[1] We use a 3-D chemical transport model (the GEOS-Chem CTM) to evaluate a global emission inventory for ethane (C2H6), with a best estimate for the global source of 13 Tg yr−1, 8.0 Tg yr−1 from fossil fuel production, 2.6 Tg yr−1 from biofuel, and 2.4 Tg yr−1 from biomass burning. About 80% of the source is emitted in the Northern Hemisphere. The model generally provides a reasonable and unbiased simulation of surface air observations, column measurements, and aircraft profiles worldwide, including patterns of geographical and seasonal variability. The main bias is a 20%–30% overestimate at European surface sites. Propagation of the C2H6 seasonal signal from northern midlatitudes to the equatorial western Pacific and the southern tropics demonstrates the dominance of northern midlatitudes as a source of C2H6 worldwide. Interhemispheric transport provides the largest C2H6 source to the Southern Hemisphere (1.7 Tg yr−1), and southern biomass burning provides the other major source (1.0 Tg yr−1). The C2H6 emission inventory for the United States from the Environmental Protection Agency (0.6 Tg yr−1) is considerably lower than our estimate constrained by extensive aircraft observations in the continental boundary layer (2.4 Tg yr−1). This appears to reflect a factor 7 underestimate in the fossil fuel source over the south-central United States. Our estimate of C2H6 emissions, together with observed ratios of CH4:C2H6, suggests that CH4 emissions from energy production in the U.S. may be underestimated by as much as 50%–100%.


Envisioning the first book of the bible like no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator, reveals here the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest and deeply moving way. Originally thinking that we would do a take off of Adam and Eve, Crumb became so fascinated by the Bible's language, "a text so great and so strange that it lends itself readily to graphic depictions," that he decided instead to do a literal interpretation using the text word for word in a version primarily assembled from the translations of Robert Alter and the King James bible. Now, readers of every persuasion-Crumb fans, comic book lovers, and believers-can gain astonishing new insights from these harrowing, tragic, and even juicy stories. Crumb's Book of Genesis reintroduces us to the bountiful tree lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire that rained from the heavens, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh, where Joseph's embalmed body is carried in a coffin, in a scene as elegiac as any in Genesis. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretation that have often obscured the Bible's most dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of Biblical originals: from the serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing like an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a "kind've depressed guy who doesn't strike you as physically courageous," and his bother, Esau, "a rough and kick ass guy," to Abraham's wife Sarah, more fetching than most woman at 90, to God himself, "a standard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard." As Crumb writes in his introduction, "the stories of these people, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories. They were the foundation, the source, in writing of religious and political power, handed down by God himself." Crumb's Book of Genesis, the culmination of 5 years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling which celebrates the astonishing diversity of the one of our greatest artistic geniuses. Nominated for three 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards: Best Adaptation from Another Work, Best Graphic Album, Best Writer/Artist.


Being highly flexible in building dynamic, database-driven web applications makes the PHP programming language one of the most popular web development tools in use today. It also works beautifully with other open source tools, such as the MySQL database and the Apache web server. However, as more web sites are developed in PHP, they become targets for malicious attackers, and developers need to prepare for the attacks. Security is an issue that demands attention, given the growing frequency of attacks on web sites. Essential PHP Security explains the most common types of attacks and how to write code that isn't susceptible to them. By examining specific attacks and the techniques used to protect against them, you will have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the safeguards you are about to learn in this book. In the much-needed (and highly-requested) Essential PHP Security, each chapter covers an aspect of a web application (such as form processing, database programming, session management, and authentication). Chapters describe potential attacks with examples and then explain techniques to help you prevent those attacks. Topics covered include: Preventing cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities Protecting against SQL injection attacks Complicating session hijacking attempts You are in good hands with author Chris Shiflett, an internationally-recognized expert in the field of PHP security. Shiflett is also the founder and President of Brain Bulb, a PHP consultancy that offers a variety of services to clients around the world.


Although the mechanisms of ventricular fibrillation (VF) have been studied extensively in animal hearts, relatively few studies have investigated VF in the human heart. The aim of this study was to record epicardial activity during early human VF and analyse the electrical signals in order to characterise the complexity of activity and to estimate the number of reentrant sources driving the VF. In 10 patients undergoing routine cardiac surgery, VF was induced by burst pacing and a 20-40 s episode of fibrillatory activity was recorded from a dense array of unipolar electrodes spanning the entire epicardium. Dominant frequencies were computed using the fast Fourier transform. Activation times were computed at the minimum negative slopes of the electrograms. Phase singularities and activation wavefronts were identified and quantified. We found that early human VF was typically sustained by a small number of re-entrant sources that were associated with large and coherent wavefronts. However, at times we also observed a large number of small wavefronts. Our results suggest that multiple electrophysiological mechanisms sustain VF in the human heart. (4 pages)


Photo collage of the Cleburne baseball team in 1906. In the center of the collage is a studio photograph of the entire team with coach Doak Roberts seated in the center and young boy in front of him. Four members of the team are seated on the floor with the front two lying on the boy's knees. Surrounding the center photograph are thirteen studio portraits of the individual players with Coach Doak Roberts in the top center. Throughout the collage are cutouts of the players in action - catching the ball, batting and throwing. The players names are written illegibly underneath their pictures and the words, "Cleburne 1906" surround the center photograph. On the mat at the bottom is written, "In Group Doak Roberts, Bat Boy -"


In this paper, the analysis of one approach for the regularization of pure Neumann problems for second order elliptical equations, e.g., Poisson's equation and linear elasticity equations, is presented. The main topic under consideration is the behavior of the condition number of the regularized problem. A general framework for the analysis is presented. This allows to determine a form of regularization term which leads to the "natural" asymptotic of the condition number of the regularized problem with respect to mesh parameter. Some numerical results, which support theoretical analysis are presented as well. The main motivation for the presented research is to develop theoretical background for an efficient and robust implementation of the solver for pure Neumann problems for the linear elasticity equations. Such solvers usually are needed in a number of domain decomposition methods, e.g. FETI. Developed approaches are planed to be used in software, developing in ITWM, e.g. KneeMech simulation software.


The international attention increasingly being paid to Indigenous peoples culminated in the 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly. Nevertheless, the lack of accurate and consistent data on Indigenous peoples hinders the creation of concrete benchmarks and monitoring mechanisms for their development. Based on the most recent census questionnaires available for 231 countries and regions for which the United Nations Statistics Division collects statistics, this study identifies the proportion and geographic distribution of questionnaires that enumerated Indigenous peoples and variations in the questions used to enumerate them. The fact is that relatively few census questionnaires enumerate Indigenous peoples. Where they were enumerated, Indigenous cultures and identities were homogenized by many censuses, and classified as minorities rather than as distinct peoples. As a result, Indigenous peoples remain invisible in large areas of the globe and the United Nations, various governmental and non-governmental organizations, and Indigenous people themselves all face overwhelming challenges in their attempts to document the existence and circumstances of Indigenous peoples.


Mapping of parallel applications on the network topology is becoming increasingly important on large supercomputers. Topology aware mapping can reduce the hops traveled by messages on the network and hence reduce contention, which can lead to improved performance. This paper discusses heuristic techniques for mapping applications with irregular communication graphs to mesh and torus topologies. Parallel codes with irregular communication constitute an important class of applications. Unstructured grid applications are a classic example of codes with irregular communication patterns. Since the mapping problem is NP-hard, this paper presents fast heuristic-based algorithms. These heuristics are part of a larger framework for automatic mapping of parallel applications. We evaluate the heuristics in this paper in terms of the reduction in average hops per byte. The heuristics discussed here are applicable to most parallel applications since irregular graphs constitute the most general category of communication patterns. Some heuristics can also be easily extended to other network topologies.


A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.


A graph is called integral if all its eigenvalues (of the adjacency matrix) are integers. In this paper, the graphs $S_1(t)=K_{1,t}$, $S_2(n,t)$, $S_3(m,n,t)$, $S_4(m,n,p,q)$, $S_5(m,n)$, $S_6(m,n,t)$, $S_8(m,n)$, $S_9(m,n,p,q)$, $S_{10}(n)$, $S_{13}(m,n)$, $S_{17}(m, n, p, q)$, $S_{18}(n,p,q,t)$, $S_{19}(m,n,p,t)$, $S_{20}(n,p,q)$ and $S_{21}(m,t)$ are defined. We construct the fifteen classes of larger graphs from the known 15 smaller integral graphs $S_1-S_6$, $S_8-S_{10}$, $S_{13}$, $S_{17}-S_{21}$ (see also Figures 4 and 5, Balinska and Simic, Discrete Math. 236 (2001) 13-24). These classes consist of nonregular and bipartite graphs. Their spectra and characteristic polynomials are obtained from matrix theory. We obtain their integral property by using number theory and computer search. All these classes are infinite. They are different from those in the literature. It is proved that the problem of finding such integral graphs is equivalent to solving Diophantine equations. We believe that it is useful for constructing other integral graphs. The discovery of these integral graphs is a new contribution to the search of integral graphs. Finally, we propose several open problems for further study.


Disposables are increasingly being used in the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals. This article describes the design of a fully disposable process for the cGMP manufacture of clinical trial grade plasmid DNA. It addresses the rationale for implementing such a process with respect to the manufacture of patient-specific plasmid DNA vaccines for the treatment of leukemia. The process incorporates a number of disposable technologies, which are simple to use and thus reduce the need for investment in expensive equipment and cleaning validation.


Author(s): Cooper, Kyle | Abstract: How your daily gut busting routine may actually be preventing weight loss and pushing you closer to death In western cultures like ours, countries like the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada and other European nations, what's the first thing that anybody thinks of or tells you whenever the idea of weight loss is brought up? You've got to hit the treadmill, exercise bike or the streets and burn those calories!On the surface of it, this makes sense, right? After all, you're doing a lot of work and you're sweating and breathing heavy. Surely running a few miles every day must be dissolving those unsightly LB's like crazy, right?Would you be surprised to hear that this is actually wrong?No, I'm not crazy – let me lay it out for you…Yes, cardio does burn calories, it's true. And yes, some cardio is good for you. Light cardio promotes a healthy heart and increases your endurance. On the other hand, though… heavy cardio actually begins to have the opposite effects.Before I get into why, let me give you a simple but common sense example. Imagine pre-historic Man. These men and women are running around the Paleolithic world chasing down antelope, red deer, aurox, bison and the occasional wooly mammoth. Most of their diet comes from animal protein and what edible plants they can scrounge.Well, if cardio was so great for losing weight, these people would simply starve to death while running down their food. All that cardio would burn through their energy reserves faster than they could replace them. Yet they didn't starve to death… why?For one thing, a lot of heavy cardio is hard on your knees and feet. Second, it's also hard on the heart. Too much cardio actually begins to add scar tissue to your heart and increases your rate of heart attack. We didn't realize that for a while until many scientific studies were done on the subject.As for losing weight, excessive cardio actually has the reverse effect and here's why. Our bodies are genetically designed to survive. Our body's job is to store energy as fuel both for its immediate use and in the form of fat for those times when food is scarce. In modern times, of course, food isn't really scarce, so this built in safety feature is rarely needed.However, when you deprive your body of the nutrients it requires, either by starving yourself on some crazy diet or by over-taxing your body with lots of cardio, it begins to switch into survival mode.Additionally, and unfortunately with heavy cardio, your body also becomes anabolic.This means that it begins to burn the most effective source of energy first – and that's not fat… it's your muscle. Take a good look at some of these chronic long distance runners who compete. Many of them are kind of stringy looking and have to pack in the carbs just to maintain their muscle mass.You want your body to burn fat, not muscle, obviously. It's not really about calories, as many diets and so-called fitness gurus try to make you believe. Calories are only a means of measuring food energy. Yes, if you want to lose weight, you must take in less calories than you consume, yet there's so much more to it than that.The biggest secret to weight loss isn't running 10 miles every day, starving yourself or even avoiding some of your favorite carbs, believe it or not. In fact, if you're going to lose weight properly, it's actually important that you do eat some of your favorite foods!I know that sounds crazy, too – but it's absolutely true, and I can prove it to you! If you know how to use your body's natural processes to your advantage, it's entirely possible to lose 10, 20 or even 30+ pounds in a single month without starvation diets, gut wrenching cardio, ridiculous workouts and eating anything gross! It's true and I can show you the science to prove it!Want to know more about dropping some stubborn LB's right away? Then click this link and I'll show you a video that'll explain how and show you the science backed by independent clinical studies to prove it. http://bit.ly/click-here-for-fat-decimator-system-official-website


Performing your first Web site analysis just got a whole lot easier. Web Analytics For Dummies offers everything you need to know to nail down and pump up the ROI on your Web presence. It explains how to get the stats you need, then helps you analyze and apply that information to improve traffic and click-through rate on your Web site. Youll discover: What to expect from Web analytics Definitions of key Web analytics terms Help in choosing the right analytics approach How to collect key data and apply it to site design or marketing Techniques for distinguishing human users from bots Tips on using Google and other free analytics tools Advice on choosing pay and subscription services A detailed and accurate analysis is crucial the success of your Web site. Web Analytics For Dummies helps you get it right the first timeand every time.


Some of the applications of OWL and RDF (e.g. biomedical knowledge representation and semantic policy formulation) call for extensions of these languages with nonmonotonic constructs such as inheritance with overriding. Nonmonotonic description logics have been studied for many years, however no practical such knowledge representation languages exist, due to a combination of semantic difficulties and high computational complexity. Independently, low-complexity description logics such as DL-lite and EL have been introduced and incorporated in the OWL standard. Therefore, it is interesting to see whether the syntactic restrictions characterizing DL-lite and EL bring computational benefits to their nonmonotonic versions, too. In this paper we extensively investigate the computational complexity of Circumscription when knowledge bases are formulated in DL-liteR, EL, and fragments thereof. We identify fragments whose complexity ranges from P to the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, as well as fragments whose complexity raises to PSPACE and beyond.


A good stereopsis (depth perception) is needed in everyday life, regardless whether a person is a professional driver or chef. Good estimation of distance, and of what is further and what closer, could mean the difference between a crushed and a whole car or between a bloody and a healthy finger. The main theme of this Master thesis is detect and quantify major factors in depth perception. Do the younger estimate the depth better than the older; do they have better depth perception with greater or smaller pupil distance; does depth perception depend on gender; what happens with stereopsis when vision is fogged by +0,5 and +1,0 D? These are the questions dealt with in this Master thesis.
To answer these questions measurements were made on 51 subjects (mean age 45,0 +/- 13,32 years) of whom 25 were women, mean age 45,5 +/-13,55 years (12 with PD 66 mm) and 26 men, mean age 44,4 +/- 13,34 years (13 with PD 66 mm). Each of these four groups was further divided by age (one in range 20 to 35 years and second in range 50 to 65 years).
The measurements were made with a few assumptions. The first assumption was that stereopsis is in direct correlation with visual acuity, the second assumption was that persons with bigger interpupillar distance have better stereopsis, and the third assumption was that with age the stereopsis ability decreases.
The measurements were done with modified Frisby–Davis test expanded from four geometrical shapes to twenty-five circles. The stereopsis was measured with full refractive correction at 4,5 and 3,0 meters. Later, stereopsis was measured with fogging with +0,5 and +1,0 D at the 4,5 and 3,0 meter distances.
Statistically there is no correlation (or very weak) between stereopsis and the visual acuity for whole group of 51 test persons, but if only young test persons are taken in consideration, the correlation becomes significant, r(20)=0,566, p=0,009 at 4,5 m and r(20)=0,456, p=0,043 at 3,0 m and that matches the assumption. Stereopsis is in no or weak positive correlation with pupil distance r(51)=0,059, p=0,679, which is in total contrast to the assumption. Stereopsis is in positive correlation with age at 4,5 meters measuring distance, r(51)=0,371, p=0,007, which corresponds to assumption. In addition, stereopsis is better in females than in males by 32,5%.
Based on the results it can be concluded that the stereopsis is in negative correlation with age, in positive correlation with visual acuity, females have better stereopsis than males and statistically, the correlation between stereopsis and pupil distance (PD) has not been proved. The most important conclusion is that the decreased visual acuity brings significant fall of stereopsis. A deficit in refraction of -0,50 D decreases stereo acuity by about 90% (nearly 2x) and a deficit of -1,0 D decreases stereo acuity by about 220% (about 3x).
Keywords: Stereopsis, stereo acuity, depth perception, pupil distance (PD), visual acuity (VA).


Introductory engineering courses within large universities often have annual enrollments which can reach up to a thousand students. It is very challenging to achieve differentiated instruction in classrooms with class sizes and student diversity of such great magnitude. Professors can only assess whether students have mastered a concept by using multiple choice questions, while detailed homework assignments, such as planar truss diagrams, are rarely assigned because professors and teaching assistants would be too overburdened with grading to return assignments with valuable feedback in a timely manner. In this paper, we introduce Mechanix, a sketch-based deployed tutoring system for engineering students enrolled in statics courses. Our system not only allows students to enter planar truss and free body diagrams into the system just as they would with pencil and paper, but our system checks the student's work against a hand-drawn answer entered by the instructor, and then returns immediate and detailed feedback to the student. Students are allowed to correct any errors in their work and resubmit until the entire content is correct and thus all of the objectives are learned. Since Mechanix facilitates the grading and feedback processes, instructors are now able to assign free response questions, increasing teacher's knowledge of student comprehension. Furthermore, the iterative correction process allows students to learn during a test, rather than simply displaying memorized information.


This study explores the welfare effects of patent protection in a Romer-type expanding variety model in which R&D and capital accumulation are both engines of growth. It shows that the comparison between the productivity of R&D and that of capital plays an important role in the welfare analysis. When the relative productivity of R&D compared to capital is high (low), social welfare takes an inverted-U shape for (is decreasing in) the strength of patent protection, and the welfare-maximizing degree of patent protection is no greater than (identical to) the growth-maximizing degree. Moreover, the model is calibrated to the US economy and the numerical results support these welfare implications.


Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an (also known as The Koran) is the sacred book of Islam. It is the word of God whose truth was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over a period of 23 years. As it was revealed, so it was committed to memory by his companions, though written copies were also made by literate believers during the lifetime of the Prophet. The first full compilation was by Abu Bakar, the first Caliph, and it was then recompiled in the original dialect by the third Caliph Uthman, after the best reciters had fallen in battle. Muslims believe that the truths of The Holy Qur'an are fully and authentically revealed only in the original classical Arabic. However, as the influence of Islam grows and spreads to the modern world, it is recognised that translation is an important element in introducing and explaining Islam to a wider audience. This translation, by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, is considered to be the most faithful rendering available in English.


This paper constitutes an examination of what is perceived to be a backlash with respect to Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and similar educational campaigns. In it we review recent writings which relate to the importance of critical pedagogical spaces, and which problematize the emerging pushback against popular and political educational efforts to critique the occupation of Palestine. We also examine the history of IAW and chronicle attempts (within the Canadian context) to silence organizers and teachers associated with IAW. Finally we discuss the implications of this for further organizing and teaching about Palestine. Some of the questions at the heart of this paper are, "Why is this form of social justice education perceived to be so dangerous?", "Where is the impetus coming from to silence this form of popular education" and "What are the implications of these types of surveillance and silencing."


In this paper, dynamic response analysis of a heave compensation system is performed for offshore drilling operations based on multibody dynamics. With this simulation, the efficiency of the heave compensation system can be virtually confirmed before it is applied to drilling operations. The heave compensation system installed on a semi-submersible platform consists of a passive and an active heave compensator. The passive and active heave compensator are composed of several bodies that are connected to each other with various types of joints. Therefore, to carry out the dynamic response analysis, the dynamics kernel was developed based on mutibody dynamics. To construct the equations of motion of the multibody system and to determine the unknown accelerations and constraint forces, the recursive Newton-Euler formulation was adapted. Functions of the developed dynamics kernel were verified by comparing them with other commercial dynamics kernels. The hydrostatic force with nonlinear effects, the linearized hydrodynamic force, and the pneumatic and hydraulic control forces were considered as the external forces that act on the platform of the semi-submersible rig and the heave compensation system. The dynamic simulation of the heave compensation system of the semi-submersible rig, which is available for drilling operations with a 3,600m water depth, was carried out. From the results of the simulation, the efficiency of the heave compensation system were evaluated before they were applied to the offshore drilling operations. Moreover, the calculated constraint forces could serve as reference data for the design of the mechanical system.


T-shirt of white cotton, having short sleeves and a rounded neckline, which is printed with an artistic rendering of a portrait of Che Guevara, arranged as large main central portrait in black, surrounded by four smaller renditions in pale gray.

Acquired by the donor in Mexico City in 1971 from a vendor in the Mexico City Metro.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (b. June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina - d. La Higuera, Bolivia, October 9, 1967) commonly known as El Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution.


We prove a conjecture of Droste and Kuske about the probability that $1$ is minimal in a certain random linear ordering of the set of natural numbers. We also prove generalizations, in two directions, of this conjecture: when we use a biased coin in the random process and when we begin the random process with a specified ordering of a finite initial segment of the natural numbers. Our proofs use a connection between the conjecture and a question about the game of gambler's ruin. We exhibit several different approaches (combinatorial, probabilistic, generating function) to the problem, of course ultimately producing equivalent results.


The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century. Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed. By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era.... Download ebook, read file pdf The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries


Modern knowledge in physics is in need of new ideas in order to find answers to questions about the origins of matter, waveparticle duality, time, the Big Bang, black hole singularity, and evolution. As an effort to collaborate with the infusion of new ideas, this investigation was developed based on the philosophy of hidden variables behind (HVB). This HVB theory is originated from re-interpreting the fundamental concepts of energy delocalization from the atomic model of Bohr and the generation of electric charges in particles from the electromagnetic equations of Maxwell. In the theory, it is hypothesized that before the Big Bang, the electric and magnetic energy were initially totally delocalized, that is, spread over an infinite number of energy levels belonging to a tachyon-like parent matrix of matter that moves faster than the speed of light. The matter at this superluminal state is considered to be non-dual, theoretically having its energy acting 100% as a wave and 0% as a particle, hereby identified as pure energy. The luminal matter of this universe is considered to be distorted superluminal matter having lower than 100% delocalized and higher than 0% localized energy. The HVB theory introduces a new quantum field that attenuates the degree of localization of pure energy to allow particles to have different degrees of duality, so that duality can be scrambled. The model proposes that a Lorentz-like force acts on the fully-delocalized superluminal energy of the pure matter, causing a slowdown of its velocity, becoming localized luminal speed of light. The increase in localized energy leads to greater mass and charge allocation in particles. In the HVB theory, the universe was originated from a vortex formed of distorted energy-waves of the matrix, which created a gradient of attracted waves driven by increased in electromagnetic force, later developing gravity, forming an equilibrated "bubble" of luminal matter in the superluminal matrix, resembling a slower moving eddy on the surface of the rushing waters of a river. The motion of the bubble-universe in the matrix is represented from the wave point of view, in which the universe is entangled energy propagating through the matter of the matrix medium. The matter of the matrix being distorted to form the universe at point A is not the same matter of the matrix being distorted to re-form it at point B. This implies that what is really being propagated is the information or instruction of how to distort matrix matter to look like the universe, with the condition of replacing it with a slight increase in entropy. The quantum-controlled attenuation of the degree of localization gives rise to the particle plethora, allows crossing from particles to anti-particles, and explains how isotopes of the same element may decay at different rates. In the HVB theory time is considered another waveparticle. The concept implies that both waveparticles time and light must have non-zero mass. The flow of the waveparticle time is unidirectional, associated with increased disorder. The energy levels of time are organized by locating the occurrence of any event 1 (the cause) at a higher energy level than the immediate occurring event 2 (the effect). Traveling back in time is forbidden due to energy barriers to reach the past and the future. The theory acclaims the establishment of the fourth law of thermodynamics: Energy use is always minimized. This changes the modern view of the parallel universes. Black holes are seen as places of the matrix in which the Big Bang effect is reversed at a lower scale by returning localized energy back to delocalized, in which the singularity is seen as the place at which luminal physics collapse and superluminal physics takes over.


Grassland management has been increasingly intensified throughout centuries since mankind started to control and modify the landscape. Species communities were always shaped alongside management changes leading to huge alterations in species richness and diversity up to the point where land use intensity exceeded the threshold. Since then biodiversity became increasingly lost. Today, global biodiversity and especially grassland biodiversity is pushed beyond its boundaries. Policymakers and conservationists seek for management options which fulfill the requirements of agronomic interests as well as biodiversity conservation alongside with the maintenance of ecosystem processes. However, there is and will always be a trade-off.
Earlier in history, natural circumstances in a landscape mainly determined regionally adapted land use. These regional adaptions shaped islands for many specialist species, and thus diverse species communities, favoring the establishment of a high β-diversity. With the raising food demand, these regional and traditional management regimes became widely unprofitable, and the invention of mineral fertilizers ultimately led to a wide homogenization of grassland management and, as follows, the loss of biotic heterogeneity. In the course of the green revolution, this immediate coherence and the dependency between grassland biodiversity and traditional land use practices becomes increasingly noticed. Indeed, some traditional forms of management such as meadow irrigation have been preserved in a few regions and thus give us the opportunity to directly investigate their long-term relevance for the species communities and ecosystem processes. Traditional meadow irrigation was a common management practice to improve productivity in lowland, but also alpine hay meadows throughout Europe until the 20th century. Nowadays, meadow irrigation is only practiced as a relic in a few remnant areas. In parts of the Queichwiesen meadows flood irrigation goes back to the Middle Ages, which makes them a predestined as a model region to study the long- and short-term effects of lowland meadow irrigation on the biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
Our study pointed out the conservation value of traditional meadow irrigation for the preservation of local species communities as well as the plant diversity at the landscape scale. The structurally more complex irrigated meadows lead to the assumption of a higher arthropod diversity (Orthodoptera, Carabidae, Araneae), which could not be detected. However, irrigated meadows are a significant habitat for moisture dependent arthropod species. In the light of the agronomic potential, flood irrigation could be a way to at least reduce fertilizer costs to a certain degree and possibly prevent overfertilization pulses which are necessarily hazardous to non-target ecosystems. Still, the reestablishment of flood irrigation in formerly irrigated meadows, or even the establishment of new irrigation systems needs ecological and economic evaluation dependent on regional circumstances and specific species communities, at which this study could serve as a reference point.


This paper analyzes the evolution of U.S. patent law between the first patent act in 1790 and 1870, the passage of the last major patent act of the nineteenth century. During most of the nineteenth century, patent law developed in the courts, and instrumental to this development were a relatively small patent bar, a subset of the judiciary, and several repeat parties who played a role in a significant proportion of patent cases. Yet at several junctures, most importantly with the major changes introduced in 1836, but also through minor statutory changes throughout the nineteenth century, Congress intervened to alter the patent statute. We argue that this evolution is best understood through an interest group-based analysis, focused on the question of the choice of which institution interest groups select in their efforts to alter the law. The courts and Congress each present interest groups with a different menu of costs and benefits. Although the federal courts have generally been viewed as relatively costly to capture, we argue that the nineteenth century federal bench was less costly to influence than Congress in many instances. A relatively few judges heard the vast majority of patent cases, allowing the patent bar to seek change through the courts. There were two major and several minor patent statutes, as well. Interest groups turned to Congress for two reasons. First, despite the general agreement among bench and bar on the appropriate evolutionary path for patent law, there remained in American law a powerful strain of anti-monopoly thought, hostile to patents. Although most patent cases ended up litigated before sympathetic judges by the skilled patent bar, not every patent case did so and the proportion being litigated outside the small strata of experienced judges grew over time. And, because of the "democratic" nature of patent practice, patent law touched individuals spread across the country and made litigation before judges with an anti-monopoly orientation a real risk. Interest groups therefore turned to Congress on occasion to "lock in" changes in the law that they had achieved through the courts. They also sought Congressional aid in correcting occasional dead-ends reached in the law's development.


International intellectual property (IP) law has moved from the absence of any obligations on criminal IP enforcement in the 'pre-TRIPS era' to a flexible international minimum standard embodied in Art.61 of the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The recent WTO Panel Report in the China – IPRs dispute confirms the policy space WTO Members enjoy under the notion of 'commercial scale': the relative, situation-specific interpretation by the Panel leaves discretion to set thresholds for criminal liability taking into account domestic products and markets. While this paper agrees with this interpretative result, it finds that an important systemic flaw of the Panel's interpretative exercise is the absence of any serious consideration of the treaties' (i.e. TRIPS) object and purpose. As this paper argues, this flaw is endemic in IP related WTO Panel Reports. It is even more troublesome since WTO Members unanimously emphasised the importance of TRIPS objectives for the Agreement's interpretation in the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health. The second focus of this paper is a preliminary analysis of the draft provisions of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on criminal IP enforcement and their impact on TRIPS. The paper shows that the current status quo in international criminal IP enforcement is likely to undergo significant changes. If ACTA will become the next international 'gold standard in IPR enforcement', it will replace the flexible minimum standard of Art.61 TRIPS with a set of detailed and comprehensive rules on criminal offenses, liability and penalties as well as other specific remedies. Apart from adding new offenses, ACTA defines the qualification 'commercial scale' to include, inter alia, all wilful copyright infringements that are quantitatively 'significant' or, qualitatively, for a commercial advantage or financial gain. The paper argues that this not only contradicts the interpretation in the WTO Panel Report, but diminishes much of the current ability to tailor criminal IP enforcement to the domestic environment.


Developing applications for Android and other mobile devices using web technologies is now well within reach. When the capabilities of HTML5 are combined with CSS3 and Javascript, web application developers have an opportunity to develop compelling mobile applications using familiar tools. Not only is it possible to build mobile web apps that feel as good as native apps, but to also write an application once and have it run a variety of different devices. While the HTML5 specification is still evolving, there is a lot that can be used right now to build mobile web apps. Mobile web apps are now starting to provide many of the features that were once only available to native-language-based Apps in Java, Objective-C, etc. Pro Android Web Apps teaches developers already familiar with web application development, how to code and structure a web app for use on the Android mobile platform. Understand both the why and how of mobile web app development, focusing on the Android platform. Learn how to structure mobile web apps through a number of practical, real-world application examples. Discover what cloud platforms such as Google AppEngine have to offer Android web apps, for both hosting web apps and providing device to cloud data synchronization solutions. Get a real picture of the status of HTML5 on Android and other mobile devices, including some things to watch out for when building your own applications. Understand the capabilities of the web application stack, and how to complement those with native bridging frameworks such as PhoneGap to access native features of the device. Gain an understanding of the different UI frameworks that are available for building mobile web apps. Learn how to include mapping and leverage Location Based Services in mobile web apps to create engaging mobile experiences. Enable social integration with your Android web app and gain access to millions of potential users. After reading this book, you will not only have a greater understanding of the world of web apps on Android, but also how to leverage additional tools and frameworks to increase the reach of your mobile web apps. Additionally, through the practical samples in the book you will have been given solid exposure of where both the opportunities and challenges lie when building mobile apps the web way. What youll learn What Android web apps can do, and when to use web development rather than native development to create an application. How to use existing JavaScript and CSS frameworks to create rich mobile user interfaces. When to use HTML5 and when to use a native bridging framework to access native Android functionality. Connext with cloud services and APIs to build engaging location based services and games. Enable social integration with your Android web app and gain access to millions of potential users. Who this book is for This bookis targeted at web developers looking to transfer their skills over to mobile application development.Readers will understand that Android is continuing to gain momentum in the marketplace and will want to build an application specifically for that platform.They will have a strong desire to use web technologies rather than the native tools to build applications, either due to personal taste or to gain cross-platform mobile portability for the majority of their application code. Table of Contents Getting Started Building a Mobile HTML Entry Form HTML5 Storage APIs Constructing a Multipage App Synchronizing with the Cloud Competing with Native Apps Exploring Interactivity Location Based Services and Mobile Mapping Native Bridging with PhoneGap Integrating with Social APIs Mobile UI Frameworks Compared Polishing andPackaging an App for Release The Future of Mobile Computing Appendix: Debugging Android Web Apps


Through a series of recent breakthroughs, deep learning has boosted the entire field of machine learning. Now, even programmers who know close to nothing about this technology can use simple, efficient tools to implement programs capable of learning from data. This practical book shows you how. By using concrete examples, minimal theory, and two production-ready Python frameworks-scikit-learn and TensorFlow-author Aurelien Geron helps you gain an intuitive understanding of the concepts and tools for building intelligent systems. You'll learn a range of techniques, starting with simple linear regression and progressing to deep neural networks. With exercises in each chapter to help you apply what you've learned, all you need is programming experience to get started. Explore the machine learning landscape, particularly neural nets Use scikit-learn to track an example machine-learning project end-to-end Explore several training models, including support vector machines, decision trees, random forests, and ensemble methods Use the TensorFlow library to build and train neural nets Dive into neural net architectures, including convolutional nets, recurrent nets, and deep reinforcement learning Learn techniques for training and scaling deep neural nets Apply practical code examples without acquiring excessive machine learning theory or algorithm details


In Citizens United, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, and other recent cases, the Supreme Court has given organizations a newly-robust First Amendment right to use the entity's money in ways that stakeholders within the organization may find anathema and to discriminate against employees and members in order to advance the expressive interest of the entity. Yet, in Knox v. SEIU Local 1000 in 2012, the Court held that a labor union violates the First Amendment rights of dissenters if it levies a special assessment for political speech without first having dissenters opt in. The Court's jurisprudence on associational speech lacks any theory of when and why an organization's speech violates the rights of dissenters. Nor does it consider what kinds of internal organizational governance mechanisms are necessary to ensure a fair allocation of speech protections between those who wish the organization to promote one message and those who wish it to promote another. Moreover, the majority in Knox casts First Amendment doubt on the validity of the entire concept of collective bargaining by a union elected by a majority to represent all employees in a bargaining unit of government employees. As ballot measures in various states have been enacted or are pending limiting the rights of unions to raise and spend money on politics in the name of protecting dissident employees, a principled approach to the free speech rights of unions, corporations, and other associations is ever more needed. In this article we offer an approach to reconciling the First Amendment expressive interests of organizations with the expressive interests of dissenting stakeholders within them. We suggest an approach to resolving the inconsistency between Citizens United, the union-dues cases, and the Court's other compelled speech and associational speech jurisprudence. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, we suggest not that shareholders be given the opt out (or opt in) rights of dissenting union employees but instead that unions be given the same broad speech rights as corporations to use dues and fees paid by all employees on political activity.


For millions of legacy documents, correct rendering depends upon resources such as fonts that are not generally embedded within the document structure. Yet there is a significant risk of information loss due to missing or incorrectly substituted fonts. Large document collections depend on thousands of unique fonts not available on a common desktop workstation, which typically has between 100 and 200 fonts. Silent substitution of fonts, performed by applications such as Microsoft Office, can yield poorly rendered documents. In this paper we use a collection of 230,000 Word documents to assess the difficulty of matching font requirements with a database of fonts. We describe the identifying information contained in common font formats, font requirements stored in Word documents, the API provided by Windows to support font requests by applications, the documented substitution algorithms used by Windows when requested fonts are not available, and the ways in which support software might be used to control font substitution in a preservation environment.


In 1992 the Cadbury Committee report on the financial aspects of corporate governance was published. The Committee had been established following the failures of a number of high profile businesses in the UK which had shaken confidence in the market. Some nine years later, in 2001, the collapse of Enron sent shockwaves through the US market. As a result of the Enron collapse and various other high profile scandals in the years since its occurrence, the US is examining its own corporate governance structures and provisions to determine how these might be improved and help avoid another Enron. The EU similarly is developing principles and legislation to improve corporate governance, and scandals such as Royal Ahold and Parmalat have helped drive further governance reforms. In this paper we detail the development of corporate governance codes in the UK and the adaptation of similar codes in the EU. We discuss the role of the financial sector in corporate governance and how principles for regulation and supervision of the financial sector complement codes of conduct and legislation in the area of corporate governance. JEL Classification numbers: G34, G28, G22, G23


"This thesis examines the construction of knowledge and identity revealed through the perspectives and acts of the participants in, opponents to, and observers of the North Carolina Regulation. By so doing, this work penetrates the elusive worldviews and mindsets of eighteenth-century colonists, especially those living in the North Carolina backcountry. Documentary sources--including heretofore-neglected newspapers--serve as the foundational source material; a consideration of townscapes and landscapes is included also to illustrate their roles in the Regulation. Through this inquiry my thesis examines broadly the cultural mechanisms used by Regulators to construct and propel their protest against tyranny and corruption; intertwined with these issues are matters of representation and exchanges of power in this complex agrarian protest. Such a focus is designed to expand upon the existing literature on this subject, which generally examines the causes and roots of this struggle. "--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


The problem of efficiently finding similar items in a large corpus of high-dimensional data points arises in many real-world tasks, such as music, image, and video retrieval. Beyond the scaling difficulties that arise with lookups in large data sets, the complexity in these domains is exacerbated by an imprecise definition of similarity. In this paper, we describe a method to learn a similarity function from only weakly labeled positive examples. Once learned, this similarity function is used as the basis of a hash function to severely constrain the number of points considered for each lookup. Tested on a large real-world audio dataset, only a tiny fraction of the points (∼0.27%) are ever considered for each lookup. To increase efficiency, no comparisons in the original high-dimensional space of points are required. The performance far surpasses, in terms of both efficiency and accuracy, a state-of-the-art Locality-Sensitive-Hashing based technique for the same problem and data set.


"A Short History of Byzantium" is renowned historian, and author of "A History of Venice", John Julius Norwich's classic history of Byzantium. Constantine the Great moved the seat of Roman power to Constantinople in AD 330 and for eleven brutal, bloody centuries, the Byzantine Empire became a beacon of grand magnificence and depraved decadence...Here then are the centuries dominated by ferocious arguments over the nature of Christ and his Church. By knowledge, where scholars and scribes preserved the heritage of the ancient world. By emperors like Justinian the Great and Basil the Bulgar-Slayer - men pious, heroic or monstrous. By creativity, as art and architecture soared to new heights. In this abridgement of his celebrated trilogy, John Julius Norwich provides the definitive introduction to the savage, scintillating world of Byzantium. "Norwich has the gift of historical perspective, as well as clarity and wit. Few can tell a good story better than he". ("Spectator"). "A real-life epic of love and war, accessible to anyone". ("Independent on Sunday"). "Norwich tells a remarkable story with boundless zest. He offers character sketches of the appalling personages who infest his narrative ...with the assurance of a Macauley or a Gibbon". ("Daily Telegraph"). John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and, after a spell of National Service in the Navy, at New College, Oxford, where he took a degree in French and Russian. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for twelve years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut. In 1964 he resigned from the service to write. He is the author of histories of Norman Sicily, the Republic of Venice and the Byzantine Empire. He has written and presented some thirty historical documentaries on television, and is a regular lecturer on Venice and numerous other subjects.


There has been increasing concern about the impacts of exposure to chemical compounds with endocrine disrupting activities in the environment, especially aquatic environments, to wildlife and humans. South Africa is known to have used and abused most chemicals listed by developed and developing countries as endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Endocrinedisrupting chemicals have been reported in water, sediment and serum, as well as in fish tissue samples, at a level that could trigger endocrine disruption in humans and wildlife. Although some monitoring has been reported, particularly in water systems within the country, information on EDCs in other environmental matrices is scanty. The water systems monitored so far are very few. The strongest economy in Africa, and an emerging world economy depending on agriculture, mining, manufacturing and industry, needs to focus more on monitoring and to strengthen government organs and institutions to monitor and ensure environmental safety. Keywords : Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), phenols, phthalates, monitoring, South Africa


Happiness and lament in the house of Jacob The birth narrative in Genesis 29:31-30:24 is a coherent mini drama in its own right, although it is embedded in the patriarchal narratives and as such furnishes important background to the unfolding drama in Jacob's house. In this narrative, the reader is invited right into the intricate family relations of a dysfunctional polygamous marriage, where two rivals communicate with each other and their mutual husband by means of the names given at birth to their children and the children of their slave girls. This article focuses on the quest for happiness, which is evident in the births and name-giving in the house of Jacob. Although true happiness remains elusive, at the end both women receive their dues. God keeps a balance between the two contenders, but the birth of Rachel's son calls for a resolution still to come. The text is thus left open ended.


How should we regulate the U.S. financial system after the financial crisis, when we face the task with a radically inadequate understanding of what went wrong and what effect proposed regulations will likely have? This paper explores three quite different approaches to regulating in the face of severe uncertainty: the libertarianism of Friedrich Hayek, the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott, and the liberalism of John Maynard Keynes. Each thought deeply about the problem of how uncertainty affects human affairs, but each came to quite different conclusions about how to address such uncertainty. The paper outlines the core, immensely useful insights of each. It then outlines the even more useful and persuasive critiques that each launches at the other two. From this collision of viewpoints, the paper outlines a hybrid general approach to regulating the financial system which it (rather tongue-in-cheek) labels "cowardly interventions." This approach accepts the basic insight of Keynes that unregulated financial markets will be deeply unstable, causing periodic destructive depressions. Thus, fairly strong regulation of finance is needed. But following the insights of Hayek and Oakeshott, I argue that new regulations should be cowardly. We should as much as possible heed the wisdom embedded in markets and existing institutions. We should identify as best we can the biggest problems that current markets pose, and address those problems with new rules that are measured, limited, market-friendly, and subject to evaluation and pruning.This framework supports a three-part response to the crisis. First, the New Deal structure for regulating banks should be extended to the shadow banking system which was at the heart of the crisis. (What is "shadow banking"? Read the paper.) In that structure, the government acts as a lender of last resort to forestall panics, while using resolution authority and prudential regulation to replicate much of the discipline of an unregulated market. Second, more specific limited rules should address glaring problems in the mortgage securitization chain. Third, regulatory agencies should be prodded to constantly re-evaluate existing regulation in light of new circumstances. Using this framework, the paper gives a guarded defense of the Dodd-Frank Act. All three elements of a proper response are there in the Act. However, there are major concerns. Most importantly, the Act does not do enough to address the largely unregulated shadow banking system. The Act should also have begun the process of eliminating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even legislation without these weaknesses would not end financial crises forever. However, if the many regulations to implement Dodd-Frank are mostly well done, they may postpone the next big crisis for a decade or two, and they may make the next crisis shorter and less severe when it does happen. Dodd-Frank is imperfect even by the standards of a philosophy which emphasizes inevitable imperfection, but on balance it does pretty well under the circumstances.


Parenting has been identified as a key influence on children's temperament in the first years of life. This study examined the extent to which maternal sensitivity predicted infants' subsequent temperamental reactivity and adaptive emotion regulation and moderated the relationship between infants' early mother-oriented emotion regulation behavior and later adaptive emotion regulation. Mothers brought their infants to the laboratory when their infants were 6 and 16 months old to participate in 2 videotaped procedures at each time point which were designed to elicit negative emotions from infants (i.e., anger and fear). Mothers reported infant temperament at both time points. Researchers coded maternal behavior during periods of infant distress, infant negative reactivity and two types of adaptive emotion regulation behavior (i.e., mother-oriented and independent). There was modest stability in infant negative reactivity from 6 to 16 months but no evidence that maternal sensitivity to distress moderates this stability. Maternal sensitivity to distress moderated the relationship between reactivity at 6 months and the use of mother-oriented emotion regulation behavior at 16 months; however, there was no direct influence of maternal sensitivity on either type of adaptive emotion regulation behavior. Mother-initiated look-at-mother predicted the use of independent emotion regulation, but this association was not moderated by maternal sensitivity. In conclusion, different types of adaptive emotion regulation behavior appear to be influenced by different constellations of maternal and infant behavior.


Using a simple job market equilibrium model we study the relationship between work effort and monitoring by firms. Some other determinants of work effort investigated include the educational level of the worker, the minimum or start-up salary as well as the economic conjuncture. As common logic dictates, optimal work effort increases with the amount of monitoring done by the employer. Quite contrary to common logic, though, we find that at the optimum employers observe and control good workers much more stringently and meticulously than poor workers. This is because under profit maximization most of the employer's profit and surplus result from good workers and he risks losing a large amount of profit by not observing those. Managers monitor strictly more productive workers, fast learners and those starting at a higher autonomous level of monitoring, as those contribute more substantially to the firm's profit.


For decades the fact that input price hikes are passed on faster than input price cuts was thought to be well explained by the assumption that competitive firms fully pass on all input price changes, so they can't price asymmetrically, so asymmetric pricing behavior is limited to oligopolies, firms that do all sorts of bizarre things (finding yet another one being no big deal). However, Peltzman found no effect of concentration on such asymmetric pricing, raising the puzzle of why competitive industries generally price asymmetrically. This paper solves that puzzle.


Twenty-five years after it was decided, a legal scholar can still use McCleskey v. Kemp as shorthand for a Supreme Court decision that failed to protect the Constitution's most basic values. This Article uses Justice Powell's papers to gain new insight into how an opinion came to be written that engendered so much criticism. What emerges is a sense of how Justice Powell's belief in the legal system, when coupled with his distrust of "statistical jurisprudence," led him to place his faith in legal procedures despite statistical evidence that racial bias was infecting the death penalty. McCleskey is thus an important lesson that procedure, despite its many benefits, can have a dark side if it becomes a veneer obscuring injustice. Justice Powell's opinion, especially the final section of the decision, also provides important lessons about how a judicial opinion communicates messages that reach beyond the holding itself. Indeed, the Article compares Powell's opinion to the concurrence that Justice Scalia proposed but never wrote – a concurrence that would have acknowledged that "irrational sympathies and antipathies including racial" inevitably enter a capital jury's decision, but then would have found no constitutional violation. The Article ultimately asks: although Scalia's position might have provoked outrage, might not its candor in the long run have produced a more constructive response than Powell's opinion which appeared to adopt a position of willful blindness towards the existence of racial bias?


This book examines the idea of 'parental responsibility' in English law and what is expected of a responsible parent. The scope of 'parental responsibility', a key concept in family law, is undefined and often ambiguous. Yet, to date, more attention has been paid to how individuals acquire parental responsibility than to the question of the rights, powers, duties and responsibilities they have once they obtain it. This book redresses the balance by providing the first sustained examination of the different elements of parental responsibility, bringing together leading scholars to comment on specific aspects of its operation.

The book begins by exploring the conceptual underpinnings of parental responsibility in the context of parents' and children's rights. The analysis highlights the inherent constraints and limitations of 'parental responsibility' and how its scope has deliberately been curtailed in certain contexts. The book then considers what parental responsibility allows and requires in specific areas, for example, naming a child, education, religious upbringing, medical treatment, corporal punishment, dealing with any contracts entered into or property owned by the child, representing the child in legal proceedings, consenting to a child's marriage or civil partnership and the law's response to the death of a child. In the final section, the idea of the 'responsible parent' is considered in the contexts of child support, contact, tort, and criminal law.
Book description from publisher website at: http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781841138800


Abstract The aim of this paper was to analyze reasons and a range of changes in agricultural land areas due to allocation them for non-agricultural purposes across a period of 1990-2015 in Poland. This phenomena has not been sufficiently considered till now. Lack of this knowledge does not allow effective reduction of the decline of agricultural land by appropriate legislation and administrative action, especially on urban areas. In Poland, a significant proportion of agricultural land is allocated annually for non-agricultural purposes, which is connected with their permanent withdrawal from agricultural production. The permanent decline in the area of agricultural land in the country has been observed since the beginning of the systemic transformation. The dominant direction of the land withdrawal for non-agricultural purposes is their allocation to housing construction. In 1995 the Law on the protection of agricultural and forest land was introduced. This law includes strengthened economic tools for the protection of agricultural land in the form of mandatory charges for the withdrawal of agricultural land showing the best soil quality. This has led to a significant reduction in agricultural land use withdrawal. However, accelerated regional development following the accession of Poland to the EU and, then, the need to expand technical infrastructure resulted in several amendments to the 1995 Act, significantly weakened the protection of agricultural and forest land. It seems that the land as the unrepeatable good should be strictly covered by more respect and protection than ever before, especially in areas with the highest production value.


This work presents a new framework for Grobner basis computations with Boolean polynomials. Boolean polynomials can be modeled in a rather simple way, with both coefficients and degree per variable lying in {0, 1}. The ring of Boolean polynomials is, however, not a polynomial ring, but rather the quotient ring of the polynomial ring over the field with two elements modulo the field equations x2 = x for each variable x. Therefore, the usual polynomial data structures seem not to be appropriate for fast Grobner basis computations. We introduce a specialized data structure for Boolean polynomials based on zero-suppressed binary decision diagrams (ZDDs), which is capable of handling these polynomials more efficiently with respect to memory consumption and also computational speed. Furthermore, we concentrate on high-level algorithmic aspects, taking into account the new data structures as well as structural properties of Boolean polynomials. For example, a new useless-pair criterion for Grobner basis computations in Boolean rings is introduced. One of the motivations for our work is the growing importance of formal hardware and software verification based on Boolean expressions, which suffer – besides from the complexity of the problems – from the lack of an adequate treatment of arithmetic components. We are convinced that algebraic methods are more suited and we believe that our preliminary implementation shows that Grobner bases on specific data structures can be capable to handle problems of industrial size.


The SenseCam is a passive capture wearable camera and when worn continuously it takes an average of 1,900 images per day. It can be used to create a personal lifelog or visual recording of a wearer's life which can be helpful as an aid to human memory. For such a large amount of visual information to be useful, it needs to be structured into "events", which can be achieved through automatic segmentation. An important component of this structuring process is the selection of keyframes to represent individual events. This work investigates a variety of techniques for the selection of a single representative keyframe image from each event, in order to provide the user with an instant visual summary of that event. In our experiments we use a large test set of 2,232 lifelog events collected by 5 users over a time period of one month each. We propose a novel keyframe selection technique which seeks to select the image with the highest "quality" as the keyframe. The inclusion of "quality" approaches in keyframe selection is demonstrated to be useful owing to the high variability in image visual quality within passively captured image collections.


The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) requests assistance in preventing on-duty cardiovascular deaths among U.S. fire fighters. To reduce these deaths, NIOSH recommends that fire departments and fire fighters follow established medical screening guidelines, adopt risk reduction measures during fire fighting operations, and develop and participate in comprehensive wellness/fitness programs. To bring the information and recommendations in this Alert to the attention of the fire service community, NIOSH requests help from the following individuals and organizations: fire commissioners, fire chiefs, State and local fire district administrators, State fire marshals, safety and health officials, health care providers (physicians, nurses, etc.), human resource specialists, unions, labor organizations, insurance companies and editors of trade journals and other publications.


We review the functionality of a modular, component-based tool kit for Bayesian network development and inference. Beyond its operation as a standalone modeling and inference environment, MSBNx facilitates the development of standalone applications by providing a set of run-time components that provide Bayesian reasoning services when integrated into other programs. MSBNx inferential operations provide both inference about states of inference and about the value of information for unobservered evidence. The services and modeling environment supports both diagnostic and troubleshooting mingles observations and repair operations. MSBNx facilitates the development and use of new add-in components. The modeling environment provides a means for assessing distinctions and beliefs, and special interfaces and tools for representing the asymmetric nature of probability distributions.


Coming in the midst of the Rehnquist Court's federalism revolution, Printz v. United States held that federal commandeering of state executive officers is "fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty." The Printz majority's discussion of historical evidence, however, inverted Founding-era perspectives. When Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton endorsed commandeering during the ratification debates, they were not seeking to expand federal power. Quite the opposite. The Federalists capitulated to states' rights advocates who had recently rejected a continental impost tax because Hamilton, among others, insisted on hiring federal collectors rather than commandeering state collectors. The commandeering power, it turns out, was an integral aspect of the Anti-Federalist agenda because it facilitated federal use of state and local officers, thus ensuring greater local control over federal law enforcement and averting the need for a bloated federal bureaucracy. These priorities carried over into the First Congress, where Anti-Federalists were among the most vehement defenders of the federal power to commandeer state executive and judicial officers. Ironically, though understandably when viewed in context, it was Federalists who first planted the seeds of the anticommandeering doctrine. Incorporating recently uncovered sources and new interpretations, this Article aims to significantly revise our understanding of Founding-era attitudes towards federal commandeering of state officers. Moreover, the Article explains why early Congresses generally shunned the use of state officers and how this custom combined with shifting political priorities to quickly erode what once had been a strong consensus favoring commandeering's constitutionality.


Tibetan Buddhist prophecies of decline are largely unattended when it comes to practitioners' lived experiences. This article considers such narratives through a focus on a community of American Buddhists in California. The relationship between Buddhist narratives of degenerating future and the American landscape is played out through the creation and distribution of sacred objects, which are potent containers for—and portents of—prophetic futures. Ruptures in time and landscape become, through the frame of prophecy, imaginative spaces where the American topography is drawn into Tibetan history and prophetic future. Narratives of decline, this article argues, also find common ground with salient American rhetoric of preparedness and are therefore far from fringe beliefs, but a more widely available way of thinking through quotidian life.


Purpose Empathy is a key element of patient–physician communication; it is relevant to and positively influences patients' health. The authors systematically reviewed the literature to investigate changes in trainee empathy and reasons for those changes during medical school and residency. Method The authors conducted a systematic search of studies concerning trainee empathy published from January 1990 to January 2010, using manual methods and the PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO databases. They independently reviewed and selected quantitative and qualitative studies for inclusion. Intervention studies, those that evaluated psychometric properties of self-assessment tools, and those with a sample size <30 were excluded. Results Eighteen studies met the inclusion criteria: 11 on medical students and 7 on residents. Three longitudinal and six cross-sectional studies of medical students demonstrated a significant decrease in empathy during medical school; one cross-sectional study found a tendency toward a decrease, and another suggested stable scores. The five longitudinal and two cross-sectional studies of residents showed a decrease in empathy during residency. The studies pointed to the clinical practice phase of training and the distress produced by aspects of the "hidden," "formal," and "informal" curricula as main reasons for empathy decline. Conclusions The results of the reviewed studies, especially those with longitudinal data, suggest that empathy decline during medical school and residency compromises striving toward professionalism and may threaten health care quality. Theory-based investigations of the factors that contribute to empathy decline among trainees and improvement of the validity of self-assessment methods are necessary for further research.


Over nearly sixty years, Agnes Varda (b. 1928) has given interviews that are revealing not only of her work, but of her remarkably ambiguous status. She has been called the "Mother of the New Wave" but suffered for many years for never having been completely accepted by the cinematic establishment in France. Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), displayed many of the characteristics of the two later films that launched the New Wave, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless. In a low-budget film, using (as yet) unknown actors and working entirely outside the prevailing studio system, Varda completely abandoned the "tradition of quality" that Truffaut was at that very time condemning in the pages of Cahiers du cinema. Her work, however, was not "discovered" until after Truffaut and Godard had broken onto the scene in 1959. Varda's next film, Cleo from 5 to 7, attracted considerably more attention and was selected as France's official entry for the Festival in Cannes. Ultimately, however, this film and her work for the next fifty years continued to be overshadowed by her more famous male friends, many of whom she mentored and advised. Her films have finally earned recognition as deeply probing and fundamental to the growing awareness in France of women's issues and the role of women in the cinema. "I'm not philosophical," she says, "not metaphysical. Feelings are the ground on which people can be led to think about things. I try to show everything that happens in such a way and ask questions so as to leave the viewers free to make their own judgments." The panoply of interviews here emphasize her core belief that "we never stop learning" and reveal the wealth of ways to answer her questions.


Since it first appeared in 1971, "Rise to Globalism" has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The ninth edition of this classic survey, now updated through the administration of George W. Bush, offers a concise and informative overview of the evolution of American foreign policy from 1938 to the present, focusing on such pivotal events as World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and 9/11. Examining everything from the Iran-Contra scandal to the rise of international terrorism, the authors analyze - in light of the enormous global power of the United States - how American economic aggressiveness, racism, and fear of Communism have shaped the nation's evolving foreign policy.


Multiple scattering contributes critically to the characteristic translucent appearance of food, liquids, skin, and crystals; but little is known about how it is perceived by human observers. This article explores the perception of translucency by studying the image effects of variations in one factor of multiple scattering: the phase function. We consider an expanded space of phase functions created by linear combinations of Henyey-Greenstein and von Mises-Fisher lobes, and we study this physical parameter space using computational data analysis and psychophysics.
 Our study identifies a two-dimensional embedding of the physical scattering parameters in a perceptually meaningful appearance space. Through our analysis of this space, we find uniform parameterizations of its two axes by analytical expressions of moments of the phase function, and provide an intuitive characterization of the visual effects that can be achieved at different parts of it. We show that our expansion of the space of phase functions enlarges the range of achievable translucent appearance compared to traditional single-parameter phase function models. Our findings highlight the important role phase function can have in controlling translucent appearance, and provide tools for manipulating its effect in material design applications.


We report a novel survey that narrows the gap between information about teachers' knowledge of fraction arithmetic provided, on the one hand, by measures practical to administer at scale and, on the other, by close analysis of moment-to-moment cognition. In particular, the survey measured components that would support reasoning directly with measured quantities, not by executing computational algorithms, to solve problems. These components—each of which was grounded in past research—were attention to referent units, partitioning and iterating, appropriateness, and reversibility. A second part of the survey asked about teachers' professional preparation and history. We administered the survey to a national sample of in-service middle-grades mathematics teachers in the United States and received responses from 990 of those teachers. We analyzed responses to items in the first part of the survey using the log-linear diagnostic classification model to estimate each teacher's profile of strengths and weaknesses with respect to the four components of reasoning. We report on the diversity of profiles that we found and on relationships between those profiles and various aspects of teachers' professional preparation and history. Our results provide insight into teachers' knowledge resources for enacting standards-based instruction in fraction arithmetic and an example of new possibilities for mathematics education research afforded by recent advances in psychometric modeling.


Abstract. Following the launch of several satellite ultraviolet and visible spectrometers including the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), much has been learned about the global distribution of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). NO2, which is mostly anthropogenic in origin, absorbs solar radiation at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. We parameterized NO2 absorption for fast radiative transfer calculations. Using this parameterization with cloud, surface, and NO2 information from different sensors in the NASA A-train constellation of satellites and NO2 profiles from the Global Modeling Initiative (GMI), we compute the global distribution of net atmospheric heating (NAH) due to tropospheric NO2 for January and July 2005. The globally-averaged NAH values due to tropospheric NO2 are very low: they are about 0.05 W/m2. While the impact of NO2 on the global radiative forcing is small, locally it can produce instantaneous net atmospheric heating of 2–4 W/m2 in heavily polluted areas. We assess the impact of clouds and find that they reduce the globally-averaged NAH values by 5–6% only. However, because most of NO2 is contained in the boundary layer in polluted regions, the cloud shielding effect can significantly reduce the net atmospheric heating due to tropospheric NO2 (up to 50%). We examine the effect of diurnal variations in NO2 emissions and chemistry on net atmospheric heating and find only a small impact of these on the daily-averaged heating (11–14% at the most). We also examine the sensitivity of NO2 absorption to various geophysical conditions. Effects of the vertical distributions of cloud optical depth and NO2 on net atmospheric heating and downwelling radiance are simulated in detail for various scenarios including vertically-inhomogeneous convective clouds observed by CloudSat. The maximum effect of NO2 on downwelling radiance occurs when the NO2 is located in the middle part of the cloud where the optical extinction peaks.


"Operetta: A Theatrical History" is considered the classic history of this important musical theater form. Traubner's book, first published in 1983, is still recognized as the key history of the people and productions that made operetta a worldwide phenomenon. Beginning in mid-19th century Europe, the book covers all of the key developments in the form, including the landmark works by Strauss and his followers, Gilbert & Sullivan, Franz Lehar, Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, and many more. The book perfectly captures the champagne-and-ballroom atmosphere of the greatest works in the genre. It will appeal to all fans of musical theatre history.


May state courts entertain federal criminal prosecutions? Many scholars assume that the answer is "yes." From the Progressive era to the present, scholars have urged that state courts be allowed to entertain certain federal criminal prosecutions - prosecutions now within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts. These proposals aim to alleviate pressures on the federal courts caused by Congress's unabated federalization of ostensibly local crimes, by returning many such crimes to local courts for local enforcement. While scholars debate the utility of such proposals, this article focuses on a different and less well explored problem: whether such proposals are constitutional. A close review of the evidence - including the Constitution's framing and ratification, the early practices of Congress and the state courts, as well as more modern developments - suggests that there is far less support for the possibility of concurrent state court jurisdiction over federal crimes than is often assumed. In addition to these jurisdictional concerns, doubts would surround the question whether state prosecutors could be compelled or even authorized to exercise federal prosecutorial power, absent compliance with the Constitution's Appointments and Take Care Clauses. Even assuming such compliance, cross-jurisdictional prosecutions also raise the question whether criminal defendants facing federal charges in state court would enjoy various constitutional protections still applicable only in federal courts, as well as questions respecting the operation of double jeopardy and the location of the pardon power. While the constitutional problems may not be insurmountable, this article concludes that they are sufficiently pervasive and difficult that proposals for state court prosecutions of federal crimes should be rejected.


Objective To study the career progression of NHS doctors, comparing men and women. Design Postal questionnaire surveys. Participants and setting Graduates of 1977, 1988, and 1993 from all UK medical schools. Results The response rate was 68% (7012/10 344). Within general practice, 97% (1208/1243) of men, 99% (264/267) of women who had always worked full time throughout their career, and 87% (1083/1248) of all women were principals. Median times from qualification to principal status were 5.8 (95% confidence interval 5.6 to 6.0) years for men, 5.6 (5.4 to 5.8) years for women who had worked full time during training, and 6.8 (6.5 to 7.0) years for all women. Of the 1977 and 1988 graduates in hospital practice, 96% (1293/1347) of men were consultants, compared with 92% (276/299) of women who had always worked full time throughout their career and 67% (277/416) of women who had not. Median time to first consultant post was 11.7 (11.5 to 11.9) years for men, 11.3 (11.0 to 11.6) years for women who worked full time during training, and 12.3 (12.0 to 12.6) years for all women. Women who had not always worked full time throughout their career were over-represented in general practice and under-represented in most hospital specialties, substantially so in the surgical specialties and anaesthetics. Women who had always worked full time were under-represented not only in the surgical specialties but also in general practice. Conclusions Women not progressing as far and as fast as men was, generally, a reflection of not having always worked full time rather than their sex. The findings suggest that women do not generally encounter direct discrimination; however, the possibility that indirect discrimination, such as lack of opportunities for part time work, has influenced choice of specialty cannot be ruled out.


OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, February, 2009 ii


This qualitative study follows career changers, to tell their story and to analyze their experiences. Twelve new lateral entry teachers are tracked throughout their first five years of teaching in order to understand their perspectives of teaching before they began their career, during the course of their new career, and afterward. By careful analysis of these perspectives, educational administrators can provide improved services and support for these teachers.
Research reveals that more than half of all new teachers leave the profession within the first five years. By careful analysis of the perspectives of the lateral entry teachers in this study, services and support for this category of teachers can be improved and retention of these teachers increased.
The twelve teachers chosen for this study represent a cross section of lateral entry teachers spanning a variety of demographics. These demographics include gender, age, location, subject area, grade level, and backgrounds. This study provides insight into why lateral entry candidates choose teaching as their new career, why they felt they would be successful in teaching and whether or not they were, what perceptions of the teaching profession did these careers changers share, and how, or if, these perspectives changed over a five-year period. In general, this study tells the career changing stories of 12 lateral entry teachers who are or were in the classroom educating our children.


Fourth Amendment decisions primarily rely on balancing tests. None of these tests account for the fundamental flaw that skews the balance in these cases. The Fourth Amendment aims to protect the privacy of all individuals against government intrusion but is always presented to courts by a criminal defendant whose hands are dirty. Thus, when a court considers a balance of privacy interests against a government's interest in effective law enforcement, the government wins almost every time. Without mitigation of the central weakness in Fourth Amendment balancing — that a criminal defendant is protecting the rights of all of society — these constitutional inquiries fail to protect broader privacy rights and equal protection interests implicated by the Fourth Amendment.This Article takes an in-depth look at this fundamental flaw with an original and comprehensive analysis of Supreme Court cases and proposes a new model of the Fourth Amendment that alleviates this problem. This Article reveals that since 1990 the Supreme Court sided with government interests in approximately 8 out of 10 criminal procedure cases. It also discovers that parties fail to present data to courts, which leaves courts lacking appropriate information. This leads to what I refer to as "blind balancing." Indeed, blind balancing demonstrates several dangers — specifically common sense errors, inconsistences between similar cases, and reliance on hypothetical threats. After identifying these problems, this Article considers a new model for the Fourth Amendment. This model envisions a major shift in Fourth Amendment balancing towards considering broader statistical data and facts to inform decisions and educate courts to consider not only the defendant before them but the rights of society implicated in every case.


Tidal riparian wetlands serve as buffers between upland areas and the adjacent
river channel. The ability of these swamps and marshes to keep up with changes in sea
level depends on a combination on several factors including: sediment availability,
hydrologic regime, deposition rates, and below ground productivity, that control surface
elevation. This study examines sediment availability, deposition, and elevation change
across different types of tidal wetlands in the Lower Cape Fear River Estuary, North
Carolina. The study used marsh and swamp sites as well as sites along two different
stream types, black and brown-water, within the estuary. Marshes and wetlands along the
brown-water river exhibited significantly greater and more variable deposition rates than
swamps and wetlands located along the black-water river (0.720 ± 1.310 gm2day-1 and
0.710 ± 1.270 gm2day-1). The brown-water marsh site exhibited significantly greater
rates of deposition than any of the other sites. Organic content of deposited material was
highest at the black-water swamp site and lowest at the brown-water marsh site.
Total suspended solids measured once a month over a single flood tide were
highest at the black-water marsh (33.01 ± 43.54 mgL-1) and lowest at the black-water
swamp (3.07 ± 10.62 mgL-1). Measurements of surface water flow during a single ebb
tide at each site were examined along with the mean grain size of available material.
Results showed vertical flow speed and grain size were the dominant controls on
deposition in this system. Measurements of surface elevation at each wetland showed a
loss of elevation at the marsh sites and very slight increases at the swamp sites. When
compared to current rates of sea-level rise for the area, it appears that these wetlands are
not able to maintain their elevation in the face of rising sea-level.


A cyclic polytope of dimension $d$ with $n$ vertices is a convex polytope combinatorially equivalent to the convex hull of $n$ distinct points on a moment curve in ${\Bbb R}^d$. In this paper, we prove the cyclic sieving phenomenon, introduced by Reiner-Stanton-White, for faces of an even-dimensional cyclic polytope, under a group action that cyclically translates the vertices. For odd-dimensional cyclic polytopes, we enumerate the faces that are invariant under an automorphism that reverses the order of the vertices and an automorphism that interchanges the two end vertices, according to the order on the curve. In particular, for $n=d+2$, we give instances of the phenomenon under the groups that cyclically translate the odd-positioned and even-positioned vertices, respectively.


Transcript of an interview conducted during a walk through the Back Bay section of
 Boston, Massachusetts. Annotated by a research associate. The interview was
 conducted as part of the Perceptual Form of the City, a research project
 investigating the individual's perception of the urban landscape.


Isolated left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC) results from excessive trabeculation and impaired myocardial compaction during heart development. The extracellular matrix (ECM) that separates endocardium from myocardium plays a critical but poorly understood role in ventricular trabeculation and compaction. In an attempt to characterize solute carrier family 39 member 8–null (Slc39a8-null) mice, we discovered that homozygous null embryos do not survive embryogenesis and exhibit a cardiac phenotype similar to human LVNC. Slc39a8 encodes a divalent metal cation importer that has been implicated in ECM degradation through the zinc/metal regulatory transcription factor 1 (Zn/MTF1) axis, which promotes the expression of ECM-degrading enzymes, including Adamts metalloproteinases. Here, we have shown that Slc39a8 is expressed by endothelial cells in the developing mouse heart, where it serves to maintain cellular Zn levels. Furthermore, Slc39a8-null hearts exhibited marked ECM accumulation and reduction of several Adamts metalloproteinases. Consistent with the in vivo observations, knockdown of SLC39A8 in HUVECs decreased ADAMTS1 transcription by decreasing cellular Zn uptake and, as a result, MTF1 transcriptional activity. Our study thus identifies a gene underlying ventricular trabeculation and compaction development, and a pathway regulating ECM during myocardial morphogenesis.


The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence was pleased to present the 2009 Fall Symposium Series, held Thursday through Saturday, November 5–7, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. The Symposium Series was preceded on Wednesday, November 4 by a one-day AI funding seminar. The titles of the seven symposia were as follows: (1) Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, (2) Cognitive and Metacognitive Educational Systems, (3) Complex Adaptive Systems and the Threshold Effect: Views from the Natural and Social Sciences, (4) Manifold Learning and Its Applications, (5) Multirepresentational Architectures for Human-Level Intelligence, (6) The Uses of Computational Argumentation, and (7) Virtual Healthcare Interaction.