At long last, the epic biography Ted Williams deserves - and that his fans have been waiting for. Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than 500 home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in WWII and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him - and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s grand biography reveals. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his 22 years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America - and shocked them, too: His notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a God in the batter's box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. His ferocity came to define his troubled domestic life. While baseball might have been straightforward for Ted Williams, life was not. THE KID is biography of the highest literary order, a thrilling and honest account of a legend in all his glory and human complexity. In his final at-bat, Williams hit a home run. Bradlee's marvelous book clears the fences, too.


Hyperoxaluria is a primary risk factor for the formation of calcium oxalate-containing kidney stones. Increased dietary oxalate intake and/or intestinal absorption may provide the critical quantity of additional oxalate that triggers the formation of kidney stones. The accurate determination of food oxalate is highly dependent on oxalate extraction, the first step in oxalate analysis. Potential problems include the possibility of elevated oxalate due to in vitro conversion from various oxalate precursors such as ascorbate and failure to dissolve all pre-existing calcium oxalate crystals. The primary objective was to compare the efficiency of the hot and cold extraction methods in extracting oxalate from 50 dry herb and 10 fresh fruit samples. Regardless of the method of extraction, leaves of Atriplex halimus and kiwifruit exhibited the highest concentrations of both total and soluble oxalate among the herbs and the fruits, respectively. The hot extraction method appeared to extract more total oxalate compared to the cold extraction method while there was no significant difference between the methods in efficiency of extracting soluble oxalate. The overall data suggested that the use of the hot acid method will yield a more accurate assessment of the total oxalate content of foods.


This research seeks to make an exploratory study of the strategies used by the creators of monuments, memorials, and commemorative places located in the public spaces that use sound as one of the primary raw material in their design. The term acoustic monu-memorials was coined in this research to encircle these structures and places. In order to achieve the goal of this research, it was necessary to compile a number of samples, primarily after the digital recording era of captured sound around 1971 to the present. The compilation was relevant because such a compendium was not found in the literature, and to the author's knowledge, a comprehensive investigation of the strategies used in planning acoustic monu-memorials in the urban spaces does not exist.
The method used to create such compendium was to send a question to people with different background identities, such as visual and sound artists, musicians, art curators, and heritage scholars among others. This question produced a selection of 51 examples of acoustic monu-memorials located in public spaces. Subsequently, the examples were classified into four major categories according to their form and nature. Additionally, two examples from the main categories were chosen as case studies: The Sinti and Roma Memorial in Berlin, Germany and the Niche monument in Cali, Colombia. These study cases were presented, described, and analysed in detail as they represent the type of what could be defined as an acoustic monu-memorial in general.
Lynch's (1960) five elements that help individuals build the image of the city were transferred and used as a tool to help to build this image into acoustic terms. A thorough analysis of the acquired data yielded found the strategies used by the designers to shape, modify, transform, and structure public space. These strategies are entitled Sound Spaces. Moreover, a list entitled Urban Acoustic Commemoration Code was compiled. This list of suggestions addresses urban planners, architects, artists, designers, and general public interested in the aspects involved when creating acoustic commemoration phenomena in public spaces.


Several approaches exist for organizing and analyzing data in a phenomenological qualitative study. Transcendental phenomenology, based on principles identified by Husserl (1931) and translated into a qualitative method by Moustakas (1994), holds promise as a viable procedure for phenomenological research. However, to best understand the approach to transcendental phenomenology, the procedures need to be illustrated by a qualitative study that employs this approach. This article first discusses the procedures for organizing and analyzing data according to Moustakas (1994). Then it illustrates each step in the data analysis procedure of transcendental phenomenology using a study of reinvestment or the "ripple effect" for nine individuals who have participated in a youth leadership mentoring program from the 1970s to the present. Transcendental phenomenology works well for this study as this methodology provides logical, systematic, and coherent design elements that lead to an essential description of the experience.


This paper describes the automatic design of methods for detecting fraudulent behavior. Much of the design is accomplished using a series of machine learning methods. In particular, we combine data mining and constructive induction with more standard machine learning techniques to design methods for detecting fraudulent usage of cellular telephones based on profiling customer behavior. Specifically, we use a rule-learning program to uncover indicators of fraudulent behavior from a large database of cellular calls. These indicators are used to create profilers, which then serve as features to a system that combines evidence from multiple profilers to generate high-confidence alarms. Experiments indicate that this automatic approach performs nearly as well as the best hand-tuned methods for detecting fraud.


The origin and prevalence of triggered seismicity and remote aftershocks are under debate. As a result, they have been excluded from probabilistic seismic hazard assessment and aftershock hazard notices. The 2004 M = 9.2 Sumatra earthquake altered seismicity in the Andaman backarc rift-transform system. Here we show that over a 300-km-long largely transform section of the backarc, M≥4.5 earthquakes stopped for five years, and over a 750-km-long backarc section, the rate of transform events dropped by two-thirds, while the rate of rift events increased eightfold. We compute the propagating dynamic stress wavefield and find the peak dynamic Coulomb stress is similar on the rifts and transforms. Long-period dynamic stress amplitudes, which are thought to promote dynamic failure, are higher on the transforms than on the rifts, opposite to the observations. In contrast to the dynamic stress, we calculate that the mainshock brought the transform segments approximately 0.2 bar (0.02 MPa) farther from static Coulomb failure and the rift segments approximately 0.2 bar closer to static failure, consistent with the seismic observations. This accord means that changes in seismicity rate are sufficiently predictable to be included in post-mainshock hazard evaluations.


Refactoring has proven its value in a wide range of development projectshelping software professionals improve system designs, maintainability, extensibility, and performance. Now, for the first time, leading agile methodologist Scott Ambler and renowned consultant Pramodkumar Sadalage introduce powerful refactoring techniques specifically designed for database systems. Ambler and Sadalage demonstrate how small changes to table structures, data, stored procedures, and triggers can significantly enhance virtually any database designwithout changing semantics. Youll learn how to evolve database schemas in step with source codeand become far more effective in projects relying on iterative, agile methodologies. This comprehensive guide and reference helps you overcome the practical obstacles to refactoring real-world databases by covering every fundamental concept underlying database refactoring. Using start-to-finish examples, the authors walk you through refactoring simple standalone database applications as well as sophisticated multi-application scenarios. Youll master every task involved in refactoring database schemas, and discover best practices for deploying refactorings in even the most complex production environments. The second half of this book systematically covers five major categories of database refactorings. Youll learn how to use refactoring to enhance database structure, data quality, and referential integrity; and how to refactor both architectures and methods. This book provides an extensive set of examples built with Oracle and Java and easily adaptable for other languages, such as C#, C++, or VB.NET, and other databases, such as DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, and Sybase. Using this books techniques and examples, you can reduce waste, rework, risk, and costand build database systems capable of evolving smoothly, far into the future.


We adopt the framework of Schumpeterian creative destruction formalized by Aghion et al. (2009) to analyze the impact of foreign entry on the productivity growth of domestic firms. In the face of foreign entry, domestic firms exhibit heterogeneous patterns of growth depending on their technological distance from foreign firms. Domestic firms with smaller technological distance from their foreign counterparts tend to experience faster productivity growth, while firms with larger technological distance tend to lag further behind. We test this hypothesis using a unique firm-level data of Chinese manufacturing. Our empirical results confirm that foreign entry indeed generates strong heterogeneous growth patterns among domestic firms.


Twenty-six younger (ages 18-36 years) and 19 older (ages 60-88 years) healthy right-handed men and women were tested for interhemispheric transfer by using visual evoked potentials to laterally presented checkerboards. Interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) was estimated by subtracting latencies for both P100 and N160 peaks of the waveform contralateral to the stimulus from the waveform ipsilateral to the stimulus for homologous sites. The quality of interhemispheric transfer was estimated by comparing peak-to-peak amplitudes for homologous sites. IHTT did not change across age, but there was a suppression of the waveform over the indirectly stimulated hemisphere in the older participantsl The significance of this finding for age-related changes in functions mediated by the corpus callosum is discussed.


Beautifully designed and richly illustrated The Complete Manual of Typography, Second Edition, is the fully updated version of THE seminal book on typography by Jim Felici. This book is about how type should look and how to make it look that way in other words, how to set type like a professional. It explains in practical terms how to use todays digital tools to achieve the secret of good design: well set type. An essential reference for anyone who works with type: designers, print production professionals, and corporate communications managers can go to straight to the index to find focused answers to specific questions, while educators and students can read it as a text book from cover to cover. Youll Learn: Basic Concepts and anatomy of good typography, indexed for quick reference by busy professionalsHow to manage fonts and handle corrupted or missing fonts on any operating systemWhat makes good type good (and bad type bad)Techniques for working with measure, point-size, leading, kerning, and other type fundamentalsPractical ways to fix composition problems such as loose lines, bad rags, windows, and orphansHard-to-find rules for managing hyphenation and justification, indents, text wraps, and expert-set charactersSecrets of how to wring out good type from uncooperative word-processing and layout problemsThe latest font technologies, including OpenType New typographic tools and improved font services in Operating Systems such as Windows and Mac OSNew Techniques, and coverage of working methods such as style sheets.35 page glossary of type termsPraise for the first edition"Clear and elegant... There's no better or more useful introduction to the whole craft of typography"Roger Black - Danilo Black, Inc"All you've wanted to know about type and typography but never dared ask. Jim Felici brings together a vast amount of knowledge in this book. Must-Have!"Erik Spiekermann author, Stop Stealing Sheep (and Find Out How Type Works)


For most of American history, until the 1950s, courts treated paid lobbying as a civic wrong, not a protected First Amendment right. Lobbying was presumptively against public policy, and lobbying contracts were not enforced. Paid lobbying threatened the integrity of individuals, legislators, lobbyists, and the integrity of society as a whole. Some states had laws criminalizing lobbying; Georgia had an anti-lobbying provision in its Constitution. Inasmuch as there was a personal right to either petition the government, or share views with officers of the government, this right was not something one could sell -- it was not, in the term used by one court, a "vendible" -- a sellable item. Line-drawing between illegitimate paid lobbying and legitimate legal services was not easy, but in general courts enforced contracts where the thing being sold was expertise to be shared in a public forum, while refusing to enforce contracts where the thing being sold was personal influence to be shared in private meetings. During the mid-20th century, the practice of not enforcing lobbying contracts fell away. This change came from two things: the growing sanctity of contract, and the professionalization of the lobbying industry. State laws regulated lobbying instead of banning it. At the same time, as a constitutional matter, the law of lobbying occupied something of a no-mans land for many years -- paid lobbying was neither explicitly protected by the First Amendment nor explicitly not protected. Supreme Court cases suggested, but did not hold, that paid lobbying was a First Amendment right. Only recently, and without much judicial discussion, has the legal-academic community presumed that there is a unique First Amendment right to pay someone to lobby, or be paid to lobby, grounded in the speech and/or petition clauses of the First Amendment. The scope of that right is unclear. This Article tells the history of the earlier approaches towards lobbying. It explores the lobbying cases of the 19th and early 20th century courts, looking at the logic underpinning them and how courts distinguished between illegitimate lobbying and legitimate hiring of professional lawyers. This Article is largely historical, but has doctrinal implications. First, it shows that as a matter of practice, there is no historical consensus on a First Amendment right to lobby. Second, the length and breadth of the treatment of lobbying as wrong -- not a right -- is indirect evidence that the First Amendment was not intended to protect paid lobbying. Third, the reasoning of the courts that invalidated lobbying contracts is still relevant to the degree of protection, and the kinds of activities that might be worthy of greater or lesser protection.


Biological Soil Crusts (BSCs), composed of lichens, mosses, green algae, microfungi and cyanobacteria are an ecological important part of the perennial landcover of many arid and semiarid regions (Belnap et al. 2001a), (Budel 2002). In many arid and hyperarid areas BSCs form the only perennial "vegetation cover" largely due to their extensive resistance to drought (Lange et al. 1975). For the Central Namib Desert (Namibia), BSCs consisting of extraordinary vast lichen communities were recently mapped and classified into six morphological classes for a coastal area of 350 km x 60 km. Embedded into the project "BIOTA" (www.biota-africa.org) financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research the study was undertaken in the framework of the PhD thesis by Christoph Schultz. Some of these lichen communities grouped together in so called "lichen fields" have already been studied concerning their ecology and diversity in the past (Lange et al. 1994), (Loris & Schieferstein 1992), (Loris et al. 2004), (Ullmann & Budel 2001a), (Wessels 1989). Multispectral LANDSAT 7 ETM+ and LANDSAT 5 TM satellite imagery was utilized for an unitemporal supervised classification as well as for the establishment of a monitoring based on a combined retrospective supervised classification and change detection approach (Bock 2003), (Weiers et al. 2003). Results comprise the analysis of the mapped distribution of lichen communities for the Central Namib Desert as of 2003 as well as reconstructed distributions for the years 2000, 1999, 1992 and 1991 derived from retrospective supervised classification. This allows a first monitoring of the disturbance, destruction and recovery of the lichen communities in these arid environments including the analysis of the major abiotic processes involved. Further analysis of these abiotic processes is key for understanding the influence of Namib lichen communities on overall aeolian and water induced erosion rates, nutrient cycles, water balance and pedogenic processes (Belnap & Gillette 1998), (Belnap et al. 2001b), (Belnap 2001c), (Evans & Lange 2001), (McKenna Neumann & Maxwell 1999). In order to aid the understanding of these processes SRTM digital elevation model data as well as climate data sets were used as reference. Good correlation between geomorphological form elements as well as hydrological drainage system and the disturbance patterns derived from individual post classification change comparisons between the timeframes could be observed. Conjoined with the climate data sets sporadic foehn-like windstorms as well as extraordinary precipitation events were identified to largely affect the distribution patterns of lichen communities. Therefore the analysis and monitoring of the diversity, distribution and spatiotemporal change of Central Namib BSCs with the means of Remote Sensing and GIS applications proof to be important tools to create further understanding of desertification and degradation processes in these arid regions.


This brief article, written for a symposium on "Collaboration and the Colorado River," evaluates the U.S. Department of the Interior's Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program ("AMP"). The AMP has been advanced as a pioneering collaborative and adaptive approach for both decreasing scientific uncertainty in support of regulatory decision-making and helping manage contentious resource disputes -- in this case, the increasingly thorny conflict over the Colorado River's finite natural resources. Though encouraging in some respects, the AMP serves as a valuable illustration of the flaws of existing regulatory processes purporting to incorporate collaboration and regulatory adaptation into the decision-making process. Born in the shadow of the law and improvised with too little thought as to its structure, the AMP demonstrates the need to attend to the design of the regulatory process and integrate mechanisms that compel systematic program evaluation and adaptation. As such, the AMP provides vital information on how future collaborative experiments might be modified to enhance their prospects of success.


In "Business Stripped Bare", Sir Richard Branson shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant and audacious deals. Discover why Virgin tried to take on one of the world's biggest superbrands, how Virgin Mobile USA holds the record as the fastest company in history to generate revenues of over one billion dollars (faster than Microsoft, Google and Amazon) and how Richard is the only person in the world to have built eight billion-dollar companies from scratch in eight different sectors. Combining invaluable advice with the remarkable and candid inside stories of Virgin's greatest achievements, as well as some of its setbacks, "Business Stripped Bare" is a dynamic, inspirational and truly original guide to success in business and in life. Whether you are an executive, an entrepreneur or are just starting out, Richard strips business down to show how you can succeed and make a difference.


The consistency of regional government budget is actually reflected from adjustment planning and budgeting program, which is really determined by formulating process of annual government planning every year. Formulating process is bureaucracy responsibility, so most of behaviors of bureaucracy where dominated. This research aimed at: (1) describing behaviors of bureaucracy types in formulating process annual government planning, (2) describing external environment models interaction with behaviors of bureaucracy types in formulating process annual government planning, and (3) explain the formulating process of annual government planning principles with behaviors of bureaucracy types. The results of the research showed that between behaviors of bureaucracy types consists of: career staff type, politics type, professional type, and missioner type, which dominated by the career staff type in formulating process annual government planning. This happens because of the perception, individual decision making, communication patterns, unit leadership, internal organization and culture. While the external environment interaction model of  bureaucratic behavior is a social model the determined the regency leadership factor, factor structure, factor of bureaucratic authority, and cultural factors. While the application of the principles annual government planning formulation based on the type of bureaucratic behavior has basically done but still needs improvement.


As the world approaches the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, it is worth investigating the costs borne by countries like India that did not become communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after its independence in 1947, India strove for self-sufficiency instead of the gains of international trade, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production. These policies yielded economic growth of 3.5 percent per year, which was half that of export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded slow progress in social indicators, too. Growth per capita in India was even slower, at 1.49 percent per year. It accelerated after reforms started tentatively in 1981, and shot up to 6.78 percent per year after reforms deepened in the current decade. What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.


Ion thrusters are Electric Propulsion systems used for satellites and space missions. Within
this work, the High Efficient Multistage Plasma Thruster (HEMP-T), patented by the
THALES group, is investigated. It relies on plasma production by magnetised electrons.
Since the confined plasma in the thruster channel is non-Maxwellian, the near-field plume
plasma is as well. Therefore, the Particle-In-Cell method combined with a Monte-Carlo
Collision model (PIC-MCC) is used to model both regions. In order to increase the sim-
ulated near-field plume region, a non-equidistant grid is utilised, motivated by the lower
plasma density in the plume. To minimise artificial self-forces at grid points bordered by
cells of different size a modified method for the electric field calculation was developed in
this thesis. In order to investigate the outer plume region, where electric field and collisions
are negligible, a ray-tracing Monte-Carlo model is used. With these simulation methods,
two main questions are addressed in this work.
What are the basic mechanisms for plasma confinement, plasma-wall-interaction
and thrust generation?
For the HEMP-T the plasma is confined by magnetic fields in the thruster channel, generated
by cylindrical permanent magnets with opposite polarity. Due to different Hall parameters,
electrons are magnetised, while ions are not. Therefore, the dominating electron transport
is parallel to the magnetic field lines. In the narrow cusp regions, the magnetic mirror effect
reduces the electron flux towards the wall and confines the electrons like in a magnetic
bottle. At the anode, propellant gas streams into the thruster channel, which gets ionised
by the electrons creating the plasma. As a result of the electron oscillation between the two
cusp regions, ionisation of the propellant gas is efficient.
The magnetic field configuration of the HEMP-T also influences the plasma potential inside
the thruster channel. Close to the symmetry axis, the mainly axial magnetic field results in
a flat potential. At the inner wall, the field configuration reduces the plasma wall interaction
to only the narrow cusp regions. Here, the floating potential of the dielectric channel wall
and its plasma sheath result in a rather low radial potential drop compared to the applied
anode potential. As a result, the electric potential is rather flat and impinging ions at the
thruster channel wall have energies below the sputter threshold energy of the wall material.
Therefore, no sputtering appears at the dielectric wall. At the thruster exit the confinement
by the magnetic field is weakened and the potential drops with nearly the full anode voltage.
The resulting electric field accelerates the generated ions into the plume and generate the
thrust, but they are also able to sputter surfaces. During terrestrial testing, sputteringat vacuum vessel walls leads to the production of impurities. The amount of back-flux
towards the channel exit is determined by the sputter yield of the vacuum chamber wall. A
large distance between thruster exit and vessel wall reduces the back-flux and smooths the
pattern of deposition inside the thruster channel. Dependent on their material, the evolving
deposited layers can get conductive, modify by this the potential distribution and reduce
the thrust.
For the HEMP-T, ions are mainly generated at high potential close to the applied anode
potential. Therefore, the accelerated ions producing the thrust gain the maximum energy
as observed in experiment. Ions emitted from the thruster into different angles in the
plume contribute mainly to the ion current at angles between 30 ◦ and 90 ◦ . They mainly
originate from ionisation at the thruster exit. The resulting angular distribution of the
ejected ion current is close to the one of the experiment, slightly shifted by about ten
degrees to higher emission angles. In front of the thruster exit, electrons are trapped by
electrostatics forces. This enhanced density allows ionisation and an additional electron
density structure establishes.
What are possible physics based ideas for optimisation of an ion thruster?
An optimised thruster should have a high ionisation rate inside the thruster channel, low
erosion and an ion angular distribution with small contributions at high angles for min-
imised thruster satellite interactions. In experiments, the HEMP-T satisfies already quite
nicely these requests. In the simulations, low erosion inside the thruster channel and angular
ion distributions close to the experimental data are demonstrated. However, the ionisation
efficiency is lower and radial ion losses are larger than in experiment. A possible explanation
of these differences is an underestimated transport perpendicular to the magnetic field lines,
well known for magnetised plasmas.
A successful example for an optimisation using numerical simulations is the reduction of
back-flux of sputtered impurities during terrestrial experiments by an improved set-up of
the vacuum vessel. The implementation of baffles reduces the back-flux towards the thruster
exit and therefore deposition inside the channel. These improvements were successfully im-
plemented in the experiment and showed a reduction of artefacts during long time measure-
ments. This leads to a stable performance, as it is expected in space.


To succeed in today's interconnected and complex world, workers need to be able to think systemically, creatively, and critically. Equipping K-16 students with these twenty-first-century competencies requires new thinking not only about what should be taught in school but also about how to develop valid assessments to measure and support these competencies. In Stealth Assessment, Valerie Shute and Matthew Ventura investigate an approach that embeds performance-based assessments in digital games. They argue that using well-designed games as vehicles to assess and support learning will help combat students' growing disengagement from school, provide dynamic and ongoing measures of learning processes and outcomes, and offer students opportunities to apply such complex competencies as creativity, problem solving, persistence, and collaboration. Embedding assessments within games provides a way to monitor players' progress toward targeted competencies and to use that information to support learning.Shute and Ventura discuss problems with such traditional assessment methods as multiple-choice questions, review evidence relating to digital games and learning, and illustrate the stealth-assessment approach with a set of assessments they are developing and embedding in the digital game Newton's Playground. These stealth assessments are intended to measure levels of creativity, persistence, and conceptual understanding of Newtonian physics during game play. Finally, they consider future research directions related to stealth assessment in education.


Complex Event Processing (CEP) has been established as a well-suited software technology for processing high-frequent data streams. However, intelligent stream based systems must integrate stream data with semantical background knowledge. In this work, we investigate different approaches on integrating stream data and semantic domain knowledge. In particular, we discuss from a software engineering per- spective two different architectures: an approach adding an ontology access mechanism to a common Continuous Query Language (CQL) is compared with C-SPARQL, a streaming extension of the RDF query language SPARQL.


IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), a new and modern concept of emerging technologies with focus on providing cutting edge high-resolution television, broadcast, and other fascinating services, is now easily available with only requirement of high-speed internet. Everytime a new technology is made local, it faces tremendous problems whether from technological point of view to enhance the performance or when it comes down to satisfy the customers. This cutting edge technology has provided researchers to embark and play with different tools to provide better quality while focusing on existing tools. Our target in dissertation is to provide a few interesting facets of IPTV and come up with a concept of introducing an imaginary cache that can re-collect the packets travelling from streaming server to the end user. In the access node this cache would be fixed and then on the basis of certain pre-assumed research work we can conclude how quick retransmission can take place when the end user responds back using RTCP protocol and asks for the retransmission of corrupted/lost packets. In the last section, we plot our scenario of streaming server on one side and client, end user on the other end and make assumption on the basis of throughput, response time and traffic.


This technical monthly report covers studies related to the use of "*Pu0 2 in radioisotope power systems carried out for the Office of Coordination and Special Projects of the US Department of Energy by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most of the studies discussed here are ongoing. Results and conclusions described may change as the work continues. Published reference of the results cited in this report should not be made without the explicit permission of the person in charge of the work.


In this work two main approaches for the evaluation of credit derivatives are analyzed: the copula based approach and the Markov Chain based approach. This work gives the opportunity to use the advantages and avoid disadvantages of both approaches. For example, modeling of contagion effects, i.e. modeling dependencies between counterparty defaults, is complicated under the copula approach. One remedy is to use Markov Chain, where it can be done directly. The work consists of five chapters. The first chapter of this work extends the model for the pricing of CDS contracts presented in the paper by Kraft and Steffensen (2007). In the widely used models for CDS pricing it is assumed that only borrower can default. In our model we assume that each of the counterparties involved in the contract may default. Calculated contract prices are compared with those calculated under usual assumptions. All results are summarized in the form of numerical examples and plots. In the second chapter the copula and its main properties are described. The methods of constructing copulas as well as most common copulas families and its properties are introduced. In the third chapter the method of constructing a copula for the existing Markov Chain is introduced. The cases with two and three counterparties are considered. Necessary relations between the transition intensities are derived to directly find some copula functions. The formulae for default dependencies like Spearman's rho and Kendall's tau for defined copulas are derived. Several numerical examples are presented in which the copulas are built for given Markov Chains. The fourth chapter deals with the approximation of copulas if for a given Markov Chain a copula cannot be provided explicitly. The fifth chapter concludes this thesis.


Abstract. Globally, carbonyl sulphide (COS) is the most abundant sulphur gas in the atmosphere. Our chemistry-climate model (CCM) of the lower and middle atmosphere with aerosol module realistically simulates the background stratospheric sulphur cycle, as observed by satellites in volcanically quiescent periods. The model results indicate that upward transport of COS from the troposphere largely controls the sulphur budget and the aerosol loading of the background stratosphere. This differs from most previous studies which indicated that short-lived sulphur gases are also important. The model realistically simulates the modulation of the particulate and gaseous sulphur abundance in the stratosphere by the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). In the lowermost stratosphere organic carbon aerosol contributes significantly to extinction. Further, using a chemical radiative convective model and recent spectra, we compute that the direct radiative forcing efficiency by 1 kg of COS is 724 times that of 1 kg CO 2 . Considering an anthropogenic fraction of 30% (derived from ice core data), this translates into an overall direct radiative forcing by COS of 0.003 W m −2 . The direct global warming potentials of COS over time horizons of 20 and 100 yr are GWP(20 yr) = 97 and GWP(100 yr) = 27, respectively (by mass). Furthermore, stratospheric aerosol particles produced by the photolysis of COS (chemical feedback) contribute to a negative direct solar radiative forcing, which in the CCM amounts to −0.007 W m −2 at the top of the atmosphere for the anthropogenic fraction, more than two times the direct warming forcing of COS. Considering that the lifetime of COS is twice that of stratospheric aerosols the warming and cooling tendencies approximately cancel.


The Pennsylvania State University is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to programs, facilities, admission and employment without regard to personal characteristics not related to ability, performance, or qualifications as determined by University policy or by state or federal authorities. It is the policy of the University to maintain an academic and work environment free of discrimination, including harassment. The Pennsylvania State University prohibits discrimination, harassment against any person because of age, ancestry, color, disability or handicap, genetic information, national origin, race, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or veteran status and retaliation due to the reporting of discrimination or harassment. Discrimination, harassment, or retaliation against faculty, staff or students will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University. Direct all inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policy to the Affirmative Action Office, The Pennsylvania State University, 328 Boucke Building, University Park, PA 16802-5901, Tel (814) 865-4700/V, (814) 863-0471/TTY. Nondiscrimination Statement -


This article considers the policing of protests against "fracking" at Barton Moss, Salford, Greater Manchester between November 2013 and April 2014. The article seeks to make sense of the policing response to the protest camp established at the Barton Moss site and to consider what the policing of anti-fracking protests reveals about state responses to resistance in the current era. The article begins by sketching out the background to fracking in the UK and to the specific protest at Barton Moss. It then provides some detail about the nature of policing experienced at the camp during its five month operation before considering how the policing of anti-fracking protests – and protest policing more generally – need to be considered in relation to the general function of police . To do this we draw upon the concept of pacification to consider both the destructive and productive effects of the exercise of police power and suggest that this concept, and the reorientation of critical policing studies that it demands, are essential for understanding police and state violence in the contemporary liberal democracy.


In response to Jamie France's note, "A Proposed Solar Access Law for the State of Texas," Professor Bronin urges future commentators to focus on three additional areas of inquiry related to proposed solar rights regimes. Bronin argues that such proposals would be strengthened by discussion of potential legal challenges to the proposals, related political issues, and renewable energy microgrids.Ms. France's proposal for the State of Texas includes the elimination of preexisting private property restrictions that negatively affect solar access. Bronin argues that this proposal would be strengthened by a discussion of potential challenges under federal and state takings clauses. Additionally, Ms. France's suggestion that zoning ordinances protect homeowners' solar access would benefit from a discussion of challenges that might be raised by home rule cities in Texas. Furthermore, to provide a full perspective, a discussion of possible alternative rules for Houston, which lacks a zoning ordinance, might add to Ms. France's proposal, according to Bronin. Bronin also emphasizes that proposals for solar rights regimes, such as that of Ms. France, often affect various interest groups, and commentators should address the political issues that this creates. Specifically, in discussing Ms. France's proposal for the State of Texas, Bronin identifies the lack of political support for small-scale renewable energy installations as opposed to large-scale projects, Texas's current budget shortfall, and powerful interests groups that are affected by the proposal. Finally, Bronin encourages other commentators to consider advocating for renewable energy microgrids. Bronin has described these as "small-scale, low-voltage distributed generation between neighbors for energy derived from sources such as solar collectors, wind power systems, microturbines, geothermal wells, and fuel cells, which have minimal negative impact on the environment." Bronin believes that renewable energy microgrids "should be a key part of solar access regimes in any state."


This paper expands, refines, and explicates media synchronicity theory, originally proposed in a conference proceeding in 1999 (Dennis and Valacich 1999). Media synchronicity theory (MST) focuses on the ability of media to support synchronicity, a shared pattern of coordinated behavior among individuals as they work together. We expand on the original propositions of MST to argue that communication is composed of two primary processes: conveyance and convergence. The familiarity of individuals with the tasks they are performing and with their coworkers will also affect the relative amounts of these two processes. Media synchronicity theory proposes that for conveyance processes, use of media supporting lower synchronicity should result in better communication performance. For convergence processes, use of media supporting higher synchronicity should result in better communication performance. We identify five capabilities of media (symbol sets, parallelism, transmission velocity, rehearsability, and reprocessability) that influence the development of synchronicity and thus the successful performance of conveyance and convergence communication processes. The successful completion of most tasks involving more than one individual requires both conveyance and convergence processes, thus communication performance will be improved when individuals use a variety of media to perform a task, rather than just one medium.


A clutter or antichain on a set defines a hypergraph. Matroid ports are a special class of clutters, and this paper deals with the diameter of matroid ports, that is, the diameter of the corresponding hypergraphs. Specifically, we prove that the diameter of every matroid port is at most $2$. The main interest of our result is its application to secret sharing. Brickell and Davenport proved in 1989 that the minimal qualified subsets of every ideal secret sharing scheme form a matroid port. Therefore, our result provides a new necessary condition for an access structure to admit an ideal secret sharing scheme.


If you have programming experience and a familiarity with C--the dominant language in embedded systems--Programming Embedded Systems, Second Edition is exactly what you need to get started with embedded software. This software is ubiquitous, hidden away inside our watches, DVD players, mobile phones, anti-lock brakes, and even a few toasters. The military uses embedded software to guide missiles, detect enemy aircraft, and pilot UAVs. Communication satellites, deep-space probes, and many medical instruments would have been nearly impossible to create without embedded software. The first edition of Programming Embedded Systems taught the subject to tens of thousands of people around the world and is now considered the bible of embedded programming. This second edition has been updated to cover all the latest hardware designs and development methodologies.The techniques and code examples presented here are directly applicable to real-world embedded software projects of all sorts. Examples use the free GNU software programming tools, the eCos and Linux operating systems, and a low-cost hardware platform specially developed for this book. If you obtain these tools along with Programming Embedded Systems, Second Edition, you'll have a full environment for exploring embedded systems in depth. But even if you work with different hardware and software, the principles covered in this book apply.Whether you are new to embedded systems or have done embedded work before, you'll benefit from the topics in this book, which include:How building and loading programs differ from desktop or server computersBasic debugging techniques--a critical skill when working with minimally endowed embedded systemsHandling different types of memoryInterrupts, and the monitoring and control of on-chip and external peripheralsDetermining whether you have real-time requirements, and whether your operating system and application can meet those requirementsTask synchronization with real-time operating systems and embedded LinuxOptimizing embedded software for size, speed, and power consumptionWorking examples for eCos and embedded LinuxSo whether you're writing your first embedded program, designing the latest generation of hand-held whatchamacalits, or managing the people who do, this book is for you. Programming Embedded Systems will help you develop the knowledge and skills you need to achieve proficiency with embedded software.Praise for the first edition: "This lively and readable book is the perfect introduction for those venturing into embedded systems software development for the first time. It provides in one place all the important topics necessary to orient programmers to the embedded development process. --Lindsey Vereen, Editor-in-Chief, Embedded Systems Programming


"The calorie-income demand elasticity is an important parameter in the development literature and in the policy arena. Yet, there is very little evidence on the extent to which it can be considered as an unchanging parameter or a time-shifting parameter that, for example, changes with the economic conditions faced by households. In this paper I use data from the 1996 and 1999 National Socio-Economic Surveys (SUSENAS) in Indonesia to examine whether the relationship between income changes and caloric availability has changed and if so, how. Using the same questionnaire, the SUSENAS surveys collect detailed information on more than 200 different food items consumed over the last seven days by 60,000 households at the same point in each survey year. I use nonparametric as well as regression methods to examine two important relationships: (1) between income and total calories, and (2) between income and calories from cereals and other foods (excluding cereals and root crops). The empirical analysis finds that the income elasticity of the demand for total calories is slightly higher in February 1999 (the crisis year with dramatically different relative prices) compared to its level in February 1996. Also, the calorie-income elasticity for cereals as a group increases while the calorie-income elasticity for other food items decreases. The latter finding is interpreted as consistent with the presence of a binding subsistence constraint." from Authors' Abstract


In this paper, we address the problem of privacy preserving delegated word search in the cloud. We consider a scenario where a data owner outsources its data to a cloud server and delegates the search capabilities to a set of third party users. In the face of semi-honest cloud servers, the data owner does not want to disclose any information about the outsourced data; yet it still wants to benefit from the highly parallel cloud environment. In addition, the data owner wants to ensure that delegating the search functionality to third parties does not allow these third parties to jeopardize the confidentiality of the outsourced data, neither does it prevent the data owner from efficiently revoking the access of these authorized parties. To these ends, we propose a word search protocol that builds upon techniques of keyed hash functions, oblivious pseudo-random functions and Cuckoo hashing to construct a searchable index for the outsourced data, and uses private information retrieval of short information to guarantee that word search queries do not reveal any information about the data to the cloud server. Moreover, we combine attribute-based encryption and oblivious pseudo-random functions to achieve an efficient revocation of authorized third parties. The proposed scheme is suitable for the cloud as it can be easily parallelized.


Any books that you read, no matter how you got the sentences that have been read from the books, surely they will give you goodness. But, we will show you one of recommendation of the book that you need to read. This morningside heights is what we surely mean. We will show you the reasonable reasons why you need to read this book. This book is a kind of precious book written by an experienced author.


Two different medium-speed diesel engine cylinder head designs have been studied. The focus of the study has been the effect of intake channel design in the in-cylinder flow. The study has been carried out by CFD. The first cylinder head is a standard Wartsila 20 cylinder head and the second one is a specially designed head for a single cylinder research engine, called Extreme Value Engine (EVE). The CFD boundary conditions have been simulated by the help of a 1-d simulation code. In the full load cases the maximum cylinder pressure was 300 bar. Simulations have been done at lower load level too. One simulation with the new cylinder head was carried out with one intake valve closed in order to get an idea of the swirl to be generated by this approach. In the study the in-cylinder flow field, the cylinder charge and turbulence kinetic energy have been examine. Author Name:


The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has yielded more litigation and less local competition than its supporters expected or intended. Calls for its reform are multiplying. The article diagnoses the 1996 Act's failings and prescribes a framework for reform. The successful deregulations of the transportation industries and of long-distance telecommunications (precedents the 1996 Act sought to follow) demonstrate that the Act should have taken additional steps to promote intermodal telecommunications competition. Transportation deregulation successfully prompted competition where (as in the case of airlines and trucking) multiple firms could compete on an intramodal basis or where (as in the case of railroads) the single firm was subject to intermodal competition from firms using other technologies. The 1996 Act's reliance on the unbundling of incumbent local telephone companies' networks reveals that its supporters thought that portions of the local wireline networks would remain bottlenecks. The lesson, therefore, is that the 1996 Act should have taken additional steps to create the conditions for intermodal competition. Based on this analysis, the article outlines a new communications law that increases the possibilities for intermodal competition. Indeed, the glimmers of hope for local competition - cell phone substitution and voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) telephony - are intermodal competitors. Although the 1996 Act did move in this direction and the Federal Communications Commission is vigorous on several fronts, more can be done. Spectrum reform (the most significant missed opportunity in the 1996 Act) and other steps would decrease legal and economic barriers to intermodal competition. The article also addresses local and state control of telecommunications carriers, regulatory parity, universal service reform, and government funding of research and infrastructure, and it offers a technology-neutral regulatory scheme for VoIP. The proposed deregulatory agenda seeks a law capable of accommodating the speed and diversity of technological change in this "Internet time."


In this enlightening book James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age--today's heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today's policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation. Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain--the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson's philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the "commons of the mind," Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.


A review of:

Beile, Penny M. and David N. Boote. "Does the Medium Matter?: A Comparison of a Web-Based Tutorial with Face-to-Face Library Instruction on Education Students' Self-Efficacy Levels and Learning Outcomes." Research Strategies 20 (2004): 57-68.

Objective – To determine whether library skills self-efficacy levels and learning outcomes of postgraduate education students varied with different instructional delivery methods, specifically Web-based or face to face.

Design – Pre- and post-intervention survey comparing three groups receiving different types of instruction.

Setting – Department of Educational Studies at a large U.S. urban university.

Subjects – Forty-nine masters, doctoral, and certificate-seeking education students enrolled in one of three sections of a research methods course. There were 40 female and 9 male students.

Methods – Immediately before receiving library instruction, the three student groups were asked to complete a library skills self-efficacy questionnaire, comprising 30 items designed to measure students' perceptions of their ability to successfully perform library research. They also completed a library skills test, consisting of 20 multiple choice questions, designed to assess conceptual knowledge, knowledge of database searching, and institution-specific knowledge. The intervention groups were:

Group 1 (Sixteen students) – an on-campus class that received a face to face instruction session comprised of a 70-minute demonstration of key library databases followed by an activity that allowed students to practice their skills.

Group 2 (Nineteen students) – an on-campus class that received a Web-based tutorial comprised of four interactive modules, requiring an average 80 minutes to complete.

Group 3 (Nineteen students) - a Web-based class that received the same Web-based tutorial as Group 2.

The survey and test were repeated six weeks after the instruction.

Main results – Both self-efficacy scores and library skills test scores increased for all three groups post-intervention. Average self-efficacy levels increased from a mean of 68.88 (SD=19.92) to a mean of 91.90 (SD=16.24); library skills scores increased from an average score of 58.78 (SD=13.80) to an average of 73.16 (SD=12.65). There was no statistically significant difference between the post- intervention scores of the three groups on the library skills test. However, the Web-based students in Group 3 showed a statistically significant greater increase in self-efficacy score (78.86 to 102.36) when compared with Group 2 participants (64.74 to 83.68).

Conclusion – The study provides evidence that library instruction is effective in increasing both skill levels and self-efficacy levels. It does not give a clear indication of the relative value of different modes of delivery, but it does support the contention that Web-based tutorials are at least as effective as face to face sessions.


The present paper offers a critique of Block on the issues of abortion and child abandonment. Block regards aborting a fetus or abandoning a child as an instance of exercising one's libertarian right of expelling trespassers from one's private property. I argue that the above reasoning is flawed due to the lack of the appreciation of the fact that if one voluntarily initiates the causal chain which leads to someone else ending up on his property, the latter person cannot be considered a trespasser. Furthermore, in the light of the above observation, any direct effects resulting from that person's eviction should be considered the responsibility of the property's owner. All of this follows from the simple logical fact that in all links of the causal chain under consideration the owner is the ultimate causal agent.


Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels. The literature documents many potential cobenefits of mitigation for nonclimate objectives, such as human health and energy security, but little is known about their overall welfare implications. Integrated model studies highlight that climate policies as part of well-designed policy packages reduce the overall cost of achieving multiple sustainability objectives. The incommensurability and uncertainties around the quantification of coeffects become, however, increasingly pervasive the more the perspective shifts from sectoral and local to economy wide and global, the more objectives are analyzed, and the more the results are expressed in economic rather than nonmonetary terms. Different strings of e...


This Article, published in a symposium issue focusing on science and expertise, traces the early reception of the modern expert witness. It describes in some detail the widespread frustrations with expert witnesses in court in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the two most vociferous critiques: that experts too often became partisans, mere mouthpieces for the party that hired them; and that expert testimony was so frequently contradictory that it confused and perplexed, rather than enlightened, the lay jurors who heard it. The Article argues that these criticisms can only be properly understood by recognizing two important aspects of how expert evidence was being wielded and understood in this period. First, it is important to recognize that even amidst the rampant complaints by the bench, bar, and experts themselves, about the content and methods of expert testimony, the actual use of expert evidence was simultaneously increasing. Second, I argue that a key source of the dissatisfaction with expert testimony was a disjunction between a set of idealized expectations for scientific evidence and the practical realities of its use in the courtroom. It was precisely because of what science was thought to be able to offer to the process of legal decisionmaking, that the spectacle of warring experts provoked such frustration and anger. Science ought to have been able to offer proof more objective, more certain, and more neutral than that of the lay eyewitness, or so believed scientists and legal commentators alike. When it failed to do so, this failure was frequently attributed to partisan excess or the problems of adversarialism, rather than recognized as being, at least in significant part, the result of unrealistic expectations for science itself. In the conclusion, I suggest that this idealized conception of science lingers with us today as well, and continues to influence how we understand and critique expert evidence in court.


A great way to get started on this new, FREE, Web-based productivity and collaboration tool Zoho is a very cool-and free-alternative to Microsoft Office. Known as "cloud" computing because it's totally Web-based, Zoho provides 18 different applications to help you write documents, create spreadsheets, send e-mail, and much more. People love it, but what it doesn't offer are extensive help files, so that's where this practical book comes in. Zoho For Dummies shows you how to use Zoho's most widely used applications, including Zoho Writer, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Show, Zoho Sheet, Zoho DB, Zoho Mail, Zoho Planner, Zoho CRM, and Zoho Projects. You'll get thoroughly up to speed on all common tasks and discover enough tips and tricks to get you power-using Zoho in no time. Zoho is a free, Web-based alternative to Microsoft Office launched in 2007; it is considered to be "cloud computing" because it is categorized as Software as a Service (SaaS) and Web-based The book guides you through common tasks and provides tips and tricks to maximize your productivity and minimize hassle Covers Zoho Writer, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Show, Zoho Sheet, Zoho DB, Zoho Mail, Zoho Planner, Zoho CRM, and Zoho Projects Also provides information about sharing content, scheduling, and more Get your head in the clouds with this friendly guide to the exciting new Zoho "cloud" alternative to Microsoft Office.


This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the latest neuroscientific approaches to the scientific study of creativity. In chapters that progress logically from neurobiological fundamentals to systems neuroscience and neuroimaging, leading scholars describe the latest theoretical, genetic, structural, clinical, functional, and applied research on the neural bases of creativity. The treatment is both broad and in depth, offering a range of neuroscientific perspectives with detailed coverage by experts in each area. The contributors discuss such issues as the heritability of creativity; creativity in patients with brain damage, neurodegenerative conditions, and mental illness; clinical interventions and the relationship between psychopathology and creativity; neuroimaging studies of intelligence and creativity; the neuroscientific basis of creativity-enhancing methodologies; and the information-processing challenges of viewing visual art. ContributorsBaptiste Barbot, Mathias Benedek, David Q. Beversdorf, Aaron P. Blaisdell, Margaret A. Boden, Dorret I. Boomsma, Adam S. Bristol, Shelley Carson, Marleen H. M. de Moor, Andreas Fink, Liane Gabora, Dennis Garlick, Elena L. Grigorenko, Richard J. Haier, Rex E. Jung, James C. Kaufman, Helmut Leder, Kenneth J. Leising, Bruce L. Miller, Apara Ranjan, Mark P. Roeling, W. David Stahlman, Mei Tan, Pablo P. L. Tinio, Oshin Vartanian, Indre V. Viskontas, Dahlia W. Zaidel


In this article we examine the role of appeasement in human emotion, social practice, and personality. We first present an analysis of human appeasement. Appeasement begins when the conditions of social relations lead one individual to anticipate aggression from others, is expressed in submissive, inhibited behavior, which in turn evokes inferences and emotions in others that bring about social reconciliation. Our empirical review focuses on two classes of human appeasement: reactive forms of appeasement, including embarrassment and shame, which placate others after social transgressions; and anticipatory forms of appeasement, including polite modesty and shyness, which reduce the likelihood of social conflict and aggression. Our review of the empirical evidence indicates that embarrassment, shame, modesty, and shyness share the eliciting conditions, submissive behavior, and social consequences of appeasement. We conclude by discussing social processes that allow humans to appease one another, such as teasing, and those that prevent appeasement, such as legal and negotiation practices, to the benefit and detriment of human relations.


The business judgment rule is corporate law's central doctrine, pervasively affecting the roles of directors, officers, and controlling shareholders. Increasingly, moreover, versions of the business judgment rule are found in the law governing the other types of business organizations, ranging from such common forms as the general partnership to such unusual ones as the reciprocal insurance exchange. Yet, curiously, there is relatively little agreement as to either the theoretical underpinnings of or policy justification for the rule. This gap in our understanding has important doctrinal implications. As this paper demonstrates, a string of recent decisions by the Delaware supreme court based on a misconception of the business judgment rule's role in corporate governance has taken the law in a highly undesirable direction. Two conceptions of the business judgment rule compete in the case law. One views the business judgment rule as a standard of liability under which courts undertake some objective review of the merits of board decisions. This view is increasingly widely accepted, especially by some members of the Delaware supreme court. The other conception treats the rule not as a standard of review but as a doctrine of abstention, pursuant to which courts simply decline to review board decisions. The distinction between these conceptions matters a great deal. Under the former, for example, it is far more likely that claims against the board of directors will survive through the summary judgment phase of litigation, which at the very least raises the settlement value of shareholder litigation and even can have outcome-determinative effects. Like many recent corporate law developments, the standard of review conception of the business judgment rule is based on a shareholder primacy-based theory of the corporation. This article extends the author's recent work on a competing theory of the firm, known as director primacy, pursuant to which the board of directors is viewed as the nexus of the set of contracts that makes up the firm. In this model, the defining tension of corporate law is that between authority and accountability. Because one cannot make directors more accountable without infringing on their exercise of authority, courts must be reluctant to review the director decisions absent evidence of the sort of self-dealing that raises very serious accountability concerns. In this article, the author argues that only the abstention version of the business judgment rule properly operationalizes this approach.


Diagnosis of acute HCV infection enables estimation of annual incidence rates and transmission patterns, thereby facilitating implementation and assessment of prevention programs. At the individual level, a diagnosis of acute infection expedites linkage to care, counseling regarding high-risk behavior, and timely interventions to reduce virus transmission and liver disease progression (Bruneau, 2014). Some persons involved in high-risk behaviors practice serosorting, defined as using HCV antibody serostatus to determine whether to engage in high-risk behaviors with certain individuals (Smith, 2013). Thus, undiagnosed acutely-infected persons may be at greater risk of transmitting HCV to their presumably seronegative contacts than would be expected by chance.


Describes what it means to be anointed with the Spirit so that one can preach "to raise the dead." In The Holy Spirit and Preaching, James A. Forbes, Jr.--widely hailed as one of the nation's foremost preachers--offers four dynamic lectures originally delivered as the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University, the most prestigious annual preaching event in the United States. In each of the lectures, Forbes focuses on the Holy Spirit as it relates to preaching. He traces the Holy Spirit's activity in Jesus' ministry and looks at the impact of being anointed by the Holy Spirit. Forbes demonstrates how the Holy Spirit works with the pastor in the preparation and delivery of a sermon. The Holy Spirit and Preaching concludes by focusing on the need for anointed preaching, and the way anointed preaching happens today.


Implement programming best practices from the ground upImagine how much easier it would be to solve a programming problem, if you had access to the best practices from all the top experts in the field, and you could follow the best design patterns that have evolved through the years. Well, now you can. This unique book offers development solutions ranging from high-level architectural patterns, to design patterns that apply to specific problems encountered after the overall structure has been designed, to idioms in specific programming languages--all in one, accessible, guide. Not only will you improve your understanding of software design, you'll also improve the programs you create and successfully take your development ideas to the next level.Pulls together the best design patterns and best practices for software design into one accessible guide to help you improve your programming projects Helps you avoid re-creating the wheel and also meet the ever-increasing pace of rev cycles, as well as the ever-increasing number of new platforms and technologies for mobile, web, and enterprise computing Fills a gap in the entry-level POSA market, as well as a need for guidance in implementing best practices from the ground upSave time and avoid headaches with your software development projects with Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture For Dummies.


This thesis presents the results of a narrative inquiry study conducted in the context of Higher Education Institutions. The study aims to describe and foster understanding of the beliefs, perceptions, and felt constraints of ten academic researchers deeply involved in digital scholarship. Academic research, as one of the four categories of scholarship, is the focus of the analysis. The methods of data collection included in-depth online interviews, field notes, closed blog posts, and follow up dialogues via email and web-telephony.

The literature review within this study presents a narrative on scholarship throughout the ages up to the current environment, highlighting the role of technology in assisting different forms of networking, communication, and dissemination of knowledge. It covers aspects of online participation and scholarship such as the open access movement, online networks and communities of practice that ultimately influence academic researchers' sense of identity and their approaches to digital scholarship. The themes explored in the literature review had a crucial role in informing the interview guide that supported the narrative accounts of the research participants. However, the data collected uncovered a gap in knowledge not anticipated in the literature review, that of power relations between the individual and their institutions. Hence, an additional sociological research lens, that of Pierre Bourdieu, was adopted in order to complete the analysis of the data collected. There were three major stages of analysis: the construction of research narratives as a first pass analysis of the narrative inquiry, a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts, and a Bourdieuian analysis, supported by additional literature, that reveals the complexity of current academic practice in the context of the Participatory Web.

This research set out to study the online practices of academic researchers in a changing environment and ended up examining the conflicts between modern and conservative approaches to research scholarship in the context of academic researchers' practices. This study argues that the Participatory Web, in the context of academic research, can not only empower academic researchers but also place them in contention with traditional and persistent scholarly practice.


Purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between school leadership and organizational justice using meta-analysis. By combining nine independent researches, a sample of 4303 respondents has been obtained, which represent overall Turkey. The results of the analysis, which were conducted using random effects model, showed that school leadership is strongly correlated with organizational justice. It was found that ethical leadership is the style with the biggest effect among the leadership styles covered in the study. Considering how effective the school leadership on the organizational justice is, it has been recommended to investigate the effect of leadership on the other components of the school as well.


Profiling the ten most populous cities in the United States during ten critical eras of political development, "Cities in American Political History" presents a unique singular focus on American cities, their government and politics, industry, commerce, labor, and race and ethnicity. Cities in American Political History analyzes the role that large cities from New York to Chicago to San Jose, have played in U.S. politics and policymaking. Each entry is structured for straightforward comparison across issues and eras. The city profiles include basic data and statistics for the era and are accompanied by maps of each era and the largest cities at that time.


The discovery of an HIV-1 cure remains a medical challenge because the virus rebounds quickly after the cessation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). Here, we investigate the potential of an engineered tandem bispecific broadly neutralizing antibody (bs-bnAb) as an innovative product for HIV-1 prophylactic and therapeutic interventions. We discovered that by preserving 2 single-chain variable fragment (scFv) binding domains of each parental bnAb, a single gene–encoded tandem bs-bnAb, BiIA-SG, displayed substantially improved breadth and potency. BiIA-SG neutralized all 124 HIV-1–pseudotyped viruses tested, including global subtypes/recombinant forms, transmitted/founder viruses, variants not susceptible to parental bnAbs and to many other bnAbs with an average IC50 value of 0.073 &mgr;g/ml (range < 0.001–1.03 &mgr;g/ml). In humanized mice, an injection of BiIA-SG conferred sterile protection when administered prior to challenges with diverse live HIV-1 stains. Moreover, whereas BiIA-SG delayed viral rebound in a short-term therapeutic setting when combined with cART, a single injection of adeno-associated virus–transferred (AAV-transferred) BiIA-SG gene resulted dose-dependently in prolonged in vivo expression of BiIA-SG, which was associated with complete viremia control and subsequent elimination of infected cells in humanized mice. These results warrant the clinical development of BiIA-SG as a promising bs-bnAb–based biomedical intervention for the prevention and treatment of HIV-1 infection.


Background/Context Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, teaching in public school contexts has become more complex and challenging. Today, public school teachers at all grade levels are accountable for maintaining a steady focus on their students' academic achievement. However, many teachers have found themselves wrestling with two conflicting understandings of academic achievement. These two conflicting understandings reflect two existing discourses used to frame students' acquisition of school-centered knowledge and skills: academic progress and academic success. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the Study In this article, we focus on the coexisting discourses of academic achievement circulating within in our participants' teaching credential preparation experience. We present the data, drawn from the first two sets of interviews completed for our larger study of preservice teachers' understandings of the relationship between sociocultural factors and academic achievement, that document our participants' confusion and uncertainty about the meaning of "academic achievement." We draw from the notion of discourse, as theorized by Michel Foucault, to foreground the need to establish specific terminology—namely, academic progress and academic success—to clarify the various aspects of academic achievement and to facilitate discussion of this critically important construct. Research Design The study draws from a basic or generic qualitative methodology in which the aim is to understand a situation by exploring, analyzing, and interpreting the perspectives and understandings of individuals within that situation. The findings come from data generated across two interviews conducted with preservice teachers at the beginning and conclusion of their first semester in the professional development sequence of their elementary (pk–4) teacher education program. Setting The study takes place at a large urban university teacher education program in the U.S. South. Population/Participants/Subjects Participants are a racially and ethnically diverse set of 12 preservice teacher candidates. Ten were pursuing a elementary generalist teaching credential, and 2 were pursuing a elementary generalist-bilingual teaching credential.


Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad's analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr's philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity.

In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of "social" and "natural" agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their "interrelationship." Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler's influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science.


"Wychowanie w Rodzinie" ("Family Upbringing") is a journal dedicated to the problems of the family in the historical and the contemporary approach. The published original articles – written by authors from Poland and other countries who discuss research results as well as theories – constitute a voice in humanities and social sciences discourse on the family. Although the majority of the published papers belong to such branches of social sciences as history of education and pedagogy of the family it is increasingly often that the work of scholars of other sub-disciplines of pedagogy as well as psychology, sociology, archaeology, literary studies, linguistics, and law is presented.


In this gustatory tour of human history, John S. Allen demonstrates that the everyday activity of eating offers deep insights into human beings' biological and cultural heritage. We humans eat a wide array of plants and animals, but unlike other omnivores we eat with our minds as much as our stomachs. This thoughtful relationship with food is part of what makes us a unique species, and makes culinary cultures diverse. Not even our closest primate relatives think about food in the way Homo sapiens does. We are superomnivores whose palates reflect the natural history of our species. Drawing on the work of food historians and chefs, anthropologists and neuroscientists, Allen starts out with the diets of our earliest ancestors, explores cooking's role in our evolving brain, and moves on to the preoccupations of contemporary foodies. "The Omnivorous Mind" delivers insights into food aversions and cravings, our compulsive need to label foods as good or bad, dietary deviation from "healthy" food pyramids, and cross-cultural attitudes toward eating (with the French, bien sur, exemplifying the pursuit of gastronomic pleasure). To explain, for example, the worldwide popularity of crispy foods, Allen considers first the food habits of our insect-eating relatives. He also suggests that the sound of crunch may stave off dietary boredom by adding variety to sensory experience. Or perhaps fried foods, which we think of as bad for us, interject a frisson of illicit pleasure. When it comes to eating, Allen shows, there's no one way to account for taste.


Since its first publication, Michael J. Mauboussin's popular guide to wise investing has been translated into eight languages and has been named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. Now updated to reflect current research and expanded to include new chapters on investment philosophy, psychology, and strategy and science as they pertain to money management, this volume is more than ever the best chance to know more than the average investor. Offering invaluable tools to better understand the concepts of choice and risk, More Than You Know is a unique blend of practical advice and sound theory, sampling from a wide variety of sources and disciplines. Mauboussin builds on the ideas of visionaries, including Warren Buffett and E. O. Wilson, but also finds wisdom in a broad and deep range of fields, such as casino gambling, horse racing, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He analyzes the strategies of poker experts David Sklansky and Puggy Pearson and pinpoints parallels between mate selection in guppies and stock market booms. For this edition, Mauboussin includes fresh thoughts on human cognition, management assessment, game theory, the role of intuition, and the mechanisms driving the market's mood swings, and explains what these topics tell us about smart investing. More Than You Know is written with the professional investor in mind but extends far beyond the world of economics and finance. Mauboussin groups his essays into four parts-Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Innovation and Competitive Strategy, and Science and Complexity Theory-and he includes substantial references for further reading. A true eye-opener, More Than You Know shows how a multidisciplinary approach that pays close attention to process and the psychology of decision making offers the best chance for long-term financial results.


Marcus Cato Sulla Aemilius Paullus Pompey The Gracchi Marius Julius Caesar Anthony 'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.' In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is also implicitly to educate and warn those in his own day who wielded power. In prose that is rich, elegant and sprinkled with learned references, he explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. While drawing chiefly on historical sources, he brings to biography a natural story-teller's ear for a good anecdote. Throughout the ages Plutarch's Lives have been valued for their historical value and their charm. This new translation will introduce new generations to his urbane erudition. The most comprehensive selection available, it is accompanied by a lucid introduction, explanatory notes, bibliographies, maps and indexes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


Determination of food authenticity is an important issue in quality control and food safety. Recent studies predict a growing demand for natural and more authentic food and beverage products. The quality and authenticity of apple juice is also of a great economic importance since the popularity and demand for apple juice consumption has increased. The growth of the market for organically produced apples and apple juice is due to the increasing demand for healthy food requirements, protection of the environment and the promotion of biotic diversity. Organic foods have a higher nutritional and health value, but they are more expensive, because their production is more difficult and less profitable. In addition to how food is produced, consumers are increasingly placing emphasis on food products of specific region, which are known for their unique natural flavours and taste.

The presented thesis is based on four separate but closely interrelated studies, in which a combination of different isotopic ratios of bioelements (2H/1H, 13C/12C, 15N/14N, 18O/16O), multi-element analysis, and major primary and secondary metabolite profiles were exploited to differentiate the geographical origin and agricultural production practice (organic vs integrated/conventional) of Slovenian apples. These parameters were used to establish the first database of authentic Slovenian apple juice, which can be used to verify the authenticity of commercially available apple juice in Slovenia.

The first preliminary study was entitled "Organic Cultivation ~ Geographical Origin (OCGO)" and was performed using apples from the 2009 growing season. Its aim was to examine the use of stable isotope and multi-element data for determining the geographical origin and agricultural production practice of fresh apple juices. Fruits of six apple (Malus domestica Borkh) cultivars (Topaz, Idared, Golden Delicious, Goldrush, Gala, Gloster) were collected from four different geographical regions of Slovenia (Alpine, Dinaric, Pannonian and Mediterranean) grown under organic and integrated/conventional orchard management systems. The results revealed that stable isotope parameters in sugar, pulp and water were the most significant variables for differentiating between the regions. Good separation was achieved between the geographical regions in Slovenia based on the δ18O and δ2H values in water and Rb and S levels in the apple fruit juice. The most significant variables that distinguished between organically and integrated/conventionally cultivated apples were the 15N/14N ratio and antioxidant activity of the apple juice. Significant differences were also observed in the ascorbic acid content of the juice. Based on these results the number and types of apples and the minimum number of samples needed from the same region for determining geographical origin were determined.

The second study was called "Organic ~ Conventional Apple Cultivation" (OCAC) and was performed in 2010 and 2011 in a Gala apple orchard. The aim was to determine the effect of different fertilizers allowed either in organic or conventional/integrated agricultural regimes on different parameters. Quality parameters, isotopic composition of C in sugars and in pulp together with N and elemental analysis were investigated. The following five fertilizers were applied: Biosol and Plantella organic (organic) and Ca cyanamide, KAN and UREA (mineral) at a rate of 60 and 120 kg of nitrogen per hectare. From the obtained data it was possible to differentiate between organic and integrated/conventional apple production when taking into account the following parameters: mass, skin and flesh firmness (SFF), total soluble solids (TSS), and the content of Cl as well as δ15N and δ13C in the pulp.

The "Organic Cultivation ~ Geographical Origin" (OCGO) study, which took place during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons included a greater number of samples and samples from five different geographical regions: Alpine, Dinaric,


A framework to establish the expected effects of climate on forage quantity and quality in a local savanna system was developed to interpret large herbivore population performance patterns in the Kruger National Park. We developed a climate–vegetation response model based on interpretation and synthesis of existing knowledge (literature review) and supported by investigation and analyses of local patterns of climate effects on forage plant performance and chemical composition. Developing the climate–vegetation response model involved three main components, namely (1) defining indicators of forage availability to herbivores (nitrogen productivity, nitrogen quality, carbon-nutrient quality), (2) identifying herbivore species guilds of similar nutritional requirements with respect to these indicators [bulk feeders with tolerance to fibrous herbage (buffalo, waterbuck), bulk feeders with preference for high nitrogen quality forage (short grass preference grazers: blue wildebeest and zebra) and selective feeders where dietary items of relatively high carbon-nutrient quality represented key forage resources (selective grazers: sable antelope, roan antelope, tsessebe, eland)] and (3) developing a process model where the expected effects of plant metabolic responses to climate on key forage resources were made explicit. According to the climate–vegetation response model both shorter-term transient temperature acclimation pulses and longer-term shifts in plant metabolic functionality settings were predicted to have occurred in response to temperature trends over the past century. These temperature acclimation responses were expected to have resulted in transient pulses of increased forage availability (increased nitrogen- and carbon-nutrient quality), as well as the progressive long-term decline of the carbon-nutrient quality of forage. Conservation implications: The climate–vegetation response model represents a research framework for further studies contributing towards the enhanced understanding of landscape-scale functioning of savanna systems with reference to the interplay between climate, vegetation and herbivore population dynamics. Gains in such understanding can support sound conservation management.


A new approach for modelling time that does not rely on the concept of a clock is proposed. In order to establish a notion of time, system behaviour is represented as a joint progression of multiple threads of control, which satisfies a certain set of axioms. We show that the clock-independent time model is related to the well-known concept of a global clock and argue that both approaches establish the same notion of time.


"NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) program is pioneering new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities, and validating operational concepts for future human missions beyond Earth orbit" [1]. Under the new Atmosphere Revitalization Recovery and Environmental Monitoring (ARREM) project [2], efforts are focused on improving current state-of-the-art systems utilizing fixed beds of sorbent pellets by evaluating structured sorbents, seeking more robust pelletized sorbents, and examining alternate bed configurations to improve system efficiency and reliability. These development efforts combine testing of sub-scale systems and multi-physics computer simulations to evaluate candidate approaches, select the best performing options, and optimize the configuration of the selected approach, which is then implemented in a full-scale integrated atmosphere revitalization test. Reference 3 discusses the hardware design and sorbent screening and characterization effort in support of the ARREM project within the AES program. This paper describes the development of atmosphere revitalization models and simulations in support of the ARREM project. COMSOL Multiphysics has been used in the following technology development efforts: (1) Development of 1-D and 2-D Axisymmetric Packed Bed Models and Comparison with Breakthrough Curves. Adsorption in fixed beds of pelletized sorbents is the primary means of gas separation for atmosphere revitalization systems. For the bulk separation of CO2 and H2O, temperature changes due to the heat of adsorption are significant, requiring the modeling and simulation of the heat balance equations. For columns with small tube diameter to pellet diameter ratios, as encountered in internally heated columns, flow channeling along the column wall can have a strong influence on overall performance [4]. In some cases, the influence is great enough to necessitate the use of 2-D simulations as shown in Figure 1. (2) Isothermal Bulk Desiccant Development. Initial models of the 4-column IBD with an aluminum (Al) foam lattice were conducted using the COMSOL Multiphysics code. For the porous flow part of the model, the code solves the low Mach number, compressible Brinkman equations modified by a Forchheimer drag term. Forchheimer drag adds a drag term that is proportional to the square of the fluid velocity, rather than just linear, as is the case in Darcy flow, with a coefficient given by βF = 1.75ρg*√(e /150/κ). Heat transfer is modeled by solving the heat transfer equations separately for the porous medium (the beds) and the solid Al canister, with appropriate boundary conditions. Modeling results are showing in Figure 2. A second prototype test fixture, also shown in Figure 2, will be modeled following model validation. (3) Microlith Residual Desiccant Development. Figure 3 provides a cross-section of the Microlith concept and 3-D COMSOL velocity mapping of the jelly roll. This analysis provided important insight leading to successful corrective action for a flow channeling problem. Further uses of this model will be to map flow maldistribution following corrective action. With the addition of adsorption physics, this model will provide a means for optimization of cyclic parameters for this hardware, and allow for design optimization studies for new Microlith designs.


Don't panic! Combat your worries and minimize anxiety with CBT!

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a hugely popular self-help technique, which teaches you to break free from destructive or negative behaviors and make positive changes to both your thoughts and your actions. This practical guide to managing anxiety with CBT will help you understand your anxiety, identify solutions to your problems, and maintain your gains and avoid relapse.

Managing Anxiety with CBT For Dummies is a practical guide to using CBT to face your fears and overcome anxiety and persistent, irrational worries. You'll discover how to put extreme thinking into perspective and challenge negative, anxiety-inducing thoughts with a range of effective CBT techniques to help you enjoy a calmer, happier life.

 Helps you understand anxiety and how CBT can help
 Guides you in making change and setting goals
 Gives you tried-and-true CBT techniques to face your fears and keep a realistic perspective

Managing Anxiety with CBT For Dummies gives you the tools you need to overcome anxiety and expand your horizons for a healthy, balanced life.


The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which diverse RTI schools in North Carolina engage in culturally responsive beliefs and practices. A total of eight diverse elementary schools participated in this study. Within these schools, 200 general and special education teachers in grades k-5 completed surveys. Areas surveyed included culturally responsive teacher practices, culturally responsive school practices, level of training, and demographics. Three open-ended questions addressed successes, barriers, and needs to implementing culturally responsive practices as part of RTI. The majority of participants had more than 10 years experience in education and had received training in culturally responsive practices. A key finding of this investigation was that a high proportion of the teachers agreed to employing all of the culturally responsive practices except for one. In addition, an equally high proportion of teachers perceived their school as employing all of the culturally responsive practices except one. Answers to open-ended questions both supported and refuted these findings. These findings of this study are discussed, including the implications for future research.


In Morrison v. National Australia Bank, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 held that U.S. securities laws apply only to securities transactions within the United States. The transactional test in Morrison could be relatively short lived because it is rooted in geography. For cases involving private securities transactions in which geographic determinants of a transaction and thus applicable law are unclear, this article suggests redirecting the inquiry away from the geographic location of securities transactions towards the parties' choice of law. In the long run, allowing parties to choose the law pertaining to private transactions could be more effective than relying on geography that is both indeterminate and easy to manipulate. Jurisdictions could then compete to induce transacting parties to bring private transactions within their jurisdictional reach by designing substantive law and procedures that parties choose ex-ante ("Choice of Law Competition"). Recent cases expanding the jurisdictional reach of Dutch courts suggest that the Netherlands or another EU member state could engage in a different type of jurisdictional competition. Jurisdictions performing this role adjust their procedural rules to set up a forum within their borders for litigation that appeals to plaintiffs and their lawyers ("Forum Competition"). The U.S. engaged in some Forum Competition for extraterritorial securities litigation prior to Morrison, and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 empowers the SEC to continue to bring suits in the United States over securities transactions outside the United States. For many issuers and investors who do not choose the forum ex-ante, Forum Competition can be suboptimal. Depending on future developments, the acceptable outer bounds of Forum Competition between the United States and Europe may need to be defined by treaty or multilateral agreement.