State parole boards have historically operated free from constitutional constraints when making decisions about whether to release prisoners. Recent Supreme Court decisions subject states to a new constitutional requirement to provide a "meaningful opportunity to obtain release" for at least some categories of juvenile offenders. Using original data collected through a survey, this Article provides the first comprehensive description of existing parole board release procedures nationwide and explores whether these practices comply with the Court's Eighth Amendment mandate.The Court's recent decisions in Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama prohibit sentences of life without the possibility of release (LWOP) for juvenile offenders in nonhomicide cases and forbid mandatory LWOP sentences in homicide cases. States must now provide nonhomicide juvenile offenders with a "meaningful opportunity to obtain release" and give judges the option of imposing a sentence with the chance of release on homicide offenders. Around the country, state courts, legislatures, and governors have started to respond to Graham and Miller. Yet there is little scholarship focusing on a central issue raised by these cases: What constitutes a meaningful opportunity to obtain release under the Eighth Amendment? The Court has declined to provide detailed guidance on the matter, stating that "[i]t is for the State, in the first instance, to explore the means and mechanisms for compliance."Viewed in the context of the Court's earlier Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, the meaningful opportunity for release requirement appears to encompass three distinct components: (1) a chance of release at a meaningful point in time, (2) a realistic likelihood of release for the rehabilitated, and (3) a meaningful opportunity to be heard. For the most part, states have responded to Graham and Miller by making juvenile offenders eligible for release under existing and long-standing parole board procedures. To date, the debate in the states has focused primarily on the first component of the meaningful opportunity requirement-when a juvenile offender should be eligible for release. Most states have paid little attention to whether existing parole board practices satisfy the other two components of the meaningful opportunity requirement. These practices, which were designed for a different purpose, may not offer a realistic chance of release and meaningful hearings for juvenile offenders.Parole procedures in every state are different, and many parole boards operate under unwritten and unpublished rules. To understand existing practices, I sent a survey to every parole board in the country. The survey results revealed procedures that, while adequate for adult offenders, may not survive Eighth Amendment scrutiny when applied to juvenile offenders under Graham and Miller. Such procedures include (1) preventing prisoners from appearing before decision makers, (2) denying prisoners the right to see and rebut evidence, and (3) limiting the role of counsel. I conclude that some states may not be able to rely on their existing parole board practices to provide a meaningful opportunity for release, and may need to craft special rules for considering release of juvenile offenders serving lengthy sentences.


The next major wave of Bitcoin regulation will likely be aimed at financial instruments, including securities and derivatives, as well as prediction markets and even gambling. While there are many easily regulated intermediaries when it comes to traditional securities and derivatives, emerging bitcoin-denominated instruments rely much less on traditional intermediaries. Additionally, the block chain technology that Bitcoin introduced for the first time makes completely decentralized markets and exchanges possible, thus eliminating the need for intermediaries in complex financial transactions. In this article we survey the type of financial instruments and transactions that will most likely be of interest to regulators, including traditional securities and derivatives, new bitcoin-denominated instruments, and completely decentralized markets and exchanges. We find that Bitcoin derivatives would likely not be subject to the full scope of regulation under the Commodities and Exchange Act to the extent such derivatives involve physical delivery (as opposed to cash settlement) or are nonfungible and not independently traded. We also find that some laws, including those aimed at online gambling, do not contemplate a payment method like Bitcoin, thus placing many transactions in a legal gray area.Following the approach to virtual currencies taken by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, we argue that other financial regulators should consider exempting or excluding certain financial transactions denominated in Bitcoin from the full scope of their regulations, much like private securities offerings and forward contracts are treated. We also suggest that to the extent that regulation and enforcement becomes more costly than its benefits, policymakers should consider and pursue strategies consistent with that new reality, such as efforts to encourage resilience and adaptation.


We report on the observation of quantized surface spin waves in periodic arrays of magnetic Ni81Fe19 wires by means of Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. At small wavevectors (q_1 = 0 - 0.9*100000 cm^-1 ) several discrete, dispersionless modes with a frequency splitting of up to 0.9 GHz were observed for the wavevector oriented perpendicular to the wires. From the frequencies of the modes and the wavevector interval, where each mode is observed, the modes are identified as dipole-exchange surface spin wave modes of the film with quantized wavevector values determined by the boundary conditions at the lateral edges of the wires. With increasing wavevector the separation of the modes becomes smaller, and the frequencies of the discrete modes converge to the dispersion of the dipole-exchange surface mode of a continuous film.


Currently most word sense disambiguation (WSD) systems are relatively individual word sense experts. Scarcely do these systems take word sense transitions between senses of linearly consecutive words or syntactically dependent words into consideration. Word sense transitions are very important. They embody the fluency of semantic expression and avoid sparse data problem effectively. In this paper, How Net knowledge base is used to decompose every word sense into several sememes. Then one transition between two words' senses becomes multiple transitions between sememes. Sememe transitions are much easier to be captured than word sense transitions due to much less sememes. When sememes are labeled, WSD is done. In this paper, multi-layered conditional random fields (MLCRF) is proposed to model sememe transitions. The experiments show that MLCRF performs better than a base-line system and a maximum entropy model. Syntactic and hypernym features can enhance the performance significantly.


The fluctuations of the exchange rate of the domestic currency have been a major concern. Since the 1970's there has been a debate on the relationship between exchange rate volatility and export flows. In the wake of the recent global financial crisis and rising food prices, this debate has become even more strident and the concerns even more palpable. South Africa has not escaped the debate. The exchange rate of the South African Rand has been undergoing a series of devaluations for several decades. In such a situation, exporters must contend with some exchange rate volatility which might have implications for export flows. However, in the absence of systematic study, neither the magnitude of the fluctuations nor their impacts is known with certainty and this presents immense policy difficulties. This paper seeks to provide answers to the most commonly asked question as to the magnitude and extent of such fluctuations and their precise impacts on export levels and the market shares of South African citrus exports in the destination markets around the world. The principal objective it to estimate the impact of exchange rate volatility on the competitiveness of South Africa's agricultural exports. The paper reviews the theoretical literature in respect to foreign exchange market, Balance of Payments, exchange rate models and the evidence from monetarists and the Purchasing Power Parity. Laspeyres-indexed export prices, exchange rates and export volumes for maize, oranges, sugar, apples, grapes, pears, avocados, pineapples, apricots and peaches for the period 1980-2008 and exports to the European Union are modeled by means of ARIMA (AR) and Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) and export demand equation estimated. The Constant Market Share (CMS) model was applied to assess the extent to which the SA citrus industry has maintained its competitive advantage in several markets. The overall results obtained strongly confirm that exchange rate volatility have a positive impact on the competitiveness of South Africa's agricultural exports and that, despite the on-going financial crisis that has engulfed the world, South Africa's citrus exports have maintained a healthy market share. This result is surprising but understandable in the light of the special arrangements put in place by South Africa's monetary authorities to protect the Rand from over-exposure to global financial developments over the period under review. The important practical implications of these findings for the success of the agricultural restructuring programmes going on in South Africa are evaluated and discussed against the backdrop of the fresh debates on national economic policy management in the wake of financial meltdown that has once again threatened the financial stability of virtually every region in the world in recent years.


The Integrated Design Process (IDP) is a method of intervention in early stages of the design process that supports the development and design team to avoid sub-optimal design solutions. IDP is not a new concept, and may in fact have been applied in the past by some design teams on an ad-hoc basis; but the formal implementation of the process is a development that has taken place over the past 15 years. This paper provides a partial history and some analysis of the characteristics of IDP.


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Lactate utilising bacteria (LUB) assist in reducing the risk of ruminal lactate acidosis when high concentrate diets are fed to feedlot cattle. Ruminal lactate acidosis can lead to lower animal performance and morbidity. Preliminary studies suggested that the strain, Megasphaera elsdenii (M.e.) NCIMB 41125, is a particularly potent LUB. The potential of M.e.NCIMB 41125 to improve the health and performance of feedlot cattle was investigated. Four hundred and forty eight Bonsmara steers (ca. 240 kg) were used in a 100-day feeding trial. Half the steers received at processing 200 mL M.e.NCIMB 41125 per os (LY) and the other half no LUB (LN). The diets in each of these treatments were divided into a low roughage (2%) (RL) and high roughage (8%) (RH) diet. The effects of LY vs. LN, RL vs. RH as main effects and their respective interactions (LYRL, LYRH, LNRL & LNRH) were compared in terms of morbidity, feedlot performance and carcass characteristics. The steers were weighed at two week intervals, feed was offered daily and the orts were removed weekly from each pen. The faecal consistency score and incidence of morbidity were recorded. At slaughter, carcass data were collected and the health status of the liver and rumen epithelium was assessed. Steers dosed with M.e.NCIMB 41125 had a 5.6% better average daily gain (ADG) during weeks 3 - 5 (2.09 kg/day vs. 1.98 kg/day for LY and LN, respectively). Feed conversion ratio (FCR, Weeks 1 - 13) was better for the steers fed the RL than the RH treatment (4.72 kg/kg vs. 4.99 kg/kg for RL and RH, respectively). Steers on the LNRH treatment during weeks 3 - 5 used more feed per kg gain than steers on the other treatments (5.39 kg/kg for LNRH vs. 4.74 kg/kg and 4.72 kg/kg for LYRL and LNRL, respectively). More steers (21) on the LNRL treatment were treated for morbidity than on the other treatments (8, 7 and 5 for LYRL, LYRH and LNRH, respectively). In general, animal performance was not improved by dosing with M.e.NCIMB 41125, but since ADG was improved in the immediate postadaptation phase (weeks 3 - 5) and morbidity levels were lower on the low roughage diet, dosing of steers on low roughage, lactate acidosis-prone, diets with M.e.NCIMB 41125 should prove useful. Keywords : Beef cattle, lactic acid utilising bacteria, acidosis, morbidity


Objective – To compare users' perceptions of 5 clinical information resources, and to assess the average number of questions answered after attempting 3 randomly assigned clinical questions on each resource.

Design – A combined task assessment, based on the design specification published in the Sixth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC-6) "interactive track," and a user-satisfaction questionnaire developed from previously published surveys.
Setting – A health sciences library at a university in the United States of America.

Subjects – A convenience sample of 18 volunteers, who were either university health care staff or students.
Methods – A set of 15 clinical test questions was developed from previous studies. Participants were randomly allocated 3 test questions, which they then attempted to answer using each of 5 commercially available clinical information resources. Each participant was allocated a different set of test questions for each resource and did not attempt the same question on more than one resource. As part of the overall study design, the questions were randomised such that each question was paired with each resource at least once. The order in which the resources were tested by participants was also randomised. The resources tested were ACP's PIER, DISEASEDEX, FIRSTConsult, InfoRetriever and UpToDate. Training in use of the resources was not provided as part of the study; however, participants were allowed to familiarise themselves with each resource before attempting the test questions. To simulate a clinical situation, participants were asked to spend a maximum of 3 minutes on each question. The number of questions successfully answered using each resource was recorded. Participants were also asked to complete a user satisfaction questionnaire, based on previously published questionnaires, for each resource after attempting the 3 questions allocated to that resource. The questionnaire used a 5-point Likert scale with participants asked to rate attributes such as clarity, ease of use, speed and accuracy of content. A final question also asked participants to indicate which resource they liked the best and which they liked the least. Participants also completed a background questionnaire, again based on previously published questionnaires, covering aspects such as age, gender, experience with searching and previous use of various information resources, including the 5 resources being tested.

Main results – Characteristics of participants – Participants ranged in age from 28 to 49 years (mean 35 years), and were experienced computer users with over 94% using a computer at least once a day. The male (42%) and female (58%) split of the group was roughly equal. The participants' occupations were physician (44%), medical informatics student with previous clinical experience (28%), pharmacist (17%), nurse (6%) and MRI technologist (6%). Participants had been in their current profession for a mean of 8 years (range 1 to 20 years). Whilst 72% of participants reported familiarity with UpToDate, no more than 12% of participants reported familiarity with any one of the other information resources tested.
Clinical questions - Participants were able to answer more questions with UpToDate (average 2.5 questions) compared to the other resources, which ranged from an average of 1.6 (ACP's PIER) to 1.9 (DISEASEDEX) questions answered. This difference was found to be statistically significant using the Friedman test.
User satisfaction - The user satisfaction survey results showed no significant differences in perceptions of the different resources in relation to accuracy, currency of content, speed or amount of information provided. However, UpToDate scored significantly higher (Friedman test) on ease of use, clarity of screen layout and how well it satisfiedparticipants' needs.
Overall, 13 participants (73%) rated UpToDate the best, 3 (18%) preferred FIRSTConsult and 1 (6%) rated ACP's PIER best. Conversely, InfoRetriever was rated worst by 6 participants (38%), 4 participants (25%) each rated DISEASEDEX and FIRSTConsult worst and 2 participants (13%) rated ACP's PIER worst. A chi-squared analysis found these rankings to be significantly different.

Conclusion – A number of commercial information resources are now available that aim to help clinical staff make treatment decisions at the point of care. This study evaluates 5 such resources by comparing both success in answering typical clinical questions and the results of a user satisfaction survey.
The study indicates that participants were able to find significantly more answers when using UpToDate compared to the other resources tested. Whilst there was no statistically significant difference between the user perception ratings assigned to each resource with regard to speed, accuracy or amount of information provided, participant ratings for screen layout and ease of use significantly favoured UpToDate. In addition, significantly more participants identified UpToDate as the best resource.

Evaluations of clinical information resources have traditionally focused on user ratings of the content of these products. The findings of this study suggest that this approach may no longer be sufficient, and that evaluations that address the user's experience (satisfaction concerning ease of use, speed, etc.) are also needed.


This article examines a scandal, concerning a foreign investor who was supposedly the head of an organ trafficking ring that broke out in the northern Mozambican city of Nampula in 2003. I use this scandal as a way to critique ideas of 'neo-liberal occult economies'. Instead of 'occult interpretations' arising in an almost predetermined way as people revert to familiar idioms of sorcery to cope with their incomprehension at the changes wrought by neo-liberalism, I argue the Nampula organ scandal shows that it is people's particular relationship to the state explains the scandal rather than simply economic changes. That is why this particular scandal ended up speaking far more convincingly to the fears of the better-off than of the poor.


The present article analyzes the issue of the borde r based upon a study of the experiences of the Terena indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul. This people lives in villages situated in an international border region. I present a number of theoretical reflections on symbolic conflicts, the border development process and its effects on indig enous societies. The article contains two analytic movements: 1. an analysis of the symbolic conflict permeating the legal processes, linked to the territorial conflicts between the Terena and rural producers, showing how the idea of the border is activated in the construction of politica l mechanisms for excluding and (de)legitimizing ethnic groups; 2. an analysis of the State's border policies, territorial dynamics and its confrontati on with indigenous symbolic policies in different loca l situations along the border, which also form part of the symbolic struggle for recognition of th e legitimacy of indigenous identities and territories.


My aim in this article is to illuminate the common law of torts and its relation to and with ideas about gender difference, by focusing on three sets of cases involving injured women, spanning the time between approximately 1860 and 1930. My conclusions run counter to two approaches scholars have frequently taken in analyzing gender and the common law of torts. Some tort scholars neglect gender completely, omitting it as an important axis of analysis. Other scholars, though not themselves erasing women or omitting gender, find that historical tort law itself committed a similar act of exclusion or subordination in the development of an objective standard of care. But notwithstanding the recent explosion in feminist torts scholarship, little scholarship actually examines and discusses old accident cases to test a hypothesis of exclusion and consistent oppression against their particular language and holdings. This Article essays such a test, using as the field of study three categories of cases, involving injuries to women who were passengers in cars and wagons, injuries to female drivers of wagons, and injuries to women boarding and disembarking from trains. Reported decisions in these categories evince common understandings of gender differences courts considered relevant: that wives had less authority than husbands, that women were less competent in the public sphere of transportation than men, and that women were less physically agile than men. This Article presents the interplay of those understandings and tort doctrine. The results of this interplay were as complex as gender difference and tort law themselves, and my project is one of thick description - to complicate rather than to present a unified field theory of gender and tort. Nonetheless, one solid conclusion to be drawn from all three categories is that, as might be expected given the existence of female accident victims and the importance of the ideology of gender to social ordering, the accusation of erasure of gender difference is incorrect. Far from naively erasing gender by subsuming women into the male category of "reasonable men" or a purportedly neutral, but no less male category of "reasonable persons," courts actually treated gender as an important factor in assessing appropriate standards of care. Neither do the cases support a charge of invariable refusal to take account of women's experience, or of consistent deprecation of women's capabilities. Each of the three categories of opinions serves as a case study of tort law's intricate interaction with gender difference, illuminating the diversity of possible and actual legal approaches to thinking about women's agency, authority, and capabilities. Together, in rhetoric, analysis, and result, they present a world frequently, though not uniformly, friendly to women and their needs. In the first set of cases, discussed in Part I, women were injured as passengers in cars and wagons, usually when their husbands were driving. During the entire period surveyed, the cases establish courts' views of the gendered relationship of wife to husband were of central analytic importance to their legal assessments of a woman's right to recover against a third party who caused an accident. Part I-A explains that although the cases display a relatively unchanging construction and presentation of the marital relationship B assigning the wife, at least in the public space of the roads, to a subordinate role to her husband B doctrinal changes from 1860 to 1930 precisely inverted the legal result of this assignment. In the early part of the period, courts concluded from women's subordinate position in marriage that a female passenger could not recover against a third party if her husband's driving had negligently contributed to the accident. But in 1890 or 1900, the results shifted, and courts concluded from the same subordination that a female passenger could recover in the same circumstances. Part I-B demonstrates additionally that courts deciding whether a female passenger had herself been contributorially negligent also considered gender norms relevant to the inquiry; the idea that female authority and competence was lessened in public spaces contributed to some courts' decisions that the injured women passengers before them had not been contributorially negligent. Part II discusses a second set of cases, in which women drivers of wagons were injured. Some nineteenth-century court decisions in this category acknowledged and treated a perceived gender difference - that women were inferior drivers to men. These opinions examined numerous doctrinal possibilities for the role gender should play, but settled on none of them, showing that a particular shared understanding about gender does not answer the question of how gender should bear on the injured female tort plaintiff's right to recover. Later opinions dealing with female drivers, by contrast, generally did not discuss gender at all. Part III presents a third and final set of cases, in which women were injured boarding and disembarking from trains. Underlying these decisions was yet another, and related, shared understanding of a gender difference B that women had more difficulty than men negotiating the world of train and streetcar travel. Here, the defendant railroads' legal status as common carriers framed how judges incorporated perceived gender difference into their analysis. As in the first set of cases, though not the second, as courts in this third category repeatedly confronted the perceived difference of women from men, and decided whether and how to accommodate that difference, some particularized rules and a fairly consistent caselaw developed. In a contextual analysis that was not quite feminist, but not anti-feminist either, courts were more likely to invite women into public spaces and to enforce access rules for them than to exclude them, and were more likely to treat women as adults with adult capabilities and responsibilities of self-care, than as children unable to take care of their own safety. Although their facts otherwise vary, the three sets of cases do share one obvious factual feature B all involve transportation-related injuries. This focus on transportation reflects early tort law's similar focus rather than any claim that gender was at issue only in this subset of personal injury cases. And of course, courts also discussed gender in cases that did not involve accidents at all. Divorce cases, rape cases, cases about such gendered torts as seduction or alienation of affections C all were among the arenas in which lawyers and courts discussed women and the law's relationship to and expectations for them. This Article presents just one piece of the puzzle.


The case study of investment treaty arbitration provides an opportunity to examine whether and how the invocation of responsibility by a non-state actor has affected secondary rules of state responsibility. This article takes the analytical perspective of investors, capable of being perceived as right-holders (by reference to human and consular rights), beneficiaries (by reference to the law of treaties rules on third states), or agents (by reference to diplomatic protection). The shift from the state to the investor as the entity invoking responsibility for the breach of investment treaties seems to have influenced the law of state responsibility in a number of distinct ways. The apparent disagreement about the law of state responsibility may sometimes properly relate to questions of treaty interpretation, while in other cases rules from an inter-state context are applied verbatim. In other cases, the different perspectives lead to importantly different conclusions regarding circumstances precluding wrongfulness, elements of remedies, waiver of rights, and, possibly, interpretative relevance of diplomatic protection rules. The overall thesis is that conceptual challenges faced by investment arbitration may be illuminated by the solutions formed by the regimes that provided the background for its creation.


Today, the worlds and terminologies of mechanical engineering and software engineering coexist, but they do not always work together seamlessly. Both worlds have developed their own separate formal vocabulary for expressing their concepts as well as for capturing and communicating their respective domain knowledge. But, these two vocabularies are not unified, interwoven, or at least interconnected in a reasonable manner. Thus, the subject of this paper is a comparison of the vocabularies of the two fields, namely feature technology from the area of mechanical engineering and software design patterns from the software engineering domain. Therefore, a certain amount of definitions, history, examples, etc. is presented for features as well as for design patterns. After this, an analysis is carried out to identify analogies and differences. The main intention of this paper is to inform both worlds - mechanical and software engineering - about the other side's terminology and to start a discussion about potential mutual benefits and possibilities to bridge the gap between these two worlds, e.g. to improve the manageability of CAx product development processes.


Some judges and scholars have questioned the social value of the standard form in which the Securities and Exchange Commission settles its corporate enforcement actions, including the agency's use of essentially unreviewed consent decrees that include no admission of liability or wrongdoing. This essay for a symposium on SEC enforcement provides an analysis of the deterrent effects of the three main components of settlements in public enforcement of law: liability, admission, and remedy. The conclusions are the following. All three components have beneficial deterrent effects. Cost considerations nonetheless justify some settlements that dispense with liability or admission, or even both. But a practice like the SEC's of uniformly institutionalizing settlements without admissions, such that the deterrent effects of admissions are never realized, even for bargaining leverage, is not justified. Further, there is reason to believe that some form of judicial review of enforcement settlements would contribute to deterrence. To put the argument another way, the SEC and other agencies engaged in public civil enforcement could learn something from contemplating why the federal criminal justice system strongly disfavors nolo contendere pleas and why a plea bargaining system dominated by nolo pleas would be so undesirable as to be unthinkable.


A gripping portrait of the first president of the United States from the author of "Alexander Hamilton," the New York Times bestselling biography that inspired the musical. Celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation and the first president of the United States. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one volume biography of George Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his adventurous early years, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president. In this groundbreaking work, based on massive research, Chernow shatters forever the stereotype of George Washington as a stolid, unemotional figure and brings to vivid life a dashing, passionate man of fiery opinions and many moods. Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography Truly magnificent [a] well-researched, well-written and absolutely definitive biography Andrew Roberts, "The Wall Street Journal" Superb the best, most comprehensive, and most balanced single-volume biography of Washington ever written. Gordon S. Wood, "The New York Review of Books" A truly gripping biography of George Washington... I can t recommend it highly enough as history, as epic, and, not least, as entertainment. It s as luxuriantly pleasurable as one of those great big sprawling, sweeping Victorian novels. Hendrik Hertzberg, "The New Yorker" Lin-Manuel Miranda s smash Broadway musical Hamilton has sparked new interest in the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. In addition to Alexander Hamilton, the production also features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Lafayette, and many more. "


We use observations of N2O and mean age to identify realistic transport in models in order to explain their ozone predictions. The results are applied to 15 chemistry climate models (CCMs) participating in the 2010 World Meteorological Organization ozone assessment. Comparison of the observed and simulated N2O, mean age and their compact correlation identifies models with fast or slow circulations and reveals details of model ascent and tropical isolation. This process-oriented diagnostic is more useful than mean age alone because it identifies models with compensating transport deficiencies that produce fortuitous agreement with mean age. The diagnosed model transport behavior is related to a model's ability to produce realistic lower stratosphere (LS) O3 profiles. Models with the greatest tropical transport problems compare poorly with O3 observations. Models with the most realistic LS transport agree more closely with LS observations and each other. We incorporate the results of the chemistry evaluations in the Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate (SPARC) CCMVal Report to explain the range of CCM predictions for the return-to-1980 dates for global (60°S-60°N) and Antarctic column ozone. Antarctic O3 return dates are generally correlated with vortex Cly levels, and vortex Cly is generally correlated with the model's circulation, although model Cl chemistry and conservation problems also have a significant effect on return date. In both regions, models with good LS transport and chemistry produce a smaller range of predictions for the return-to-1980 ozone values. This study suggests that the current range of predicted return dates is unnecessarily broad due to identifiable model deficiencies.


Background/Context Increasing teacher retirements and persistently high turnover have ignited interest in teacher recruitment and retention in recent years. Nowhere is the need to understand these issues more urgent than in low-income schools. These schools face especially large challenges in attracting and retaining competent and committed teachers. Such schools often experience high levels of turnover and, as a result, are staffed disproportionately by inexperienced teachers who are generally less effective than their more experienced counterparts. In addition to this educational cost, elevated turnover also generates substantial organizational and financial losses for low-income schools. Professionals working in other careers constitute one potential source of teachers for low-income schools. The proportion of midcareer entrants among first-year teachers nationwide nearly doubled in recent years. Although analysts assert that midcareer entrants bring great commitment to teaching, scant research examines whether they stay in teaching longer than individuals who enter teaching directly after college. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The primary purpose of this study is to examine whether older entrants to teaching are more likely than younger recruits to voluntarily remain in low-income schools and the teaching profession as a whole. I also explore whether older new teachers' backgrounds differ from those of younger new teachers and whether they are more likely than their younger counterparts to remain in K–12 school-based jobs (i.e., teaching, working as a specialist or administrator). In addition, I examine whether older new teachers who leave the profession have different reasons for doing so than younger new teachers and whether they enter different occupations after teaching. Research Design I investigate the questions described above using a sample of over 2,000 Teach For America (TFA) teachers who began their careers in schools serving high proportions of low-income and minority children. The sample for my study is drawn from a census of all teachers enrolled in the 2000, 2001, and 2002 TFA cohorts. These teachers would have accumulated 4, 5, or 6 years of teaching experience if they had taught continually. From 3,283 TFA enrollees in these cohorts, 2,029 individuals (62%) responded to an online survey that gathered data on teachers' individual characteristics (e.g., subject matter preparation and assignment; demographic information) and, where relevant, the timing of their first departure from their school and the teaching profession. I used discrete-time survival analysis, logistic regression, and chi-square analysis to analyze the data. Findings/Results I found that older TFA entrants to teaching had a lower risk than did younger entrants of leaving low-income schools, the teaching profession, and broader school-based roles. I further found that older entrants' backgrounds differed from younger entrants. Older entrants were significantly more likely than their younger counterparts to be male, to be African American, and to have lived in the locale where they were placed by TFA. Among respondents who left teaching, older entrants' reasons for doing so differed significantly from those noted by younger entrants. Older entrants to teaching were significantly more likely than younger entrants to cite family or health matters as a very or extremely important factor in their decision to leave. Last, older entrants who left the profession also entered significantly different types of professions than did younger entrants. Most notably, older entrants to teaching were significantly more likely than younger entrants to become a K–12 specialist or administrator after they left the classroom. Conclusions/Recommendations Viewed broadly, these findings suggest that older entrants to teaching may prove a promising source of teachers for low-income schools. On all measures, older entrants demonstrated more commitment to low-income schools and the teaching profession than did their younger counterparts. Notably, even though they began their careers in challenging, low-income schools, they left the teaching profession at rates (61.3% in 3 years) that are not that distant from some estimates of attrition of teachers who began their careers in urban schools, some of which were likely less challenging than those where TFA teachers typically work. More broadly, districts seeking to develop human capital across multiple levels of the system might also consider targeting older individuals as a source of new teachers. Not only do these people appear to teach longer, but if they leave teaching, they are more likely than younger entrants to remain in schools in roles other than classroom teacher.


Funeral program for Major General Homer D. Smith, retired from the United States Army. The funeral was held at Dodd Field Chapel at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas, and it was officiated by Reverend David W. Schulte. The date of the service is not included. Includes biographical information for the deceased and the lyrics to the hymn "How Great Thou Art" printed on a separate sheet. Smith is a veteran of both World War II and the Vietnam War, and he lived from February 16, 1922 to March 6, 2011.


Based on an impressive array of studies, Paul Robinson and his coauthors have developed a new theory of criminal justice, which they call "empirical desert." The theory asserts that, because people are more likely to be compliant with a legal regime that is perceived to be morally credible, a criminal justice system that tracks empirically derived lay views about how much punishment is deserved is the most efficient way of achieving utilitarian goals, or at least is as efficient at crime prevention as a system that focuses solely on deterrence and incapacitation. This Article describes seven original studies that test the most important hypotheses underlying empirical desert theory. The authors' conclusions, which throw doubt on much of empirical desert theory, include the following: (1) while consensus on the ordinal ranking of traditional crimes is relatively strong, agreement about appropriate punishments — which arguably is the type of agreement empirical desert requires in order to work — is weak; (2) the relationship between people's willingness to abide by the law and the law's congruence with their beliefs about appropriate punishment is complex and not necessarily positive; further, any noncompliance that results from the law's failure to reflect lay views about desert is probably no greater than the noncompliance triggered by a failure to follow lay views about the role utilitarian goals should play in fashioning criminal dispositions; (3) while the relative crime control benefits of a desert-based system and a prevention-based system are hard to evaluate (and are not directly examined here), people are willing to depart from desert in cases that do not involve the most serious crimes if they believe that preventive goals can be achieved in some other way. The Article ends by discussing the implications of these findings for criminal justice policy, especially with respect to determinate and indeterminate sentencing.


Subject of this book is an epistemological consideration - a consideration which could be characterised as a main theme - maybe the main theme - of that part of philosophy we all know as epistemology: the nature of knowledge. But other than the most essays on the subject of knowledge, here I am going to deal with a largely overlooked account to try to find an answer to the epistemological question of knowledge. This is the mental state account of knowledge (Price in his 'Belief' the formulation ``mental acts'' and Williamson talks about a ``state of mind''). Or to put it into the question I chose as title: is knowledge a mental state? We have to concede first that there is only a small group of philosophers who used to explain knowledge in terms of a mental state, particularly the `Oxford Realists'. And secondly, the acceptance of the MS thesis is low and negative. There is an interesting detail here: unlike the poor interest in an epistemic theory such as the MS thesis, philosophers like Prichard or Austin (and their philosophical thinking) are not really living in the shadows of philosophical consideration. Indeed their philosophical impact is high level, if we consider for instance Prichard's moral writings or Austin's theory of speech acts. I think we can conclude from this fact that the reason of the `negative' ignorance in respect of their epistemological point of view was not caused by a negative quality of their philosophy. Now, the question we are faced with (and that should be answered here) is: what is wrong with the MS thesis even though it is held by high class philosophers? Why is the epistemic thinking of Cook Wilson, Prichard and Austin afflicted with such ignorance? I will try to explain this later on with the notion of an unreflected Platonian heritage during 2000 years of epistemic thinking - a notion which is similar to a point Hetherington has called ``epistemic absolutism''. So, there are three main purposes which I am pursuing in this consideration: 1.To explain the reasons why there is such an ignorance towards an assertion of the MS thesis. I am going to pursue this through an analysis of knowledge which will demonstrate the inappropriateness of the JTB thesis as an adequate analysis of knowledge. 2.To describe that it is a mistake to ignore or at least underestimate the MS thesis in the discussion of an appropriate definition of knowledge and to maintain that the MS thesis is the key to a general theory of knowledge. 3.Conclusion: If the first two steps are correct, the JTB thesis is insufficient in order to give an account of the nature of knowledge in general. A consequence from this is: all the epistemic theories which are dealing with the JTB thesis are based on deficient assumptions. Hence their results - notably the well-known externalism/internalism debate - are insufficient, too. So, there is a need for a new theory of knowledge based on the MS thesis. In the course of my consideration I am going to justify the following three theses: i) The JTB thesis as a definition of knowledge in general is deficient, as the JTB thesis describes the propositional aspect of knowledge only. But the propositional knowledge - the so-called `knowledge that' - is merely one element among others that has to be recognized in search of a theory of knowledge. ii) The status of the `knowledge that' is derivative and not ultimate. It is derived from the non- propositional knowledge in order to make the non-propositional knowledge communicable to others. The mode of the `knowledge that' is indirect and thus can be stated in the third person point of view only. This ultimate kind of knowledge - the knowledge which the `knowledge that' is derived from - is the non-propositional knowledge. Its mode is direct and hence it is restricted to the first person point of view. Therefore the basis towards a theory of knowledge in general has to be this non-propositional aspect of knowledge. iii) Hence, taking the first two theses for granted, an appropriate theory of knowledge needs an account of the non-propositional knowledge. The MS thesis will accomplish this task.


We consider the problem of approximating the branch and size dependent demand of a fashion discounter with many branches by a distributing process being based on the branch delivery restricted to integral multiples of lots from a small set of available lot-types. We propose a formalized model which arises from a practical cooperation with an industry partner. Besides an integer linear programming formulation and a primal heuristic for this problem we also consider a more abstract version which we relate to several other classical optimization problems like the p-median problem, the facility location problem or the matching problem.


Two conceptions of the value of political freedom are popular. According to one, freedom serves autonomy, creating one's own path through life. According to the other, freedom serves authenticity, keeping faith with an identity one did not choose. This paper bridges the gap between these views in several ways. It shows that autonomy embraces some of the unchosen aspects of life that authenticity stresses, and that authenticity is consistent with scope for choice within an unchosen identity. It is also shows that both views share a stake in a neglected value, self-knowledge. Partisans of authenticity cannot keep faith with their identity if they do not know what it truly is. Partisans of autonomy cannot choose a path in life without knowing what the options are for them, and these options can be affected instrumentally and constitutively by their identity, which they therefore have a stake in knowing. Of course, there can be more than one sound argument in favor of freedom. But contrary to what many suppose, autonomy and authenticity are complementary, not competing, in making that case. The differences between them are matters of nuance and degree.


Severe shortages of skilled and qualified personnel in the shipping industry have been addressed in different ways. This paper looks into the issue from a new perspective where high mobility in the shipping industry is seen as a vehicle of knowledge flows that can be used for knowledge transfer. This paper argues that while organisations cannot stop personnel leaving, it is possible, however, to retain part of the knowledge that these leaving personnel carry through effective knowledge management practices. This paper introduces organizational knowledge base (OKB) and identifies knowledge flows both at organizational and industrial levels showing that much can be done to effectively utilise knowledge spillovers brought about by high personnel mobility in the shipping industry. The paper then examines the barriers and facilitators of knowledge transfer in the context of the shipping industry. Due to the unique characteristics of the shipping industry such as the absence of genuine employment link between seafarers, and the remoteness of the onboard workplace from the onshore management, conventional knowledge management practices need to be modified to suit the context of the shipping industry. The paper suggests that advanced information and communication technologies, a dedicated knowledge sharing culture, and strong leadership are essential factors in facilitating knowledge transfer in the context of shipping. The implications of the application of knowledge management practices in the shipping industry are two fold: one is the change of perspectives towards the shortage of skilled personnel in the shipping industry which in turn impacts on maritime education and training; the other is the realignment of resources in tackling the problem of skill shortages, that is, a shift from employee retention to knowledge retention. It is expected that such an attempt will shed light on the understanding of skill shortages from a different perspective and provide insight on the tasks that the shipping industry is facing.


Economists could not properly capture the impact of internet on markets without a proper theory of consumer search. As a result, this theory has been rediscovered and developed further since the early 2000s. It can address such critical questions as the impact of reduced search cost on prices, variety, and product choice as well as advertising practices (such as search advertising). This theoretical development has also fed into a rich empirical literature exploiting the wealth of data that is now available regarding both consumers' and firms' online activity. The goal of this chapter is to present the basic concepts underpinning the theory of imperfectly competitive markets with consumer search. We stress that appropriate theoretical frameworks should involve sufficient heterogeneity among agents on both sides of the market. We also explain why the analysis of ordered search constitutes an essential ingredient for modeling recent search environments.


Inductive learning is based on inferring a general rule from a finite data set and using it to label new data. In transduction one attempts to solve the problem of using a labeled training set to label a set of unlabeled points, which are given to the learner prior to learning. Although transduction seems at the outset to be an easier task than induction, there have not been many provably useful algorithms for transduction. Moreover, the precise relation between induction and transduction has not yet been determined. The main theoretical developments related to transduction were presented by Vapnik more than twenty years ago. One of Vapnik's basic results is a rather tight error bound for transductive classification based on an exact computation of the hypergeometric tail. While tight, this bound is given implicitly via a computational routine. Our first contribution is a somewhat looser but explicit characterization of a slightly extended PAC-Bayesian version of Vapnik's transductive bound. This characterization is obtained using concentration inequalities for the tail of sums of random variables obtained by sampling without replacement. We then derive error bounds for compression schemes such as (transductive) support vector machines and for transduction algorithms based on clustering. The main observation used for deriving these new error bounds and algorithms is that the unlabeled test points, which in the transductive setting are known in advance, can be used in order to construct useful data dependent prior distributions over the hypothesis space.


The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the northern Caribbean with three Spanish ships in October 1492 marked the beginning of continuing European contact with the Americas. With his second voyage of 1493 permanent European occupation of the Caribbean began, with enormous consequences for the peoples and ecology of the region. Failing to encounter the wealthy trading societies that Columbus had hoped to find by reaching Asia, Europeans in the Caribbean soon realized that they would have to involve themselves directly in organizing profitable enterprises. Gold mining in the northern islands and pearl fishing in the islands off the coast of Tierra Firme (present-day Venezuela) for some years proved enormously profitable but depended on Spaniards' ability to exploit indigenous labor on a large scale. The imposition of the Spanish encomienda system, which required indigenous communities to provide labor for mining and commercial agriculture, and the large-scale capture and transportation of Native Americans from one locale to another wrought havoc among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean, resulting in high mortality and flight. Spaniards in the islands soon sought to supplement indigenous labor by importing African slaves who, in the early 16th century, became a significant if not always easily controlled presence in the region.
 From the earliest years the Spanish Caribbean was a complex, dynamic, and volatile region characterized by extensive interaction and conflict among diverse groups of people and by rapid economic and institutional development. Although the islands became the launching grounds for subsequent Spanish moves to the nearby mainland, throughout the 16th century and beyond they played a crucial role in sustaining Spain's overseas empire and integrating it into the larger Atlantic system.


Project FD2020 'Regionalised impacts of climate change on flood flows' provided a methodological framework designed to enable the quick estimation of the impact of a set of climate change scenarios on the flood flows of a catchment. The method separates the climate change that a catchment may be exposed to (the hazard) from the catchment response to changes in the climate (the vulnerability, in terms of change in four flood indicators), through use of a sensitivity framework. Re-combining vulnerability and hazard then leads to an estimate of the risk of change in flood flows. This extension to project FD2020 uses FD2020's representation of vulnerability, along with sets of climate change scenarios from UK Climate Projections 09 (UKCP09), to estimate the probabilistic risk for each of the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) catchments in England and Wales. This report describes the methodology applied to estimate the vulnerability of each of the NRFA catchments for each flood indicator (flood peaks with a return period of 2, 10, 20 and 50 years), summarises the hazard as defined by UKCP09 for river-basin regions over England and Wales, and presents the resulting estimates of risk (with uncertainty ranges).

The vulnerability of each catchment is estimated through the use of the FD2020 response types, and the catchment properties which characterise those response types (via decision trees), rather than through direct hydrological modelling of all NRFA catchments. Minor modifications are made to the FD2020 decision trees before using them to estimate the response type of each NRFA catchment, to make them more robust for use with a wider range of combinations of catchment properties.

The hazard is derived from the UKCP09 climate scenarios, for the 2080s time-horizon under the A1B (Medium) emissions scenario, for the 12 river-basin regions covering England and Wales: Northumbria, Humber, Anglian, Thames, South-East England, South-West England, Severn, West Wales, North-West England, Solway and Tweed. In each case, a single harmonic function is fitted to each of the 10,000 sets of monthly changes in precipitation and temperature. The distributions of the three parameters of these fitted harmonic functions (mean, amplitude and phase) are assessed against the sets of changes applied in the FD2020 sensitivity framework. In general, the two sets compare favourably.

The hazard for a given river-basin region is combined with the vulnerability for each response type. This is done by using the mean and amplitude of the fitted precipitation harmonics (hazard) to extract the estimated impact from the key response patterns (vulnerability) for each response type and flood indicator. The set of 10,000 extracted impacts then represents an initial estimate of the range of risk (due to climate modelling uncertainty and natural variability) in each case. The appropriate uncertainty allowances are added, to get a more robust estimate of the range of risk.

The results are presented by river-basin region. The use of the UKCP09 Sampled Data for river-basin regions simplifies the results, as there is one set of results for each response type in each river-basin region at each return period, rather than for each catchment at each return period. For each region, a regional risk is also calculated at each return period, based on the number of NRFA catchments of each response type.

The results present a wealth of information to support the update of guidance on flooding and climate change, and decisions by the policy-maker on what level of detail/complexity is most appropriate:
• Revised nationwide allowances;
• New regional allowances;
• New regional / sub-regional allowances by response type;
• Local decision-making, where the tools are provided to evaluate changes to river flows from user-defined future climate scenarios and catchment characteristics.
The benefits and weaknesses of each level are discussed, including the balance between simplicity of guidance and the possibility of over/under-adaptation. Decisions also have to be made by the policy-maker on the preferred level of protection and how much uncertainty information is taken into account. The next part of the project will look at alternative time-horizons and emissions scenarios, and consider the extension to higher return periods.


The celebrated Regularity Lemma of Szemeredi asserts that every sufficiently large graph $G$ can be partitioned in such a way that most pairs of the partition sets span $\epsilon$-regular subgraphs. In applications, however, the graph $G$ has to be dense and the partition sets are typically very small. If only one $\epsilon$-regular pair is needed, a much bigger one can be found, even if the original graph is sparse. In this paper we show that every graph with density $d$ contains a large, relatively dense $\epsilon$-regular pair. We mainly focus on a related concept of an $(\epsilon,\sigma)$-dense pair, for which our bound is, up to a constant, best possible.


Introduction. Part I: Inn the Beginning. Chapter 1: So You Want to Open a B&B. Chapter 2: Deciding on the Location and Style of Your B&B. Part II: Transitioning from Inn Goer to Inn Owner. Chapter 3: Creating the Plan for Your Business. Chapter 4: Purchasing an Existing B&B. Chapter 5: Starting a New Inn from Scratch. Part III: Getting Ready for Guests. Chapter 6: Organizing Your Record-Keeping. Chapter 7: Setting Rates and Establishing Policies. Chapter 8: B&B Marketing 101. Chapter 9: Furnishing Your Inn. Chapter 10: Making Breakfast a Memorable Meal. Part IV: Up and Running: Day-to-Day Operations. Chapter 11: Communicating with Potential Guests and Taking Reservations. Chapter 12: Taking Care of Guests. Chapter 13: Maintaining Your Inn. Chapter 14: Getting Help When You Need It. Part V: Taking It beyond Breakfast and the Basics. Chapter 15: Assessing Your Success and Building on It. Chapter 16: Keeping Your Most Important Asset (You) Fine-Tuned. Chapter 17: Looking into Your Future. Part VI: The Part of Tens. Chapter 18: Ten Cleaning Tips to Save Time, Money, and Your Inn. Chapter 19: Ten Ways to Guarantee a Return Guest. Index.


Abstract A widely spread belief among economists is that monetary policy has relatively short-lived effects on real variables such as unemployment. Previous studies indicate that monetary policy affects the output gap only at business cycle frequencies, but the effects on unemployment may well be more persistent in countries with highly regulated labor markets. We study the Swedish experience of unemployment and monetary policy. Using a structural VAR we find that around 30 percent of the fluctuations in unemployment are caused by shocks to monetary policy. The effects are also quite persistent. In the preferred model, almost 30 percent of the maximum effect of a shock still remains after ten years.


This document is written testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, for a hearing under the general title of "Rise of the Drones: Unmanned Systems and the Future of War." The hearing covered military, strategic, technological, and economic issues related to unmanned aerial vehicles in military, intelligence, and civilian commercial use. This written testimony addressed certain international law and legal policy issues raised by the use of drones as a means of projecting force. It is primarily addressed to the question of the CIA campaign of drone attacks in Pakistan and beyond, rather than the use of drones as an alternative form of air support on active battlefields in, for example, Afghanistan.The testimony defends the lawfulness of the CIA campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan and beyond, arguing that they are lawful under doctrines of self defense, and that this legal justification protects this activity even outside of their use by regular military on conventional battlefields. The testimony argues, however, that whatever legal issues are unique to drone warfare, the most important issue facing the United States over their use at this time is not drone technology as such, but instead whether, and on what grounds, their use is lawful by the civilian clandestine service, the CIA. Drone technology in effect forces onto the table serious discussion of the lawful and proper role of the CIA. The President has tasked the CIA with the mission that it currently carries out in Pakistan - essentially, drone strikes against militants and suspected or known terrorists, but using the CIA rather than the military presumably in order to be able to preserve the formal denial that US military forces are operating inside Pakistan. The question that critics increasingly raise is whether this activity by the CIA is lawful, and in addition the standing questions about drone warfare - is it extrajudicial execution, are there obligations to seek to capture rather than kill, and others. The Obama administration has embraced the drone strategy - and in particular, it has embraced the CIA campaign because it is, as senior US leaders have said repeatedly, the only way to strike directly at the terrorists and their leadership and seek to deny them safe havens. This testimony argues that the US government drone program through the CIA is lawful. But it notes sharply that the US government has conspicuously failed to offer a public rationale for the legality of the program - and that the program's legitimacy is at risk of gradual erosion from the public perception that if the government will not defend its lawfulness, perhaps it is not. This testimony urges the administration and Congress directly to address this issue of vital legal policy, and specifically to address the situation of the CIA and its use of force. It briefly offers grounds of argument on which to do so, starting from the proposition of international law of self-defense as a category broader and separate from armed conflict.(Important Note of March 26, 2010. This testimony was submitted and the subcommittee hearing held on March 23, 2010, just prior to a major address by Harold Koh, State Department Legal Adviser, to the American Society of International Law, on March 25, 2010. The Legal Adviser's address carried a substantial discussion of drone warfare and targeted killing, offered as the "considered view" of the United States. Professor Anderson makes special note that the Legal Adviser addressed some of the core concerns of this testimony, and asks that this testimony be read in light of that speech a few days later. In particular, the Legal Adviser offered a clear and considered public legal rationale for the legality of drone strikes as carried out by the US government – one of the key criticisms that this testimony makes of the Obama administration's legal approach to drone warfare. Professor Anderson welcomes the Legal Adviser's statement as a very important step forward with respect to both the willingness of the US government to offer a public legal rationale as well as its general substantive content.)


The increasing, anthropogenic demand for chemicals has created large environmental problems with repercussions for the health of the environment, especially aquatic ecosystems. As a result, the awareness of the public and decision makers on the risks from chemical pollution has increased over the past half-century, prompting a large number of studies in the field of ecological toxicology (ecotoxicology). However, the majority of ecotoxicological studies are laboratory based, and the few studies extrapolating toxicological effects in the field are limited to local and regional levels. Chemical risk assessment on large spatial scales remains largely unexplored, and therefore, the potential large-scale effects of chemicals may be overlooked.
To answer ecotoxicological questions, multidisciplinary approaches that transcend classical chemical and toxicological concepts are required. For instance, the current models for toxicity predictions - which are mainly based on the prediction of toxicity for a single compound and species - can be expanded to simultaneously predict the toxicity for different species and compounds. This can be done by integrating chemical concepts such as the physicochemical properties of the compounds with evolutionary concepts such as the similarity of species. This thesis introduces new, multidisciplinary tools for chemical risk assessments, and presents for the first time a chemical risk assessment on the continental scale.
After a brief introduction of the main concepts and objectives of the studies, this thesis starts by presenting a new method for assessing the physiological sensitivity of macroinvertebrate species to heavy metals (Chapter 2). To compare the sensitivity of species to different heavy metals, toxicity data were standardized to account for the different laboratory conditions. These rankings were not significantly different for different heavy metals, allowing the aggregation of physiological sensitivity into a single ranking.
Furthermore, the toxicological data for macroinvertebrates were used as input data to develop and validate prediction models for heavy metal toxicity, which are currently lacking for a wide array of species (Chapter 3). Apart from the toxicity data, the phylogenetic information of species (evolutionary relationships among species) and the physicochemical parameters for heavy metals were used. The constructed models had a good explanatory power for the acute sensitivity of species to heavy metals with the majority of the explained variance attributed to phylogeny. Therefore, the integration of evolutionary concepts (relatedness and similarity of species) with the chemical parameters used in ecotoxicology improved prediction models for species lacking experimental toxicity data. The ultimate goal of the prediction models developed in this thesis is to provide accurate predictions of toxicity for a wide range of species and chemicals, which is a crucial prerequisite for conducting chemical risk assessment.
The latter was conducted for the first time on the continental scale (Chapter 4), by making use of a dataset of 4,000 sites distributed throughout 27 European countries and 91 respective river basins. Organic chemicals were likely to exert acute risks for one in seven sites analyzed, while chronic risk was prominent for almost half of the sites. The calculated risks are potentially underestimated by the limited number of chemicals that are routinely analyzed in monitoring programmes, and a series of other uncertainties related with the limit of quantification, the presence of mixtures, or the potential for sublethal effects not covered by direct toxicity.
Furthermore, chemical risk was related to agricultural and urban areas in the upstream catchments. The analysis of ecological data indicated chemical impacts on the ecological status of the river systems; however, it is difficult to discriminate the effects of chemical pollution from other stressors that river systems are exposed to. To test the hypothesis of multiple stressors, and investigate the relative importance of organic toxicants, a dataset for German streams is used in chapter 5. In that study, the risk from abiotic (habitat degradation, organic chemicals, and nutrients enrichment) and biotic stressors (invasive species) was investigated. The results indicated that more than one stressor influenced almost all sites. Stream size and ecoregions influenced the distribution of risks, e.g., the risks for habitat degradation, organic chemicals and invasive species increased with the stream size; whereas organic chemicals and nutrients were more likely to influence lowland streams. In order to successfully mitigate the effects of pollutants in river systems, co-occurrence of stressors has to be considered. Overall, to successfully apply integrated water management strategies, a framework involving multiple environmental stressors on large spatial scales is necessary. Furthermore, to properly address the current research needs in ecotoxicology, a multidisciplinary approach is necessary which integrates fields such as, toxicology, ecology, chemistry and evolutionary biology.


The measured particle ratios in central heavy-ion collisions at RHIC-BNL are investigated within a chemical and thermal equilibrium chiral SU(3) σ–ω approach. The commonly adopted non-interacting gas calculations yield temperatures close to or above the critical temperature for the chiral phase transition, but without taking into account any interactions. In contrast, the chiral SU(3) model predicts temperature and density dependent effective hadron masses and effective chemical potentials in the medium and a transition to a chirally restored phase at high temperatures or chemical potentials. Three different parametrizations of the model, which show different types of phase transition behaviour, are investigated. We show that if a chiral phase transition occured in those collisions, 'freezing' of the relative hadron abundances in the symmetric phase is excluded by the data. Therefore, either very rapid chemical equilibration must occur in the broken phase, or the measured hadron ratios are the outcome of the dynamical symmetry breaking. Furthermore, the extracted chemical freeze-out parameters differ considerably from those obtained in simple non-interacting gas calculations. In particular, the three models yield up to 35 MeV lower temperatures than the free gas approximation. The in-medium masses turn out to differ up to 150 MeV from their vacuum values.


During the Cold War, the nature, intent, and scale of Soviet civil defense were the subject of heated debate in the West. Some analysts claimed that the USSR possessed a massive civil defense program capable of seriously destabilizing the strategic nuclear balance. This article draws on previously unexamined archival sources to investigate Soviet shelter construction from 1953, when the USSR's civil defense forces began planning for nuclear war, until the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. These documents indicate that shelter construction consumed the majority of Soviet civil defense funding and was conducted by order of the Council of Ministers. Although the shelters were inadequate both technologically and quantitatively to protect the Soviet population from an all-out U.S. thermonuclear attack, they existed in significant numbers and represented a considerable expenditure of limited Soviet resources. These new revelations provide important insights into Soviet thinking about nuclear war during the Khrushchev era.


Matt 1:18-25 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. 20 But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 "And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." 22 So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: 23 "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, "God with us." 24 Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, 25 and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name Jesus. (NKJ)


A full-color directory of must-have iPhone and iPod touch apps! The App Store allows you to browse and download thousands of applications that were developed with the iPhone SDK and published through Apple. The popularity of iPhone and iPod touch apps is exploding and this handy guide helps you sort through the tens of thousands of available apps so you can find the ones that are ideal for you. Packed with tips and tricks on how to make the most of each app, this book escorts you through a vast selection of apps and then helps you narrow down the most essential and most entertaining apps for your needs and interests. You'll encounter amazing apps in business, education, entertainment, finance, cooking, nutrition, games, healthcare, news, music, social networking, news, weather, and more. Helps you sort through the tens of thousands of available apps for the iPhone and iPod touch so you can find whats right for you Shares unique tips and tricks for making the most of the apps that appeal to you Shows you a variety of apps in the fields of weather, news, photography, cooking, entertainment, business, education, healthcare, social networking, sports, and more Presents information in the straightforward but fun language that defines the For Dummies series With Incredible iPhone Apps For Dummies, you'll discover how to have fun, get more done, and make the most of your iPhone or iPod touch.


It has been empirically verified that smoother intensity maps can be expected to produce shorter sequences when step-and-shoot collimation is the method of choice. This work studies the length of sequences obtained by the sequencing algorithm by Bortfeld and Boyer using a probabilistic approach. The results of this work build a theoretical foundation for the up to now only empirically validated fact that if smoothness of intensity maps is considered during their calculation, the solutions can be expected to be more easily applied.


Providing a complete resource for any teacher seeking a way to bring GIS technology into the middle- or high-school classroom, this educational package is a comprehensive collection of world geography lessons, lesson plans, exercises, and assessment tools. Exploring seven geographic themes, students are able to investigate each theme using real data to create maps with GIS software. This book provides teachers with everything they need to begin teaching a GIS course or incorporating GIS into a standard geography course.


Terrestrial ecosystems sequester 2.1 Pg of atmospheric carbon annually. A large amount of the terrestrial sink is realized by forests. However, considerable uncertainties remain regarding the fate of this carbon over both short and long timescales. Relevant data to address these uncertainties are being collected at many sites around the world, but syntheses of these data are still sparse. To facilitate future synthesis activities, we have assembled a comprehensive global database for forest ecosystems, which includes carbon budget variables (fluxes and stocks), ecosystem traits (e.g. leaf area index, age), as well as ancillary site information such as management regime, climate, and soil characteristics. This publicly available database can be used to quantify global, regional or biome‐specific carbon budgets; to re‐examine established relationships; to test emerging hypotheses about ecosystem functioning [e.g. a constant net ecosystem production (NEP) to gross primary production (GPP) ratio]; and as benchmarks for model evaluations. In this paper, we present the first analysis of this database. We discuss the climatic influences on GPP, net primary production (NPP) and NEP and present the CO2 balances for boreal, temperate, and tropical forest biomes based on micrometeorological, ecophysiological, and biometric flux and inventory estimates. Globally, GPP of forests benefited from higher temperatures and precipitation whereas NPP saturated above either a threshold of 1500 mm precipitation or a mean annual temperature of 10 °C. The global pattern in NEP was insensitive to climate and is hypothesized to be mainly determined by nonclimatic conditions such as successional stage, management, site history, and site disturbance. In all biomes, closing the CO2 balance required the introduction of substantial biome‐specific closure terms. Nonclosure was taken as an indication that respiratory processes, advection, and non‐CO2 carbon fluxes are not presently being adequately accounted for.


Summary Pituitary apoplexy is a rare but potentially life-threatening clinical syndrome characterised by ischaemic infarction or haemorrhage into a pituitary tumour that can lead to spontaneous remission of hormonal hypersecretion. We report the case of a 50-year-old man who attended the emergency department for sudden onset of headache. A computed tomography (CT) scan at admission revealed pituitary haemorrhage and the blood test confirmed the clinical suspicion of acromegaly and an associated hypopituitarism. The T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed the classic pituitary ring sign on the right side of the pituitary. Following admission, he developed acute-onset hyponatraemia that required hypertonic saline administration, improving progressively. Surprisingly, during the follow-up, IGF1 levels became normal and he progressively recovered pituitary function. Learning points: Patients with pituitary apoplexy may have spontaneous remission of hormonal hypersecretion. If it is not an emergency, we should delay a decision to undertake surgery following apoplexy and re-evaluate hormone secretion. Hyponatraemia is an acute sign of hypocortisolism in pituitary apoplexy. However, SIADH although uncommon, could appear later as a consequence of direct hypothalamic insult and requires active and individualised treatment. For this reason, closely monitoring sodium at the beginning of the episode and throughout the first week is advisable to guard against SIADH. Despite being less frequent, if pituitary apoplexy is limited to the tumour, the patient can recover pituitary function previously damaged by the undiagnosed macroadenoma.


This dissertation consists of two articles written to address the context of type 2 diabetes care in African American women. In addition, the proposal and required Institutional Review Board (IRB) documentation are included as Appendices. The first article is a review of the existing literature regarding the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of type 2 diabetes management and outcomes in African American women. The aim of conducting this review of extant literature was to identify what further research was needed specifically in African American women with type 2 diabetes as there is very little to date. The second article was written to identify and explore several demographic and biopsychosocial-spiritual variables associated with type 2 diabetes control in African American women. A set of variables were found to predict diabetes control over time (hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)), body mass index (BMI), and depression severity.   The focus of type 2 diabetes management has been predominantly biomedical. With major disparities in morbidity and mortality and a growing disease burden, the psychosocial-spiritual context of diabetes is important to consider. For this non-systematic review, articles were found in Google Scholar, EBSCO, and reference sections of resultant articles. Search terms included "type 2 diabetes management," "family," and "African American" and were set as follows: "type 2 diabetes management and family" and "type 2 diabetes management and African American." A total of 41 articles met inclusion criteria. Several factors associated with type 2 diabetes management in African American women were identified including: psychosocial support, socioeconomic status, culture, gender and sex, mental health, and spirituality. African American women's health appeared particularly sensitive to family context and spiritual wellbeing. Culture, socioeconomic status, and mental health were also associated with their diabetes-related health outcomes. Future researchers should address the multiplicative influence of these factors specifically in relation to African American women and their diabetes management and outcomes.  The second article was written to report the biopsychosocial-spiritual variables related to type 2 diabetes management in African American women. A cross-sectional survey of African American women with type 2 diabetes (n=58) was utilized to explore demographic and biopsychosocial-spiritual variables related to diabetes control (HbA1c). Associations between BMI and depression severity (PHQ-9) and demographic and biopsychosocial-spiritual variables were explored. Participants were surveyed with the following scales: Diabetes Care Profile, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Family Crisis Orientation Personal Evaluation, Illness Cognition, Health Distress, and Basic Adlerian Scales for Interpersonal Success. BMI and current HbA1c were extracted from participants' medical records. According to hierarchical regression analyses, the biopsychosocial model trended toward significant prediction of the variance in HbA1c; the demographic and biopsychological model explained 27% (p<0.001) of the variance in BMI; and the demographic and biopsychosocial-spiritual model explained 52% (p<0.001) of the variance in depression. Disability status was a significant individual predictor of BMI. Health distress and social/personal factors were individually significant predictors of PHQ-9. A revised framework of biopsychosocial-spiritual factors may be more predictive of HbA1c and diabetes risk factors in this population. This warrants further investigation in efforts to improve type 2 diabetes management and outcomes.


Receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL) activates, while osteoprotegerin (OPG) inhibits, osteoclastogenesis. A neutralizing Ab against RANKL, denosumab, improves bone strength in osteoporosis. OPG also improves muscle strength in mouse models of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (mdx) and denervation-induced atrophy, but its role and mechanisms of action on muscle weakness in other conditions remain to be investigated. We investigated the effects of RANKL inhibitors on muscle in osteoporotic women and mice that either overexpress RANKL (HuRANKLTg+), or lack Pparb and concomitantly develop sarcopenia (Pparb–/–). In women, taking denosumab for more than 3 years improved appendicular lean mass and handgrip strength compared with no treatment, whereas bisphosphonate did not. HuRANKLTg+ mice displayed lower limb force and maximal speed, while their leg muscle mass was diminished, with a lower number of type I and II fibers. Both OPG and denosumab increased limb force proportionally to the increase in muscle mass. They markedly improved muscle insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, and decreased antimyogenic and inflammatory gene expression in muscle, such as myostatin and protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor-γ. Similarly, in Pparb–/–, OPG increased muscle volume and force while also normalizing insulin signaling and higher expression of inflammatory genes in skeletal muscle. In conclusion, RANKL deteriorates while its inhibitors improve muscle strength and insulin sensitivity in osteoporotic mice and humans. Hence, denosumab could represent a novel [...] Research Article Bone biology Muscle biology


For centuries, wills scholars have lamented the difficulty of discerning intent from testamentary documents but have failed to examine how these documents might be written differently. A will can reflect and reinforce the decedent's relationships with friends and family, can express support for institutions and causes in which the decedent believes, and can establish the decedent's lasting legacy. And even if the will is simple and mundane, dealing only with the decedent's personal possessions or naming her fiduciaries, its terminal nature imbues the will with talismanic power. Often the final significant written communication by its author, a will has the potential to be a monument – or indeed a testament – to the decedent's loved ones, to express her vision for the future or her version of the past. More often than not, however, today's will is written in an insider's private language, so that testator after testator exclaims at her will execution ceremony about the formal, dry, and sometimes archaic, legalistic writing. Is this necessary?This article explores the advantages and pitfalls of infusing wills with expressive language. Legal scholars have widely acknowledged the power and resonance that personal narratives bring to briefs, judicial opinions, and other persuasive legal writing. This scholarship has suggested the critical role of narratives in giving meaning beyond mere rules and doctrine. Remarkably, given the intense emotional aspects of death, scholars have largely ignored the role of expressive and individualized language in wills. This article takes seriously the ways in which such language might enhance the meaning and significance of transactional documents, such as wills. After exploring the costs and benefits to testators, beneficiaries, fiduciaries, courts and society of expressive will drafting, this article argues that encouraging a testator to use richer, more varied language can actually help the testator focus on her own intentions and then communicate those intentions to the people she leaves behind. Moreover, this article rejects the argument that including apparently "unnecessary" language in a will inherently result in more litigation. Rather, it suggests that expressive language has the potential to avert litigation and, when contests do occur, facilitate the court's analysis of the challenged instrument. Far from "unnecessary," the inclusion of expressive language in a testator's final will and testament can strengthen the testator's connection to her personal identity and her community, an important step in furthering the ultimate goal of having her property pass effectively as she intends and desires.


Many intrastate conflicts see more than one mediation effort. As the sequencing of mediation efforts in intrastate conflicts is neglected in existing research, this project addresses the question how and why previous mediation outcomes have an impact on subsequent mediation onset and subsequent mediation success. Drawing on bargaining theory, it is argued that governments and rebel groups engaged in intrastate conflicts account for previous mediation outcomes in their cost-benefit calculations on subsequent mediation onset, and, should subsequent talks set on, their behaviour during subsequent mediation efforts, which influences subsequent mediation success.

If mediation did not produce an agreement, the persistence of the private information problem is noted by the conflict parties. Yet, no new costs of mediation are uncovered, and hence the conflict parties will agree to subsequent mediation onset. Being aware of the necessity to overcome the private information and the commitment problem, the mediator will seek to account for the concerns of the conflict parties, and thereby work towards subsequent mediation success. If mediation produced a partial agreement, the benefits of mediation are underlined. The private information and the commitment problem seem solved with the assistance of the mediator. Subsequent mediation onset and eventually subsequent mediation success are observed. If a mediated agreement was reneged on by the rebel group, the government will refrain from further talks, pointing out the rebel group's illegitimacy. If the government reneged on the agreement itself, it will also decide against subsequent mediation, as the previous mediation effort produced an agreement which did not mirror the power distribution in the dyad. Costs of mediation, which outweigh the benefits of it, were highlighted. Rebel groups will opt for mediation regardless which side reneged on an agreement. As both governments and rebel groups have to agree to subsequent mediation for talks to set on, subsequent mediation onset is unlikely if a mediated agreement was reneged on. Given the onset of subsequent mediation after a mediated agreement was reneged on, subsequent mediation success is unlikely to be observed, due to the previously underlined hazards of sharing private information and the persistence of the commitment problem.

The theoretical argument is tested with a mixed-methods approach. The quantitative analysis accounts for mediation efforts in African intrastate conflicts between 1993 and 2007. The qualitative analysis scrutinises the mediation efforts between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army. The results of both parts of analysis largely go hand-in-hand, and show that partial mediation success and mediation which did not produce an agreement have a positive impact on subsequent mediation onset in particular, but also on subsequent mediation success. Reneged on mediated agreements have a severe negative impact on subsequent mediation onset and subsequent mediation success though.

By addressing the question which impact previous mediation outcomes have on subsequent mediation efforts, this research shows that mediation which does not produce an agreement is not the mediation outcome which needs to be feared by the international community. Instead, the deteriorating impact of short-lived agreements, a mediation outcome which is unaccounted for in existing research as an explanatory variable, becomes apparent. This research has important policy implications, especially for mediators, as it suggests that accepting mediation efforts to end without an agreement is more conducive for subsequent mediation efforts. Moreover, this research points towards the necessity of including reneged on agreements in mediation research as an explanatory variable more extensively, thereby shedding more light onto the dynamics at play in consecutive mediation efforts.


Considering the increased complexity in the competitive landscape, innovation is the keyword of the post-industrial era, and in order to be attained by the enterprises, it requires new strategies, capabilities and competencies. Considering this scenario this study included analysis of improvements achieved with the implementation of the e-ticketing system in a case of public transport in major cities of southern Brazil categorized as cases β and γ. Furthermore, it aimed to ascertain whether the improvements in information management provided by electronic ticketing qualify it as an innovation. The research was based on the theoretical model of innovation described in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 in order to guide the research activities described. Qualitative data was collected through interviews and document analysis. The collected information was analyzed using content analysis and the amount of vehicles and passengers in the cities covered by the survey were used as secondary data. The characteristic effects of innovation were found to be in line with the results of e-ticketing in the cases analyzed, making this system a way to attain innovation. In accordance with the guidelines set for this study, it is worth emphasizing that the impacts of the e-ticketing system were considered innovative, not the system itself, because electronic billing was a means to achieve innovation and not an innovation per se.


This article conducts an in-depth examination of Supreme Court Justices' reliance on legislative history during the Burger, Rehnquist, and early Roberts eras. In doing so, it makes two important contributions to current statutory interpretation debates. First, the article presents a powerful case against the conventional wisdom that legislative history is a "politicized" resource, invoked opportunistically by federal judges. The premise that judges regularly rely on legislative history to promote their preferred policy positions - if true - should find ample support in the majority opinions of liberal Supreme Court Justices construing liberal (pro-employee) labor and civil rights statutes. By analyzing all 320-plus majority opinions in workplace law authored by eight liberal Justices from 1969-2006, the authors establish that legislative history reliance is actually associated with a constraining set of results. When these eight liberals use legislative history as part of their majority reasoning, they do so to justify a higher proportion of their pro-employer outcomes than their pro-employee decisions. The authors then review individual majority opinions to demonstrate how this surprising pattern of reliance is based on neutral doctrinal considerations. Liberal Justices use legislative history to illuminate the existence and contours of complex statutory bargains that often favor conservative or pro-employer positions. The authors consider alternative explanations, premised on the institutional factor of who assigns majority opinions and also the instrumental possibility that liberals withhold use of legislative history in "minor" cases to enhance its value in more important decisions. They conclude, however, that Justices Brennan, Marshall, Souter, Stevens, and others are willing to follow so frequently a legislative history trail leading away from their presumed ideological preferences mainly because they have invoked this interpretive resource in principled fashion. The article's second major contribution is to identify and analyze the Scalia Effect that has arisen with respect to liberal Justices' use of legislative history since 1986. In the face of Justice Scalia's fervently expressed opposition to legislative history, liberal Justices have opted not to rely on that resource in a series of pro-employer majorities that Scalia joins. One result of the liberals' strategic restraint is to make their use of legislative history in remaining (mostly pro-employee) majority opinions appear more ideological than was true before Scalia joined the Court. The authors also show that liberal justices have special reasons for acting strategically in this regard. When liberals rely on legislative history, Justice Scalia is significantly less likely to join their majority opinions even when he votes on their side; he also is significantly less likely to vote for the majority result when these liberals rely on legislative history than when they do not. Intriguingly, Justice Scalia's strong resistance to legislative history usage does not extend to majorities authored by his conservative colleagues. Scalia seems prepared to give these conservative colleagues a free ride: he is every bit as likely to join their majorities, or vote for their results, when they rely on legislative history as when they do not.


Simultaneous information and energy transfer (SIET) is attracting much attention as an effective method to provide green energy supply for mobiles. However, low power level of harvested energy from RF spectrum limits application of this technique. Thanks to improvement of sensitivity and efficiency of RF energy harvesting circuit as well as dense deployment of small cell base stations, SIET becomes more practical. In this paper, we propose a unified receiver model for SIET in LTE-A small cell base station networks, formulate a feasibility problem with Poisson point process model and analyze the feasibility for a special and practical scenario. The results show that it is feasible for mobiles to charge the secondary battery with harvested energy from BSs, but it is still impractical to directly charge the primary battery or operate without any battery at all.


Proponents often recommend high labor standards as a means of reducing inequality between and within countries. Opponents suggest that labor standards exacerbate international and domestic inequalities. In this paper, we forward a simple argument whereby the impact of higher labor standards on domestic inequality depends on a country's labor endowment. We hypothesize that where labor is abundant, higher standards will exacerbate inequality. Where labor is scarce, higher labor standards might lower inequality. In both cases, the impact of labor standards on inequality work through an employment and wage effect. Using newly available data on labor standards around the world from 1981 to 2000, we provide evidence largely consistent with our hypotheses. Higher labor standards do, indeed, exacerbate inequality in labor-abundant economies. On the other hand, higher labor standards lower inequality in labor-scarce economies. We discuss the implications of these findings for work on labor market insiders and outsiders as well as the political economy of development.


The hockey stick debate is about two things. At a technical level it concerns a wellknown study that characterized the state of the Earth's climate over the past thousand years and seemed to prove a recent and unprecedented global warming. I will explain how the study got the results it did, examine some key flaws in the methodology and explain why the conclusions are unsupported by the data. At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing process. In view of the massive global influence of IPCC Reports, there is an urgent need to bias-proof future assessments in order to put climate policy onto a new foundation that will better serve the public interest.