Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a phenomenon of growing interest around the world. However, little is known regarding the characteristics of social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurial behaviour also remains poorly understood. Although the need for research on particular groups of social entrepreneurs has been acknowledged, there currently is a dearth of literature specifically on older social entrepreneurs. This mixed methods study provides important insight into the diversity of social entrepreneurs over 50 and their SE activities, taking into consideration the different ways in which individual experiences are embedded in social, cultural and educational/professional backgrounds. The focus on older people in this research has also brought to light how individual pathways into SE are shaped by stages and events in people's lives. The life course approach adopted reveals the complex and evolving nature of SE motivations which cannot be understood in isolation from other aspects of individuals' past, present and plans for future lives. A related key question addressed is whether social entrepreneurs become more or less risk averse with age. The research contributes to knowledge in three main ways. First, an empirically based typology is developed which reflects the spectrum of social entrepreneurial activity. Three main types are identified ('Volunteer Activists', 'Rationalising Professionals' and 'High Aspirers') which demonstrate the diversity of (50+) social entrepreneurs beyond their demographic characteristics, i.e. including with respect to their expectations, the nature of their contributions, challenges and related support needs. Second, it demonstrates the importance of life stages for better understanding the link between (social) entrepreneurial intentions and actual behaviour, and presents a model of the role of motivations in the SE process which is integrated with a life course perspective. Third, it provides a more holistic insight into the nature of risk and its various dimensions, including financial (the main focus of the 'mainstream' literature) as well as reputational or other personal (e.g. physical) risks. It also demonstrates that individuals' risk taking propensity often changes over time and in response to changing circumstances in form of life stages.


An option-theoretic model of suicide in the continuous time framework is proposed. Given completeness of the financial market and the associated contingent claim argument, the value of human capital consistent with the no-arbitrage principle is determined as the expected, discounted, present value of the future wage stream under the risk-neutral probability measure. The suicide option - the right but not the obligation to commit suicide - is modelled as an American put option with this human capital stock and a certain reference level of human capital as the underlier and strike price, respectively. The value of underlier falling short of the srtike price doet not induce the option holder's immediate suicide because of the option value to postpone such a fatal and irreversible decision. This value, the delayed exercise premium, is given in a near closed form up to a deterministic exercise boundary. The nearly closed-form nature of this boundry allows one to calibrate the model to the real suicide rates among Japanese male workers from 1998 to 2009. The calibrated value of the strike price roughly amounts to the perpetual annuity value of the 90 percentage of the initial wage earned as of the new entry into the labor market, with the coupon rate given by the spread in market prices of risk between financial and labor market.


The paper is devoted to a follow-up of 177 bladder cancer patients. The problems of providing radiotherapy with the use of hyperfractionation of a radiation dose were discussed. Despite an increase in a tumor dose by 15%, no increase in the number and expression of local radiation reactions is observed. Enhanced therapeutic efficacy was observed, particularly in cases of locally advanced tumors (T3). Three years after conventional radiotherapy 44% of the patients were alive, after hyperfractionated irradiation--69%.


: Drought resistance traits are important for resistance to preharvest aflatoxin contamination in peanut seeds caused by Aspergillus flavus ; however, the evidence has been controversial. The problem might be solved by investigating fungal activities relevant to drought effects on the early pod. Herein, drought impacts on three peanut cultivars with different genotypes were shown as leaf adaptation to reduce transpiration. High impacts were observed in ICGV 98300, ICGV 98308, and Tainan 9 cultivars. Fungal ingress was not histologically found across sclerenchyma to the inner parenchyma of R3 pod pericarp regardless of genotypes or water conditions. Similar activities occurred in R5 pods of non-drought stressed control plants, and the fungus was not detectable inside newly developing seeds. Healthy sclerenchyma likely displayed a physical barrier role. Drought led to the fungal detection in seeds of the three cultivars. The results corresponded to the fungal germination tests in mature seeds, where A. flavus was found, of stressed plants. A. flavus nor-1 transcript was occasionally detected showing A. flavus colonization in a number of R5 kernels of control plants. Under drought condition, the nor-1 expression was increased by 2.5 folds in Tainan 9 and ICGV 98300, and a small increase was observed in ICGV 98308. The reducing sugar contents in R5 kernels of Tainan 9 and ICGV 98300 were also increased, suggesting the stimulation of oxidative stress and aflatoxin synthesis. High A. flavus virulence, based on nor-1 expression and reducing sugar content, was remarkable in ICGV 98308 under water regimes for control and drought-stressed plants under greenhouse conditions.


In this experiment, the micro copper powders with high temperature of oxidation resistance were prepared by coating with 2 wt.% of silane coupling agent(KH560) solution in order to protect them from oxidation in isotropically conductive adhesives, and X-ray diffraction analysis(XRD), thermo gravimetric analysis(TGA) and accelerated aging test were applied to analyze the anti-oxidant property of the samples before and after they were treated. Experimental results showed that the polymer of silane coupling agent on the surfaces of copper powders had high thermal stability exposed under high temperature and was very effective in preventing the copper powders from oxidation in isotropically conductive adhesives. Besides, the epoxy conductive adhesive sample with plated copper as electrically conductive fillers still had good conductive property even exposed at 160 degrees with its bulk resistivity was 8.75×10-3Ω•cm.


The government efforts to dissolve the societal organizations must be carried out in accordance of stages and processes stipulated in the Law on Societal Organizations. Persuasive efforts must be done first before the imposition of administrative sanctions. Administrative sanctions in the form of warning letters and temporary suspensions of activities need to be done before the Government dissolves the societal organizations after a court decision was obtained from the permanent legal force. The writer considered that the dissolution of societal organizations by the Government was urgent for the present, but the Government before dissolving societal organizations should seek consideration from the Constitutional Court of Indonesia as the guardian, and interpreter of Pancasila. Thus, the Constitutional Court of Indonesia as a neutral judicial institution shall have the authority to consider whether a societal organization will be dissolved.


This paper examines the welfare effect of the acquisition of mines by firms in resource-importing countries. In particular, we focus on the distribution of profits from resource extraction between exporting and importing countries. We consider one resource-extracting firm, which is located in a resource-exporting country, and two resource-importing firms, which are located in resource-importing countries. We demonstrate that, when a resource-importing country buys the interests of mines from the resource-extracting firm, the welfare of the resource-exporting country as well as that of resource-importing countries increases. This is because the insufficient supply of resource is mitigated. Subsidy by the government of a resource-importing country encourages the acquisition of mines by the resource-importing firm of the country. However, a part of the subsidy shifts from the resource-importing firm to the resource-exporting country through a price increase of interests. Thus, the welfare of the resource-importing country may decrease. We also consider the case in which resource-importing firms explore new mines in their own countries.


1. Obtaining empirical evidence of the consequences of dispersal distance on fitness is challenging in wild animals because long-term, unbiased data on reproduction, survival and movement are notoriously difficult to obtain. 2. Lifetime fitness correlates of natal dispersal distance were studied in an isolated population of the facultatively colonial lesser kestrel Falco naumanni (Fleischer) monitored during 8 years at north-eastern Spain, where most birds (83%) dispersed from their natal colony to settle at distances ranging from 112 m to 136.5 km. 3. Neither annual breeding success nor age at recruitment was affected by natal dispersal distance. However, a capture-mark-recapture analysis revealed that survival during the year following recruitment decreased exponentially with dispersal distance, with differences of up to 15% between philopatrics and long-distance dispersers. In subsequent years, it remained similar irrespective of the natal dispersal distance moved. These results did not seem to be biased by long-distance dispersers settling differentially in the periphery of the population (which could emigrate permanently and be considered dead in future occasions) or within-individual consistency in successive dispersal distances, so our results appear to reflect genuine survival differences between dispersal tactics. 4. Average lifetime fledgling production, average lifetime recruitment success and rate-sensitive individual fitness (λ(ind)) also decreased with the distance from the natal to the first-breeding colony, indicating that dispersal decisions early in life affecting immediate survival prospects may translate into long-term fitness costs. 5. Both survival and lifetime fitness models including continuous dispersal distances significantly improved the characterization of the effect on fitness compared with models considering dispersal as a discrete process (i.e. dispersal vs. philopatry at a colony level). 6. Long-distance dispersers were more likely to establish new colonies regardless of whether they recruited in the centre or the periphery of the population, revealing their important role in the colonization of unoccupied patches. Individuals experienced a higher probability of mortality in small and newly funded colonies, so lifetime fitness costs of dispersal seem to be explained by recruitment in sites where average quality is low because of high uncertainty in survival prospects.


IMPORTANCE
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committees influence decisions relating to the regulatory approval of drugs in the United States. Outside of the field of oncology, prosponsor voting bias has been observed among members with financial conflicts of interest (FCOIs).

OBJECTIVE
To explore factors associated with Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) recommendations and the influence ODAC members' FCOIs on the drug approval process.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Retrospective analysis of 82 ODAC meeting transcripts between January 2000 and December 2014. Analysis was restricted to meetings at which votes were cast relating to oncologic drugs. The influence of methodology of trials supporting approval and frequency and type of self-reported FCOIs of voting members was explored using logistic regression.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
ODAC recommendation for drug approval and subsequent FDA approval.

RESULTS
Eighty-two transcripts of ODAC meetings between January 2000 and December 2014 were available for analysis. During the time period analyzed, ODAC members voted on 68 applications in 79 meetings (the remaining 3 meetings included voting questions regarding postmarketing safety or trial design). There was agreement between ODAC recommendations and final FDA approval; FDA approval was received for all 41 drugs that ODAC recommended approval. Additionally, the FDA approved 7 out of 41 agents that were not recommended for approval by ODAC (κ = 0.83). In 51 of 79 meetings, more than 1 trial was available to support the indication of a particular drug, and favorable ODAC recommendations were more likely when this was the case (odds ratio [OR], 1.82; 95% CI, 1.19-2.78; P = .01). Availability of randomized data did not appear to be important with selected single-arm phase 2 trials leading to recommendations for approval, especially in rare diseases. There has been a significant reduction in FCOIs over time (31 of 77 voting members [40%] in 2000 vs 0 of 20 voting members in 2014 [0%]; P < .001). Recommendations for approval were made in 28 of 47 meetings with members reporting FCOIs while among meetings with no reported FCOIs, recommendations for approval were made in 13 of 35 meetings (OR, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.97-1.46; P = .10). No significant association between ODAC recommendations and FDA approval was observed for members with FCOIs with the sponsor (OR, 1.79; 95% CI, 0.97-1.46; P = .19 and OR, 3.48; 95% CI, 0.84-14.35; P = .09, respectively) compared with members with FCOIs with competitors (OR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.78-1.44; P = .72 and OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.69-1.28; P = .69, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Availability of multiple trials is associated with higher odds of ODAC recommendation and drug approval. Availability of randomized data appears less important. Declaration of FCOIs among ODAC members was frequent during the time period of interest but has decreased significantly over time. There is no apparent association between FCOIs and ODAC recommendations and subsequent FDA approval.


In past years, we have witnessed the fields of geosciences and remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) become closer. Thanks to the massive availability of observational data, improved simulations, and algorithmic advances, these disciplines have found common objectives and challenges to help advance the modeling and understanding of the Earth system. Despite such great opportunities, we have also observed a worrisome tendency to remain in disciplinary comfort zones, applying recent advances from AI on well-resolved remote sensing problems. Here, we take a position on the research directions for which we think the interface between these fields will have the most significant impact and become potential game changers. In our declared agenda for AI in Earth sciences, we aim to inspire researchers, especially the younger generations, to tackle these challenges for a real advance of remote sensing and the geosciences.


The Global Alliance against Chronic Respiratory Diseases (GARD) is a voluntary alliance that is assisting World Health Organization (WHO) in the task of addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) at country level. The GARD approach was initiated in 2006 (1,2). GARD Turkey is the first comprehensive program developed by a government with all stakeholders of the country. GARD Turkey Project is the National Control Program of Turkish Ministry of Health on chronic airway disease (asthma and COPD) (3,4). This paper describes the segment of the program on asthma.


Soybean meal, SoyPlusRTM, dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), and fish meal samples were used in the evaluation of the modified three-step, the immobilized digestive enzyme assay ( IDEA), the guanidination, and the furosine in vitro procedures to estimate intestinal digestibility of amino acids in rumen undegraded protein ( RUP-AA). Identifying an in vitro method to estimate RUP-AA digestibility will allow for routine analysis of feeds for this parameter, which can lead to more accurate formulation of dairy rations. To determine the adequacy of these procedures, in vivo RUP-AA digestibility estimates were obtained using the precision-fed cecectomized rooster assay. Rumen undegraded residues ( RUR) were generated, and intact feeds and RUR were analyzed for AA and crop-intubated to cecectomized roosters. Results of the rooster experiments indicate that AA digestibility differs from RUP-AA for DDGS samples, and RUP-AA digestibility differs within samples. For the modified three-step procedure, digestibility of all AA in all feedstuffs was highly correlated to in vivo data. For the IDEA analysis, IDEA values of intact feeds were highly correlated to RUPAA digestibility, which indicates that the ruminal incubation step can be eliminated with this method. The guanidination and furosine methods can be used to predict lysine digestibility only, which is often a limiting AA in dairy rations. Blocked lysine was calculated from furosine concentrations, and the guanidination procedure was used to calculate reactive lysine. Blocked and reactive lysine estimates were highly correlated to in vivo lysine digestibility. Of these two methods, the guanidination procedure was a better approach for predicting lysine digestibility across feedstuffs. To increase the number and type of sample analyzed, 5 BM samples were later obtained. Blood meal was only analyzed via the rooster assay, the modified three-step procedure, and the guanidination method. Among the BM samples, digestibility of AA was similar to RUPAA. For the modified three-step procedure, the use of intact BM provided more accurate estimates of RUPAA digestibility than the RUR. The guanidination method was not a good approach to predict lysine digestibility in BM. In conclusion, the modified three-step procedure appears to be the best in vitro approach to estimate RUP-AA digestibility.


Introduction: Human attitudes to and perception of dogs vary both between and within societies and cultures and are influenced by many factors including factors unrelated to the dog such as it's environment. These include cultural factors, personal knowledge, the function of the animal, the perceived intelligence and the appearance of the dog. It is known that the presence of a dog can influence perceptions of the handler but it has not been established whether the characteristics of the handler can influence the perception of the dog. This is especially pertinent to the area of working dogs. German shepherd dogs tend to have a negative image and may be under utilized in assistance dog work due to concerns regarding the public perception of this breed. Methodology: The research was by a questionnaire survey of students at Cork Institute of Technology. Respondents were asked to rate photographs of three breeds of dog alone and to then rate the same dogs with three of fifteen possible categories of "owner", prior to completing the questionnaire. 463 questionnaires were completed. Results: There was a difference in mean rating for temperament for a dog alone and for the same dog with a handler, and there were between breed differences. Different dog breeds were rated significantly differently (Wilkes Lambda = 0.187, F (13,374) = 125.053 P = .000). There was a significant effect of handler on the perception of the Labrador (LR)(F (14,462) = 8.589 P = .000), of the German shepherd (GSD)(14,462) = 6.513 P = .000) and of the Airedale terrier (AT)(F (14,461) = 7.587 P = .000) The handler categories, which appeared to influence perception most, were the Garda (Police)(male(m) and female(f)); rough male; wheel chair user (m and f); blind person (m and f). Pearson's correlations revealed consistency in ratings throughout the questionnaire, with or without a visual representation for the LR and for the GSD but not for the AT. The LR has a positive image. The GSD while perceived as having a negative image, appears to have an altered image when seen in a working context, where people described it inferring intelligence and admirable character. The AT is uncommon in Ireland and without media association. This may explain the inconsistencies in ratings when presented either with or without a visual image. Conclusions: People's perception of the temperament of a breed of dog may be influenced by the breed, by the appearance of the handler and by their experience and knowledge of dogs. The results appear consistent, that is, respondents perceived that the three breeds of dog were either more friendly or less friendly, when presented with certain differing categories of handler.


Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is often severe, enduring, and contributes significantly to chronic disability. But clinicians have difficulty in assessing cognition due to a lack of brief instruments. We evaluated whether a brief battery of cognitive tests derived from larger batteries could generate a summary score representing global cognitive function. Using data from 3 previously published trials, we calculated the corrected item-total correlations (CITCs) or the correlation of each test with the battery total score. We computed the proportion of variance that each test shares with the global score excluding that test (R(t)(2)=CITC(2)) and the variance explained per minute of administration time for each test (R(t)(2)/min). The 3 tests with the highest R(t)(2)/min were selected for the brief battery. The composite score from the trail making test B, category fluency, and digit symbol correlated .86 with the global score of the larger battery in 2 of the studies and correlated between .73 and .82 with the total battery scores excluding these 3 tests. A Brief Cognitive Assessment Tool for Schizophrenia (B-CATS) using the above 3 tests can be administered in 10-11 min. The full batteries of the larger studies have administration times ranging from 90 to 210 min. Given prior research suggesting that a single factor of global cognition best explains the pattern of cognitive deficit in schizophrenia, an instrument like B-CATS can provide clinicians with meaningful data regarding their patients' cognitive function. It can also serve researchers who want an estimate of global cognitive function without requiring a full neuropsychological battery.


Dipeptidyl peptidase IV-beta (DPP IV-beta) is a novel protein which shows a peptidase activity similar to the T-cell-activation antigen CD26. To further characterize this DPP IV-beta and confirm its cell surface expression, we have developed a purification strategy using the CD26- cell line C8166. The purification process includes biotinylation of cell surface proteins before preparation of cell extracts and processing by gel-filtration, ion-exchange and lectin chromatographies. Consistent with the molecular mass of DPP IV-beta estimated by gel-filtration chromatography, the final purified fraction, manifesting a typical DPP IV activity, showed a major biotinylated 75-80-kDa band in SDS/PAGE, thus suggesting the monomeric nature of this enzyme. Kinetic parameters of DPP IV-beta and the sensitivity to a new family of irreversible DPP IV inhibitors, were studied in comparison to CD26. Both enzymes followed a Michaelis kinetics with different Km values for Gly-Pro-NH-Np (NH-Np, para-nitroanilide) hydrolysis (0.28+/-0.05 mM and 0.12+/-0.02 mM). More significant differences were observed in the sensitivity to inhibitors, which exerted a much higher activity on CD26 than on DPP IV-beta. These differences permitted us to study DPP IV-beta expression in CD26-expressing cells, showing the expression of this new enzyme in all lymphoid cells tested, and a rapid enhancement in phytohemagglutinin-stimulated or protein-A-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Our results indicate that, although DPP IV-beta and CD26 are coexpressed and manifest a typical DPP IV activity, there are distinct features in their catalytic activities that may confer to each enzyme a complementary role in peptide processing.


The distribution of mechanical property in the weld zone of friction stir welded 7050 aluminum alloy joint along the plane perpendicular to the welding direction was experimentally investigated by the non-contact measurement method. The results show that the elastic modulus presents a W-shape distribution across the weld zone. The elastic modulus in the weld nugget zone is increased due to the grain refinement. In addition, the elastic modulus in the advancing side is slightly less than that in the retreating side possibly because of the relatively higher temperature in the advancing side during the welding process. The strength in the vicinity of weld center is decreased while the ductility is enhanced. The tensile strength and yield strength in the weld nugget zone and thermo-mechanically affected zone are significantly decreased while the elongation is increased due to the change of strengthening mechanism. In the heat affected zone the strength is decreased compared to the base material because the second phase grows up.


Occupation segregation is a persistent aspect of the labour market, and scholars have often researched what happens when women and men enter into what are seen to be 'non-traditional' work roles for their sex. Research on men within women's roles has concentrated mainly on the challenges to a masculine identity, while research on workplace language has focused on women's linguistic behaviour in masculine occupations. To date, there has been relatively little research into the linguistic behaviour of men working in occupations seen as women's work (e.g., nursing, primary school teaching). To address this gap, this article focuses on men's discursive behaviour and identity construction within the feminized occupation of nursing. Empirical data collected by three male nurses in a hospital in Northern Ireland is explored using discourse analysis and the Community of Practice paradigm. This paper discusses how the participants linguistically present themselves as nurses by performing relational work and creating an in-group with their nurse colleagues by actively using an inherently 'feminine' discourse style.


Objective. The aim of this study is to describe the main imaging findings of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (IHCC) and the role of interventional radiology (IR) specialist in the management of these patients, with emphasis on outcomes and comp lications following this procedures. Materials and method. We performed a retrospective study, over a two-year period (2016 to 2018), on 396 consecutive patients with intrahepatic parenchymatous lesions that underwent interventional radiology procedures with the aim of diagnosis confirmation, for palliative treatment or the management of complications. For all these patients, we reviewed and analyzed the CT and MRI image findings. Eight patients from this group who underwent transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) were also included in this study. Results. In 12.8% (n=26) of the cohort patients, the histopathology confirmed the diagnosis of IHCC: 19 males (73%) and 7 females (27%), with the mean age of 67 years old. There was a total of 9 (4.4%) complications and adverse effects after liver biopsy, all of them categorized as minor complications. The review of CT/MRI images showed a hypovascular imaging aspect, in most cases the hepatobiliary phase being the most valuable for the diagnostic workup. In eight patients of the cohort, with TACE, there were no major complications. Conclusions. In nonspecific IHCC appearances, IR may play a crucial role in the diagnosis confirmation and in the management of IHCC through various minimally invasive procedures which offer a safe and a low complications rate.


JAI comprises the work of senior researchers from SBC community, offering a unique opportunity for students and computer professionals to update themselves in different subjects, interacting with leaders of the most diverse research areas in Brazil. In 2019, JAI, held in Belem, comprised four mini-courses in advanced areas of knowledge in Computing. These are: 1) Introduction to the Programming of Quantum Computers; 2) How to program high performance applications with productivity; 3) Block Chains: Consensus Algorithms and Implementation in the Hyperledger Fabric Platform and 4) Authentication using Biometric Signals: Fundamentals, Applications and Challenges. These were selected from among 9 excellent proposals. The criteria took into account the reviewers' comments, the seniority of the speakers, demonstrated competence in their area of activity, importance and scope of the proposed theme and potential to arouse the interest of young students, academics and professionals in the area.


on to the skin. They do not state how long the contaminating solution was allowed to remain in contact with the skin; nor, of course, have they done the only experiment which would really help-namely, to do their experiment on normal, untreated skin, and recording the growth of all potentially pathogenic bacteria. They might also be surprised to know how many doctors do not in fact bother with routine skin preparation before injection. I am well aware that I am not the first to do so, and I claim no "discovery." I am concerned only to bring into the open a practice which experience proves to be safe, which has a sound theoretical backing, but which many doctors are unfortunately ashamed of using, even when they have been using it, as in one case I know of, for over 30 years.-L am, etc., T. C. DANN. University College of Swansea, Glam.


ABSTRACT The authors' goal was to identify ways in which Korean immigrant parents define the concept of parental involvement and to examine the statistical significances of interrelationships among these meanings. Seventy-seven parents responded to an open-ended question that asked them to define the meaning of parental involvement; 141 responses were analyzed. Qualitative analysis resulted in four distinct categories: (a) support at home (68.8%), (b) home–school connection (17.7%), (c) participation in school (5.0%), and (d) duty (8.5%). The category of support at home was divided into three subcategories: Support of nonacademic development (31.9%), support of emotional psychological development (29.1%), and support of academic success (7.8%). A correlational analysis indicated that support of emotional psychological development was negatively correlated with home–school connection and support of academic success. The parents who considered parental involvement to be their duty did not perceive their roles as participating in home–school connections and supporting nonacademic development activities.


Thermolysis of the four possible isomeric 3-methoxy-16-methylestra-1,3,5(10)-trien-17-yl azidoformates 1b, 6b, 10b and 14b, of 3-methoxyestra-1, 3, 5(10)-trien-17β-yl azidoformate 17b, and of 16β-azidoformyloxymethyl-3-methoxyestra-1,3,5(10)-triene 21b was realized at 100 °C. Thermolysis results in insertion of the nitrene intermediate into C–H bonds, the site of which depends on the steric position of the substituents in the D ring of the sterane skeleton.


We report on novel investigations into training models that make sentences concise. We define the task and show that it is different from related tasks such as summarization and simplification. For evaluation, we release two test sets, consisting of 2000 sentences each, that were annotated by two and five human annotators, respectively. We demonstrate that conciseness is a difficult task for which zero-shot setups with large neural language models often do not perform well. Given the limitations of these approaches, we propose a synthetic data generation method based on round-trip translations. Using this data to either train Transformers from scratch or fine-tune T5 models yields our strongest baselines that can be further improved by fine-tuning on an artificial conciseness dataset that we derived from multi-annotator machine translation test sets.


Hedonic price modelling attempts to uncover information on the determinants of prices - in this case the prices
are those of houses in the Greater London area for the period between 1980 and 1998. The determinants of house
prices can include house attributes (such as size, type of building, age, etc.), neighbourhood attributes (such as
proportion of unemployed people in the neighbourhood or local tax rates) and geographic attributes (such as
distance from the city centre or proximity to various amenities) (Orford 1999).
Almost all applications of hedonic price models applied to housing are in the form of multiple linear regression
models where price is regressed on various attributes. The parameter estimates from the calibration of this type
of regression model are assumed to yield information on the relative importance of various attributes in
influencing price. One major problem with this approach is that it assumes that the determinants of prices are the
same in all parts of the study area. This seems particularly illogical in this type of application where there could
easily be local variations in preferences and also in supply and demand relationships. Hence, it seems reasonable
to calibrate local hedonic price models rather than global ones – that is, to calibrate a model form which is
flexible enough to allow the determinants of house prices to vary spatially. Geographically Weighted Regression
(GWR) (Fotheringham et al. 2002) is a statistical technique that allows local calibrations and which yields local
estimates of the determinants of house prices. GWR was recently used to investigate spatial variations in house
price determinants across London separately for each of the years between 1980 and 1998 (Crespo et al. 2007).
The result of the GWR analysis is a set of continuous localised parameter estimate surfaces which describe the
geography of the parameter space. These surfaces are typically visualised with a set of univariate choropleth
maps for each surface which are used to examine the plausibility of the stationarity assumption of the traditional
regression and different possible causes of non-stationarity for each separate parameter (Fotheringham and al.
2002). The downside of these separate univariate visualisations is that multivariate spatial and non-spatial
relationships and patterns in the parameter space can not be seen. In an attempt to counter this inadequacy, in a
previous study we suggested to treat the result space of one single GWR analysis as a multivariate dataset and
visually explore it (Demsar et al. 2007). The goal was to identify spatial and multivariate patterns that the
separate univariate mapping could not recognise. In this paper we extend this approach with the temporal
dimension: we use Geovisual Analytical exploration to investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics in a time series
of GWR hedonic price models. The idea is to merge the time series of GWR result spaces (one space per year)
into one single highly-dimensional spatio-temporal dataset, which we then visually explore in an attempt to
uncover information about the temporal and spatio-temporal behaviour of parameter estimates of GWR and
consequently of underlying geographical processes.


Data on the decrease of the DNA melting temperature Tm with the salt concentration M are reported and discussed. The electrostatic free energy change in the helix–coil transition, ΔFe is related to the potential, ψ, which represents the electrostatic repulsion between the phosphate charges; ψ is calculated as a function of M and of the distances between the charges of the two strands. The Debye‐Hückel approximation is shown to overestimate ψ. It is suggested that the high local concentration of the counterions in the immediate vicinity of the fixed charges screen these charges from interacting with other fixed charges, to the extent that the system behaves as if the fixed ions carry a reduced charge. The notion of a reduced charge represents in a single parameter the deviation of the Debye‐Hückel approximation from the true potential. A plot of Tm versus ΔFe gives a straight line as predicted. ΔH0 is calculated from the slope and found to be consistent with experimentally determined values. Our calculations support the hypothesis that the change of Tm with salt concentration is due to changes in the screened interactions between the fixed phosphate charges. In analyzing the results of these calculations, we are able on the one hand to indicate some of the limitations of the theoretical model and, on the other hand, draw some conclusions about the order of magnitude of the nonelectrostatic interaction energy of formation of the double helix.


Confusing Colloids in Liquid Crystals In a simple fluid, particle diffusion such as the motion of colloidal particles shows a change in the mean squared displacement that is proportional with time. Within a nematic liquid crystal, diffusion of the molecules may show anisotropic behavior. Turiv et al. (p. 1351; see the Perspective by Abbott) asked what happens to colloidal particles in a nematic liquid crystal. At short times, anomalous diffusion was observed with motion both slower and faster than the long-term behavior, indicative of a complex coupling between the diffusive motion of the colloidal particles and the motion of the liquid crystal molecules. Colloidal particles in a nematic liquid crystal experience anomalous and anisotropic Brownian motion. [Also see Perspective by Abbott] In the simplest realization of Brownian motion, a colloidal sphere moves randomly in an isotropic fluid; its mean squared displacement (MSD) grows linearly with time τ. Brownian motion in an orientationally ordered fluid—a nematic—is anisotropic, with the MSD being larger along the axis of molecular orientation, called the director. We found that at short time scales, the anisotropic diffusion in a nematic becomes anomalous, with the MSD growing slower or faster than τ; these states are respectively termed subdiffusion and superdiffusion. The anomalous diffusion occurs at time scales that correspond to the relaxation times of director deformations around the sphere. Once the nematic melts, the diffusion becomes normal and isotropic. Our experiment shows that the deformations and fluctuations of long-range orientational order profoundly influence diffusive regimes.


The Popham's Arboretum, a small regenerated forest patch located in a highly urbanized setting in Dambulla, is home to a small population of the Grey Slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus). Here we report on the habitat selection of the Grey Slender Loris within the arboretum. Nocturnal surveys were conducted on 20 days during three sampling sessions between September 2016 to June 2017. The majority of the 55 loris sightings made during the survey period were concentrated within the core areas of the forest. These sightings were geo-referenced and marked for habitat sampling. A total of twenty 10x10 m quadrates centered on these sightings (n=13) and additional quadrates located where no sightings were made during the survey (n=7), were used for the habitat analyses. Six habitat parameters previously shown to be important for the loris; % canopy cover, mean DBH, total abundance of plants over 10 cm GBH, species richness of plants, number of creepers and the distance to the forest edge were recorded for each quadrate. Further, temperature and relative humidity within each of the quadrates were also recorded between 1900 and 1800 hrs. Results indicate a significant differences in four of these parameters (species richness of trees, canopy cover, distance to the forest boundary and relative humidity) between areas of the forest that were used and those that were not used by the loris (p<0.05). Interestingly, the PC1 and PC2 explaining approximately 60 % of the variation in the habitat (derived from PCA analyses) indicates that microhabitat features within used areas were different to those that were not used. Two plant species, the creeper Derris parviflora (Kala Wel) and the tree Diplodiscus verrucosus (Dikwanna), showed up as species that were preferentially used by the loris as indicated by the Selectivity Index, where the percentage usage far exceeded their percentage availability within the forest (% availability and % usage values were 5.19 and 27.3 for D. parviflora and 11.58 and 29.0 for D. verrucosus). The preference for areas with the creeper might be explained by the fact that it eases climbing and movement of the loris. However, no explanation could be given at this stage for its preference for the D. verrucosus tree. The findings nevertheless suggest that enrichment with preferred plants could be used to increase habitat utilization by the loris, which would be critical to ensure their survival in small and isolated forest fragments in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. Keywords: Dry zone forest, Habitat selection, Loris


Hypoparathyroidism is a rare endocrine disorder characterized by low calcium and high phosphate levels, in the setting of a low or inappropriately normal PTH level. Given its rarity, it has been classified as an orphan disease in the United States and by the European Commission. The first international conference on the management of hypoparathyroidism was convened in Florence Italy 2015 and resulted in the publication of detailed guidelines on the epidemiology, presentation, clinical features and management of hypoparathyroidism. Hypoparathyroidism may be associated with a spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic in the setting of mild hypocalcemia, to life threatening cardiac arrythmias, seizures or laryngospasm, in the setting of severe acute hypocalcemia. The most common cause is postsurgical hypoparathyroidism following anterior neck surgery, followed by autoimmune disorders and rarely genetic disorders. Establishing a diagnosis of hypoparathyroidism is important as it is associated with the development of kidney stones, renal insufficiency, cataracts, basal ganglia calcifications, as well as a reduced health-related quality of life.
Most patients with chronic hypoparathyroidism require lifelong high dose calcium and activated vitamin D supplements. The goals of treatment are 3 fold, namely, relieve symptoms of hypocalcemia, raise calcium concentration to the low-normal range and avoid hypercalciuria. For those individuals who cannot maintain a stable serum and urine calcium with conventional calcium and activated Vitamin D regimens, the addition of recombinant PTH (1-84) is currently an option. The approval of recombinant PTH (1-84) represents a significant step forward in the management of this disorder.


The analysis focuses on the recent Opinion of Advocate General (AG) Kokott and AG Sharpston on the Achbita and Bougnaoui cases respectively, which were referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerning the issue of religious expression in the workplace. The CJEU will deliver its judgments for the first time on religious discrimination in employment after, what has been, 16 years that the Directive 2000/78/EC has entered into force. The paper compares the facts of the cases and the arguments that the AGs have put forward with each other as well as with context-related jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). By assessing whether the CJEU's and ECtHR's related case-law has been divergent or coherent, the paper sketches a theoretical framework between the juxtaposed regimes of the European Union and the Council of Europe. In this respect, the analysis stresses how this comparison answers to three underlying questions: the question of the framing of the debate; the question of how perception translates in the assessed cases and finally the question of whether religion is a choice or not. It draws attention on how AG Sharpston concluded that the employee's dismissal amounted to direct discrimination against her on the basis of her right to freedom of religion enshrined in both Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU). The analysis highlights that what underlies the respective cases are core legal concepts of autonomy, human dignity and equality as premises of substantive justice. By recognising links between human rights protection and the non-discrimination norms, the analysis aims to reflect on the nature of religious freedom as a fundamental right consisting of both an individual and group dimension, which needs to be protected at a symbolic and practical level for the purposes of genuine plurality and social cohesion.


The study of real division algebras was initiated by the construction of the quaternion and the octonion algebras in the mid-19th century. In spite of its long history, the problem, of classifying ...


Although there is consensus that software defined networking and network functions virtualization overhaul service provisioning and deployment, the community still lacks a definite answer on how carrier-grade operations praxis needs to evolve. This article presents what lies beyond the first evolutionary steps in network management, identifies the challenges in service verification, observability, and troubleshooting, and explains how to address them using our Service Provider DevOps (SP-DevOps) framework. We compendiously cover the entire process from design goals to tool realization and employ an elastic version of an industry-standard use case to show how on-the-fly verification, software-defined monitoring, and automated troubleshooting of services reduce the cost of fault management actions. We assess SP-DevOps with respect to key attributes of software-defined telecommunication infrastructures both qualitatively and quantitatively, and demonstrate that SP-DevOps paves the way toward carrier-grade operations and management in the network virtualization era.


Background Nakhon Ratchasima province is the largest province of Thailand. Its main areas are agricultural. Its statistical death of drowning, that usually occurs in rural areas and natural water sources, is in the top 10 provinces of Thailand. Methods This project has been starting since 2012. It has been built by a network of Merit Maker team comprising many sectors. This project has been based on the revision of existing experience and the own cost. This project was started from one team in the urban and then was expending to rural areas until it was completely covered the 32 districts in 2015. There are educations about safety on water for communities, skills about helping people from drowning, survival skills on the water when drowning and, skills for CPR. In addition, there are using the resources that are easy to find out in the area, build up communities network team to manage high-risk water sources and, installing warning sign with first aids for helping people from drowning. Results According to the study, it is found that the number of children, who died from drowning (0–14 years old) in Nakhon Ratchasima at the beginning of the year 2012, there were 40 children (8.0). In 2013, there were 36 children (7.4). In 2014, there were 23 children (4.8). In 2015, there were 36 children (7.7). In 2016, there were 38 children (8.1). In 2017, there were 20 children (4.3). The number of dead children from 2012–2017 has been decreasing because of the good cooperation between a network of Merit Maker. Conclusion Death from drowning can be prevented by creating a network Merit Maker team in the area, using the simple methods that focus on skill training for children and managing about environmental water resources under resources of the area.


There is robust evidence showing associations between political ideology and environmentalism such that self-identified political liberals tend to hold greater pro-environmental positions than conservatives. Drawing from research on moral foundations, we report two studies examining the extent to which political ideology and individualising foundations of care- and fairness-based morality interact to predict environmentalism. Results support the predicted moderating role of individualising foundations, with no moderating effects for the binding foundations of loyalty-, authority- and sanctity-based morality. Liberal ideology was a stronger predictor of electricity conservation with increasingly high levels of individualising morals (Study 1, N = 144), while conservative ideology was a stronger predictor of positive feelings towards the Green Party with increasingly high levels of individualising morals (Study 2, N = 233). The results indicate that individualising morals might intensify environmentalism for those who already lean towards a pro-environmental stand but also for those who lean away from a pro-environmental stand. The findings confirm the important role of both care- and fairness-based morality in addressing environmental problems.


Author(s): Becknell, Nigel | Advisor(s): Yang, Peidong | Abstract: Anthropogenic CO2 emissions from human dependence on fossil fuel are causing rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, increasing the average temperature of the planet and acidifying the oceans, among other negative effects. Reliance on carbon-based fuels is not sustainable and must be replaced by alternative, renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal. The water cycle, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and electrochemically oxidizing the hydrogen to regenerate water, can be an efficient and sustainable energy storage cycle. An electrolyser powered by renewable electricity splits water, and a proton exchange membrane fuel cell uses hydrogen fuel to produce electricity on demand. The performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells is significantly limited by the platinum-based oxygen reduction catalyst, which must be improved in activity and durability in order to commercialize applications such as fuel cell vehicles.Bimetallic nanoframes have great potential for achieving new levels of catalytic activity in various heterogeneous reactions due to their high surface area dispersion of expensive noble metals on the exterior and interior surfaces of the structure. Pt-based nanoframes such as Pt-Ni and Pt-Co can be specifically tuned for excellent oxygen reduction activity and application in the cathode of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Nanoframes were made by first synthesizing polyhedral nanoparticles with composition such as PtCo3 or PtNi3 by a hot-injection method. Scanning transmission electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy showed that these nanoparticles demonstrate elemental segregation of platinum to the edges of the polyhedron, forming the basis for a framework nanostructure. The process of preferential oxidative leaching was used to remove the non-noble metal from the interior of the framework, leaving the platinum-rich edges intact to form Pt3Co or Pt3Ni nanoframes.Understanding the atomic structure of the nanoframe is crucial to exposing the source of its performance characteristics. It is highly unlikely that a catalyst remains the same under reaction conditions when compared to as-synthesized. Hence, the ideal experiment to study the catalyst structure should be performed in situ. X-ray absorption spectroscopy is an ideal in situ technique to study Pt3Ni nanoframes, which are an excellent electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction. First, the surface characteristics of the nanoframes were probed through electrochemical hydrogen underpotential deposition and carbon monoxide electrooxidation, which proved that nanoframe surfaces with different structure exhibit varying levels of binding strength to adsorbate molecules. It is well-known that Pt-skin formation on Pt–Ni catalysts will enhance oxygen reduction activity by weakening the binding energy between the surface and adsorbates. Ex situ and in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy revealed that nanoframes which bind adsorbates more strongly have a rougher Pt surface caused by insufficient segregation of Pt to the surface and consequent Ni dissolution. In contrast, nanoframes which exhibit extremely high oxygen reduction activity demonstrated more significant segregation of Pt over Ni-rich subsurface layers, allowing better formation of the critical Pt-skin.The nanoframe structure is made possible by the compositional heterogeneity in polyhedral Pt-Ni or Pt-Co nanocrystals, which offers additional variables to maneuver the functionality of the nanocrystal. However, understanding how to manipulate anisotropic elemental distributions in a nanocrystal is a great challenge in reaching higher tiers of nanocatalyst design. The evolutionary trajectory of phase segregation in Pt–Ni rhombic dodecahedra was studied in order to elucidate the mechanisms that enable synthesis of the Pt3Ni nanoframe. The anisotropic growth of a Pt-rich phase along the l111g and l200g directions at the initial growth stage resulted in Pt segregation to the 14 axes of a rhombic dodecahedron, forming a highly branched, Pt-rich tetradecapod structure embedded in a Ni-rich shell. With longer growth time, the Pt-rich phase selectively migrated outwards through the 14 axes to the 24 edges such that the rhombic dodecahedron became a Pt-rich frame enclosing a Ni-rich interior phase. The Ni-rich interior was then selectively oxidized and corroded to form the hollow Pt3Ni nanoframe that demonstrated exceptional catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction.The anisotropic phase segregation and migration mechanism offers a radically different approach to synthesis of nanocatalysts with desired compositional distributions and performance. The newly acquired understanding of these mechanisms was applied to manipulate the morphology of Pt-Ni rhombic dodecahedral nanoframes into excavated nanoframes that also exhibit high catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction without need for Pt-skin formation. Controlling the ratio of platinum and nickel precursors within the nanoframe synthetic system adjusted the three-dimensional platinum anisotropy in the rhombic dodecahedron, resulting in a transition from the previous hollow nanoframe to a unique excavated structure. Excavated nanoframes showed ~10 times higher specific and ~6 times higher mass activity than commercial Pt/C, and twice the mass activity of the hollow nanoframe. The high specific activity of the excavated nanoframe is attributed to enhanced Ni content in the near-surface region and the extended two-dimensional sheet structure within the nanoframe that minimizes the number of low-coordinated Pt sites.


Cattle body composition is difficult to model because several factors affect the composition of the average daily gain (ADG) of growing animals. The objective of this study was to identify commercial single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panels that could improve the predictability of days on feed (DOF) to reach a target United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grade given animal, diet, and environmental information under feedyard conditions. The data for this study was comprised of crossbred heifers (n = 681) and steers (n = 836) from commercial feedyards. Eleven molecular breeding value (MBV) scores derived from SNP panels of candidate gene polymorphisms and two-leptin gene SNP (UASMS2 and E2FB) were evaluated. The empty body fat (EBF) and the shrunk body weight (SBW) at 28% EBF (AFSBW) were computed by the Cattle Value Discovery System (CVDS) model using hip height (EBFHH and AFSBWHH) or carcass traits (EBFCT and AFSBWCT) of the animals. The DOFHH was calculated when AFSBWHH and ADGHH were used and DOFCT was calculated when AFSBWCT and ADGCT were used. The CVDS estimates dry matter required (DMR) by individuals fed in groups when observed ADG and AFSBW are provided. The AFSBWCT was assumed more accurate than the AFSBWHH because it was computed using carcass traits. The difference between AFSBWCT and AFSBWHH, DOFCT and DOFHH, and DMR and dry matter intake (DMI) were regressed on the MBV scores and leptin gene SNP to explain the variation. Our results indicate quite a large range of correlations among MBV scores and model input and output variables, but MBV ribeye area was the most strongly correlated with the differences in DOF, AFSBW, and DMI by explaining 8, 13.2 and 6.5%, respectively, of the variation. This suggests that specific MBV scores might explain additional variation of input and output variables used by nutritional models in predicting individual animal performance.


Some of the appealing characteristics of distributed ledger technology (DLT), which blockchain is a type of, include guaranteed integrity, disintermediation and distributed resilience. These characteristics give rise to the possible consequences of immutability, unclear ownership, universal accessibility and trans-border storage. These consequences have the potential to contravene data protection principles of Purpose Specification, Use Limitation, Data Quality, Individual Participation and Trans-Border Data Flow. This paper endeavors to clarify the various types of DLTs, how they work, why they exhibit the depicted characteristics and the consequences. Using the universal privacy principles developed by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this paper then describes how each of the consequence causes concerns for privacy protection and how attempts are being made to address them in the design and implementation of various applications of blockchain and DLT, and indicates where further research and best-practice developments lie.


Australian Football: Steps to Success provides the essential skills players and coaches need to master the game and build successful teams. This book contains comprehensive instruction on the techniques and tactics that have helped top player Andrew McLeod become a two-time Norm Smith medallist and three-time All Australian. McLeod and football coach and teacher Trevor Jaques draw on years of experience to help you prepare for and play the game.
 From basic ball handling to more challenging ruckwork, Australian Football: Steps to Success provides full technical guidance. Carefully selected drills speed the learning process and help monitor progress. You then apply those skills on the field with the tactical approaches essential to commanding every facet of the game. The final training guidelines ensure that practice sessions are varied, efficient, and fun while physically preparing players to execute the skills and withstand the rigors of one of the most challenging team sports.
 See all of the titles in the Steps to Success Series.


Zeeman–Doppler imaging studies have shown that the magnetic fields of T Tauri stars can be significantly more complex than a simple dipole and can vary markedly between sources. We collect and summarize the magnetic field topology information obtained to date and present Hertzsprung–Russell (H-R) diagrams for the stars in the sample. Intriguingly, the large-scale field topology of a given pre-main-sequence (PMS) star is strongly dependent upon the stellar internal structure, with the strength of the dipole component of its multipolar magnetic field decaying rapidly with the development of a radiative core. Using the observational data as a basis, we argue that the general characteristics of the global magnetic field of a PMS star can be determined from its position in the H-R diagram. Moving from hotter and more luminous to cooler and less luminous stars across the PMS of the H-R diagram, we present evidence for four distinct magnetic topology regimes. Stars with large radiative cores, empirically estimated to be those with a core mass in excess of ∼40% of the stellar mass, host highly complex and dominantly non-axisymmetric magnetic fields, while those with smaller radiative cores host axisymmetric fields with field modes of higher order than the dipole dominant (typically, but not always, the octupole). Fully convective stars above ≳ 0.5 M☉ appear to host dominantly axisymmetric fields with strong (kilo-Gauss) dipole components. Based on similarities between the magnetic properties of PMS stars and main-sequence M-dwarfs with similar internal structures, we speculate that a bistable dynamo process operates for lower mass stars (≲ 0.5 M☉ at an age of a few Myr) and that they will be found to host a variety of magnetic field topologies. If the magnetic topology trends across the H-R diagram are confirmed, they may provide a new method of constraining PMS stellar evolution models.


The need to decrease pollution in urban zones has pushed toward severe regulations in term of low-emission limits. The effect of this "environmental awareness" is an increased interest in electric vehicles (EV).The construction of a EV is presented in the paper. This vehicle has been designed specifically to be powered by electric motors, the suspension system and the general layout have been developed accordingly.According to the European technical regulations, the vehicle has been designed for a city use. The main features of GreenFun, (this is the name of the prototype), are an extensive use of composite and lightweight materials, a special suspension system layout, a 4WD powertrain realized by means of 4 electric motor hubs and the use, for the first time in a production vehicle, of 4 measuring wheels that are able to measure the forces acting between the pneumatic tires and the road. These information are used as input for the vehicle control systems in order to enhance performance and safety.In the paper, the most relevant vehicle subsystems are described in detail (chassis, wheel, suspensions, powertrain, energy management, control system, …).Copyright © 2012 by ASME


Islamic    economics (Arabic: الاقتصاد الإسلامي), is a term used to refer to Islamic commercial jurisprudence or fiqh al-mu'āmalāt (Arabic: فقه المعاملات), and also to an ideology of economics based on the teachings of Islam that takes a middle ground between the systems of  Marxism and capitalism. As a complete way of life, Islam has provided guidelines and rules for every sphere of life and society.  Naturally, a functioning economic system is vital for a healthy society, as the consumption of goods and services, and the facilitation of this by a common medium of exchange, play a major role in allowing people to realize their material and other goals in life. Islam has set some standards, based on justice and practicality, for such economic systems to be established.  These standards aim to prevent the enmity that often occurs between different socioeconomic sections. Islamic economic principles are based on Qur'an, Sunnah, Ijma (the consensus of religious scholars), and Qiyas (personal opinions based on analogy and religious doctrines). Islam provides specific instructions on the Property Rights, Income Distribution, Zakat, Ushr or tithe, Kharaj and Inheritance. This article explains about the Principles and Activities according to Islamic thoughts and Seerah.


iii I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iv This thesis focuses on the problem of defining and designing public space in contemporary mass society. " Assembly " revaluates a cultural understanding of public space as the space of regulation, consumption and leisure, and works to find spaces of freedom, agency and action. Three iconic sites located in Toronto from three successive generations are examined: Nathan Phillips Square, the Eaton Centre and the new Dundas Square. These three sites form the primary division of the work and are respectively paired with extended critiques from three thinkers: The pairings centre on Arendt's account of the " rise of the social " , on Baudrillard's analysis of consumption and on Debord's dissection of the spectacle. The argument is presented in the form of an assemblage. Although the nature of this method invites each reader to construct their own meaning, this thesis grounds itself on a defined polemic. It considers public space to be marked by 1) the erosion of a clear distinction between our public and private realms, and their subsequent dissolution into the realm of the social, 2) the ideology of consumption overtaking the realm of the social, and 3) the world of the commodity replacing reality with the world of the spectacle. " Assembly " first consists of three main sections corresponding to the three sites. Each of these parts is assembled from three distinct strands: factual, theoretical and visual. The factual strand forms the main " field " of each section and is made up of selected quotations from mass media – newspapers, public documents and websites. The theoretical strand, consisting of pointed quotations from the relevant social theorist, is threaded through the field of mass media. The visual strand comprises two elements: a postcard that marks the beginning of the section and a series of authored photographs that follows and complements the text-based assemblage. Inevitably, the relationship between general social values and those of individuals is fraught. Consequently, and perhaps also inevitably, architectural design tends to reduce the manifoldness of the public realm into a homogenous and singular public space: the " whole ". This thesis pursues the question of how to …


Background: Previous studies have compared sperm phenotypes between men with partial deletions within the AZFc region of the Y chromosome and non-carriers, with variable results. In this study, a separate question was investigated, the basis of the variation in sperm phenotype within gr/gr deletion carriers, which ranges from normozoospermia to azoospermia. Differences in the genes removed by independent gr/gr deletions, the occurrence of subsequent duplications or the presence of linked modifying variants elsewhere on the chromosome have been suggested as possible causal factors. This study set out to test these possibilities in a large sample of gr/gr deletion carriers with known phenotypes spanning the complete range. Results: In total, 169 men diagnosed with gr/gr deletions from six centres in Europe and one in Australia were studied. The DAZ and CDY1 copies retained, the presence or absence of duplications and the Y-chromosomal haplogroup were characterised. Although the study had good power to detect factors that accounted for ⩾5.5% of the variation in sperm concentration, no such factor was found. A negative effect of gr/gr deletions followed by b2/b4 duplication was found within the normospermic group, which remains to be further explored in a larger study population. Finally, significant geographical differences in the frequency of different subtypes of gr/gr deletions were found, which may have relevance for the interpretation of case control studies dealing with admixed populations. Conclusions: The phenotypic variation of gr/gr carriers in men of European origin is largely independent of the Y-chromosomal background.


In this study, the internationalization decisions of firms are looked at from a dynamic perspective. Internationalizing firms gradually build the experience that help them to reduce uncertainty and expand further into new international markets. Earlier experiences are seen as stepping stones that help firms to conduct new expansions and enhance learning from these new steps. However, do firms in the current globalized business environment really take incremental steps in expanding into new markets? And, do firms indeed need to take incremental expansion steps in order to learn to internationalize successfully? This study finds firstly, that the expansion patterns of firms entering the new markets in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineties of the twentieth century are still affected by factors of uncertainty and 'psychic distance' but firms have internationalized at a higher pace than observed before. Secondly, the study explores whether firms should take smaller, incremental, steps in order to learn successfully to the benefit of new expansions, or whether they can also learn successfully from taking larger consecutive expansion steps. An expansion model allowing for larger internationalization steps receives support from the data.


The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is clinically involved in diverse ocular inflammatory diseases. Because perturbed RPE cells produce a variety of inflammatory substances, RPE cells may play an integral part in these diseases. Interleukin-1 (IL-1) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) are pleiotropic cytokines with the ability to trigger numerous inflammatory responses. This report shows that cultured human RPE cells synthesize interleukin-1 β (IL-1β) and GM-CSF in response to the potentially inflammatory cytokine, IL-1α, but not to E. coli endotoxin. Control RPE cells made little or no mRNA or protein for either IL-1β or GM-CSF. Upon stimulation of the cells by IL-1α, both IL-1β and GM-CSF mRNAs were readily apparent by 3 hours, persisted for over 24 hours, and were translated into immunologically detectable proteins. GM-CSF protein was secreted into the culture medium, whereas IL-1β protein remained cell associated. The IL-1α-induced mRNA and protein production were inhibited ...


We originally isolated the Df31 protein from Drosophila embryo extracts as a factor which could decondense Xenopus sperm, by removing the sperm specific proteins and interacting with histones to facilitate their loading onto DNA. We now believe that this protein has a more general function in cellular DNA metabolism. The Df31 gene encodes a very hydrophilic protein with a predicted molecular mass of 18.5 kDa. Immunostaining showed that Df31 was present in a wide range of cell types throughout differentiation and in both dividing and non-dividing cells. In all cases the protein is present in large amounts, comparable with the level of nucleosomes. Injection of antisense oligonucleotides to lower the level of Df31 in embryos caused severe disruption of the nuclear structure. Large irregular clumps of DNA were formed, and in most cases the amount of DNA associated with each clump was more than that found in a normal nucleus. Immunofluorescence, cell fractionation, and formaldehyde cross-linking show that Df31 is associated with chromatin and that a significant fraction of it binds very tightly. It also shows the same binding characteristics when loaded onto chromatin in vitro. Chromatin fractionation shows that Df31 is tightly associated with nucleosomes, preferentially with oligonucleosomes. Despite this no differences were observed in the properties of nucleosomes loaded in the in vitro system in the presence and absence of Df31. These results suggest that Df31 has a role in chromosomal structure, most likely acting as a structural protein at levels of folding higher than that of nucleosomes.


Video imagery can be acquired from aerial, terrestrial and marine based platforms and has been exploited for a range of remote sensing applications over the past two decades. Examples include coastal surveys using aerial video, routecorridor infrastructures surveys using vehicle mounted video cameras, aerial surveys over forestry and agriculture, underwater habitat mapping and disaster management. Many of these video systems are based on interlaced, television standards such as North America's NTSC and European SECAM and PAL television systems that are then recorded using various video formats. This technology has recently being employed as a front-line, remote sensing technology for damage assessment post-disaster. This paper traces the development of spatial video as a remote sensing tool from the early 1980s to the present day. The background to a new spatial-video research initiative based at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, (NUIM) is described. New improvements are proposed and include; low-cost encoders, easy to use software decoders, timing issues and interoperability. These developments will enable specialists and non-specialists collect, process and integrate these datasets within minimal support. This integrated approach will enable decision makers to access relevant remotely sensed datasets quickly and so, carry out rapid damage assessment during and post-disaster.


This study was carried out on first-year engineering students in the subject of technical drawing, an eminently practical subject that requires the continuous development of spatial vision and also that students should devote time and effort to it from the very beginning. For the study we designed an auto-feedback activity to be applied to the students in the experimental group. The aim was to determine whether the students improved by this means their capacity for self-regulation and ultimately their academic performance. The students included in the experimental group obtained higher scores in the end-of-year self-regulation questionnaire (78.5) than those in the control group (66.47). There was a highly significant correlation (r=0.60; p<0.05) between the final grade and the class attendance rate. Although the auto-feedback treatment did not directly influence the final grades in the analysis of overall variance, it did have an indirect effect through the attendance variable; the students in the experimental group attended significantly more classes than those in the control group (82.2% vs. 68.6%; p<0.05). In fact, a comparison of the average final grades showed that the experimental group obtained significantly higher marks (6.97/10) than the control group (3.8/10).


Plant roots have considerable impact on the mechanical stability of soil, but to date the underlying mechanisms have been poorly quantified. In this study, controlled laboratory studies of soil reinforced with willow trees (Salix viminalis cv Tora) found a strong correlation between the cross-sectional area of soil covered by roots and shear reinforcement. We separated broken versus pulled-out roots and measured individual root diameters crossing the shear-plane. The shear strength of planted specimens compared with non-planted specimens increased eight-fold at 0.10-m shear depth, more than four-fold at 0.25-m depth, and more than doubled at 0.40-m depth. These data were used to evaluate several models of root-reinforcement. Models based on catastrophic and simultaneous failure of all roots overpredicted reinforcement by 33% on average. Better agreement between experimental and model results was found for a stress-based fiber-bundle-model, in which roots break progressively from weakest to strongest, with the load shared on the remaining roots at each step. Roots have a great capacity to reinforce soils, with existing models providing reasonable predictions of increased shear strength. However, deterministic understanding and modeling of the processes involved needs to consider root failure mechanisms. In particular, the role of root stiffness and root-soil adhesion is not considered in existing models of soil reinforcement by plant roots.


The purpose of this study was to isolate and identify compounds from the bark of Alseodaphne perakensis (Lauraceae) which commonly known as Medang to validate and evaluate the use of this species in antimalaria activity. The comprising compounds from the dichloromethane crude extract were separated using column chromatography and the structures of the compounds were elucidated using spectroscopic analysis. The identified compounds were aporphine alkaloids; corydine 1 and oxohernagine 2. These isolated compounds show IC50 values 0.404μg/ml and 0.738μg/ml, respectively against Plasmodium falciparum, K1 isolate (resistant strain).


Synthesis of myofibrillar proteins in the diffusion-restricted adult cardiocyte requires microtubule-based active transport of mRNAs as part of messenger ribonucleoprotein particles (mRNPs) to translation sites adjacent to nascent myofibrils. This is especially important for compensatory hypertrophy in response to hemodynamic overloading. The hypothesis tested here is that excessive microtubule decoration by microtubule-associated protein 4 (MAP4) after cardiac pressure overloading could disrupt mRNP transport and thus hypertrophic growth. MAP4-overexpressing and pressure-overload hypertrophied adult feline cardiocytes were infected with an adenovirus encoding zipcode-binding protein 1-enhanced yellow fluorescent protein fusion protein, which is incorporated into mRNPs, to allow imaging of these particles. Speed and distance of particle movement were measured via time-lapse microscopy. Microtubule depolymerization was used to study microtubule-based transport and distribution of mRNPs. Protein synthesis was assessed as radioautographic incorporation of [3H]phenylalanine. After microtubule depolymerization, mRNPs persist only perinuclearly and apparent mRNP production and protein synthesis decrease. Reestablishing microtubules restores mRNP production and transport as well as protein synthesis. MAP4 overdecoration of microtubules via adenovirus infection in vitro or following pressure overloading in vivo reduces the speed and average distance of mRNP movement. Thus cardiocyte microtubules are required for mRNP transport and structural protein synthesis, and MAP4 decoration of microtubules, whether directly imposed or accompanying pressure-overload hypertrophy, causes disruption of mRNP transport and protein synthesis. The dense, highly MAP4-decorated microtubule network seen in severe pressure-overload hypertrophy both may cause contractile dysfunction and, perhaps even more importantly, may prevent a fully compensatory growth response to hemodynamic overloading.


Over the past decade the first-time enrollment of females in undergraduate engineering has not increased and remains at about 20%, in spite of ongoing K-12 engineering gender diversity programs. The underlying cause for the decline is not cognitive ability or academic performance. Instead, the cause has sociocultural roots that create barriers to female participation in science and engineering education and careers. The research literature shows that some of the most important STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) participation barriers along the educational pathway from K-12 to undergraduate engineering include: "chilly climate" in science classrooms; lack of tinkering self efficacy; lack of technical self efficacy; lack of societal relevance of STEM careers; and lack of female and minority STEM role models. This work presents the results of a research-based workshop on issues that inhibit females from enrolling in college curricula that lead to STEM degrees and careers. The workshop was presented to 48 high school math and science teachers (80% female and 20% male) from four school districts who were participating in a four-course sequence of math, science, and engineering classes as part of a National Science Foundation sponsored Math Science Partnership project entitled, Project Pathways. The workshop was conducted with an active learning approach that included frequent breaks for reflection, discussion and recording of facts, ideas, experiences, strategies and possible actions. The results showed that all teachers were aware that gender-equity issues existed in K-12 science and math classrooms. However, they were less frequently aware of underlying causes or of possible approaches to address the causes. The teachers were aware of some of the types of findings in the research literature such as gender and minority stereotypes, the "chilly climate" in some math and science classrooms, and the lack of female and minority role models. However, many were unaware of other types of findings in the literature which were composed of more subtle forms of bias, such as lack of activities to develop tinkering selfefficacy and more frequent control of classroom labs and projects by more aggressive males than less aggressive females. Based on the their own experience and their informed knowledge of research-based gender and equity issues, the teachers proposed strategies to address the issues. The most frequently cited strategy for addressing the STEM gender barrier was improving tinkering self-efficacy. Suggestions included participation in hands-on activities at home, parental involvement, starting early in elementary school, and structuring laboratories and projects for equal female and male participation. Specific responses and analysis, as well as other less frequently cited issues and strategies, are presented in more detail in body of the paper.


This paper presents results of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling and experimental wind tunnel testing to predict the drag coefficient for a Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) entered in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC). Herein, a comparison of CFD to wind tunnel test data is presented for ten different HPV designs. The current study reveals that streamlining the nose cone, tail cone, and wheel housing allows for a reduction of drag forces in critical areas, and a reduced drag coefficient. This allows for a selection to be made during the design phase, prior to manufacturing. Drag coefficients were found to be in the range of 0.133 < CD < 0.273, depending on the type of HPV considered. Wind tunnel testing was performed on scale models of the HPV showing agreement to the CFD results on average to within 16%. The wind tunnel testing showed a 7.7% decrease in drag coefficient from the baseline HPV of 2019 to the baseline HPV of 2020. Thus, the wind tunnel data supported by CFD analysis was used to assist in the design of the HPV.


This paper is aimed to study the effect of material type on the drawing force. Three metals are used (low carbon steel 1008 AISI, Austenitic stainless steel 304 AISI, and pure aluminum 1100), as a sheet with thickness of 0.5mm for each one, and they were cutting as a blank with 80 mm diameter, then drawn in a die with 44mm diameter to produce cup. To predict the deep drawing force by finite element method, Hill's yield criteria is used, which examines the effect of anisotropy. Two dimension axisymmetry model of deep drawing were built and analyzed by ANSYS FEM code. The results show that the drawing force for stainless steel is higher than the other two metals due to the difference in metallurgical structure. The numerical results were compared with the experimental; good agreement was found between finite element and experimental results.


This paper presents a numerical study on heat transfer by laminar flows in a two-dimensional channel. The channel is filled with a porous material which is assumed to be non-uniform across the channel, especially near the channel walls where the permeability of the porous material increases drastically to simulate the complexity at the interface between the porous media and the solid walls. Degrees of the non-uniformity of the porous material are described in this study by a parameter β. Heat sources, either constant temperature or constant heat flux, are located on the channel walls, so that heat transfer from the sources into the channel flow is greatly affected by the condition at the wall-porous media interfaces. The temperature distribution near the heat source region and the Nusselt numbers are calculated for different β values. The sensitivity of the non-uniformity of the porous media near the channel walls on the overall heat transfer is assessed. It is found that a higher non-uniformity of the porous material near the channel wall can actually enhance the heat transfer from the sources to the channel flow, as the flow velocity near the wall has been significantly increased due to the higher permeability of the porous material in the near-wall region.


As the performance of autonomous systems increases, safety concerns arise, especially when operating in non-structured environments. To deal with these concerns, this work presents a safety layer for mechanical systems that detects and responds to unstable dynamics caused by external disturbances. The safety layer is implemented independently and on top of already present nominal controllers, like pose or wrench tracking, and limits power flow when the system's response would lead to instability. This approach is based on the computation of the Largest Lyapunov Exponent (LLE) of the system's error dynamics, which represent a measure of the dynamics' divergence or convergence rate. By actively computing this metric, divergent and possibly dangerous system behaviors can be promptly detected. The LLE is then used in combination with Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to impose power limit constraints on a jerk controlled system. The proposed architecture is experimentally validated on an Omnidirectional Micro Aerial Vehicle (OMAV) both in free flight and interaction tasks.


This paper aims at presenting the results from a research on the reasons why more than 50% of the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in European Union (EU) are non-innovative. The paper intends to find out which are the specific factors that influence the percentage of non-innovative industrial SMEs, considering that SMEs are the main stakeholders and target group of EU funds and policies, and industry is the main direction for economic development. The study employs a cross-sectional study and linear regressions. The findings after applying the research methodology show some already known factors that obstruct SMEs innovation performance like lack of internal finance and little market competition. However, the main contribution of the research is the finding that a low market demand does not contribute to an increase in the percentage of non-innovative enterprises. As a conclusion, all the measures and EU programs for boosting market demand for the purposes of increasing the number of innovative enterprises would be useless.


Discussions about formative assessment and advantages that it brings to the classroom are becoming more frequent. It is a new, authentic approach that allows pupils to acquire more permanent knowledge and integrate them into the educational process.
In the theoretical part, we described the meaning of formative assessment and what the key elements of formative assessment are, as well as advantages and possible weaknesses that it brings to the classroom.
The key elements of formative assessment are the purposes of learning, where goals and performance criteria are decided, portfolio, where we described the positives of using a portfolio, feedback, where the importance and the necessity of a good feedback is explained, and assessment and evaluation, where self-evaluation and peer evaluation are included.
In the empirical part, we described a case study that we conducted, where we interviewed eight elementary English teachers from Podravje region and asked them what they think about formative assessment, how they integrated it into their teaching, and how using formative assessment has changed their teaching.
Formative assessment has become a current topic at study groups for teachers in the last couple of years, so there are not any surprising results yet. The teachers that we interviewed use just some aspects of formative assessment because for the full use of formative assessment they most frequently mention the lack of time.
As any other novelty, formative assessment needs time to integrate in our educational system and reach a place that it deserves. Teachers think that introducing formative assessment at an early stage of education should be better and that the pupils would be prepared for this kind of teaching and learning, and the learning would only get easier with years. Teachers are also enthusiastic about the principle on which formative assessment works, and believe that this way pupils can achieve better and long lasting knowledge.


The calculation of long range interactions is a computationally demanding task in particle based simulations. To reduce the computational complexity from O(N2) to O(N) an algorithm based on a fast 2d-Wavelet transform technique was developed. In this algorithm, a CPU and memory demanding part is to construct the 2d-Wavelet transform of a grid based inverse distance matrix. The 2d-Wavelet transform is thereby calculated via a triple-matrix-multiply and threshold procedure, which results in a sparse representation in Wavelet space. To accelerate the calculation of the triple matrix multiplication, the capabilities of the heterogeneous multicore processor Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) are explored. An efficient implementation of the Wavelet transform is developed by considering the architectural requirements of Cell/B.E. Via this implementation, the difficulties and problems in porting code to Cell/B.E. and using sparse linear algebra operations on the processor are assessed.


ABSTRACT: Liao, Sellhorn, and Skaife (2012) address a topical and important question of whether the comparability of earnings increased after the mandatory adoption of IFRS in France and Germany. The main result is that the comparability is higher in the year of adoption but decreases in subsequent years. The authors argue that this might be due to subsequent differences in the way managers in the two countries implemented IFRS. In this discussion, I make some suggestions for improvement with regards to both the conceptualization of accounting comparability and research design. I also discuss how adopting one GAAP across countries might just be one small step in a long journey to achieve a global accounting harmonization. JEL Classifications: G14; G15; M41; M48.


State led credit and savings programs have been implemented in numerous low income countries, but their success in reaching the poor remains widely debated. We report on research which exploits the policy features of the Indian social banking program to provide evidence on this issue. State-led branch expansion into rural unbanked locations reduced poverty across Indian states. In addition, the enforcement of directed bank lending requirements was associated with increased bank borrowing among the poor, in particular low caste and tribal groups.


In this review, we examined the types of CS projects found in K-12 science education facilitated by digital technologies, the learning outcomes from students' participation in these projects, and the type of digital technologies used. With the application of the study's selection criteria, 15 eligible publications were included in the review; these were indexed in three databases as well as in Google Scholar. Despite the rising popularity of CS projects, the present review revealed that there is little empirical evidence for the effects of technology-facilitated CS projects on learning outcomes when K-12 students are involved. Yet, the review demonstrates a promising research area in science education and technology-enhanced learning.


Respiratory variables of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) blood were monitored continuously in vivo using an extracorporeal circulation or in vitro using blood flowing in a semi- closed loop. The experiments were designed to assess the rapid effects of endogenous catecholamines on red blood cell (RBC) O2 and CO2 transport. The addition of catecholamines (nominal final blood concentrations were 250 nmol l-1 adrenaline and 20 nmol l-1 noradrenaline) caused activation of RBC Na+/H+ exchange both in vivo and in vitro as indicated by the reductions in whole-blood pH. In both experimental systems, the activation of Na+/H+ exchange was associated with a rapid reduction of blood PCO2, indicating a sudden net movement of plasma CO2 into the RBC. In vitro the initial reduction of blood PCO2 was followed by a pronounced elevation as a result of the titration of plasma HCO3- by H+ extruded from the RBC. Blood PO2 fell markedly in a transitory manner after the addition of catecholamines. The decreases in PO2 were probably caused by rapid increases in the affinity/capacity of haemoglobin for O2 which, in turn, caused O2 molecules to enter the RBC from the plasma. The results are discussed with reference to the role of circulating catecholamines in rapidly modifying blood O2 and CO2 transport in rainbow trout.


Background Recent studies in Minnesota showed an increased risk of mesothelioma among iron miners, and a significant dose-response relationship with cumulative exposure to elongate mineral particles (EMPs). This prompted us to assess the state of knowledge on potential contribution of EMPs in the aetiology of occupational lung diseases in iron and gold miners. Methods We first systematically reviewed epidemiologic studies on iron and gold miners' health, and animal studies on health effects of EMPs (published since 1990), and then conducted an exploratory study of the geological characteristics of iron and gold mines in Quebec. Following a literature review of mines for which health problems have been reported worldwide, a petrographic study was done on rock-specimens from several active and inactive mines in Quebec to identify mineral species that could have an EMP morphology. Results Between January 1990 and February 2016, 24 epidemiological articles published in 7 countries mentioned cancer risks: only the Minnesota studies reported an increased risk of mesothelioma in iron miners, whereas 2 articles mentioned a few mesothelioma cases in gold miners. Three available animal studies and 4 toxicological literature reviews inferred that other parameters than dimension may modulate toxicity. The geological literature review indicated that EMPs are expected in host rocks of gold mines (tremolite and actinolite), and in rock-deposits of iron mines (grunerite). The identification of amphibole-EMPs in several specimens during our petrographic study confirmed these expectations. Conclusion The epidemiological literature does not describe adequately dimensional characteristics of the particles, and animal studies point to possible toxicity of cleavage fragments that meet dimensional criteria of WHO fibres. Geological settings of iron and gold mines in Quebec seem to favour the formation of amphibole EMPs. In the absence of fibre measurements in the mines, the precautionary principle should be applied in order to protect workers adequately.


On the 21st and 22nd of May 2009, an International Scientific Conference "The Faces of Asian Statehood. Civilization, Cultural, Political, Legal and Economic Aspects" was held in Toruń, Poland. The event took place thanks to the joint initiative of the Asia and Paci! c Society and its Chairman Adam Marszałek – the main organizing institution, Institute of Political Science & Institute of International Relations – University of Nicolaus Copernicus, Toruń, Poland, as well as local (President of Toruń) and regional (Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region) authorities. Joanna Marszałek- -Kawa was the Scientific Manager of the sessions. Members of the Organizing Committee include also Lucyna Osińska, Robert Gawłowski, Joanna Modrzyńska and Mariusz Popławski.


This work presents significant development into chaotic mixing induced through periodic boundaries and twisting flows. Three-dimensional closed and throughput domains are shown to exhibit chaotic motion under both time periodic and time independent boundary motions, A property is developed originating from a signature of chaos, sensitive dependence to initial conditions, which successfully quantifies the degree of disorder withjn the mixing systems presented and enables comparisons of the disorder throughout ranges of operating parameters, This work omits physical experimental results but presents significant computational investigation into chaotic systems using commercial computational fluid dynamics techniques. Physical experiments with chaotic mixing systems are, by their very nature, difficult to extract information beyond the recognition that disorder does, does not of partially occurs. The initial aim of this work is to observe whether it is possible to accurately simulate previously published physical experimental results through using commercial CFD techniques. This is shown to be possible for simple two-dimensional systems with time periodic wall movements. From this, and subsequent macro and microscopic observations of flow regimes, a simple explanation is developed for how boundary operating parameters affect the system disorder. Consider the classic two-dimensional rectangular cavity with time periodic velocity of the upper and lower walls, causing two opposing streamline motions. The degree of disorder within the system is related to the magnitude of displacement of individual particles within these opposing streamlines. The rationale is then employed in this work to develop and investigate more complex three-dimensional mixing systems that exhibit throughputs and time independence and are therefore more realistic and a significant advance towards designing chaotic mixers for process industries. Domains inducing chaotic motion through twisting flows are also briefly considered. This work concludes by offering possible advancements to the property developed to quantify disorder and suggestions of domains and associated boundary conditions that are expected to produce chaotic mixing.


The 2000 Illinois Vineyard Survey showed 400+ acres of grapes compared to 181 two years earlier. There are 28 wineries with eight more scheduled to open - up from four in the 1980s. State government has allocated $500,000 annually to an Illinois Grape and Wine Resource Council in part to boost the state's economy. We address the need to quantify benefits by creating detailed budgets for the winegrape and wine industries. These become part of a state-wide input-output model (IMPLAN). Results indicate that grape growing has an output multiplier of 1.90. Winemaking, which includes out-of-state grapes has an output multiplier of 1.76.