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Chemical communication plays an essential role in several social and reproductive behaviors of many animals. In lizards, the main sources of semiochemicals are femoral or pre-anal gland secretions and feces. In male lizards Psammodromus algirus, there are age-related differences in the chemical composition of femoral gland secretions and in the reproductive strategies, with older males defending territories and females, while younger males adopting sneak-mating strategies. Females flee more often from mating advances of young males than from those of old males, which are more successful in obtaining matings. This suggests that age discrimination of males may be important for females. We tested here whether females showed differential chemosensory responses to chemical cues (femoral gland secretion and feces) of males of two age classes, and whether females use information from substrate scent marks of males of different ages to select where to stay. We found that females elicited more tongue-flicks to the secretion and feces of old males than to control or secretion and feces of young males. Also, the time spent by females on a scented paper depended on the treatment, suggesting that females tended to spend more time on scent marks made with femoral secretions of old males. Adult females seemed capable to discriminate between young and old males based on chemical cues alone and showed more interest in scents of old males. However, substrate scent marks did not seem to entirely determine site selection by females, suggesting that females might need additional cues to perform the choice. These results can be explained by the different age-dependent reproductive strategies of males, which can affect differentially to females., Financial support was provided by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP 2017/19640‐0) and by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad project MINECO CGL2014‐53523‐P.

AIM: To identify the gait parameters used to assess gait disorders in children with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and evaluate their responsiveness to treatments. METHOD: A systematic search within PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus (in English, 2000-2016) for randomized controlled trials of children with bilateral spastic CP who were assessed by instrumented gait analysis (IGA) was performed. Data related to participants and study characteristics, risk of bias, and outcome measures were collected. A list of gait parameters responsive to clinical interventions was obtained. RESULTS: Twenty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. Eighty-nine gait parameters were identified, 56 of which showed responsiveness to treatments. Spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters were widely used compared to kinetic and surface electromyography data. The majority of responsive gait parameters were joint angles at the sagittal plane (flexion-extension). INTERPRETATION: The IGA yields responsive outcome measures for the gait assessment of children with bilateral spastic CP. Spatiotemporal and kinematic (at sagittal plane) parameters are the gait parameters used most frequently. Further research is needed to establish the relevant gait parameters for each clinical problem. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Fifty-six responsive gait parameters for children with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy were identified. Most responsive gait parameters belong to joint angles time-series at sagittal plane. Spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters are widely used compared to kinetic and surface electromyography parameters.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is widespread among prokaryotes driving their evolution. In this paper, we review the potential impact in humans of the HGT between prokaryotes living in close association with humans in two scenarios: horizontal transfer in human microbiomes and transfer between microbes living in human managed environments. Although our vision is focused on the possible impact of these transfers in the propagation of antibiotic resistance genes or pathogenicity determinants, we also discuss possible human physiological adaptations via gene transfer between resident and occasional bacteria in the human microbiome. The authors thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. LB is supported by the grant CGL2016-75262-P of Spain DGI. RP is supported by a postdoctoral contract (Submodality 5.2.A) funded by the Research Plan of the University of Cordoba.

We study the upscaling and prediction of large-scale solute dispersion in heterogeneous porous media with focus on preasymptotic or anomalous features such as tailing in breakthrough curves and spatial concentration profiles as well as nonlinear evolution of the spatial variance of the concentration distribution. Spatial heterogeneity in the hydraulic medium properties is represented in a stochastic modeling approach. Direct numerical Monte Carlo simulations of flow and advective particle motion combined with a Markov model for streamwise particle velocities give insight in the mechanisms of preasymptotic and asymptotic solute transport in terms of the statistical signatures of the medium and flow heterogeneity. Based on the representation of equidistantly sampled particle velocities as a Markov process, we derive an upscaled continuous time random walk approach that can be conditioned on the flow velocities and thus hydraulic conductivity in the injection region. In this modeling framework, we identify the Eulerian velocity distribution, advective tortuosity, and the correlation length of particle velocities as the key quantities for large-scale transport prediction. Thus, the upscaled model predicts the spatial concentration profiles, their first and second centered moments, and the breakthrough curves obtained from direct numerical Monte Carlo simulations in spatially heterogeneous conductivity fields. The presented approach allows to relate the medium and flow properties to large-scale preasymptotic and asymptotic solute dispersion. ©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved., The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007‐2013) ERC Grant Agreement 617511 (MHetScale). The data presented in the paper can be accessed at the GitLab ( https://gitlab.com/marco.dentz/darcy‐simulations‐data ).

We present a reactive random walk particle-tracking approach to describe bimolecular chemical reactions and show its equivalence with the advection-diffusion-reaction equation. The method is able to efficiently simulate reactions in d-dimensional systems with homogeneous and spatially variable advection. Reactions among particles are determined by the reaction probability that is given in terms of the reaction rate coefficient, the total number of particles, and an interaction radius that describes the well-mixed support volume at which all particles have the same probability to interact. The method is meshless and free of numerical dispersion. The method is validated for the bimolecular irreversible chemical reaction A + B→C in scenarios characterized by slow and fast chemical kinetics under diffusion and heterogeneous advection and diffusion. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved., We acknowledge the support of the European Research Council (ERC) through the project MHetScale (617511) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, and European Regional Development Fund through the project MECMAT (CGL2016‐80022‐R). The numerical data can be reproduced following the numerical algorithms and parameter sets given in the paper. Alternatively, the data can be obtained upon request from the corresponding author.

Based on an original double‐blind survey on randomly drawn samples of over 10,000 manufacturing firms across a range of different industries and countries, the World Management Survey is one of the first large and internationally comparable management practices data sets. In this paper, I describe and compare the performance of Greek firms to those from other countries around the world with the aim of identifying some lessons for both managers and policy makers in Greece on how to increase management quality, and hence, firms' productivity.

It has been suggested that external and/or internal limitations paradoxically may lead to superior learning, i.e., the concepts of starting small and less is more (Elman, 1993; Newport, 1990). In this paper, we explore the type of incremental ordering during training that might help learning, and what mechanism explains this facilitation. We report four artificial grammar learning experiments with human participants. In Experiments 1a and 1b we found a beneficial effect of starting small using two types of simple recursive grammars: right-branching and center-embedding, with recursive embedded clauses in fixed positions and fixed length. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2 (N=100). In Experiment 3 and 4, we used a more complex center-embedded grammar with recursive loops in variable positions, producing strings of variable length. When participants were presented an incremental ordering of training stimuli, as in natural language, they were better able to generalize their knowledge of simple units to more complex units when the training input ‘grew’ according to structural complexity, compared to when it ‘grew’ according to string length. Overall, the results suggest that starting small confers an advantage for learning complex center-embedded structures when the input is organized according to structural complexity.

INTRODUCTION: This systematic review examines whether individualised gonadotropin dosing in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) leads to better outcomes with respect to safety, costs and live birth rates compared to standard dosing. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Electronic databases searched were PubMed, Embase and Cochrane. The primary outcome was live birth rate. The secondary outcomes included pregnancy rate, costs and safety. Papers were critically appraised by two reviewers. RESULTS: A total of 7,022 articles were retrieved and assessed for eligibility, of which seven randomised controlled trials were selected. All studies used gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist co-treatment. Clinical and methodological heterogeneity was present, so data could not be pooled for meta-analysis. Only one study, that mainly included women with a good prognosis, revealed an increased chance of ongoing pregnancy in the individualised dosing group compared to standard treatment. With respect to safety, individualised dosing might reduce the occurrence of hyper response and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, without affecting the outcome of pregnancy. In predicted poor responders higher than standard dosages do not reduce the incidence of poor response. A cost-efficacy analysis was not performed in any of the studies included. CONCLUSION: It is currently not possible to conclude whether individualised dosing leads to higher pregnancy or live birth rates as compared to standard dosing, since evidence from well-designed studies that are adequately powered for one of these outcomes is lacking. So, large well-designed studies that evaluate the impact of individualised dosing on live birth rates are needed to assess whether individualised dosing should become the standard in IVF practice. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

African traditional beverages are widely consumed food-grade liquids processed from single or mixed grains (mostly cereals) by simple food processing techniques, of which fermentation tops the list. These beverages are very diverse in composition and nutritional value and are specific to different cultures and countries. The grains from which home-processed traditional beverages are made across Africa are often heavily contaminated with multiple mycotoxins due to poor agricultural, handling, and storage practices that characterize the region. In the literature, there are many reports on the spectrum and quantities of mycotoxins in crops utilized in traditional beverage processing, however, few studies have analyzed mycotoxins in the beverages themselves. The available reports on mycotoxins in African traditional beverages are mainly centered on the finished products with little information on the process chain (raw material to final product), fate of the different mycotoxins during processing, and exposure estimates for consumers. Regulations targeting these local beverages are not in place despite the heavy occurrence of mycotoxins in their raw materials and the high consumption levels of the products in many homes. This paper therefore comprehensively discusses for the 1st time the available data on the wide variety of African traditional beverages, the mycotoxins that contaminate the beverages and their raw materials, exposure estimates, and possible consequent effects. Mycotoxin control options and future directions for mycotoxin research in beverage production are also highlighted.

Zero excess in the study of geographically referenced mortality data sets has been the focus of considerable attention in the literature, with zero-inflation being the most common procedure to handle this lack of fit. Although hurdle models have also been used in disease mapping studies, their use is more rare. We show in this paper that models using particular treatments of zero excesses are often required for achieving appropriate fits in regular mortality studies since, otherwise, geographical units with low expected counts are oversmoothed. However, as also shown, an indiscriminate treatment of zero excess may be unnecessary and has a problematic implementation. In this regard, we find that naive zero-inflation and hurdle models, without an explicit modeling of the probabilities of zeroes, do not fix zero excesses problems well enough and are clearly unsatisfactory. Results sharply suggest the need for an explicit modeling of the probabilities that should vary across areal units. Unfortunately, these more flexible modeling strategies can easily lead to improper posterior distributions as we prove in several theoretical results. Those procedures have been repeatedly used in the disease mapping literature, and one should bear these issues in mind in order to propose valid models. We finally propose several valid modeling alternatives according to the results mentioned that are suitable for fitting zero excesses. We show that those proposals fix zero excesses problems and correct the mentioned oversmoothing of risks in low populated units depicting geographic patterns more suited to the data.

Pumping tests are performed during aquifer characterization to gain conceptual understanding about the system through diagnostic plots and to estimate hydraulic properties. Recovery tests consist of measuring head response in observation and/or pumping wells after pumping termination. They are especially useful when the pumping rate cannot be accurately controlled. They have been traditionally interpreted using Theis' recovery method, which yields robust estimates of effective transmissivity but does not provide information about the conceptual model. Agarwal proposed a method that has become standard in the oil industry, to obtain both early and late time reservoir responses to pumping from recovery data. However, the validity of the method has only been tested to a limited extent. In this work, we analyze Agarwal's method in terms of both drawdowns and log derivatives for non-ideal conditions: leaky aquifer, presence of boundaries, and one-dimensional flow. Our results show that Agarwal's method provides excellent recovery plots (i.e., the drawdown curve that would be obtained during pumping) and parameter estimates for nearly all aquifer conditions, provided that a constant pumping rate is used and the log derivative at the end of pumping is constant, which is too limiting for groundwater hydrology practice, where observation wells are usually monitored. We generalize Agarwal's method by (1) deriving an improved equivalent time for time-dependent pumping rate and (2) proposing to recover drawdown curves by extrapolating the pumping phase drawdowns. These yield excellent diagnostic plots, thus facilitating the conceptual model analysis for a broad range of conditions. ©2018. The Authors., We acknowledge support from EU projects TRUST (grant 309067 of FP7) and FRACRISK (grant 636811 of H2020), and the Spanish project MEDISTRAES (CGL2013‐48869). The paper provides all the information needed to replicate the results. All data related to the analysis performed can be downloaded from https://h2ogeo.upc.edu/es/investigacion‐hidrologia‐subterrania/software/599‐recovery‐test‐interpretation.

AIM: To evaluate the efficacy of clobazam treatment in reducing epileptiform discharges and modifying neuropsychological function in continuous spike-wave during slow wave sleep. METHOD: We performed a prospective clinical trial in patients with continuous spike-wave during sleep aged 4 to 10 years. Patients underwent neuropsychological assessment and overnight electroencephalographic monitoring before treatment, and subsequent repeat assessment and overnight electroencephalographic monitoring 3 months after treatment. Treatment consisted of 1mg/kg clobazam up to a maximum dose of 30mg during the first night, followed by 0.5mg/kg nightly for 3 months. RESULTS: Nine patients completed the study and had pre- and post-neuropsychological evaluation. There was a qualitative reduction in median (p(25) -p(75) ) spike percentage after 3 months (72.2 [68.0-75.8] vs 32.7 [4.7-81.7]). There were no marked changes in median (p(25) -p(75) ) IQ comparing pre- and post-clobazam treatment (80.0 [74.0-88.0] vs 80.0 [67.0-89.0]). There was a qualitative increase in Verbal IQ (83.0 [69.0-92.0] vs 95.0 [83.0-99.0]) and a qualitative decrease in Non-verbal IQ (84.0 [74.0-87.0] vs 71.0 [60.0-84.0]). INTERPRETATION: Qualitative improvements in epileptiform activity and cognition occurred in patients treated with clobazam for 3 months and the relationship between epileptiform activity and cognitive outcome should be studied in larger studies. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Verbal IQ in patients with continuous spike-wave during sleep improved following short-term treatment with clobazam. Other neuropsychological improvements were observed, but varied by patient. Cognitive improvement was observed despite some worsening of epileptiform discharges.

AIM: Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a major modulator in brain maturation and its role in many different neurodevelopmental disorders has been widely reported. Although the involvement of GABA in different disorders has been related to its regulatory function as an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mature brain, co-transmitter, and signalling molecule, little is known about its role as a clinical biomarker in neuropaediatric disorders. The aim of this study is to report the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) free-GABA concentrations in a large cohort of patients (n=85) with different neurological disorders. METHOD: GABA was measured in the CSF of neuropaediatric patients using capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection. Other neurotransmitters (amino acids and monoamines) were also analysed. RESULTS: GABA concentrations in CSF were abnormal, with a greater frequency (44%) than monoamines (20%) in neuropaediatric patients compared with our reference values. Although we included a few patients with inborn errors of metabolism, GABA levels in CSF were more frequently abnormal in metabolic disorders than in other nosological groups. INTERPRETATION: Our work suggests further research into brain GABAergic status in neuropaediatric disorders, which could also lead to new therapeutic strategies. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Homeostasis of GABA seems more vulnerable than that of monoamines in the developing brain. The highest GABA levels are found in the primary GABA neurotransmitter disorder SSADH deficiency. GABA alterations are not specific for any clinical or neuroimaging presentation.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jors.12285 This paper links gender wage gaps with the urban wage premium. First, the study documents gender wage gaps are narrower in larger U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2010. Skill agglomerations are then considered to explain this. Specifically, if men and women employ heterogeneous skills, and these skills have differential productivities across city sizes, agglomerative forces may differentially reward men and women. Occupational data show that women are concentrated in jobs relatively more intensive in interactive and cognitive skills, while men are comparatively in physical skill-intensive jobs. Decomposing the gender wage gap shows that explanatory factors (education, skills, and location) predict women would outearn men. Instead, agglomerative skill returns account for majority of the gap. These estimates suggest that even as women employ skills rewarded in agglomeration economies, they benefit less from agglomerations than men, resulting in the observed gap.

In this paper, we provide an intensive review of the recent developments for semiparametric and fully nonparametric panel data models that are linearly separable in the innovation and the individual-specific term. We analyze these developments under two alternative model specifications: fixed and random effects panel data models. More precisely, in the random effects setting, we focus our attention in the analysis of some efficiency issues that have to do with the so-called working independence condition. This assumption is introduced when estimating the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix of nonparametric estimators. In the fixed effects setting, to cope with the so-called incidental parameters problem, we consider two different estimation approaches: profiling techniques and differencing methods. Furthermore, we are also interested in the endogeneity problem and how instrumental variables are used in this context. In Addition, for practitioners, we also show different ways of avoiding the so-called curse of dimensionality problem in pure nonparametric models. In this way, semiparametric and additive models appear as a solution when the number of explanatory variables is large.

Globally, salmon populations are under pressure and in those where numbers are severely depleted, density independent factors such as the accumulation of fine sediment and subsequent mortality of incubating embryos are critical factors in their conservation. Although progress has been made in identifying the processes by which fine sediment can lead to embryo mortality, this has focussed on the physical blockage of gravel pores. This paper presents new knowledge on the role of sediment-associated organic matter in controlling the supply of dissolved oxygen to incubating salmon embryos within gravel river beds. We report a new approach to the measurement of sediment oxygen demand (SOD) from interstitial sediments accumulated within salmon redds and demonstrate this across a range of salmon river types. The effects of varying SOD on dissolved oxygen supply to incubating salmon embryos are quantified for the first time, using the physically based Sediment Intrusion and Dissolved Oxygen (SIDO-UK) model. The results reveal the importance of the mass of accumulating sediment and sediment consumption rates (sediment oxygen consumption [SOC]), which constitute the overall SOD over time for a particular sediment sample. Higher SOC result in reductions in dissolved oxygen that are deleterious to salmonids; however, these are subordinate to the effects of sediment mass. Larger quantities of sediment accumulating within the redd not only create a higher SOD but also physically block the pores within the gravels, leading to a more drastic decline in oxygen supply through the combined effects of reduced seepage velocity and dissolved oxygen concentration. We seek to generalize the results by exploring the influence of catchment characteristics on field measures of SOD and SOC. This work makes a significant and novel contribution to improving our fundamental understanding of hyporheic processes within salmonid spawning gravels whilst providing resource managers with evidence of the deleterious effects of sediment-associated organic matter on salmon recruitment.

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excess fine sediment is a global cause of lotic ecosystem degradation. Despite historic interest in identifying sediment sources and quantifying instream dynamics, tackling fine sediment problems remains a key challenge for river managers and a continued focus of international research. Accordingly, a national meeting of the British Hydrological Society brought together those working on fine sediment issues at the interface of hydrology, geomorphology, and ecology. The resulting collection of papers illustrates the range of research being undertaken in this interdisciplinary research arena, by academic researchers, environmental regulators, landowners, and consultants. More specifically, the contributions highlight key methodological advancements in the identification of fine sediment sources, discuss the complexities surrounding the accurate quantification of riverbed fine sediment content, demonstrate the potential utility of faunal traits as a biological monitoring tool, and recognize the need for improved mechanistic understanding of the functional responses of riverine organisms to excess fine sediment. Understanding and mitigating the effects of fine sediment pressures remains an important and multifaceted problem that requires interdisciplinary collaborative research to deliver novel and robust management tools and sustainable solutions.

This paper uses a resource-based perspective to better understand how the three most established expertise possessed by founding entrepreneurs influence the development path of firms operating in the high-tech industrial sector. The longitudinal evidence from two rounds of face-to-face interviews with the owners of Chinese high-tech SMEs in 2004 and 2009 identifies three business strategic choices innovation, product, and production that are essential to optimize the expertise and sources of finance available for creating and growing a high-tech business. The findings from the interview evidence offer novel insights into the entrepreneurial development path of firms associated with types of entrepreneurs and availability of financial sources possessed by founding entrepreneurs.

This paper examines whether investors' decisions are influenced by the word content of newspaper reports of new product announcements. Using textual analysis we find that announcements of new products covered by financial newspapers with positive word content earn significant abnormal returns. These returns are 270 basis points higher than new products without positive word coverage, and such announcements bring negative impact to their rival firms' value. Our results suggest that the market reacts to the linguistic content of the new product announcement rather than to the announcement itself.

Major discoveries in the biology of nervous system tumors have raised the question of how non-histological data such as molecular information can be incorporated into the next World Health Organization (WHO) classification of central nervous system tumors. To address this question, a meeting of neuropathologists with expertise in molecular diagnosis was held in Haarlem, the Netherlands, under the sponsorship of the International Society of Neuropathology (ISN). Prior to the meeting, participants solicited input from clinical colleagues in diverse neuro-oncological specialties. The present white paper catalogs the recommendations of the meeting, at which a consensus was reached that incorporation of molecular information into the next WHO classification should follow a set of provided ISN-Haarlem guidelines. Salient recommendations include that (i) diagnostic entities should be defined as narrowly as possible to optimize interobserver reproducibility, clinicopathological predictions and therapeutic planning; (ii) diagnoses should be layered with histologic classification, WHO grade and molecular information listed below an integrated diagnosis; (iii) determinations should be made for each tumor entity as to whether molecular information is required, suggested or not needed for its definition; (iv) some pediatric entities should be separated from their adult counterparts; (v) input for guiding decisions regarding tumor classification should be solicited from experts in complementary disciplines of neuro-oncology; and (iv) entity-specific molecular testing and reporting formats should be followed in diagnostic reports. It is hoped that these guidelines will facilitate the forthcoming update of the fourth edition of the WHO classification of central nervous system tumors.

A large body of literature problematises the role of the Mediterranean, as both civilisational hearth and liminal frontier, in both ancient and modern Europe. However, much less attention has been directed to the inland sea at Europe's northern edge: the Arctic. Increasingly, as the Arctic becomes attractive to non-Arctic European capitals as a potential site of investment and (in)security, European states, and perhaps the EU as a whole, are seeking to construct the Arctic, like the Mediterranean, as a space that is both marginal and central to the continent's future. This paper seeks to investigate the extent to which the Arctic is, to paraphrase Viljhalmur Stefansson, Europe's ‘Polar Mediterranean’ and what this means for Europe as it constructs institutions and identities that, as in the Mediterranean, use the concept of the inland sea to both incorporate and differentiate its internal and external ‘others.’

What is the difference between the terms ‘Roma’, ‘gypsies’, ‘nomads’ and ‘Travellers’? These are a few of the names that are used to refer to the Roma minority in scholarly research, political speeches and the media. Most of the Romani studies literature on Roma labels and the state's categorisation underscores how these often derogatory denominations reflect the widespread stigmatisation of these people and, in turn, perpetuate regimes of exclusion and segregation. However, this literature implicitly conceives of language as purely functional to exclusion, overlooking the ways in which the construction and use of these labels have also created the conditions for the emergence of practices of resistance. This limitation is mainly due to the fact that these works follow a Foucauldian approach, which tends to overemphasise the importance of dominant discourses subjecting the individual, and to downplay the presence of generative and creative practices. I suggest integrating this approach with the notion of ‘assemblage’ as developed by Deleuze and Guattari, which entails both ordering and territorialising dynamics together with destabilising moves. By adopting this lens, the paper discusses the effects of two different Roma naming assemblages: on the one hand, the glossary published by the Council of Europe (CoE) that carefully defines and differentiates all the terms used for the Roma, and, on the other, the French and Italian governments' discourses that ambiguously lump together all these different denominations. Although at first sight it may appear that the latter bolsters discriminatory and segregating policies, while the former supports more inclusionary measures, by drawing on policy-documents analysis and in-depth interviews with pro-Roma advocacy group members, I show that both these naming assemblages actually produce exclusionary as well as resisting effects.

The objective of this paper is to assess an approach to statistical modeling of point referenced establishment data that permit inclusion of "environmental" or establishment-specific covariates and specific forms of interestablishment interaction. Gibbs models are used to decompose the conditional intensity of the spatial point process into trend and interaction components. The trend is composed of access measures (primarily different classes of roads) and three different interaction processes are tested: Geyer, area interaction, and Strauss hard core. While the models used have proved to be useful in ecology, we are unaware of any applications to establishment or firm data. In empirical application, the models yield intuitively appealing results for the trend component, and the ability to specify the interaction component gives deeper insights into interestablishment spatial dynamics than any previously published methods.

This paper presents a building block approach to design a reconfigurable discriminator (RD), which is the core circuit in frequency identification receivers. The RD is used to identify an unknown signal; the output of the circuit determines a frequency subband where the unknown signal falls into. The proposed building block design approach is scalable and can be used to produce any multibit RD. This design approach can be used to produce RD circuits with more or less resolution for a fixed band of operation, according to the number of bits used for a given design. The building block approach is demonstrated through the design of a 4-bit RD. This design is a two-port device that provides a series readout and can produce 4 bits for frequency identification. The device operates from 1 to 4GHz, implemented by microstrip lines and PIN diode switches. Simulated and measured responses are in agreement.

This paper presents a building block approach to design a reconfigurable discriminator (RD), which is the core circuit in frequency identification receivers. The RD is used to identify an unknown signal; the output of the circuit determines a frequency subband where the unknown signal falls into. The proposed building block design approach is scalable and can be used to produce any multibit RD. This design approach can be used to produce RD circuits with more or less resolution for a fixed band of operation, according to the number of bits used for a given design. The building block approach is demonstrated through the design of a 4-bit RD. This design is a two-port device that provides a series readout and can produce 4 bits for frequency identification. The device operates from 1 to 4 GHz, implemented by microstrip lines and PIN diode switches. Simulated and measured responses are in agreement.

Persons with haemophilia, living with their condition from infancy, require attention from a biopsychosocial approach, in which both the biological and the biographical dimension are addressed. These patients and their environment may benefit greatly from having professionals to help them manage, pre-emptively if possible, to adapt to the disease, cope with the experience of suffering and overcome the difficulties caused by chronicity. The ultimate goal of the interventions was to achieve the best quality of life possible with tailored objectives throughout the patient's life, including disease control, addressing the particular difficulties, and achieving optimal empowerment. This article aims to describe the role of Health Psychology and its professionals in supporting the young patient with haemophilia and provide a brief guide that might be useful for health professionals involved in his care. From the psychological perspective, this paper focuses on communication of diagnosis, the role and support of the family, issues during infancy, childhood and adolescence and how the healthcare team can address them to provide successful support.

This paper investigates the optimal currency composition for a country's foreign reserves. In the context of China, we examine the asymmetric, fat-tail and complex dependence structure in distributions of currency returns. A skewed, fat-tailed and pair-copula construction is then built to capture features of higher moments. In a D-vine copula approach, we show that under the disappointment aversion effect, the central bank in our model can achieve sizeable gains in expected economic value from switching from the mean-variance to copula modelling. We find that this approach will lead to an optimal currency composition that allows China to have more space for international currency diversification while maintaining the leading position of the US dollar in the currency shares of China's reserves.

This paper investigates trust and organizational justice as antecedents of Works Council (WC) effectiveness perceptions and the moderating role of industrial relations climate on this relationship. A two-year longitudinal study of Works Council participants in two UK organizations (a Housing Association and a Professional Services firm) was undertaken. Results support the hypotheses, finding positive significant relationships between both trust and organizational justice and WC outcomes of WC performance, WC usefulness, and outcome satisfaction. Industrial relations climate is found to moderate the relationship between justice and WC performance, WC usefulness and outcome satisfaction.

Safety should be designed into systems from their very conception, which can be achieved by integrating powerful hazard analysis techniques into the general systems engineering process. The primary barrier to achieving this objective is the lack of effectiveness of the existing analytical tools during early concept development. This paper introduces a new technique, which is based on a more powerful model of accident causality—called systems‐theoretic accident model and process (STAMP)—that can capture behaviors that are prevalent in these complex, software‐intensive systems. The goals are to (1) develop rigorous, systematic tools for the analysis of future concepts in order to identify potentially hazardous scenarios and undocumented assumptions, and (2) extend these tools to assist stakeholders in the development of concepts using a safety‐driven approach., United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (LEARN Grant NNX14AC71A)

The United Kingdom has experienced several exceptional summer flash floods in recent years and there is growing concern about the frequency of such events and the preparedness of the population. This paper uses a case study of the upper Ryedale flash flood (2005) and questionnaire and interview data to assess local perceptions of upland flash flooding. Experience of a major flash flood may not be associated with increased flood risk perception. Despite local residents’ awareness of a trend towards wetter summers and more frequent heavy rainfall, the poor maintenance of rivers was more frequently thought to be a more significant factor influencing local flood risk than climate change. Such findings have important implications for the potential success of contemporary national flood policies, which have put greater emphasis on public responsibility for responding to flooding. This study recommends, therefore, the use of fresh participatory approaches to redistribute and raise awareness of locally-held flood knowledge.

Educational effectiveness research has identified school membership as being and important factor in relation to academic progress but it has also pointed to the importance of teachers. Additionally, districts have been shown to be of minor importance for progress once key variables are taken into account while data from international studies suggest that countries are important when attainment is studied while controlling for background factors. A perspective, named the Proximate Variables within Jurisdictions (PVJ) theory, is introduced to help understand and predict relationships. The theory holds that variables which are closest to the student are the most influential but that the jurisdiction where the student is educated, which has its own approaches to education and upbringing is of similar importance. A child's educational success in international terms is most influenced by actions in the home and the classroom seen in the context of the country where she or he is brought up. Does the theory hold when progress in classrooms, year groups and educational systems (jurisdictions) is estimated in a single analysis? This study compared progress of pupils in over 4000 classrooms across 11 educational systems. Large differences were found between classes and the educational systems both for reading and mathematics during the first year at school. The theory holds for the most part but questions are left unanswered and the paper sets out a series of testable hypotheses which may be addressed in the future.

The present paper reports on the development and the psychometric properties of a brief observational assessment of home environments for use in large-scale investigations with young infants. We generated observational items conceptually relevant for child development by two methods. First, we adapted the Infant Toddler Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (IT-HOME) inventory for use in an exclusively observational context. Second, we added new observational items following a review of relevant literature and consulting professionals. The quality of the instrument was first evaluated in a pilot study (n = 926). In our study sample of 3406 families and their children (median age = 3.1 months, range = 1.66.0), exploratory factor analysis was used to identify latent constructs, Cronbach's alpha was used as a measure of internal consistency, and convergent validity was evaluated against family socio-demographic characteristics. Inter-observer agreement was investigated in a sub-sample of the respondents (n = 124). The results supported good psychometric properties of the instrument based on: (a) exploratory factor analysis yielding three meaningful latent constructs, (b) Cronbach's alphas ranging from a = 0.66 to a = 0.90, (c) inter-observer agreement ranging from r = 0.75 to r = 0.91, and (d) associations between the instrument and socio-demographic characteristics in the expected direction [e.g. Odds Ratio for low income = 15.24, 95% confidence interval (11.60, 20.01)]. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper we present a new methodology for detecting differential item functioning (DIF). We introduce a DIF model, called the random item mixture (RIM), that is based on a Rasch model with random item difficulties (besides the common random person abilities). In addition, a mixture model is assumed for the item difficulties such that the items may belong to one of two classes: a DIF or a non-DIF class. The crucial difference between the DIF class and the non-DIF class is that the item difficulties in the DIF class may differ according to the observed person groups while they are equal across the person groups for the items from the non-DIF class. Statistical inference for the RIM is carried out in a Bayesian framework. The performance of the RIM is evaluated using a simulation study in which it is compared with traditional procedures, like the likelihood ratio test, the Mantel-Haenszel procedure and the standardizedp-DIF procedure. In this comparison, the RIM performs better than the other methods. Finally, the usefulness of the model is also demonstrated on a real life data set.

Organizational memory is not just the stock of knowledge about how to do things, but also of expectations of organizational members vis-à-vis each other and the organization as a whole. The central argument of this paper is that this second type of organizational memory -organizational expectations memory- is a necessary precondition for successfully creating and maintaining organizational procedural memory, which is at the basis of organizational performance. If members of organizations have fewer expectations of being rewarded beyond what is stipulated in formal contracts, these individuals are less likely to risk investing in collective tacit and firm-specific knowledge resources and more likely to focus on building individual and mobile knowledge resources that have value outside the boundaries of the organization. A case study of latent organizations in the Dutch film industry is presented to support the central argument and suggests further avenues of research, in particular concerning the effects of labour mobility on organizational expectations memory.

Scholarly and activist discourses alike have invoked a homology between walling practices along the US/Mexico border and in occupied Palestine. Such discourses often rely on visual/rhetorical manoeuvres to assert equivalence between distinct sites, technologies and practices. Often, this equivalence then enables the collapsing of difference into what we describe as the ‘global security’ paradigm, one that represents a multiplicity of governmental practices, logics and outcomes as manifestations of a singular ‘global’ phenomenon. Although we celebrate the impulse to articulate common struggles against violence or dispossession, we question whether the assertion of singularity or equivalence between sites obscures important differences that might more productively inform a politics of solidarity. We furthermore ask whether viewing ‘securitisation’ as a ubiquitous global phenomenon risks reiterating the very logic by which states rhetorically justify their walling practices. In this paper we explore these issues, and identify a need for further work that takes seriously the heterogeneity of walling projects while examining the translocal practices and articulations that inform their proliferation and construction.

Young people are living in an era where their daily routines are saturated with different media platforms, competing for their attention. One such platform is community radio. However, community radio has not gained as significant scholarly attention as other media outputs. Although there is not a wealth of extant literature on the topic of young people and community radio, much of the available literature provides colourful accounts of young people, community radio and urban life – typically through detailed case studies. Collating these case studies, my discussion is organised around two central themes: first, community radio as a platform for youth voice; and second, social inclusion of young people through youth media participation. I situate these lively exchanges and debates within the wider literature of youth media, the arts and creative industries. I suggest that community radio stations, both traditional FM and online community stations, are crucial spaces of development for young people's identities, and a space of creative learning outside of a more formal environment of school. However, I wish this to be more than a whistle‐stop tour of key literature; usefully, this paper critically assesses key conversations and highlights areas for urban geographers to devote future research interest.

This paper describes the presence of an interstitial pure duplication of 19p13.3 (4.95Mb) in a patient with intellectual disability studied by array-CGH which was initially considered as a de novo alteration. The discovery of the same chromosomal alteration in a first-degree cousin of this patient led us to investigate the presence of insertional translocations, which were consequently found in three family generations. The same duplication was found in three intellectually disabled patients and among the translocation carrier family members a very high incidence of miscarriages are reported. A review of other published cases has allowed us to find three other patients with a similar pure duplication, all of them sharing some common clinical findings such as intrauterine growth retardation, microcephaly, motor and speech delay, moderate to severe intellectual disability, and dysmorphic features. These findings allow us to suggest the presence of a new microduplication syndrome in chromosomal region 19p13.3. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper evaluates the response of streamflow and other components of the water balance to changes in climate and land use in a Pyrenean watershed. It further provides a measure of uncertainty in water resources forecasts by comparing the performance of two hydrological models: the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Regional Hydro-ecological Simulation System (RHESSys). Regional climate model outputs for the 2021–2050 time frame and hypothetical (but plausible) land-use scenarios considering re-vegetation and wildfire processes were used as inputs to the models. Results indicate an overall decrease in river flows (up to 30%, depending on the combination of scenarios) when the scenarios are considered, except for the post-fire vegetation scenario, in which streamflows are simulated to increase (between 2% and 10%). However, the magnitude of these projections varies between the two models used, as SWAT tends to produce larger hydrological changes under climate change scenarios and RHESSys shows more sensitivity to changes in land cover. The final prediction will therefore depend largely on the combination of the land-use and climate scenarios and on the model used. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Atypical work arrangements have long been criticized as offering more precarious and lower paid work than regular open-ended employment. An important British paper by Booth et al. (Economic Journal, Vol. 112 (2002), No. 480, pp. F189–F213) was among the first to recognize such jobs also functioned as a stepping stone to permanent work. This conclusion proved prescient, receiving increased support in Europe. Here, we provide a broadly parallel analysis for the USA, where research has been less targeted on this issue. We report similar findings for temporary workers in the USA as found for fixed-term contract workers in Britain.

Aim: The 'centre-periphery hypothesis' (CPH) predicts that species performance (genetics, physiology, morphology, demography) will decline gradually from the centre towards the periphery of the geographic range. This hypothesis has been subjected to continuous debate since the 1980s, essentially because empirical studies have shown contrasting patterns. Moreover, it has been proposed that species performance might not be higher at the geographic range centre but rather at the environmental optimum or at sites presenting greater environmental stability in time. In this paper we re-evaluate the CPH by disentangling the effects of geographic, climatic and historical centrality/marginality on the demography of three widely distributed plant species and the genetic diversity of one of them. Location: Europe and North America. Methods: Based on a species distribution modelling approach, we test whether demographic parameters (vital rates, stochastic population growth rates, density) of three plant species of contrasting life-forms, and the genetic diversity of one of them, are higher at their geographic range centres, climatic optima or projected glacial refugia. Results: While geographic, climatic and historical centre-periphery gradients are often not concordant, overall, none of them explain well the distribution of species demographic performance, whereas genetic diversity responds positively only to a historical centrality, related to post-glacial range dynamics. Main conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first assessment of the response of species performance to three centrality gradients, considering all the components of different species life cycles and genetic diversity information across continental distributions. Our results are inconsistent with the idea that geographically, climatically or historically marginal populations generally perform worse than central ones. We particularly emphasize the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the relative effects of contemporary versus historical and geographic versus ecological factors on the distribution of species performance. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd., We are grateful to Arndt Hampe and three anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript. Funding was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through a doctoral grant (FPI, BES-2011-045169), and the project CAMBIO, CGL2010-21642. D.F.D. and W.F.M. received funding from the US National Science Foundation. We thank GBIF, Anthos, WorldClim and the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project for making their data freely available online. We also thank R. Braza for French data, M. Pata for helping with statistical analysis, I. Pardo and W. Thuiller for insightful discussions, P. Errea and R. Drummond for helping with the treatment of geographic data, as well as M. Maza for providing pictures of the plants. Finally, numerous people helped to collect demographic and genetic data.

Between January and June 2013, nine stillborn bovine foetuses with congenital malformations from nine cattle herds located in Salamanca (central Spain) were detected. Necropsy was performed on two calves. Pathological lesions together with molecular genetics and serological results allowed a definitive diagnosis: first confirmation of Schmallenberg virus (SBV) infection in cattle in Spain. SBV was detected in different tissues and organic fluids in both animals including blood, suggesting a possible viraemia. The umbilical cord was also positive for the presence of SBV in both animals. The former tissue provides an easy to obtain sample and might be a sample of choice when necropsy is carried out in the field., This paper was partially funded by a Grant from INIA-RTA2011-00010-00-00 (FEDER-Cofinantiated). We would like to thank G. Belver and S. Morales for their kind help and support. We also thank Dr. Kevin Dalton for critically reviewing the manuscript. A. Balseiro is a recipient of a 'Contrato de Investigacion para Doctores' from INIA (Spain).

Alphabetical name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in economics and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced a faster productivity rate over the course of her career as a result of reputation and visibility. Authors know that name ordering matters and take ordering seriously. Several characteristics of an author-group composition determine the decision to deviate from the default alphabetical name order to a significant extent.

Though research on Israel/Palestine often privileges the macro-geopolitical perspective, a growing body of work has begun to catalogue the ways in which the violence of occupation is carried out through intimate spaces and practices. However, often missing from such accounts is an understanding of intimacy as a counter-veiling political force. Looking at the ‘Love Under Apartheid’ project in Palestine, and queer anti-occupation organising in Israel, this paper considers how storytelling can serve as both a research methodology and political intervention, changing the way geopolitical stories are told and unfold.

Multi-touch surfaces have the potential to change the nature of computer-supported collaborative learning, allowing more equitable access to shared digital content. In this paper, we explore how large multi-touch tables can be used by groups of students as an external representation of their group interaction processes. Video data from 24 groups of students working on a logic reasoning problem was examined to identify their levels of reasoning about the task, and how they used the table to support their reasoning. Results indicate that of the 13 groups who solved or nearly solved the problem, 12 used the table to represent their reasoning process, while only four groups who used the table to support their reasoning process did not solve the problem. Examples from three groups are used to explore the different ways the table was used as an external representation of the groups' processes. The findings indicate that the group problem-solving process can be enhanced with the use of multi-touch tables, although students may need support in using the technology effectively to support their collaborative reasoning.

This paper evaluates whether nature of the union moderates the antecedents of union commitment and participation, based on a study of member attitudes in Voice, formerly the Professional Association of Teachers, and the National Unions of Teachers, often seen as the most “moderate and “militant” teacher unions respectively.

Mega-scale glacial lineations (MSGLs) are a characteristic landform on ice stream beds. Solving the puzzle of their formation is key to understanding how ice interacts with its bed and how this, in turn, influences the dynamics of ice streams. However, a comprehensive and detailed characterization of this landform's size, shape and spatial arrangement, which might serve to test and refine formational theories, is largely lacking. This paper presents a detailed morphometric analysis and comparison of 4043 MSGLs from eight palaeo-ice stream settings: three offshore (Norway and Antarctica), four onshore (Canada), and one from under a modern ice stream in West Antarctica. The length of MSGLs is lower than previously suggested (mode 1000–2000 m; median 2892 m), and they initiate and terminate at various locations on an ice stream bed. Their spatial arrangement reveals a pattern that is characterized by an exceptional parallel conformity (80% of all mapped MSGLs have an azimuth within 5° from the mean values), and a fairly constant lateral spacing (mode 200–300 m; median 330 m), which we interpret as an indication that MSGLs are a spatially self-organized phenomenon. Results show that size, shape and spatial arrangement of MSGLs are consistent both within and also generally between different ice stream beds. We suggest this results from a common mechanism of formation, which is largely insensitive to local factors. Although the elongation of MSGLs (mode 6–8; median 12.2) is typically higher than features described as drumlins, these values and those of their width (mode 100–200 m; median 268 m) overlap, which suggests the two landforms are part of a morphological continuum and may share a similar origin. We compare their morphometry with explicit predictions made by the groove-ploughing and rilling instability theories of MSGL formation. Although the latter was most compatible, neither is fully supported by observations.

Key termsequine; immunophenotype; ISCTmarkersThere has been growing interest in recent years in the use ofmesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as a potential treatment fora number of important diseases. MSCs were first describedas colony-forming units consisting of fibroblast-like cellsderived from bone marrow (1). Since then they have beenisolated from many different tissues such as adipose, muscle,synovium, dental pulp, tendon, peripheral blood, Wharton’sjelly, and umbilical cord blood (2–4). The biological charac-teristics of MSCs that contribute to their therapeutic activityand the mechanisms of action continue to be studied.Despite many advances in MSC therapy, a specific markerthat defines cultured MSCs and identifies them within theirtissue niche has remained elusive. As a consequence, theInternational Society of Cell Therapy (ISCT) proposed a setof minimal test criteria for human MSCs as a first attempt atstandardization for laboratory and preclinical research. Thesecriteria include plastic adherence, trilineage differentiation toosteoblast, adipocyte, and chondrocyte lineages, and a phe-notype relating to surface marker expression. This latter stip-ulates that MSCs, measured by flow cytometry, must show 95% positivity for CD73, CD90, and CD105 antigens and 2% for CD45, CD34, CD14 or CD11b, CD79a or CD19,and HLA class II (5).These criteria were established only for human MSCresearch. However, the study of MSCs is not limited to humanapplications: many animal models are routinely used in pre-clinical investigation and in veterinary applications. There isan urgent need for a universal marker(s) to define and identifyMSCs from all tissues of origin, which will apply across allspecies.There has been an interest in equine MSC therapy formore than 10 years, especially in the treatment of musculo-skeletal disorders such as tendon or joint disease. In addition,because of similarities in terms of structure and biomechanics,the horse is accepted by the US Food and Drug Administra-tion as an animal model suitable for the investigation of carti-lage and tendon repair therapies for human use. In recentyears, several equine trials have been carried out using MSCsfrom different sources. Most of these reported a positive out-come (6) although the mechanism of action remains unclear.It can be argued that failure to understand the biologicalmechanism of repair hinders development of optimized thera-pies. It can also be argued that the lack of meaningful potencytests will hamper the development of standardized cell prepa-rations. The most important identifying characteristics ofequine MSCs have been plastic adhesion and trilineage poten-tial. The use of cell surface markers has been limited due tothe lack of commercial antibodies that cross-react with equineantigens (7).The paper published in this issue (p. XXX) by Paebstet al. is the first to analyze the complete panel of human MSCmarkers established by the ISCT in equine MSCs derived fromfive different tissue sources (marrow, adipose, tendon, umbili-cal cord tissue, and umbilical cord blood).

The current paper combines research from personality, cultural, social, and work- and organizational psychology. More precisely, it addresses the motivating effects of situations that either foster or inhibit social loafing under typical vs maximum performance conditions. It further tests how these effects are moderated by the three individual difference variables of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience, and the two cultural dimension variables of collectivism and power distance. Results reveal positive main effects for inherently motivating situations, maximum performance conditions, conscientiousness, agreeableness and collectivism, as well as a significant interaction between the degree to which the situation invites social loafing and the typical vs maximum performance condition. These findings thus confirm a possible overlap between the theories of social loafing and of typical vs maximum performance. Finally, power distance showed a number of surprising interactions that may, in part, account for cultural differences found in the social loafing literature. Implications for theory building, empirical research and practice are discussed.