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This study explores the effect of tributyltin (TBT) treatment on lipid homeostasis of D. magna using chemometric methods. The experimental design included two factors 'time' and 'dose' of TBT, and lipids were measured in replicate samples for each combination of factors. This study represents a case of multivariate multi-set data, obtained using a two factorial balanced design and explored using different multivariate chemometric techniques, to have an insight into data patterns, to separate main sources of variance and to identify lipid profiles associated with TBT dose. ANOVA- Simultaneous Component Analysis (ASCA) allowed the separation of the two sources of variation, suggesting thatthe TBT dose affected the evolution of the concentrations of lipids over time, although when the whole development process was considered, the interaction between time and dose factors was rather low. Multivariate Curve Resolution Alternating Least Squares (MCR-ALS) helped to resolve four distinct profiles associated with the different phases of D. magna development, showing changes in their lipids composition, and in their relation with TBT dose. A discussion of the meaning of these changes on lipid profiles and of their time evolution is performed. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. ; This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 35 n. 32073.AM gratefully acknowledges the Juan de la Cierva Post-Doctoral research grant (JCI-2011-10895). ; Peer reviewed

Situated in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, Mecca is considered the spiritual capital of one and a half billion worldwide Muslims. The city is visited by millions of pilgrims every year. It has undergone significant changes in land cover (LC) since the government first embarked on a series of ambitious development projects 20 years ago to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims and citizens. The main objective of our study is to detect, identify, analyze and measure the evolving land cover and urban morphology composition from multi-temporal satellite images. To characterize the morphological change during a period of twenty years, four satellite images, acquired in 1998 by Landsat TM and in 2003, 2008 and 2013 by Landsat ETM+, were classified into five main categories: Urban, Street, Soil and Vegetation. In addition, DEM has been extracted and included as Mountain. Change detection (CD) analysis is applied using post-classification comparison and GIS. As part of the study, morphological index, such as, Entropy is included for better understanding of urban structures behaviour. Mecca and its surroundings show a noticeable increase in urban and vegetation cover. Urban cover (UC) changes were divided into five radial directions: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, East, and Northwest. These changes are influenced by mountain ranges surrounding the city and the highways. These revelations can play a significant role towards future planning and development activities, which may further promote urban growth.

Home-based telemedicine (HBT) is a validated method of evidence-based treatment delivery for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and justification for its use has centered on closing gaps related to provider availability and distance to treatment centers. However, another potential use of HBT may be to overcome barriers to care that are inherent to the treatment environment, such as with female veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma (MST) and who must present to VA Medical Centers where the majority of patients share features with perpetrator (e.g. gender, clothing) and may function as reminders of the trauma. Delivering evidence-based therapies to female veterans with MST-related PTSD via HBT can provide needed treatment to this population. This manuscript describes an ongoing federally funded randomized controlled trial comparing Prolonged Exposure (PE) delivered in-person to PE delivered via HBT. Outcomes include session attendance, satisfaction with services, and clinical and quality of life indices. It is hypothesized that based on intent-to-treat analyses, HBT delivery of PE will be more effective than SD at improving both clinical and quality of life outcomes at post, 3-, and 6-month follow-up. This is because 'dose received', that is fewer sessions missed, and lower attrition, will be observed in the HBT group. Although the current manuscript focuses on female veterans with MST-related PTSD, implications for other populations facing systemic barriers are discussed.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) was discovered in the early 1980s when the virus had already established a pandemic. For at least three decades the epidemic in the Western World has been dominated by subtype B infections, as part of a sub-epidemic that traveled from Africa through Haiti to United States. However, the pattern of the subsequent spread still remains poorly understood. Here we analyze a large dataset of globally representative HIV-1 subtype B strains to map their spread around the world over the last 50 years and describe significant spread patterns. We show that subtype B travelled from North America to Western Europe in different occasions, while Central/Eastern Europe remained isolated for the most part of the early epidemic. Looking with more detail in European countries we see that the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland exchanged viral isolates with non-European countries than with European ones. The observed pattern is likely to mirror geopolitical landmarks in the post-World War II era, namely the rise and the fall of the Iron Curtain and the European colonialism. In conclusion, HIV-1 spread through specific migration routes which are consistent with geopolitical factors that affected human activities during the last 50 years, such as migration, tourism and trade. Our findings support the argument that epidemic control policies should be global and incorporate political and socioeconomic factors.

Over six million people have been displaced in Colombia's ongoing armed conflict, mainly from rural to urban areas. In 2012, the Colombian government launched a large-scale social housing program to alleviate the housing deficit caused by conflict and furthermore compensate the IDPs for their losses. The principles of this initiative are in line with the wishes of most victim families, who prefer to stay in the cities to which they moved due to the conflict. The new apartments and houses are provided free of charge and are in high demand. That may help to explain the lack of success of another large-scale reparation program, land restitution, which promotes the return of displaced households to the countryside. Building on empirical qualitative field data, this article shows how the free housing program 'cements' the choice of displaced families to continue living in cities and further develop their post-conflict urban livelihoods and social networks, as opposed to returning to the depopulated rural areas and reestablishing agricultural activities. It is argued that those housing projects are not the ideal solution to the problems of housing shortage and poverty among the displaced population. ; acceptedVersion ; © 2016. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. LOCKED until 18.4.2018 due to copyright restrictions. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The thrust of this study was to examine the effects of principals' leadership styles on students' academic performance in public secondary schools in Homabay County, Kenya. This study was based on combinations of modified Bossert's framework and Pitner's moderated effects model of effective schools. The main objective of the study was to examine the extent principals leadership styles influence students' academic performance in national examinations in HomaBay County Kenya. The study adopted the ex-post facto research design. Combinations of stratified random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to draw 216 secondary school teachers and 39 principals yielding a sample size of 255 respondents. The study employed a questionnaire for teachers and interview guide for principals. It was established that school principals utilize diverse leadership behaviour, some pointing to the more democratic and transactional styles while others skewed towards the more autocratic and laissez-faire types. The use of diverse leadership behaviour notwithstanding, it was evident that most principals were deficient in the types of leadership behaviour that support the creation of a conducive learning environment and support to teachers necessary for effective teaching and the expected enhanced students' academic achievement. A test of null hypothesis retained the null hypothesis that that there was no statistically significant relationship between principals' leadership styles and students' academic performance. It was recommended that school principals should aspire to establish a school environment which is conducive for effective teaching and learning (236 words).

The post-compulsory education and training system in the UK has long been defined as an archetypical voluntarist model. Yet, with the election of a New Labour government in 1997, the relationship between the state as supply-side provider of skills and employers as the demanders of skills began to subtly change. An additional rhetoric emerged in skills policy that suggested a role for the state to shape higher skills demands. This instigated a move towards what is here defined by the oxymoron 'state-steered voluntarism'; an approach to the governance of skills which aimed to deliver both a demand-led skills system and a system to lead demand. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with key policy-makers, this article offers an interpretive analysis of New Labour's ideas about the nature of workplaces, and the role of the state and skills providers in response, that explains the existence of policy paradox. We find that New Labour articulated three distinct strategies for governing skills, depending on whether workplaces were perceived to have 'good', 'bad', or frankly 'ugly' skills aspirations. However, whilst this threefold skills strategy seemingly served the 25 purpose of containing multiple policy objectives and creating a graded role for state action, it was also prone to being used selectively by those with vested interests in UK skills policy (i.e. the representatives of businesses and employers and the representatives of employees and learners).

The literature increasingly recognises the importance of gender in defining the boundaries between national societies and migrants. But little is still known about the history and changes of mechanisms that shape the role of gender as category of difference. Based on a historical case study of Switzerland this paper examines how gender is implicated in the politics of migrant admission and incorporation and underlying notions of 'the other'. Drawing on theories of boundary work we show that gendered representations of migrants are mobilised by different actors to advance their claims and calls for certain forms of immigration control and migrant integration. Since the late 19th century gendered representations of Swiss nationals and migrant others shift from classical gender ideas to culturalized post-colonial interpretations of gender roles and, most recently, to normative ideas of gender equality. As part of these changes, migrant women moved from the periphery to the core of public and political attention. Concomitantly, categories of difference shift from the intersection of gender and social class to an intersection of gender, culture and ethnicity. Local particularities of Switzerland – the idea of 'over-foreignization' and the system of direct democracy – play a significant role in shaping categories. But Switzerland's embeddedness in transnational fields emerges as equally important. The paper expands on recent research and illuminates how changing dynamics of categorisation and othering facilitate the construction of nations and national identities in a transnationalized world.

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) was discovered in the early 1980s when the virus had already established a pandemic. For at least three decades the epidemic in the Western World has been dominated by subtype B infections, as part of a sub-epidemic that traveled from Africa through Haiti to United States. However, the pattern of the subsequent spread still remains poorly understood. Here we analyze a large dataset of globally representative HIV-1 subtype B strains to map their spread around the world over the last 50 years and describe significant spread patterns. We show that subtype B travelled from North America to Western Europe in different occasions, while Central/Eastern Europe remained isolated for the most part of the early epidemic. Looking with more detail in European countries we see that the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland exchanged viral isolates with non-European countries than with European ones. The observed pattern is likely to mirror geopolitical landmarks in the post-World War II era, namely the rise and the fall of the Iron Curtain and the European colonialism. In conclusion, HIV-1 spread through specific migration routes which are consistent with geopolitical factors that affected human activities during the last 50 years, such as migration, tourism and trade. Our findings support the argument that epidemic control policies should be global and incorporate political and socioeconomic factors.

Questo lavoro si propone di esaminare la situazione economica siciliana dal secondo dopoguerra fino all'inizio degli anni Sessanta. Sono stati analizzati il periodo post - bellico e i risultati conseguiti dalla Sicilia nella fase della Ricostruzione, soprattutto grazie all'attività del Banco di Sicilia. L'Istituto divenne il motore dell'economia siciliana e fornì assistenza finanziaria ai diversi settori economici attraverso il lavoro compiuto dalle sue quattro Sezioni di credito speciale: credito agrario, minerario, fondiario e industriale. Si è analizzato il ruolo del Banco in relazione agli eventi storici ed economici interni ed esterni all'isola, come il Piano Marshall, la nascita della Comunità Economica Europea e della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. Ciò che emerge nel ventennio considerato è la salda posizione istituzionale mantenuta dal Banco. Nel dettaglio, riuscì a estendere il suo peso finanziariamente e territorialmente, a far fronte ai bisogni dei diversi settori economici dell'isola, e ad adattarsi alla struttura che l'economia siciliana stava assumendo relativamente al processo di rinnovamento di alcuni settori tradizionali (agricoltura, settore minerario ecc.) e anche di organizzazione. La ricerca ha utilizzato prevalentemente le pubblicazioni degli uffici economici del Banco che apportarono un valido contributo per la conoscenza di alcuni aspetti dell'economia regionale e delle tendenze delle strategie economiche del Mezzogiorno; tali pubblicazioni oggi costituiscono una fonte preziosa e insostituibile per gli studi di storia economica sulla Sicilia del Novecento.

Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales. Maestría en Derecho ; According to article 29 of the Political Constitution of the Mexican United States, in face of invasions, serious disturbance of public peace or any other situation which puts society in great danger or conflict, the right and privileges which can slow down a quick and easy response to the situation, can be suspended. This is the constitutional basis of the state of exception. Nevertheless, post-revolutionary governments decided, most of the times, to not turn to this article, but to set up factual states of exception. This paper will focus in those factual exceptions in order to prove that we have been living a continuous state of exception. ; Conforme al artículo 29 de la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, en los casos de invasión, perturbación grave de la paz pública, o de cualquier otro que ponga a la sociedad en grave peligro o conflicto, los derechos y garantías que fuesen obstáculo para hacer frente, rápida y fácilmente a la situación pueden ser suspendidos. Este es el fundamento constitucional del estado de excepción. Sin embargo, los gobiernos posrevolucionarios optaron, en la mayoría de los casos, no por invocar este artículo, sino en instaurar estados de excepción de facto. Este trabajo se enfoca en esos estados materiales de excepción con el propósito de demostrar que hemos estado viviendo en un continuo estado de excepción.

In many post-election surveys, the proportion of respondents who claim to have voted is greater than government-reported turnout rates. These differences have often been attributed to respondent lying (e.g., Burden 2000). In a search for greater accuracy, scholars have replaced respondent self-reports of turnout with government records of their turnout (a.k.a. turnout validation). Some scholars have interpreted "validated" turnout estimates as more accurate than respondent self-reports because "validated" rates tend to be lower than aggregate self-reported rates and tend to be closer to government-reported rates. We explore the viability of turnout validation efforts. We find that several apparently viable methods of matching survey respondents to government records severely underestimate the proportion of Americans who were registered to vote. Matching errors that severely underestimate registration rates also drive down "validated" turnout estimates. As a result, when "validated" turnout estimates appear to be more accurate than self-reports because they produce lower turnout estimates, the apparent accuracy is likely an illusion. Also, among respondents whose self-reports can be validated against government records, the accuracy of self-reports is extremely high. This would not occur if lying was the primary explanation for differences between reported and official turnout rates. These findings challenge the notion that the practice of "turnout validation" offers a means of measuring turnout that is more accurate than survey respondents' self-reports.

The article deals with the American myth and the Italian nationalism during World War I. Up to the US presidential elections in November 1916, Italian nationalism considered the war from an Eurocentric perspective, but in the aftermath, and especially after US joined the war in April 1917, many things changed. The issues I'll discuss in this paper are the following: the impact of the strong military mobilization (and in particular the arrival of US troops in Italy in the summer of 1918); the role played by the newspaper «L'Idea Nazionale» in a positive opinion about Woodrow Wilson and his commitment; the strong relationship between Italian and American people, confirmed by many articles praising US soldiers, young, strong and ready to sacrifice. At this stage there is no trace of the huge rift that will open at the Peace conference on Adriatic question and Fiume. The US were rather a model of patriotism, as mentally and geographically distant, and embodied several myths built at the beginning of the century with "The Strenuous Life" of Theodore Roosevelt, the relationship between military and physical education and the Italian need to become a powerful nation in the international framework. Thus, the nationalist perception of US can't be reduced to the suspects about pacifist and democratic internationalism: this was rather a phenomenon of the post-war period, but the perception during the war was very different and certainly not clear-cut.

К моменту основания Федеративной Республики Германия в 1949 году формирование органов полиции было завершено, в Конституции закреплен приоритет в деле обеспечения безопасности за федеральными землями. Авторы освещают основные этапы истории формирования новой полиции Саксонии, ее центральную роль как защитника демократических свобод и народного права в становлении демократического самоуправления, основные задачи при осуществлении демократических реформ и становлении государства. В статье идет речь об условиях создания структурных подразделений полиции, характере деятельности и классификации, о методах работы по преодолению сложных задач по борьбе с наследием фашизма в ходе национализации и земельной реформы в Германии в послевоенный период. ; By the moment of the foundation of Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 the creating of police bodies had been completed. In the Constitution the priority for providing safety in the federal lands is fixed. The authors cover the basic historical stages of creating the new police of Saxony, its central role as the defender of democratic freedom and the national right in becoming democratic self-management, the primary goals at realization of democratic reforms and becoming of the state. The article deals with the conditions of creating the police structural divisions, the character of their activity and classification, about the methods of work on overcoming complicated tasks on struggle against a heritage of fascism in the course of nationalization and land reform in Germany during the post-war period.

This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of state constitutional limits on legislative incorporation of dynamic federal law, as occurs when a state legislature incorporates future federal tax, environmental or health laws. Many state judicial decisions draw on the nondelegation doctrine to endorse an ex ante prohibition on state legislative incorporation of dynamic federal law. However, the analysis in this Article shows how bedrock principles related to separation of powers under state constitutions, such as protecting transparency, reinforcing accountability, and protecting against arbitrariness in lawmaking, are not consistent with this approach. Instead, this Article highlights two practices that can make dynamic incorporation of federal law more compatible with state separation of powers: a) accountable intermediaries, such as administrative agencies, as a was of preserving political accountability with incorporation of dynamic federal sources of law; and b) ex post judicial review, as a mechanism to provide standards and safeguards to protect against arbitrariness in lawmaking. The analysis highlights serious flaws with judicial interpretations of state constitutions that impose an ex ante barrier to the adoption of dynamic federal law. It also advances "hard look federalism†as a novel approach to judicial review by state appellate courts that can allow states to both protect their own separation of powers concerns and improve the operation of federalism, particular by enhancing state participation in adoption, interpretation, and implementation of federal standards.