Orientation: This article reports on a learning intervention in a brokers company with fewer than 50 employees. A rich description of the participants' experience is provided. Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the use of an experiential learning process during an organisation development (OD) intervention in a small business by means of a case study. Motivation for the study: This study explored the important role of small businesses; the role of management; and, more specifically, organisation development models that were developed for large corporations; as these emphasise the need to study the purpose of organisation development interventions in small businesses. Research design, approach and method: The study reported on in this article was a qualitative case study in a small brokers company with 21 staff members. The data were analysed manually by means of qualitative content analysis. Main findings: The main finding of the research concerned how experiential learning intervention provided a space for participants to start exploring, and gradually changing the dynamics of their small business, by transforming their business into a more formal company. Practical/managerial implications: The primary implication is that experiential learning interventions that are operationalised, from a psychodynamic perspective, can be valuable when consulted by small businesses during their transformation towards becoming more formal companies. Contribution/value-add: This article contributes to the OD literature on small businesses, with fewer than 50 employees, by providing data on how the learning process, that commenced during an experiential learning intervention, assisted a small company to develop its identity towards that of a more formal company.


Recent years have witnessed a remarkable spread of interest in decentralised infrastructures for Internet services. Peer-to-Peer systems and overlay networks have given rise to a major paradigm shift and to novel challenges in distributed systems research. Numerous projects from several research communities and commercial organisations have started building and deploying their own systems. Adoption, however, has been restricted to sparsely selected areas, dominated by few applications. Among the technical reasons for the limited availability of deployable systems is the complexity of their design and the incompatibility of systems and frameworks. Applications are tightly coupled to a specific overlay implementation and the framework it uses. This leaves developers with two choices: implementing their application based on the fixed combination of overlay, networking framework and programming language, or reimplementing the overlay based on the desired application framework. Both approaches have their obvious draw-backs. Implementing an overlay, even as a reimplementation, is a task that exhibits considerable challenges. Protocols have to be adapted, completed and partially reverse engineered from the original system to implement them correctly. Message serializations and interfaces have to be rewritten for the new framework. State maintenance and event handling are programmed in very different ways in different environments, which typically requires their redesign. Reimplementing an overlay for a new environment is therefore not necessarily less work than designing a new one. As for the alternative, being tied to a specific environment prevents the application designer from freely choosing the best suited framework for the specific application. Deploying different overlays in one application is only possible if they were written for the same framework, and even then, running multiple non-integrated overlays at the same time can become prohibitively resource extensive. Testing with different overlay topologies and adapting to different deployment environments is similarly hard in this scenario. The current techniques used for overlay implementation turn out to become limiting factors in the design of overlay applications. The approach taken by this thesis tackles these issues at design time, at a point long before integration problems arise. It presents a modelling framework that allows to express overlay specific semantics in a platform-independent, domain specific language called the Overlay Modelling Language, OverML. A Model Driven Architecture maps these abstract overlay specifications to concrete, framework specific implementations. Applications based on OverML benefit from state sharing between different overlays and from short topology implementations in the SQL-Like Overlay Specification Language SLOSL. Their conciseness allows an easy adaptation of SLOSL statements to specific quality-of-service requirements. The architecture provides a clean separation between the generated implementation and hand-written components through generic, event-driven interfaces. To evaluate the approach, a series of topologies is exemplarily specified in OverML and/or SLOSL. A complete walk-through from the specification to the deployment of an OverML implemented overlay is additionally presented. The major contribution of this thesis is the first complete design methodology for the integrative, high-level development of portable, adaptable overlay networks.


The 1964 article "Physical Education, An Academic Discipline" did much to foster more and better relevant research, which is what its author, Franklin Henry, who had earned a PhD in Physiological Psychology, had hoped would occur. However, a number of negative changes (which he certainly did not want) soon began to occur in the field of physical education, which now too rarely uses that name. (Few, if any, other departments in universities and colleges have made as many name changes.) The precipitous decline of efforts to put into practice the results of research (hence, the absence of pedagogy and other "applied" courses in too many curricula) is proving to be especially detrimental. American children and young people had become so inactive that the United States Department of Health and Human Services considered it imperative to state in Physical Activity and Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (published in 1996): "Community leaders need to reexamine whether enough resources have been devoted to th...


This paper addresses a set of issues related to language documentation that are not often explicitly dealt with in academic publications, yet are highly important for the development and success of this new discipline. These issues include embedding language documentation in the socio-political context not only at the community level but also at the national level, the ethical and technical challenges of digital language archives, and the importance of regional and international cooperation among documentation activities. These issues play a major role in the initiative to set up a network of regional language archives in three South American countries, which this paper reports on. Local archives for data on endangered languages have recently been set up in Iquitos (Peru), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and in various locations in Brazil. An important feature of these is that they provide fast and secure access to linguistic and cultural data for local researchers and the language communities. They also make data safer by allowing for regular update procedures within the network.


The Khmer Rouge forbade the conduct of any funeral rites at the time of the death of the estimated two million people who perished during their rule (1975–79). Since then, however, memorials have been erected and commemorative cere monies performed, both public and private, especially at former execution sites, known widely as 'the killing fields'. The physical remains themselves, as well as images of skulls and the haunting photographs of prisoners destined for execution, have come to serve as iconic representations of that tragic period in Cambodian history and have been deployed in contested interpretations of the regime and its overthrow.


The Food Stamp Program has undergone a number of major changes since its modern version was established in 1961. It is now one of the largest "welfare" programs and provides an income supplement to the food-purchasing power of more than 18 million persons each month, at a cost of nearly $7 billion annually. This report traces the history of the program from 1961 through 1979,
with an emphasis on how program rules, philosophy, participation, and costs have changed over the years.


This study demonstrates that the U.S. equity premium has declined significantly during the last three decades. The study calculates the equity premium using a variation of a formula in the classic Gordon stock valuation model. The calculation includes the bond yield, the stock dividend yield, and the expected dividend growth rate, which in this formulation can change over time. The study calculates the premium for several measures of the aggregate U.S. stock portfolio and several assumptions about bond yields and stock dividends and gets basically the same result. The premium averaged about 7 percentage points during 1926 70 and only about 0.7 of a percentage point after that. This result is shown to be reasonable by demonstrating the roughly equal returns that investments in stocks and consol bonds of the same duration would have earned between 1982 and 1999, years when the equity premium is estimated to have been zero.


The global financial crisis has lead to a renewed interest in discretionary fiscal stimulus. Advocates of discretionary measures emphasize that government spending can stimulate additional private spending --- the so-called Keynesian multiplier effect. Thus, we investigate whether the discretionary spending announced by Euro area governments for 2009 and 2010 is likely to boost euro area GDP by more than one for one. Because of modeling uncertainty, it is essential that such policy evaluations be robust to alternative modeling assumptions and different parameterizations. Therefore, we use five different empirical macroeconomic models with Keynesian features such as price and wage rigidities to evaluate the impact of fiscal stimulus. Four of them suggest that the planned increase in government spending will reduce private spending for consumption and investment purposes significantly. If announced government expenditures are implemented with delay the initial effect on euro area GDP, when stimulus is most needed, may even be negative. Traditional Keynesian multiplier effects only arise in a model that ignores the forward-looking behavioral response of consumers and firms. Using a multi-country model, we find that spillovers between euro area countries are negligible or even negative, because direct demand effects are offset by the indirect effect of euro appreciation.


The SME Policy Index is a benchmarking tool designed for emerging economies to assess SME policy frameworks and monitor progress in policy implementation over time. The Index has been developed by the OECD in partnership with the European Commission (EC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the European Training Foundation (ETF) in 2006 for the Western Balkans. The South East European Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (SEECEL) joined as an additional partner in 2014. The SME Policy Index has since 2006 been applied in four regions and nine assessment rounds overall.
The SME Policy Index: Western Balkans and Turkey 2016 presents the results of the fourth assessment of the Small Business Act for Europe in the Western Balkans and, since 2012, Turkey. The assessment framework is structured around the ten principles of the Small Business Act for Europe (SBA). It provides a wide-range of pro-enterprise measures to guide the design and implementation of SME policies based on good practices promoted by the EU and the OECD.
The Index identifies strengths and weaknesses in policy design, implementation and monitoring. It allows for comparison across countries and measures convergence towards good practices and relevant policy standards. It aims to support governments in setting targets for SME policy development and to identify strategic priorities to further improve the business environment. It also helps to engage governments in policy dialogue and exchange good practices within the region and with OECD and EU members.


Abstract. The global spatial and diurnal distribution of cloud properties is a key issue for understanding the hydrological cycle, and critical for advancing efforts to improve numerical weather models and general circulation models. Satellite data provides the best way of gaining insight into global cloud properties. In particular, the determination of cloud thermodynamic phase is a critical first step in the process of inferring cloud optical and microphysical properties from satellite measurements. It is important that cloud phase be derived together with an estimate of the confidence of this determination, so that this information can be included with subsequent retrievals (optical thickness, effective particle radius, and ice/liquid water content). In this study, we combine three different and well documented approaches for inferring cloud phase into a single algorithm. The algorithm is applied to data obtained by the MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and POLDER3 (Polarization and Directionality of the Earth Reflectance) instruments. It is shown that this synergistic algorithm can be used routinely to derive cloud phase along with an index that helps to discriminate ambiguous phase from confident phase cases. The resulting product provides a semi-continuous index ranging from confident liquid to confident ice instead of the usual discrete classification of liquid phase, ice phase, mixed phase (potential combination of ice and liquid particles), or simply unknown phase clouds. The index value provides simultaneously information on the phase and the associated confidence. This approach is expected to be useful for cloud assimilation and modeling efforts while providing more insight into the global cloud properties derived from satellite data.


The degree/diameter problem is to determine the largest graphs or digraphs of given maximum degree and given diameter. General upper bounds - called Moore bounds - for the order of such graphs and digraphs are attainable only for certain special graphs and digraphs. Finding better (tighter) upper bounds for the maximum possible number of vertices, given the other two parameters, and thus attacking the degree/diameter problem 'from above', remains a largely unexplored area. Constructions producing large graphs and digraphs of given degree and diameter represent a way of attacking the degree/diameter problem 'from below'. This survey aims to give an overview of the current state-of-the-art of the degree/diameter problem. We focus mainly on the above two streams of research. However, we could not resist mentioning also results on various related problems. These include considering Moore-like bounds for special types of graphs and digraphs, such as vertex-transitive, Cayley, planar, bipartite, and many others, on the one hand, and related properties such as connectivity, regularity, and surface embeddability, on the other hand.


Arthritis restricts movement; yoga increases range of motion: these two were made for each other. Arthritis is the leading cause of disability in this country, limiting everyday activities for more than seven million Americans. Drugs, surgeries, and steroids can alleviate some of the discomforts, but study after study has shown that exercise is most beneficial to most forms of arthritis, specifically low-impact, flexibility-enhancing exercises-hence, yoga. In this comprehensive and thoroughly illustrated guide, Loren Fishman and Ellen Saltonstall, who between them have seven decades of clinical experience, help readers understand arthritis and give a spectrum of exercises for beginners and experts. Broken down into chapters focusing on each major joint, there are 100 classical yoga poses and numerous imaginative and physiologically sound adapted poses, all with step-by-step instructions and easy-to-follow photo demonstrations. The authors welcome readers into the philosophy and principles of yoga and show how to use yoga to find lasting relief from arthritis.


Clustering is a division of data into groups of similar objects. Each group, called cluster, consists of objects that are similar between themselves and dissimilar to objects of other groups. The clustering algorithm attempts to find natural groups of components, based on some similarity. Traditional clustering algorithms will search only a small sub-set of all possible clustering and consequently, there is no guarantee that the solution found will be optimal. This paper presents the document clustering based on Genetic algorithm with Simultaneous mutation operator and Ranked mutation rate. The mutation operation is significant to the success of genetic algorithms since it expands the search directions and avoids convergence to local optima. In each stage of the genetic process in a problem, may involve aptly different mutation operators for best results. In simultaneous mutation the genetic algorithm concurrently uses several mutation operators in producing the next generation. The mutation ratio of each operator changes according to assessment from the respective offspring it produces. In ranked scheme, it adapts the mutation rate on the chromosome based on the fitness rank of the earlier population. Experiments results are examined with document corpus. It demonstrates that the proposed algorithm statistically outperforms the Simple GA and K-Means.


Privacy and verifiability refer to fundamental principles of democratic elections and therefore belong to the set of established security requirements which each electronic voting scheme is expected to meet. However, very different ideas and opinions about privacy and verifiability exist in the scientific community, which shows that both properties are not well understood yet. Moreover, although the desired properties (captured by the security requirements) should be separated from the assumed adversary model (expressed by adversary capabilities), specific adversary capabilities are inherently assumed for the privacy-related security requirements of receipt-freeness and coercion-resistance, which complicates the analysis of voting schemes. The first part of this thesis presents a taxonomy for privacy and verifiability in electronic voting. We compile the conceivable levels of privacy and verifiability and investigate the relation between both properties. To this end, we introduce a conceptual model capturing both privacy and verifiability. We also provide a comprehensive adversary model for electronic voting by considering different adversary capabilities. The conceptual model, the levels of privacy and verifiability, and the adversary capabilities together form our taxonomy for privacy and verifiability in electronic voting. The presented taxonomy provides a deeper understanding of privacy and verifiability and their correlation in electronic voting. We show how the taxonomy can be used to analyze the security of voting schemes by identifying the level of privacy and verifiability provided depending on the adversary capabilities assumed. Moreover, the taxonomy allows to select appropriate levels of the requirements for different types of elections, and to determine reasonable adversary models for individual election scenarios. The second part of this thesis considers long-term aspects of verifiability in remote electronic voting. The lawfulness of any legally binding election must be provable for several years due to possible scrutiny proceedings. Therefore, specific documents such as the ballots must be retained. The election records are usually retained for the legislative period of the elected body; however, this period may be extended if scrutiny procedures are pending. Retention obligations apply not only to conventional paper-based elections, but also to remote electronic voting. But contrary to the case of paper-based elections, general regulations or guidelines on retention of remote electronic election data have not been issued so far. In particular, the question which records should be retained is yet unanswered. The second part of this thesis sets out to identify the election records that have to be retained in order to prove the proper conduct of a remote electronic election. We derive retention requirements for online elections from legal regulations which apply to Federal Elections for the German Bundestag, and we make recommendations on how to meet these requirements. Establishing Internet voting in parliamentary elections presupposes that its technical implementation meets certain legal requirements, and conclusive retention of election data is one of them. Thus, our work contributes to establishing online voting as an additional voting channel in parliamentary elections in Germany. It may support legislative organs when issuing a legal framework on remote electronic voting. Moreover, our work is valuable for developing legally compliant voting systems as the need for record keeping should be considered already when designing and implementing a remote electronic voting scheme.


An $n \times n$ array is avoidable if there exists a Latin square which differs from the array in every cell. The main aim of this paper is to present a generalization of a result of Chetwynd and Rhodes involving avoiding arrays with multiple entries in each cell. They proved a result regarding arrays with at most two entries in each cell, and we generalize their method to obtain a similar result for arrays with arbitrarily many entries per cell. In particular, we prove that if $m\in {\Bbb N}$, there exists an $N=N(m)$ such that if $F$ is an $N\times N$ array with at most $m$ entries in each cell, then $F$ is avoidable.


In wondering the things that you should do, reading can be a new choice of you in making new things. It's always said that reading will always help you to overcome something to better. Yeah, a cut above is one that we always offer. Even we share again and again about the books, what's your conception? If you are one of the people love reading as a manner, you can find a cut above as your reading material.


Marine litter is one of the main sources of anthropogenic pollution in the marine ecosystem, with plastic representing a global threat. This paper aims to assess the spatial distribution of plastic macro-litter on the seafloor, identifying accumulation hotspots at a northern Mediterranean scale. Density indices (items km–2) from the MEDITS trawl surveys (years 2013-2015) were modelled by generalized additive models using a Delta-type approach and several covariates: latitude, longitude, depth, seafloor slope, surface oceanographic currents and distances from main ports. To set thresholds for the identification of accumulation areas, the percentiles (85th, 90th and 95th) of the plastic spatial density distribution were computed on the raster data. In the northern Mediterranean marine macro-litter was widespread (90.13% of the 1279 surveyed stations), with plastic by far the most recurrent category. The prediction map of the plastic density highlighted accumulation areas (85th, 90th and 95th percentiles of the distribution, respectively, corresponding to 147, 196 and 316 items km–2) in the Gulf of Lions, eastern Corsica, the eastern Adriatic Sea, the Argo-Saronic region and waters around southern Cyprus. Maximum densities were predicted in correspondence to the shallower depths and in proximity to populated areas (distance from the ports). Surface currents and local water circulation with cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies were identified as drivers likely facilitating the sinking to the bottoms of floating debris.


For almost as long as there have been bankruptcy laws, there have been complaints that the primary beneficiaries of these laws are insiders who administer the bankruptcy system. In recent decades, this line of criticism has carried with it an implicit criticism of bankruptcy courts, who are urged to more aggressively police the costs of bankruptcy. Indeed, at least one recent critic has unkindly suggested that the failure of the courts to control bankruptcy costs is the result of a corrupt bargain between bankruptcy courts and practitioners. Rarely addressed is why bankruptcy courts regulate professional costs at all. In most areas of American law, a professional is accountable solely to its client. Complaints about excessive cost might result in a separate malpractice action, but a client who thinks they have been overcharged for the defense of their speeding ticket will find little relief in traffic court. Why is bankruptcy different?This paper begins to look at this question with brief overview of the concept of bankruptcy costs, traditionally divided between direct and indirect costs. I next turn to a consideration of the process for overseeing bankruptcy costs. I briefly trace the history of court control of compensation in corporate bankruptcy, and then detail the current legal structure. The final part of the chapter then surveys the existing understanding of chapter 11 cost, and concludes with a some thoughts on the important questions that remain unanswered.In short, we know a bit about direct costs, but very little about any other sort of costs. Moreover, what we know is almost entirely lacking in context. This makes it quite hard to understand if the existing system of cost regulation is either useful or justified.


This book focusses on computer methodologies as a way of investigating language and character in literary texts. Both theoretical and practical, it surveys investigations into characterization in literary linguistics and personality in social psychology, before carrying out a computational analysis of Virginia Woolf's experimental novel The Waves . Frequencies of grammatical and semantic categories in the language of the six speaking characters are analyzed using Wmatrix software developed by UCREL at Lancaster University. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by a qualitative analysis into recurring patterns of metaphor. The author concludes that these analyses successfully differentiate all six characters, both synchronically and diachronically, and claims that this methodology is also applicable to the study of personality in non-literary language. The book, written in a clear and accessible style, will be of interest to post-graduate students and academics in linguistics, stylistics, literary studies, psychology and also computational approaches.


1. Auditing: Integral to the Economy. 2. The Risk of Fraud and Mechanisms to Address Fraud: Regulation, Corporate Governance, and Audit Quality. 3. Internal Control over Financial Reporting: Management's Responsibilities and Importance to the External Auditors. 4. Professional Liability and the Need for Quality Auditor Judgments and Ethical Decisions. 5. Professional Auditing Standards and the Audit Opinion Formulation Process. 6. A Framework for Audit Evidence. 7. Planning the Audit: Identifying and Responding to the Risks of Material Misstatement. 8. Specialized Audit Tools: Sampling and Generalized Audit Software. 9. Auditing the Revenue Cycle 10. Auditing Cash and Marketable Securities 11. Auditing Inventory, Goods and Services, and Accounts Payable: The Acquisition and Payment Cycle. 12. Auditing Long-Lived Assets: Acquisition, Use, Impairment, and Disposal. 13. Auditing Debt Obligations and Stockholders' Equity Transactions. 14. Activities Required in Completing a Quality Audit. 15. Audit Reports on Financial Statements. 16. Advanced Topics Concerning Complex Auditing Judgments. 17. Other Services Provided by Audit Firms. Auditing Standards Appendix. ACL Appendix. Case Index. Auditing in Practice, Emerging Issues and Fraud Focus Index by Chapter. Index.


The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services. I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation. II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas. V. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views. VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.


65 I love desire, the state of want and thought of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul requires desire. I love the things I've sought — you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll from my billfold — and love what I want: clothes, houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute desire for nut gateau is driven out by death, but the cake on its plate has meaning, even when love is endangered and nothing matters. For my mother, health; for my sister, bereft, wholeness. But why is desire suffering? Because want leaves a world in tatters? How else but in tatters should a world be? A columned porch set high above a lake. Here, take my money. A loved face in agony, the spirit gone. Here, use my rags of love.


Given a graph $G$, an identifying code ${\cal D}\subseteq V(G)$ is a vertex set such that for any two distinct vertices $v_1,v_2\in V(G)$, the sets $N[v_1]\cap{\cal D}$ and $N[v_2]\cap{\cal D}$ are distinct and nonempty (here $N[v]$ denotes a vertex $v$ and its neighbors). We study the case when $G$ is the infinite hexagonal grid $H$. Cohen et.al. constructed two identifying codes for $H$ with density $3/7$ and proved that any identifying code for $H$ must have density at least $16/39\approx0.410256$. Both their upper and lower bounds were best known until now. Here we prove a lower bound of $12/29\approx0.413793$.


Suppose the nominal money supply could be cut literally overnight by, say, 20%. What would happen to prices, wages, output? The answer can be found in 1720s France, where just such an experiment was carried out, repeatedly. Prices adjusted instantaneously and fully on one market only, that for foreign exchange. Prices on other markets (such as commodities) as well as prices of manufactured goods and industrial wages fell slowly, over many months, and not by the full amount of the nominal reduction. Coincidentally or not, the industrial sector (as represented by manufacturing of woolen cloths) experienced a contraction of 30%. When the government changed course and increased the nominal money supply overnight by 20%, prices responded much more, and the woolen industry rebounded.


Antitrust policy today is an anomaly. On the one hand, antitrust is thriving internationally. On the other hand, antitrust's influence has diminished domestically. Over the past thirty years, there have been fewer antitrust investigations and private actions. Today the Supreme Court complains about antitrust suits, and places greater faith in the antitrust function being subsumed in a regulatory framework. So what happened to the antitrust movement in the United States?Two import factors contributed to antitrust policy's domestic decline. The first is salience, especially the salience of the U.S. antitrust goals. In the past thirty years, enforcers and courts abandoned antitrust's political, social, and moral goals, in their quest for a single economic goal. Second antitrust policy increasingly relied on an incomplete, distorted conception of competition. Adopting the Chicago School's simplifying assumptions of self-correcting markets composed of rational, self-interested market participants, the courts and enforcers sacrificed important political, social, and moral values to promote certain economic beliefs.With the anger over taxpayer bailouts for firms deemed too-big-and-integral-to-fail, the wealth inequality that accelerated over the past thirty years, and the current budget cuts and austerity measures, the United States is ripe for a new antitrust policy cycle. This Article first summarizes the quest during the past 30 years for a single economic goal. It discusses why this quest failed. Four oft-cited economic goals (ensuring an effective competitive process, promoting consumer welfare, maximizing efficiency, and ensuring economic freedom) never unified antitrust analysis. After discussing why it is unrealistic to believe that a single well-defined antitrust objective exists, the Article proposes how to account antitrust's multiple policy objectives into the legal framework. It outlines a blended goal approach, and the benefits of this approach in providing better legal standards and reviving antitrust's relevance.


thesis deals with the investigation of the dynamics of optically excited (hot) electrons in thin and ultra-thin layers. The main interests concern about the time behaviour of the dissipation of energy and momentum of the excited electrons. The relevant relaxation times occur in the femtosecond time region. The two-photon photoemission is known to be an adequate tool in order to analyse such dynamical processes in real-time. This work expands the knowledge in the fields of electron relaxation in ultra-thin silver layers on different substrates, as well as in adsorbate states in a bandgap of a semiconductor. It contributes facts to the comprehension of spin transport through an interface between a metal and a semiconductor. The primary goal was to prove the predicted theory by reducing the observed crystal in at least one direction. One expects a change of the electron relaxation behaviour while altering the crystal's shape from a 3d bulk to a 2d (ultra-thin) layer. This is due to the fact that below a determined layer thickness, the electron gas transfers to a two-dimensional one. This behaviour could be proven in this work. In an about 3nm thin silver layer on graphite, the hot electrons show a jump to longer relaxation time all over the whole accessible energy range. It is the first time that the temporal evolution of the relaxation of excited electrons could be observed during the transition from a 3d to a 2d system. In order to reduce or even eliminate the influence coming from the substrate, the system of silver on the semiconductor GaAs, which has a bandgap of 1.5eV at the Gamma-point, was investigated. The observations of the relaxation behaviour of hot electron in different ultra-thin silver layers on this semiconductor could show, that at metal-insulator-junctions, plasmons in the silver and in the interface, as well as cascading electrons from higher lying energies, have a huge influence to the dissipation of momentum and energy. This comes mainly from the band bending of the semiconductor, and from the electrons, which are excited in GaAs. The limitation of the silver layer on GaAs in one direction led to the expected generation of quantum well states (QWS) in the bandgap. Those adsorbate states have quantised energy- and momentum values, which are directly connected to the layer thickness and the standing electron wave therein. With the experiments of this work, published values could not only be completed and proved, but it could also be determined the time evolution of such a QWS. It came out that this QWS might only be filled by electrons, which are moving from the lower edge of the conduction band of the semiconductor to the silver and suffer cascading steps there. By means of the system silver on GaAs, and of the known fact that an excitation of electrons in GaAs with circularly polarised light of the energy 1.5eV does produce spin polarised electrons in the conduction band, it became possible to bring a contribution to the hot topic of spin injection. The main target of spin injection is the transfer of spin polarised electrons out of a ferromagnet into a semiconductor, in order to develop spin dependent switches and memories. It could be demonstrated here that spin polarised electrons from GaAs can move through the interface into silver, could be photoemitted from there and their spin was still being detectable. As a third investigation system, ultra-thin silver layers were deposited on the insulator MgO, which has a bandgap of 7.8eV. Also in this system, one could recognize a change in the relaxation time while reducing the dimension of the silver layer from thick to ultra-thin. Additionally, it came out an extreme large relaxation time at a layer thickness of 0.6 – 1.2nm. This time is an order of magnitude longer than at thick films, and this is a consequence of two factors: first, the reduction of the phase space due to the confined electron gas in the z-direction, and second, the slowlier thermalisation of the electron gas due to less accessible scattering partners.


The results of investigations of multi-component nanostructured coatings of (TiAlSiY)N/CrN type are presented. The influence of different variants of substrate surface pretreatment on adhesive strength and hardness of coatings was studied. Pre-treatment of samples was carried out in plasma of two-stage gas discharge according to various technological schemes. Except for ion-plasma purification, some samples were pretreated with a sublayer of chromium within 5 minutes. The coatings were formed by a vacuum-arc deposition method at simultaneous spraying of two cathode targets. The first cathode is made of chromium, and the second cathode is made of multicomponent Ti - Al - Si - Y alloy obtained by vacuum-arc remelting of powder mixture of the mentioned elements. The coatings were deposited on polished stainless-steel substrates at negative 280 V bias potential. The geometry of the unit and its elements, as well as technological characteristics of the processes of evaporation-condensation were selected so that at a speed of rotation of samples 8 revolutions per minute the formation of the coating with a total thickness of about 9.0 microns occurred in approximately 60 minutes. The analysis of the composition of the coatings shows that the content of elements in the coating differs greatly from the content of elements in the sprayed cathodes. The X-ray diffractometry has shown that all deposition modes are characterized by the formation of phases with cubic (fcc) crystal lattice in both phase layers of multilayer coatings. In the layers formed at spraying of TiAlSiY alloy, a multi-element disordered solid solution (TiAlSiY)N with a crystal lattice of NaCl type and a lattice parameter of 0.4241 nm, as well as chromium mononitride CrN with a lattice parameter of 0.4161 nm, is determined. It has been established that preliminary formation of a chromium sublayer on the substrate leads to significant changes in adhesive strength of multi-component coatings compared to coatings without a sublayer.


For the purpose of this subpart: (a) Except as provided below, the general definitions, abbreviations and methods of analysis set forth in 40 CFR part 401 shall apply to this subpart. (b) The term anhydrous product shall mean the theoretical product that would result if all water were removed from the actual product. (c) The term surfactant shall mean those methylene blue active substances amenable to measurement by the method described in ''Methods for Chemical Analysis of Water and Wastes,'' 1971, Environmental Protection Agency, Analytical Quality Control Laboratory, page 131.


We present SlickFeel, a single haptic display setup that can deliver two distinct types of feedback to a finger on a touchscreen during typical operations of sliding and clicking. Sliding feedback enables the sliding finger to feel interactive objects on a touchscreen through variations in friction. Clicking feedback provides a key-click sensation for confirming a key or button click. Two scenarios have been developed to demonstrate the utility of the two haptic effects. In the first, simple button-click scenario, a user feels the positions of four buttons on a touchscreen by sliding a finger over them and feels a simulated key-click signal by pressing on any of the buttons. In the second scenario, the advantage of haptic feedback is demonstrated in a haptically-enhanced thumb-typing scenario. A user enters text on a touchscreen with two thumbs without having to monitor the thumbs' locations on the screen. By integrating SlickFeel with a Kindle Fire tablet, we show that it can be used with existing mobile touchscreen devices.


A review of:

Crumley, Ellen T., Wiebe, Natasha, Cramer, Kristie, Klassen, Terry P., Hartling, Lisa. "Which resources should be used to identify RCT/CCTs for systematic reviews: a systematic review." BMC Medical Research Methodology 5:24 (2005) doi:10.1186/1471-2288-5-24 (available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/5/24 .
Objective – To determine the value of searching different resources to identify relevant controlled clinical trial reports for systematic reviews.

Design – Systematic review.

Methods – Seven electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library) were searched to April 2004;four journals (Health Information & Libraries Journal - formerly Health Libraries Review, Hypothesis, Journal of the Medical Library Association - formerly Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, Medical Reference Services Quarterly were handsearched from 1990 to 2004; all abstracts of the Cochrane Colloquia (1993-2003) were handsearched; key authors were contacted and relevant article references screened. Two reviewers independently screened results for studies that compared two or more resources to find RCTs or CCTs using defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Two reviewers assessed studies for quality using four criteria: adequate descriptions of what the search was attempting to identify, the methods used to search, the reference standard; and, evidence that bias was avoided in selection of relevant studies. Screening and assessment differences between reviewers were resolved through discussion. Using a standard form, one investigator extracted data for each study, such as study design, results (e.g., recall, precision); a second investigator checked these data. Authors were contacted to provide missing data. Results were grouped by resources compared and these comparisons were summarized using medians and ranges. Search strategies were categorized as Complex (using a combination of types of search terms), Cochrane (the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy or HSSS), Simple (using five or fewer search terms which may include a combination of MeSH, Publication Type, keywords), and Index (using one or two terms to check/verify if the study is in the database).1

Main results – Sixty-four studies met criteria for inclusion in the analysis. Four major comparisons were: MEDLINE vs. handsearch (n=22), MEDLINE vs. MEDLINE + handsearch (n=12), MEDLINE vs. other reference standard (n=18), and EMBASE vs. reference standard (n=13). Thirteen other comparisons had only one or two studies each. The most common comparison was between MEDLINE vs. Handsearching. Data analyzed from 23 studies and 22 unique topic comparisons showed a 58% median for search recall (range=7-97%). Data for search precision based on 12 studies and 11 unique topic comparisons indicated a median of 31% (range=0.03-78%). Data based on more than four comparisons, shows no median recall more than 75% (range=18-90%) and no median precision more than 40% (range=13-83%). Recall was higher for Trial Registries vs. Reference Standard (89%, range=84-95%) but these numbers were based on two studies and four comparisons; one study with two comparisons measured precision (range=96-97%) for Trial Registries vs Reference Standard. Subgroup analyses indicate that Complex and Cochrane searches each achieve better recall and precision compared to Simple searches. Forty-two studies reported reasons why searches miss relevant studies. The reason cited most often for electronic databases was inadequate or inappropriate indexing.
Conclusion – The results of this systematic review indicate that no one resource results in particularly high recall or precision when searchers look for RCTs and CCTs.


In September 1962, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) held its first conven tion in Fresno, California, initiating a multiracial movement that would result in the cre ation of United Farm Workers (UFW) and the first contracts for farm workers in the state of California. Led by Cesar Chavez, the union contributed a number of innovations to the art of social protest, including the most successful consumer boycott in the history of the United States. Chavez welcomed contributions from numerous ethnic and racial groups, men and women, young and old. For a time, the UFW was the realization of Martin Luther King Jr.'s beloved community—people from different backgrounds coming together to cre ate a socially just world. During the 1970s, Chavez struggled to maintain the momentum created by the boycott as the state of California became more involved in adjudicating la bor disputes under the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA). Although Chavez and the UFW ultimately failed to establish a permanent, national union, their suc cesses and strategies continue to influence movements for farm worker justice today.


In a work of sweep and ambition, James Fichter explores how American trade proved pivotal to the evolution of capitalism in the United States and helped to shape the course of the British Empire. Before the American Revolution, colonial merchants were part of a trading network that spanned the globe. After 1783, U.S. merchants began trading in the East Indies independently, creating a new class of investor-capitalists and the first generation of American millionaires. Such wealth was startling in a country where, a generation earlier, the most prosperous Americans had been Southern planters. This mercantile elite brought its experience and affluence to other sectors of the economy, helping to concentrate capital and create wealth, and paving the way for the modern business corporation. Conducted on free trade principles, American trade in Asia was so extensive that it undermined the monopoly of the British East India Company and forced Britain to open its own free trade to Asia. The United States and the British Empire thus converged around shared, Anglo-American free-trade ideals and financial capitalism in Asia. American traders also provided a vital link to the Atlantic world for Dutch Java and French Mauritius, and were at the vanguard of Western contact with Polynesia and the Pacific Northwest. Based on an impressive array of sources from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States, this pathbreaking book revolutionizes our understanding of the early American economy in a global context and the relationship between the young nation and its former colonial master.


Introduction. Part I: Locating Physiology on the Web of Knowledge. Chapter 1: Anatomy and Physiology: The Big Picture. Chapter 2: What Your Body Does All Day. Chapter 3: A Bit about Cell Biology. Part II: Sizing Up the Structural Layers. Chapter 4: Scrutinizing the Skeletal System. Chapter 5: Muscles: Setting You in Motion. Chapter 6: Getting the Skinny on Skin, Hair, and Nails. Part III: Exploring the Inner Workings. Chapter 7: The Nervous System: Your Body s Circuit Board. Chapter 8: The Endocrine System: Releasing Chemical Messages. Chapter 9: The Circulatory System: Getting Your Blood Pumping. Chapter 10: The Respiratory System: Breathing Life into Your Body. Chapter 11: The Digestive System: Beginning the Breakdown. Chapter 12: The Urinary System: Cleaning Up the Act. Chapter 13: The Immune System: Living in a Microbe Jungle. Part IV: Life s Rich Pageant: Reproduction and Development. Chapter 14: The Reproductive System. Chapter 15: Change and Development over the Life Span. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 16: Nearly Ten Chemistry Concepts Related to Anatomy and Physiology. Chapter 17: Ten Phabulous Physiology Phacts. Index.


Global climate change influences the economic performance of all countries, and Indonesia is no exception. Under climate change, Indonesia is predicted to experience temperature increases of approximately 0.8°C by 2030. Moreover, rainfall patterns are predicted to change, with the rainy season ending earlier and the length of the rainy season becoming shorter. Climate change affects all economic sectors, but the agricultural sector is generally the hardest hit in terms of the number of poor affected. We assess climate change impacts for Indonesia using an Indonesian computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that focuses on the agricultural sector. Climate change input data were obtained from the International Food Policy Research Institute's International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade. Our results show that by 2030, global climate change will have a significant and negative effect on the Indonesian economy as a whole. In these projections, we see important impacts for particular sectors in the CGE model, especially for the agricultural sector (both producers and consumers) and in rural areas and for poorer households. Real gross domestic product (GDP) drops slightly and the consumer price index (CPI) increases by a small amount. Negative GDP growth is chiefly the result of adverse impacts on agriculture and agro-based industries, with the largest impact for soybeans, rice, and paddy (unmilled rice). Decreasing output of paddy and rice will adversely affect the country's food security. Domestic prices for paddy and rice increase significantly, pushing up the CPI. Taking international food price shocks into account would increase negative impacts. We find that addressing constraints to agricultural productivity growth through increased public agricultural research investments will be important to counteract adverse impacts of climate change. Enhanced awareness of both government agencies and farmers will be needed for the rural economy to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.


We consider a variant of a knapsack problem with a fixed cardinality constraint. There are three objective functions to be optimized: one real-valued and two integer-valued objectives. We show that this problem can be solved efficiently by a local search. The algorithm utilizes connectedness of a subset of feasible solutions and has optimal run-time.


In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, pianist Randy Weston and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik celebrated with song the revolutions spreading across Africa. In Ghana and South Africa, drummer Guy Warren and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin fused local musical forms with the dizzying innovations of modern jazz. These four were among hundreds of musicians in the 1950s and '60s who forged connections between jazz and Africa that definitively reshaped both their music and the world. Each artist identified in particular ways with Africa's struggle for liberation and made music dedicated to, or inspired by, demands for independence and self-determination. That music was the wild, boundary-breaking exultation of modern jazz. The result was an abundance of conversation, collaboration, and tension between African and African American musicians during the era of decolonization. This collective biography demonstrates how modern Africa reshaped jazz, how modern jazz helped form a new African identity, and how musical convergences and crossings altered politics and culture on both continents. In a crucial moment when freedom electrified the African diaspora, these black artists sought one another out to create new modes of expression. Documenting individuals and places, from Lagos to Chicago, from New York to Cape Town, Robin Kelley gives us a meditation on modernity: we see innovation not as an imposition from the West but rather as indigenous, multilingual, and messy, the result of innumerable exchanges across a breadth of cultures.


We study the behavior of output, employment, consumption, and investment in Germany during the Great Depression of 1928-37. In this time period, real wages were countercyclical, and productivity and fiscal policy were procyclical. We use the neoclassical growth model to investigate how much these factors contribute to the Depression. We find that real wages, which were significantly above their market clearing levels, were the most important factor for the economic decline in the Depression. Changes in productivity and fiscal policy were also important for the decline and recovery. Even though our analysis is limited to a small number of factors, the model accounts surprisingly well for the Depression in Germany.


Everyone engaged in legal education and not utterly asleep agrees that there is a "law school crisis." Building on recent works by Brian Tamanaha and Walter Olson, this paper discusses its causes and potential solutions, using a typical dichotomy in recent populist movements -- the "one percent" versus "99 percent" meme -- as a lens. It examines arguments that the problem is economic and that it is primarily cultural; although I conclude the problem is economic and structural far more than cultural, I also argue that one of Tamanaha's primary recommendations for reform -- that law schools ought to display more experimentation and institutional pluralism, and that ABA accreditation requirements ought to make this more possible -- goes some way toward addressing both diagnoses. The paper is more descriptive than prescriptive, although I offer some thoughts on solutions. I emphasize three things: 1) law schools would be better off focusing on regional than national markets, although the US News rankings make regionally oriented approaches more difficult; 2) a serious increase in meaningful faculty governance and involvement is needed; and 3) the role and needs of the client have been surprisingly marginal in recent discussions of law school reform. The client needs to be a prominent part of reform discussions, which suggests, contrary to some extant views, that curricular reform ought to continue to be part of the discussion along with economic and structural reform. This is an early and imperfect draft intended for discussion and feedback, given both the importance of the issue and the need for increased public discussion. Comments are welcome.


Winner of a 2012 Jolt Productivity Award! Updated and expanded to cover iOS 5 and Xcode 4.3, iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide leads you through the essential concepts, tools, and techniques for developing iOS applications. After completing this book, you will have the understanding, the know-how, and the confidence you need to tackle iOS projects of your own. Based on Big Nerd Ranch's popular iOS Bootcamp course and its well-tested materials and methodology, this best-selling guide teaches iOS concepts and coding in tandem. The result is instruction that is relevant and useful. Throughout the book, the authors clearly explain what's important to know and share their insights into the larger context of the iOS platform. This gives you a real understanding of how iOS development works, the many features that are available, and when and where to apply what you've learned. Here are some of the topics covered: Xcode 4.3, Instruments, and Storyboards ARC, strong and weak references, and retain cycles Interfacing with iCloud Handling touch events and gestures Tool bars, navigation controllers, and split view controllers Localization and Internationalization Block syntax and use Background execution and multi-tasking Saving/loading data: Archiving and Core Data Core Location and Map Kit Communicating with web services Working with XML, JSON, and NSRegularExpression Using the Model-View-Controller-Store design pattern


In Petersburg (1916), Andrei Bely uses the space of the city to examine and attempt to reconfigure the persistent question of identity within the Russian consciousness. Bely's awareness of St. Petersburg's historical and national significance as a political nucleus compels him to work within the symbolic, drawing from various disciplines including mythology, philosophy, and mathematics. As Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad suggest in the novel's introduction, the city's geographic positioning contributes to its greater cultural uncertainty; it pits the Neo-Kantian reason, structure, and order of the "West" against the alleged irrational, impalpable, and intuitive nature of the "East" (Bely viii). Bely's urbanized creative consciousness can be contextualized by way of its origins in Western philosophy, particularly its Nietzschean influence and the idea of eternal return. Although his use and understanding of this concept fluctuated over the years, Bely interpreted Nietzsche's notion of "return" as being creative, using it to describe the circularity of every artistic, philosophical, and literary endeavor (Maguire and Malmstad 103). By approaching Bely's symbolism via its Nietzschean foundations, a better understanding can be gained regarding his use of the city's geometric space in establishing a connection with the modern. Bely's creative reading of Nietzsche facilitates his turn to the symbolic, and more critically, the novel's enduring significance in his "diagnosis of modern culture" (Maguire and Malmstad 102). The amalgamation of Western philosophy, the modern novel, and the modern city ignited his examination and creation of Petersburg, as within this context, the symbolic rests in the act of creation. For Bely, the city and the text are interchangeable; both behave creatively as developmental centers for the modern. Likewise, his calculated and mathematical re-creation of St. Petersburg within the text allows it to operate as a public space for the articulation of Russia's political and cultural anxiety.


This paper describes the claim for energy production based on the so-called cold fusion effect. Reasons are given to explore this energy source based on the need for such clean energy and the observed behavior. Chemical energy alone has powered civilization until relatively recently when nuclear fission power based on uranium became available. Efforts are now underway to go the next step on this path using nuclear sources by harnessing the fusion of hydrogen. The first attempt using the so-called hot fusion method has not been successful in producing practical power. Furthermore, the required generator is expected to be impractical as results of its complexity and size even after the many engineering problems are solved. Perhaps a different approach is needed. Fortunately, a new method to cause fusion using a simpler method was recently discovered; only to be widely rejected because it conflicts with what is known about nuclear interaction. This paper addresses this issue by summarizing some of the evidence supporting such a novel fusion reaction.


The aim of this study was to develop a mental health profile on the population of young people in Elphin, Co. Roscommon. It also looked at the specific types of coping strategies and the relationship of those coping strategies to various levels of mental health. A focus group of six students was also carried out to gather recommendations for the organisation and running of the youth cafe. The participants involved were 112 students from each school year in Elphin Community College, with an age range of 12-18, with a mean age of 14.6 (SD = 1.86), unbalanced for gender. Each participant completed a set of questionnaires comprised of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the 12 item General Health Questionnaire, the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situation, the 21 item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, and the Youth Self Report. Results found 10.7% of students presented with very good mental health, 72.3% had normal levels and 17% were found to have poor mental health. All three hypotheses were supported. It was found that individuals who employ avoidance-based coping strategies are more likely to have better levels of general mental health. Students who employ emotion-based coping strategies internalise more and are more likely to have poorer general mental health, and also a variety of other problems, such as conduct, somatic and social problems. Future research directions in this area include choosing a period of testing in the school calendar when the students are settled in their school routine and there are no visible signs of disruption.


This essay describes how environmental conditions affected my unexpected evolution from farm life in a rural Canadian community to becoming a physical education specialist and multisport coach and eventually a U.S. kinesiology scholar with a public health focus. I first recount my life on the farm and initial education and then identify the importance of full- and part-time jobs relative to how they helped prepare me for a life in academia. Later, I summarize two main areas of academic work that extended beyond university campuses—the design and implementation of evidence-based physical activity programs and the development of systematic observation tools to assess physical activity and its associated contexts in diverse settings, including schools, parks, and playgrounds. I conclude with a section on people and locations to illustrate the importance of collaborations—essential components for doing field-based work. Without those connections, I would not have had such an extensive and diverse career.


This book introduces one of the most powerful tools of modern economics to a wide audience: those who will later construct or consume game-theoretic models. Robert Gibbons addresses scholars in applied fields within economics who want a serious and thorough discussion of game theory but who may have found other works overly abstract. Gibbons emphasizes the economic applications of the theory at least as much as the pure theory itself; formal arguments about abstract games play a minor role. The applications illustrate the process of model building--of translating an informal description of a multi-person decision situation into a formal game-theoretic problem to be analyzed. Also, the variety of applications shows that similar issues arise in different areas of economics, and that the same game-theoretic tools can be applied in each setting. In order to emphasize the broad potential scope of the theory, conventional applications from industrial organization have been largely replaced by applications from labor, macro, and other applied fields in economics. The book covers four classes of games, and four corresponding notions of equilibrium: static games of complete information and Nash equilibrium, dynamic games of complete information and subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, static games of incomplete information and Bayesian Nash equilibrium, and dynamic games of incomplete information and perfect Bayesian equilibrium.


The story of the origin of today's National Academy of Kinesiology begins in 1904 when Luther Halsey Gulick made the first attempt at creating an Academy. Due to various factors, this effort waned. In 1926, Clark Hetherington called together four of his colleagues to initiate what we now recognize as the Academy. This article will describe and provide an analysis of the stories of the first 10 members of the Academy as well as provide the context within which the Academy emerged.


Abstract. We present a new multispectral approach for observing lowermost tropospheric ozone from space by synergism of atmospheric radiances in the thermal infrared (TIR) observed by IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) and earth reflectances in the ultraviolet (UV) measured by GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2). Both instruments are onboard the series of MetOp satellites (in orbit since 2006 and expected until 2022) and their scanning capabilities offer global coverage every day, with a relatively fine ground pixel resolution (12 km-diameter pixels spaced by 25 km for IASI at nadir). Our technique uses altitude-dependent Tikhonov–Phillips-type constraints, which optimize sensitivity to lower tropospheric ozone. It integrates the VLIDORT (Vector Linearized Discrete Ordinate Radiative Transfer) and KOPRA (Karlsruhe Optimized and Precise Radiative transfer Algorithm) radiative transfer codes for simulating UV reflectance and TIR radiance, respectively. We have used our method to analyse real observations over Europe during an ozone pollution episode in the summer of 2009. The results show that the multispectral synergism of IASI (TIR) and GOME-2 (UV) enables the observation of the spatial distribution of ozone plumes in the lowermost troposphere (LMT, from the surface up to 3 km a.s.l., above sea level), in good agreement with the CHIMERE regional chemistry-transport model. In this case study, when high ozone concentrations extend vertically above 3 km a.s.l., they are similarly observed over land by both the multispectral and IASI retrievals. On the other hand, ozone plumes located below 3 km a.s.l. are only clearly depicted by the multispectral retrieval (both over land and over ocean). This is achieved by a clear enhancement of sensitivity to ozone in the lowest atmospheric layers. The multispectral sensitivity in the LMT peaks at 2 to 2.5 km a.s.l. over land, while sensitivity for IASI or GOME-2 only peaks at 3 to 4 km a.s.l. at lowest (above the LMT). The degrees of freedom for the multispectral retrieval increase by 0.1 (40% in relative terms) with respect to IASI only retrievals for the LMT. Validations with ozonesondes (over Europe during summer 2009) show that our synergetic approach for combining IASI (TIR) and GOME-2 (UV) measurements retrieves lowermost tropospheric ozone with a mean bias of 1% and a precision of 16%, when smoothing by the retrieval vertical sensitivity (1% mean bias and 21% precision for direct comparisons).


Malnutrition and poverty poses a major challenge to low-income families in developing nations and the twin issues are very critical for a growing infant. Commercially processed weaning foods are expensive for these categories of families; hence the objective was to formulate and evaluate the functional, antinutritional and protein quality of composite weaning food based on soybean and tigernut flour. Soybean and Tigernut seeds were processed into flour and three weaning diets: STF 1 (Tigernut; 75%, Soybean 15%); STF 2 (Tigernut; 65%, soybean 25%) and STF 3 (Tigernut; 55%, Soybean 35%) with 10% full cream milk powder (FCM) addition were produced according to FAO/WHO/UNU recommendations. Commercial weaning food (CB) was used as control. Effect of tigernut flour addition on the functional, antinutritional and protein quality of the formulated blends were evaluated using standard methods. The protein quality was evaluated using rat assay.  The functional properties of the samples were significantly (P<0.15) different from the commercial sample. STF 3 sample had significantly (P<0.05) lower swelling index (SI), Packed bulk density, (PBD), loose bulk density (LBD) and water absorption capacity (WAC) with values of 3.63±0.10, 0.53±0.01 g/cm, 0.32±0.03 g/cm and 187.00 ± 2.10 ml/100g compared to values of 6.14±0.22, 0.55 ± 0.01g/cm, 0.42±0.01g/cm and 374.00 ± 3.40 for commercial sample, respectively. Total oxalic, soluble oxalic acid, phytic acid and tannins values of the diets were significantly (P<0.05) higher than CB, and the lowest values were for STF S . Protein quality indices of the samples showed significant (P<0.05) difference. The NPU, PER, NPR, TD and BV of STF 3 compared favorably with CB. STF 3 sample supported good growth for the growing rats. The results suggested that STF3 is nutritionally balanced & possessed good growth promoting quality for a growing infant and could be adopted at the house hold-level to curb infant malnutrition and death.


Reliable methods for the analysis of tolerance-affected analog circuits are of great importance in nowadays microelectronics. It is impossible to produce circuits with exactly those parameter specifications proposed in the design process. Such component tolerances will always lead to small variations of a circuit's properties, which may result in unexpected behaviour. If lower and upper bounds to parameter variations can be read off the manufacturing process, interval arithmetic naturally enters the circuit analysis area. This paper focuses on the frequency-response analysis of linear analog circuits, typically consisting of current and voltage sources as well as resistors, capacitances, inductances, and several variants of controlled sources. These kind of circuits are still widely used in analog circuit design as equivalent circuit diagrams for representing in certain application tasks Interval methods have been applied to analog circuits before. But yet this was restricted to circuit equations only, with no interdependencies between the matrix elements. But there also exist formulations of analog circuit equations containing dependent terms. Hence, for an efficient application of interval methods, it is crucial to regard possible dependencies in circuit equations. Part and parcel of this strategy is the handling of fill-in patterns for those parameters related to uncertain components. These patterns are used in linear circuit analysis for efficient equation setup. Such systems can efficiently be solved by successive application of the Sherman-Morrison formula. The approach can also be extended to complex-valued systems from frequency domain analysis of more general linear circuits. Complex values result here from a Laplace transform of frequency-dependent components like capacitances and inductances. In order to apply interval techniques, a real representation of the linear system of equations can be used for separate treatment of real and imaginary part of the variables. In this representation each parameter corresponds to the superposition of two fill-in patterns. Crude bounds – obtained by treating both patterns independently – can be improved by consideration of the correlations to tighter enclosures of the solution. The techniques described above have been implemented as an extension to the toolbox Analog Insydes, an add-on package to the computer algebra system Mathematica for modeling, analysis, and design of analog circuits.


Policy makers love to speak about restoring the economy and the associated "good" jobs as voters imagine they were in the past. But is such economic nostalgia reasonable in a dynamic global economy? Moreover, has it actually been true that the economy, and particularly the labor market, were ever as stable as we imagine? Our work here suggests that the labor market has been constantly evolving since 1970 and that there is no tendency to return to "normal" if such a normal were to be defined as it was in the good old days. Moreover, labor market policies built on such nostalgia in an attempt to return to the past are misplaced at best and likely to hurt workers more by providing false hopes and also lead to a misallocation of economic resources than if forward looking policies were adopted to adapt workers for the future of the labor market opportunities.  Our efforts suggest that since 1970 the mean and standard deviation of employment growth had actually been decreasing for each decade up until the 1990-99. For the most recent (2000-09) period, the standard deviation shows an uptick and a significant reduction in the mean. Moreover, when we evaluate the entire period as a whole, 1970-2009, we find that the trend coefficient is statistically significant and has a negative sign. That implies the employment growth rate has a decreasing pattern over time. In addition, the high volatility in the employment series is evidence by a standard deviation (1.93%) that is greater than the mean (1.63%).  We apply the traditional unit root tests, efficient unit root tests, and unit root tests with structural break on the employment series. In addition, we follow Hamilton's approach and apply an Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) approach on the employment series Our results suggest that the level of the employment growth rates is mean-diverting and subject to a structural break. Second, in the presence of the ARCH effect, OLS standard errors can be misleading, with a spurious regression possibility. Finally, the ARCH effect and unit root problem have serious consequences for forecasting and the forecast band could be narrower than the actual.  Key Words: Employment; Structural Change; ARCH; Mean Diversion.JEL Classification: C10; J21; J30


I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what's happening. Because I don't choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you're in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I'm resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.


To evaluate potential treatment of organic waste (OW) dominant pollutions in the urban wastewater by Thai soils, a primary and a main anaerobic incubation experiments have been carried out. First probation, excess glucose solution (1500 mg/l) without (0) and with (+3750 mg/l of 16-20-0 fertilizer) in a 5 x 2 factorial in CRD, having 5 flooding periods: 0, 1, 3, 5 and 7 days and 2 fertilization: 0 and + replicatied 3 times, in a Tropaquepts (Rb series) at 1:2 of soil:solution ratio, has been carried out. This trial confirmed, LERD's discovery that anaerobic treatment of the OW was very effective reaching the treatment potential at the 5 days period at 2730 ppm from the 3000 ppm load used. Next demonstation, the soil and other 16 ones in 7 of the 9 Thai soil Orders which were Alfisols (4), Inceptisols (3), Mollisols (3), Ultisols (3), Vertisols (2), Spodosols (1), and Oxisols (1) were investigated. Anaerobic incubation at 1:2 soil:solution ratio of the fertilized glucose solution at 5 days period in the CRD experiment of the 17 soils with 3 replications that was highly significant difference (P<0.01). Soil properties had correlated with glucose treatment by Pearson correlation, were related in linear equation which can forecasted potential of wastewater treatment because of many soil properties were encourage anaerobe activities which are nutrients, enzymes and electron accepters.


E-commerce has matured and become mainstream. The fashion industry is now competing strongly in the digital markets. Beside traditional web-shops, new sales and branding channels are emerging e.g. M-commerce (mobile); social commerce; marketplaces; gaming etc. E-commerce and multichannel retailing (MCR) now have a less technology-centric perspective while focusing more on sales and branding, although technology is the carrier and imposes limits. Corporate information systems are extended to the consumer"s computers, smartphones and digital entertainment platforms. The information systems (IS) research tradition is somewhat challenged but can provide an elaborate framework for the understanding of the business and technology changes as well as provide an ideal support for research and businesses in choosing among the different MCR options. This paper proposes a model to understand and position fashion companies" existing and future sales and branding channels from an IS perspective. Future research suggestions include long-term challenges and benefits of distinct electronic channels.


This article proposes an integrated sustainable tourism development strategy for the Vredefort Dome as a World Heritage Site. In particular, it analyses the integration of the South African guidelines for responsible tourism applied to a local community. All tourism product owners in the Dome area formed part of this research that was conducted by means of a survey. The strategy that was formulated for the area aims to ensure that future generations will be able to utilise the resources in the same manner as the present generation. It is indicated that this intra-generational equity will only be possible through an integrated approach. The value of this research is its contribution to responsible tourism and, concurrently, its emphasis on the fact that tourism destinations in South Africa need to be developed in an integrated and sustainable manner. In order for the Vredefort Dome to be a World Heritage Site, and to exist as a protected area, it is imperative that the tourism product owners in the area realise their roles as custodians of this precious site. This proposition leads to the main aim of this study, namely to develop an integrated tourism development strategy for the Vredefort Dome as a World Heritage site. The results of the empirical study indicated that tourism stakeholders are prepared to improve the present situation in the Vredefort Dome and are willing to adjust their business practices in the future. Such changes in practice involve some strategic issues, and the economic, social and environmental strategies will give direction to this World Heritage Site to become more sustainable.


Given the rising awareness of the potential of the Internet as a political space and increasing government control over the space, it is easy to understand the widespread interest in finding technical solutions to Internet filtering. While filtering circumvention technologies emerged in 1996 with Bennet Hazelton's Peacefire, designed to evade filtering within US high schools and universities, in recent years, there's been a great deal of interest in the technical community and the general public in the topic of Internet circumvention. The embrace of an "Internet freedom" agenda by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a pair of widely publicized speeches has increased awareness of the challenges of Internet filtering and encouraged new actors to explore or enter the field.The prospect of expanded fiscal support for tool development and deployment has led to debate in the popular press about the strengths and weaknesses of various circumvention tools and strategies. These debates make clear the need for scholarly research on the efficacy of various tools.This study uses a novel methodology for conducting in-country testing without requiring a researcher to be physically present in censored nations. While this method does not fully replicate the performance of circumvention tools from a cyber cafe in a filtered nation, it can be regularly replicated, allowing us to conduct tests over a long period of time and, potentially, create an ongoing, regularly updated portrait of circumvention tool usability in locations across the globe. In this report, we focus on questions of utility - the ability for a tool to be installed and used in a particular location, and the accuracy and speed of the tool. Additionally, we address concerns about security, usability and openness when appropriate.This evaluation also differs from our earlier work (2007 Circumvention Landscape Report; 2010 Circumvention Tool Usage) in that we cover significantly more tools and examine two classes of tools (ad-supported proxy servers and VPN services) which we did not review previously. We expanded the set of tools considered to recognize the increased number of options that users in censored nations may choose from, and to acknowledge results of our previous research which suggest that simple web proxies and VPNs have a very significant user base in comparison with dedicated censorship circumvention tools.


Abstract. An extensive set of measurements was made in and around Mexico City as part of the MILAGRO (Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observations) experiments in March 2006. Simulations with the Model for Ozone and Related Chemical Tracers, version 4 (MOZART-4), a global chemical transport model, have been used to provide a regional context for these observations and assist in their interpretation. These MOZART-4 simulations reproduce the aircraft observations generally well, but some differences in the modeled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the observations result from incorrect VOC speciation assumed for the emission inventories. The different types of CO sources represented in the model have been "tagged" to quantify the contributions of regions outside Mexico, as well as the various emissions sectors within Mexico, to the regional air quality of Mexico. This analysis indicates open fires have some, but not a dominant, impact on the atmospheric composition in the region around Mexico City when averaged over the month. However, considerable variation in the fire contribution (2–15% of total CO) is seen during the month. The transport and photochemical aging of Mexico City emissions were studied using tags of CO emissions for each day, showing that typically the air downwind of Mexico City was a combination of many ages. Ozone production in MOZART-4 is shown to agree well with the net production rates from box model calculations constrained by the MILAGRO aircraft measurements. Ozone production efficiency derived from the ratio of Ox to NOz is higher in MOZART-4 than in the observations for moderately polluted air. OH reactivity determined from the MOZART-4 results shows the same increase in relative importance of oxygenated VOCs downwind of Mexico City as the reactivity inferred from the observations. The amount of ozone produced by emissions from Mexico City and surrounding areas has been quantified in the model by tracking NO emissions, showing little influence beyond Mexico's borders, and also relatively minor influence from fire emissions on the monthly average tropospheric ozone column.


Developing skilful seasonal (up to 6 month lead time) forecasting of river flows is important for many societal applications. Long-lead forecasts have potential to aid water management decision making and preparation for human response to hydrological extremes. The seasonal prediction of river flows has been a topic of increasing interest due to the recent 2004-06 drought and 2007 floods experienced in the UK.

The aim of this paper is to compare the relative skill of predictions of river flow using: (1) a multi-Global Climate Model (GCM) ensemble data set of seasonal hindcasts (i.e. DEMETER) and (2) downscaled multi-GCM data (also DEMETER) as input to a hydrological model. The period of 1980-2001 is the interval considered. The River Dyfi basin in West Wales, UK is the focus of this exploratory research. This basin is a near natural catchment, hence the climate-flow signal should be clearer. The DEMETER project is the source of the multi-model climate data, and this consists of 7 GCMs each with 9 ensemble members. Hindcasts with lead times up to 6 months are available from 1st February, 1st May, 1st August and 1st November initial conditions. Each hindcast was split into the first 3 and last 3 months, and the subsequent concatenation of the split hindcasts produced 2 time series (total of 7x9x2 ensemble series), which were used in the hydrological model.

DEMETER daily precipitation (1–3 and 4–6 month series) and 'observed' potential evaporation (PE) data drive the Probability Distributed Model (PDM) to simulate daily river flow series. PDM is a lumped rainfall-runoff model that transforms rainfall and PE data to river flow at the basin outlet. PDM was calibrated with observations over a 10 year (1980–1990) period, and then validated over an independent 10 year (1991–2001) period.

The coarse resolution of the DEMETER data (standardised to 2.5˚ x 2.5˚ resolution) means that the atmospheric motions at sub-grid scales are not captured by the models. The large spatial disparity between the GCM grids and the scale of the study (471.3 km2) lead to important underestimation of precipitation by DEMETER models. This difference is addressed through the use of a statistical downscaling tool, the Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM). The SDSM was calibrated on an independent re-analysis data set (ERA-40 from the ECMWF), as ERA-40 provides one of the best estimates of the real atmosphere (a spatial resolution comparable to that of DEMETER models was used for this calibration). Multiple linear regression models (one per month) were used to link large-scale DEMETER predictors (for each of the 9x7x2 ensemble members) with basin scale rainfall, and a stochastic weather generator produced downscaled rainfall time series. These new downscaled series are designed to more closely represent catchment rainfall. DEMETER precipitation data and downscaled data are inputted to the PDM to determine their relative river flow modelling skill.

Preliminary results show that simulated river flows driven by DEMETER do indeed underestimate the observed flow. The downscaled series improves the hindcast skill, and little reduction in skill is seen when using a longer lead time hindcast. The results drawn from this research will have major implications for assessing (1) the potential skill expected from large scale GCM output, and (2) the relative improvement in skill of using downscaled versus non-downscaled precipitation data. Additionally, it will be possible to ascertain any degradation in the seasonal hindcast skill when using longer lead times.


Nancy Clancy is back in New York Times bestselling team Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser's third Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy chapter book-about seeing the future! Nancy thinks she may be able to read the future ...and all signs point to her being a true clairvoyant (that's fancy for a fortune-teller). In the perfect follow-up to Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth and Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer, Nancy tries her hand at fortune-telling but quickly learns it's a bit more complicated than she thought. Does Nancy really have special powers, or is it all just a coincidence? Fans of Fancy Nancy will love joining Nancy Clancy in the latest addition to the chapter book series. The central theme of all the Nancy Clancy books shines through, showing the power of positive thinking.


As the field of adult and continuing education matures, it is useful to more fully understand both the nature of practice and the characteristics of practitioners. Although some attention has been devoted to these topics in the literature, this article focuses on those practitioners who work in a university setting. and reports the results of a national study of university continuing educators. The data, which was gathered on a Canada-wide basis, has allowed us to both describe the characteristics and job responsibilities of those working in the field and develop job responsibility profiles. In addition, the study considers questions of gender, academic rank, age, educational levels, and length of experience in university continuing education as important elements in understanding who continuing educators are, and the kind of work they do.


It is well known that different types of electoral systems create different incentives to cultivate a personal vote and that there may be variation in intra-party competition within an electoral system. This article demonstrates that flexible list systems – where voters can choose to cast a vote for the list as ordered by the party or express preference votes for candidates – create another type of variation in personal vote-seeking incentives within the system. This variation arises because the flexibility of party-in-a-district lists results from voters' actual inclination to use preference votes and the formal weight of preference votes in changing the original list order. Hypotheses are tested which are linked to this logic for the case of Belgium, where party-in-a-district constituencies vary in their use of preference votes and the electoral reform of 2001 adds interesting institutional variation in the formal impact of preference votes on intra-party seat allocation. Since formal rules grant Belgian MPs considerable leeway in terms of bill initiation, personal vote-seeking strategies are inferred by examining the use of legislative activity as signalling tool in the period between 1999 and 2007. The results establish that personal vote-seeking incentives vary with the extent to which voters use preference votes and that this variable interacts with the weight of preference votes as defined by institutional rules. In addition, the article confirms the effect of intra-party competition on personal vote-seeking incentives and illustrates that such incentives can underlie the initiation of private members bills in a European parliamentary system.


Since the 1930s, the proportion of civil cases concluded at trial has declined from about 20% to below 2% in the federal courts and below 1% in state courts. This Article looks to the history of the civil trial to explain why the trial endured so long and then vanished so rapidly. For the litigants, a civil procedure system serves two connected functions: investigating the facts and adjudicating the dispute. The better the system investigates and clarifies the facts, the more it promotes settlement and reduces the need to adjudicate. The Anglo-American common law for most of its history paid scant attention to the investigative function. This Article points to the role of the jury system in shaping the procedure and restricting the investigative function. Pleading was the only significant component of pretrial procedure, and the dominant function of pleading was to control the jury by narrowing to a single issue the question that the jury would be asked to decide. This primitive pretrial process left trial as the only occasion at which it was sometimes possible to investigate issues of fact. Over time, the jury-free equity courts developed techniques to enable litigants to obtain testimonial and documentary evidence in advance of adjudication. The fusion of law and equity in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure of 1938 brought those techniques into the merged procedure, and expanded them notably. The signature reform of the Federal Rules was to shift pretrial procedure from pleading to discovery. A new system of civil procedure emerged, centered on the discovery of documents and the sworn depositions of parties and witnesses. Related innovations, the pretrial conference and summary judgment, reinforced the substitution of discovery for trial. This new procedure system has overcome the information deficit that so afflicted common law procedure, enabling almost all cases to be settled or dismissed without trial. Pretrial procedure has become nontrial procedure by making trial obsolete.


On April 20, 2010, British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing eleven people and spilling billions of gallons of oil into the gulf. In the days and weeks that followed, the media pointed to the Minerals Management Services (MMS), the regulatory agency responsible for managing offshore drilling, as being complicit with BP. The MMS issued permits for deepwater drilling in violation of its regulations; provided hundreds of exemptions to the regulations; maintained lax monitoring and enforcement procedures; allowed the companies to draft regulations that suited their interests and objectives; and engaged in inappropriate relationships with the oil and gas industry.This brief essay of 2,500 words describes how the origin of the oil disaster can be traced, in significant part, to the MMS and its close relationship with the industry it had been charged with regulating. The roots of the disaster date back to the early years of the Reagan Administration when, in 1982, controversial Interior Secretary James Watt restructured the agencies responsible for revenue collection and regulatory oversight of the oil and gas industry, merging the responsibilities of two agencies into one. Even if we ascribe the best intentions to President Ronald Reagan and James Watt, the conflict of interest they created in 1982 directly led to the BP Oil Disaster nearly thirty years later. The only question left open after they restructured the agencies in 1982 was when would the disaster strike?


Few counseling programs directly address the importance of self-care in reducing stress and burnout in their curricula. A course entitled Mind/Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care was created to address personal and professional growth opportunities through self-care and mindfulness practices (meditation, yoga, qigong, and conscious relaxation exercises). Three methods of evaluating this 15-week 3-credit mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course for counseling students indicated positive changes for students in learning how to manage stress and improve counseling practice. Students reported positive physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and interpersonal changes and substantial effects on their counseling skills and therapeutic relationships. Information from a focus group, qualitative reports, and quantitative course evaluations were triangulated; all data signified positive student responses to the course, method of teaching, and course instructor. Most students reported intentions of integrating mindfulness practices into their future profession.


Objective Obesity in mid-life may increase the risk of subsequent dementia. Our objective was to study this risk, focusing on differences by age at the time of recording of obesity, in a large defined population. Methods A record linkage cohort study was undertaken using national administrative statistical data on hospital care and mortality in England, 1999–2011. A cohort of 451 232 people with obesity and a control cohort was constructed. Results were expressed as age-specific risk ratios comparing the two cohorts. Results The risk ratio for dementia in people admitted to hospital with obesity aged 30–39 years was significantly increased at 3.5 (95% CI 2.1 to 5.6). Risk ratios for dementia then gradually reduced with increasing age at obesity from 1.7 (95% CI 1.3 to 2.2) in people aged 40–49 years when obesity was first recorded to 1.4 (95% CI 1.3 to 1.5) in those aged 60–69 years. People in their 70s when obesity was recorded had neither an increased nor a reduced risk of subsequent dementia at 0.97 (95% CI 0.93 to 1.01), and those aged ≥80 years had a reduced risk of subsequent dementia at 0.78 (95% CI 0.74 to 0.82). Conclusions Obesity is associated with a risk of dementia in a way that appears to vary with age. Investigation of the mechanisms mediating this association might give insights into the biology of both conditions.


As library and information professionals we are often asked what are "multicultural library services" (MLS) and why should such services be provided. The IFLA Section on Library Services to Multicultural Populations has been grappling with these questions in our recent review of the Section's definition of multiculturalism. As a member of the Section and an extension of the discussion and understanding of multiculturalism in library and information practice, I developed a draft often reasons to offer multicultural library services ("Raison d'etre for Multicultural Library Services," IFLA Library Services to Multicultural Populations Section Newsletter, pp. 6-7, November 2004. http:// www.ifla.org/V11/s32/ news/s32-newsletter-Nov04.pdf) for the Section to consider. At its 1st March 2005 meeting, held in Rome, the Section considered these 10 reasons and adopted them with minor changes. This list referred to as the raison d'etre for multicultural library services is being translated and will soon be made available in multiple languages.


This analysis evaluates how the value of energy storage changes when adding variable generation (VG) renewable energy resources to the grid. A series of VG energy penetration scenarios from 16% to 55% were generated for a utility system in the western United States. This operational value of storage (measured by its ability to reduce system production costs) was estimated in each VG scenario, considering provision of different services and with several sensitivities to fuel price and generation mix. Overall, the results found that the presence of VG increases the value of energy storage by lowering off-peak energy prices more than on-peak prices, leading to a greater opportunity to arbitrage this price difference. However, significant charging from renewables, and consequently a net reduction in carbon emissions, did not occur until VG penetration was in the range of 40%-50%. Increased penetration of VG also increases the potential value of storage when providing reserves, mainly by increasing the amount of reserves required by the system. Despite this increase in value, storage may face challenges in capturing the full benefits it provides. Due to suppression of on-/off-peak price differentials, reserve prices, and incomplete capture of certain system benefits (such as the cost of power plant starts), the revenue obtained by storage in a market setting appears to be substantially less than the net benefit (reduction in production costs) provided to the system. Furthermore, it is unclear how storage will actually incentivize large-scale deployment of renewables needed to substantially increase VG penetration. This demonstrates some of the additional challenges for storage deployed in restructured energy markets.