 0. The minimum value x, resulting from the positioning of the windings inside the coil housing, was assumed for the analysis, as illustrated in Figure 4. The current value of the coupling factor k was determined in the range x = (5...35) mm, y = (0...25) mm, based on where L short (x, y) is the inductance measured at the Tx coil terminals with closed Rx coil terminals, and L open (x, y) is the inductance measured at the Tx coil terminals with opened Rx coil terminals in each of the analyzed positions (x, y). Due to similar dimensions of Tx and Rx coils, the redetermination of the value k from the side of the Rx receiving coil was abandoned, therefore assuming the full symmetry of the circuit . The measurements were carried out with the use of an RLC bridge of HP 4284A type, with a basic accuracy of 0.1%, at a frequency of 125 kHz and excitation of 1 V. Due to the single measurement of each value of L short and L open , the estimation of the measurement error k was based on the following equation: i.e., and finally Noting that L open ≈ L short and, thus, assuming similar absolute errors of the inductance measurement of ΔL open ≈ ΔL short , it can be assumed that the error of determining k value from Eq. (13) amounts to Formula (17) indicates that there is a significant increase in the error for decreasing values of k, i.e., for the most distant positions (x, y). The position x = 35 mm, y = 25 mm was assumed as the measurement limit in which repeatable k values were obtained, despite its main determination by L short (L open was almost constant). For large k values (i.e., small x and y values), the error associated with the positioning of the Rx coil became dominant. This results from the high steepness of M xy in Eq. (7) in this area, thus, the significant changes occurring for the uncertainty of the Δx and Δy displacement. Determination of this error based on Eq. (7) is equivalent to finding a solution to the following equation: It is not necessary to search for the analytical form of Equation (18) because ΔM xy can be determined directly as the gradient value ∇M (x, y). In practical implementation, the uncertainty of determination of the Δx and Δy positions was estimated at ±0.15 mm with the resulting highest value ΔM xy as 0.017 mH at the (5, 0) point. 12) and (13), taking into account the uncertainties in Eqs. (17) and (18). For the coaxial direction, i.e., along the X(5, 0) → (35, 0) axis, a precise mapping of the theoretical course is visible. For the transverse direction, i.e., along the Y (5, 0) → (5, 25) axis, the impact of the coil thickness, which is not taken into account in Equation (6), is visible. The maximum deviation of such determined characteristics amounts to 0.052 at the (5, 15) point. Figure 8 presents two analyzed AFE structures. The diode rectifier uses low-signal Shottky diodes of BAT54 type, characterized by the maximum conduction voltage amounting to V F = 0.32 V at I F = 1 mA and the capacitance of C D = 10 pF at V R = 1 V and f = 1 MHz. The transistor system is based on a configuration taken from , approximated with the use of a complementary pair of Mosfet lowpower transistors of N3008N/PBK type, manufactured by Nexperia. This type was selected for its low switching voltage V GSth = 0.6 V(min) and internal clipping structure . Two additional diodes on the rectifier output reflect solutions that eliminate the reverse leakage. Due to the nonlinear nature of the AFE input, it was necessary to identify the real and imaginary parts of its input impedance Z N as a function of the control voltage u R . During the Z N measurement, the C R capacitor was disconnected from the input, assuming the constancy of its parameters in the analyzed frequency range and working voltages, which simultaneously removed its dominance in the analyzed circuit. It has also been noticed that, in the steady state, with constancy of f O , R L , and C L , it is possible to simplify the analysis by replacing the four-terminal network by a two-terminal network - Figure 9, whose impedance is the only searched value. The nonlinear capacitive nature of two-terminal networks has been confirmed by subsequently implemented measurements of both AFE structures. Measurements in the power function, Figures 10 and 11, were implemented in accordance with the HP 4284A precision bridge, enabling measurements with an excitation up to 20 V and a minimum step of 10 mV. In contrast to the previously used methods , the need to build a dedicated amplifier with low distortions and indirect determination of the input impedance from the S 21 measurement was eliminated. The searched values R N , C N were directly obtained from the indications of the bridge with high accuracy. A similar solution was used in , yet only in a scope up to 2 V, resulting from the limitations of the used instrument. All measurements were controlled by an application based on the LabVIEW environment. Figure 12 presents an electrical diagram consisting of components presented in Section 3. Its components include : EQUIVALENT MODEL CIRCUIT • source of sinusoidal voltage with frequency f O , output voltage U O , and internal resistance R O , representing the control generator; • Tx transmitting coil with substitute parameters L 1 , R S1 , C P 1 , R P 1 ; • mutual inductance M , representing the current value of the coupling between the coils; • Rx receiving coil, with substitute parameters L 2 , R S2 , C P 2 , R P 2 ; • C R capacitor, which creates a resonance circuit with the receiving coil, which is single-point tuned to f O ; • reactance two-terminal network R N , C N , representing the rectifier input. The flows of i 1 and i 2 currents were numerically determined for interesting positions (x, y), by solving a system of nonlinear differential equations in the Mathcad environment. The distorted flows Figure 12. Circuit diagram. obtained in this way were subjected to Fourier transform, which allowed the determination of the amplitudes and phases of the harmonics up to the 13th order. RF Setup The measurements of electromagnetic emission were carried out in the ALSE chamber in accordance with the dedicated measurement setup, which is presented in Figure 13. It consisted of a non-magnetic base, on which a fixed Tx coil was placed at a height of 90 mm at a distance of 1 m from the measured antenna. The coil was controlled from the outside of the chamber by a Keysight 33220A generator, whose sinusoidal output signal was selected to obtain an emission level of approx. 74 dBµV/m, which corresponded to the voltage at the coil terminals 10.2V pp . The value of this excitation was kept constant during all subsequent measurements, while the intensity of the obtained field referred to the maximum limit in the LW, MW band, amounting to 72 dBµV/m for the RE310 emission. An additional margin was assumed as the uncertainty of the whole measuring path. After measuring the chamber's background, the generator's own disturbances were measured once by charging the Rx coil with a value close to |Z N | min , i.e., R L = 1 kΩ. During the measurement, the rectifier circuit was omitted. Due to the introduced circuit detuning, the position of the maximum coupling (thus, the largest load) was experimentally determined by searching for the minimum voltage U o at the generator output, which was monitored with the use of an oscilloscope. It was found that a generator with such a load did not introduce significant harmonic disturbances (< −65 dBc) or deviated from the limit declared by the manufacturer - Figure 14. At the initial stage, the disturbances of both tested circuits were also measured with the use of PK + AV detectors, confirming the convergence of their indications for periodic signals. The subsequent measurements were carried out only with the use of a PK detector with a measurement time of 50 ms. The Rx receiving coil was placed on a handle with the possibility of adjusting the position in the direction of the X and Y axes with a step of 1 mm and rotation every 5 • . The aluminum housing in which the coil load was placed (i.e., C R , rectifier, C L , R L ) and the double-wire shielded cable that connected the receiving coil were grounded to a metal tabletop to minimize common disturbances coming from the distorted waveform at the rectifier output . Figure 15 presents an example of the emission. The results collected in this manner were grouped depending on the type of rectifier and the direction of X and Y displacement. Moreover, the values of selected harmonics, i.e., 2f o , 3f o ...13f o , were separated and placed on a common diagram in order to observe the nature of the changes. In the form of supplementation, the place of the strongest coupling was located for the basic harmonic f o = 125 kHz (i.e., the largest decrease in the basic harmonic amplitude), whose presence was observed during the measurements of Mosfet-based rectifier. Figure 16 presents the levels of disturbances registered for the diode rectifier along the X axis. There is a clearly visible strong dominance of the odd harmonics 3f O , 5f O ..., which fade monotonically along with the increase in distance between the coils, wherein the quicker fading of the higher order harmonics is characteristic. Figure 18 presents changes of disturbances in the transverse direction, i.e., along the Y axis. In the scope of displacements, which are smaller than half of the coil radius, the levels of harmonics remained fairly uniform, with a maximum drop of −2 dBµV/m. Even harmonics 4f O , 6f O ... from the response of the diode rectifier remained within the noise, not having a significant contribution into the analyzed spectrum. However, the relatively constant value of 2f O above the background level is interesting, which suggests its origin directly from the generator; however, this is not observed in Figure 14. Alternatively, its source may be directly the waveform at the rectifier output and its incomplete shielding through the metal housing. Figure 17 demonstrates changes of disturbance levels in the direction of the X axis for the rectifier with Mosfet transistors. For the maximal approximation of the coils, the increase in the value of all harmonics is clearly visible, which indicates the reduction of u R voltage by the internal clipping structures. This is also visible in Figure 15, where the acceptable limit value for the exemplary standard is marked. In the range of x = 30...50 mm, there was a significant increase in even harmonics, despite the coils moving away from each other. This results from the squared characteristics i d = f (u R ) in the area of u R = ±1 V, and it starts to dominate until the coupling fades away. DISCUSSION Within transverse displacements, i.e., Figure 19, similar to the case of diode rectifier, there is a Table 2 shows the summary of measured and calculated emission levels for the selected position of the receiving coil. A good correlation of the initial harmonics can be seen; however, it deteriorates more quickly for even harmonics, for which significantly lower levels were observed. The reason for this is the accuracy of the model from Figure 12, because the mapping of disturbances with dynamics over 50 dB requires a model of a similar quality. The general accuracy is also affected by a significant simplification of the analysis, which does not take into account the position of the coils in relation to the monitoring antenna in an analytical manner . Considering the results summarized in Table 2, the convergence of disturbance mapping can be assumed to be approx. −35 dBc, which is a good result regarding the implemented simplifications. According to the opinion of the author, the main purpose of this analysis, i.e., the determination of the nature of disturbances depending on the current location of the coils, has been achieved. CONCLUSIONS Based on the theory of inductively coupled coils, the currents affecting the levels of disturbances radiated in the LF band were determined analytically in this article. They were determined in a variable range, resulting from the mutual position of the coils, limited only by their radii. The areas affecting a significant increase in emission levels, which are the local maxima of coupling and activation areas of clipping systems, were also identified. Moreover, the nature of even harmonic sources, which are the squared characteristics of Mosfet transistors, were confirmed. Another significant conclusion is the possibility of exceeding the emission limit by weakly coupled circuits, which may be overlooked in the scope of practical solutions. Analytical determination of the level of signal registered by the receiving antenna is an issue that has not been analyzed here. Undoubtedly, it is a significant topic that considerably exceeds the scope of this article. It is planned to model a complete system based on the HFSS model and determine the field distribution based on the Maxwell solver as an extension of this work.

Electro-aerodynamic instability of a thin dielectric liquid sheet sprayed with an air stream. The instability of a thin sheet of dielectric liquid moving in the same direction as an air stream in the presence of a uniform horizontal electric field is studied theoretically. It is found that aerodynamic-enhanced instability occurs if the Weber number is much less than a critical value related to the ratio of the air and liquid stream velocities, the electric field, and the dielectric constant values. The electric field is found to have a stabilizing effect, and there exists a critical Weber number above which instability is suppressed by the surface tension effect. The condition for disintegrating the sheet is obtained in terms of the electric field values, and some limiting cases are recovered.

The NBA is deep into its stretch run, with roughly 15 regular-season games per team on the docket. At the top of the order, the Golden State Warriors dominate headlines in their quest to best the 72-win record set by the 1996 Chicago Bulls. And the San Antonio Spurs are quietly putting together a historic run of their own. Meanwhile, in the East, LeBron’s Cavaliers continue to garner attention (and criticism), while overachieving ball clubs like the Charlotte Hornets and Indiana Pacers jockey for playoff positioning to the delight of their fanbases. The five most disappointing teams in the NBA, however, came into the regular season with playoff or even championship aspirations, but are now struggling to simply remain competitive. These clubs have lost the goodwill of their cities with a litany of ill-timed player personnel moves, fired coaches, and toxic locker room chemistry. 5. Milwaukee Bucks Last year, at this time, the Milwaukee Bucks were about to sneak into the postseason with an eighth seed and go to war against the Chicago Bulls through six hard-fought playoff games in the first round. Jason Kidd was a coach on the rise, running the offense through the 6-foot-11 Giannis Antetokounmpo and calling out a series of frenetic presses and traps to harass the opposition into costly turnovers. This offseason, the Bucks won a $50 million bidding war against the New York Knicks for the services of Greg Monroe, kept the sharpshooting Khris Middleton in-house, and looked poised to finally roll out a healthy Jabari Parker on the wing. On paper, these young Bucks were poised to contend for a spot in the semifinals, if not the Eastern Conference crown. In reality, however, Milwaukee was a hodgepodge collection of mismatched parts and atrocious shooting. The 2016 Bucks stumbled to a 28-38 mark and are all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. At times, Milwaukee appears completely lost offensively, with defenses packing the paint and openly daring anybody besides Middleton to shoot. The Bucks did manage to hand the then-24-0 Golden State Warriors their first loss of the season. Based on that game, it looks as if the future for basketball success in Milwaukee will come when they clamp down on defense and run the floor. At least, that’s how they blew the Warriors out of the building. 4. Houston Rockets As recently as last year, the NBA MVP award was down to the wire in a four-horse race of LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, and James Harden. In a photo finish, Curry won the official MVP trophy, while The Beard somehow emerged as the player’s choice for the award. However, anyone arguing that James Harden in the best player in the game today has likely not watched much, if any, of the 2016 NBA season. Harden is now a relative afterthought as he has led an underachieving Houston squad to nowhere. After going 4-7 earlier this year, the Rockets fired Kevin McHale only 11 games into the season — a stretch that saw multiple lapses on defense, Harden jacking up ill-advised shots, and free agent pickup Ty Lawson seemingly lost out on the floor. Without McHale, the Houston Rockets have continued their maddeningly inconsistent ways deep into the regular season. After the coaching change, Ty Lawson was promptly relegated to the end of the bench before the Rockets bought out his contract. The Rockets are now down to playing .500 ball; at serious risk of missing the playoffs altogether, after going toe-to-toe with the Warriors last season in the Western Conference Finals. 3. New Orleans Pelicans In 2014, Kentucky head coach John Calipari declared that his former pupil, Anthony Davis, would emerge as the best player in the game, and at last season’s end, The Brow appeared to make good upon this promise — blitzing the Warriors for 32 points, 11 rebounds, and three blocks per game through the opening round of the playoffs. At that point, it felt as if AD had arrived to dominate the post, knock down mid-range jump shots, set the tone defensively, and carry his franchise. In 2016, however, Davis and the Pelicans have sharply regressed. Rather than banging inside, Davis now regularly floats around the perimeter within Alvin Gentry’s newly installed motion offense. The Brow is jacking up two three-point attempts per game, which opposing defenses will happily give up. AD’s field goal percentage has fallen beneath 50% for the first time in his career, and he’s forced to carry the load for the oft-injured Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon. The New Orleans Pelicans now head into the final leg of the regular season with a 24-41 record and one of the worst defenses in the league, despite having Davis to anchor the middle. The Pelicans lack a real pass-first, playmaker out on the floor to get others involved without pounding the ball out of isolation sets late in the shot clock. This season, Davis let his talents and star power go to waste in a small market for a team that appears to be going nowhere. 2. Phoenix Suns The Phoenix Suns may rival the Sacramento Kings as the most dysfunctional franchise in the NBA. The biggest difference may be in perception; for Sacramento, the drama is the rule, rather than the exception, while Phoenix was assumed to be a team on the rise out of the rugged Western Conference. In fact, Jeff Hornacek was the runner-up to Gregg Popovich for NBA Coach of the Year as recently as 2014. Phoenix fired Hornacek last February, after the team had lost 19 out of 21 games to go 14-35 at that point in the season. The Suns were dismissed as the laughing stock of the NBA after suffering through a devastating, season-ending injury to Eric Bledsoe that left a weak product out on the floor. Still, Hornacek had clearly lost this team, as evidenced by his game-time shouting match with Markieff Morris, which finally concluded with a towel being thrown into the head coach’s face. 9 By that point, a toxic and pouty Morris had already mailed in the season, after his twin, Marcus, had been dealt to Detroit. The pair described the move as a “slap in the face,” apparently after accepting less money to remain together in the Valley of the Sun. The Phoenix front office finally put Markieff out of his misery last month, shipping the young forward off to Washington for pennies on the dollar. The Suns are now an abysmal 17-49 and looking forward to the draft lottery. 1. Chicago Bulls In a reversal of fortunes from the Jordan Dynasty, it was the Chicago Bulls emerged as perennial championship contenders, only to be foiled by James time and time again. Last year finally appeared to be The Year. Jimmy Butler was becoming one of the better two-way players in the game, and Pau Gasol and Derrick Rose both showed flashes of the players they used to be. This stacked roster also came with the luxury of bringing three double-digit scorers off the bench, in Nikola Mirotic, Aaron Brooks, and Taj Gibson. Last year, the Bulls were actually up against Cleveland, 2-1, before James nailed a dagger corner jumper to win Game Four as time expired to tie the series up, in front of a shocked United Center crowd. From there, King James and his Cavs went on to humiliate the Bulls 94-73, in a Game 6 elimination game. Tom Thibodeau promptly emerged as a convenient scapegoat for the Bulls’ failure, as critics ripped this former Coach of the Year for his hard-nosed style, which ran his players into the ground, at the expense of postseason execution. Prior to this season, the Bulls parted ways with Thibodeau and replaced him with Fred Hoiberg. With the new coach at the controls, the Bulls were supposed to flourish offensively and finally own the East. Chicago, however, has lost any semblance of identity, with Hoiberg repeatedly tinkering with rotations, and Jimmy Butler struggling with the demands of stardom. The Chicago Bulls are now 32-32 and one game out of the playoffs. The Bulls, at best, may hope for an eighth-seeded berth, and then LeBron will likely sweep them out of the postseason again. Statistics courtesy of ESPN.com and Basketball-Reference.com. More from Sports Cheat Sheet:

. As many as 616 patients with malignant tumours of the alimentary canal were studied by CT tomography using different contrast mediums and methodical approaches toward identifying the site of the tumour. Based on the comparison of the results obtained from pathomorphologic findings and those from the surgical intervention, CT semiotics has been developed of tumours, criteria established to determine the depth of the tumour invasion and extra-wall spread of the tumour CT potentialities were verified in the diagnosis of metastatic involvement of regional lymph nodes and remote organs as was the role of the method in selection of a specific therapeutic alternative.

Uterus didelphys with blind hemivagina and ipsilateral renal agenesis complicated by pyocolpos and presenting as acute abdomen 11 years after menarche: presentation of a rare case with review of the literature. BACKGROUND Congenital anomaly of the Müllerian duct system can result in various urogenital anomalies including uterus didelphys with blind hemivagina and ipsilateral renal agenesis. The diagnosis of this condition is usually made after menarche, but its rarity and variable clinical features may contribute to a diagnostic delay for years after menarche. CASE A 24-year-old woman presented to the emergency room of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology complaining of severe worsening lower abdominal pain, vomiting and pus-like vaginal discharge. Physical examination revealed acute abdomen with diffuse lower abdominal tenderness, rebound and muscular resistance. Cervical and vaginal observation was impossible because of the patient's discomfort. Bimanual gynecological examination showed high tenderness cervical motion. Transabdominal ultrasound scan was performed and the radiologist interpreted the ultrasonographic findings as existence of a pelvic mass with mixed echogenicity. The preoperative diagnosis was ruptured tubo-ovarian abscess and emergency laparotomy was performed. Free pus in the pelvis was found. Also, a double uterus with an elongated and inflammatory right fallopian tube with pus passing out of its fimbrial end was observed. Vaginal examination under general anesthesia revealed an obstructed right hemivagina with vaginal pus-like discharge from a small fistula hole on the septate vagina. The final diagnosis was uterus didelphys with unilateral imperforate right hemivagina and pyocolpos. Transvaginal resection of the vaginal septum was performed and a large amount of pus and blood was spilled out. Postoperatively, intravenous pyelography demonstrated agenesis of the right kidney. CONCLUSION We demonstrated the difficulty in making a correct diagnosis of this rare congenital anomaly of the female genital tract, especially after many years since menarche. This condition should be considered to prevent misdiagnosis or suboptimal treatment and decrease morbidity and unnecessary surgical procedures.

3D-Printed Impedance Micropump for Continuous Perfusion of the Sample and Nutrient Medium Integrated with a Liver-On-Chip Prototype In recent decades, organ-on-chip devices have gained substantial interest as an alternative for studying the pathophysiological processes relevant to drug screening. Micropumps are being utilized to simulate the in vivo physiological fluid flow more realistically in these organ-on-chip devices. Micropumps play a crucial role in pumping, perfusion, and circulation of fluids in various microdevices such as on-chip PCR, DNA microarrays, miniature bioreactor cell separation, and lab-on-chip biosensing platforms. With the rapid growth in technology, efficient pumping for proper circulation of media and nutrients has become imperative. In this study, we have described the design and development of an open-source impedance micropump for continuous perfusion of nutrient medium in a liver-on-chip prototype. This micropump is controlled via an integrated microcontroller board, with an observed flow rate ranging from 0.2 to 2 mL/min. Google Sketchup 2020 and DLP 3D printing were used to fabricate small precise parts of the impedance micropump. The flow rate was measured to characterize the actuating performance of the micropump. The poly-dimethyl siloxane-based liver-on-chip prototype has been fabricated using a soft photolithography procedure. Further, a study of continuous perfusion of culture medium through the liver-on-chip containing the Hepg2 cell line was successfully performed by integrating it with the impedance micropump. Hoechst staining and Alamar Blue observed cell viability to confirm the healthy cell growth inside the liver-on-chip microfluidic chip. The compactness of the overall setup allows it to fit in a Petri plate, eliminating chances of contamination while cell handling. ■ INTRODUCTION The organ-on-a-chip (OOC) device requires a continuous flow of media/nutrients inside the microchannels to maintain dynamic cell culturing conditions. To achieve a precise flow, micropumps have been used for the controlled pumping of fluids in the microfluidic channels. Several types of micropumps have been reported, developed, and applied in research since the late 90s. One of the major advantages of using a micropump is its miniature design and potability as compared to that of the bulky peristaltic or syringe pump. Most conventional micropumps consist of valves, diaphragms, pneumatic valves, or piezoelectric elements as their actuation generating components. This directly affects the overall cost and power consumption of the micropump. Table 1 shows the reported micropumps with different actuation principles and operating mechanisms. Most of the micropumps have valves that ensure the unidirectional flow of fluids and need to be synchronized with the actuation mechanism to initiate a flow. Additionally, these valve structures need to be precisely fabricated, which mostly requires microfabrication facilities that directly affect the overall cost of the device. Some micropumps, such as thermo-pneumatic ones, operate on 10− 15 V, with high current consumption to run microheaters for their operation. 1 On the other hand, a piezoelectric-based micropump requires precisely cut piezoelectric materials and DC to AC conversion for its actuation. 2 A peristaltic micropump is a valveless micropump that requires similar electrical or mechanical components to the abovementioned micropumps and sometimes requires spring-loaded rollers for generating the peristaltic wave, which in turn requires a geared DC motor or a heavy-duty stepper motor. 3 The micro-impedance class of micropumps projected in this study comes under the valveless pumps category and may be used in the domain of micro-and macro-fluidic systems. 4 Impedance pumps are a kind of valveless pump and are generally of sizeable dimensions. While operating on an unleveled surface, the effect of gravity becomes more significant, and hence, the micropump cannot maintain a stable flow rate. The influence of gravity makes it difficult for the pump to generate enough suction to pump a specific fluid volume against gravity. The dimensions of the proposed impedance micropump are kept in a range (1−20 mm) to overcome these issues, thus providing accurate and controlled pumping. This micropump may perform the planned crucial functions of nutrient supply and waste removal in microfluidic devices concerned with cell culturing and tissue engineering. Furthermore, the impedance pump can easily be manufactured using injection molding or 3D printing techniques. Its simple design and lack of complicated components make it ideal for mass manufacturing. The impedance micropump does not require any complex components such as blades, microvalves, piezo elements, or high electric fields, making it safe for studies involving perfusion and handling of sensitive biomolecules and cell-based studies. Accordingly, it is typically straightforward to integrate an optical evanescent wave absorbance or a localized surface plasmon resonance-oriented microfluidic biosensor module to the proposed micropump in a single microfluidic biosensor design. 5−9 Adjusting simple parameters such as the excitation frequency or tapping location can change the flow's direction and provide a versatile flow output. Such characteristics make the impedance micropump well-suited to various applications ranging from point-of-care devices, drug toxicity testing, organ-on-a-chip, and drug delivery with precisely controlled flow rates. During the past few years, there has been an evolution in 3D printing technologies, making them more reliable and precise over time. Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers serve wide applications, which use near UV lasers and photocurable resins for 3D printing objects and can provide higher printing resolutions of 30−50 μm. One such category of 3D printer uses a UV LCD screen to 3D print objects, known as digital light processing (DLP) 3D printers. The DLP printer is used to 3D print impedance micropump parts 3D designed using CAD software, provides precise structural details without fail, and can print very intricate designs and structures with a resolution of around (1 μm). 10 The impedance micropump was 3D printed with triplicate copies with a precise resolution of around ±1 μm. After assembling the triplicate copies of the impedance micropumps, there were no significant variations observed in the structural as well as operational attributes. It resulted in an adequate reproducible device construction outcome, as well as the repeatable pumping characteristics of the micropump. OOC is a 3D in vitro physiological microfluidic system aiming to recreate the in vivo conditions found inside the organ/tissue on a microfluidic chip. 11 Similarly, a liver-on-a-chip is a high-throughput system capable of imitating conditions of hepatocytes and the dynamic physicochemical hepatic environment. These devices have the potential to accelerate the existing drug development pipeline by providing an alternative to the animal models. 12 Liver-on-a-chip devices have shown promising results in mimicking in vivo conditions by recreating the sinusoidal structure of the liver while maintaining high cell viability and cellular phenotypes and emulating native liver functions. 13 Here, we have integrated the impedance micropump to a liveron-chip device designed to study drug toxicity in liver cells. The purpose of the micropump is to maintain the optimal media flow, which reaches the cells through perfusion. The intended OOC microfluidics has been an essential explored domain for the past few years and has become a hot topic of current research. The field promises to eradicate animal models for drug testing and drug development, which also does not predict good results in humans. For simulating the microenvironment (existing inside the human body), these OOC microfluidic chips contain seeded human cells, which provide mostly accurate results compared to the animal models. 14,15 One research group performed drug toxicity testing over the 3D cell culture platform and utilized the conventional peristaltic pump for perfusing culture media through the platform. They fabricated the microfluidic device using polymethyl methacrylate and poly-dimethyl siloxane (PDMS) after seeding the HT29 cell line and cultured 3D spheroids within the microfluidic channels for drug toxicity testing. 16 In another approach, a research group designed and tested a novel microfluidic device for oxygenating blood samples using a custom-made setup, where they used a syringe pump as a pumping device to pump the swine venous blood inside the designed microfluidic device. 17 Considering the crucial role of pumps in the microfluidic domain, we identified a need to develop a cost-effective alternative that consumes low power, are small, and have low operational cost. The proposed low-cost, miniature impedance micropump addresses these crucial needs in this regard. It can be effectively planned as a miniature heart connected to the cell-seeded microfluidic chip for perfusion and circulation of the culture media. ■ THEORETICAL PRINCIPLE The actuation in the impedance micropump occurs by linear beating of the minuscule tapper head and is attained by reciprocating machinery. This mechanism is known as the also Scotch and Yoke mechanism. For the production of diminutive reciprocating machinery, the minute motor shaft should possess eccentricity according to the preferred linear displacement. For the impedance micropump mentioned in this study, Here, x is the length of the elastic tube, t is the time, A is the flexible tube cross-sectional area, u is the mean flow velocity at cross-section A, P is the transmural pressure, and ρ is the density. F is the quasi-viscous source in the momentum equation that determines the friction between the fluid and the elastic tube wall. The physical model of the impedance pump developed in the present study utilizes a two-dimensional model 19 with the Navier−Stokes equations, which are written Figure 1. 3D designed CAD view of the motor and tapper unit assembly inside the proposed micropump with the Scotch and Yoke mechanism also known as the reciprocating mechanism that translates angular rotation (miniature DC motor) to linear movement (tapper head). In the equations above, v is the flow velocity of the sample fluid in the x−y plane and p is the pressure. ■ DESIGN AND FABRICATION 3D Design, Fabrication, and Assembly of the Impedance Micropump. While designing the impedance micropump, we prioritized simple assembly and easy handling. Figure 1 describes the 3D CAD view of the motor and tapper unit assembly present inside the micropump. Furthermore, the assembled micropump consisted of three components: ( Figure 2a) the pump base, (Figure 2b) the tapping mechanism, and ( Figure 2c) the tubing holder, which makes it modular. Parts such as the miniature DC motor and tapper head are precisely measured and then incorporated in the micropump design. The impedance micropump parts was designed on Google SketchUp version 2020, as shown in Figure 2. The created design was then imported in the stereolithography (.stl) format, an acceptable format for 3D printing. The final design after 3D printing resulted in a highly compact device of (22 mm × 10 mm × 11.7 mm) volume, including all the electromechanical components, excluding the microcontroller unit. The impedance pump is composed of an elastic and compressible tube unit made up of soft elastic material (i.e., PDMS) tubings, which are attached to both ends to a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tubing using resin-based glue. Although flexible, PTFE tubings are more rigid than PDMS, which is a desired characteristic of an impedance pump, as depicted by Figures 3 and 4a,b, after which the tubing assembly may then be fitted within the 3D printed impedance micropump body. The main impedance pump comprises compressible elastic tubings (PDMS) and comparable rigid tubings (PTFE), as shown in Figure 4a. PTFE tubings were already purchased, and the compressible PDMS tubings were fabricated in the laboratory itself using a stainless-steel smooth wire with a cross-sectional diameter of 0.5 mm. PDMS with the standard 10:1 polymer to the curing agent ratio is prepared and left for at least 1 h at room temperature to initiate minor cross-linking. After 1 h, the stainless-steel wire is cut into 5 cm long pieces, dipped into the PDMS elastomer, and hung vertically in a hot air oven without turning it on for 20 min to remove the excess elastomer. 20 min later, the oven temperature is set to 100°a nd left for half an hour to cross-link the PDMS elastomer completely. Once the elastomer is cross-linked, the elastomer coating can be slipped off easily using chloroform, as shown in Figure 4a. The next step is to cut PDMS tubings in 1 cm of length and PTFE tubing in two pieces of 10 cm length each. The process aided us to fabricate PDMS elastic tubing of 0.5 mm internal diameter and 0.9 mm external diameter with only an average of ±5% variation in the outer/inner diameters of the aforesaid tubing. Additionally, the trivial variations in tubing diameters caused an insignificant alteration in the characteristic functioning of the impedance micropump. The PDMS tubing is attached end-to-end to the PTFE tubing via resin-based glue, as shown in Figure 4b, and the impedance micropump is ready for use. Before designing the impedance micropump, excluding the external components such as a miniature DC motor and a tapper head, the precise measurements of all the parts were taken using a digital vernier caliper. 3D designing platform Google SketchUp version 2020 was used to design 3D parts of the micropump. Impedance micropump parts are designed into three parts. Once finished with the designing, the 3D (.stl) file needs to be exported and sliced using slicing software to obtain the 3D printable G.code file. A 3D DLP printer (model: Anycubic Photon Zero) was used to 3D print the designed parts using epoxy-based UV photocurable resin (AcryloCure) Figure 5d. All the parts were 3D printed in triplicate, and the copies were 3D printed all at once. Triplicate copies were 3D printed to assess the reproducibility and repeatability of the impedance micropump design. The DLP 3D printer has a UV LCD panel that can project the individual slice of the 3D created object to 3D print the desired design. UV photocurable resin is loaded into the resin vat. The 3D printer has an optically clear base to facilitate the light projections through the resin to the z-axis build plate. The UV projection instantly cures the projected region on the build plate immersed in the resin vat and increases with the set z-axis thickness, resulting in the precisely printed 3D object. The designed 3D impedance micropump is driven by linear tapping action of the mini tapper head, achieved by a reciprocating mechanism, also known as the Scotch and Yoke mechanism. For making a miniature reciprocating mechanism, the small motor shaft needs to have some eccentricity according to the desired linear displacement required. For this impedance micropump, a linear displacement of 0.5 mm is required, for which the shaft of the miniature motor is introduced with a minor bend and made it eccentric. An 8 mm × 3 mm tapper head is fabricated using a thin 0.5 mm stainless-steel sheet with a slit of 1 mm × 0.5 mm at the center for inserting the eccentric shaft of the miniature motor to actuate it linearly. After all the designed parts have been 3D printed, slight modifications of the miniature DC motor shaft are performed, and the main impedance micropump with proper tubings is ready. The next step is to assemble all the components into a single unit, as depicted by Figure 5a−c. The prepared micropump tubing is passed through the intrinsic beveled holes provided at both sides in the base part of the design to hold the tubings in the position. The tapping mechanism sits on the top of the base so that the tapper head aligns with the elastic compressible section and is slightly asymmetric from the center point of the flexible tube length. It was observed that the optimal tapping locating on the elastic section is found to be in the second half from the center. Before this, when tapped in the first and second halves, the pump is not able to reach the maximum pressure head. The rigid tube end near the tapper head becomes the outlet of the pump. A microcontroller board Arduino Mega 2560 is initially used to drive and test the structure of the prototype consists of an upper channel and a lower channel separated by a porous membrane in between. This porous membrane is the most crucial part and acts as a conduit between the cells in the upper channel and the nutrient media flowing in the bottom channel. The whole liveron-chip device is fabricated using a PDMS elastomer, which is chemically inert, non-toxic, and bio-compatible. The whole chip is a double layered structure which is aligned and bonded by placing a porous membrane composed of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) in between the two chambers and bonding the whole device using corona discharge treatment creating two chambers, of which one is the cell chamber and the other one is the media flow chamber. The device is finally bonded over a glass substrate to provide mechanical strength and ease of handling to the device. Ten copies of the liver-on-chip device were fabricated initially after considering the experimental losses during the testes and to check the reproducibility and repeatability of the whole experimental setup including the liver-on-chip device efficiency. Two devices were sacrificed for the general durability tests, and the remaining eight devices were further used for the experimentation. Out of the remaining eight copies, three liver-onchip devices were initially used for the testing with triplicate copies of the 3D printed impedance micropump. ■ EXPERIMENTAL SETUP The experimental setup consisted of the liver-on-chip integrated with the impedance micropump as shown in Figure 6. We have used a prototype of PDMS-based liver-on-chip microfluidic device to culture the HepG2 cells and test/ validate the functionality of the proposed 3D impedance micropump. The procedure for fabricating the liver-on-chip prototype was inspired by the method described by ref 20. The channels are first designed using AutoCAD 2020. The SU-8 master was fabricated through UV exposure. Two SU-8 masters with the same design but different depths were fabricated as the heights of the upper channel was greater than that of the lower channels. The basic structure of the prototype consists of an upper channel layer and a lower channel layer separated by a porous PVDF membrane in between with high porosity (total porosity ≥70%, mean pore size 0.2−0.45 μm). This porous membrane is the most crucial part and acts as a conduit between the cells in the upper channel and the nutrient media flowing in the bottom channel. Both these layers were casted using PDMS molds. The liver-on-chip prototype is designed in such a way that the cell chamber is separated via a porous membrane. The setup of the impedance micropump is connected to the lower media flow channel. Consequently, cells sit on the top of the membrane, and the nutrient media flowing in the bottom channel perfuses through the pores while maintaining their viability. The continuous flow is ensured by the impedance micropump integrated with the chip. Cell Seeding and Culturing inside the Microchannels. The HepG2 cells were cultured following the standard protocol given by the manufacturer with all sterility measures to avoid contamination. The HepG2 cell line was procured from the National Cell Repository (NCSS, Pune, India). The HepG2 cells were cultured in a horizontal culture flask for 24 h in Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum and 1% antibiotic solution at 37°C with 5% CO 2 . After 24 h, we observed 80− 85% confluent cells. All microchannels were 0.1 mm tall and 0.3 mm wide. Downstream of the through holes, the channels were 15 mm long, yielding a constant 4.5 mm 2 cell culture seeding area making up entire device volume of ∼1 μL. A confluence of 70−80% is required before seeding cells inside the device. The cell seeding density of (3 × 10 4 cells/mm 2 ) was calculated according to the volume of the channels and the days of continuous incubation of cells in the device. The counting of cells before seeding was performed using a hemocytometer. The channels in the device were sterilized by flowing isopropyl alcohol (IPA) through the microchannels for 5 min, followed by washing with deionized (DI) water to remove the alcohol. Type I collagen solution in acetic acid and sterile water was passed through the channels for 1 h to promote cell adhesion inside the channel. After this step, the microchannels were flushed with Hank's balanced salt solution (HBSS, Sigma-Aldrich). Further, the device was placed under UV light for 5− 10 min. The cells were seeded as per the total volume of the microchannel. The cells were allowed to attach to the collagencoated microchannels in an incubator at 37°C and 5% CO 2 . The device with the seeded cells is placed inside the incubator for 24 h. The cells are visualized under the microscope for cell confluency and adhesion. After 24 h, the cells were stained with a blue fluorescent nuclear dye Hoechst 33258 (Sigma-Aldrich, 0.25 μ g/mL), incubated for a minimum of 1 h at 37°C , and visualized under a Nikon upright fluorescence microscope with water immersion objectives (model Evolution VF, Media Cybernetics, USA), and images were taken at 40× magnification. It was clearly visible that the cells were in good health and actively dividing. Introduction of Flow Using an Impedance Pump. Further, the liver-on-chip was coupled in series with the impedance micropump in the closed-loop configuration for continuous perfusion study. As shown in Figure 6 earlier, the impedance micropump is coupled in series with the liver-onchip microfluidic chip using extended PTFE tubings. External integration of the impedance micropump serves a series of purposes, providing ease of accessibility to decouple the liveron-chip device from the setup for cell monitoring and imaging purpose and also eliminating any mechanical vibrations produced by the miniature motor, which may hamper the cell stability or may pollute the observations. The whole setup is then placed inside the CO 2 incubator by properly covering it up in a sterile covering and then wiping the entire setup using 70% ethanol solution to avoid contamination. After every 10− 15 h, fresh medium was introduced within the closed loop. ■ RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Flow Control. Flow control in the impedance micropump was achieved by varying the tapping frequency, as shown in Figure 1. Tapping frequency depends upon the RPM of the miniature motor, which is controlled electronically using a microcontroller interface for varying the tapping frequency, precisely providing the required voltage levels through modulation. The higher the voltage, the greater the RPM, and the higher the tapping frequency. Tapping frequency was measured and calculated using a small setup along with a microcontroller unit. As shown in Figure 7a, the upper part of the metal tapper unit is connected in the system such that it acts like a switch that closes and opens periodically, providing a series of pulsed outputs received at the analog input of the microcontroller programed to measure the delay in the incoming pulses, which is used to calculate the tapping frequency, while allowing the user to input voltage values to control the tapping frequency. Tapping frequency was measured with and without coupling with the impedance micropump, which affects the tapping frequency as shown in Figure 7b. The flow rate was measured by collecting the fluid sample in marked PCR tubes and the time taken to fill the volume at different tapping frequencies. Upon studying the flow control in the impedance, the micropump flow initiates at around 10 Hz and reaches the maximum flow rate at around 35 Hz. At 40 Hz, the flow rate decreases and continues to decrease till 45 Hz. Upon reaching 50 Hz, the net flow rate becomes zero. The flow rate measurement was performed in triplicate. The readings were averaged, and the standard deviation was calculated. When increased further to around 55 Hz, a flow reversal in the opposite direction is observed with a negative flow rate, as depicted by Figure 8. The estimation of the flow properties was performed using two sample liquids: DI water and DMEM culture medium. The variation in the flow rates of both the sample liquids were observed because both the sample liquids exhibit different dynamic viscosities, which affects their flow properties. Estimation of Pressure Generated during Operation. Pressure generated by the impedance micropump and pressure drop inside the liver-on-chip device are essential for the culture medium to pass through the microporous membrane over which the cells adhere. A pressure drop of a certain magnitude is required to push the culture medium through the micropores to reach out to the cell chamber. A pressure transducer is connected in between the impedance micropump and the liver-on-chip device for estimating the pressure drop across the liver-on-chip device. Pressure readings are taken at series of tapping frequencies, as shown in Figure 9. Pressure drop generated at variable frequencies were found to be sufficient enough to push the culture medium through the microchannels and through the porous membrane as well. While estimating pressure in the microfluidics domain dealing with laminar flow with alow Reynolds number, the relationship between the flow rate and pressure can be estimated from Hagen−Poiseuille's law: ΔP = QR H where ΔP is the change in pressure in the microfluidic channel at a certain distance, Q is the volumetric flow rate of the fluid inside the channel, and R H is the hydraulic resistance presented by the microfluidic channel geometry. In devices being fabricated via photolithography are generally rectangular and with a depth generally less than the width of the microfluidic channel, for which R H can be estimated by R H = 12ηL/wh 3 , where η is the fluid viscosity, L is the channel length, w is the channel width, and h is the channel height. All the calculations were performed on the media flow chamber coupled with the impedance micropump with the following dimensions: L = 20 mm is the channel length, w = 1.3 mm is the channel width, and h = 0.15 mm is the channel height. The analogy of the system can be related with the Ohms law: ΔV = IR used for analyzing electronic circuitry. 21 A comparative study is performed by theoretically calculating the pressure values generated inside the liver-onchip device, along with the pressure readings obtained using the pressure transducer. The pressure transducer is connected in between the impedance micropump and the liver-on-chip device while the proposed impedance micropump operates. Experiments were performed in triplicates, and the standard deviation was calculated for each case, as depicted by Figure 9. The study in Figure 9a,b shows the pressure variation inside the liver-on-chip device with respect to the tapping frequency of the tapping head for DI water and the DMEM culture medium, respectively. The study in Figure 9b,c reveals the linear relationship between the pressure generated and the flow rate for each case. Impedance Micropump Integration with a Microfluidic Chip. The impedance micropump can be used to perform experiments where continuous perfusion and circulation studies are required. The impedance pump can operate in both open-loop and closed-loop configurations. Here, the pump has been used for perfusion studies performed on a microfluidic chip with the HepG2 human liver cancer cell line. The prepared culture medium is perfused and continuously circulated through the microfluidic chip containing cells. The study was performed and was monitored for 24 h at varying flow rates of 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 mL/min each. The experimental results showed a consistent standard deviation, as depicted in the graph. At the flow rate of 2 mL/min, we observed a large standard deviation. This indicates that 2 mL/min is the maximum limit of the impedance pump. This behavior is in accordance with the standard characteristic of an impedance pump. The impedance micropump is coupled with the lower microchannel in a closed-loop configuration. The medium is circulated and replaced after regular intervals. The whole setup of the closed-loop circulation consisting of the impedance micropump and the microfluidic chip is depicted in Figure 10a,b. Also, the closed-loop circuit flow eliminates any possible chances of cross-contamination. As PDMS is gas permeable, the chances of medium evaporation and drying of cells are quite high. 22 This can be overcome by continuous medium circulation through the liver-on-chip microfluidic chip while maintaining an adequate medium and replenishing it with nutrients mimicking the natural blood flow conditions. A healthy cell population was observed inside the liver-on-chip microfluidic device. The impedance micropump provides a micro-pulsatile flow at a low tapping frequency of around 15− 25 Hz. The optimal flow rate range is found to be 0.5−1.5 mL/ min, in which cells inside the liver-on-chip microfluidic chip do not experience any shear stress during membrane deformation due to medium pressure developed inside the lower medium flow chamber with a wall shear stress of ∼38.9 dyn/cm 2 . On increasing the flow rate above 1.5 mL/min, the porous membrane starts to deform and the cells inside start experiencing a compressive force, resulting in permanent damage to the liver-on-chip device. After every 12 h, new medium was perfused while the impedance micropump is in the operational mode. Fresh medium was infused using a 1 mL syringe, pushing the used medium out of the circuit. Multiple liver-on-chip devices such as liver-on-chip, gut-on-chip, lungon-chip, kidney-on-chip, and so forth, 23−25 could be effectively integrated with the impedance micropump, which could be potentially used for high throughput screening and drug toxicity testing. While working for a microdomain flow application, the objective is to attain the desired flow rate and requirement of high pressure. The effect of gravity on flow almost nullifies as flow in the microfluidics domain remains laminar. The Reynolds number (Re) hardly exceeds 30, that is, R < 30. When the flow rate is the only aspect, impedance micropumping can be easily deployed as a simple, effective, miniature, and cost-effective solution. Cell Viability Assay. Hoechst is a nuclear-specific blue fluorescent dye used to stain live or fixed cells. It is a non-toxic stable stain for staining live cells. After subjecting the device to different flow rates, we stained the cells with a Hoechst 33342 stain to visualize how many cells survived inside the channel. This helped in estimating the optimal flow rate to keep the cells in a viable and adherent stage. In our experiment, the Hoechst 33342 dye was diluted to 10 μg/mL and added to the culture medium in the channel containing cells. The cells were incubated at cells at 37°C for 1 h and then imaged under 40× magnification under a fluorescence microscope. Figure 11 shows the microscopic images of the cells inside the channels after being subjected to different flow rates. The maximum viability was observed at a flow rate of 1 mL/min, whereas cells were stable at lower flow rates. An AlamarBlue cell viability assay kit was purchased from Thermo Fisher Scientific, and a test was performed to confirm the viability of the HepG2 cells inside the liver-on-chip. The perfusion experiment was performed in triplicate at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The AlamarBlue cell viability assay was performed. The assay showed maximum viability with respect to the control, as depicted by Figure 12. The viability of the cells inside the liver-on-chip depends upon the culture medium being fed to the cells after effectively passing through the membrane on which they are attached. ■ CONCLUSIONS This work describes the design and development of an elegant simple valveless impedance micropump and a liver-on-chip prototype. It has been developed as an alternative to the conventional pumps and micropumps for OOC microfluidic chip-based applications. The experimental results at a specific flow rate show normal growth of HepG2 cells inside the OOC microfluidic chip while being connected to the impedance micropump, and no cellular detachment was observed inside the microfluidic chip while performing perfusion and circulation of culture media. Due to its light weight and small design, it can be easily placed along with the OOC microfluidic chip inside the incubator. Its modular design makes it is easy to assemble and repairable/replaceable in case of any issue with any of its constitutive components. Quite a few microfluidic biosensors modules may be directly interfaced with concurrent analyte samples via the proposed single impedance micropump for effective biosensing in an enclosed fluidic ambiance of microdevice and micropump. Owing to the easy manufacture procedure and its simple, cost-effective, minuscule, and closed modular blueprint, the projected micropump may be an efficient option as a peripheral pumping unit, for any lab-on-chip or in vitro BioMEMS application. 26 Figure 12. AlamarBlue cell viability assay at a flow rate pf 1 mL/min with respect to the control. After seeding the HepG2 cells inside the cell chamber of the liver-on-chip, the perfusion study was performed for 24 h, and the mean value of the cell viability data was calculated with respect to the control.

Silicone-specific blood lymphocyte response in women with silicone breast implants. A blinded cross-sectional study was carried out with 99 women, 44 of whom had silicone breast implants. Group I consisted of 55 healthy volunteer women without breast implants; group II comprised 13 volunteer women with breast implants or explants who felt healthy; group III comprised 21 volunteer women with breast implants who had chronic fatigue, musculoskeletal symptoms, and skin disorders; and group IV comprised 10 women who had their prostheses explanted but still presented with clinical symptoms similar to those of the women in group III. Proliferative responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from all 99 women were measured by thymidine uptake after exposure to SiO2 silicon, or silicone gel. The levels of proliferative responses were expressed as stimulation indices, which were obtained by dividing the counts per minute of stimulated cells by the counts per minute of unstimulated cells. Abnormal responses to SiO2, silicon, or silicone gel were defined as a stimulation index of > 2.8, > 2.1, or > 2.4, respectively. Abnormal responses were observed in 0% of group I, 15% of group II, 29% of group III, and 30% of group IV (P < 0.0005 for group I versus groups II and IV). Thirty-one percent of symptomatic women with silicone gel breast implants had elevated serum silicon levels ( > 0.18 mg/liter); however, there was no significant correlation between abnormal cellular responses and silicon levels in blood serum, type of implant, time since first implantation, prosthesis explantation, number of implants, or report of implant leakage or rupture.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Physicists aren't afraid of thinking big, but what happens when you think too big? This philosophical question overlaps with real physics when hypothesizing what lies beyond the boundary of our observable universe. The problem with trying to apply science to something that may or may not exist beyond our physical realm is that it gets a little foggy as to how we could scientifically test it. A leading hypothesis to come from cosmic inflation theory and advanced theoretical studies — centering around the superstring hypothesis — is that of the multiverse, an idea that scientists have had a hard time in testing. In its most basic sense, the multiverse is a collection of universes popping in and out of existence, bustling around in a foamy mess, embedded in a vacuum of non-zero energy. Through quantum fluctuations, universes are born while others die — each universe taking on different forms and different kinds of physics. But, if the multiverse hypothesis has any shred of reality behind it, how can scientists prove (or at least gather some observational evidence) that we exist inside one of an infinite ocean of universes? This question is a tough one for scientists as many critics will argue that the multiverse hypothesis is nothing more than metaphysics, or a philosophical discussion. We are forever cocooned inside our universal ‘bubble' and can therefore never experience what is going on ‘outside' — if, indeed, there is an outside — so what's the point in thinking about it? But in a thought-provoking news release from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada, theoretical physicists are working hard to marry the multiverse with observational science collected from the furthest-most frontiers of the Cosmos. SEE ALSO: When the Multiverse Collides "We're trying to find out what the testable predictions of [the multiverse] would be, and then going out and looking for them," said Matthew Johnson of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. If the multiverse is real, it stands to reason that, in this rampaging mess of neighboring universal "bubbles," there should be frequent collisions, much like the jostling balls in a ball pit. Johnson's team has specifically set out to look for observational evidence of neighboring universes colliding with our own, thereby supplying some hint of observational evidence that we may have universal neighbors. But to do this, Johnson must model the entire Universe. "We start with a multiverse that has two bubbles in it, we collide the bubbles on a computer to figure out what happens, and then we stick a virtual observer in various places and ask what that observer would see from there," said Johnson. "Simulating the universe is easy." SEE ALSO: Looking for the Thumbprints of Parallel Universes Although you have to admire his can-do attitude, the team aren't simulating every atom, star or galaxy in the Universe; in fact, the computer simulation only models the largest scale structures and forces. "All I need is gravity and the stuff that makes these bubbles up. We're now at the point where if you have a favorite model of the multiverse, I can stick it on a computer and tell you what you should see," he said. This is where, according to the researchers, their work is so important if we are to understand what is going on in the regions beyond our Universe. For example, if we consider a collision-filled multiverse, Jonson's model predicts that observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation should exhibit rings, or ‘bruises', where next-door universes are pushing against ours. The CMB is the ubiquitous (yet very faint) ‘echo' of the Big Bang that can be seen at the most distant reaches of the Universe. If there's some interaction with universal bubbles (as some multiverse hypotheses suggest), these circular bruises should be present in the CMB signal — representing distortions in the outermost edge of our ‘bubble.' Through a brief analysis of CMB maps of the entire sky, it appears that these circular rings are not present, potentially disproving a multiverse filled with colliding universes. Or it at least suggests the collisions aren't happening now — perhaps the multiverse is in some quiescent state? As pointed out by the Institute press release, this research isn't setting out to prove whether or not the multiverse exists, it's merely identifying possible observational cues that we could look out for. And this pulls extra-universal studies into a scientific endeavor rather than leaving it in a metaphysical funk. Read more about this research and links to Johnson's publications on the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics website. This article originally published at Discovery News here

Let’s get one thing straight: The accusations against Roy More are compelling. Sure, there are some (poorly-sourced) stories and theories “discrediting” his accusers, and the involvement of Gloria Allred is just about the worst thing that could happen to the anti-Moore movement, but Moore is, at best, super creepy. However, Alabama Democrats have chosen Doug Jones as their candidate. While there are plenty of reasons to dislike Moore, there is no reason at all that you can justify voting for Jones in this election. At RedState, there has always been one hard and fast rule: Oppose abortion at all costs. Jones supports abortion right up until the baby is out of the womb, and even then it’s probably debatable for him. If you vote for Jones, you are not a conservative, and you cannot claim to be one. This is not up for debate. Under no circumstances should you support, endorse, or vote for Doug Jones. Which seems to be what Jeff Flake, among others, is doing. After what we know, for Republicans to support Roy Moore over Doug Jones is political tribalism at its worst. We shouldn’t succumb to it — Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) November 26, 2017 Sorry, Senator Flake, but that’s a load of crap. There are going to be plenty of people who will vote for Moore because he isn’t in favor of murdering babies. That’s not tribalism, that’s rationalizing. Am I endorsing Moore here? Of course not. Plenty of folks will accuse me of it, naturally, but I don’t encourage anyone to vote for Moore. He is unfit for the office, but the issue of abortion – the actual murder of children – makes Jones just as unfit in my book. Sorry if I don’t want people murdering OR touching kids. I’m picky like that. What I suggest, and it’s probably frowned upon for me to do so (FYI: I do not speak for all of RedState when I write this), is that people just don’t vote in Alabama. Don’t go out of your way to have to make a choice on the lesser of two evils. Don’t vote for evil at all. It’s the same as 2016 for me. Did I want Trump? No. Does that mean I wanted Hillary? No. I refused to vote because I was dead set against voting for a bad person just because they were less bad than the other. Alabama’s vote is exactly the same situation. So, I hope the people of Alabama don’t vote. I hope everyone sits at home and says, “Nope. We’re not doing this.” But that won’t happen. We’ll have a winner, and everyone will still lose.

Phytochemical and Biological Properties of Ferula sharifi Essential Oil Abstract This study presents the phytochemical components and antibacterial properties of the hydrodistilled essential oil (EO) of Ferula sharifi. The EO components were identified by GC-MS analysis. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and mininmum bactericidal (MBC) of EO against four selected probiotic microorganisms (Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus ramnus) was determined using micro-plate assay. Thirty components representing 96.9 % of the total oil were characterized. The main chemical group was monoterpene hydrocarbons (43.9 %) including ®-pinene (21.7 %), ⟨-pinene (15.9 %) and sabinene (5.7 %). The MIC and MBC values ranged between 1250-10000 ppm., L. acidophillus was the susceptible (MIC: 1250 ppm and MBC: 5000 ppm) among the tested microorganism. Our results showing that the genus Ferula is considered as a good source of EO and antibacterial activity against probiotic bacteria. So its use as natural additives in functional foods need to be further investigated.

Security researchers at Trustwave SpiderLabs have discovered a new vulnerability in Lenovo’s much maligned Lenovo Solution Center software. The vulnerability allows attackers with local network access to a PC to execute arbitrary code. A new vulnerability has been discovered in Lenovo’s much-maligned Lenovo Solution Center (LSC) software. The vulnerability allows attackers with local network access to a PC to execute arbitrary code, said researchers at Trustwave SpiderLabs. The flaw allows an attacker to elevate privileges and is tied to the LSC application’s backend. It opens the door for a malicious attacker to start the LSC service and trick it in to executing arbitrary code in the local system context, said Karl Sigler, a SpiderLabs researcher at Trustwave. LSC comes preloaded on nearly all Lenovo business and consumer desktops and laptop PCs. The software acts as a dashboard monitoring system health and security – from battery life, driver updates and firewall status. Lenovo has issued a fix for the security flaw last week. This is the second time the computer maker has had to patch LSC – the first being December 2015. “In keeping with industry best practices, Lenovo moved rapidly to ready a fix and on April 26 it updated its security advisory disclosing this additional vulnerability and the availability of a fix that addressed it,” a Lenovo spokesperson told Threatpost. “This is a pretty bad vulnerability, but it does require an existing user to be logged in in order to pull off any attack,” Sigler said in an email interview with Threatpost. He said the attack can’t be exploited remotely. “For a malicious insider or for an attacker that already has a foothold in the network, this vulnerability could be used to make that foothold a full gateway to your network,” he said. Trustwave later today is publicly disclosing details of the vulnerability, found bySpiderLabs researcher Martin Rakhmanov. This is the second time Lenovo has had to fix security vulnerabilities tied to its LSC software. Far more serious flaws were originally discovered in LSC software by the hacking group Slipstream/RoL on Dec. 3, 2015. That’s when the group – without forewarning Lenovo of its disclosure – demonstrated a proof-of-concept exploit that allowed a malicious web page to execute code on Lenovo PCs with system privileges. Hackers demonstrated how they could exploit the LSC’s SerLSCTaskService component, opening up a HTTP daemon via a system port that can receive commands. One of those commands, called RuInstaller, executes files placed in the Local Store folder of the Lenovo PC. Slipstream/RoL also demonstrated another vulnerability tied to the LSCTaskService. This flaw opened Lenovo systems running the LSC software to cross-site request forgery attacks. In this case, attackers could remotely execute code on Lenovo PCs running the LSC software just by enticing a user to visit a malicious website. “By convincing a user who has launched the Lenovo Solution Center to view a specially crafted HTML document [such as] a web page or an HTML email message or attachment, an attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges,” explained a vulnerability note from the DHS-sponsored CERT at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Blindsided by the Slipstream/RoL exploits, Lenovo responded quickly to the proof-of-concepts issuing a statement at the time: “We are urgently assessing the vulnerability report and will provide an update and applicable fixes as rapidly as possible,” it wrote in a Lenovo Security Advisory. On Dec. 9, 2015, Lenovo updated its version 2.x.x LSC software with version 3.x.x that fixed the problem. The LSC security flaw is the most recent in a long list of security fumbles that have plagued Lenovo over the past year. In February 2015, Lenovo was put in the security hot seat when researchers discovered a piece of software called Superfish that injected ads on websites and could be abused by hackers to read encrypted passwords and web-browsing data. Last August, Lenovo again landed in hot water when it was criticized for automatically downloading Lenovo Service Engine software – labeled as unwanted bloatware by many. Worse, when users removed the software Lenovo systems were configured to download and reinstall the program without the PC owner’s consent.

Outcomes of Birds of Prey with Surgical or Traumatic Wing Amputation: A Retrospective Study from 1995 to 2017 Abstract: Surgical amputation of a limb is often required to treat raptor orthopedic injuries at rehabilitation centers. In some cases, amputation is an alternative to euthanasia if the bird's welfare is deemed appropriate under human care. The outcome for raptors maintained in a captive setting following wing amputation is poorly documented. A retrospective study was conducted in a Canadian raptor rehabilitation facility to assess the outcomes and complications observed in captive and free-living raptors with partial or complete, surgical or traumatic amputations of the wing. Data from raptors admitted to the rehabilitation center from 1995 to 2017 were reviewed. Overall, 32 records were included in this retrospective study from 11 species of raptors with surgical or traumatic wing amputations. Survival times of the 23 birds with an amputated wing (median: 1070 days, range: 68 days to 13 years and 1 month) were significantly (P = .02) longer than the survival times of the 404 non-amputated birds (median: 696 days, range 37 days to 27 years and 3 months). Complications occurred in 13 of 30 birds (43%) during the recovery period, with 9 of 30 (30%) birds developing life-threatening complications. Maladaptation to captivity was the leading cause of euthanasia during this period. After placement in captivity, 3/23 (13%) birds developed complications related to the amputation site. Based on this study, we conclude that some birds can tolerate partial or complete wing amputation, but the decision to place a bird in a captive setting should encompass the bird's ability to cope with human interaction and the availability of an adapted and safe enclosure for the animal.

An Areal Rainfall Estimator Using Differential Propagation Phase: Evaluation Using a C-Band Radar and a Dense Gauge Network in the Tropics Abstract An areal rainfall estimator based on differential propagation phase is proposed and evaluated using the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC) C-POL radar and a dense gauge network located near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Twelve storm events during the summer rainy season (December 1998–March 1999) are analyzed and radar–gauge comparisons are evaluated in terms of normalized error and normalized bias. The areal rainfall algorithm proposed herein results in normalized error of 14% and normalized bias of 5.6% for storm total accumulation over an area of around 100 km2. Both radar measurement error and gauge sampling error are minimized substantially in the areal accumulation comparisons. The high accuracy of the radar-based method appears to validate the physical assumptions about the rain model used in the algorithm, primarily a gamma form of the drop size distribution model, an axis ratio model that accounts for transverse oscillations for D ≤ 4 mm and equilibrium shapes for D > ...

For all the hand-wringing over automated ad buying systems and mobile devaluing publishers' real estate, a number of online properties can still fetch top dollar. The below premium placements, sourced from media buyers and sellers, span the tried and traditional to the new and so-called "native," but industry executives identified one commonality across all cited: the ability to attract sizeable audiences and justify substantial spending. Facebook Combine online's most lucrative content type, video, and one of its most attractive properties, Facebook, and it's little surprise the site is seeking 7-figure sums -- $1 million up to $2.4 million a day -- for its upcoming in-feed video ads. That's roughly double what Facebook currently receives for its version of the home page takeover that lets brands advertise reach an entire audience segment for $500,000 to $700,000 a day. YouTube Google's video site attracts nearly as many unique visitors each month as Facebook and has been able to translate that into similar ad rates. Advertising on YouTube's home page during holidays costs about $500,000 and includes an additional $100,000 commitment; a couple years ago that package ran around $150,000. However the real money resides closer to the content. To be the first preroll ad that plays when someone visits a video's watch page, advertisers must ante up a similar amount to the home-page package. Channel sponsorships start at around $1 million. Yahoo Yahoo continues to garner among the web's largest audiences, which is why the portal that's considered a comeback story is able to pull $450,000 to $700,000 for each daylong home page takeover. For comparison's sake, a standard banner on Yahoo News main page costs $120,000 a day. AOL AOL isn't as big as Yahoo, and the price of its home-page ad reflects that. The banner runs around $275,000 to $300,000 per day, though it can be had for $150,000 during fire sales. ESPN Last year Forbes called ESPN "the world's most valuable media property." The Disney-owned company owes much of that acclaim to its TV network, but a standard box banner on the sports site's home page merits $200,000 to $300,000 a day. Twitter Twitter's Promoted Tweets may get all the attention for popping up in users' streams, but the social network's priciest ad product sits on the side. Twitter limits Promoted Trends to one a day, and that scarcity allows it to charge $200,000 for each advertiser. The New York Times The paper of record notches $120,000 each weekday for the pushdown ads overtaking its home page. Vice Media The New York Times' polar opposite, the rowdy Vice Media, pulls $75,000 per day for the pushdown ads overtaking its home page Tumblr Yahoo could get a return on its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr by upping the number of ads running in users' feeds. The unit has only been in market for a couple months but fetches roughly $20,000 per advertiser a day as part of a $200,000 commitment. Forbes Forbes' welcome ad that displays the first time someone navigates to the business publication's site looks simple. But a Forbes spokesperson said the unit, which is capped to pop up only once a day to each unique visitor, fetches $75 to $100 per every thousand visitors (Forbes.com receives 650,000 unique visitors a day, including 500,000 in the U.S.). StarGreetz The video ad company charges advertisers $20,000 to $100,000 per month to run video ads personalized to each person they are served to -- the ads actually speak an individual's name and can include other personal information like where they live, provided that data is already available to the advertiser-- though advertisers have to pony up anywhere from an extra $10,000 to more than nine figures for celebrity spokespeople like country band Lady Antebellum or Nascar driver Kyle Busch to parse each branded greeting ("Hi John Doe, let me tell you about [insert brand]").

Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said they've identified the men seen in a social media video that appears to show a shark tied to the back of a boat being dragged across water at high speeds. FWC isn't releasing their names to the public and no arrests have been made, officials said in a statement Wednesday. "The FWC has identified the individuals in the video, and would like to thank the public for their assistance," the statement read. "Per normal protocol, while this investigation is ongoing, the agency will not be confirming the identities of the individuals involved." Officials with FWC announced Tuesday that they were investigating the video, which sparked outrage on social media after it was posted. Want to Spend a Night in Jail? It Just Takes $40 Want to spend the night in the slammer? Minnesota's Chisago County Sheriff's Office can help make it happen. The department is letting people stay overnight inside the new Public Safety Center to see the facility and help deputies train before inmates arrive. It just costs $40 per person. (Published Friday, April 27, 2018) In the video released by the FWC, one of the men appears to say "look, it’s already almost dead," while pointing to the shark flopping across the water behind the speeding boat. FWC officials said it's too early to speculate as to what, if any, violations took place in the incident. "The FWC would like to state that that the lack of respect shown in this video for our precious natural resources is disheartening and disturbing, and is not representative of conservation-minded anglers around the world," the FWC statement read.

A Mumbai-based startup is looking forward to manufacture a washing machine for people who cannot afford to buy a regular washing machine or do not have enough space in their house. This pocket-friendly machine is obviously not like any other regular machine washing. It appears like a big electronic hand blender which can be mounted on any plastic bucket to wash all types of laundry. Advertising “The simplicity of design will enable us to make this machine at a very low price – if mass manufactured. Making this device available in the market for an affordable price for the poor families in the third world will help millions of women who presently are forced to wash clothes by hand,” said Piyush Agarwalla, founder of Vimbas Navrachna, the group which is manufacturing Venus mini portable washing machine. The project went live on crowd funding website Indiegogo on October 13. The Vimbas Navrachna team has to generate US$ 50,000 by December 12 to start the mass production of Venus. “Our aim is sell the Venus machine for Rs 1,500 or less if possible. Every contribution will help bring us closer to realizing our dream of mass manufacturing this device and selling at an affordable price,” said Agarwalla. With a plastic bucket of 25 litres capacity (minimum 20 litres bucket), users can wash up to 2.5 kilograms of load per five minutes wash cycle. The Venus can be useful for people living alone like students, bachelors, working men & women, according to the project’s Indiegogo page. Advertising The team even has plans to manufacture a direct current (DC) version of the Venus if they exceed the funding goal. The DC version can be operated with the help of batteries making it ideal for campers. Specs Voltage: 110/230 V Power: 350 Watts Weight: 2.1 Kgs (Basic Unit) Capacity:2.5 Kgs Dimensions: (LxWxH) 100x150x420 mm Wash Cycle: 3 to 5 mins (approx) Contents: Basic Unit, Bucket Clamps

A classic study from more than 60 years ago suggesting that males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates may, in fact, be wrong, say life scientists who are the first to repeat the historic experiment using the same methods as the original. In 1948, English geneticist Angus John Bateman published a study showing that male fruit flies gain an evolutionary advantage from having multiple mates, while their female counterparts do not. Bateman's conclusions have informed and influenced an entire sub-field of evolutionary biology for decades. "Bateman's 1948 study is the most-cited experimental paper in sexual selection today because of its conclusions about how the number of mates influences fitness in males and females," said Patricia Adair Gowaty, a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. "Yet despite its important status, the experiment has never been repeated with the methods that Bateman himself originally used, until now. "Our team repeated Bateman's experiment and found that what some accepted as bedrock may actually be quicksand. It is possible that Bateman's paper should never have been published." Gowaty's study was published June 11 in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is scheduled for publication in an upcoming print edition. The original experiment on Drosophila melanogaster, also known as the common fruit fly, was performed by creating multiple, isolated populations with either five males and five females or three of each gender in a jar. The insects mated freely in the experimental populations, and Bateman examined the children that made it to adulthood. To count the number of adult offspring engendered by each of his original insect subjects, Bateman needed a reliable way to match parents with children. Nowadays, modern geneticists would use molecular evidence to determine the genetic parentage of each child, but DNA analysis was not available in the 1940s. Instead, Bateman chose his initial specimens carefully, selecting D. melanogaster flies that each had a unique, visible mutation that could be transferred from parent to child, Gowaty said. The mutations were extreme. Some of the flies had curly wings, others thick bristles, and still others had eyes reduced in size to narrow slits. The outward differences in each breeding subject allowed Bateman to work backward to determine the parentage of some of the fly progeny and to document each mating pair among the original insects. A child with curly wings and thick bristles, for example, could only have come from one possible pairing. Yet Bateman's method, which was cutting-edge for its time, had a "fatal flaw," according to Gowaty. Imagine the child of a curly-winged mother and an eyeless father. The child has an equal chance of having both mutations, only the father's mutation, only the mother's mutation or no mutation at all. In order to know who mated with whom, Bateman used only the children with two mutations, because these were the only ones for which he could specifically identify both the mother and father. But by inferring who mated with whom from the children with two mutations, Bateman probably got a skewed sample, Gowaty said. In repeating Bateman's experiment, she and her colleagues found that the flies with two severe mutations are less likely to survive into adulthood. Flies use their wings not only to hover but also to sing during courtship, which is why curly wings present a huge disadvantage. Specimens with deformed eyes might have an even tougher time surviving. The 25 percent of children born with both mutations were even more likely to die before being counted by Bateman or Gowaty. "It's not surprising that the kids died like flies when they got one dramatic mutation from mom and another dramatic mutation from dad," she said. Gowaty found that the fraction of double-mutant offspring was significantly below the expected 25 percent, which means Bateman would have been unable to accurately quantify the number of mates for each adult subject. Further, his methodology resulted in more offspring being assigned to fathers than mothers, something that is impossible when each child must have both a father and a mother, Gowaty said. Bateman concluded that male fruit flies produce many more viable offspring when they have multiple mates but that females produce the same number of adult children whether they have one mate or many. But Gowaty and her colleagues, by performing the same experiment, found that the data were decidedly inconclusive. In their repetition — and possibly in Bateman's original study — the data failed to match a fundamental assumption of genetic parentage assignments. Specifically, the markers used to identify individual subjects were influencing the parameters being measured (the number of mates and the number of offspring). When offspring die from inherited marker mutations, the results become biased, indicating that the method is unable to reliably address the relationship between the number of mates and the number of offspring, said Gowaty. Nonetheless, Bateman's figures are featured in numerous biology textbooks, and the paper has been cited in nearly 2,000 other scientific studies. "Here was a classic paper that has been read by legions of graduate students, any one of whom is competent enough to see this error," Gowaty said. "Bateman's results were believed so wholeheartedly that the paper characterized what is and isn't worth investigating in the biology of female behavior." Repeating key studies is a tenet of science, which is why Bateman's methodology should have been retried as soon as it became important in the 1970s, she said. Those who blindly accept that females are choosy while males are promiscuous might be missing a big piece of the puzzle. "Our worldviews constrain our imaginations," Gowaty said. "For some people, Bateman's result was so comforting that it wasn't worth challenging. I think people just accepted it." Shaking the foundation Biologists studying sexual selection examine mating habits of organisms ranging from fruit flies to gorillas, both in the lab and in the wild, in order to better understand how certain traits or behaviors confer evolutionary advantages. Sexual selection began as a discipline following Charles Darwin's publication of "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex," considered Darwin's defense against critics of his theory of evolution through natural selection. He argued that while the unwieldy, colorful tails of peacocks hindered flight and made males easy targets for hungry tigers, the flamboyant plumage served a vital role in attracting potential mates. The overdressed birds had an unexpected evolutionary advantage that did not help when it came to escaping predators but did help when it came to producing offspring through sexual selection, said Gowaty. Darwin, and later Bateman, cleaved to the notion that females of a species tended to be discriminating and passive, while the far more promiscuous males competed for their attentions. In the last few decades, however, evolutionary biologists have shown that the story is far more complicated. Gowaty, who has been interested in female mating habits in insects and birds since the beginning of her career, spent 30 years in the field studying Eastern bluebirds. She published the first molecular genetics study showing that females in a socially monogamous species mated outside their traditional pairs regularly. Gowaty describes the benefits of multiple mates as an answer to the never-ending evolutionary struggle against what may be the world's greatest predator: disease. "Our pathogens have much shorter generation times than we do as the hosts, and they evolve offenses much more rapidly than we can evolve defenses," she said. "One of the rules of nature is that our pathogens are going to get us." In this illness-driven arms race, organisms that produce offspring from multiple mates are more likely to produce some children with the right antibodies to survive the next generation of viruses, bacteria and parasites. Fruit fly males are likely to give females the additional variation in the genome that they need to build strong immune systems in their kids, Gowaty said. For Gowaty, there are many open questions remaining when it comes to female mating habits, whether in fruit flies or other organisms. Yet shaking the bedrock of the Bateman paradigm may help the field examine new perspectives. "Paradigms are like glue, they constrain what you can see," she said. "It's like being stuck in sludge — it's hard to lift your foot out and take a step in a new direction." This study was federally funded by the National Science Foundation. Other co-authors included Wyatt Anderson, a professor of genetics at the University of Georgia and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and Yong-Kyu Kim, a research scientist at Emory University. UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.