We argue that a healthy urban forest contributes immensely to the sustainability of cities. The argument is based on a comprehensive array of values elicited from Canadians in several cities. To begin, we define the urban forest as inclusive of all the trees in the city and thus representing the predominant contributor to a city’s green infrastructure. Then we enumerate and explain the broad diversity of ways in which urban people value trees in the city. We, thus, show the myriad pathways by which trees contribute positively to any city’s social, economic, and ecological sustainability. Following a short summary of the ways in which trees may detract from people’s quality of life, we present promising management directions for urban-forest improvement, as we understand the situation in Canada. We conclude that all cities can enhance their sustainability by improving the urban forest.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that through the maintenance systems theory an audit methodology can be developed so it can be linked to a decision making process methodology to fully support the actions and initiatives proposed for improvement. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology is delimited by the concept of maintenance systems, from where a maintenance audit is developed to allow an integration of the Decision Making Grid (DMG) concept in order to add a basis of decision making and help in the prioritization process. Findings – This paper discuss an approach to the maintenance audits integrating well-established concepts of maintenance engineering and a decision making technique, which leads to an audit result-decision matrix that can show to the organization the wrong paths and shortcomings that are required to be solved in order to progress and close the gap to reach their desired performance. Originality/Value – Although there is a wide range of techniques developed to assess and audit, most of them imply a large and elaborated method not only for the questions (which are inevitable when assessing) but also to understand the findings and elaborate recommendations. The paper explores the integration of a defined maintenance system, its boundaries and its interactions, while mapping those concepts within a decision matrix.

Abstract: Autophagy is a highly regulated catabolic process that involves sequestration and lysosomal degradation of cytosolic components such as damaged organelles and misfolded proteins. While autophagy can be considered to be a general cellular housekeeping process, it has become clear that it may also play cell type-dependent functional roles. In this study, we analyzed the functional importance of autophagy in human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), and how this is regulated during differentiation. Western blot-based analysis of LC3-II and p62 levels, as well as flow cytometry-based autophagic vesicle quantification, demonstrated that umbilical cord blood-derived CD34(+) /CD38(-) immature hematopoietic progenitors show a higher autophagic flux than CD34(+) /CD38(+) progenitors and more differentiated myeloid and erythroid cells. This high autophagic flux was critical for maintaining stem and progenitor function since knockdown of autophagy genes ATG5 or ATG7 resulted in reduced HSPC frequencies in vitro as well as in vivo. The reduction in HSPCs was not due to impaired differentiation, but at least in part due to reduced cell cycle progression and increased apoptosis. This is accompanied by increased expression of p53, proapoptotic genes BAX and PUMA, and the cell cycle inhibitor p21, as well as increased levels of cleaved caspase-3 and reactive oxygen species. Taken together, our data demonstrate that autophagy is an important regulatory mechanism for human HSCs and their progeny, reducing cellular stress and promoting survival. Resumen: La autofagia es un proceso lisosomal catabólico altamente regulado que implica el secuestro y degradación de componentes citosólicos: tales como proteínas mal plegadas y orgánelos deteriorados. Mientras que la autofagia puede ser considerada como un proceso general de limpieza celular, también juega un papel funcional dependiendo del tipo de célula. En el presente estudio, hemos analizado la importancia de la autofagia en las células madre hematopoyéticas y sus progenitores y cómo dicho proceso está regulado durante la diferenciación. El análisis de los niveles de LC3-II y p62, así como la cuantificación de la autofagia mediante citometría de flujo demostraron que los progenitores hematopoyéticos inmaduros CD34 (+) / CD38 (-) tienen un flujo de autofagia mayor que las células eritroides y mieloides. Este alto flujo de autofagia es crucial para las células madre y los progenitores hematopoyéticos inmaduros CD34 (+) / CD38 (-) ya que la disminución en los niveles de ATG7 y ATG5 resulta en una reducción de dichas células tanto in vitro como in vivo. Lo anterior es consecuencia de la inhibición parcial del ciclo celular y de un aumento en apoptosis. Adicionalmente, observamos un incremento en la expresión de p53, los genes pro-apoptosis BAX y PUMA, el inhibidor de ciclo celular p21, los niveles de caspasa-3 clivada y las especies reactivas del oxígeno. En conclusión, nuestros datos demuestran que la autofagia es un mecanismo de regulación importante para las células madre hematopoyéticas y sus progenitores reduciendo los niveles de estrés y promoviendo su supervivencia.

Managing and arbitrating behaviours, processes and components in multilayered cognitive architectures when a huge amount of environmental variables are changing continuously with increasing complexity, ensue in a very comprehensive task. The presented framework proposes an hybrid cognitive architecture that relies on subsumption theory and includes some important extensions. These extensions can be condensed in inclusion of learning capabilities through bio-inspired reinforcement machine learning systems, an evolutionary mechanism based on gene expression programming to self-configure the behaviour arbitration between layers, a co-evolutionary mechanism to evolve behaviour repertories in a parallel fashion and finally, an aggregation mechanism to combine the learning algorithms outputs to improve the learning quality and increase the robustness and fault tolerance ability of the cognitive agent. The proposed architecture was proved in an animat environment using a multi-agent platform where several learning capabilities and emergent properties for self-configuring internal agent’s architecture arise.

The immense literature on discrimination treats outcomes as relative: One group suffers compared to another. But does a difference arise because agents discriminate against others—are exophobic—or because they favor their own kind—are endophilic? This difference matters, as the relative importance of the types of discrimination and their inter-relation affect market outcomes. Using a field experiment in which graders at one university were randomly assigned students’ exams that did or did not contain the students’ names, on average we find favoritism but no discrimination by nationality, and neither favoritism nor discrimination by gender, findings that are robust to a wide variety of potential concerns. We observe heterogeneity in both discrimination and favoritism by nationality and by gender in the distributions of graders’ preferences. We show that a changing correlation between endophilia and exophobia can generate perverse changes in observed market discrimination.

This article is concerned with soil-sustainability problems of agriculture in developing countries, in particular with soil erosion. The aim of our study is to develop a comprehensive model that explains the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices with respect to soil conservation. Our approach includes the following special features: (A) The model is comprehensive in that it includes a large number of institutional, personal–social, economic, and physical explanatory variables. (B) Particular attention is paid to the influence of marketing systems on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, which to our knowledge has been neglected in past research. (C) The concept of adopting sustainable agricultural practices (ASAP) is differentiated into a limited number of basic components of soil conservation.(D) The model is estimated by Principal Component Regression, which enhances efficient estimation of the impact of many explanatory variables on ASAP. Our model is applied to Cabuyal hillside farming in Colombia. The application demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed model. ASAP is differentiated into three basic components: soil-disturbance control, soil-protection practices, and run-off control. It appears that soil-disturbance control is particularly influenced by farmers’ characteristics, such as education and managerial variables. The second component, soil-protection practices, appears to be strongly influenced not only by farmers’ managerial variables but also by their relationship with their environment, in particular marketing institutions. The third soil-conservation component, run-off control, is influenced by the physical characteristics of the plot and by the available farm labor. Our empirical results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed model in designing agricultural policies, because it can determine which variables are more likely to influence the adoption of a specific type of soil conservation.

The commercial businesses of Queensland Rail (QR) were separated from the Government’s public transport business on 1 July 2010. QR National Limited will be sold via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) – sometimes referred to as a public float planned for the final quarter of 2010, subject to market conditions. On becoming a publicly listed company it is expected that there is great scope for increase in market share. In order to realise the opportunities available to a public company, the following undertakings are necessary: - Business and logistics improvements. - Compliance requirements. - Capital Investment. This report looks at the process to develop a program of work that will deliver on these undertakings. It describes how nominated projects were classified, scoped, prioritised and selected using a filtering process and how sub programs were packaged for delivery. Finally the report outlines a framework for execution. This framework includes an approach to governance, risk management, control of time, cost, scope and benefits realisation. Due to the limited knowledge of the inner workings of QR National, assumptions have been made based on information available in the public domain.

Abstract: Asphyxia suicide by placing a plastic bag over the head in addition with inhalation of gases or use of sedative substances is an unusual method of committing suicide, but frequently referenced by right to die groups in the Internet. This article reports 2 suicides in which chloroform was used to induce unconsciousness and subsequent asphyxia by placing the head in a plastic bag. Case histories of two young Colombian males, ages 23 and 28, are described with special emphasis on characteristics of death related to suffocation using plastic bags and chloroform. The final remarkable point in both cases is that the victims previously searched the WEB for instructions of suicide methods. The importance of the phenomenon of misuse of Internet by young people who commit suicide is stressed. Resumen: El suicidio por asfixia mediante la colocación de una bolsa de plástico sobre la cabeza, además de la inhalación de gases o el uso de sustancias sedantes es un método inusual de cometer suicidio, pero es frecuentemente referenciado por los grupos que apoyan el derecho al suicidio en Internet. Este artículo reporta 2 casos de suicidios en los que se usó cloroformo para inducir la inconsciencia y la asfixia subsecuente colocando la cabeza en una bolsa de plástico. Se describen las historias de 2 jóvenes colombianos, de edades comprendidas entre 23 y 28 años, con especial énfasis en las características de su muerte relacionadas con la asfixia mediante bolsas de plástico y cloroformo. El último punto notable en ambos casos es que las víctimas previamente buscaron en la WEB instrucciones de métodos suicidas. Se resalta la importancia del fenómeno del mal uso de Internet por parte de los jóvenes con alto riesgo suicida.

Abstract: Here we present new records for four bird species to the Andean foothills of the department of Meta in Colombia, and we confirm the occurrence and document range extensions for these in the basin of the Orinoco river. These species are the Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps (Linnaeus 1758), the Yellowchinned Spinetail, Certhiaxis cinnamomeus (Gmelin 1788), the Yellow-browed Tyrant, Satrapa icterophrys (Viellot 1818), and the Glossy Ibis, Plegadis falcinellus (Linnaeus 1766). We also report new sightings of the Prothonotary Warbler, Protonotaria citrea (Boddaert 1783), Least Grebe, Tachybaptus dominicus (Linnaeus 1766), Oilbird, Steatornis caripensis (Humboldt 1817) and Epaulet Oriole, Icterus cayanensis (Linnaeus 1766) in the Colombian Andean-Orinoco (Meta department). Resumen: Aquí presentamos nuevos registros para cuatro especies de aves para las estribaciones Andinas del Departamento del Meta en Colombia, y confirmamos la ocurrencia y documentamos la extensión de rango para éstas especies en la cuenca del río Orinoco. Estas especies son el Zambullidor común Podilymbus podiceps (Linnaeus 1758), el chamicero barbiamarillo, Certhiaxis cinnamomeus (Gmelin 1788), el mosquero cejiamarillo, Satrapa icterophrys (Viellot 1818), y el ibis pico de hoz, Plegadis falcinellus (Linnaeus 1766). También reportamos nuevos registros de la Reinita cabecidorada, Protonotaria citrea (Boddaert 1783), el zambullidor chico, Tachybaptus dominicus (Linnaeus 1766), el guacharo, Steatornis caripensis (Humboldt 1817) y el turpial boyerito, Icterus cayanensis (Linnaeus 1766) en el Orinoco Andino de Colombia (departamento del Meta).

Abstract: The aim of this study was to assess the resistance of microsurgically repaired proper palmar digital nerves (PPDN) to mobilization. Thirty-nine PPDN from fresh forearms cadavers were transected and then sutured using 10/0 nylon. After skin closure, each finger was forcefully flexed and extended 10 times. Out of the 39 repaired nerves, two were elongated and four were ruptured; this amounts to a 15.38% complication rate. We recommend immobilization of nerve repairs, although this contradicts most recent studies. Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es probar la resistencia de la neurorrafia de los nervios colaterales digitales. Se utilizaron 39 nervios colaterales digitales de 8 antebrazos de cadáver. La sección del nervio se realizó a nivel de la mitad de la falange proximal. La neurorrafia se realizó con Nylon 10-0. Se revisaron los especímenes para constatar el estado de las neurorrafias. Al considerar falla cualquier solución de continuidad o distensión de la zona de sutura se presenta falla de la misma el 15.38%. Los resultados de este estudio llevan a concluir que la inmovilización es necesaria para prevenir la ruptura de la neurorrafia de los nervios colaterales digitales.