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Distinguishing between basic liberties and sovereign liberties is today a cornerstone of the most prominent republican theories of democracy and their promotion of freedom as non-domination. The two sets of liberties are intended to function together to guarantee individual freedom at all levels of governance, both domestically and globally. Basic liberties belong to the national sphere of governance, where they contribute to the free and equal civic status of the individual and are correlatively linked to the protection of the individual by a system of state laws and norms. Sovereign liberties, on the other hand, operate in the international sphere where they constitute ‘state freedom’ as an external (global) dimension of individual freedom. According to the republican adage “No free individual without a free state”, this external dimension of individual freedom implies the absence of international domination of states by other states or internationally active agencies and bodies, just as the internal (domestic) dimension of individual freedom implies, among other things, the absence of individual domination by other individuals or agents. However, the author of this essay argues that sovereign liberties, as conceived, are inadequate to protect states and their people from certain kinds of external domination, namely, those arising from state-to-state relations in international law and the circumstances of global domination. Suverene svofoščine: Kjer Pettitova mednarodna zaščita osebne svobode omahne. Razlikovanje med temeljnimi svoboščinami in suverenimi svoboščinami je danes temelj najvidnejših republikanskih teorij demokracije in njihovega pospeševanja svobode kot odsotnosti dominacije. Oba sklopa svoboščin naj bi delovala skupaj, da bi zagotovila posameznikovo svobodo na vseh ravneh upravljanja, tako doma kot tudi globalno. Temeljne svoboščine spadajo v državno sfero upravljanja, kjer pripomorejo k svobodnemu in enakopravnemu državljanskemu statusu posameznika in so uztrezno povezane z zaščito posameznika s sistemom državnih zakonov in norm. Suverene svoboščine pa delujejo v mednarodni sferi, kjer konstituirajo »državno svobodo« kot zunanjo (globalno) razsežnost individualne svobode. V skladu z republikanskim pregovorom: »Ni svobodnega posameznika brez svobodne države« ta zunanja razsežnost svobode posameznika pomeni odsotnost mednarodne dominacije držav s strani drugih držav ali mednarodno aktivnih agencij in organov, tako kot notranja (domača) razsežnost svobode posameznika med drugim pomeni odsotnost posamične dominacije drugih posameznikov ali agentov. Vendar pa avtorica trdi, da suverene svoboščine, kot so zasnovane, državam in njihovim ljudem ne nudijo primerne zaščite pred tistimi vrstami zunanje dominacije, ki izhajajo iz odnosov med državami v mednarodnem pravu in okoliščin globalne dominacije. Ker tako ne služijo v celoti svojemu namenu, jih avtorica preimenuje v »svofoščine«.

Malaria is a severe disease of global importance transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. The ability to rapidly detect the presence of infectious mosquitoes able to transmit malaria is of vital importance for surveillance, control and elimination efforts. Current methods principally rely on large-scale mosquito collections followed by labour-intensive salivary gland dissections or enzyme-linked immunosorbent (ELISA) methods to detect sporozoites. Using forced salivation, we demonstrate here that Anopheles mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium expel sporozoites during sugar feeding. Expelled sporozoites can be detected on two sugar-soaked substrates, cotton wool and Whatman FTA cards, and sporozoite DNA is detectable using real-time PCR. These results demonstrate a simple and rapid methodology for detecting the presence of infectious mosquitoes with sporozoites and highlight potential laboratory applications for investigating mosquito-malaria interactions. Our results indicate that FTA cards could be used as a simple, effective and economical tool in enhancing field surveillance activities for malaria.

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2019 is the seventh annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 81 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in the recent years. The evaluation included the standard VOT and other popular methodologies for short-term tracking analysis as well as the standard VOT methodology for long-term tracking analysis. The VOT2019 challenge was composed of five challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2019 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2019 challenge focused on "real-time" short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2019 focused on long-term tracking namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance. Two new challenges have been introduced: (iv) VOT-RGBT2019 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB and thermal imagery and (v) VOT-RGBD2019 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. The VOT-ST2019, VOT-RT2019 and VOT-LT2019 datasets were refreshed while new datasets were introduced for VOT-RGBT2019 and VOT-RGBD2019. The VOT toolkit has been updated to support both standard short-term, long-term tracking and tracking with multi-channel imagery. Performance of the tested trackers typically by far exceeds standard baselines. The source code for most of the trackers is publicly available from the VOT page. The dataset, the evaluation kit and the results are publicly available at the challenge website(1). Funding Agencies|Slovenian research agencySlovenian Research Agency - Slovenia [J2-8175, P2-0214, P2-0094]; Czech Science Foundation Project GACR [P103/12/G084]; MURI project - MoD/DstlMURI; EPSRCEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP/N019415/1]; WASP; VR (ELLIIT, LAST, and NCNN); SSF (SymbiCloud); AIT Strategic Research Programme; Faculty of Computer Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Background: The biting behaviour and dispersal of insect vectors in the field underlies the transmission of many diseases. Here, a novel collection methodology coupled with the molecular analysis of blood-meal sources and digestion rates is introduced with the aim of aiding the understanding of two critical and relatively understudied mosquito behaviours: plasticity in blood-host choice and vector dispersal. Results: A collection strategy utilising a transect of mosquito traps placed at 50 m intervals allowed the collection of blood-fed Anopheles coluzzii from a malaria-endemic village of southern Ghana where human host availability ranged from zero (a cattle pen), increasing until humans were the dominant host choice (the middle of the village). Blood-meal analysis using PCR showed statistically significant variation in blood-meal origins for mosquitoes collected across the 250 m transect: with decreasing trend in Bovine Blood Index (OR = 0.60 95% CI: 0.49-0.73, P < 0.01) and correspondingly, an increasing trend in Human Blood Index (OR = 1.50 95% CI: 1.05-2.16, P = 0.028) as the transect approached the village. Using qPCR, the host DNA remaining in the blood meal was quantified for field-caught mosquitoes and calibrated according to timed blood digestion in colony mosquitoes. Time since blood meal was consumed and the corresponding distance the vector was caught from its blood-host allowed the estimation of An. coluzzii dispersal rates. Within 7 hours of feeding, mosquitoes typically remained within 50 m of their blood-host but at 60 hours they had dispersed up to 250 m. Conclusions: Using this methodology the remarkably small spatial scale at which An. coluzzii blood-host choice can change was demonstrated. In addition, conducting qPCR on host blood from field-caught mosquitoes and calibrating with timed experiments with colonised mosquitoes presents a novel methodology for investigating the dispersal behaviour of vectors. Future adaptations to this novel method to make it broadly applicable to other types of setting are also discussed. Universiteit Stellenbosch, National Institute for Health Research, National Health and Medical Research Council Scopus

For 50 years or so, visual search experiments have been used to examine how humans find behaviourally relevant objects in complex visual scenes. For the same length of time, there has been a dispute over whether this search is performed in a serial or parallel fashion. In this paper, we approach this dispute by numerically fitting a serial search model and a parallel search model to reaction time (RT) distributions from three visual search experiments (feature search, conjunction search, spatial configuration search). In order to do so, we used a free-likelihood method based on a novel kernel density estimator (KDE). The serial search model was the Competitive Guided Search (CGS) model by Moran et al. [(2013). Competitive guided search: Meeting the challenge of benchmark RT distributions. Journal of Vision, 13(8), 24–24.]. We were able to replicate the ability of CGS to model RT distributions from visual search experiments, and demonstrated that CGS generalizes well to new data. The parallel model was based on the biased-competition theory and utilized a very simple biologicallyplausible winner-take-all (WTA) mechanism from Heinke and Humphreys’s [(2003). Attention, spatial representation and visual neglect: Simulating emergent attention and spatial memory in the Selective Attention for Identification Model (SAIM). Psychological Review, 110(1), 29–87.]. With this mechanism, SAIM has been able to explain a broad range of attentional phenomena but it was not specifically designed to model RT distributions in visual search. Nevertheless, the WTA was able to reproduce these distributions. However, a direct comparison of the two models suggested that the serial CGS is slightly better equipped to explain the RT distributions than the WTA mechanism. The CGS’s success was mainly down the usage of the Wald distribution which was specifically designed to model visual search. Future WTA versions will have to find a biologically plausible mechanism to reproduce such a RT distribution. Finally, both models suffered from a failure to generalize across all display sizes. From these comparisons, we developed suggestions for improving the models and motivated empirical studies to devise a stronger test for the two types of searches.

Study Objective. To describe the characteristics and clinical outcomes of hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients who received adjunctive cytomegalovirus intravenous immune globulin (CMV-IVIG) for probable or proven CMV disease. Design. Retrospective cohort study. Setting. Large, university-affiliated, tertiary-care medical center. Patients. Thirty-five adult HSCT recipients who received at least one dose of CMV-IVIG for adjunctive treatment of probable or proven CMV disease between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2007. Measurements and Main Results. All-cause mortality at hospital discharge was the primary outcome. All patients received an allogeneic HSCT. Twenty-six patients (74%) had pneumonitis, nine (26%) had enteritis, and 29 (83%) had CMV viremia. All patients received concomitant antiviral therapy; 31 (89%) received ganciclovir, and 14 (40%) received foscarnet. All-cause mortality at hospital discharge was 49% (17 patients). Patient characteristics associated with mortality included requiring intubation for CMV pneumonia (11 [79%] of 14 nonsurvivors vs 3 (25%) of 12 survivors, p=0.016) and earlier disease onset after HSCT (median 48 days for nonsurvivors vs 106 days for survivors, p

The current salvage therapies for relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are unsatisfactory. Over the past 7 years, we have used two salvage regimens: fludarabine, cytarabine, and idarubicin with (FLAG-IM) or without gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO) (9 mg/m(2) on Day 8) (FLAG-I) in relapsed/refractory AML. Three-quarters of patients also received concurrent G-CSF. Seventy-one patients were treated, 23 with FLAG-I and 48 with FLAG-IM. The median duration of follow-up was 30.6 months. The treatment groups were well balanced with median ages of 48 years (range 18-70) and 47 years (range 20-68), unfavorable cytogenetics in 57% and 35%, prior allogeneic stem cell transplant in 43% and 42%, and CR1 duration

Study Objective. To compare clinical outcomes of patients receiving an alternative dosage of meropenem with those of patients receiving imipenem-cilastatin or the traditional dosage of meropenem after failure of or intolerance to cefepime for treatment of febrile neutropenia. Design. Retrospective, single-center cohort study. Setting. 1250-bed urban academic medical center. Patients. One hundred twenty-seven adults with neutropenic fever who received either imipenem-cilastatin or meropenem; imipenem-cilastatin was the preferred carbapenem until September 1, 2006, after which meropenem became the formulary carbapenem. Measurements and Main Results. Of the 127 patients, 40 received imipenem-cilastatin 500 mg every 6 hours between September 1, 2005, and August 31, 2006; 87 patients received meropenem between September 1, 2006, and August 31, 2007: 29 received a traditional dosage of meropenem 1 g every 8 hours, and 58 received an alternative dosage of meropenem 500 mg every 6 hours. Primary outcomes of time to defervescence (median 3 vs 2 vs 3 days), need for additional antibiotics (20% vs 17% vs 14%), and time to receipt of additional antibiotics (median 5 vs 2 vs 1 days) were not significantly different among the imipenem-cilastatin, traditionally dosed meropenem, and alternatively dosed meropenem groups, respectively. In addition, significant differences in secondary outcomes, which were treatment duration (median 10 vs 8 vs 8 days), seizure rate (0% vs 0% vs 0%), in-hospital mortality (5% vs 7% vs 7%), and 30-day mortality (13% vs 7% vs 14%), were not identified among the three groups, respectively. Conclusion. The alternative meropenem dosage of 500 mg every 6 hours yielded similar patient outcomes, including time to defervescence, need for additional antibiotics, duration of therapy, and mortality, when compared with the traditional meropenem dosage and imipenem-cilastatin in adults with febrile neutropenia. In addition, no adverse effects on clinical outcomes were observed with the alternative dosage of meropenem.

This article considers trends in state aid and research suggesting that low-income high school students do not prepare for college because they believe it is unaffordable. Authors posit a cultural ecological framework for examining how students think about going to and paying for college, asserting that preparation for college and financial aid is multifaceted and longitudinal.

© 2015 IEEE. The Visual Object Tracking challenge 2015, VOT2015, aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. Results of 62 trackers are presented. The number of tested trackers makes VOT 2015 the largest benchmark on short-term tracking to date. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the appendix. Features of the VOT2015 challenge that go beyond its VOT2014 predecessor are: (i) a new VOT2015 dataset twice as large as in VOT2014 with full annotation of targets by rotated bounding boxes and per-frame attribute, (ii) extensions of the VOT2014 evaluation methodology by introduction of a new performance measure. The dataset, the evaluation kit as well as the results are publicly available at the challenge website.

Over the last century, one of the more contested issues in academe has been the epistemological battle about the nature of knowledge. Put simply, if truth is absolute and not created, then the standards used to admit students, and hire and promote faculty may be divorced from the identity of the person or the social context in which they operate. Decontextualized, objective criteria may be developed and employed to assess the qualifications of an individual; consequently, ideas such as merit become the cornerstone of academic life. Given this view, whether a student merits admission

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) remains one of the most catastrophic comorbidities associated with prematurity. In spite of extensive research, the disease remains unsolved. The aims of this article are to present the current state of the science on the pathogenesis of NEC, summarize the clinical presentation and severity staging of the disease, and highlight the nursing assessments required for early identification of NEC and ongoing care for infants diagnosed with this gastrointestinal disease. The distributions of systemic and intestinal clinical signs that are most sensitive to nursing assessment and associated with Bell Staging Criteria are presented. These descriptive data are representative of 117 cases of NEC diagnosed in low-gestational-age infants (

The approved 7-day schedule of subcutaneous azacitidine for myelodysplastic syndrome is associated with injection site reactions and bruising and may be inconvenient because of the need for weekend doses. Although pharmacokinetic data with IV azacitidine suggests equivalence, there are no efficacy data published. Patients with all myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) FAB subtypes were enrolled and received 75 mg/m(2)/d of azacitidine by 20-min intravenous infusion for 5 days in every 28 days. Global methylation studies were performed at baseline and prior to Cycle 3. Twenty-five patients were enrolled and 22 were evaluable. Median age was 69.5 years; 9 (41%) patients had lower-risk disease (IPSS Low or Int-1) and 13 (59%) had higher-risk disease (IPSS Int-2 or High). Twenty-seven percent of patients responded (5 CRs and 1 PR). The median time to response was 108 days. The median PFS was 339 days (11.3 months), the median OS was 444 days (14.8 months) and the median duration of response (DOR) was 450 days (15.0 months). Global methylation studies suggest a greater degree of demethylation in responders. This regimen appeared to offer a PR + CR rate and median DOR somewhat similar to what has been reported with the 7-day subcutaneous regimen; however, OS was shorter.

To compare clinical outcomes of patients receiving an alternative dosage of meropenem with those of patients receiving imipenem-cilastatin or the traditional dosage of meropenem after failure of or intolerance to cefepime for treatment of febrile neutropenia.Retrospective, single-center cohort study.1250-bed urban academic medical center.One hundred twenty-seven adults with neutropenic fever who received either imipenem-cilastatin or meropenem; imipenem-cilastatin was the preferred carbapenem until September 1, 2006, after which meropenem became the formulary carbapenem.Of the 127 patients, 40 received imipenem-cilastatin 500 mg every 6 hours between September 1, 2005, and August 31, 2006; 87 patients received meropenem between September 1, 2006, and August 31, 2007: 29 received a traditional dosage of meropenem 1 g every 8 hours, and 58 received an alternative dosage of meropenem 500 mg every 6 hours. Primary outcomes of time to defervescence (median 3 vs 2 vs 3 days), need for additional antibiotics (20% vs 17% vs 14%), and time to receipt of additional antibiotics (median 5 vs 2 vs 1 days) were not significantly different among the imipenem-cilastatin, traditionally dosed meropenem, and alternatively dosed meropenem groups, respectively. In addition, significant differences in secondary outcomes, which were treatment duration (median 10 vs 8 vs 8 days), seizure rate (0% vs 0% vs 0%), in-hospital mortality (5% vs 7% vs 7%), and 30-day mortality (13% vs 7% vs 14%), were not identified among the three groups, respectively.The alternative meropenem dosage of 500 mg every 6 hours yielded similar patient outcomes, including time to defervescence, need for additional antibiotics, duration of therapy, and mortality, when compared with the traditional meropenem dosage and imipenem-cilastatin in adults with febrile neutropenia. In addition, no adverse effects on clinical outcomes were observed with the alternative dosage of meropenem.

Studies on species of Monogenea have shown that these parasites often infect only a specific host species, genus, or family, and that they attach only to specific sites within hosts. Few studies, however, examine habitat specificity across host and habitat scales. In this study, we focused on host, macrohabitat, and microhabitat specificity in the monogenean diplozoon Afrodiplozoon polycotyleus, a gill parasite of African cyprinid fishes, Barbus spp. We first compared the occurrence of A. polycotyleus among 4 species of Barbus from a single location in the Mpanga River of western Uganda; Barbus neumayeri was the only species infected with the parasite. We then quantified parasite prevalence and mean abundance in B. neumayeri from a series of river and swamp sites in the same drainage, looking for environmental predictors of diplozoon prevalence and abundance over a broad habitat scale. The prevalence and mean abundance of A. polycotyleus on gills of B. neumayeri was highest in the hypoxic swamp habitat, followed by the intermittent stream sites, and faster flowing river sites. Parasite prevalence and mean abundance across habitats were negatively related to both water current and dissolved oxygen concentration. Within hosts, A. polycotyleus was strongly specific among hemibranchs in poorly oxygenated water and was found on arch 2, hemibranch 4 most frequently.

Patients with hematologic malignancies and hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients are at high risk for bacterial bloodstream infections (BSI) owing to resistant organisms. Data describing the outcomes of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal (VRE) BSI in this patient population are limited. We performed a retrospective cohort study of all cases of VRE BSI that occurred between February 1996 and December 2002 on the Leukemia/HSCT unit at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. There were 68 episodes of VRE BSI in 60 patients with acute (53%) or chronic (8%) leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (22%) or other malignant hematologic disorders (17%). A total of 13, 32 and 32% were recipients of autologous, related and matched-unrelated transplants, respectively. Forty-two of allograft recipients had active acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and 32% chronic GVHD. Only 57% were neutropenic, 52% had refractory/relapsed malignancy and 60% had end organ dysfunction with a median APACHE II score of 17. Median survival after VRE BSI was 19 days. Pneumonia, receipt of anti-fungal drugs and low APACHE II score at the time of the VRE BSI remained significant risk factors for death on multivariable analysis. Our analysis suggests that in patients with hematological malignancies or HSCT, VRE may not have the behavior of a virulent pathogen. VRE BSI may simply be a marker of these patients' already existing critical medical condition.