Despite the transformation in biological practice and theory brought about by discoveries in molecular biology, until recently philosophy of biology continued to focus on evolutionary biology. When the Human Genome Project got underway in the late 1980s and early 1990s, philosophers of biology -- unlike historians and social scientists -- had little to add to the debate. In this landmark collection of essays, Sahotra Sarkar broadens the scope of current discussions of the philosophy of biology, viewing molecular biology as a unifying perspective on life that complements that of evolutionary biology. His focus is on molecular biology, but the overriding question behind these papers is what molecular biology contributes to all traditional areas of biological research.Molecular biology -- described with some foresight in a 1938 Rockefeller Foundation report as a branch of science in which "delicate modern techniques are being used to investigate ever more minute details" -- and its modeling strategies apparently argue in favor of physical reductionism. Sarkar's first three chapters explore reductionism -- defending it, but cautioning that reduction to molecular interactions is not necessarily a reduction to genetics (and does not support the claims of either heriditarianism or environmentalism). The next sections of the book discuss function, exploring how functional explanations pose a problem for reductionism; the informational interpretation of biology and how it interacts with reductionism; and the tension between the unifying framework of molecular biology and the received framework of evolutionary theory. The concluding chapter is an essay in the emerging field of developmental evolution, exploring what molecular biology may contribute to the transformation of evolutionary theory as evolutionary theory takes into account morphogenetic development.


In this study, a high-performance controller is proposed for single-phase grid-tied energy storage systems (ESSs). To control power factor and current harmonics and manage time-shifting of energy, the ESS is required to have low steady-state error and fast transient response. It is well known that fast controllers often lack the required steady-state accuracy and trade-off is inevitable. A hybrid control system is therefore presented that combines a simple yet fast proportional derivative controller with a repetitive controller which is a type of learning controller with small steady-state error, suitable for applications with periodic grid current harmonic waveforms. This results in an improved system with distortion-free, high power factor grid current. The proposed controller model is developed and design parameters are presented. The stability analysis for the proposed system is provided and the theoretical analysis is verified through stability, transient and steady-state simulations.


Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, "we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel." In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine.Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words.Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors.Eric J. Cassell, M.D., an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School, is widely recognized in the medical field for his contributions to communications in medicine and for his writings on ethics. Talking With Patients is the result of more than ten years of research. His first book, The Healer's Art, has achieved the status of an underground classic.


The aim of the present study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Iranian version of the stages of change readiness and treatment eagerness scale, which had been translated and cross-culturally modified into Persian language and back-translated to English. Most specifically, the study sought to validate the Iranian version of the stages of change readiness and treatment eagerness scale, based on the evaluation of two experts. An additional objective was to test the translated instrument for its reliability. For this purpose, the validated instrument was administered to 80 male drug addicts, who were outpatient services at a government rehabilitation center. The results showed the both experts indicated that the items of the translated instrument had very high relevance to their present context. The inter-rater reliability of the scores given by the two experts indicated .805 between the experts' scores for the total scale. The findings showed that the alpha coefficients for the total scale scores at pre-test and post-test were .832 and .787, respectively. Also, the results indicated that the alpha coefficients for all the subscales of the translated instrument at pre-test ranged from .69 to .81. In all the subscales, alphas at post-test ranged from .66 to .79. The Pearson correlation test indicated a high correlation coefficient of .86 between test and retest. In short, the study showed that the translated instrument has very high content validity and high reliability and that it can be used to assess motivation for behavior change and predict treatment outcomes in drug addicts that are receiving treatments in Iran.


The fate of the USS Flier is one of the most astonishing stories of the Second World War. On August 13, 1944, the submarine struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in less than one minute, leaving only fourteen of its crew of eighty-six hands alive. After enduring eighteen hours in the water, eight remaining survivors swam to a remote island controlled by the Japanese. Deep behind enemy lines and without food or drinking water, the crewmen realized that their struggle for survival had just begun. On its first war patrol, the unlucky Flier made it from Pearl Harbor to Midway where it ran aground on a reef. After extensive repairs and a formal military inquiry, the Flier set out once again, this time completing a distinguished patrol from Pearl Harbor to Fremantle, Western Australia. Though the Flier's next mission would be its final one, that mission is important for several reasons: the story of the Flier's sinking illuminates the nature of World War II underwater warfare and naval protocol and demonstrates the high degree of cooperation that existed among submariners, coast watchers, and guerrillas in the Philippines. The eight sailors who survived the disaster became the first Americans of the Pacific war to escape from a sunken submarine and return safely to the United States. Their story of persistence and survival has all the elements of a classic World War II tale: sudden disaster, physical deprivation, a ruthless enemy, and a dramatic escape from behind enemy lines. In The USS Flier: Death and Survival on a World War II Submarine, noted historian Michael Sturma vividly recounts a harrowing story of brave men who lived to return to the service of their country.


This work discusses how knowledge gatekeepers' intervention in the process of innovations and technology transfer was developed and applied in the manufacturing, financial and R&D firms in Rwanda and Uganda. The study was based on 150 questionnaires distributed, and used to collect empirical data. Furthermore, 25 interviews were conducted within ten organizations and fifteen well known opinion leaders and recognised experts in the fields concerned by this study. In an examination of the role of gatekeeper of knowledge in knowledge transfer processes the study has found that knowledge gatekeepers maybe individual, a firm, or a department within an organization. Furthermore, individuals working as knowledge gatekeepers must adapt to the recipient culture and knowledge sharing practice if they are to effect change. For technological innovations and knowledge transfer, the study found that the role of gatekeepers can be a multidimensional one, ranging from being trust and relationship builders, ambassadors within and from originating firms to receiving firms, and flag bearers. On the basis of the evidences obtained, the study has found no evidence to suggest that, in a gatekeeper's intervention within the knowledge creation process, there are no evidences that, in case of a firm acting as a knowledge gatekeeper, may necessarily develop asymmetries as well as put in place destructive mechanisms to restrain potential competitors within the sector from developing similar products or that they would necessarily incorporate innovative SMEs in their network who may provide related products to the leading firm.


A Johns Hopkins team has stopped in its tracks a form of blood cancer in mice by engineering and inactivating an enzyme, telomerase, thereby shortening the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres. "Normally, when telomeres get critically short, the cell commits suicide as a means of protecting the body," says Carol Greider, Ph.D., the Daniel Nathans chair of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins. Her study, appeared online in April 2007 at Cancer Cell, uncovers an alternate response where cells simply - and permanently - stop growing, a process known as senescence. In an unusual set of experiments, the research team first mated mice with non-operating telomerase to mice carrying a mutation that predisposed them to Burkitt's lymphoma, a rare but aggressive cancer of white blood cells. Telomerase helps maintain the caps or ends of chromosomes called telomeres, which shrink each time a cell divides and eventually - when the chromosomes get too short - force the cell to essentially commit suicide. Such cell death is natural, and when it fails to happen, the result may be unbridled cell growth, or cancer. The first generation pups born to these mice contained no telomerase and very long telomeres. These mice all developed lymphomas by the time they were 7 months old. The researchers then continued breeding the mice to see what would happen in later generations. By the fifth generation, the researchers discovered that the mice had short telomeres and stopped developing lymphomas. When the researchers blocked the suicide machinery in these fifth-generation mice, they were very surprised to find that the mice still remained cancer free. "We were confused as to what was going on; we thought for sure that blocking the cells' ability to commit suicide would lead to the cancer's returning," says Greider. A closer look showed microtumors in the mice's lymph nodes that had begun the road to cancer, but stopped, falling instead into a state of senescence. "They don't die, they don't divide, they just sit there in permanent rest," says Greider. Greider, who won the Lasker Award in 2006 for her discovery of telomerase, says further study of the road to senescence should suggest new ways of preventing or treating cancer by interfering safely with telomerase and the cell-suicide system. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.


Economists argue that tort law promotes an efficient allocation of resources to safety, while philosophers contend that it dispenses corrective justice. Despite the divide, the leading tort theories share something in common: They are grounded in an unduly narrow view of tort. Both economists and philosophers confuse the institution of tort law with the rules that are distinctive of it. They offer theories of tort's substantive rules, but for the most part ignore the procedures by which those rules are implemented. As a consequence, both miss and misconstrue much about tort law. The problem is particularly acute for economists. They analyze the impact of tort's substantive rules on accident and accident avoidance costs. Yet, the institution of tort law generates many other costs and benefits for society, and those costs and benefits affect the optimal arrangement of tort's rules. The fact that economists have not factored these additional costs and benefits into their analyses calls into question their descriptive and normative claims about tort. Corrective justice theory is not in as much trouble as the economic approach, but it is troubled still. Philosophers' neglect of the procedural dimension of tort has caused them to overlook ways that tort does justice between wrongdoers and victims. And it has led them to make misleading claims about the nature of both corrective justice and tort law. This article draws out the trouble with tort theory through a thought experiment, starring Harry Potter. Potter's magic helps to highlight the features of tort that the leading theories overlook. Once they are in view, the article considers the ways in which the omissions cast doubt on the claims those theories make, investigates ways they might improved, and offers several observations about the choice between them.


Fitch, Sheree. Night Sky Wheel Ride. Illus. Yayo. Vancouver : Tradewind Books, 2012. Print. Fans of Sheree Fitch will not be disappointed by the magical dream world circus presented in "Night Sky Wheel Ride". Young readers are drawn into the ethereal journey by the main characters as they wonder if they are up to the challenge of riding the big wheel: "Are we big enough this year, Mama? Are we brave enough, Brother? Sister are you ready to fly?"  This book will work well as a bedtime or naptime story as Fitch's rhymes and scenarios are a little softer and less gregarious than some of her other books. For example, the siblings contemplate the night sky as they enjoy the ride: "Swinging, swaying, staying / up top the stopped ferris wheel / Dizzy-dazed we gaze up feel the moon's breath on our faces/soft as dandelion's fuzz". However, there are certainly bursts of action and energy often accented by onomatopoeic words, such as when the children first take flight: "Hop up to knee knock rockety rock swiggle sway creak squeak rickety ratcheting up! up! up!" Illustrator Yayo's images are bright, whimsical and echo a child's imagination and point of view where everyday objects morph into magic: a roller coaster glides along the curved edges of a laundry basket while the big wheel can be seen inside the spinning drum of a washing machine. There are forests of cotton candy, and the colourful dots of people "waayyy down on the ground" are drawn as "dancing jellybeans".  The back and front covers and inside pages are particularly attractive as they feature phosphorescent images on a dark background. Throughout the story the text is woven in and out of the illustrations to reflect the movements of the main characters and other objects. This helps to engage readers without hindering the storyteller as the text is large and legible. According the publisher's web site it is recommended for ages 3-4.  It would make an excellent addition to a home, school or public library picture book collection. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Kim Frail Kim is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. Children's literature is a big part of her world at work and at home. She also enjoys gardening, renovating and keeping up with her kids.


OBJECTIVES
There is no consensus on the definition of Quality of life (QoL). It is considered to be comprised of both psychological and somatical well-being. A variety of tools has been developed to measure subjective and objective (QoL). A number of factors, including demographical and medical may have an impact on QoL. The aim of our study was to compare the QoL in selected anxiety disorders and evaluate the influence of comorbid personality disorder.

METHOD
We evaluated data from 278 patients suffering from social phobia, panic disorder and/or agoraphobia, adjustment disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Personality disorders were diagnosed in 90 probands. The Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction (Q-LES-Q) was used to assess patients´perceived QoL.

RESULTS
Up to our data there was no statistical difference in overall score of quality of life in selected anxiety disorders. The only significant difference between patients was found in subscale "household." Comorbid personality disorder had no influence on the overall score or any domain of Q-LES-Q.

CONCLUSION
Our study proved that presence of anxiety disorder means a decrease in QoL. Particular anxiety disorders did not differ in overall scores of Q-LES-Q. Furthermore, comorbid personality disorder had no impact on quality of life of patients.


The montane cloud forests of South America are some of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, whilst also being especially vulnerable to climate change and human disturbance. Today much of this landscape has been transformed into a mosaic of secondary forest and agricultural fields. This thesis uses palaeoecological proxies (pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, charcoal, organic content) to interpret ecosystem dynamics during the late Quaternary, unravelling the vegetation history of the landscape and the relationship between people and the montane cloud forest of the eastern Andean flank of Ecuador. Two new sedimentary records are examined from the montane forest adjacent to the Rio Cosanga (Vinillos) and in the Quijos Valley (Huila). These sites characterise the natural dynamics of a pre-human arrival montane forest and reveal how vegetation responded during historical changes in local human populations. Non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) are employed in a novel approach to analyse a forest cover gradient across these sites. The analysis identifies a distinctive NPP assemblage connected to low forest cover and increased regional burning. Investigation into the late Pleistocene Vinillos sediments show volcanic activity to be the primary landscape-scale driver of ecosystem dynamics prior to human arrival, influencing montane forest populations but having little effect on vegetation composition. Lake sediments at Huila from the last 700 years indicate the presence of pre-Hispanic peoples, managing and cultivating an open landscape. The subsequent colonization of the region by Europeans in the late 1500's decimated the indigenous population, leading to the abandonment of the region in conjunction with an expansion in forest cover ca. 1588 CE. After approximately 130 years of vegetation recovery, montane cloud forest reached a stage of structural maturity comparable to that seen in the pre-human arrival forest. The following 100 years (1718-1822 CE) of low human population and minimal human impact in the region is proposed as a shifted ecological baseline for future restoration and conservation goals. This 'cultural ecological baseline' features a landscape that retains many of the ecosystem service provided by a pristine montane forest, while retaining the cultural history of its indigenous people within the vegetation.


Electro-oxidation reactions using a nickel anode were carried out on the calcium-spent liquor effluent obtained from Sappi Saiccor (formerly South African Industrial Cellulose Corporation) dissolving pulp mill as well as on lignin- and lignan-type compounds previously identified in the effluent. Voltammograms were obtained for each solution in order to identify the oxidation potentials of the compounds to be electro-oxidised. Value-added products such as vanillin and syringaldehyde were identified in the electro-oxidised reaction mixtures using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Profiles of the changes in concentration of these compounds were determined as a function of time with maximum concentrations reached within the first half hour. These findings are significant in that few electro-oxidation reactions have been carried out on the effluent of a pulp mill which uses the acid bisulphite pulping process and no results have previously been reported on the electro-oxidation of syringaldehyde. This study contributes to a further understanding of the electro-oxidation of lignin and is of value to the paper and pulp industry at large. Reduction of the organic content of the effluent by electro-oxidation was shown to be possible.


Ontologies and automated reasoning are the building blocks of the Semantic Web initiative. Derivation rules can be included in an ontology to define derived concepts, based on base concepts. For example, rules allow to define the extension of a class or property, based on a complex relation between the extensions of the same or other classes and properties. On the other hand, the inclusion of negative information both in the form of negation-as-failure and explicit negative information is also needed to enable various forms of reasoning. In this paper, we extend RDF graphs with weak and strong negation, as well as derivation rules. The ERDF stable model semantics of the extended framework (Extended RDF) is defined, extending RDF(S) semantics. A distinctive feature of our theory, which is based on Partial Logic, is that both truth and falsity extensions of properties and classes are considered, allowing for truth value gaps. Our framework supports both closed-world and open-world reasoning through the explicit representation of the particular closed-world assumptions and the ERDF ontological categories of total properties and total classes.


The typical academic concern with respect to advancing criminal justice technology, be it wiretaps or surveillance drones, is that there will be too much of it. In the context of pretrial justice, however, we have the opposite problem. Although detention for dangerousness has received far more attention in recent years, a significant number of non-dangerous but impecunious defendants are jailed to ensure their presence at trial due to continued, widespread reliance on a money bail system. Increasingly sophisticated forms of electronic monitoring have the potential to mitigate flight risk at least as well as money bail at a cost to defendants and the state lower than money bail's necessary concomitant, pretrial detention. But the long, mostly sad history of bail reform efforts suggests that, unlike wiretaps, electronic monitoring in lieu of detention will not be adopted through the political process in many jurisdictions.This paper develops two related claims. First, in the near term, electronic monitoring will present a superior alternative to money bail for addressing flight risk. In contrast to previous proposals for reducing pretrial detention rates, including increased use of personal recognizance bonds and varying forms of supervision by pretrial services agencies, electronic monitoring has the potential to both reduce fugitive rates (by allowing the defendant to be easily located) and government expenditures (by reducing the number of defendants detained at state expense). Moreover, the usual objections to government monitoring – the intrusion on individual privacy and the threat of surveillance extending to new segments of society – have relatively little force in the pretrial context, where detention currently all but extinguishes privacy interests, and the number of criminal defendants is largely independent of the means of preventing flight.Secondly, despite the potential benefits to defendants and governments, electronic monitoring is not likely to be adopted by legislative or executive action. The commercial bail industry has a significant financial incentive to maintain the status quo, and it has repeatedly blunted previous reform efforts. Thus, although there is a lively debate over the institutions best suited to respond to advances in investigative technology, here the best prospect for meaningful change is clearly the judiciary generally, and the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of Excessive Bail more specifically. To achieve this goal, however, the courts will, for the first time, have to develop a meaningful jurisprudence of excessiveness to test the fit between the government's pretrial goals and the means employed to accomplish them. The paper begins this inquiry, arguing that the text, purpose, and history of the Amendment all support the requirement that the chosen means be, at minimum, not substantially more burdensome than necessary. Under this standard, a money bail system that leads to widespread detention without a corresponding increase in performance or savings cannot survive in the face of a less restrictive technological alternative.


In this book, Bernard Rudofsky steps outside the narrowly defined discipline that has governed our sense of architectural history and discusses the art of building as a universal phenomenon. He introduces the reader to communal architecture--architecture produced not by specialists but by the spontaneous and continuing activity of a whole people with a common heritage, acting within a community experience. A prehistoric theater district for a hundred thousand spectators on the American continent and underground towns and villages (complete with schools, offices, and factories) inhabited by millions of people are among the unexpected phenomena he brings to light.The beauty of "primitive" architecture has often been dismissed as accidental, but today we recognize in it an art form that has resulted from human intelligence applied to uniquely human modes of life. Indeed, Rudofsky sees the philosophy and practical knowledge of the untutored builders as untapped sources of inspiration for industrial man trapped in his chaotic cities.


In traditional portfolio optimization under the threat of a crash the investment horizon or time to maturity is neglected. Developing the so-called crash hedging strategies (which are portfolio strategies which make an investor indifferent to the occurrence of an uncertain (down) jumps of the price of the risky asset) the time to maturity turns out to be essential. The crash hedging strategies are derived as solutions of non-linear differential equations which itself are consequences of an equilibrium strategy. Hereby the situation of changing market coefficients after a possible crash is considered for the case of logarithmic utility as well as for the case of general utility functions. A benefit-cost analysis of the crash hedging strategy is done as well as a comparison of the crash hedging strategy with the optimal portfolio strategies given in traditional crash models. Moreover, it will be shown that the crash hedging strategies optimize the worst-case bound for the expected utility from final wealth subject to some restrictions. Another application is to model crash hedging strategies in situations where both the number and the height of the crash are uncertain but bounded. Taking the additional information of the probability of a possible crash happening into account leads to the development of the q-quantile crash hedging strategy.


For over a century, "Thayer's" has been lauded as one of the best New Testament lexicons available. Both accessible and thorough, it is a work suited for the student of New Testament Greek. "Thayer's" provides dictionary definitions for each word and relates each word to its New Testament usage and categorizes its nuances of meaning. Its exhaustive coverage of New Testament Greek words, as well as its extensive quotation of extra-biblical word usage and the wealth of background sources consulted and quoted, render "Thayer's" an invaluable resource.


Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.


In 2002, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case involving the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court ruled that Witnesses cannot be required to give their names to local government authorities in order to obtain permits before going door-to-door to distribute their publications and preach their religious message. While the amount of new law being generated by the religion's followers has slowed, scholars have finally begun in recent years to give significant attention to the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and, in particular, to their phenomenal wave of constitutional litigation. Shawn Francis Peters' Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution is the most recent, and broadest, historical account of the Witnesses' legal activities. Peters focuses on the period of the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, a time when persecution of the Witnesses was at its peak and the Supreme Court decided a flurry of major First Amendment cases involving the Witnesses. Peters' book shares a fundamental flaw with previous accounts of the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses. He has chosen to passionately and unequivocally support the Witnesses' side of each and every one of the legal battles he describes. In Peters' hands, every episode in the Witnesses' legal struggles becomes a story about how an extraordinarily brave and dedicated Witness challenged an indefensible rule of law, and how every case ultimately resulted in either a watershed victory for liberty, or a disheartening judicial failure to protect our freedom. This Review considers the problems that arise in trying to force the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses into a uniform narrative of courageous opposition to unjust legal restrictions and prejudice. This form of legal history idealizes and oversimplifies the events underlying the cases and the issues they raise. Part I of this Review describes Peters' approach, and how he consistently frames the legal history of the Witnesses as a confrontation between righteous dedication and legal harassment. Part II suggests that Peters and other historians have been so determined to applaud the Witnesses' effect on the law that they have overlooked the equally significant question of how participating in these legal activities affected the Witnesses. Part III closely examines one particular case in which the Supreme Court considered the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses, in order to suggest how Peters' approach to the legal history of the Witnesses can distort representation of the facts underlying cases as well as analysis of the meaning and significance of the cases as legal precedent. Finally, Part IV suggests that Peters, like others, has also neglected the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the Witnesses' legal history through comparison of the Witnesses to other religious groups.


What constitutes excellence in information systems research for promotion and tenure? This is a question that is regularly addressed by members of promotion and tenure committees and those called upon to write external letters. While there are many elements to this question, one major element is the quality and quantity of an individual's research publications. An informal survey of senior Information Systems faculty members at 49 leading U.S. and Canadian universities found 86 percent to expect three or more articles in elite journals. In contrast, an analysis of publication performance of Ph.D. graduates between the years of 1992 and 2004 found that approximately three individuals in each graduating year of Ph.D.s (about 2 percent) published 3 or more articles in a set of 20 elite journals within 6 years of graduation. Only 15 individuals from each graduating year (11 percent) published one or more articles. As a discipline, we publish elite journal articles at a lower rate than Accounting, yet our promotion and tenure standards are higher, similar to those of Management, Marketing, and Finance. Thus, there is a growing divergence between research performance and research standards within the Information Systems discipline. As such, unless we make major changes, these differences will perpetuate a vicious cycle of increasing faculty turnover, declining influence on university affairs, and lower research productivity. We believe that we must act now to create a new future, and offer recommendations that focus on the use of more appropriate standards for promotion and tenure and ways to increase the number of articles published.


A measurement of the production cross section for two isolated photons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV is presented. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb$^{-1}$ recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement considers photons with pseudorapidities satisfying $|\eta^{\gamma}|<1.37$ or ${1.56<|\eta^{\gamma}|<2.37}$ and transverse energies of respectively $E_{\mathrm{T,1}}^{\gamma}>40$ GeV and $E_{\mathrm{T,2}}^{\gamma}>30$ GeV for the two leading photons ordered in transverse energy produced in the interaction.The background due to hadronic jets and electrons is subtracted using data-driven techniques. The fiducial cross sections are corrected for detector effects and measured differentially as a function of six kinematic observables. The measured cross section integrated within the fiducial volume is $16.8 \pm 0.8$ pb. The data are compared to fixed-order QCD calculations at next-to-leading-order and next-to-next-to-leading-order accuracy as well as next-to-leading-order computations including resummation of initial-state gluon radiation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithm or matched to a parton shower, with relative uncertainties varying from 5% to 20%.


eISSN 2383-5710 cCopyright 2021 by the Korean Society for Legal Medicine This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 7 Korean J Leg Med 2021;45:7-13 https://doi.org/10.7580/kjlm.2021.45.1.7


The Web contains some extremely valuable information; however, often poor quality, inaccurate, irrelevant or fraudulent information can also be found. With the increasing amount of data available, it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish truth from speculation on the Web. One of the most, if not the most, important criterion used to evaluate data credibility is the information source, i.e., the data origin. Trust in the information source is a valuable currency users have to evaluate such data. Data popularity, recency (or the time of validity), reliability, or vagueness ascribed to the data may also help users to judge the validity and appropriateness of information sources. We call this knowledge derived from the data the provenance of the data. Provenance is an important aspect of the Web. It is essential in identifying the suitability, veracity, and reliability of information, and in deciding whether information is to be trusted, reused, or even integrated with other information sources. Therefore, models and frameworks for representing, managing, and using provenance in the realm of Semantic Web technologies and applications are critically required. This thesis highlights the benefits of the use of provenance in different Web applications and scenarios. In particular, it presents management frameworks for querying and reasoning in the Semantic Web with provenance, and presents a collection of Semantic Web tools that explore provenance information when ranking and updating caches of Web data. To begin, this thesis discusses a highly exible and generic approach to the treatment of provenance when querying RDF datasets. The approach re-uses existing RDF modeling possibilities in order to represent provenance. It extends SPARQL query processing in such a way that given a SPARQL query for data, one may request provenance without modifying it. The use of provenance within SPARQL queries helps users to understand how RDF facts arederived, i.e., it describes the data and the operations used to produce the derived facts. Turning to more expressive Semantic Web data models, an optimized algorithm for reasoning and debugging OWL ontologies with provenance is presented. Typical reasoning tasks over an expressive Description Logic (e.g., using tableau methods to perform consistency checking, instance checking, satisfiability checking, and so on) are in the worst case doubly exponential, and in practice are often likewise very expensive. With the algorithm described in this thesis, however, one can efficiently reason in OWL ontologies with provenance, i.e., provenance is efficiently combined and propagated within the reasoning process. Users can use the derived provenance information to judge the reliability of inferences and to find errors in the ontology. Next, this thesis tackles the problem of providing to Web users the right content at the right time. The challenge is to efficiently rank a stream of messages based on user preferences. Provenance is used to represent preferences, i.e., the user defines his preferences over the messages' popularity, recency, etc. This information is then aggregated to obtain a joint ranking. The aggregation problem is related to the problem of preference aggregation in Social Choice Theory. The traditional problem formulation of preference aggregation assumes a I fixed set of preference orders and a fixed set of domain elements (e.g. messages). This work, however, investigates how an aggregated preference order has to be updated when the domain is dynamic, i.e., the aggregation approach ranks messages 'on the y' as the message passes through the system. Consequently, this thesis presents computational approaches for online preference aggregation that handle the dynamic setting more efficiently than standard ones. Lastly, this thesis addresses the scenario of caching data from the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud. Data on the LOD cloud changes frequently and applications relying on that data - by pre-fetching data from the Web and storing local copies of it in a cache - need to continually update their caches. In order to make best use of the resources (e.g., network bandwidth for fetching data, and computation time) available, it is vital to choose a good strategy to know when to fetch data from which data source. A strategy to cope with data changes is to check for provenance. Provenance information delivered by LOD sources can denote when the resource on the Web has been changed last. Linked Data applications can benefit from this piece of information since simply checking on it may help users decide which sources need to be updated. For this purpose, this work describes an investigation of the availability and reliability of provenance information in the Linked Data sources. Another strategy for capturing data changes is to exploit provenance in a time-dependent function. Such a function should measure the frequency of the changes of LOD sources. This work describes, therefore, an approach to the analysis of data dynamics, i.e., the analysis of the change behavior of Linked Data sources over time, followed by the investigation of different scheduling update strategies to keep local LOD caches up-to-date. This thesis aims to prove the importance and benefits of the use of provenance in different Web applications and scenarios. The exibility of the approaches presented, combined with their high scalability, make this thesis a possible building block for the Semantic Web proof layer cake - the layer of provenance knowledge.


An article by Francesco Daveri and Guido Tabellini (2000) combines empirics and a general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model to recommend the reduction of labor taxation and pension expenditures. I demonstrate that, in the model, unemployment would be zero if unemployment benefits remained between zero and a certain value that is dependent on the level of wage taxation. My demonstration leads to two questions: (1) Why should the government introduce unemployment benefits in an economy that otherwise would always operate at full employment? (2) Why is the reader led to believe that the reduction of labor taxation and pension expenditure are the main economic policy indications that derive from the model? Since, in the Daveri and Tabellini model, unemployment benefits are a waste of resources, the reduction of unemployment benefits is the best way to reduce unemployment.


It has long been taken as gospel that attorney advertising drives down the cost of legal services. The Supreme Court assumed it when first permitting attorney advertising in the landmark First Amendment case, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. And, in the decades following Bates, courts, commentators, the ABA, and the FTC have followed suit, frequently touting advertising's ability to cut consumer costs. The price effect of attorney advertising is thus both seemingly settled and also deeply embedded in its judicial justification.But there is a wrinkle. Though it appears advertising did drive down prices for routine legal services in the years immediately following Bates, in the intervening decades, there has been a decided, yet heretofore unexplored, shift. Contemporary attorney advertising is now mostly the province of the personal injury bar. Yet there is scant evidence that attorney advertising reduces the contingency fees personal injury lawyers charge. To the contrary, the best, most sophisticated, most comprehensive study of legal fees and attorney advertising ever conducted found that, unlike for most basic legal services (e.g., wills, personal bankruptcies, uncontested divorces), those who advertised personal injury legal services charged higher prices than their non-advertising counterparts. Other evidence likewise shows contingency fees have not dropped, even while personal injury lawyers' ad expenditures have soared. This fact has been all but ignored, though it is of enormous consequence for both the legality of attorney advertising and the delivery of legal services more generally. This Article aims to reopen and reorient the "settled" attorney advertising debate, in light of the particularities of personal injury practice and the changing nature of the market for personal legal services in the United States.


In order to help readers stay up-to-date in the field, each issue of Progress in Photovoltaics will contain a list of recently published journal articles that are most relevant to its aims and scope. This list is drawn from an extremely wide range of journals, including IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Renewable Energy, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Journal of Applied Physics, and Applied Physics Letters. To assist readers, the list is separated into broad categories, but please note that these classifications are by no means strict. Also note that inclusion in the list is not an endorsement of a paper's quality. If you have any suggestions, please email Ziv Hameiri at firstname.lastname@example.com.


Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this convenient volume provides comprehensive analysis of the law affecting the physician-patient relationship in Spain. Cutting across the traditional compartments with which lawyers are familiar, medical law is concerned with issues arising from this relationship, and not with the many wider juridical relations involved in the broader field of health care law.

After a general introduction, the book systematically describes law related to the medical profession, proceeding from training, licensing, and other aspects of access to the profession, through disciplinary and professional liability and medical ethics considerations and quality assurance, to such aspects of the physician-patient relationship as rights and duties of physicians and patients, consent, privacy, and access to medical records. Also covered are specific issues such as organ transplants, human medical research, abortion, and euthanasia, as well as matters dealing with the physician in relation to other health care providers, health care insurance, and the health care system.

Succinct and practical, this book will prove to be of great value to professional organizations of physicians, nurses, hospitals, and relevant government agencies. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Spain will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its comparative value as a contribution to the study of medical law in the international context.


The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian . Cormac McCarthy states that "books are made out of books," and in identifying two novels which McCarthy cites as influence of Blood Meridian , the goal was to determine the varying manners in which McCarthy engaged both texts, ultimately coming to the conclusion that Blood Meridian is a compression, and literal flattening, of both of these works. From My Confession , McCarthy primarily draws from the work for historical purposes. Many of the men in Blood Meridian are historically accurate sketches from Chamberlain's work, and McCarthy's Judge Holden completely owes his existence to Chamberalain, as My Confession is the only mention of Holden in any document. In illuminating key passages from Chamberlain's work, and placing them in direct contact with similar passages from Blood Meridian , readers are able to comprehend the ramifications of McCarthy's choice to either adhere to Chamberlain's text or deviate from it. From Moby-Dick , instead of primarily drawing from historical sources, McCarthy utilizes Melville's novel in terms of character, plot, setting, and language. The points of contact between the two works are numerous, and at times highly visible. In examining the similarities and differences between the two works in areas of contact, readers are able to better understand McCarthy's compression of the works, as certain aspects of Blood Meridian are elucidated in placing them in conversation with Moby-Dick .


How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.


The bestselling guide to the leading image-editing software, fully updated Previous editions of this For Dummies guide have sold more 650,000 copies. Richly illustrated in full color, this edition covers all the updates in the newest version of Photoshop, the gold standard for image-editing programs. Used by professional photographers, graphic designers, and Web designers as well as hobbyists, Photoshop has more than four million users worldwide. Photoshop is the image-editing software preferred by professional photographers and designers around the world; the latest version includes new functionality and enhanced tools Teaches all the basics for first-time users, including how to work with the menus, panels, tools, options, and essential shortcuts Covers how to fix red-eye, remove blemishes and wrinkles, remove people or objects from a photo, adjust brightness, improve color, add shadows and highlights, work with Camera Raw, decrease digital noise, create composite images, use channels and masks, optimize images for the Web, and much more Photoshop CS5 For Dummies helps both amateur and professional Photoshop users take advantage of all the program has to offer.


The microgravity conditions of space travel result in unique physiological demands on the human body. In particular, the absence of the continual mechanical stresses on the skeletal system that are present on Earth cause the bones to decalcify. Trabecular structure decreases in thickness and increases in spacing, resulting in decreased bone strength and increased risk of injury. Thus, monitoring bone health is a high priority for long-term space travel. A single probe covering all frequency bands of interest would be ideal for such measurements, and this would also minimize storage space and eliminate the complexity of integrating multiple probes. This invention is an ultrasound transducer for the structural characterization of bone. Such characterization measures features of reflected and transmitted ultrasound signals, and correlates these signals with bone structure metrics such as bone mineral density, trabecular spacing, and thickness, etc. The techniques used to determine these various metrics require measurements over a broad range of ultrasound frequencies, and therefore, complete characterization requires the use of several narrowband transducers. This is a single transducer capable of making these measurements in all the required frequency bands. The device achieves this capability through a unique combination of a broadband piezoelectric material; a design incorporating multiple resonator sizes with distinct, overlapping frequency spectra; and a micromachining process for producing the multiple-resonator pattern with common electrode surfaces between the resonators. This device consists of a pattern of resonator bars with common electrodes that is wrapped around a central mandrel such that the radiating faces of the resonators are coplanar and can be simultaneously applied to the sample to be measured. The device operates as both a source and receiver of acoustic energy. It is operated by connection to an electronic system capable of both providing an excitation signal to the transducer and amplifying the signal received from the transducer. The excitation signal may be either a wide-bandwidth signal to excite the transducer across its entire operational spectrum, or a narrow-bandwidth signal optimized for a particular measurement technique. The transducer face is applied to the skin covering the bone to be characterized, and may be operated in through-transmission mode using two transducers, or in pulse-echo mode. The transducer is a unique combination of material, design, and fabrication technique. It is based on single-crystal lead magnesium niobate lead titanate (PMN-PT) piezoelectric material. As compared to the commonly used piezoceramics, this piezocrystal has superior piezoelectric and elastic properties, which results in devices with superior bandwidth, source level, and power requirements. This design necessitates a single resonant frequency. However, by operating in a transverse length-extensional mode, with the electric field applied orthogonally to the extensional direction, resonators of different sizes can share common electrodes, resulting in a multiply-resonant structure. With carefully sized resonators, and the superior bandwidth of piezocrystal, the resonances can be made to overlap to form a smooth, wide-bandwidth characteristic.


The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the first modern private school choice program in the United States, has grown from 341 students attending 7 private schools in 1990 to 27,857 students attending 126 private schools in 2019. The MPCP has been subject to extensive study focused largely on student performance on standardized tests. This study presents new data on the college enrollment, persistence, and graduation of MPCP and MPS students who were tracked over 12 years beginning in 2006. MPCP participants are compared with a matched sample of MPS students who lived in the same neighborhood and had similar demographic characteristics and test scores at the beginning of the study. The collective evidence in this paper indicates that students in the MPCP program have greater educational attainment than the comparison group, as measured by college experience and outcomes. Most of the college attainment benefits of the MPCP are clear for both students who were in ninth grade at the beginning of the study, for whom positive attainment effects have previously been reported, and students who were initially enrolled in grades three through eight, who we examine here for the first time. As of 2018, MPCP students have spent more total years in a four-year college than their MPS peers. The MPCP students in the grade three through eight sample attained college degrees at rates that are statistically significantly higher than their matched MPS peers.


Empire of Humanity-Michael Barnett 2011-03-03 Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism's remarkable growth from its humble origins in the early nineteenth century to its current prominence in global life. In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today's peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post–Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today's leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate. Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism's enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages—imperial, postcolonial, and liberal—each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate. Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the "international community" believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.


John Wolcott Phelps was born in Guilford, Vermont and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1836. On May 2, 1861, Phelps was appointed Colonel of the 1st Vermont Infantry and was mustered into U.S. service on May 8. He was promoted to brigadier general on May 27, 1861. General Phelps was stationed at Camp Parapet in Carrollton, seven miles from New Orleans. Many fugitive slaves arrived at the camp seeking refuge. Phelps sought to create three regiments of black soldiers, but his commanding officer, General Butler, ordered that they be made laborers. Unwilling to employ the Africans as mere laborers, General Phelps offered his resignation on August 21, 1862. General Butler refused to accept it. Later that August, General Phelps returned his commission to President Abraham Lincoln. Phelps went on to become the candidate for the American Party/Anti-Masonic Party for president in 1880.

The collection includes 17 letters from family friend Gov. Frederick Holbrook and his son William C. Holbrook, major and later colonel of the 7th Vermont. Gov. Holbrook wrote about the recruitment of the 7th Vermont, the appointments of Colonel George T. Roberts, William Holbrook, and other officers, the character of Vermont soldiers, and his attempts to influence federal war policy. Both of the Holbrooks corresponded with Phelps about General Butler's censure of the 7th Vermont after the battle of Baton Rouge. Gov. Erastus Fairbanks wrote on similar topics, and about allegations of misconduct by surgeons in the 1st Vermont. Other correspondents include Senators Justin S. Morrill and George F. Edmunds, Congressman Frederick E. Woodbridge, and Capt. E.V.N. Hitchcock on the condition of the 7th Vermont at Santa Rosa Island in March 1863, Major Harry N. Worthen concerning sick soldiers of the 1st Vermont at Fort Monroe, and Capt. Charles W. Seaton of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters, concerning the promotion of William Ripley to Lieutenant Colonel of that regiment.


The paper proposes a framework for assessing the impact of system-wide and bank-level capital buffers. The assessment rests on a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model that relates individual bank adjustments to macroeconomic dynamics. We estimate FAVAR models individually for eleven euro area economies and identify structural shocks, which allow us to diagnose key vulnerabilities of national banking systems and estimate short-run economic costs of increasing banks' capitalisation. On this basis, we run a fullyfledged cost-benefit assessment of an increase in capital buffers. The benefits are related to an increase in bank resilience to adverse shocks. Higher capitalisation allows banks to withstand negative shocks and moderates the reduction of credit to the real economy that ensues in adverse circumstances. The costs relate to transitory credit and output losses that are assessed both on an aggregate and bank level. An increase in capital ratios is shown to have a sharply different impact on credit and economic activity depending on the way banks adjust, i.e. via changes in assets or equity.


From gluten-free to all-Paleo, GMOs to grass-fed beef, our newsfeeds abound with nutrition advice. Whether sensational headlines from the latest study or anecdotes from celebrities and food bloggers, we're bombarded with "superfoods" and "best ever" diets promising to help us lose weight, fight disease, and live longer. At the same time, we live in an over-crowded food environment that makes it easy to eat, all the time. The result is an epidemic of chronic disease amidst a culture of nutrition confusion-and copious food choices that challenge everyday eaters just trying to get a healthy meal on the table. But the exhilarating truth is that scientists know an astounding amount about the power of food. A staggering 80% of chronic diseases are preventable through modifiable lifestyle changes, and diet is the single largest contributing factor. And we also know the secrets to eating sustainably to protect our planet. In Food & Nutrition, Harvard- and Columbia-trained nutrition scientist Dr. P.K. Newby examines 134 stand-alone questions addressing "need to know" topics, including how what we eat affects our health and environment, from farm to fork, and why, when it comes to diet, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts-and one size doesn't fit all. At the same time, Newby debunks popular myths and food folklore, encouraging readers to "learn, unlearn, and relearn" the fundamentals of nutrition at the heart of a health-giving diet. Her passion for all things food shines through it all, as does her love of the power of science, technology, and engineering to help create healthier diets for ourselves, and a more sustainable future for the planet we share.


A friendly, step-by-step guide to the Microsoft Office database application Access may be the least understood and most challenging application in the Microsoft Office suite. This guide is designed to help anyone who lacks experience in creating and managing a database learn to use Access 2010 quickly and easily. In the classic For Dummies tradition, the book provides an education in Access, the interface, and the architecture of a database. It explains the process of building a database, linking information, sharing data, generating reports, and much more. As the Microsoft Office database application, Access may be the least understood and most challenging part of the Office suite Access 2010 For Dummies walks newcomers through building and using their first database Covers linking information in a database, setting relationships, modeling data, and building tables Explores how to extract data from Access and get specific answers, create forms, and export data in reports A section for more experienced users looks at analyzing errors and creating an interface Fully updated for the newest version, Access 2010 For Dummies gets new Access users up to speed and helps veterans get the most from the Office database application.


Now in its second edition, here is one of the first and only issue-based nonpartisan guides to contemporary American politics. It s a very exciting time in American politics. Voter turnout in primaries and caucuses across the nation has shattered old records. More than ever, in this election year people are paying attention to the issues. But in a world of sound bites and deliberate misinformation and a political scene that is literally colored by a partisan divideblue vs. redhow does the average educated American find a reliable source that s free of political spin?"What You Should Know About Politics . . . But Don t" breaks it all down, issue by issue, explaining who stands for what, and why, whether it s the economy, the war in Iraq, health care, oil and renewable energy sources, or climate change. If you re a Democrat, a Republican, or somewhere in between, it s the perfect book to brush up on a single topic or read through to get a deeper understanding of the often mucky world of American politics."


The general objective of the Report is to study the recent evolution of the social economy in the European Union. It focuses on three areas: firstly, the social economy and the emergent concepts/movements related to it, secondly, the public policies adopted in both the EU and the member states in recent years to enhance the social economy sector and thirdly, measuring the weight of the social economy in each EU member country. This Report shows that the European social economy provides over 13.6 million paid jobs in Europe, accounting for 6.3% of the total EU working population of the EU-28. Despite its size, the social economy remains invisible in the national accounts and statistics around Europe, a hurdle that constitutes another major challenge, although efforts have been made during the last two decades. The new concepts and approaches related to the social economy that have emerged in Europe, such as social enterprises, social innovation, collaborative economy, economy of the common good, circular economy and corporate social responsibility, have been analysed and the main public policies for the social economy that have been implemented in recent years have been studied. Special mention has been made of the Social Business Initiative (SBI) introduced by the European Commission.


[1] The aerosol direct solar effect under clear sky is assessed by (1) combining multiple aerosol characterizations and (2) using the satellite-retrieved land surface albedo. The aerosol characterization is made through an integration of the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrievals and the Georgia Tech/Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model simulations. The spectral and bidirectional albedo of land surface is derived from MODIS. On a global average, the solar forcing at the top of atmosphere (TOA) DFTOA is −4.5 Wm−2, of which about 1/3 is contributed by a sum of natural and anthropogenic sulfate and carbonaceous aerosols. Though the optical depth is about 50% higher over land than over ocean, no significant land-ocean contrast in this TOA forcing is observed. It is reduced by larger aerosol absorption and higher surface albedo over land. As a result of absorption by soot and dust, a much larger surface cooling and substantial atmospheric absorption coexist over land and adjacent oceans. Globally, the surface cooling DFSFC is about −9.9 Wm−2, and the atmospheric absorption DFAIR is about 5.4 Wm−2, suggesting that more than half of the surface cooling results from the atmospheric absorption. Sensitivity tests show that an inclusion of MODIS-derived anisotropy of land surface reflection reduces the diurnal variation of TOA solar forcing, because of aerosol-induced changes in the fraction of direct beam and hence in the effective reflection from the surface. Constraining the GOCART dust absorption with recent measurements reduces DFAIR and DFSFC by 1.3 Wm−2 and 0.9 Wm−2, respectively, and increases the TOA cooling by 0.4 Wm−2.


The topic of this work is the continuum mechanic modelling of point defects in piezoelectric materials. Devices containing piezoelectric material and especially ferroelectrics require a high precision and are exposed to a high number of electrical and mechanical load cycles. As a result, the relevant material properties may decrease with increasing load cycles. This phenomenon is called electric fatigue. The transported ionic and electric charge carriers can interact with each other, as well as with structural elements (grain boundaries, inhomogeneities) or with material interfaces (domain walls). A reduced domain wall mobility also reduces the electromechanical coupling effect, which leads to the electric fatigue effect. The materials considered here are barium titanate and lead zirconate titanate (PZT), in which oxygen vacancies is the most mobile and most frequently appearing defect species. Intentionally introduced foreign atoms (dopants) can adjust the material properties according to their field of application by generating electric dipoles with the vacancies. Agglomerations of point defects can strongly influence the domain wall motion. The domain wall can be slowed down or even be stopped by the locally varying fields in the vicinity of the clusters. Accumulations of point defects can be detected at electrodes, pores or in the bulk of fatigued samples. The present thesis concentrates focuses on the self interaction behaviour of point defects in the bulk. A micro mechanical continuum model is used to show the qualitative and the quantitative interaction behaviour of defects in a static setup and during drift processes. The modelling neglects the ferroelectric switching mechanisms, but is applicable to every piezoelectric material. The underlying differential equations are solved by means of analytical (Green's functions) and numerical (Finite Differences with discrete Fourier Transform) methods, depending on the boundary conditions. The defects are introduced as localised Eigenstrains, as electric charges and as electric dipoles. The required defect parameters are obtained by comparisons with atomistic methods (lattice statics). There are no standardised procedures available for the parameter identification. In this thesis, the mechanical parameter is obtained by a comparison of relaxation volumes of the atomic lattice and the continuum solution. Parameters for isotropic and anisotropic defect descriptions are identified. The strength of the electric defect is obtained by a comparison of the electric internal energies of atomistics and continuum. The appearing singularities are eliminated by taking only the energy difference of a infinite crystal and a periodic cell into account. Both identification processes are carried out for the cubic structure of barium titanate, which decouples the mechanical and the electrical problem. The defect interaction is analysed by means of configurational forces. The mechanical defect parameter generates a directional short-range attraction between defects. An electrical defect parameter produces the long-range Coulomb interaction, which predicts a repulsion of two similar charges. Additionally, an interaction with defect dipoles is taken into account. It is shown that a defect agglomeration is possible for any static defect configuration. Finally, defect drift is simulated using a thermodynamically motivated migration law based on configurational forces. In this context, the migration of point defects due to self interaction, and the influence of external fields is investigated.


Mutation rate is a crucial evolutionary parameter that has typically been treated as a constant in population genetic analyses. However, mutation rate is likely to vary among co-existing individuals within a population, due to genetic polymorphisms, heterogeneous environmental influences, and random physiological fluctuations. We explore the consequences of such mutation rate heterogeneity in a model allowing an arbitrary distribution of mutation rate among individuals, either with or without inheritance. We find that variation of mutation rate about the mean results in a higher probability of producing zero or many simultaneous mutations on a genome. Moreover, it increases the frequency of higher order mutants even under ongoing mutation and selection. We gain a quantitative understanding of how this frequency depends on moments of the mutation rate distribution and selection coefficients. In particular, in a two-locus model, heterogeneity leads to a relative increase in double mutant frequency proportional to the squared coefficient of variation of the mutation rate. Relative effect sizes increase with the number of loci. Finally, this clustering of deleterious mutations into fewer individuals results in a higher population mean fitness. Our results imply that mutation rate heterogeneity allows a population to maintain a higher level of adaptedness to its current environment, while simultaneously harboring greater genetic diversity in the standing variation, which could be crucial for future adaptation to a new environment. Our results also have implications for interpreting mutation rate estimates and mutant frequencies in data.


In 2004, British authorities arrested Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian born cleric sought by the United States for his involvement in instigating terrorist attacks. As authorities prepared to extradite him in July 2010, the European Court of Human Rights issued a stay. According to the court, al-Masri's claims that maximum-security prisons in the United States violate European human rights laws prohibiting torture and degrading treatment warranted further examination. Regardless of the eventual resolution of the al-Masri case, the European Court of Human Rights' inability to summarily dismiss these assertions demonstrates something quite troubling. At a minimum, the court's actions indicate that a perception has developed in the world that the American penal system has gone astray. But are prisons in the United States that much different from those found in other parts of the world?In the spring and summer of 2010, I traveled to prisons in the United States, The Netherlands, and Israel to compare the way each country detains its most violent and culpable residents. The results of this research indicate something quite striking about what makes prisons around the world successful and offer a sobering examination of the deficiencies present in many under-funded American institutions. This article will begin by examining the cultures of four prison facilities: two prisons in America (one federal and one state), a prison in The Netherlands, and a prison in Israel. For each institution, this article will offer a narrative of my observations regarding the prison's structure and security, living conditions, and programming. In particular, the examination of each prison facility will include discussion of the apparent significant impact of each prison's culture on the perceived rates of violence, the financial costs of administration, and the achievement of moral obligations regarding the treatment of prisoners. Through this analysis, this article will first propose that prisons with cultures that create a sense of community within the inmate population benefit from lower rates of violence. Second, the article will contend that lower rates of violence also lead to reduced costs of administration. Finally, this article will argue that regardless of the above-described benefits it is also morally correct to create positive prison environments rather than permit prisons to become warehouses for societal outcasts.


The present study deals with the nutrient concentrations and its use by the dominant tree species of sal (Shorea robusta Roxb.) in comparison to one of the predominating tree species namely kendu (Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb.). The study was carried out in a highly encroached tropical dry deciduous forest known as Matha Protected Forest (MPF) of Purulia district, West Bengal, India. MPF is broadly fragmented into two parts viz. Plot A and Plot B. The main objective of the study is to define the distribution of major nutrient concentrations in green leaf, leaf litter and soil as well as the proficient use and resorption of nutrients by dominant plant species Shorea robusta Roxb. and one of the pre-dominant plant species Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb. To improve the understanding of flow of nutrients and their losses within the ecosystem, that will give information for effective forest management strategies. From analysis, it is depicted that nutrient use efficiency is in the order P>K>N for Shorea robusta Roxb. while the pattern is K>P>N in Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb. We found differences of nutrient concentration between the species and the variation in nutrient concentration depends on the site characteristics. Similarly variation in nutrient remobilization also occurs. Above all, nutrient limitation occurs at the smaller fragmented Plot B, as Plot A shows decreased Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE) and Nutrient Retranslocation Efficiency (NRE) than Plot B.


Perhaps it is a blessing when Jasmine Dent dies in her sleep. At long last an end has come to the suffering of a body horribly ravaged by disease. It may well have been suicide; she had certainly expressed her willingness to speed the inevitable. But small inconsistencies lead her neighbor, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard, to a startling conclusion: Jasmine Dent was murdered. But if not for mercy, why would someone destroy a life already so fragile and doomed? As Kincaid and his capable and appealing assistant Sergeant Gemma James sift through the dead woman's strange history, a troubling puzzle begins to take shape - a bizarre amalgam of good and evil, of charity and crime ...and of the blinding passions that can drive the human animal to perform cruel and inhuman acts.


Each abstract has been indexed according to first author. Abstracts appear as they were submitted and have not undergone editing or the Oncology Nursing Forum's review process. Only abstracts that will be presented appear here. For Congress scheduling information, visit congress.ons.org or check the Congress guide. Data published in abstracts presented at the ONS 43rd Annual Congress are embargoed until the conclusion of the presentation. Coverage and/or distribution of an abstract, poster, or any of its supplemental material to or by the news media, any commercial entity, or individuals, including the authors of said abstract, is strictly prohibited until the embargo is lifted. Promotion of general topics and speakers is encouraged within these guidelines.


While diagnosing the current situation of small and medium sized family enterprises in Latin
America, it is common to find that one of its greatest weaknesses lies in the poor administrative
management developed by its directors and / or owners, a fact resulting from the low levels of
professionalization held by members of the organization. In this regard, strive for a balanced and
efficient management committed to the training of leaders capable of ensuring profitability and
growth processes of trade for these companies, within a coherent framework consistent with the
requirements set by the current environment of globalization markets.


The CSNET project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, has as its goal the design and implementation of a computer communications network to provide services to computer science research groups in the United States. Experience with Arpanet has shown that access to a computer network can lead to significantly higher level of interaction between geographically dispersed researchers. This can result in an increase in the quantity and quality of research produced by these researchers. In addition, it is expected that availability of a network will help address the current 'crisis in computer science' by encouraging more researchers to remain at universities. In this regard, a goal of CSNET is to foster "universal connectivity', i.e., participation by every university, industrial, and government computer science research group in the United States. By December 1982, over eighty university, government, and industrial sites will be participating.


Since the 1980s, there has been a global wave of transfer of state assets to private hands. China is a relatively late participant of this worldwide trend, yet, in the last decade it has emerged as one of the largest privatizing countries. Shu-Yun Ma argues that China's privatization is not based on any grand blueprint; rather, it is privatization by 'groping for stones to cross the river', a well-known metaphor often attributed to Deng Xiaoping, meaning that the reform simply proceeds on a trial-and-error basis without being guided by any theory.


Perceptions about God's involvement in the health of people have always been an issue in Christianity. Conflicting views regarding the transcendent versus immanent nature of Godhave therefore played a prominent part within theological discussions. The purpose of this empirical survey was to explore the extent to which South African Christians directly attribute their health and/or diseases to the hand of God. A total of 3000 structured questionnaires were distributed of which 575 were received back. The IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 21) statistical program was used to analyse the data. Most participants disagreed with the view that God largely determined their health, although the majority did think that diseases (including AIDS) were sent by God, whilst playing down the role of natural causes.In conclusion, one could say that health beliefs amongst South Africans are closely linked to supernatural agents, although the direct role of God is seen mostly in terms of the sending of occasional diseases rather than constant involvement in general health. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The study challenges the applicability of a secularised medical model within the South African context and its relevance for prevention programmes.


An increasing number of older people receive organ transplants for various end-stage conditions. Although organ transplantation is an effective therapy for older patients (i.e., older than 65 years of age), such as in end-stage renal disease, this therapy has not been optimized for older patients because of our lack of understanding of the effect of aging and the immune response to organ transplantation. Here, we provide an overview of the impact of aging on both the allograft and the recipient and its effect on the immune response to organ transplantation. We describe what has been determined to date, discuss existing gaps in our knowledge, and make suggestions on necessary future studies to optimize organ transplantation for older people.


The federal government has imposed a minimum wage since 1938, and nearly all the states impose their own minimum wages. These laws prevent employers from paying wages below a mandated level. While the aim is to help workers, decades of economic research show that minimum wages usually end up harming workers and the broader economy. Minimum wages particularly stifle job opportunities for low-skill workers, youth, and minorities, which are the groups that policymakers are often trying to help with these policies. There is no "free lunch" when the government mandates a minimum wage. If the government requires that certain workers be paid higher wages, then businesses make adjustments to pay for the added costs, such as reducing hiring, cutting employee work hours, reducing benefits, and charging higher prices. Some policymakers may believe that companies simply absorb the costs of minimum wage increases through reduced profits, but that's rarely the case. Instead, businesses rationally respond to such mandates by cutting employment and making other decisions to maintain their net earnings. These behavioral responses usually offset the positive labor market results that policymakers are hoping for. This study reviews the economic models used to understand minimum wage laws and examines the empirical evidence. It describes why most of the academic evidence points to negative effects from minimum wages, and discusses why some studies may produce seemingly positive results. Some federal and state policymakers are currently considering increases in minimum wages, but such policy changes would be particularly damaging in today's sluggish economy. Instead, federal and state governments should focus on policies that generate faster economic growth, which would generate rising wages and more opportunities for all workers.


ireless Communication is one of the fields of Telecommunications which is growing with the tremendous speed. With the passage of time wireless communication devices are becoming more and more common. It is not only the technology of business but now people are using it to perform their daily tasks, be it for calling, shopping, checking their emails or transfer their money. Wireless communication devices include cellular phones, cordless phones and satellite phones, smart phones like Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), two way pagers, and lots of their devices are on their way to improve this wireless world. In order to establish two way communications, a wireless link may be using radio waves or Infrared light. The Wireless communication technologies have become increasingly popular in our everyday life. The hand held devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) allow the users to access calendars, mails, addresses, phone number lists and the internet. Personal digital assistants (PDA) and smart phones can store large amounts of data and connect to a broad spectrum of networks, making them as important and sensitive computing platforms as laptop PCs when it comes to an organization's security plan. Today's mobile devices offer many benefits to enterprises. Mobile phones, hand held computers and other wireless systems are becoming a tempting target for virus writers. Mobile devices are the new frontier for viruses, spam and other potential security threats. Most viruses, Trojans and worms have already been created that exploit vulnerabilities. With an increasing amount of information being sent through wireless channels, new threats are opening up. Viruses have been growing fast as handsets increasingly resemble small computers that connect with each other and the internet. Hackers have also discovered that many corporate wireless local area networks (WLAN) in major cities were not properly secured. Mobile phone operators say that it is only a matter of time before the wireless world is hit by the same sorts of viruses and worms that attack computer software.


The constitutional challenge to Obamacare was a case that comes along once every generation, if not less often. Not because it could affect a presidential election or was otherwise politically significant, but because it reconsidered so many aspects of our constitutional first principles: the fundamental relationships between citizens and the government and between the states and the federal government; the role of the judiciary in saying what the law is and checking the political branches; and the scope of and limits to all three branches' powers. This case was not about the state of health care in America or how to fix this troubled area of public policy. It was instead about how to read our nation's basic law and whether Congress was constitutionally authorized to use the tools it used in this particular instance.Anyone reading this article will already know at least the basic outline of the Supreme Court's ruling. As I wrote on the leading Supreme Court blog in the wake of the decision, those who challenged the law won everything but the case. That is, the Supreme Court adopted all of our legal theories regarding the scope of federal regulatory authority and yet Obamacare stands. This article explains and elaborates on those basic points, the good (Commerce Clause, Necessary & Proper Clause, Spending Clause), the bad (the taxing power), and the ugly (John Roberts's reasoning and motivations).In sum, the Constitution's structural provisions — federalism, separation and enumeration of powers, checks and balances — aren't just a dry exercise in political theory, but a means to protect individual liberty from the concentrated power of popular majorities. Justice Kennedy said it best in summarizing the joint dissent from the bench: "Structure means liberty." If Congress can avoid the Constitution's structural limits by "taxing" inactivity, its power is no more limited and liberty no better protected than if it were allowed to regulate at will under the Commerce Clause. The ultimate lesson to draw from this two-year legal seminar, then, is that the proper role of judges is to apply the Constitution regardless of whether it leads to upholding or striking down legislation. And a correct application of the Constitution inevitably rests on the Madisonian principles of ordered liberty and limited government that the document embodies.


Many books and articles have been published over several decades on 'biblical hermeneutics' to capture the epistemology of biblical hermeneutics and the phenomenology of interpretation, communication and language in order to direct the Bible reader how to read the ancient texts, assembled in the Bible, sensibly. The first part of this essay looks briefly into the history of biblical hermeneutics of the past century in order to generate an orientation of how 'biblical hermeneutics' was regarded and applied as well as to constitute an environment for the investigation to follow in the rest of this essay and in a succeeding essay. In the second part of this essay, a few hermeneutical approaches are analysed in order to recommend a way forward for the dynamic analysis and interpretation (ἑρμηνeία) of biblical texts. This prepares the stage for the recommendation of two extra textures or aspects to be incorporated in the hermeneutical process, to be investigated in a succeeding essay. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article briefly orientates the reader about the paradigm shifts concerning biblical hermeneutics over the previous half century. It challenges the holistic approach to incorporate spirituality and the embodiment of biblical texts in the hermeneutical process. Disciplines involved are hermeneutics and methodology, theology and spirituality.


In this paper network location problems with several objectives are discussed, where every single objective is a classical median objective function. We will lock at the problem of finding Pareto optimal locations and lexicographically optimal locations. It is shown that for Pareto optimal locations in undirected networks no node dominance result can be shown. Structural results as well as efficient algorithms for these multi-criteria problems are developed. In the special case of a tree network a generalization of Goldman's dominance algorithm for finding Pareto locations is presented.


BACKGROUND
In transitioning from the Millennium Development Goal to the Sustainable Development Goal era, it is imperative to comprehensively assess progress toward reducing maternal mortality to identify areas of success, remaining challenges, and frame policy discussions. We aimed to quantify maternal mortality throughout the world by underlying cause and age from 1990 to 2015.

METHODS
We estimated maternal mortality at the global, regional, and national levels from 1990 to 2015 for ages 10-54 years by systematically compiling and processing all available data sources from 186 of 195 countries and territories, 11 of which were analysed at the subnational level. We quantified eight underlying causes of maternal death and four timing categories, improving estimation methods since GBD 2013 for adult all-cause mortality, HIV-related maternal mortality, and late maternal death. Secondary analyses then allowed systematic examination of drivers of trends, including the relation between maternal mortality and coverage of specific reproductive health-care services as well as assessment of observed versus expected maternal mortality as a function of Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary indicator derived from measures of income per capita, educational attainment, and fertility.

FINDINGS
Only ten countries achieved MDG 5, but 122 of 195 countries have already met SDG 3.1. Geographical disparities widened between 1990 and 2015 and, in 2015, 24 countries still had a maternal mortality ratio greater than 400. The proportion of all maternal deaths occurring in the bottom two SDI quintiles, where haemorrhage is the dominant cause of maternal death, increased from roughly 68% in 1990 to more than 80% in 2015. The middle SDI quintile improved the most from 1990 to 2015, but also has the most complicated causal profile. Maternal mortality in the highest SDI quintile is mostly due to other direct maternal disorders, indirect maternal disorders, and abortion, ectopic pregnancy, and/or miscarriage. Historical patterns suggest achievement of SDG 3.1 will require 91% coverage of one antenatal care visit, 78% of four antenatal care visits, 81% of in-facility delivery, and 87% of skilled birth attendance.

INTERPRETATION
Several challenges to improving reproductive health lie ahead in the SDG era. Countries should establish or renew systems for collection and timely dissemination of health data; expand coverage and improve quality of family planning services, including access to contraception and safe abortion to address high adolescent fertility; invest in improving health system capacity, including coverage of routine reproductive health care and of more advanced obstetric care-including EmOC; adapt health systems and data collection systems to monitor and reverse the increase in indirect, other direct, and late maternal deaths, especially in high SDI locations; and examine their own performance with respect to their SDI level, using that information to formulate strategies to improve performance and ensure optimum reproductive health of their population.

FUNDING
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


In this age of modern era, the use of internet must be maximized. Yeah, internet will help us very much not only for important thing but also for daily activities. Many people now, from any level can use internet. The sources of internet connection can also be enjoyed in many places. As one of the benefits is to get the on-line learning from experience a guidebook for clinicians book, as the world window, as many people suggest.


"Freedom from Fear" - collected writings from the Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi's collected writings - edited by her late husband, whom the ruling military junta prevented from visiting Burma as he was dying of cancer - reflects her greatest hopes and fears for her fellow Burmese people, and her concern about the need for international co-operation in the continuing fight for Burma's freedom. Bringing together her most powerful speeches, letters and interviews, this remarkable collection gives a voice to Burma's 'woman of destiny', whose fate remains in the hands of her enemies. Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and leader of Burma's National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the world's greatest living defenders of freedom and democracy, and an inspiration to millions worldwide. This book sits alongside Nelson Mandela's memoir "Long Walk to Freedom". "This book is bound to become a classic for a new generation of Asians who value democracy even more highly than Westerners do, simply because they are deprived of the basic freedoms that Westerners take for granted". ("The New York Times"). "Aung San Suu Kyi's extraordinary achievement has been to confront the regime peacefully, reasonably and persuasively ...in one of the most laudable continuing acts of political courage". ("Financial Times"). "Such is the depth of passion and learning that she brings to her writings about national identity and its links with culture and language that she has attracted the admiration of intellectuals around the world". ("Sunday Times"). Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of Burma's National League for Democracy. She was placed under house arrest in Rangoon in 1989, where she remained for almost 15 of the 21 years until her release in 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. She is also the author of "Letters from Burma".


In one of the first in-depth studies to focus on minorities who have made it to the top, Breaking Through examines the crucial connection between corporate culture and the advancement of people of color. American companies may tout their equal opportunity initiatives, but with 95% of all executive-level positions in the United States held by white males, most of these programs clearly fall far short of their goals when it comes to diversifying upper management. Yet, even in the face of such overwhelming odds, some minority executives do break through to the highest leadership ranks. What can we learn from these success stories? The often surprising conclusions drawn by authors Thomas and Gabarro represent important milestones both for the study of organizational practice and for minorities planning their own course of professional achievement. Here are the determining factors--both individual and organizational--that correspond to the advancement of minority executives to the highest levels.