OBJECTIVES: We examined approaches to reduce sodium content of food served in settings operated or funded by the government of the County of Los Angeles, California.METHODS: We adapted health impact assessment methods to mathematically simulate various levels of reduction in the sodium content of food served by the County of Los Angeles and to estimate the reductions' potential impacts on mean sys

Spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes can be decoded using a graph-based message passing algorithm applied across the total length of the coupled graph. However, considering practical constraints on decoding latency and complexity, a sliding window decoding approach is normally preferred. In order to reduce decoding complexity compared with standard parallel decoding schedules, serial s

In 2 studies with a total of over 300 participants, the Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory for Individuals (ECCI-i) was shown to be a reliable measuring instrument. In the first of these studies, the test was also shown to be a valid predictor of 2 measures of creative expression. The test is derived from empirical research on the creative process in individuals, which suggests that creativ

Public perception of the underlying causes of anthropogenic climate change is a complex and subjective issue that is critical to effective risk communication. This issue is important to scientists and policymakers because of the role of individual perceptions in influencing their protective behaviour towards risk (e.g., the adoption of climate risk reduction and mitigation strategies). This cross-

Some species of long-distance migrant birds are thought to follow spatiotemporal patterns of high food availability during the non-breeding season, a strategy termed "itinerancy," instead of being sedentary in one specific site. We tracked the migration of a small Eurasian songbird, the Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus), using archival light-level geolocators. The birds showed a distinct c

The paper reports experimental results on the intonation of wh- and yes/no-questions in Tokyo Japanese, and discusses several implications for the semantic and phonological theories of focus. The intonation of declarative sentences, wh-questions, and yes/no-questions are systematically compared. The results show that the wh-question exhibits an F0-prominence on the wh-phrase, while the yes/no-ques

Pedestrian merging flows on stairs are defined as the confluence of a flow of pedestrians from a stair and pedestrians from each floor of a multi-storey building. This paper introduces a novel simplified mathematical model for the calculation of evacuation times on stairs which takes into account the impact of merging flows. The model allows calculating the impact of merging ratio (people accessin

Dog polymorphonuclear leukocyte cathepsin G was isolated from a granule extract using a two-step procedure including affinity chromatography on aTrasylol-Sepharose gel and ion-exchange chromatography on a CM 52 column. 22 of the first 24 N-terminal amino acids were determined and showed 83% and 71% identity to those of human and rat cathepsin G, respectively. Total amino-acid composition demonstra

Somatic rearrangements contribute to the mutagenized landscape of cancer genomes. Here, we systematically interrogated rearrangements in 560 breast cancers by using a piecewise constant fitting approach. We identified 33 hotspots of large (>100 kb) tandem duplications, a mutational signature associated with homologous-recombination-repair deficiency. Notably, these tandem-duplication hotspots were

The β2-integrins on leukocytes can serve as a signaling unit during cell adhesion and locomotion, and to further clarify this important property we investigated the possible mechanisms of β2-integrin-induced activation of PtdIns 3-kinase. It has previously been demonstrated that clustering of β2-integrins activates p21(ras) by a tyrosine kinase-dependent pathway, and here we show that active p21(r

This paper addresses a relatively new phenomenon in higher education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and explores conceptions around this new and emerging development from the perspective of a number of stakeholders in the university. A phenomenographic approach is adopted. The study explores how different stakeholders at a university perceive the MOOC phenomenon, and reflects on how the man

The primary goal of this workshop was to identify the most appropriate method to estimate the potential effect of reduction in sodium consumption on mortality. Difficulty controlling hypertension at the individual level has motivated international, federal, state, and local efforts to identify and implement population-wide strategies to better control this problem; reduction of sodium intake is on