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Minor professional sport in North America includes the many leagues that are not part of the “Big Five.” For these leagues, ticket sales, especially season ticket sales, are one of the major sources of club revenue. Segmenting customers into homogenous groups is well established as an effective means to render efficient marketing. In addition, market segmentation has been well researched in a variety of contexts; however, further research in the area of minor professional sport in North America will advance our knowledge and offer practical value to practitioners. Therefore, this research, in collaboration with a minor league professional sport club, provides a framework for season ticket holder segmentation application by minor professional sport leagues and clubs, and offers practical recommendations to reach niche markets.

Translating the concept of a living wage into a cash figure presents a number of challenges. A recent review of the approaches used in the UK explored these, with the aim of creating a unified and improved calculation. Designing a living wage relies on some technical decisions, such as which data sources are most appropriate. But many of the building blocks underlying a living wage require judgements on societal values, expectations and norms. The living wage rates in the UK are voluntary and promoted by campaign groups; this means any methodology needs to be empirically sound but also recognise the realities facing employers. No perfect approach can exist. But through analysis, consultation with stakeholders and a clear governance structure, the method used in London and the rest of the UK offers a robust, respected and up-to-date way to calculate the income needed to meet a decent standard of living.

Aim Cohort data suggest that anastomotic leak occurs after 8% of right colectomies causing significant morbidity and mortality. Patient selection, intra-operative factors, and technical variation all contribute to risk of leak. The EAGLE study will assess whether implementation of the European Society of Coloproctology (ESCP) Safe Anastomosis Intervention reduces anastomotic leak following right colectomy. Methods An international, multi-centre, cluster randomised trial will be undertaken with hospitals as clusters. Hospitals will be recruited in a number of distinct phases, with each phase following the same research plan, in which clusters are randomised to one of three, staggered (dog-leg) schedules for implementation of the Safe Anastomosis Intervention. Results Results from different phases will be meta-analysed. The intervention is a three-component behavioural change programme for surgeons, anaesthetists and operating room staff, supported by an online learning environment. All colorectal surgical units around the world will be eligible. Adults undergoing elective or emergency right colectomy or ileocaecal resection, by any approach and for any indication will be included. The primary outcome is 30-day anastomotic leak rate, defined as clinical or radiologically-detected leak or intra-abdominal or pelvic collection. Assuming hospitals provide data for an average of 10 patients per two month recruitment period, 333 clusters (4440 patients in total) will allow for detection of an absolute risk reduction of anastomotic leak from 8.1% to 5.6% (relative risk reduction 30%). This protocol adheres to Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Intervention Trials (SPIRIT). Discussion The protocol describes the methods for an evaluation of a hospital-level, education-based quality improvement intervention targeted to reduce the life-threatening surgical complication of anastomotic leak.

Exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are defined as sustained worsening of a patient's condition beyond normal day-to-day variations that is acute in onset, and that may also require a change in medication and/or hospitalization. Exacerbations have a significant and prolonged impact on health status and outcomes, and negative effects on pulmonary function. A significant proportion of exacerbations are unreported and therefore left untreated, leading to a poorer prognosis than those treated. COPD exacerbations are heterogeneous, and various phenotypes have been proposed which differ in biologic basis, prognosis, and response to therapy. Identification of biomarkers could enable phenotype-driven approaches for the management and prevention of exacerbations. For example, several biomarkers of inflammation can help to identify exacerbations most likely to respond to oral corticosteroids and antibiotics, and patients with a frequent exacerbator phenotype, for whom preventative treatment is appropriate. Reducing the frequency of exacerbations would have a beneficial impact on patient outcomes and prognosis. Preventative strategies include modification of risk factors, treatment of comorbid conditions, the use of bronchodilator therapy with long-acting β2-agonists or long-acting muscarinic antagonists, and inhaled corticosteroids. A better understanding of the mechanisms underlying COPD exacerbations will help to optimize use of the currently available and new interventions for preventing and treating exacerbations.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a highly prevalent disease characterized by nonreversible airway obstruction. Well-characterized symptoms such as exertional dyspnea and fatigue have a negative impact on patients' quality of life (QoL) and restrict physical activity in daily life. The impact of COPD symptoms on QoL is often underestimated; for example, 36% of patients who describe their symptoms as being mild-to-moderate also admit to being too breathless to leave the house. Additionally, early morning and nighttime symptoms are a particular problem. Methods are available to allow clinicians to accurately assess COPD symptoms, including patient questionnaires. Integrated approaches to COPD management, particularly pulmonary rehabilitation, are effective strategies for addressing symptoms, improving exercise capacity and, potentially, also increasing physical activity. Inhaled bronchodilators continue to be the mainstay of drug therapy in COPD, where options can be tailored to meet patients' needs with careful selection of the inhaled medication and the device used for its delivery. Overall, an integrated approach to disease management should be considered for improving QoL and subsequent patient outcomes in COPD.

There is a significant risk of surgical resection during the lifetime of an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patient: laparoscopic surgery has been increasingly applied to the management of IBD with short and long-term advantages. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that laparoscopic surgery for IBD, performed by a surgical trainee under the supervision of an experienced trainer, is feasible and safe. All surgical procedures were sub-divided in six critical steps in order to define the procedure as supervised trainee performed (STP) when the trainer was present unscrubbed in the theatre or assisting and trainer performed (TNER) when the trainer performed two or more critical steps of the procedure. Included were all patients undergoing laparoscopic resection for IBD between January 2009 and December 2013. Thirty-day mortality and morbidity were the primary outcomes. Reoperations and rehospitalizations within 30 days of discharge were recorded prospectively and were the secondary outcomes together with conversion rate and length of hospital stay. One hundred fifty-one patients were included: 77 (50.99 %) STP and 74 (49.01 %) TNER. No deaths occurred, and 30-day morbidity was 27.15 % with no differences between the groups. Operating time was longer in the STP (166.6 ± 53.31 vs 130.4 ± 49.15). Five patients (2 vs 3) required reoperation (3.31 %), while 13 patients (8.6 %) required readmission. Laparoscopic surgery for IBD performed by a supervised trainee is safe compared to trainers performed procedures despite a longer operating time. Randomized clinical trials are needed to confirm these preliminary results and to investigate long-term outcomes.

The problem of determining a function from a subset of its spherical means has a rich history in pure and applied mathematics. Its connection with photoacoustic imaging has already been made abundantly clear in earlier chapters in this volume: when the sound speed νs in a medium is constant the pressure at time t and point r is expressed in terms of spherical means of the pressure, and its time derivative, at any earlier time t′.We begin this chapter with a review of the connections between spherical means and the several equations which arise in the time or frequency domains in the analysis of photoacoustic imaging and show how the inverse problem of photoacoustic imaging can be formulated as the problem of recovering a function from some collection of its spherical means. In §2 we discuss the uniqueness problem of when a function is determined by a collection of its spherical means, and when the initial value of a wave equation is determined by the value of the solution on a subset of the spatial domain over a given time interval. In §3 we specialize to the question of actually recovering (or approximately recovering) a function supported in a region D in space (or in the plane) from its spherical means with centers on the boundary of D for fairly general regions D. In connection with this topic, it is convenient to also discuss some related work on the characterization of the range of the spherical mean transform, and of related wave equations. (Several other chapters in this volume have some discussion of the range: see the chapter by S. Patch and the chapter by M. Agranovsky, P. Kuchment, and L. Kunyansky.) In §4, we specialize to the case when the family of spherical means are centered on sets with simple geometry, and present some of the filtered back-projection formulas that have been found. This section is largely independent of the preceding two, and so the reader interested in explicit formulas can jump directly from the introduction. We shall confine the discussion of this chapter to two and three dimensions, since these are relevant to photoacoustic tomography. Many of the results do have higher dimensional generalizations, and the interested reader may pursue these in the original articles.

We present a proof of principle for the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons that is at the center of many theories on the evolution of cooperation. We establish the tragedy in the context of a general chemostat model with two species, the cooperator and the cheater. Both species have the same growth rate function and yield constant, but the cooperator allocates a portion of the nutrient uptake towards the production of a public good -the "Commons" in the Tragedy- which is needed to digest the externally supplied nutrient. The cheater on the other hand does not produce this enzyme, and allocates all nutrient uptake towards its own growth. We prove that when the cheater is present initially, both the cooperator and the cheater will eventually go extinct, hereby confirming the occurrence of the tragedy. We also show that without the cheater, the cooperator can survive indefinitely, provided that at least a low level of public good or processed nutrient is available initially. Our results provide a predictive framework for the analysis of cooperator-cheater dynamics in a powerful model system of experimental evolution., Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures

XRCC1 is a scaffold protein that interacts with several DNA repair proteins and plays a critical role in DNA base excision repair (BER). XRCC1 protein is in a tight complex with DNA ligase IIIalpha (Lig III) and this complex is involved in the ligation step of both BER and repair of DNA single strand breaks. The majority of XRCC1 has previously been demonstrated to exist in a phosphorylated form and cells containing mutant XRCC1, that is unable to be phosphorylated, display a reduced rate of single strand break repair. Here, in an unbiased assay, we demonstrate that the cytoplasmic form of the casein kinase 2 (CK2) protein is the major protein kinase activity involved in phosphorylation of XRCC1 in human cell extracts and that XRCC1 phosphorylation is required for XRCC1-Lig III complex stability. We demonstrate that XRCC1-Lig III complex containing mutant XRCC1, in which CK2 phosphorylation sites have been mutated, is unstable. We also find that a knockdown of CK2 by siRNA results in both reduced XRCC1 phosphorylation and stability, which also leads to a reduced amount of Lig III and accumulation of DNA strand breaks. We therefore propose that CK2 plays an important role in DNA repair by contributing to the stability of XRCC1-Lig III complex.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is commonly performed, and several factors increase the risk of open conversion, prolonging operating time and hospital stay. Preoperative stratification would improve consent, scheduling and identify appropriate training cases. The aim of this study was to develop a validated risk score for conversion for use in clinical practice.Preoperative patient and disease-related variables were identified from a prospective cholecystectomy database (CholeS) of 8820 patients, divided into main and validation sets. Preoperative predictors of conversion were identified by multivariable binary logistic regression. A risk score was developed and validated using a forward stepwise approach.Some 297 procedures (3.4%) were converted. The risk score was derived from six significant predictors: age (p = 0.005), sex (p 0.001), indication for surgery (p 0.001), ASA (p 0.001), thick-walled gallbladder (p = 0.040) and CBD diameter (p = 0.004). Testing the score on the validation set yielded an AUROC = 0.766 (p 0.001), and a score6 identified patients at high risk of conversion (7.1% vs. 1.2%).This validated risk score allows preoperative identification of patients at six-fold increased risk of conversion to open cholecystectomy.

FIRMAN, K., KEMP, L, FINCH, D., MALLIA, A and SCIORTINO, J., 2011. Designing a Sustainable Beach Replenishment Scheme for a Site in Malta. In: Micallef, A. (ed.), MCRR3–2010 Conference Proceedings, Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 61, pp. 36–43. Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy, ISSN 0749–0208. The Malta Tourism Authority is planning to undertake environmentally sound beach replenishment along a rocky stretch of coastline immediately south of Qawra Point, Salina Bay. Refinement and confirmation of an initial beach layout through numerical modelling was undertaken to support Environmental Impact Studies required for the development permit for the creation of a recreational beach. There is no offshore sand available for replenishment in Malta. Instead, sand must be crushed from rock originating from an overseas quarry; local limestone is too friable. This reduces the risk of biological contamination and enables the granulometric characteristics of the sediment to be designed to suit the wave...

The paper is devoted to the range description of the Radon type transform that averages a function over all spheres centered on a given sphere. Such transforms arise naturally in thermoacoustic tomography, a novel method of medical imaging. Range descriptions have recently been obtained for such transforms, and consisted of smoothness and support conditions, moment conditions, and some additional orthogonality conditions of spectral nature. It has been noticed that in odd dimensions, surprisingly, the moment conditions are superfluous and can be eliminated. It is shown in this text that in fact the same happens in any dimension.

Let B represent the ball of radius ρ in Rn and S its boundary; consider the map , where represents the mean value of f on a sphere of radius r centered at p. We summarize and discuss the results concerning the injectivity of , the characterization of the range of , and the inversion of . There is a close connection between mean values over spheres and solutions of initial value problems for the wave equation. We also summarize the results for the corresponding wave equation problem.

Background We report experience with Ultraflex metallic stents (Boston Scientific, Natick, MA) inserted at rigid bronchoscopy under general anesthesia for palliation of benign and malignant upper airway obstruction. Methods Notes of all patients treated with Ultraflex stents from 1999 to 2003 were reviewed for symptomatic response, spirometric data, and any complications before discharge home. Long-term outcome was assessed by questionnaires sent to patients' general practitioners. Results Recruited were 66 patients (12 benign, 54 malignant airway obstructions). Before discharge home, breathlessness improved in 11 of 12 patients with benign obstruction and in 39 of 54 with malignancies. Postoperative complications in 10 patients with malignant obstructions and in 2 patients with benign obstruction were successfully controlled. It was not possible to perform preoperative pulmonary function tests in most of the patients who presented as emergencies. Mean improvement in forced expiratory volume in 1 second was 0.88 liters in 3 patients with benign obstruction and 0.28 liters in 14 patients with malignant obstruction, and mean peak expiratory flow rate improved by 109 L/min and 97 L/min, respectively. General practitioners completed questionnaires for 12 benign patients and 46 of 54 patients with malignancies. At a mean follow-up of 1017 days (range, 46 to 1120 days), 10 of the 12 patients with benign disease were alive and 7 of 46 patients with malignant airway obstruction were alive, with a median survival of 128 days (mean, 361; range, 3 to 1859 days). Most survivors had Medical Research Council grade III breathlessness or better, with few stent-related symptoms. Conclusions Ultraflex stents proved safe and effective in prolonged palliation of benign and malignant airways obstruction.

Suppose n > 1 is an odd integer, f is a smooth function supported in a ball B with boundary S, and u is the solution of the initial value problem u tt - Δ x u = 0, (x, t) ∈ R n x [0, ∞); u(x,t = 0) = 0, u t (x, t = 0) = f(x), x ∈ R n . We characterize the range of the map f → u| S×[0,∞) and give a stable scheme for the inversion of this map. This also characterizes the range of the map sending f to its mean values over spheres centred on S.

85 literature sources and 61 spider species have to be added to the "Catalogue of spiders of the north west German Lowland and Schleswig-Holstein", published in 1994. Nine species have to be omitted from the original list. Currently, the total number of spider species in the region is 653, including at least 21 doubtful records. This overall large regional species pool obviously results from the large size of the area included and its landscape diversity with coastal zones as well as lowlands with both anthropogenic and natural habitats of different natural landscapes.

The BRCA2 gene encodes a large multidomain protein of 3418 residues. Studies to elucidate the mechanisms by which BRCA2 prevents tumour formation have been largely restricted by the size of the protein. Based on secondary structure predictions we have cloned regions across the BRCA2 gene and determined the solubility of the proteins they encode. The fragment consisting of amino acids 290-456 BRCA2 was found predominantly in the soluble portion of the cell lysate and was purified by ion exchange and nickel-NTA affinity chromatography. CD spectroscopy revealed secondary structure elements consistent with a folded peptide and limited proteolysis was used to identify a potential novel domain.

Suppose u is the solution of the initial value problem u tt - Δ x u = 0, (x,t) ∈ R n × [0,∞) u(x, t=0) = f(x), u τ (x, t=0) = g(x), x ∈ R n Suppose n ≥ 1 is odd, f and g are supported in a ball B with boundary S, and one of f or g is zero. We derive identities relating the norm of f or g to the norm of the trace of u on S x [0,∞). These identities are derived using integral geometric and multiplier methods.

We show that in two dimensions we can determine a connection from the line integrals of the connection with values in skew-Hermitian m×m matrices provided that the connection has a small curvature in an appropriate sense.

book review: Stephen Dalton (2009): Spinnen – Die erfolgreichen Jäger

First record of Dipoena nigroreticulata (Simon, 1879) in Germany (Araneae, Theridiidae)

A classification method for ascertaining characteristical spider communities of different biotope types is presented. Based on a current list of biotope types all data available from a certain area about the spatial distribution of spiders were fed into a data bank an analysed. A largely standardized method has been developed which allows to classify the spider community of each biotope type. The classification is based on a presence/absence matrix and a comparison between the grades of presence in different biotope types.

Standard, or global, tomography involves the reconstruction of a function f from line integrals. Local tomography, in this paper, involves the reconstruction of a related function, $Lf = \alpha (\Lambda f +\mu\Lambda^{-1} f),$ where $\Lambda$ is the square root of the positive Laplacian, $-\Delta .$ This article is a sequel to the article "Local Tomography" [SIAM J. Appl. Math., 52 (1992), pp. 459--484, 1193--1198] by Faridani, Ritman, and Smith. The principal new results are (1) good bounds for $\Lambda f$ and $\Lambda^{-1} f$ outside the support of f, particularly when f has 0 moments up to some order; (2) identification and reduction of global effects in local tomography, i.e., identification and reduction of the dependence of Lf(x) on the values of f at points at an intermediate distance from x; (3) an algorithm for computing approximate density jumps from $\Lambda f$ when f is a linear combination of characteristic functions and a smooth background. Several examples are given: some from real x-ray da...

Looking back at major events of just a few years ago, the landscape was very different in terms of using personal computing devices and Games IT systems. Mirroring the challenge that major corporations have been facing with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies, past Games did not cater well to journalists, athletes and others wishing to use their own device to access information available on the closed environments used to provide secure, highly available Games IT systems: rather than using their own laptop, for example, a journalist would previously use one of a group of dedicated kiosk machines shared with all the other journalists, potentially printing out a news item or results sheet and then retyping it for their own news story.

The Olympic Games is undoubtedly the most high-profile event that takes place on the world stage: audiences are measured in billions, success is a matter of national pride and the organising committee is in the media spotlight throughout the entire lifecycle. The successful staging of these games was more reliant on reliable and secure technology than ever before and the profile of London as the host city exacerbated the risks to the security of the Games. Through the years of preparation, sophisticated attacks such as stuxnet emerged, numerous high-profile data breaches occurred against major corporations and hacktivists regularly caused disruption to websites around the world - including UK Government sites in early 2012. The threat, therefore, of cyber attack against the London Games, and the potential consequences of a successful attack, were both exceptionally high (Fig. 1). In light of this, LOCOG's cyber security strategy focused on five key areas to reduce the risk to the delivery of the Games. Those areas were: governance of security, technology architecture, technical security operations, situational awareness and assurance. Governance, architecture and assurance activities were critical in the planning of and approach to the Games; during the Games, technical security operations and situational awareness came to the fore.

In late 2011, The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) published Delivering London 2012: ICT enabling the Games, highlighting a range of key technologies being prepared for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The purpose of this latest publication is to revisit those technologies and the associated operations surrounding them and summarise what was achieved during the London 2012 Games. With an extraordinarily successful Games delivered and much of the technology decommissioned, it is now possible to provide a greater insight into the solutions and services put in place, including some of the challenges encountered.

It was always anticipated that demand on the London 2012 website would be huge, with a worldwide audience expecting it to be the authoritative source of information on athletes, schedules, results and more during the Games and in the lead up. As such, it could clearly be the number one target for a denial of service attack which, if successful, would disappoint millions of users and represent a significant reputational impact to the Games. Whilst confidentiality was clearly not an issue with a site for which the priority was to distribute information as quickly as possible, integrity was vital to ensure results and so on were accurate and that there was no embarrassing defacement of any content.

The www.london2012.com website was in place from an early stage in preparation for the Games and was a key strand in LOCOGs communications plan, being used to encourage engagement and provide news and updates on progress of the preparations. It was only in the final months before the Games that the focus switched to become much more Games-centric, with information on participating athletes, competition schedules and results coming to the fore.