To my parents, for their years of support and encouragement. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without help and support of many people. I would to thank my advisor Dr. Xenofon Koutsoukos, whose guidance and advice was infinitely valuable in allowing me to complete this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Mitchell Wilkes for graciously agreeing to be the second reader...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Research on children's use of mobile media devices lags behind its adoption. The objective of this study was to examine young children's exposure to and use of mobile media devices. METHODS Cross-sectional study of 350 children aged 6 months to 4 years seen October to November 2014 at a pediatric clinic in an urban, low-income, minority community. The survey was adap...

Information technology had a great impact in all aspects of life and the global economy is currently undergoing fundamental transformation. Information technology has very real impact in most of industries and in all aspects of economy, while businesses and enterprises continue to undergo considerable changes. Usage of these technologies is revolutionizing the rules of business, resulting in st...

We consider Smoluchowski’s equation with a homogeneous kernel of the form a(x, y) = xy + xy with −1 < α ≤ β < 1 and λ := α + β ∈ (−1, 1). We first show that self-similar solutions of this equation are infinitely differentiable and prove sharp results on the behavior of self-similar profiles at y = 0 in the case α < 0. We also give some partial uniqueness results for self-similar profiles: in th...

Genetic parameters and environmental factors were estimated for foaling ease (FE) and stillbirths (SBs) in four breeds of draft horses based on 11 229, 38 877, 35 764 and 13 274 FE and SB scores recorded between 1998 and 2010 for Ardennais (A), Breton (B), Comtois (C) and Percheron (P), respectively. Incidences for the three FE categories were: easy or without help 91.0% (A) to 95.4% (B), diffi...

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Shinnosuke Hattori, Weiwei Mou, Pankaj Rajak, Fuyuki Shimojo, and Aiichiro Nakano Collaboratory for Advanced Computing and Simulations, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, and Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0242, USA Department of Physics, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto 860-85...

OBJECTIVE Studies on untreated remissions from addictive behaviors have utilized very different definitions of treatment, ranging from regular self-help group participation to almost no help at all. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of different treatment definitions on triggering and maintenance mechanisms of recovery. METHOD Sample 1 consists of 103 remitted alcohol depen...

To explain my thoughts on this, I will report the highlights of the research I have been carrying out into (1) how children learn to talk and (2) why, therefore, the phonetics/phonology of English in mature speakers is the way that it is. I will then relate this to L2 learners, in order to ask what we can realistically expect students to do on their own, with and without help from technology, a...

AIM To evaluate the treatment of endometrial hyperplasia (EH) with different progestins. METHODS Eighty-two women with simple EH without atypia were included. Patients were offered oral progestagens and were randomized to one of three options for 3 months: medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA, 10 mg/day), lynestrenol (LYN, 15 mg/day) and norethisterone (NET, 15 mg/day) for 10 days per cycle. Pati...