Topology, screws, spin and hedgehogs are words not normally found in the same scientific article but with the discovery of Weyl fermions in thin tellurine films they actually belong together. The work in this highlight describes how Qui et. al. used the unique properties of tellurine and high magnetic fields to identify the existence of Weyl fermions in a semiconductor. This discovery opens a new window into the intriguing world to topological materials.
Topological semimetals are an exciting new area of research due to their number of predicted and unexpected quantum mechanical states. Understanding these materials may also lead to quantum devices that function at near room temperature.
In a uranium-based compound once dismissed as boring, scientists watched superconductivity arise, perish, then return to life under the influence of high magnetic fields.
Using intense pulsed magnetic fields and measurements at low temperatures, MagLab users have found evidence of a long-sought “spin liquid” in terbium indium oxide (TbInO
3)
The observation of topological states coupled with superconductivity represents an opportunity for scientists to manipulate nontrivial superconducting states via the spin-orbit interaction. While superconductivity has been extensively studied since its discovery in 1910, the advent of topological materials gives scientists a new avenue to explore quantum matter. BiPd is being studied using "MagLab-sized fields" by scientists from LSU in an effort to determine if it is indeed a topological superconductor.
Scientists revealed previously unobserved and unexpected FQH states in monolayer graphene that raise new questions regarding the interaction between electrons in these states.
Ultrafast manipulation of material properties with light could stimulate the development of novel electronics, including quantum computers.
Weyl metals such as tantalum arsenide (TaAs) are predicted to have novel properties arising from a chirality of their electron spins. Scientists induced an imbalance between the left- and right-handed spin states, resulting in a topologically protected current. This was the first time this phenomenon, known as the chiral anomaly, has been observed.
A material already known for its unique behavior is found to carry current in a way never before observed.
This work provides important insight into one of the parent materials of iron-based superconductors.


Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility Why Giants Fall
Hardcover
Description
Ethical failures are rooted in leadership failure, the lack of a corporate culture in which ethical concerns have been integrated, and unresponsiveness to key organizational stakeholders. This book seeks to enhance our understanding of the causes of ethical debacles in an era when ethical missteps can often lead to corporate bankruptcies or worse. Sims offers practical solutions for mitigating damage and preventing such problems from happening in the first place. He also explains how to institutionalize ethics throughout an organization.
Sims asserts that organizations wishing to behave ethically must do more than harbor good intentions. Such companies must implement policies that inculcate the corporate culture with ethical values. They must also commit to ethical behavior in all interactions with internal and external stakeholders, including investors, customers, employees, and the community.
Praeger, 9780275980399, 328pp.
Publication Date: September 30, 2003


If you are preparing for a high-asset divorce, various stressors lie ahead. Parents often face challenges related to parenting time, while high net worth divorces often bring up concerns over the division of marital property. However, child support and alimony are...
Month: August 2020
Divorce is a complicated matter, especially if you and your spouse have significant assets. Although you might think you know every financial detail of your relationship with your spouse, we know all too well that this often isn’t the case. In fact, many people don’t...


Many people believe that if they wear full or partial dentures, they no longer have to schedule appointments with denturists. This is a common mistake because visiting your denturist regularly is necessary to ensure that your oral health does not suffer. Also, your denturist offers a free annual check-up to let you know whether your dentures are in good condition. This blog will let you know the reasons why you should regularly consult your denturist.


Mushrooms are highlighted in snacks as a key ingredient for healthy digestion
Implications - Consumers are turning to easily portable mushroom-based snacks, as they gain a better understanding of the impact of their consumption habits on their health, including their digestive systems. Mushrooms have risen as a key food source for maintaining healthy digestion, as the combination of fungi and bacteria play a role in optimizing gut health. As consumers become better informed about what is necessary to maintain all aspects of their health, they look for products that can easily be integrated into their daily routine.
Workshop Question - How can your brand play a role in the consumers' desire to live a holistic lifestyle?


METHODS: A sample consisting of 20 OKC cases, 10 DCs and 10 RCs was subjected to immunohistochemical staining for osteopontin, CD44v6 and integrin αv, and podoplanin, and semiquantitative analysis was performed.
RESULTS: All factors (except integrin αv) were detected heterogeneously in the constitutive layers of the lining epithelium in all three cyst types. Key observations were significant upregulation of CD44v6 and podoplanin in OKC compared to DCs and RCs, suggesting that these protein molecules may play crucial roles in promoting local invasiveness in OKC (P<0.05). Osteopontin underexpression and distribution patterns were indistinctive among all three cysts indicating its limited role as pro-invasive factor. Clinical parameters showed no significant correlations with all protein factors investigated.
CONCLUSIONS: Present findings suggest that an osteopontinlow CD44v6high and podoplaninhigh immunoprofile most probably represent epithelial signatures of OKC and are markers of local invasiveness in this cyst.
MATERIALS & METHODS: Podoplanin expression was evaluated immunohistochemically in 153 breast cancers. Tumours with ≥ 10% distinct cytoplasmic podoplanin staining in CAFs were considered as positive.
RESULTS: In 65.3% of analysed tumours, podoplanin expression was found positive in CAFs. According to our results, podoplanin positive CAFs correlated significantly with tumour size (p= 0.012), tumour grade (p= 0.032) and cerbB2 score (p= 0.032).
DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that podoplanin expression by CAFs could predict poor patient outcome in breast carcinoma.


Singapore’s latest iconic office development 79 Robinson Road, located at the intersection of Tanjong Pagar business district and the upcoming Greater Southern Waterfront, has received its Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP). The development is jointly owned by CapitaLand, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd.
Over 70% of the development’s 518,000 square feet (sq ft) of net lettable area, primarily in the low- and mid-zone, have been taken up to date. Multinational companies occupying the newly completed Grade A office building include Allianz, EFG Bank, Howden Insurance, and William Grant & Sons amongst others. Bridge+ will introduce 56,000 sq ft of collaborative spaces at 79 Robinson Road in 4Q 2020.
In addition to a variety of meeting and event spaces accessible by tenants of the building, Bridge+ 79 Robinson Road offers fully furnished contemporary workspaces for companies of all sizes.
Tenants at 79 Robinson Road will be taking over their premises from June 2020 onwards, after the end of the circuit breaker period, and expected to move in progressively from 3Q 2020.
One-of-a-kind design features
79 Robinson Road is designed by American architecture firm Gensler, in collaboration with Singapore’s DCA Architects. The 180-metre tall development features a pixelated façade with panel sizes of varying sizes and tilt angles, akin to an algorithm of binary codes. Horizontal façade LED lights within the curtainwall frames enhances the dynamic and pixelated effect of 79 Robinson Road during night time. The energy-efficient façade is also designed to allow maximum light penetration while reducing solar heat gain.
Among the CBD office developments scheduled for completion in 2020, 79 Robinson Road boasts the largest floorplate at 23,000 sq ft, allowing tenants the flexibility to plan the most efficient layouts for their businesses. It is home to the city’s first in-built double-volume office space, curated for a single tenant’s use. Called the Sky Village, it occupies levels 27 and 28, greeting guests with a dramatic sea view as lift doors open.
Executives taking a breather from their workspaces can head to the Sky Terrace on level 21, where they can enjoy the coastal views or take part in community events organised by Bridge+. They can also access the building’s roof garden to enjoy stunning views of the CBD and even book the space to host exclusive events.
Facial recognition technology will also allow occupiers convenient and secure access to the building. The development has received the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum Award for its sustainable and environmentally friendly features, which include lush greenery as well as energy- and water-efficient building systems.
Strategic location
Executives working at 79 Robinson Road can enjoy sheltered access to and from Tanjong Pagar MRT station on the East-West line. The upcoming Shenton Way MRT station on the Thomson-East Coast line will also be a short 200 metres away. 79 Robinson Road is set to further benefit from the vibrancy of the upcoming Greater Southern Waterfront, a mixed-use district with residential, recreation and working spaces when completed.
Community building
79 Robinson Road aims to create a vibrant collaborative ecosystem in the building and the Tanjong Pagar precinct. Bridge+ will spearhead and curate unique community-driven programmes to foster connections and interactions among its members, tenants of the building and businesses and professionals working in the CBD.
One such early initiative is the seeding of a FinTech Hub at Bridge+ 79 Robinson Road. Bridge+ has inked Memorandums of Understanding with key members of the Singapore FinTech ecosystem, including the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network, FinTech Consortium, LongHash, Singapore FinTech Association, Tribe Accelerator and United Overseas Bank (UOB), to deliver programmes such as seminars, hackathons, lab crawls, industry gatherings and exhibitions to bring together the FinTech community.


There are multiple ways to split a bedroom into two rooms. Other than building a plasterboard wall to split the rooms, you can also think about:
Placing a bookshelf or closet Curtains Folding screens/ room dividers
These solutions are often preferable in studios or properties with little square meters.
Placing a plasterboard wall
The easiest way to divide a bedroom into two rooms is by placing a wall. The material of the wall can be decided upon depending on the reason for dividing the room and the plan for future usage of the rooms. Often, these walls will be made from plasterboard but these thin walls are not very soundproof, making it not an ideal solution for bedrooms. Therefore, a more durable and thicker wall is often recommended for bedrooms.
Things to keep in mind
Do keep in mind that having a window in each new bedroom is required to be officially noted as a bedroom in a housing listing for example. Bathroom access is another often forgotten aspect of splitting bedrooms. When the bathroom is directly connected to the bedroom with no other entry, a second access to the bathroom is preferable. Take into account, that by placing a wall you lose overall square meters, which can decrease the price of the property.


By Harm Reduction International
Despite the well-documented health and social impacts of substance use in general and injecting drug use specifically, harm reduction interventions remain very limited in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Only six countries implement needle and syringe programs (NSPs) - Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia - and four provide opioid agonist therapy (OAT) services as part of harm reduction - Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, and Palestine. Even in countries where NSPs and OAT are provided, accessibility and coverage remain a challenge, due to lack of funding, legal issues, stigma and discrimination, criminalisation of drug use, lack of political commitment. Overdose response is minimal and limited to only two countries - Lebanon and Morocco. No drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are currently available in the region nor programs specific to the use of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS).


After the Great Flood Noach became drunk and exposed in his tent. His son Cham saw his father’s shameful state and ran to report it to his brothers, Sheim and Yafes.
The Torah describes how they both took a garment and walked backwards into Noach’s tent, averting their gaze to cover him. While it seems obvious already, the Torah goes on to stress that Sheim and Yafes did
NOT see their father’s nakedness.
This comes to teach us that they acknowledged the problem, but without getting stuck on it they moved on to find a solution. In contrast, Cham saw Noach’s flaw only, and unable to see past it how to help him, it reflected the same flaw in Cham.
‘People are our mirrors from G-d,’ taught the Baal Shem Tov.
What does this mean?
Our interactions with others are a mirror and help us discover more about ourselves and how we can help others grow with us.
When faced with someone’s shortcomings, do you:
A.) Respond with empathy and action, like Sheim and Yafes, asking yourself what you can learn from the situation or how you can improve it? B.) React with criticism, like Cham, dwelling on the other person’s flaws non-stop, without it helping anyone?
Before losing ourselves in annoyance over someone’s imperfections, let’s take that moment and really tune in to its quiet message:
The key to transforming negativity we see around us is to start with us, within ourselves.


Preparedness is the key to any practice’s financial survival. However, being properly prepared means first taking a hard and honest look at a practice’s current financial health.
From the final quarter of 2020 through the end of 2021, there will likely continue to be a lot of uncertainty surrounding the financial risks that will be faced by private healthcare practices.
Start creating your roadmap for the risks ahead by exploring our Whitepaper, that will provide you with a methodology for identifying various financial risks.


Electroantennograms (EAGs) from field-collectedHyles lineata moths were recorded in response to 10 individual floral volatiles identified fromClarkia breweri (Onagraceae), to 22 scent compounds produced by other moth-pollinated flowers and to eight ubiquitous "green leaf volatiles." Females' EAGs were generally 1.5- to 2-fold greater than those observed for male moths. Female:male EAG rank orders were significantly correlated, but marked differences in order were observed for some compounds (e.g., benzyl alcohol, cinnamic aldehyde, geraniol, and linalool). Linalool, benzyl acetate, methyl salicylate, and pyranoid linalool oxide elicited the largest EAG responses (-1.2 to -0.8 mV) among scent compounds fromC. breweri. EAG responses were significantly lower for monoterpenes as a pooled compound class than for aromatic esters, alcohols and aldehydes, fatty acid derivatives, N-bearing compounds and oxygenated terpenoids. EAG responses to structurally related scent compounds were not significantly different in most cases. Both male and femaleH. lineata were sensitive to mostC. breweri scent compounds at 10(-2) to 10(-4) µg/µl doses, and rank order in potency varied with the dose/concentration tested.H. lineata's olfactory sensitivity to diverse volatile compounds across a range of doses/concentrations suggests that a broad array of volatiles could function as floral attractants for foraging hawkmoths.


What Do MeDiClowns Do
MeDiClowns work with various individuals and communities to improve mental, emotional and physical well-being. They are attentive to the needs of the wide range of people they engage with: newborns to our elders who are 104 years old! MeDiClowns use numerous techniques such imagination, improvisation, play, juggling, dance, music, storytelling, puppetry, magic, humour and laughter, which are adapted to any situation at hand. MeDiClowns empower people by changing perspectives, instilling hope, and enhancing the mental, emotional and physical healing journey with joy. They create heart connections through their engagement and light heartedness. Medical procedures can be scary, for people of all ages. MeDiClowns play a key role in distracting or re-directing focus with the patient, which helps to ease the physical and emotional pain. Children and adults who have experienced sexual violence or abuse, a medical examination can generate anxiety, distress and lead to re-experience former traumas. Instead of being a helper, the doctor is viewed as someone who will further hurt them. It is the patient who gives consent for the MeDiClown to enter the room. This engagement with the MeDiClown helps patients to forget about the medical equipment around them. In such situations, a MeDiClown’s role is to create a relaxed atmosphere and be someone who is a friend, an ally. At MeDiClown Academy, MeDiClownswork towards conscious redirection of attention and focus. The key is to empower the patient with choice, ie: if the patient is scared by a medical procedure, the MeDiClownwill actively engage with her through storytelling and games so that the doctor can do his work. On the other hand, if a patient is curious and wants to watch the doctor perform the medical act, we will help her watch without fear. For example, they may use a teddy bear to mimic the doctor’s act. Hence, MeDiClowns stimulatepatients’ imagination to create stories and empower them to become actors of their healing process. They will play around the room, engaging with patients, families and medical staff to create a positive and more relaxed atmosphere.
I remember playing like a child and I enjoy very much. I feel all tension gone. This is very good for everybody, Does not matter what age.
Nadukuppam, Village President
Now that you know about what we do you may want to find out
how we work.


cmTriage by CureMetrix TRIAGE. SORT. PRIORITIZE.
cmTriage™ from CureMetrix is the first FDA-cleared software in the U.S. intended to provide a notification triage code to the radiologist’s mammography worklist based on the presence of a suspicious region of interest found by the underlying algorithm. This workflow optimization tool enables a radiologist to customize their mammography worklist based on cases that may need immediate attention.
Currently, viewing stations do not allow for intelligent sorting and prioritizing of cases – a radiologist can only sort based on name, date of image acquisition, time of image acquisition, etc. With cmTriage, a radiologist can sort and prioritize cases in their worklist based on the presence of suspicious regions of interest found by the underlying algorithm. This gives the radiologist the opportunity to tackle the more difficult mammograms with a heightened awareness, or perhaps to assign those cases to the specialist best suited to interpret them.
cmTriage can also be used to optimize clinical protocol and maximize a clinic’s utilization of resources. cmTriage is vendor agnostic for any 2D FFDM screening mammography equipment and takes less than five minutes to process a study, so it seamlessly integrates into a radiologist’s workflow. Additionally, cmTriage is cloud-based so there are no added systems to install or buttons to click. The software is both DICOM and HIPAA compliant and no PHI ever leaves the hospital.
cmTriage
Works across all breast densities
Works with both mass and calcifications
According to the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC), the average sensitivity of a radiologist is 84.4% and on average they are recalling 9.6% of cases. cmTriage only flags 8.2% of cases at the same sensitivity1
At the increased default sensitivity of 93%, cmTriage will still only identify 24% of your worklist as suspicious while also potentially catching 1 to 2 more cancers per 1,000 screening cases
FDA Cleared
cmTriage is FDA cleared as a notification-only, parallel workflow tool used to identify specific patients to a radiologist based on the presence of at least one suspicious finding to support standard of care image interpretation. It is easy to implement clinically and enables a radiologist to prioritize the most suspicious cases and optimize their workflow.


Abstract
Africa hosts the greatest human genetic diversity globally, but legacies of ancient population interactions and dispersals across the continent remain understudied. Here, we report genome-wide data from 20 ancient sub-Saharan African individuals, including the first reported ancient DNA from the DRC, Uganda, and Botswana. These data demonstrate the contraction of diverse, once contiguous hunter-gatherer populations, and suggest the resistance to interaction with incoming pastoralists of delayed-return foragers in aquatic environments. We refine models for the spread of food producers into eastern and southern Africa, demonstrating more complex trajectories of admixture than previously suggested. In Botswana, we show that Bantu ancestry post-dates admixture between pastoralists and foragers, suggesting an earlier spread of pastoralism than farming to southern Africa. Our findings demonstrate how processes of migration and admixture have markedly reshaped the genetic map of sub-Saharan Africa in the past few millennia and highlight the utility of combined archaeological and archaeogenetic approaches.


Vulnerable children to get better support when moving school Proposals outlined to reduce time vulnerable children spend out of the classroom, with consultation launched on changes to the School Admissions Code
Vulnerable children are to receive improved support when moving school during term time, in new measures to reduce time spent out of the classroom.
Proposed changes to the School Admissions Code outlined today (26 June) include a new turnaround of 10 school days for a decision on an in-year application and clearly defined timescales for each stage of the process.
While these measures will apply to all children moving school during the academic year, including those of Armed Forces Personnel, vulnerable children and those in care are much more likely to move school outside of the usual timeframes.
There will also be greater clarity for parents or carers on how applications can be made during term time, how the council or admissions authority will handle requests and how decisions can be appealed.
The code is also being amended to prioritise children adopted from state care outside of England and make sure they benefit from the same experience and opportunity in accessing a school place as those adopted domestically.
School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said:
"We remain determined to support the most vulnerable pupils to reach their potential in school and beyond, which is why we are aiming to reduce the time spent outside the classroom when a child needs to move school during term time.
"These changes aim to speed up the process for vulnerable pupils and make it easier to secure a school place when they need one, as we continue to focus on delivering more good school places for pupils and parents."
The proposals are now open for an extended consultation period of sixteen weeks to ensure schools, local authorities, parents, social workers and charitable organisations have sufficient opportunity to submit their responses.
Tomas Thurogood-Hyde, Head of Governance and Legal at Astrea Academy Trust said:
"In-year admissions and the Fair Access Protocol are relied upon by thousands of children each year and they are often doubly vulnerable - not only are they between school places and therefore out of education, but there is often an underlying contributor to this. Children might be new to the country or have been recently re-housed and those who come before Fair Access panels might have been excluded or have unmet needs.
"Providing greater consistency for these children, whilst allowing a diverse system of admission authorities to collaborate according to local needs, is a timely and important step forward in ensuring equity for the children who need it most."
Councillor Abtisam Mohamed, Cabinet Member for Children & Families for Sheffield City Council said:
"I am sure that local authorities will welcome the review of the School Admissions Code which will look to provide a more robust framework for in-year admission and Fair Access Protocols.
"Such changes have the potential to really help local authorities advocate for vulnerable children and families more effectively."


Leveraging Local Voices in Campaigns
By Elizabeth Rhee, Director
When developing any advocacy campaign, considering how to leverage advocates who are local and connected to the issue is crucial. Especially given today’s environment where many Americans, including our own elected officials, are working from home, a strong grassroots strategy provides an authentic and powerful communication that reaches lawmakers and regulators at the local level.
Grassroots is a critical component for any advocacy campaign and the individuals are the “roots” of the politically potent force. The most influential people at the top, “grasstops,” are local leaders and ones who are at the forefront commenting on the matter.
Here at The Herald Group, we know that no district, state, or media market is alike, and each advocacy campaign requires a unique approach that utilizes specific and local voices to speak out on the issue at hand, all while building a grassroots army for each specific cause.
When developing communications plans, we advise our clients on how to tailor their approach and leverage local voices that will ultimately reach consumers and decisionmakers. Here are a few basics when building out your strategy.
Determine Your Advocacy Goal.What’s your advocacy goal? Are you trying to reach your state’s congresspeople involved with a certain piece of federal legislation? Or are you hoping to share constituents’ perspectives on a state bill to a local representative? After answering the outcome-driven questions, grassroots advocacy is the vehicle to help get you there. Whichever decision-makers you decide to target, employing a grassroots and grasstops strategy allows you to reach your targets through local and trusted third-party voices from their constituencies. These elements of communication, such as social media posts or editorial content, help shape the opinion of what matters. Real People. Real Stories.We engage with real people with real stories. Leveraging third-party voices at the local level allows you to build meaningful and sustained support for a brand, industry, or issue. THG works with local leaders and advocates across the country that are willing to share their perspectives on the topic at hand and engage with select policymakers. Location. Location. Location.Our network extends into every political jurisdiction and all 50 states. We know that each campaign requires understanding the perspectives of both sides of the aisle and identifying where key audiences are located. This capability allows us to scale up or down any engagement, such as a campaign in ten different states or multiple districts across one.
Combined with a clear goal, localized approach, and solid relationships, a strong grassroots strategy can be a crucial element to ensuring your advocacy campaign’s success.
THG knows the local environment across all 50 states and has a direct line to the voices who matter. If interested in learning more and expanding your advocacy communications, reach out to us.


Subseasonal Weather Outlook (2 Jul – 16 Jul 2018) Issued 5 Jul 2018 valid for weeks 1 and 2: 2 Jul – 16 Jul 2018
The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is currently weak but active over the western Indian Ocean. Over the first two weeks of July 2018, some models predict the eastward propagation of the weak MJO while other models project the MJO to become indiscernible as it moves over the Maritime Continent. Thus for the first fortnight of July 2018, the MJO is not expected to have a large impact on the region.
In terms of the weekly rainfall for the Southeast Asia region, the eastern Maritime Continent can expect above-average rainfall in the first week of July 2018. However, as the second week approaches, the wet weather conditions in the southern ASEAN region is expected to gradually ease due to a northward shift of the rain band associated with the strengthening of monsoon winds. Drier weather conditions can be expected over most parts of the southern ASEAN region in the second week of July.
In the northern ASEAN region, rainfall is expected to be above-average rainfall in the second week of July 2018, associated with a strengthening of mid-level westerly winds in the region. Areas around the Philippines, coasts of the Mekong sub-region and parts of the South China Sea have a higher likelihood of receiving above-average rainfall.
During this two-week period, the temperature over much of Southeast Asia is expected to be near-average. In parts of the Mekong sub-region, warmer temperatures are expected in week 1 than in week 2 where a gradually return to average conditions is expected.
The outlook is assessed for the region in general. For specific updates on the national scale, the relevant ASEAN National Meteorological and Hydrological Services should be consulted.


Laboratorio de ProductosÉticos® and Cevomed Limited have signed a letter of intent with Malta Enterprise for the allocation of industrial space to set up a business in Malta under the name of Cetic Pharmaceuticals for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products in Malta.
Malta's economy in real terms has maintained its positive momentum, registering an impressive growth of 7.2% in the third quarter of 2017 when compared to the corresponding period in the previous year.
The manufacturing sector has also sustained its positive momentum. Indeed, data published by the National Statistics Office (NSO) shows that the gross value added (GVA) generated by the sector in the first three quarters of 2017 increased by 8.2% when compared with the corresponding period in 2016.
Malta consistently scored near the top of the league in a report about the design and delivery of digital public services in Europe. The study, carried out for the European Commission, provides an in-depth analysis of the progress made by European public administrations in their modernisation of service provision; and delivers the ‘baseline’ against which progress can be benchmarked.
Malta Enterprise has launched the Catering Capacity Building scheme with the aim of assisting hospitality and catering establishments engage a chef to support in capacity building, innovation, and in the development the operations. Eligible undertakings, including self-employed operators, will be supported through a tax credit representing a percentage of the eligible expenditure and wages of the international experienced chefs, up to a maximum of €10,000 per undertaking.
Malta Enterprise has launched three new measures aimed at supporting R&D and Innovation activities within industry, namely:
Nominations are currently being accepted for the award of "Best Creative Enterprise" within the framework of the national awards programme celebrating the achievements of Malta's cultural and creative sectors.
Business First Ltd was officially launched by Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small Business, Dr. Christian Cardona on Wednesday 4th October. This new company is a partnership with the Malta Chamber of SMEs (GRTU) and will be enhancing the one-stop-shop model by offering a wider scope of services provided through its new Mriehel office.
Business 1st, the point of single contact for businesses, has now moved to its new premises at
Business1st Ltd,
Centru Joseph Grech, Floor 2, Cobalt House, Notabile Road, Mriehel BKR 3000
Business 1st may also be contacted on telephone number 144
The Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry welcomed its first intake of students at its campus in Malta. Upon completing their induction, the students will commence their studies in the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MMBS) programme.
During its first year of operations, while works on its permanent campus are completed, the medical school will be housed at Sir MA Refalo Gozo Sixth Form, which has been upgraded and equipped to provide the best learning experience that befits a university of international repute.
Malta’s economy grew by a staggering 6.4% in the second quarter of 2017 when compared to the same quarter in the previous year, maintaining the impressive momentum that has been registered in the past three years.
Data published by the National Statistics Office also shows that the manufacturing sector has also been performing well. Indeed, the GVA generated by the this sector at market prices increased by 6.1% when comparing the second quarter of 2017 with the corresponding period in the previous year.


Tanzania
Key Information
556 PSCs
Approx. 1,000,000 PSC personnel
No, unless they have received authorization from the Inspector General of Police
*Arms and Ammunition Act of 2002
ICoCA Member State: No
ICoCA Company Members: 1
ICoCA CSO Members: 0
Voluntary Principles State Member: No
Summary
The prevalence of private security actors has been on the rise in Tanzania since the 1980s and the liberalisation of the Tanzanian economy following the Cold War. Today the number of private security guards outnumbers that of the Tanzania Police Force. Despite the growing size of the sector, there is no specific legal framework regulating the industry. Not only does this prevent the guarantee of adequate working conditions for private security company (PSC) personnel, but it also creates an obstacle to PSC personnel accountability.
Issues of poor working conditions and PSC personnel accountability are compounded in areas where PSC personnel are charged with securing mines and other extractive companies. Tanzania has a large extractive sector, particularly in gold mining, and illegal artisanal mining is prevalent, causing clashes between illegal miners and both public and private security forces. Poor working conditions increase the frequency of PSC personnel misconduct and they often escape accountability for the use of excessive force in defending the mines from illegal miners.
Legal Framework
Private security companies fall under the authority of the Tanzania Police Force and its Community Policing Department. PSC personnel are distinguished from other community policing actors such as the Auxiliary Police because their security services are contracted by an individual, company, institution etc, while the Auxiliary Police are employees of the individual, company, or institution itself.[ii]
PSCs are required to register with the Business Regulation and Licensing Authority (BRELA) and be granted a permit by the Police Force. However, once the PSC has received a permit and a license from BRELA, there is no authority that regulates the PSC’s activities.
Because PSCs are not regular members of the Police Force and do not have legal protections regarding the use of force, they are subject to the Arms and Ammunition Act of 2002 which requires individuals to be granted authorisation for the possession of firearms. Reports state that some private security guards in Tanzania do carry firearms, but whether they are doing so with or without authorisation is unknown.[iii]
Challenges
Amongst various practical challenges such as unsatisfactory wages and inadequate equipment, the private security industry in Tanzania faces two overarching issues to robust private security governance:
The regulatory framework for the private security industry is insufficient for ensuring quality services and satisfactory working conditions. Once the PSC is registered with the Inspector General of the Police and BRELA, no mechanism exists to monitor PSC activities.
Some PSCs in Tanzania are owned by current and former members of the armed forces – who possess significant influence in the government - and public police officers. This creates a conflict of interest and prevents such PSC owners from making an objective contribution to the governmental regulation of PSCs.
Members of the Private Security Governance Observatory
[i] Mkilindi, Aisha M, 2014. http://scholar.mzumbe.ac.tz/bitstream/handle/11192/1046/MSc_HRM_Aisha M. Mkilindi_2014.pdf?sequence=1
[ii] Jaba, Shadrack, 2011. https://www.academia.edu/9296010/The_Private_Security_Industry_in_Tanzania_Challenges_Issues_and_Regulation
[iii] Mugarula, Florence. “Can You Trust Your Security Guard?” The Citizen. April 3, 2016. https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/Can-you-trust-your-security-guard-/1840340-3144246-11qki5yz/index.html.


Abstract
While a growing body of research within the environmental hazards scholarship examines how disability affects human responses to major, sudden-onset environmental disasters, little attention has been given to understanding how disability affects responses to long-term, pervasive environmental hazards. Research analysing human responses to land and groundwater legacy contamination in residential areas has identified the significance of demographic and psychosocial determinants of worry, however the question of how living with a disability affects resident worry about contamination remains unanswered. This article provides a cornerstone study for exploring the relation between worry about environmental contamination and disability. A study of 486 adults living in 13 urban residential areas in Australia affected by a range of contaminants was undertaken in 2014. Ordinal logistic regression analysis found respondents with a disability were significantly more likely to worry about contamination than those without. People living with a disability had significantly higher amounts of worry about the contamination than those living without. Changes to residents’ daily habits in response to the contamination and perceptions of personal control over exposure to the contamination present important considerations for understanding the implications of worry for people living with and without a disability in the environmental contamination context.
Keywords Australia Disability environmental contamination pervasive hazard worry


Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how medical images are interpreted, helping medical professionals save time analyzing magnetic resonance imaging, CT scans, and X-rays. However, one of the significant challenges deep learning scientists working in the medical community face is the lack of accurate and reliable data to train their neural networks.
For the first time, researchers are now using GANs to generate abnormal brain MRIs that can be used to train neural networks. To solve this problem a team of researchers from NVIDIA, the Mayo Clinic, and the MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science developed a deep learning-based model that can generate accurate and reliable synthetic images that can be used for training an artificial intelligence system.
“Data diversity is critical to success when training deep learning models,” the researchers stated in their paper. “Medical imaging data sets are often imbalanced as pathologic findings are generally rare, which introduces significant challenges when training deep learning models. We propose a method to generate synthetic abnormal MRI images with brain tumors by training a generative adversarial network.”
Using an NVIDIA DGX-system, which contains NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, with the cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework the team trained their generative adversarial network on data from two publicly available datasets of brain MRIs. One dataset contains thousands of 3D T1-weighted brain MRIs with Alzheimer’s disease, the other contains about two hundred 4D brain MRIs with brain tumors.
The team based their image-to-image translation method on the pix2pix model, previously developed by NVIDIA researchers.
GANs have been used in medical imaging before to generate a motion model from a single preoperative MRI, upsample a low-resolution image, create a synthetic head CT from a brain MRI, perform medical segmentation, and automatically align different types of MRIs, saving doctors hours.
“This offers an automatable, low-cost source of diverse data that can be used to supplement the training set,” the researchers stated. “ For example, we can alter a tumor’s size, change its location, or place a tumor in an otherwise healthy brain, to systematically have the image and the corresponding annotation,” the team explained.
Because the images are synthetically generated, there is no patient data or privacy concerns. Medical institutions can easily share data they generate with other institutions, creating millions of different combinations that can be used to accelerate the work.
The team hopes that the model can immediately help deep learning scientists generate new data that can be used to detect abnormalities and in the end, save lives.
The researchers published their paper on ArXiv.


Abstract
Purpose To share the experience of using ultra-widefield fluorescein angiography (UWF-FA) in recognizing the potential signs for retinal neovascularizations (NVE) development in branch retinal vein occlusions (BRVO). Methods Reporting angiographic findings in 60 BRVO eyes presenting with NVE and vitreous hemorrhage using UWF-FA investigation. Angiographic retinal ischemic index (ARI) was also calculated from UWF-FA as the ratio of digitally mapped ischemic retina area against area of optic disc, termed unit of disc diameter (DD). Results We observed emerging angiographic features common to these patients: pattern of a localized non-perfused retina at early phase of UWF-FA remaining non-perfused at the late phase (black retinal ischemia, black-RI) (100%); presence of retinal microvascular anomalies (RMAs) at the “water-shed-border” of black-RI (100%); site of NVEs observed at either the same “water-shed-border” (42%) or from the main vessel branch within the black-RI (30%), or from both sites (28%); multiple NVEs were observed in all eyes except two with single active NVE. Median ARI size was 114 DD (SD 80 DD), range 5–354 DD. Conclusion We report a recurring angiographic pattern common to eyes with active BRVO-NVEs from UWF-FA, and NVEs in this clinical group can develop from varied ARI sizes. Further studies would be needed to establish the role of UWF-FA in predicting angiographic risk factors for BRVO-NVE.


The interest rate announcement from the European Central Bank is due on Thursday, headlining a hectic day for the European economic news.
The ECB is likely to leave its key interest rate, which is the rate on the main refinancing operations, at a record low zero percent. Although no new measures are expected at this meeting, markets anticipate an indication about further easing from the central bank chief.
ECB President Christine Lagarde is set to hold customary press conference at 9.30 am ET.
Major economic reports due for the day are as follows:
At 4.00 am ET, Spain's INE is set to publish flash consumer price data for October. EU harmonized prices are forecast to decline 0.6 percent annually. In the meantime, unemployment data is due to Hungary.
At 4.55 am ET, the Federal Labor Agency is slated to release Germany's unemployment data for October. The number of jobless claims is seen falling 5,000 versus September's decline of 8,000.
At 5.30 am ET, the Bank of England publishes mortgage approvals for September. Economists forecast mortgage approvals to fall to 76,110 from 84,720 in the previous month.
At 6.00 am ET, Eurozone economic confidence survey data is due. The sentiment index is expected to fall to 89.5 in October from 91.1 in the previous month.
At 9.00 am ET, Destatis is slated to issue Germany's preliminary consumer price figures for October. Economists forecast consumer prices to fall 0.3 percent on year, following a 0.2 percent drop in September.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
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Gender parity in Senegal – A continuing struggle Report Date2017-05-01 MetadataShow full item record Collections Publications [1154] Original versionBergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI Insight no. 2) 8 p. Abstract
In 2010, the Senegalese women’s movement, supported by political elites and international norms, managed to push for the adoption of one of the world’s most radical gender quota laws to date. This was achieved without the support of the powerful religious leaders, the marabouts. However, the marabouts fought back in the 2014 local elections and thwarted the full implementation of parity. This CMI Insight explores the on-going fight for parity in Senegal.


In real-world applications of natural language generation, there are often constraints on the target sentences in addition to fluency and naturalness requirements. Existing language generation techniques are usually based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs)... However, it is non-trivial to impose constraints on RNNs while maintaining generation quality, since RNNs generate sentences sequentially (or with beam search) from the first word to the last. In this paper, we propose CGMH, a novel approach using Metropolis-Hastings sampling for constrained sentence generation. CGMH allows complicated constraints such as the occurrence of multiple keywords in the target sentences, which cannot be handled in traditional RNN-based approaches. Moreover, CGMH works in the inference stage, and does not require parallel corpora for training. We evaluate our method on a variety of tasks, including keywords-to-sentence generation, unsupervised sentence paraphrasing, and unsupervised sentence error correction. CGMH achieves high performance compared with previous supervised methods for sentence generation. Our code is released at https://github.com/NingMiao/CGMH (read more)PDF


Abstract
In this paper, we aim to systematically analyze the effectiveness of community-based interventions (CBIs) for the prevention and control of helminthiasis including soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) (ascariasis, hookworms, and trichuriasis), lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, dracunculiasis, and schistosomiasis. We systematically reviewed literature published before May 2013 and included 32 studies in this review. Findings from the meta-analysis suggest that CBIs are effective in reducing the prevalence of STH (RR: 0.45, 95% CI: 0.38, 0.54), schistosomiasis (RR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.33, 0.50), and STH intensity (SMD: -3.16, 95 CI: -4.28, -2.04). They are also effective in improving mean hemoglobin (SMD: 0.34, 95% CI: 0.20, 0.47) and reducing anemia prevalence (RR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.85, 0.96). However, it did not have any impact on ferritin, height, weight, low birth weight (LBW), or stillbirths. School-based delivery significantly reduced STH (RR: 0.49, 95% CI: 0.39, 0.63) and schistosomiasis prevalence (RR: 0.50, 95% CI: 0.33, 0.75), STH intensity (SMD: -0.22, 95% CI: -0.26, -0.17), and anemia prevalence (RR: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.81, 0.94). It also improved mean hemoglobin (SMD: 0.24, 95% CI: 0.16, 0.32). We did not find any conclusive evidence from the quantitative synthesis on the relative effectiveness of integrated and non-integrated delivery strategies due to the limited data available for each subgroup. However, the qualitative synthesis from the included studies supports community-based delivery strategies and suggests that integrated prevention and control measures are more effective in achieving greater coverage compared to the routine vertical delivery, albeit it requires an existing strong healthcare infrastructure. Current evidence suggests that effective community-based strategies exist and deliver a range of preventive, promotive, and therapeutic interventions to combat helminthic neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). However, there is a need to implement and evaluate efficient integrated programs with the existing disease control programs on a larger scale throughout resource-limited regions especially to reach the unreachable.
Keywords Community-based interventions Neglected tropical diseases Soil-transmitted helminthiasis ASJC Scopus subject areas Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Infectious Diseases


Guerrieri, R. ; Lecha, Lucas ; Mattana, Stefania ; Caliz, Joan ; Casamayor, Emilio O. ; Barceló, Anna ; Michalski, Greg ; Peñuelas, Josep ; Ávila, Anna ; Mencuccini, Maurizio. Journal of Ecology : doi:10.1111/1365-2745.13288 (2019) DIGITAL CSIC
1. Microbial activity plays a central role in nitrogen (N) cycling, with effects on forest productivity. Although N biotransformations, such as nitrification, are known to occur in the soil, here we investigate whether nitrifiers are present in tree canopies and actively process atmospheric N.
2. This study was conducted in a Mediterranean holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) forest in Spain during the transition from hot dry summer to cool wet winter. We quantified NH+ 4—N and NO− 3—N fluxes for rainfall (RF) and throughfall (TF) and used δ15N, δ18O and Δ17O to elucidate sources of NO−
3. Finally, we characterized microbial communities and abundance of nitrifiers on foliage, RF and TF water through metabarcoding and quantitative polymerase chain reaction respectively. 3. NO3—N fluxes at the site were larger in TF than RF, suggesting a contribution from dry deposition, as also supported by δ15N and δ18O. However, Δ17O indicated that about 20% of NO− 3 in TF derived from canopies nitrification in August, after a severe drought, with a lower proportion in September (≈8%). This seasonal partitioning between biologically and atmospherically derived NO− 3 coincided with a decreasing trend of the abundance of archaeal nitrifiers. Tree canopies and TF had more diverse microbial communities than RF. Yet, RF showed higher variability in microbial composition, likely associated with the origin of air masses.
4. Synthesis. Atmospheric N deposition is significantly altered after passing through tree canopies. While nitrification has been proposed as one of the mechanisms responsible for these changes, very few studies directly investigate its occurrence. Here, we showed that nitrification by epiphytic leaf microbes contributed to increasing NO3 in TF and that nitrifiers’ activity was reduced going from the dry and hot summer to the cool winter. Overall, these results highlight the power of coupling microbial community analysis, functional gene amplification and stable isotope approaches to examine ecosystem‐scale processes.


The US DOE’s ARPA-E issued a funding opportunity announcement () for up to $50 million in funding for a new program, Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP). The SCALEUP program aims to support the scaling of high-risk and potentially disruptive ARPA-E funded technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications.
An enduring challenge to ARPA-E’s mission is that even technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends (averaging $2.5 million over three years). ARPA-E-funded technologies typically face significant remaining technical risks upon completion of an award’s funding period.
Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and with a wide range of investors, indicates that pre-commercial “scaling” projects are critical to establishing that performance and cost parameters can be met in practice for these very early stage technologies.
These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, integrate the technology with broader systems, provide extended performance data, and validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. (These projects are often termed “pre-pilot” development in different industries.)
Success in these scaling projects would enable industry, investors, and partners to justify substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, production facilities, and materials to develop promising ARPA-E technologies into early commercial products.
Start-ups, as well as large and small businesses, leveraging subject inventions that have resulted from ARPA-E awards are eligible and encouraged to apply to the SCALEUP FOA.
Because of the breadth of energy technologies solicited under the SCALEUP FOA, technical and project targets are not specified. Therefore, ARPA-E asks Applicants to address how the proposed scale-up or pre-pilot project will sufficiently advance the technology to enable a path to market and ultimately lead to realized commercial impact.
Finalists selected for the SCALEUP award will demonstrate a path to viability and be well positioned for investment from the private sector (venture, strategic, philanthropic, internal, etc.).
The SCALEUP program will work to advance promising energy technologies that require scale-up or pre-pilot projects to enable a path to market and ultimately lead to realized commercial impact. The SCALEUP award selection process consists of three phases:
preliminary application submissions, resulting in selection of semi-finalists;
semi-finalists who will be invited to submit full applications, resulting in selection of finalists; and
finalists, who will be invited to provide oral presentations, leading to award selections.
In addition, to support eligible start-ups and small businesses, the SCALEUP FOA offers an optional fixed-amount of up to $150,000 for the development of internal frameworks and infrastructure needed for SCALEUP projects.
The deadline to submit a preliminary application is 9:30 a.m. ET on 14 February 2020.


A warning issued today by the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) highlighted the chances of unlisted and blocked telephone numbers being exposed to ISPs when accessing the internet over a phone line.
"Letting another person use such a phone line to access the internet could lead to the number being disclosed to and used by that person's internet service provider," ACA acting chairman Dr Bob Horton said.
The warning follows an ACA investigation into claims that unlisted telephone numbers, and those blocked by calling number display, had been inappropriately disclosed.
"These cases are a breach of the Calling Number Display industry code, and potentially the legislation," Horton said. "They typically happened when a person connected to an ISP from the telephone service of another person who had an unlisted number or who had blocked calling number display on their line."
The ACA advise people with unlisted or blocked numbers to be careful when allowing others to access the internet through their phone line, though Horton suggests there is no cause for alarm.
"It is not possible to establish how many people have had their telephone numbers inappropriately disclosed or used. However, when compared to the total amount of traffic between carriers and ISPs the number would be very small."
The exchange of telephone numbers between carriers is integral to the operation of telecommunications networks. However, the ACA has asked carriers to ensure that their customers know how, when and why their phone number may be disclosed to an ISP.
"It appears these practices have arisen as a result of enhancements to internet services and there is no suggestion of intentional wrongdoing on the part of carriers or ISPs," Dr Horton said.


Advanced analytics across business value chain to drive growth and profitability
Data analytics can serve as a key input for decision-making even in a relatively low data volume and velocity environment and can provide valuable insights into the company’s’ performance and its customers.
In the Real Estate industry, we partner with clients to deliver analytics that can help predict buyer purchases, location occupancy, cross-sell opportunities. We also provide comprehensive digital research applications to extract insights from an extensive industry scan to gain competitive edge.
For Manufacturing sector clients, we drive value addition through Product Pricing, Customer Analytics, Capacity modeling, Production Planning, Demand Planning, Inventory Management, Material Requirement Planning, along with FP&A solutions to track costs and unit profitability accurately.
© 2020 Merilytics Inc. All rights reserved.


The ICO has created an information hub for organisations and individuals with guidance on how to tackle data protection issues in their response to COVID-19. The ICO’s main message is that the data protection law will not stop organisations in responding to the crisis.
The hub contains several sections dedicated to organisations, individuals concerned about their personal data, community groups assisting the vulnerable, and healthcare professionals.
In a section dedicated to data controllers, the ICO has published responses to FAQs reflecting the questions its helpline has received in the past few weeks, including guidance on the following:
Advice to data controllers on conditions for sharing employee health data – data minimisation and necessity principles must apply (avoid naming individuals with Covid-19, if it is not necessary); and Advice to apply usual security measures for homeworking to keep personal data safe
In a section dedicated to individuals the ICO advises that response times from organisations to their on requests to exercise rights may be understandably slow. The ICO does not expressly call out these rights, for example a right of access to personal data. However, it is expected that the ICO would be more lenient about deadlines for responding to a request to exercise the right of access and take into account the current situation, where organisations are diverting their resources to tackle other issues.
The ICO promises to keep the hub updated to reflect the changes in the response to the pandemic.


Depression can be driven by a multitude of factors including genetics, biochemical abnormalities, trauma, environmental, family of origin, relationships, and lifestyle choices. If you are struggling with depression, you are not alone and we can help. Even if you have a genetic predisposition for it, or traumatic experiences in your life that have shaped your depression, there are practical things that can be done to help you get better.
When working with a therapist, you will be able to tailor a support plan for your needs and personality. Therapy can help you explore the contributing factors to depression, identify things that help to reduce depression, and adopt coping skills. Examples of coping skills include engaging in relationships, exercising, and eating a healthy diet. If you continue to be stuck a therapist can help you decide if a referral to a psychiatrist for medication could be warranted. We can also explore challenges in your thinking process around unhelpful thoughts and distorted perceptions that could be feeding your view of yourself, circumstances, and the world around you.
We believe in taking a holistic approach to treating depression. We want to work with you at your pace to help you achieve your goals.


As the weather condition turns distinctly wintery, concerns once more rely on the annual problem of gas as well as electricity prices. According to The Independent, one in every eleven individuals in Britain might need to prevent switching on their main home heating or plugging in electrical appliances due to worries they will certainly not be able to manage the rising electricity prices.
Five million individuals can struggle this winter to pay their energy costs, with reduced earnings family members as well as pensioners most in jeopardy over the winter duration. Over the last five years, gas hardship has actually grown in Norway threefold. A home in 'gas destitution' is described by the Fuel Poverty Advisory Team (FPGA) as a home...


I'm sitting in a torture chamber as I write this blog post. Cleverly disguised as a neighborhood coffee house, this is a den of iniquity for me right now. The tantalizing smell of coffee brewing wafts around me like a favorite hat that is swooped from my head by a gust of wind. It is swirling around me, tantalizingly close and always inches out of reach.
I'm on a cleanse. This is day 16 of a 21-day cleanse, as a matter of fact. I've had a couple of blips along the way but no coffee. I don't drink coffee on a daily basis, saving it for those days when I need that extra pick-me-up or for a weekend coffee date with my husband. And I've been doing fine with a daily cup of Yerba mate tea, which has it's own smidge of naturally occurring caffeine, in place of the latte I so dearly love, for lo these past sweet sixteen. I was caught totally off guard this morning, then, when the urge for one great coffee buzz flattened me like Wile E. Coyote running himself over with a steamroller.
"Just one cup," I thought. "One small cup will give me the energy to get some work done." I haven't felt a real sense of accomplishment since I started this cleanse. "It will be organic," I reasoned. "I can maintain my integrity
andmy pledge to reduce my toxic load, if it's a cold brewed, shade grown, Fair Trade, organic coffee. It will be nothing less than a heroic, selfless act of Eco-commerce." I will do whatever it takes to negotiate with Mr. Will & Ms. Integrity and get myself out of this caffeine and sugar deprived stupor.
This is what I do. I'm an excellent negotiator, if I say so myself, even if the bulk of my professional experience is among Me, Myself and I. We can be a tough crowd, so it's a testament to my skill to note just how often I'm able to get us all to come to terms.
We all three got into the car and drove to Organix, the local organic food store, to see what we could work out. I noticed immediately that the store is out of my favorite tea. This didn't bode well for Me. "Do you have any organic coffee?" I heard Myself ask.
"There's a nice organic cold brew in the refrigerator," the clerk said, as he handed a bottle to Me who could barely contain her joy. I saw Myself reflected in the glass of the refrigerator glass, and I could see she was pissed. "You're not going to give up so easily, are you?" she hissed. I shrugged. "Perhaps it's meant to be," I said. I put a single bottle in my cart. "It's got a real bottle cap, so we can't open it until we get home to a bottle opener," I said to reassure Myself. "Maybe this will all have blown over by then."
Back at home, I had just enough time to put away the groceries before it was time to head out to this writing meetup. I made Me put the cold brew into the fridge. She relented only because I pointed out, "this is a brew to savor, not to be slammed down in a rush." I saw Myself giving Me a celebratory thumbs up, which deflated Me. "Besides," I said, "we don't need it. Our next stop is a coffeehouse. With all organic coffee!"
We all got back into the car. "Blackberry tea, please!" I heard Myself blurt out at the counter, before anyone else could speak. I glanced at Me who fell into a petulant pout. I took the tea to our usual table and set us up to write. "Isn't this nice?" I said. "We worked it all out and we're still friends."
The mere suggestion of a compromise riled Me. I heard her scheming, "okay, fine, not today, but the cold brew is
definitelyon for breakfast tomorrow. It's organic, there's no need to rush tomorrow, plenty of time to savor it..." I heard Myself sigh.
All this dissension is making it hard for me to my concentrate on writing. Maybe it will be better tomorrow, after that coffee.....


Mehul Raval, MD, MS Rachel Greenup, MD, MPH Todd Wagner, PhD Northwestern University Duke University Stanford University HEALTH ECONOMICS IN SURGICAL HEALTH SERVICES
Health economics research is critical for evaluating the financial impact of healthcare decisions, policies, and interventions on the healthcare system and its consumers. Data related to the hidden financial burden of disease, the cost effectiveness of therapeutic options, and patient preferences around cost transparency all inform the decision-making of stakeholders including surgeons, payers, patients, and more. Our three panelists will share their innovative approaches to health economics and outcomes research as they relate to patient financial toxicity, healthcare efficiency and access, and the value of surgical care at specialty hospitals.
This webinar is open to all members and non-members. However, the number of registrants will be limited due to the capacity of our virtual platform. In the event we go beyond the number of registrants allowed, members in good standing will be given priority. REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. All attendees planning to participate in the virtual webinar must register to attend. To register, please complete our registration form.


WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28, 2019 (HealthDay News) -- Nourianz (istradefylline) tablets have been approved as an add-on treatment to levodopa/carbidopa for adults with Parkinson disease experiencing "off" episodes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced yesterday.
The drug is available in 20-mg or 40-mg doses, but the maximum recommended dosage in patients taking CYP3A4 inhibitors and those with moderate hepatic impairment is 20 mg once daily. The safety information for Nourianz states that use of the drug should be avoided in these patient populations.
Data from four 12-week placebo-controlled clinical studies demonstrated the effectiveness of Nourianz, a selective adenosine A2A receptor antagonist, in treating "off" episodes in 1,143 PD patients who were receiving treatment with levodopa/carbidopa. Compared with patients who received placebo, patients who received Nourianz experienced a statistically significant decrease in daily "off" time from baseline.
The most commonly reported adverse reactions with Nourianz included dyskinesia, dizziness, constipation, nausea, hallucination, and insomnia. The FDA noted that physicians should monitor patients for development or progression of dyskinesia while taking Nourianz. A reduction in dosage or stoppage of Nourianz should be considered in the case of hallucinations, psychotic behavior, or impulsive/compulsive behavior. Nourianz should not be used during pregnancy, and women with childbearing potential should use contraception during treatment.
Approval was granted to Kyowa Kirin.


Date of Submission
Spring 2015
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Economics
Project Advisor 1
Olivier Giovannoni
Abstract/Artist's Statement
This paper aims to answer two major conundrums in macroeconomic theory with regards to the U.S. economy. First, standard macroeconomic models such as Harrod-Domar and Solow theoryze that factor shares are constant; however, actual measures of the U.S. labor share have been on a downward trend since the early 1980s. The second conundrum relates to the Post-Kaleckian wage-led or profit-led view of economic growth. It indicates that a fall in the labor share in a wage-led economy will result in a fall in aggregate demand (due to deceases in consumption), and an increase in aggregate demand in a profit-led economy (due to increases in investment). However, the consumption share of GDP in the U.S. has been increasing and the investment share has been stable in spite of the falling labor share.
We argue that the resolution of these conundrums involves reexamining the standard Keynesian consumption function, both theoretically and empirically. Thus, we propose an original theory of consumption based on the principles of Duesenberry's (1949) Relative Income Hypothesis. We find that the economic consequence of a falling labor share in the United States is that aggregate demand growth, despite remaining wage-led, has become increasingly dependent on the accumulation of household debt. Furthermore, we conclude that there are four ominous outcomes associated with this dependence on household debt: unstable growth, sluggish growth, stagnation and economic contraction.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Recommended Citation
Xu, Alex Jianan, "The Macroeconomics of the Declining U.S. Labor Share: a Debt-led Explanation" (2015).
Senior Projects Spring 2015. 176. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2015/176
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.


The nation once shadowed by a history of struggle for survival now enters a renewed era driven by optimism, innovation, and democracy.
There is a sense of warmth and comfort that radiates within Armenia; infants and elderly walk hand in hand, the young are loud and lively, the families affectionate and welcoming—and once immersed into the day to day, it feels as though the entire population is part of one big family.
In a distance, the scenic hillside of the region’s fertile vineyards adorned by apricots and pomegranates lay beneath the majestic Mount Ararat. Armenia is known to cherish the many layers of its past, and Ararat is a symbol of that. A once-ancient empire, Armenia stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea before it lost a major part of its territory to neighbouring Turkey. But despite the decades of turbulence, its people have never been more fiercely proud of their nation’s history, as a promising future rises to conquer another day. This is the new Armenia.
Its population is celebrating the end of a month-long peaceful protest that led to the resignation of President Serzh Sargsyan and consequently, an end to the autocratic government that had controlled the former Soviet republic since 2008. In his place, Nikol Pashinyan, a prominent journalist, activist, and former parliamentarian, was elected Prime Minister.
This model of democratic engagement, and the series of opportunities and fortunes it has brought to the nation since, has prompted The Economist to name Armenia the ‘Country of the Year’. Today, Armenia and its ‘Velvet Revolution’ have become as a testament to the rest of the world that bringing about political change and positive renewal through peaceful protests is not only possible, but promising.
The Armenian people are a prime example of the belief that migration sparks innovation, uncovers potential, and facilitates adaptation to the evolving challenges of our world. Though involuntary, the migration of Armenians as a result of the atrocities of genocide in 1915, also created a movement of unity and hope for the future of their diaspora. As the month of April becomes a global dedication to the commemoration of the 1.5 million Armenians lost, this time is also served to demonstrate the power of perseverance, and the emergence of global citizens that have changed the world as a result of it.
Sharing that same vision, Founder of the Global Citizen Forum (GCF), Armand Arton, decided to host the next GCF in Yerevan, Armenia in October 2019. “I am delighted to be hosting such an essential gathering in this beautiful nation and incredibly proud to advocate my Armenian heritage,” shared Arton. “With a mission to empower unity through dialogue, this year’s Forum will focus on technology to achieve the transformation that the next generation of global citizens deserve.”
Embodying an open-air museum, Yerevan beautifully weaves modern cosmopolitan with thousand-year old history, connecting East to West with its rich cultural heritage and traditions that have evolved to fit the modern age. Its compelling hospitality and vibrant culture is celebrated amongst its lively streets, historical landmarks, rich harvest, unique architecture, and natural attractions.
One minute, it feels as though you have time-lapsed into the past, and the next, you are wandering about the city streets flooded with modern cafes, art galleries, upscale restaurants and luxury hotels. Within the last year, the nation is glowing again. There is an evolving elegance and richness that incites a newfound energy to the land—and the world is taking notice. As Armenia continues its journey to rebuild a stronger, united, and prosperous nation; voices of optimism, fortune, and freedom grow louder and louder for the world to hear: Armenia has been reborn.
The new initiative is set to reduce the processing time from application to citizenship. TheSt. Lucia
Amendments to expand dependents makes the program one of the most advantageous in theAntigua & Barbuda
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 18 November 2020: SHUAA Capital psc (DFM: SHUAA), the leading assetMontenegro, Press releases


Russia: Inflation rises from historic low in March
April 6, 2018
In March, consumer prices rose 0.3% from the previous month, a notch above the 0.2% month-on-month increase observed in February. According to Rosstat, prices for food recorded the largest rise in March, driving the index’s reading.
Inflation rose from February’s historic low of 2.2% to 2.4% in March. Despite the rise, price pressures remain subdued and inflation lies far below the Central Bank’s target of 4.0%. Annual average inflation also declined from 3.3% in February to 3.1% in March, a historical low. Russia Inflation Forecast
Panelists see inflation ending 2018 at 4.0%, which is unchanged from last month’s forecast. For 2019, participants expect inflation to also end the year at 4.0%.
Author:Angela Bouzanis, Lead Economist


Shuffling through the Bargain Bin: Real-Estate Holdings of Public Firms Irem Demirci, Umit G Gurun, Erkan Yönder Review of Finance, Volume 24, Issue 3, May 2020, Pages 647–675, https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfz010
Collateral is an important aspect of debt contracts, and particularly when the borrower falls short on liquidity or defaults on its debt, asset-specific factors that determine the liquidation value of the collateral become a concern for the lender. Our paper investigates whether a firm’s financial health affects the liquidation value of its real estate assets. We assemble a unique dataset of real estate portfolios of nonfinancial public firms in the U.S. and identify each real estate property’s location, type, and other property-specific features. We obtain commercial real estate transactions data from Real Capital Analytics database which has tracked commercial property and portfolio sales in the U.S. since 2000.
We find that financially troubled firms sell their real estate assets at a significant discount relative to their healthy peers. One-standard deviation decrease in interest coverage ratio is associated with a 17% decrease in the transaction price. Our results are robust to using book leverage and a high leverage/low current asset dummy as alternative distress proxies and controlling for a battery of property and seller characteristics including market-by-year fixed effects and firm fixed effects. We find that the impact of a firm’s financial distress on the transaction price is exacerbated when the firm’s industry peers are also liquidity-constrained. There is also considerable cross-industry variation in the distress discount: the distress discount in commercial real estate is less prominent in machinery-heavy industries.
We analyze whether there is heterogeneity in the distress discount related to property-specific and sellers’ industry-specific characteristics. Two of these factors studied are asset redeployability and availability of potential buyers. While a distribution center with a specific layout can only be utilized by certain buyers, an office space can be purchased and used by buyers both within and outside the seller’s industry. We find that, unlike their more specialized counterparts, redeployable assets do not suffer large discounts. Shleifer and Vishny (1992) suggest that significant discounts in asset prices can occur if a financially distressed seller is forced to seek transaction opportunities during times when the best potential users of the asset are also liquidity-constrained. With the advantage of observing both seller characteristics and property location, we identify potential buyers from the same industry as the seller located in the same state as the property, and find that increasing number of potential buyers alleviates the discount on distress sales up to 50%.
Finally, we investigate whether a bank’s pricing of a loan reflects these determinants. To do so, we first estimate the value of the real estate asset holdings of the firms in their sample, and then calculate the fraction of assets with desirable redeployability characteristics. We show that a one-standard-deviation decrease in the interest coverage ratio is associated with a 0.15-standard-deviation increase in loan spreads for firms with below-median portfolio redeployability and potential buyers. Overall, these findings suggest that the property-specific factors that can affect collateral value are priced in debt markets.


Each year, the TASH Conference strengthens the disability field by connecting attendees to innovative information and resources, facilitating connections between stakeholders within the disability movement, and helping attendees reignite their passion for an inclusive world. This year’s conference theme, “Gateway to Equity,” explores inclusive communities, schools, and workplaces that support people with disabilities, including those with complex support needs, in living a fair, just, and balanced life. Return to TASH website.
This presentation will describe the partnership that has developed between the Education Department of a small liberal arts college and a local advocacy group for families of children with Down Syndrome. Through this partnership, Education faculty and pre-service teachers provide sustained and meaningful support to parents, their children with special needs, and siblings through campus events offered throughout the year. These events reinforce the importance of inclusion, acceptance, and community participation. For those who registered for the TASH conference, "Valuing Lives" can be purchased online (digital download) for half price, $12.49, by visiting rtcmedia.vhx.tv and entering the coupon code TASH2016VL. The coupon will be valid until Dec. 16, 2016. Short description of film: Through archival images and footage, and dozens of interviews, the film “Valuing Lives” explores the principle of normalization, an idea that challenged our fundamental assumptions about people with intellectual disabilities, and the iconoclastic professor whose intense, multi-day workshops trained thousands of human services professionals in the theory and practice of this idea. Visit z.umn.edu/valuinglives to purchase the film and to view hours of expanded content. After this session, participants will be able to: 1. identify the appropriate individuals at an institution of Higher Education to contact when seeking to create a partnership. 2. consider their own priorities when seeking to develop a partnership. 3. describe the partnership that has been outlined between one Higher Education institution and local family advocacy organization.


Frequency of cone pigments and spectral reflectance of the color pattern of cichlids. (a) Frequency of cone pigments in M. zebra, M. auratus and P. taeniolatus. Visual pigments: SWS1 (black), SWS2b (violet), SWS2a (blue), RH2b (green), RH2a (orange) and LWS (red). Cone pigment frequency varied across species, with LWS and SWS1 showing the largest frequency variation between species. The frequency of SWS1, SWS2a and LWS differed significantly across species (Fisher's exact test, P = 0.0005, P = 0.002 and P = 0.00001, respectively). The frequency of SWS2b, RH2a and RH2b did not differ significantly across species (Fisher's exact test, P = 0.05, P = 0.09 and P = 1, respectively). Error rate was set to α = 0.0083 following Bonferroni correction for six hypothesis tests. (b) Average normalized spectral reflectance (n = 10; black lines) of the color pattern of M. zebra (solid line), M. auratus (dashed line) and P. taeniolatus (dotted line). The normalized absorption of LWS visual pigment (red line) and the normalized sidewelling irradiance measured at 5-m depth in Lake Malawi (blue thin line) are also depicted.


Journal Article Abstract/Summary:
We describe an emulator of a detailed cloud parcel model which has been trained to assess droplet nucleation from a complex, multimodal aerosol size distribution simulated by a global aerosol–climate model. The emulator is constructed using a sensitivity analysis approach (polynomial chaos expansion) which reproduces the behavior of the targeted parcel model across the full range of aerosol properties and meteorology simulated by the parent climate model. An iterative technique using aerosol fields sampled from a global model is used to identify the critical aerosol size distribution parameters necessary for accurately predicting activation. Across the large parameter space used to train them, the emulators estimate cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) with a mean relative error of 9.2 % for aerosol populations without giant cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and 6.9 % when including them. Versus a parcel model driven by those same aerosol fields, the best-performing emulator has a mean relative error of 4.6 %, which is comparable with two commonly used activation schemes also evaluated here (which have mean relative errors of 2.9 and 6.7 %, respectively). We identify the potential for regional biases in modeled CDNC, particularly in oceanic regimes, where our best-performing emulator tends to overpredict by 7 %, whereas the reference activation schemes range in mean relative error from −3 to 7 %. The emulators which include the effects of giant CCN are more accurate in continental regimes (mean relative error of 0.3 %) but strongly overestimate CDNC in oceanic regimes by up to 22 %, particularly in the Southern Ocean. The biases in CDNC resulting from the subjective choice of activation scheme could potentially influence the magnitude of the indirect effect diagnosed from the model incorporating it.


At our leadership trainings, we have learnt that it is more rewarding to be a leader, than manager. While a leader is smart, caring and flexible to change, the manager is often quite rigid and instruction specific and may not have the ability to manage change. This is due to managerial approach of guiding a team through a set of instruction to deliver a task without interplay of the human characteristics such as physical capability, mental ability, emotional development, social and interpersonal skills of team members. This could lead to the underachievement of such teams.
10 differences between leaders and managers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ubRzzirRKs


Objective: To study the effect of indomethacin on the vasculature of isolated perfused human placental cotyledon in normal and meconium pretreated placentae. Study design: Isolated placental cotyledons were dually perfused and fetal perfusion pressure was used as an index of vascular resistance. Meconium-stained amniotic fluid (MSAF) was collected from patients after artificial rupture of membranes, diluted 1:2, 1:4, 1:16 and 1:32 and a spectrophotometric determination of meconium concentration in amniotic fluid was performed. Only MSAF with an optical density of 20.0 units per gram was used in this study. In five placentae, the effect of indomethacin (100 microg/ml continuous perfusion from the fetal site) on basal pressure of the fetal-placental vasculature was established. In five more placentae, the effect of indomethacin on MSAF-induced vasoconstriction was established when a bolus injections of 1 ml MSAF was made into the fetal circulation. The statistical significance of response to MSAF injection was determined by paired t-test and ANOVA repeated measurements. Results: A significant vasoconstrictor response to MSAF was achieved in normal placentae. Bolus injections of MSAF into the fetal circulation resulted in a significant increase in perfusion pressure (P=0.0026). Indomethacin was capable of significantly reducing the basal perfusion pressure (P=0.03). Significant attenuation of vasoconstrictor response to MSAF occurred in the presence of indomethacin (P=0.0016). Conclusion: Indomethacin causes a significant reduction in basal pressure of fetal placental vasculature in the human placental circulation in vitro and is capable of attenuating the vasoconstrictory activity of MSAF. The mechanism of such activity may be explained partially by the inhibitory effect of indomethacin on the PG-mediated pathways.


Functional gait assessment and balance evaluation system test: reliability, validity, sensitivity, and specificity for identifying individuals with Parkinson disease who fall Physical Therapy 2011, 91 (1): 102-13
BACKGROUND: Gait impairments, balance impairments, and falls are prevalent in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). Although the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) can be considered the reference standard for the determination of fall risk, it has a noted ceiling effect. Development of ceiling-free measures that can assess balance and are good at discriminating "fallers" from "nonfallers" is needed.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA) and the Balance Evaluation Systems Test (BESTest) with the BBS among individuals with PD and evaluate the tests' reliability, validity, and discriminatory sensitivity and specificity for fallers versus nonfallers.
DESIGN: This was an observational study of community-dwelling individuals with idiopathic PD.
METHODS: The BBS, FGA, and BESTest were administered to 80 individuals with PD. Interrater reliability (n=15) was assessed by 3 raters. Test-retest reliability was based on 2 tests of participants (n=24), 2 weeks apart. Intraclass correlation coefficients (2,1) were used to calculate reliability, and Spearman correlation coefficients were used to assess validity. Cutoff points, sensitivity, and specificity were based on receiver operating characteristic plots.
RESULTS: Test-retest reliability was .80 for the BBS, .91 for the FGA, and .88 for the BESTest. Interrater reliability was greater than .93 for all 3 tests. The FGA and BESTest were correlated with the BBS (r=.78 and r=.87, respectively). Cutoff scores to identify fallers were 47/56 for the BBS, 15/30 for the FGA, and 69% for the BESTest. The overall accuracy (area under the curve) for the BBS, FGA, and BESTest was .79, .80, and .85, respectively.
LIMITATIONS: Fall reports were retrospective.
CONCLUSION: Both the FGA and the BESTest have reliability and validity for assessing balance in individuals with PD. The BESTest is most sensitive for identifying fallers.


On Friday, July 31, 2015 SRLP core collective members, attorneys and interns (past and present) attended #Law4BlackLives, a national gathering of lawyers, legal advocates, and law students dedicated to building a world where #BlackLivesMatter. The conference involved various panels and workshops ranging from police reform, defending the civil rights of #BlackLivesMatter protestors, and legal observing trainings. #Law4BlackLives largely centered on the intersection of organizing and lawyering, and the importance of lawyers in showing up, stepping back, and supporting those engaged in grassroots organizing campaigns.
SRLP Core Collective member, former Director of SRLP’s Prisoner Justice Project, and now staff at the Urban Justice Center’s Peter Cicchino Youth Project, Alisha Williams, spoke at the #AllBlackLivesMatter panel focused on the prominent role of Black TGNCI (trans, gender non-conforming and intersex) people, women, and queer folks in liberation movements. The panelists discussed how these voices are often marginalized or erased within movements for Black liberation, despite experiencing police harassment, terrorism and murder at inordinate rates. Alisha and other panelists spoke about the importance of radical lawyers learning to craft legal challenges based upon the lived experiences of queer and trans folks, such as working towards the decriminalizing sex work; moving beyond gay marriage and building a movement towards freedom for all Black people.
Among the other SRLP attendees at #Law4BlackLives included Pooja Gehi, former SRLP staff attorney and Director of Litigation & Advocacy, and current Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. Earlier this week, Gehi was arrested while working as a NLG Legal Observer documenting and observing police officers at the most recent protests and state violence in Ferguson. For Gehi, “It was a privilege for me to come from out of town and be given an opportunity to join the people of Ferguson in solidarity. My wrongful arrest while providing legal support was an attempt by the police to undermine the organizing efforts of QTPOC activists fighting for racial justice. That kind of police harassment and violence is an everyday occurrence for Black residences in their own neighborhoods in Ferguson and across the US.” As discussed at #Law4BlackLives, legal observing is a critical tool in movement lawyering and one of the key methods by which lawyers can support #BlackLivesMatter.
As a law student committed to social justice and movement lawyering, I was originally drawn to SRLP’s work because of its community-based structure as well as its core values – that is, a commitment to participating in larger movements for racial, social, and economic justice with a specific focus on gender liberation. Thus, it felt important that #Law4BlackLives worked at centralizing the narratives of TGNCI and queer folks by ensuring those voices were present and highlighted when discussing how legal advocates can contribute to a movement in support of Black lives.


Primary School Resources
As a teacher, you can play an important role in encouraging children to learn about a nutritious, balanced diet from early on. This is vital for a range of reasons. Aside from the obvious health benefits, children are more likely to be motivated and energised if they have a healthy diet. This will in turn support their own learning in the classroom.
Bord Bia offers a range of content and resources for teachers. These include information on gardening and growing your own food, and guides on healthy eating, which you can explore with your pupils.


Consumers already have embraced IoT technology in the home and workplace, and they desire the same easy access to information and personalized services while on the road. Today’s connected vehicles are revolutionizing the driving and automobile ownership experience by collecting, analyzing and sharing car journey and location data, driver preferences and diagnostic data to provide personalized services and build brand loyalty.
Telematic systems have rapidly evolved from providing essential safety components like GPS navigation and location tracking, to interactive communication capabilities that enable convenient features including hands-free calls, real-time traffic updates, predictive maintenance, to high-touch concierge services, such as remote door unlock, automated billing at gas stations or the ability to search for fuel, parking, restaurants or other points of interest along the route.
The rising demand for in-vehicle connectivity is accelerating technological advances and the growth of the telematics market. Twenty-one million connected cars shipped in 2016. BI Intelligence estimates that 94 million will ship in 2021 and that 82% of all vehicles shipped in that year will be connected to the internet.
While auto manufacturers are increasingly using telematics data to understand customers’ needs, the issue of who has access to—and control over—driver data has become a hot-button debate within the industry. Consumers want to protect their personal information from being shared or sold without their permission; aftermarket telematics providers fear that OEMs will block access to embedded telematics systems; and automakers want to maintain control over third-party access to vehicle data.
The path forward calls for co-creation among industry stakeholders. Whether consumers rely solely on in-vehicle telematics systems or cobbled-together solutions using a variety of apps and smart devices, the competitive edge will likely go to providers that can integrate, package and present various sources of data and insights to the end-user in a format that is relevant, easy to consume and adds value for vehicle drivers and occupants.
The rapid growth of the telematics market will pose third-party device support challenges for customer service agents. Key customer service challenges facing telematics providers include:
Whether it’s helping a lost driver find his way, staying on the line with a disoriented driver after a collision or providing car owners with a detailed explanation of diagnostics alerts, CustomerServ’s telematics call center vendors have the industry expertise to deliver an exceptional experience that builds brand loyalty.
Our world-class vendors provide support for a wide range of telematics services, including:


Research and Innovation
The global research and development activities are fully integrated into Electrolux Professional’s operating segments. The R&D organizations are specialized according to both products and missions, aiming for less mechanical and more electronic and digitally enabled appliance content. All R&D organizations are supervised by a global R&D officer to ensure clarity on the strategic direction. Each reportable segment operates specific competence centers, which lead the respective R&D processes and set corresponding guidelines. The principal centers are located in Italy, Sweden and the United States.
Electrolux Professional contributes a significant amount of resources into its global R&D activities. During the years 2017–2019, our expenditure for R&D has totaled SEK 1.2 bn, corresponding to 4.4 percent of net sales per year during the period.
Electrolux Professional focuses the R&D efforts to address several market trends including:
Digitalization of appliances Appliance connectivity Appliance agility
These trends aim to simplify customers’ appliance handling experience and improve product speed and efficiency. Sustainability and minimizing environmental impact is another key focus area and the we strive to produce more energy and resource efficient solutions. Focus on appliance digitalization, connectivity and agility is centered around new technology that can improve the offering in an economically and environmentally constructive way. The ambition is to address customers’ increased requirements for flexible machines with low running costs.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will host a public meeting and is soliciting public input on whether to expand the products included in its guidance, titled “Toxicological Principles for the Safety Assessment of Food Ingredients”—also known as the “Redbook.”
The agency is apparently considering this expansion “to include chemical safety assessments for all products over which FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) has statutory authority including regulatory contexts such as food additives, food contact substances, dietary supplement ingredients, food contaminants, and cosmetics.” According to FDA, “The Redbook would describe toxicological principles which apply across regulatory categories while still providing specific guidance for applying these principles within each particular context. The safety of foods containing microbial contaminants will continue to remain outside of the scope of the Redbook.”
The meeting will take place December 9, 2014, in College Park, Maryland, and those wishing to participate in person must register by December 2. Those wishing to make oral presentations must submit their requests by November 21, and written comments are requested by February 9, 2015. See Federal Register, October 30, 2014.


“Animals aren’t wild, they’re just free.” – Native American proverb
All animals, including cats, can teach us a lot about just being who we are naturally.
While some cats – like leopards, tigers, lions – are wild, the ones we invite into our homes are not. Even though they rely on humans for food and comfort, they still manage to be free. To be who they are.


Abstract
The reactive changes in the axillary lymph nodes of 50 breast cancer patients treated by mastectomy immediately following frozen section diagnosis have been compared with the changes in the nodes of 50 patients whose biopsy preceded mastectomy by between 2 and 5 days. The frequency of sinus histiocytosis was significantly greater in those patients who had been subjected to previous biopsy. This finding suggests that prior breast biopsy may negate the prognostic significance of sinus histiocytosis in breast cancer.
Keywords Axilla Biopsy Breast Breast Neoplasms Histiocytes Humans Lymph Nodes Mastectomy Middle Aged Prognosis Time Factors


p97 complexes as signal integration hubs
In the ubiquitin-proteasome system, a subset of ubiquitylated proteins requires the AAA+ ATPase p97 (also known as VCP or Cdc48) for extraction from membranes or protein complexes before delivery to the proteasome for degradation. Diverse ubiquitin adapters are known to link p97 to its client proteins, but two recent papers on the adapter protein UBXD7, including one by Bandau et al. in BMC Biology, suggest that rather than simply linking p97 to ubiquitylated proteins, this adapter may be essential to coordinate ubiquitylation and p97-mediated extraction of the proteasome substrate. These findings add to growing indications of richly diverse roles of adapters in p97-mediated signaling functions.