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Heavy metal contamination and its detrimental health effects are a growing concern globally. Several metal mitigation systems and regulatory approaches have been implemented to minimize the negative impacts on human health. However, none of these function at maximum efficiency, mainly due to the lack of accurate information about metal speciation. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop novel, cheap, efficient, and robust metal detecting sensors. In this study, we describe the application of a nanopipet based electrochemical sensor to detect aqueous Cd(ii) ions. The inner radius of our nanopipets is ∼300 nm, and the fundamental mechanism behind our sensor's response is ion transfer between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES). The absence of redox behavior makes ITIES an excellent, attractive electrochemical tool to study various ions in aqueous solutions. In this study, we used 1,10-phenanthroline as our ionophore in the organic phase (dichloroethane) to facilitate the transfer of Cd(ii) ions from the polar aqueous phase to the less polar organic phase. Unlike previous studies, we characterized our nanopipet in complicated matrices, including, but not limited to, tris buffer and artificial seawater. We performed quantitative assessments to determine our sensor's limit of detection, stability, sensitivity, and selectivity. We further show that our nanosensor can detect free Cd(ii) ions in the presence of strong complexing agents such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, 2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid

The etiology of neurodegenerative diseases is poorly understood; however, studies have shown that heavy metals, such as copper, play a critical role in neurotoxicity, thus, adversely affecting the development of these diseases. Because of the limitations associated with classical metal detection tools to obtain accurate speciation information of ultra-low concentrations of heavy metals in the brain, analysis is primarily performed in blood, urine, or postmortem tissues, limiting the translatability of acquired knowledge to living systems. Inadequate and less accurate data obtained with such techniques provide little or no information for developing efficient therapeutics that aid in slowing down the deterioration of brain cells. In this study, we developed a biocompatible, ultra-fast, low-cost, and robust surface-modified electrode with carbon fibers by electrodepositing dopamine via fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) to detect Cu

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) remains a global public health problem despite the availability of effective vaccine and antiviral therapy. Cytomegalovirus (CMV), another hepatotropic virus, is also very prevalent in the general population worldwide. Both HBV and CMV can persist in the host and have potential to reactivate especially with weakened host cellular immunity. Superimposed CMV infection can lead to severe HBV reactivation. The pathogenesis of the co-infection of HBV and CMV remains poorly understood. Studies reported conflicting results regarding the inhibitory effect of CMV on HBV replication. There is an unmet need on the management of co-infection of HBV and CMV; research initiatives dedicated to understanding their interactions are urgently needed.

Pore modulation via hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) needs investigation due to its crucial effect on surface that influences its multirole utilization of such ultraporous sorbents in applications of energy storage- hydrogen and capacitive- as well as for pollutant abatement- carbon capture and dye removal. Hence, loblolly pine was hydrothermally carbonized followed by KOH activation to synthesize superactivated hydrochars (SAH). The resulting SAHs had specific surface area (SSA) 1462–1703 m2/g, total pore (TPV) and micropore volume (MPV) of 0.62–0.78 cm3/g and 0.33–0.49 cm3/g, respectively. The SAHs exhibit excellent multifunctional performance with remarkably high atmospheric CO2 capture of 145.2 mg/g and high pressure cryogenic H2 storage of 54.9 mg/g. The fabricated supercapacitor displayed substantial specific capacitance value of maximum 47.2 Fg−1 at 1 A g−1 in 6 M KOH and highest MB dye removal of 719.4 mg/g. Higher HTC temperature resulted in increased surface porosity as higher SSA, TPV benefitted H2 storage and MB dye removal while superior MPV favored CO2 capture. Moderate HTC temperature ensured higher mesopore-to-macropore volume ratio favoring electrochemical performance. Isotherm modelling of the adsorbates was compared using models: Langmuir, Freundlich, Langmuir- Freundlich and Temkin.

Quantitative subsurface analysis with increased reliability is fascinating the post processing research in infrared imaging for non destructive evaluation. Accompanied by a variety of post processing approaches, non stationary thermal wave imaging has been emerging as a reliable technique to cater to anomaly detection for a wide range of materials despite its lack of quantitative evaluation. This paper proposes a classification and regression based quantitative post processing modality to characterize subsurface anomalies using quadratic frequency modulated thermal wave imaging and validate it with the experimentation carried over a carbon fiber reinforced and glass fiber reinforced plastic specimens along with a suitable mathematical model based on thermal wave propagation principles. Subsurface details have been visualized in terms of their depths where their detection capability and reliability have been assessed using signal to noise and probability of detection respectively.

In this study, two new t-butyl substituted salicyladimines, N,N′-bis(5-t-butylsalicylidene) diphenyl disulphide-2,2′-diamine and N,N′-bis(3-t-butylsalicylidene) diphenyl disulphide-2,2′-diamine were synthesized and characterized by spectroscopy and X-ray diffractometry. The effect of the t-butyl group on the keto-enol tautomerism in solution and solid state was investigated. According to X-ray and spectroscopic data (UV–Vis), both salicyladimines were found to be mainly in the enol-tautomeric form. Density functional theory (DFT) method was used to complement this research work. The theoretical results are in good agreement with those obtained experimentally. The anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial activities of the substituted salicyladimines were compared to the parent Schiff base, N,N′-bis(salicylidene) diphenyl disulphide-2,2′-diamine. The t-butyl derivatives show enhanced activity which can be related to the enol form of the Schiff bases and possibly due to the increase in dipole and quadrupole moments in addition to increase in hydrophobicity and decrease solubility in water.

This article examines China and South Korea’s health surveillance infrastructures that are being developed and deployed during COVID19. To control the outbreak and maintain the state, the Chinese government implemented the "Alipay Health Code” in collaboration with technology giants like Alibaba, while South Korea launched a “self-quarantine safety protection app” to enforce home isolation to suspected carriers and monitor their health statuses. By comparatively analyzing these quarantine surveillance mobile applications that the Chinese and South Korean governments are utilizing in pandemic control, we investigate how these two different governmental regimes - one authoritarian and the other democratic - construct and propagate what their state-of-the-art surveillance technologies can offer to the public in moments of emergency. Through a mixture of walk-through method and situational analysis, this article aims to unpack the processes in which these technologies become developed and examine the politics around their deployment. More broadly, we argue that analyzing them offers new opportunities to investigate the relationship between state surveillance and personal privacy in the context of a national crisis. As surveillance tactics that were deemed oppressive and undemocratic in ordinary times get easily normalized in crisis situations, these moments allow us to reveal the precarious and flexible nature of surveillance and privacy while destabilizing the West-oriented, dichotomic understanding of these concepts. This article tackles this question by observing the relationships among relevant actors – the state officials, industry professionals, and general users – and various contestations/negotiations involved in the processes of designing and deploying these quarantine surveillance apps.

Background: Paediatric shaft femoral fracture can be treated either conservatively or by internal fixation. Complications inherited with cast management and advantages of the intramedullary nailing in long bone fracture, resulted in increased use of this technique for paediatric shaft femur fracture. We conducted a retrospective study of the patients treated with close intramedullary nailing by using titanium elastic nail in shaft femur fracture for paediatric patients.Materials & Methods: During 2013 and 2016, we have conducted a retrospective study of 40 diaphyseal fractures of femur using closed titanium elastic nail (TEN), in paediatric patients(24 male and 16 female). Patients’ evaluation was done using Flynn criteria, resumption of school and associated complications.Results: With minimum follow-up period of 6 months, 92.5% of the patients had shown radiological union by 4 to 6 weeks with resumption of school by 8 weeks. According to Flynn criteria, excellent results were achieved in 31 (77.5%) patients, good result in 8 (20%) and poor result was present in 1(2.5%) case.Conclusions: Titanium elastic nailing in paediatric patients with shaft femur fracture is a safe, simple and reproducible technique with minimum complications, leading to early return to preinjury level with minimum morbidity.

Data anonymization is one of the main techniques used in privacy preserving data publishing, and many methods have been proposed to anonymize both individual data sets and multiple data sets. In real life, a data set is rarely isolated and two data sets published by different organizations may contain records pertaining to the same individual. For example, some patients might have visited two hospitals for the same disease, and their records are independently anonymized and published by the two hospitals. Although each published data set alone might pose a small privacy risk, the combination of two data sets may severely compromise the privacy of the individuals common to both data sets. An attack on individual privacy which uses independent data sets is called a composition attack. The topic of how to anonymize data sets to prevent a composition attack using independent data releases has not been widely investigated. In this paper, we propose a new principle to protect data sets from composition attacks. We propose a hybrid algorithm, which combines sampling, perturbation and generalization to protect data privacy from composition attacks. We experimentally demonstrate that the proposed anonymization technique significantly reduces the risk of composition attacks and also preserves good data utility. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Globally, a wide variety of business models are proposed and used to address the challenge such as survival of business in the global market. Telecommunication industry has grown tremendously over the last decade. While the industry now offers enormous services to customers the entrepreneurs still struggle while choosing an appropriate model, its implementation and business survival. The business model may be defined as a system that works takes inputs and uses business activities to produce some outputs that may be regarded as outcomes. These outcomes are aimed at achieving valued targets over various lengths of terms. Hence various models or combination of models may be required to fulfill different goals in a business environment. The aim of this paper is to highlight the global telecom business model research by analyzing the proposed solutions while highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. An insight into the steps that may help design an optimized business model for the telecom industry has also been provided.

Digital infrastructure has been rapidly embraced in the Arab Middle East and North Africa in the last decade, opening a unique window for computational social science and network data science scholars. However, there are currently two coexisting social and economic realities in the region, which result in very different usages and dynamics of networked communication: countries with chronic civil unrest in which digital media have largely served as mobilization tools (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt), and relatively stable and wealthy societies that face social change and economic hyper-development (e.g., Qatar, Kuwait). Given such diversity across the region, how and why should social scientists study digital networks in the Middle East? What can digital networks teach us about the social and political aspects of the modern Middle East? In sum, while claims about digital technologies’ impacts across the region have been critiqued for being speculative and overblown, we suggest that digital technologies have instead broadened our ability to understand ongoing transformations among Arab states and societies.

This chapter examines the efforts of advanced-industrialized Western democratic states to promote internet freedom through the backing of several international policy summits and associated funding efforts for promoting freedom of expression, for global internet users, especially in closed repressive political systems. However, the recent leaking of key classified documents identifying unlawful global surveillance practices by both authoritarian and democratic states, has further galvanized global attention towards the credibility and meaning of “internet freedom promotion.” In order to better understand what the promotion of Internet freedom entails and to unpack the complex international political economy of this global arena of policy entrepreneurship, this chapter critically examines the key stakeholders that have define and consolidate the norms and frameworks surrounding the shared global digital commons that have been used by protest movements and democracy promoters during all of the recent waves of transnational political mobilizations, including the Green Revolution, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street. The chapter argue that future investigations should discard reductive frames of analysis like ‘cyber-optimism” and “cyber-dystopianism,” and instead pay more critical attention on the key tech-savvy “communities of practice” that have emerged with a pragmatic focus on overseeing and infusing democratic norms into esoteric telecommunications policy.

While there have been many studies of the different ways regimes censor the use of social media by their citizens, shutting off social media altogether is something that rarely happens. However, it happens at the most politically sensitive times and has widespread - if not global - consequences for political, economic and cultural life. When do states disconnect their digital networks, and why? To answer this question, we build an event history database of incidents where a regime went beyond mere censorship of particular websites or users. We draw from multiple sources, including major news media, specialized news services, and international experts to construct an event log database of 566 incidents. This rich, original dataset allows for a nuanced analysis of the conditions for state action, and we offer some assessment of the impact of such desperate action. Comparative analysis indicates that both democratic and authoritarian regimes disable social media networks for citing concerns about national security, protecting authority figures, and preserving cultural and religious morals. But, whereas democracies also disable social media with the goal of protecting children, authoritarian regimes also attempt to eliminate what they perceive as propaganda on social media. We cover the period from 1995 to the first quarter of 2011, and build a grounded typology based on regime type, what states actually did to interfere with digital networks, why they did it, and who was affected.

Authentication and key exchange securely over the insecure channel is a big deal these days. It plays vital role in big data applications. Mutual authentication is generally relay at the single channel between two users. An attacker performs the passive attack (traffic analysis) and switch towards the active attack Three tier authentication system checks the authenticity of the client at three independent channels and if found secure then only allow the client to get the services from the application server. Two intermediate servers will provide two-split passwords and the application server will provide the complete password. These intermediate servers will forward the split password towards the main application server which compares and finds the similarities between them. Whole communication is based on public key cryptography to achieve mutual authentication, confidentiality and integrity of the message.

State powers and high technology industries have historically and symbiotically implemented new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to advance their operational goals. However, much of the scholarship and policy discourse studying such practices is limited to well-known mass surveillance revelations in advanced-industrialized Western democratic contexts. We present the first event-catalogued case-history analysis of 306 cases of mass surveillance systems that currently exist across 139 nation-states in the world system. Identifying the ‘known universe’ of these population-wide data infrastructures that shape the evolving relationships between citizens and state powers, this study pays particular attention to and fills an existing void in the contemporary study and understanding of mass surveillance practices by examining how population surveillance systems have diffused across the international system. By closely investigating cases of state-backed cross-sector surveillance collaborations, we address the following questions: What is the recent, global history of state-sanctioned mass surveillance systems deployment? Which stakeholders have most prominently expressed support for, benefited from, or opposed these systems, and why? What have been the comparative societal responses to the normalization of these systems in recent decades? Addressing these questions provides valuable traction for understanding how comparative contexts shape the way governance technologies unfold and spread, potentially in ways that re-enforce state powers’ interests and dominance over their citizens.

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) help the learners to take control of their learning. PLEs enable the learners to set their own leaning targets and manage their learning by communicating with others in the process of learning. As latest technological advancements have brought revolution in every field of life, so as in the PLEs. Modern PLEs are the integration of a number of latest technologies i.e. blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, where content is shaped as per the individual needs and interests of the students. Focusing on these latest aspects of the PLEs, University of South Australia initiated a three year new learning platform project in 2010, called LearnOnline, which will replace the University's current online teaching environment UniSAnet. LearnOnline was launched with a vision to foster richer learning through promoting students' active involvement in their courses and involving the students in a deeper learning experience. LearnOnline is built on modular approach and consists of different components i.e. ePortfolio, Course Outline, Lecture Recording, Copyright Monitoring, Student Email, Assessment and Feedback, Virtual Classroom, Course and Teacher Evaluation. Each component is developed separately and is fully independent. This methodology is helping the incremental implementation of the LearnOnline. As soon as a component is completed, after testing, it becomes the part of LearnOnline. In this paper, the author explains the features and workings of LearnOnline in detail and also evaluates its design methodologies.

It has been 15 years since the last wave of democratization. But as a region, North Africa and the Middle East were noticeably devoid of popular democracy movements—until the early months of 2011. Democratization movements had existed long before technologies like mobile phones and the Internet came to these countries. But with these technologies, people sharing an interest in democracy built extensive networks and activated collective action movements for political change. What might have made regimes more susceptible than others to these uprisings, and what might explain the relative successes of some movements over others? What role does information technology have in the modern recipe for democratization? Weighing multiple political, economic, demographic, and cultural conditions, we find that information infrastructure—especially mobile phone use—consistently appears as one of the key ingredients in parsimonious models for the conjoined combinations of causes behind regime fragility and social movement success. To understand the successes and failures of contemporary political protests, we must also assess how civil society leaders and authoritarian security forces treat communication technologies as democratically consequential.

As has often been noted in these pages, one world region has been practically untouched by the third wave of democratization: North Africa and the Middle East. The Arab world has lacked not only democracy, but even large popular movements pressing for it. In December 2010 and the first months of 2011, however, this situation changed with stunning speed. Massive and sustained public demonstrations demanding political reform cascaded from Tunis to Cairo, Sana‘a, Amman, and Manama. This inspired people in Casablanca, Damascus, Tripoli, and dozens of other cities to take to the streets to call for change. By May, major political casualties littered the ground: Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, two of the region’s oldest dictators, were gone; the Libyan regime of Muammar Qadhafi was battling an armed rebellion that had taken over half the country and attracted NATO help; and several monarchs had sacked their cabinets and committed to constitutional reforms. Governments around the region had sued for peace by promising their citizens hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending of various kinds. Morocco and Saudi Arabia appeared to be fending off serious domestic uprisings, but as of this writing in May 2011, the outcomes for regimes in Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen remain far from certain. There are many ways to tell the story of political change. But one of the most consistent narratives from civil society leaders in Arab countries has been that the Internet, mobile phones, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter made the difference this time. Using these technologies, people interested in democracy could build extensive net

This empirical study addresses dynamics of viral information in the blogosphere and aims to fill gaps in the literature. In this study, we present a new methodology which enables us to capture the dynamism and the time-factor of information diffusion in networks. Moreover, we argue that the blogosphere is not monolithic and illuminate the role of four important blog types: elite, toppolitical, top-general and tail blogs. We also create a map of the ‗life cycle‘ of blogs posting links to viral information, specifically viral videos at the 2008 US presidential election. Finally, we show that elite and top-general blogs ignite the virality process, which means that they get the chance to frame messages and influence agenda setting, while, top-political and tail blogs act as followers in the process. To accomplish this, we gathered data on blogs (n=9,765) and their posts (n=13,173) linking to 65 of the top US presidential election videos that became viral on the Internet during the period between March 2007 and June 2009.

Data publication is a simple and cost-effective approach for data sharing across organizations. Data anonymization is a central technique in privacy preserving data publications. Many methods have been proposed to anonymize individual datasets and multiple datasets of the same data publisher. In real life, a dataset is rarely isolated and two datasets published by two organizations may contain the records of the same individuals. For example, patients might have visited two hospitals for follow-up or specialized treatment regarding a disease, and their records are independently anonymized and published. Although each published dataset poses a small privacy risk, the intersection of two datasets may severely compromise the privacy of the individuals. The attack using the intersection of datasets published by different organizations is called a composition attack. Some research work has been done to study methods for anonymizing data to prevent a composition attack for independent data releases where one data publisher has no knowledge of records of another data publisher. In this chapter, we discuss two exemplar methods, a randomization based and a generalization based approaches, to mitigate risks of composition attacks. In the randomization method, noise is added to the original values to make it difficult for an adversary to pinpoint an individual’s record in a published dataset. In the generalization method, a group of records according to potentially identifiable attributes are generalized to the same so that individuals are indistinguishable. We discuss and experimentally demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of both types of methods. We also present a mixed data publication framework where a small proportion of the records are managed and published centrally and other records are managed and published locally in different organizations to reduce the risk of the composition attack and improve the overall utility of the data usc

When Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann conceived of and developed her spiral of silence theory in the 1960s and early 1970s, she formulated it in an era when scholars perceived a return to all-powerful media-namely, that the media were able to exert strong eff ects because audience members actively turned to newspapers, television, radio, and magazines to help defi ne social reality. Indeed, the spiral of silence emerged as a theory not only of public opinion, but also of media eff ects. With their ubiquity, consonance, and cumulativeness, the mass media of decades ago allowed individuals to gauge the climate of public opinion and speak out or not, depending on whether they perceived themselves to be in the minority or majority opinion. In this process of eff ects, the media served what Noelle-Neumann (1993) termed an “articulation function,” providing audience members with arguments used to back up their opinions. After all, “if the mass media fail to provide them, there will be no words” (p. 172).

Cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs) along with the complementary cyclins form key regulatory checkpoint controls on the cell cycle. Flavopiridol is a synthetic flavone that shows potent and selective cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitory activity. In this paper, we report modifications of the 3-hydroxy-1-methylpiperidinyl (D ring) of flavopiridol and their effect on CDK inhibitory activity.

A series of cephalosporins bearing C-3 quaternary ammonium groups were prepared and evaluated for their anti-MRSA activity. They exhibit good to excellent in vitro activity (MICs = 1−8 μg/mL) against MRSA.

A series of cephalosporins bearing C-3 benzoyloxymethyl groups were prepared and evaluated for their anti-MRSA activity and plasma stability. They exhibit excellent in vitro activity (MIC = 0.06 ∼2 μg/mL) against MRSA and excellent stability in human plasma.

A series of truncated naphthoic acid retinoids have been prepared using the Heck reaction. These retinoids were evaluated in the RAR transactivation assay in vitro and in the utriculi reduction assay in vivo. It has been found that the naphthalene ring of the retinoids is crucial for their retinoid activity and receptor selectivity.

The keto linker of 2-naphthoate retinoid 1 has been found nonessential for RAR transactivation activity and can be replaced with heteroatoms such as S, O, N without significant reduction of the activity. On the other hand, substitutions on the aromatic rings of retinoids 1 and 2 resulted in analogs with reduced potentcy and RAR selectivity.

A series of biaryl acids has been synthesized by treating diphenic anhydride with a variety of amines. The one step strategy allows the rapid interchange of groups for evaluating the hydrophobic constraints of inhibitors of phopholipase A 2 . The most active inhibitor synthesized displayed an IC 50 = 6 μM against human platelet phospholipase A 2 .

We wanted to determine whether a saline flush during vasectomy would reduce the time needed to reach azoospermia.During vasectomy men were randomly assigned to flush the prostatic end of the vas deferens with 10 mL of normal saline (intervention group, n = 50), while the remaining men (n = 56) served as controls. Sperm counts were performed on the immediate postprocedure urine specimen and on semen samples at 1, 6, and 12 weeks after vasectomy.The postprocedure urine specimens from the intervention and control groups contained 29.2 x 106 and 0.004 x 106 sperm, respectively (P.001). Total sperm counts in the ejaculate for intervention and control groups at 1, 6, and 12 weeks were (in millions of sperm): 14.1 and 13.8, 0.4 and 8.0, and 0.0 and 0.011, respectively (P.05 at all time points). There was no difference in the rate at which the men in the 2 groups achieved azoospermia.Vasal perfusion with saline during vasectomy was effective in removing sperm from the distal vas; however, perfusion did not increase the rate at which men achieve azoospermia.

Synthesis of nitrone analogues of RAR α-selective retinoid Am 580 in which the amide linker is replaced with a nitrone moiety is discribed. The nitrone segment was constructed by oxidizing the corresponding amine using MCPBA or dimethyldioxirane. The resulting nitrone derivatives were found unstable in acidic and basic conditions. The stability limitations of using this nitrone moiety as an amide surrogate are briefed.

Among retinoic acid receptors (RARs) alpha, beta, and gamma, the messenger RNA level of RAR-gamma is the most readily detectable by Northern blotting in human and mouse skin. This observation suggests that RAR-gamma may play a critical role in the modulation of the therapeutic benefits and side effects of retinoids in skin. To test this hypothesis, 11 RAR-gamma selective retinoids were synthesized based on three related structures. Each compound was found to prefer RAR-gamma when assessed by retinoid-induced transcriptional activity (RAR-gammaRAR-betaRAR-alpha). The apparent Kd for binding to recombinant receptor protein was found to follow a similar trend. To correlate this receptor selectivity with in vivo activity, the compounds were tested topically in the Rhino mouse utriculi reduction and rabbit irritation models, two assays widely used to screen retinoids for efficacy and side effects, respectively. The results indicated that for these compounds, both efficacy in the utriculi reduction assay and irritation potential in rabbits correlated positively with the RAR-gamma transactivation activity, with r2 of 0.9 and 0.8, respectively. These data suggest that RAR-gamma is an important regulator of retinoic acid efficacy in skin and further, that the irritation associated with the use of retinoids is most likely a receptor-mediated process.

The three retinoic acid receptors (RARΑ, RARΒ and RARΓ) are known to modulate the transcription of target genes through interaction of the individual receptors with their naturally occurring ligand, retinoic acid (RA). Since RA has multiple effects in vivo, considerable effort has recently been devoted to finding selective compounds to elucidate the functions of individual receptors and to relate these functions to specific in vivo effects. The racemic synthetic retinoid 6-[(5,5,8,8-tetramethyl- 5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-2 – naphthyl)hydroxy-methyl]-2-naphthalene carboxylic acid has recently been identified as an RARΓ-selective agonist. A synthetic method involving lipase-mediated transformation has been developed to prepare the individual enantiomers. Discrimination between the two enantiomers is seen in both transcriptional activity and binding to recombinant receptors with the (S)-enantiomer being the more active. Differences between the two compounds are also seen in the Rhino mouse utriculi reduction assay and the rabbit irritation model. In both animal models, the (S)-enantiomer consistently gave a greater response. Taken together, these results suggest that the activity and irritation seen with RA and related compounds is receptor mediated. Further, the strong selectivity of the compounds reported here for RARΓ suggests that this receptor plays an important role in these in vivo biological activities. The discrimination between these enantiomers may be useful in the design of novel retinoids with uniquely defined biological properties.

As Converse once said of public opinion research, “a sample design which extracts unrelated individuals from the whole and assigns the opinion of each an equal weight is a travesty on any 'realistic' understanding of what the concept of public opinion means” (Converse 1987, S14). Today, any realistic understanding of public opinion formation in Muslim media systems must come from a critical awareness of the limits to survey data, but also an appreciation that digital information technologies are providing new opportunity structures for inclusion in the process of public opinion formation and measurement.Ruling elites often try to co-opt civil society groups, and in times of political or military crises they can attempt to control the national information infrastructure. But a defining feature of civil society is independence from the authority of the state, even in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And in important ways, digital communication networks are also independent of any particular state authority. What has been the impact of digital media on political communication in Muslim media systems? How have tools such as mobile phones and the internet affected the process of forming political identity, particularly for the young? When do such tools change the opportunity for civic action, and when do they simply empower ruling elites to be more effective censors? In this chapter, we analyze the best available micro level data on technology use and changing patterns of political identity and macro level data on networks of civil society actors.Saudi Arabia and Egypt are two strong authoritarian regimes, the first an Islamist monarchy, the latter staunchly secular. Indonesia is an emerging democracy. Pakistan, with a mixed authoritarian and democratic history, is a fragile state. Despite important differences in political culture, technology diffusion is causing new patterns of political communication in all four regimes, with consequences for political participation and collective action. These four cases may be the best instances of governance archetypes in political Islam: Egypt is the biggest secular authoritarian regime, Saudi Arabia is the biggest Islamist constitutional monarchy, Indonesia is the biggest Muslim democracy, and Pakistan is the largest of fragile states. Yet all four are also interesting candidates for comparison: they have among the highest diffusion rates of digital media in the developing world; they are all countries in which digital media has been a means of building a transnational, Muslim political identity; they are all countries in which the protection of religious and cultural norms has been used to justify levels of censorship and surveillance not tolerated in other parts of the world. We identify the ways in which authoritarian regimes do make effective use of information infrastructure as a means of social control. But we also demonstrate the ways in which civil society groups effectively use information infrastructure to strengthen their own organizational capacity and preserve independence from the state.

Data anonymization has become a major technique in privacy preserving data publishing. Many methods have been proposed to anonymize one dataset and a series of datasets of a data holder. However, no method has been proposed for the anonymization scenario of multiple independent data publishing. A data holder publishes a dataset, which contains overlapping population with other datasets published by other independent data holders. No existing methods are able to protect privacy in such multiple independent data publishing. In this paper we propose a new generalization principle (ρ,α)-anonymization that effectively overcomes the privacy concerns for multiple independent data publishing. We also develop an effective algorithm to achieve the (ρ,α)-anonymization. We experimentally show that the proposed algorithm anonymizes data to satisfy the privacy requirement and preserves high quality data utility.