Older people's perspectives on their experiences of ageing and dependency shed light on the complex nature of dignity as a personal and social concept. In this study, participants revealed how, as they became dependent on others for support and care, their lives felt increasingly precarious and their sense of dignity was challenged. Influenced by their life-course experiences as well as by their social circumstances, their response to this challenge included both perseverance and adjustment to change. The attitudes and behaviour of others, including those of professionals, contributed in crucially important ways to maintaining their sense of identity and dignity.


Abstract This paper deals with the principle of subsidiarity in asylum law. It exposes some of the most important 'push' factors that have been considered by the European Union (EU) as arguments for the centralisation of asylum law. Through the application of an economic approach, this text examines the need for harmonization of asylum standards to reach the goal established in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. An economic methodology is used to investigate the application of the subsidiarity principle by considering some of the most important economic criteria for both centralisation and decentralisation, and by applying the findings to the asylum law. Specifically, this paper considers the Tiebout model, the problem of the 'race to the bottom', the reduction of transaction costs, and the importance of the protection of refugee human rights. These theories are commonly used in the cases of a specific issue with a transboundary nature, which produces [negative] international externalities. In addition, they reflect the significance of equal conditions within the EU Member States as well as the role of the EU as a sui generis organisation protecting human rights. It should be noted that this paper does not deal with the basic normative question of whether or not refugees deserve protection, but it aims to expose the advantages and disadvantages of an EU asylum policy. In its conclusion, the paper discusses the advantages of a centralised EU policy that also allows, within certain conditions, some type of competition between the Member States.


Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeIn this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority.Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past.Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.


Following in the wake of his groundbreaking War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Manuel De Landa presents a radical synthesis of historical development over the last one thousand years. More than a simple expository history, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and Flix Guattari, while also engaging the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics. Working against prevailing attitudes that see history as an arena of texts, discourses, ideologies, and metaphors, De Landa traces the concrete movements and interplays of matter and energy through human populations in the last millennium.De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In every case, what one sees is the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress, and even more important, free of any deterministic source of its urban, institutional, and technological forms. Rather, the source of all concrete forms in the West's history are shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter-energy itself.


In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo- European poetic tradition. Watkins begins this study with an introduction to the field of comparative Indo-European poetics; he explores the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and locates the various Indo-European traditions and ideologies of the spoken word. Further, his overview presents case studies on the forms of verbal art, with selected texts drawn from Indic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic languages. In the remainder of the book, Watkins examines in detail the structure of the dragon/serpent- slaying myths, which recur in various guises throughout the Indo-European poetic tradition. He finds the "signature" formula for the myth-the divine hero who slays the serpent or overcomes adversaries-occurs in the same linguistic form in a wide range of sources and over millennia, including Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Greek epic, Celtic and Germanic sagas, down to Armenian oral folk epic of the last century. Watkins argues that this formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text, and a central part of the symbolic culture of speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language: the relation of humans to their universe, the values and expectations of their society. Therefore, he further argues, poetry was a social necessity for Indo- European society, where the poet could confer on patrons what they and their culture valued above all else: "imperishable fame."


Springett, Martin. Breakfast on a Dragon's Tail: and Other Book Bites. Markham , ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2011. Print. This unusual volume by award-winning illustrator/author Martin Springett takes the "choose your own ending" idea to a whole new level by not providing an ending at all. In fact the whole book is made up of thirteen beginnings of stories, each accompanied by a full-page illustration, which might have served as a book cover. The book is designed to promote creative activities.  Springett tells children that each story "should have a beginning, a middle and an end" and that he has provided the beginning. He encourages children to finish the stories in any way they like, through creative endeavors ranging from poetry to a "chalk drawing on the sidewalk". Children are also encouraged to post their stories to publisher Fitzhenry and Whiteside's website, where "teachers and parents will also find useful information and classroom activities". Springett's art-work depicts the fantastic in each story. The first image, accompanying Breakfast on a Dragon's Tail, is bordered by patterns that recall a medieval illuminated manuscript. In the same vein, the letter "O" which begins the story is embellished with a dragon curled around it. The others are more cartoon-like. Springett's writing is very good . His story beginnings are engaging. In the Twelve Dancing Crocodiles the reader finds out that a magician and twelve dancing princesses have disappeared.   Are they the twelve dancing crocodiles? They are if you want them to be.  In The Nattering Tree, people sit under a tree and listen as the tree talks to itself. There are also lots of good one-line jokes in the story beginnings. In the Dithering Ducks of Deptford , one of the ducks says, "Never listen to a gnome! They are born naughty!" Another story, which has nothing to do with computers, is called Chip and Pin . In Dracula and Son , Springett irreverently refers to the characters as "Papa Drac" and "Drac Junior". It would have been entertaining to read Springett's versions of the endings. In fact, some children may be put off by the fact that they have to think up their own endings and entertain themselves. Because of that, this book will probably work best in a structured environment, where children have a reason to stay on track and complete the stories. Overall this book is an interesting concept, that is probably best suited to the classroom environment, so it is recommended with that reservation. Recommendation:  3 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


Over the past three decades, more and more research has been spent on understanding software evolution. The development and spread of versioning systems made valuable data available for study. Indeed, versioning systems provide rich information for analyzing software evolution, but it is exactly the richness of the information that raises the problem. The more versions we consider, the more data we have at hand. The more data we have at hand, the more techniques we need to employ to analyze it. The more techniques we need, the more generic the infrastructure should be. The approaches developed so far rely on ad-hoc models, or on too specific meta-models, and thus, it is difficult to reuse or compare their results. We argue for the need of an explicit and generic meta-model for allowing the expression and combination of software evolution analyses. We review the state-of-the-art in software evolution analysis and we conclude that: \emphTo provide a generic meta-model for expressing software evolution analyses, we need to recognize the evolution as an explicit phenomenon and model it as a first class entity. Our solution is to encapsulate the evolution in the explicit notion of history as a sequence of versions, and to build a meta-model around these notions: Hismo. To show the usefulness of our meta-model we exercise its dif ferent characteristics by building several reverse engineering applications. This dissertation of fers a meta-model for software evolution analysis yet, the concepts of history and version do not necessarily depend on software. We show how the concept of history can be generalized and how we can obtain our meta-model by transformations applied on structural meta-models. As a consequence, our approach of modeling evolution is not restricted to software analysis, but can be applied to other fields as well.


The Alien Tort Statute, enacted in 1789 as part of the first Judiciary Act, provides that "[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations. . . ." Although the statute lay dormant until the 1980s, the ATS has since become the font of transnational public law litigation in American courts. This litigation, frequently involving largely foreign parties and events, has become a form of civil-side universal jurisdiction. Like more traditional forms of universal jurisdiction, it allows American courts to hear human rights claims based on the enormity of the offense, even when the claims lack any significant ties to the United States. But unlike traditional universal jurisdiction, which is overwhelmingly a criminal phenomenon, the ATS places control over initiation and conduct of the litigation in private hands and engages the exceptional machinery of American civil justice.The Supreme Court sharply limited ATS suits last year in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. This article defends the Court's rejection of universal jurisdiction in Kiobel and assesses the future of human rights litigation in American courts. I make three main sets of arguments. First, I submit that the the scope of human rights litigation under the ATS is best viewed not as a sui generis problem of foreign relations law, as most lawyers and scholars have treated it, but within the more traditional federal courts framework of implied rights of action and federal common law. Kiobel's concerns about extraterritorial application of the ATS fit comfortably within this framework, and they suggest that the Court will be extremely cautious about expanding the scope of ATS litigation in future cases. Second, I contend that scholarly exploration of the ATS's terse text and limited history has reached the point of diminishing returns. The Framers of the First Judiciary Act could not have anticipated what ATS litigation would become, and they left us very few useful clues to answer, for example, whether aiders-and-abettors of human rights violations should be liable. The best hope for adequate answers to such questions lies with Congress, and the article proposes a number of reforms that should be addressed in a new statute amending or replacing the ATS. Third, I place the ATS in the context of broader debates about enforcement of international human rights. In this context, we confront two crucial questions of institutional design: reliance on supranational or national institutions, and public or private control of enforcement. I suggest that this debate, too, can be usefully informed by domestic debates about regulatory enforcement. But the international context affords a unique middle option, which is decentralized public enforcement of international human rights by national governments.


Social Networking Sites (SNS) have a high penetration rate among adolescents who are considered as the Net Generation. Many studies have shown that SNS can increase students' motivation to learn. Therefore, more and more instructors are trying to incorporate SNS into their delivery channels in order to better their student's learning outcomes. However, whether or not SNS effectively help students elevate their EFL learning performance still needs further investigation. This study plans to explore how EFL learners perceive SNS. A Facebook-based community of practice (CoP) was engineered by a group of English majors where English was the only language used. The study reports on a 3-month action research that monitored the EFL learners' engagements in Facebook's community of interest. The participants were forty-three English majors (N = 43), freshmen from a university in southern Taiwan, who have been actively using Facebook for more than a year. The results of the study presented an interesting aspect of the students' engagements in the activities, which were greatly influenced by the nature of the instructional activities and the feedbacks posted by their peers. Furthermore, results of an AHP analysis pointed out that these EFL students preferred involvement in instructional activities via the Facebook platform. They valued the criterion of interactivities on Facebook, with the greatest weight obtained from an AHP.


With increased use of educational technologies comes the need to not only evaluate whether or not these technologies are effective, but also how instructors can utilize these technologies to adapt teaching practices for maximized student performance on formal assessments. This study examines four specific aspects of LearnSmart™, an adaptive learning technology developed by McGraw-Hill Higher Education, and the potential effects these aspects might have on student assessment performance. With a focus on data from a module on cellular respiration, this study examines relationships between LearnSmart use and student quiz and exam scores. The results indicate statistically significant relationships when the module student score, module completion, total time spent on all LearnSmart™ exercises, and total average percent completion are used as predictors for exam score. Though other trends existed, most LearnSmart™ data is not a statistically significant predictor of assessment performance on a group level. Overall, however, all LearnSmart™ data can provide a useful tool for student self-reflection and for one-on-one interactions between instructor and student, including advising. Finally, in conjunction with data gathered from an optional LearnSmart™ student usage survey, and experience teaching and learning with LearnSmart™, the study concludes with best practices for instructors.


Making friends is a skill like any other-there are rules to follow, ways to measure your progress, and reasons why some people are better at it than others. Although it may seem like this skill comes naturally to those who don't have Asperger's disorder, nonverbal learning disorder (NLD), or other problems relating to others, the reality is that even the most popular people must constantly hone their abilities in order to make new friends and keep the friends they already have. This workbook includes forty activities you can do to recognize and use your unique strengths, understand the unspoken rules behind how people relate to each other, and improve your social skills. After completing the activities in this workbook, you will discover that you can get along with others and build friendships despite the challenges you face. All you need is the confidence to be yourself while still keeping the feelings of others in mind.


The secret to leadership and transformation of a group--or of another person--is the quality of the relationship one person has with another. The effective group leader or counselor will be the person who learns how to listen to other people. By studying and employing listening skills, church leaders will engage others more compassionately, allowing them to feel that their needs are being met. These skills can be used with persons who are terminally ill, inactive at church, going through a divorce, in a family with a severely ill person, unemployed, seeking a new church, grieving, traumatized by catastrophe, going through teenage adolescence, in marriage counseling, or leading a ministry team. John Savage offers eleven specific and teachable listening skills for improving relationships among those who do ministry in small-group settings or when offering counsel to others. The skills are taught through oral exercises and unfailingly helpful examples from actual congregational situations. The skills include paraphrasing, productive questions, perception check, expression of feelings and emotions, fogging, negative inquiry, behavior description, and story listening.


This section contains recommendations for a teaching sequence and timing intended to achieve learning outcomes through a three-hour class. The lecturer may wish to disregard or shorten some of the segments below in order to give more time to other elements, including introduction, icebreakers, conclusion or short breaks. The structure could also be adapted for shorter or longer classes, given that the class durations vary across countries..


This report is the result of an explorative study, carried out at a time when interest in apprenticeship for adults was on the rise and research and evidence on the topic was scarce and fragmented. It has explored the topic from a conceptual and theoretical point of view, reviewing relevant existing research. It has also considered a practical perspective, exploring policies EU countries and four non-EU countries - Australia, Canada, Norway and Switzerland - have in place in relation to apprenticeship for adults. It is the first report that addresses the topic from an EU-wide perspective. Largely based on data collected in 2017-18, the report includes findings from a literature review and field work. It confirms that adults increasingly participate in apprenticeship training, often due to policy interventions and measures that have removed barriers to such participation and provided incentives. The study also confirms that EU countries are fundamentally divided into two main apprenticeship function groups, with two different approaches (apprenticeship as a system; and apprenticeship as a type of VET delivery) in aiding participation of adults in apprenticeship.


Knowledge discovery from large and complex collections of today's scientific datasets is a challenging task. With the ability to measure and simulate more processes at increasingly finer spatial and temporal scales, the increasing number of data dimensions and data objects is presenting tremendous challenges for data analysis and effective data exploration methods and tools. Researchers are overwhelmed with data and standard tools are often insufficient to enable effective data analysis and knowledge discovery. The main objective of this thesis is to provide important new capabilities to accelerate scientific knowledge discovery form large, complex, and multivariate scientific data. The research covered in this thesis addresses these scientific challenges using a combination of scientific visualization, information visualization, automated data analysis, and other enabling technologies, such as efficient data management. The effectiveness of the proposed analysis methods is demonstrated via applications in two distinct scientific research fields, namely developmental biology and high-energy physics. Advances in microscopy, image analysis, and embryo registration enable for the first time measurement of gene expression at cellular resolution for entire organisms. Analysis of highdimensional spatial gene expression datasets is a challenging task. By integrating data clustering and visualization, analysis of complex, time-varying, spatial gene expression patterns and their formation becomes possible. The analysis framework MATLAB and the visualization have been integrated, making advanced analysis tools accessible to biologist and enabling bioinformatic researchers to directly integrate their analysis with the visualization. Laser wakefield particle accelerators (LWFAs) promise to be a new compact source of highenergy particles and radiation, with wide applications ranging from medicine to physics. To gain insight into the complex physical processes of particle acceleration, physicists model LWFAs computationally. The datasets produced by LWFA simulations are (i) extremely large, (ii) of varying spatial and temporal resolution, (iii) heterogeneous, and (iv) high-dimensional, making analysis and knowledge discovery from complex LWFA simulation data a challenging task. To address these challenges this thesis describes the integration of the visualization system VisIt and the state-of-the-art index/query system FastBit, enabling interactive visual exploration of extremely large three-dimensional particle datasets. Researchers are especially interested in beams of high-energy particles formed during the course of a simulation. This thesis describes novel methods for automatic detection and analysis of particle beams enabling a more accurate and efficient data analysis process. By integrating these automated analysis methods with visualization, this research enables more accurate, efficient, and effective analysis of LWFA simulation data than previously possible.


Mexico, in its quest for economic growth, moved from an import substituting inward-oriented policy regime towards an outward oriented trade regime since the introduction of the economic reform in 1985. In the form of stocktaking, this study examines the impact of trade liberalization (openness) on long run economic growth in Mexico by using data from 1980:q1 to 2008:q4 with the help of cointegration and error correction methods. The empirical results suggest that long run economic growth in Mexico is largely explained by trade liberalization (openness) and the level of capital (investment). The results, however, show that the contribution of labor force and human capital is minimal. This is somewhat surprising given increased educational spending over the last decade. The estimated coefficient of the ECM indicates low speed of adjustment to equilibrium. The sign of the ECM term is negative and significant, thus, confirming that the system corrects its previous period's disequilibrium by 20 percent a quarter. The policy implication of our results is that Mexico needs to intensify trade and investment reforms to promote sustainable long run economic growth. As an open economy, Mexico should continue to avoid real exchange rate overvaluation while minimizing exchange rate volatility. There is also the need to complement reforms in trade and investment sectors with reforms in the education sector.


Stanley defined a partition function $t(n)$ as the number of partitions $\lambda$ of $n$ such that the number of odd parts of $\lambda$ is congruent to the number of odd parts of the conjugate partition $\lambda'$ modulo $4$. We show that $t(n)$ equals the number of partitions of $n$ with an even number of hooks of even length. We derive a closed-form formula for the generating function for the numbers $p(n)-t(n)$. As a consequence, we see that $t(n)$ has the same parity as the ordinary partition function $p(n)$. A simple combinatorial explanation of this fact is also provided.


Memory forensics provides cutting edge technology to help investigate digital attacks Memory forensics is the art of analyzing computer memory (RAM) to solve digital crimes. As a follow-up to the best seller Malware Analyst's Cookbook, experts in the fields of malware, security, and digital forensics bring you a step-by-step guide to memory forensicsnow the most sought after skill in the digital forensics and incident response fields. Beginning with introductory concepts and moving toward the advanced, The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory is based on a five day training course that the authors have presented to hundreds of students. It is the only book on the market that focuses exclusively on memory forensics and how to deploy such techniques properly. Discover memory forensics techniques: How volatile memory analysis improves digital investigationsProper investigative steps for detecting stealth malware and advanced threatsHow to use free, open source tools for conducting thorough memory forensics Ways to acquire memory from suspect systems in a forensically sound manner The next era of malware and security breaches are more sophisticated and targeted, and the volatile memory of a computer is often overlooked or destroyed as part of the incident response process. The Art of Memory Forensics explains the latest technological innovations in digital forensics to help bridge this gap. It covers the most popular and recently released versions of Windows, Linux, and Mac, including both the 32 and 64-bit editions. Bonus materials include more than 20 real-world exercises, sample memory and code files, and even a formal presentation, syllabus, and test bank.


This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty (Cambridge U. Press 2009 forthcoming). In addition to introducing all of the papers in the volume, this essay introduces the organizing themes of the volume. Innovation is critical to economic growth. While it is well understood that legal institutions play an important role in fostering an environment conducive to innovation and its commercialization, much less is known about the optimal design of specific institutions. Regulatory design decisions, and in particular competition policy and intellectual property regimes, can have profoundly positive or negative consequences for economic growth and welfare. However, the ratio of what is known to unknown with respect to the relationship between innovation, competition, and regulatory policy is staggeringly low. In addition to this uncertainty concerning the relationships between regulation, innovation, and economic growth, the process of innovation itself is not well understood. The regulation of innovation and the optimal design of legal institutions in this environment of uncertainty are two of the most important policy challenges of the 21st century. Any legal regime must attempt to assess the tradeoffs associated with rules that will affect incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors and foster economic growth. Unfortunately, as this essay describes, our tools for assessing these tradeoffs are limited. Any coherent regulatory framework must take account of the low level of empirical knowledge surrounding the complex relationship between regulation - both through competition policy and patent law - and innovation, and the corresponding uncertainty caused by this absence of knowledge. The relationship between regulation and innovation has posed a significant challenge to antitrust economists at least since Schumpeter's suggestion that dynamic competition would result in "creative destruction," leading to a competitive process where one monopolist would replace another sequentially as new entrants developed a superior product. Interfering in this dynamic process for the sake of static efficiency gains is perilous, but, of course, not impossible. But regulators and policy makers must take (more) seriously the condition of fundamental uncertainty in which they act, and the significant costs of their inevitable errors before justifying interventions on grounds of promoting competition or facilitating innovation. This essay and the chapters in this book, approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective, relying on the tools of microeconomics, quantitative analysis, and comparative institutional analysis to explore and begin to provide answers to the myriad challenges facing policymakers. The strength of this analysis - often described as the New Institutional Economic approach - is in its recognition that understanding economic performance requires not only economic modeling of narrow behavior, but also an understanding of that behavior in its legal, economic, social, and political institutional context. The essay includes a table of contents for the book.


Computer simulations of complex multi- particle systems have attracted more and more research interest. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been used intensively in various scientific fields such as molecular biology, polymer physics, nanotechnology and many others. System properties measured at a certain time can be deduced from the coordinates and velocities of classical particles. If the interatomic forces are known with a good accuracy and the initial conditions of the system can be defined properly, molecular dynamics simulation can act as a computer simulation. It means that these results can be compared to experimentally obtained values and, more importantly, some other information about the system can be accessed, which sometimes is hard or impossible to measure. After a short overview on MD methods, several MD simulations will be presented. Thermal conductivity of polymer crystals is a typical quantity that is difficult to experimentally determine. This is because samples of large-enough single crystals of polymers for thermal conductivity measurements have not yet been prepared, therefore the single crystal properties can only be determined via computer simulation. In Chapter 3 we have summarized extensive calculations of the thermal conductivity of the δ -phase of syndiotactic polystyrene (sPS). Until now, only partial theoretical data dealing with thermal conductivity of crystalline polymers was available. This available data was particularly concerned with the correlation between thermal conductivity and the polymer's morphology and orientation [D. Hansen and G. A. Bernier, Polym. Eng. Sci. 12 (3), 204 (1972)]. In comparison with the amorphous structure of polymer a large anisotropy can be established in crystalline polymer as result of varied structural and morphological parameters in different directions. MD simulations permit us, for example, to restrict some oscillations and to set the bond length between two atoms, which can be done by addition of constraints in the system. Such artificial constraints limit the free movement of the particles which decreases the degrees of freedom of the system. In this study we investigated the sensitivity of the thermal conductivity to different numbers and locations of such constraints in different parts of IX the polymeric chains. It was found that the thermal conductivity has a tendency to decrease when the number of active degrees of freedom in the system is reduced by the introduction of stiff bonds. This dependence is, however, weaker and more erratic than previously found for molecular liquids and amorphous polymers [E. Lussetti, T. Terao, and F. Muller-Plathe, J, of Phys, Chem, B 111 (39), 11516 (2007)]. Another physical property of polymers, which has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in the recent times, is the understanding of the dynamic and static properties of polymer chains. Many technologies such as electronics packaging, coatings, adhesion, and composite materials are based on these polymeric properties. In Chapter 4 we discussed the physical properties of short polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) oligomers up to a chain length of ten monomers chain (H(-CH2-CH(OH)-)NCH3). The specific volume was found to depend linearly on the inverse number of repeat units N, a result that is in agreement with experimental findings for other polymers. The gyration radius was found to depend on the number of formula units via N0.65±0.03 . The exponent simulated is somewhat larger than the known N0.588 dependence for long chains in good solvents. We also discuss the orientation correlation function for different bonds in the chain. The relaxation times for these bond vectors, as obtained via the Kohlrausch- Williams-Watt expression, showed an exponential dependence on the number of repeat units. In Chapter 3 we studied the thermal conductivity of crystal polymer but under certain conditions and as a response to a temperature gradient, it was possible to correlate the separation between different chemical species. This effect is called the Soret effect or thermal diffusion effect and is quantified by the Soret coefficient (S-T). Although this effect has been studied for more than 150 years, a microscopic understanding of thermal diffusion processes in liquids is still unavailable. The precise prediction of S-T from theory and simulations and even the experimental determination for more complex systems is often a challenge. In Chapter 5, we studied the thermal diffusion behavior of an equimolar mixture of hydrocarbon chains in xylene. Hydrocarbon chains (alkanes and alkenes) with the same carbon number were considered in order to exclude the mass contribution and to investigate the influence of molecular structure on the Soret coefficient. Thermal diffusion behavior was analyzed in terms of static and dynamic properties of the mixtures and an explanation for the observed results has been supplied. Chapter 6 finally summarizes the main conclusions of the present study in the thesis and provides summary of the work.


In Western-European societies, two questions are currently at the centre of political debate. What is the scope and what are the limits of religious toleration? What is the proper role of the state with regard to religious issues? By addressing these two topics, Dutch constitutional law scholars commonly start from two presumptions. First of all, the presumption in favour of liberty (leading to a quite absolute interpretation of fundamental rights) and secondly, the doctrine of interpretative restraint by civil authorities with regard to religious matters. These presumptions are generally considered as uncontested axioms. It seems to me that both presumptions may be qualified, however. This will be done by elaborating on the views of two 17th-century scholars on religious toleration, the Englishman John Locke and the Frenchman Pierre Bayle. Interestingly,both formulated their insights during their exile in the Dutch Republic. It will turn out that the dominant interpretation of the presumptions rests on a too superficial reading of Locke and on a disregard of Bayle's insights, respectively.


Does the U.S. Supreme Court curtail rights and liberties when the nation's security is under threat? In hundreds of articles and books, and with renewed fervor since September 11, 2001, members of the legal community have warred over this question. Yet, not a single large-scale, quantitative study exists on the subject. Using the best data available on the causes and outcomes of every civil rights and liberties case decided by the Supreme Court over the past six decades and employing methods chosen and tuned especially for this problem, our analyses demonstrate that when crises threaten the nation's security, the justices are substantially more likely to curtail rights and liberties than when peace prevails. Yet paradoxically, and in contradiction to virtually every theory of crisis jurisprudence, war appears to affect only cases that are unrelated to the war. For these cases, the effect of war and other international crises is so substantial, persistent, and consistent that it may surprise even those commentators who long have argued that the Court rallies around the flag in times of crisis. On the other hand, we find no evidence that cases most directly related to the war are affected. We attempt to explain this seemingly paradoxical evidence with one unifying conjecture: Instead of balancing rights and security in high stakes cases directly related to the war, the Justices retreat to ensuring the institutional checks of the democratic branches. Since rights-oriented and process-oriented dimensions seem to operate in different domains and at different times, and often suggest different outcomes, the predictive factors that work for cases unrelated to the war fail for cases related to the war. If this conjecture is correct, federal judges should consider giving less weight to legal principles outside of wartime but established during wartime, and attorneys should see it as their responsibility to distinguish cases along these lines.


Against the two dominant strands in the secondary literature on Nietzsche's political philosophy - one attributing to Nietzsche a kind of flat-footed commitment to aristocratic forms of social ordering, the other denying that Nietzsche has any political philosophy at all-Tamsin Shaw stakes out a new and surprising position: namely, that Nietzsche was very much concerned with the familiar question of the moral or normative legitimacy of state power, but was skeptical that with the demise of religion, it would be possible to achieve a practically effective normative consensus about such legitimacy that was untainted by the exercise of state power itself. Although, as I will argue, there are reasons to be quite skeptical that Nietzsche was interested in anything like these questions, Shaw has laid down a clear and invigorating challenge to existing scholarship on Nietzsche's politics, and it is one worth meeting.


The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien, is considered by many to be the
definitive work of epic fantasy. Many critics have even gone as far as to declare Tolkien
one of the primary authors of the Twentieth Century. The scope and depth of meaning
contained within the pages of his trilogy, which consists of The Fellowship of the Ring,
The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, have touched millions of readers,
especially as evidenced by the way the works have garnered a broad and fanatical
audience within the United States.
Although the trilogy has maintained a consistently high degree of popularity and
acclaim worldwide since the first publication of the books in the 1950s, certain periods of
history have witnessed a marked increase in attention given to Tolkien's work. This has
been particularly apparent during times in American history when the nation has been
faced with internal strife or external conflict such as terrorism or the prospect of war.
Recent periods of history, which have exhibited these cultural characteristics and which
are the focus of this study, are the counterculture era of the 1960s, the Reagan
administration's efforts to restore a sense of nationalism in the 1980s, and the era of fear
and uncertainty that began with the tragedy of September 11th, 2001.
Focusing primarily on the facets of American society that find a shared cultural
relevance within the pages of Tolkien's epic, this study traces many of the possible
causes for this resurgence in popularity of The Lord of the Rings. Hence, the cultural
theories of Stuart Hall, Edward Soja, and Michel Foucault are applied within, as well as
Sigmund Freud's writings on the nature of the collective subconscious, and the repression
of trauma. The application of these critical approaches to the tendency of American culture to turn to fantasy in times of strife enables an examination of the socio-political
interaction between the themes inherent in The Lord of the Rings and the characteristic
traits of American culture that has embraced Tolkien's fantasy.


NOTE: Industry guides are administrative interpretations of laws administered by the Commission for the guidance of the public in conducting its affairs in conformity with legal requirements. They provide the basis for voluntary and simultaneous abandonment of unlawful practices by members of industry. Failure to comply with the guides may result in corrective action by the commission under applicable statutory provisions. Guides may relate to a practice common to many industries or to specific practices of a particular industry. (Authority: Sec. 6(g), 38 Stat. 722; (15 U.S.C. 46(g))


A person is 100 times more likely to get cancer at age 65 than at age 35. But new research reported Oct. 14, 2007 in the journal Nature Genetics identifies naturally occurring processes that allow many genes to both slow aging and protect against cancer in the much-studied C. elegans roundworm. Many of the worm genes have counterparts in humans, suggesting thatnew drugs may some day ensure a long, cancer-free life. The new research and a related study the scientists reported in Science last year indicate that cellular changes leading to longevity antagonize tumor cell growth. The studies are by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, who say the research also underscores the deep evolutionary connection between lifespan and cancer. The worms, known formally as Caenorhabditis elegans, were the stars of a startling 1993 discovery by UCSF biologist Cynthia Kenyon, PhD. She found then that a change in just one gene, called daf-2, doubled the worms' lifespan. This finding led to the understanding that lifespan is regulated by genes and is therefore changeable, rather than the inevitable result of the body's breakdown. The discovery in worms has been confirmed in other animals including mice. The new research by Kenyon and graduate student Julie Pinkston was reported in the advanced online edition of the journal. Kenyon is the American Cancer Society Professor and director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at UCSF. "This is very exciting," Kenyon said. "There is a widely held view that any mechanism that slows aging would probably stimulate tumor growth. But we found many genes that increase lifespan, but slow tumor growth. Humans have versions of many of these genes, so this work may lead to treatments that keep us youthful and cancer-free much longer than normal." Since her early finding that the gene daf-2 and another gene known as daf-16 regulate lifespan, Kenyon's research team has hoped to identify the genes that they in turn affect - those that more directly affect aging and tumor growth. "Now we are really getting there," Kenyon said. The gene daf-2 codes for a receptor for insulin and also for an insulin-like protein that promotes growth. It influences daf-16, which makes a so-called transcription factor - a protein that determines when and where hundreds of other genes are turned on. The focus of the new study was to identify specific genes regulated by daf-16 which affect cancer and/or lifespan. The scientists used an established tumor model in the worms. Then, starting with a list of 734 genes known to be targets of daf-16, they identified 29 genes that either promote or suppress tumor cell growth. They did this using several techniques, including RNA interference or RNAi, a powerful tool that allows scientists to control the expression of just one kind of gene at a time. About half of the genes stimulated tumor growth and half suppressed it, they found. Strikingly, about half of these genes also affect lifespan in animals that do not have tumors, further strengthening the model Kenyon and others have conceived in which the insulin receptor, daf-2, works in concert with the transcription factor daf-16 to link longevity and tumor resistance. The "downstream" genes appear to act in a cumulative way, they found. The genes that stimulated tumor growth also accelerated aging itself, and the genes that prevented tumor growth slowed down the aging process and extended lifespan. These findings greatly strengthen the view that the controls of lifespan and cancer have deep, common roots, Kenyon and Pinkston conclude. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.


From 1906 to 1934, Eugene de Salignac shot over twenty thousand 8-by-10-inch glass-plate negatives of New York City. As sole photographer at the Department of Bridges/Plant and Structures during that period of dizzying growth, he documented the creation of the city's modern infrastructure bridges, major municipal buildings, roads, and subways. For years, these remarkably lyrical photographs have been used in books and films, but never credited to de Salignac. "New York Rises" is the first monograph to present them as an aesthetically coherent oeuvre by a photographer with a unique vision. As meticulous in his record keeping as he was creative in his photography, de Salignac left five handwritten logs that identify each negative by place and exact date. This information is complemented throughout the book by narrative captions expanding on themes such as accidents, bridges, workers, and the Depression. Michael Lorenzini has unearthed primary sources to reconstruct de Salignac's biography. Kevin Moore explores his work in the context of other photographers of the period, including Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott.


We give a new short proof of Koren's characterization of graphic lists, extended to multigraphs with bounded multiplicity $p$, called $p$-graphs . The Edge-Count Criterion (ECC) for an integer $n$-tuple $d$ and integer $p$ is the statement that for all disjoint sets $I$ and $J$ of indices, $\sum_{i\in I} d_i+\sum_{j\in J} [p(n-1)-d_j]\ge p|I|\,|J|$. An integer list $d$ is the degree list of a $p$-graph if and only if it has even sum and satisfies ECC. Analogous statements hold for bipartite or directed graphs, and an old characterization of degree lists of signed graphs follows as a corollary of the extension to multigraphs.


The many philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists writing on metaphor over the past two decades have generally taken for granted that metaphor lies outside, if not in opposition to, received conceptions of semantics and grammar. Assuming that metaphor cannot be explained by or within semantics, they claim that metaphor has little, if anything, to teach us about semantic theory. In this book Josef Stern challenges these assumptions. He is concerned primarily with the question: Given the received conception of the form and goals of semantic theory, does metaphorical interpretation, in whole or part, fall within its scope? Specifically, he asks, what (if anything) does a speaker-hearer know as part of her semantic competence when she knows the interpretation of a metaphor? According to Stern, the answer to these questions lies in the systematic context-dependence of metaphorical interpretation. Drawing on a deep analogy between demonstratives, indexicals, and metaphors, Stern develops a formal theory of metaphorical meaning that underlies a speaker's ability to interpret a metaphor. With his semantics, he also addresses a variety of philosophical and linguistic issues raised by metaphor. These include the interpretive structure of complex extended metaphors, the cognitive significance of metaphors and their literal paraphrasability, the pictorial character of metaphors, the role of similarity and exemplification in metaphorical interpretation, metaphor-networks, dead metaphors, the relation of metaphors to other figures, and the dependence of metaphors on literal meanings. Unlike most metaphor theorists, however, who take these problems to be sui generis to metaphor, Stern subsumes them under the same rubric as other semantic facts that hold for nonmetaphorical language.


One of the most pertinent issues in contemporary European conflict of laws is the tension between Community law and traditional choice of law rules. The biggest problem comes not from the transposition of member state rules on choice of law into methodologically comparable EC Regulations, but rather from the so-called country-of-origin principle. This principle holds, broadly, that EU member states may not impose obligations on a provider of goods and services that go beyond the obligations imposed by the provider's home state. Originally conceived mainly with public law obligations in mind, the principle has an impact on choice of law insofar as it bars member states from applying their own law to the provider's conduct, even if they have the closest connections to this conduct. The exact relationship between the so called country of origin principle, and private international law, has long puzzled scholars and courts. Yet attempts at explanation and reconciliation have so far been unsuccessful because they started from an inappropriately narrow understanding of private international law. Integrating comparative legal history, this paper proposes a broader understanding of private international law beyond the current post-Savignyan approach. Thus broader approach makes it possible to recognize how the country of origin principle is remarkably similar to an almost forgotten and universally rejected private international law approach - the vested rights theory. The article demonstrates the parallels between the country of origin principle and US, English, French and German historical versions theories of vested rights. This insight presents an interesting challenge. The vested rights theory is now universally rejected because the criticism brought forward against it was and is felt to be irrefutable. One might think the same criticism would be able to bring the country of origin principle down, too. Indeed, the article shows how current criticism of the country of origin principle replicates to a large degree earlier criticism made against the vested rights theory. Remarkably, however, it shows also that the country of origin principle can refute the criticism. The return of vested rights, and its regained ability to overcome seemingly irrefutable criticism, hold a broader lesson. The rise and fall (and rebirth) of private international law approaches depends less on abstract considerations and more on general ideas and ideologies of the times - in this case, economic liberalism.


Marian Robinson's status as the live-in First Grandmother is an example of a growing trend in the United States - the multigenerational family. The 2010 United States Census Data reflects that the number of households with multiple generations living under one roof has increased by 25% this decade. Mrs. Robinson also reflects another new development in American families: grandparents helping their adult children with caregiving. More than 70% of grandparents are taking care of their grandkids on a regular basis, and 13% are primary caretakers. Many grandparents treat their role as caregiver like a profession, and they sacrifice jobs, residences, money, time, and part of their autonomy in order to 'retribe' their family. Often times, these grandparents are not as fortunate as Mrs. Robinson, and their selfless commitment to family not only reduces their current income, but also negatively affects their retirement funds and ability to care for themselves in the future. As the number of citizens over the age of sixty-five increases and the average age of grandparents decreases, these fundamental changes in the family caregiving network pose a threat to a significant portion of our population, particularly women, who make up the majority of grandparent caregivers. The impact of this family evolution on the older generation has yet to be examined from a legal perspective that goes beyond the traditional spectrum of family law. This article fills a gap in the legal analysis of family law reform in that it focuses on two underdeveloped topics: grandparents who are an integral part of the family, and the impending crisis of a significant aging population. This Article explores how employment, tax, and housing laws discourage intergenerational caregiving. Although research shows that grandparent involvement in their grandchildren's lives results in multiple positive outcomes, government support for the extended family network lags behind the social framework of today. This Article examines how other modern countries in Europe and Australia have adopted laws that reduce the economic strain of grandparent caregiving. It further argues that the transubstantive nature of family law requires advocacy for grandparents beyond custody and visitation rights. Expanding social welfare for grandparent caregivers will revise the concept of the system of laws that supports family care work and can reform the administration of federal, state, and local regulations governing work and family.


"Graphic Design, Referenced" is a visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. With more than 2,000 design projects illustrating more than 400 entries, it provides an intense overview of the varied elements that make up the graphic design profession through a unique set of chapters: principles - defines the very basic foundation of what constitutes graphic design to establish the language, terms, and concepts that govern what we do and how we do it, covering layout, typography, and printing terms; knowledge - explores the most influential sources through which we learn about graphic design from the educational institutions we attend to the magazines and books we read; representatives - gathers the designers who over the years have proven the most prominent or have steered the course of graphic design in one way or another; and, practice - highlights some of the most iconic work produced that not only serve as examples of best practices, but also illustrate its potential lasting legacy. "Graphic Design, Referenced" serves as a comprehensive source of information and inspiration by documenting and chronicling the scope of contemporary graphic design, stemming from the middle of the twentieth century to today.


In this dissertation we consider mesoscale based models for flow driven fibre orientation dynamics in suspensions. Models for fibre orientation dynamics are derived for two classes of suspensions. For concentrated suspensions of rigid fibres the Folgar-Tucker model is generalized by incorporating the excluded volume effect. For dilute semi-flexible fibre suspensions a novel moments based description of fibre orientation state is introduced and a model for the flow-driven evolution of the corresponding variables is derived together with several closure approximations. The equation system describing fibre suspension flows, consisting of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation with an orientation state dependent non-Newtonian constitutive relation and a linear first order hyperbolic system for the fibre orientation variables, has been analyzed, allowing rather general fibre orientation evolution models and constitutive relations. The existence and uniqueness of a solution has been demonstrated locally in time for sufficiently small data. The closure relations for the semiflexible fibre suspension model are studied numerically. A finite volume based discretization of the suspension flow is given and the numerical results for several two and three dimensional domains with different parameter values are presented and discussed.


[1] We present the first in situ measurements of HDO across the tropical tropopause, obtained by the integrated cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS) and Hoxotope water isotope instruments during the Costa Rica Aura Validation Experiment (CR-AVE) and Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4) aircraft campaigns out of Costa Rica in winter and summer, respectively. We use these data to explore the role convection plays in delivering water to the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) and stratosphere. We find that isotopic ratios within the TTL are inconsistent with gradual ascent and dehydration by in-situ cirrus formation and suggest that convective ice lofting and evaporation play a strong role throughout the TTL. We use a convective influence model and a simple parameterized model of dehydration along back trajectories to demonstrate that the convective injection of isotopically heavy water can account for the predominant isotopic profile in the TTL. Air parcels with significantly enhanced water vapor and isotopic composition can be linked via trajectory analysis to specific convective events in the Western Tropical Pacific, Southern Pacific Ocean, and South America. Using a simple model of dehydration and hydration along trajectories we show that convection during the summertime TC4 campaign moistened the upper part of the TTL by as much as 2.0 ppmv water vapor. The results suggest that deep convection is significant for the moisture budget of the tropical near-tropopause region and must be included to fully model the dynamics and chemistry of the TTL and lower stratosphere.


This paper updates a review conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 1996 in which the agency evaluated the academic research on the effects of changes in after-tax wages on labor supply in the U.S. economy. That review concluded that substitution elasticities were larger in absolute value than income elasticities and that the decision to work was more responsive to after-tax wages than was the choice of hours. In this update, we find that for men and single women, estimates of substitution elasticities have increased, and income elasticities still appear to be smaller in absolute value than substitution elasticities. We also find that labor supply elasticities of married women have fallen substantially in the last three decades, although they are still higher than the elasticities of men and unmarried women. Based on our review, the elasticities of broad measures of income (total income less capital gains) from tax return data are in most instances consistent with the labor supply elasticities estimated using survey data. We find little compelling evidence that high-income taxpayers have substantially higher elasticities with respect to their labor input than other taxpayers: While some studies have estimated higher elasticities of broad income among high-income taxpayers, those results appear to reflect those taxpayers' greater ability to time their income. In contrast, we find evidence that low-income workers have higher elasticities of labor supply than other workers, especially in the component of their labor response that reflects movement in and out of the workforce.


What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyds conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.


Hepatic fibrosis is a dynamic scarring process in which chronic inflammation stimulates production and accumulation of collagen and extracellular matrix proteins.[1,2] The hepatic stellate cells are the primary cells responsible for producing these extracellular matrix proteins. Over time, with chronic hepatitis C infection, the total extracellular matrix protein content increases and fibrosis can develop, with potential progression to cirrhosis.[3] This dynamic process can also involve remodeling and regression of the fibrous tissue via breakdown of the matrix proteins by the protease enzymes matrix metalloproteinases (MMP).[2,4] Balance of the remodeling process occurs with inhibition of the remodeling by tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMP).[2]


WARNING Only physicians experienced in cancer chemotherapy should use Cytarabine Injection. For induction therapy patients should be treated in a facility with laboratory and supportive resources sufficient to monitor drug tolerance and protect and maintain a patient compromised by drug toxicity. The main toxic effect of cytarabine injection is bone marrow suppression with leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and anemia. Less serious toxicity includes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain, oral ulceration, and hepatic dysfunction. The physician must judge possible benefit to the patient against known toxic effects of this drug in considering the advisability of therapy with Cytarabine Injection. Before making this judgement or beginning treatment, the physician should be familiar with the following text.


Pro Website Development and Operationsgives you the experience you need to create and operate a large-scale production website. Large-scale websites have their own unique set of problems regarding their designproblems that can get worse when agile methodologies are adopted for rapid results. Managing large-scale websites, deploying applications, and ensuring they are performing well often requires a full scale team involving the development and operations sides of the companytwo departments that don't always see eye to eye. When departments struggle with each other, it adds unnecessary complexity to the work, and that result shows in the customer experience. Pro Website Development and Operationsshows you how to streamline the work of web development and operations - incorporating the latestinsights and methodologies of DevOps - so that your large-scale website is up and running quickly, with little friction and extreme efficiency between divisions. This book provides critical knowledge for any developer engaged in delivering thebusiness and software engineering goals required tocreate and operatea large-scale production website. It addresses how developers can collaborate effectively with business and engineering teams to ensure applications are smoothly transitioned from product inception to implementation, and are properly deployed and managed. Pro Website Development and Operations provides unique insights into how systems, code, and process can all work together to make large-scale website development and operations ultra-efficient. What youll learn How to tear down efficiency-hampering walls between development and operations How to speed up product launches How to spend less time managing your IT infrastructure, andmore time speeding up team collaboration How to better understand how software engineering and system administration can work together How to improve communications between engineering and operations How to reduce software launch errors Who this book is for Software developers and engineers working to create professional, large-scale websites.


Scientists have found that rodents feel 36% less pain when a male researcher is in the room versus a female researcher. The rodents are also less stressed-out. The effect appears to be due to scent molecules that male mammals (including humans, dogs, and cats) have been emitting for eons. The finding could help explain why some labs have trouble replicating the results of others, and it could cause a reevaluation of decades of animal experiments: everything from the effectiveness of experimental drugs to the ability of monkeys to do math. Male odor could even influence human clinical trials.


Abstract. Mineral dust aerosols often observed over California in winter and spring, associated with long-range transport from Asia and the Sahara, have been linked to enhanced precipitation based on observations. Local anthropogenic pollution, on the other hand, was shown in previous observational and modeling studies to reduce precipitation. Here we incorporate recent developments in ice nucleation parameterizations to link aerosols with ice crystal formation in a spectral-bin cloud microphysical model coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in order to examine the relative and combined impacts of dust and local pollution particles on cloud properties and precipitation type and intensity. Simulations are carried out for two cloud cases (from the CalWater 2011 field campaign) with contrasting meteorology and cloud dynamics that occurred on 16 February (FEB16) and 2 March (MAR02). In both cases, observations show the presence of dust and biological particles in a relative pristine environment. The simulated cloud microphysical properties and precipitation show reasonable agreement with aircraft and surface measurements. Model sensitivity experiments indicate that in the pristine environment, the dust and biological aerosol layers increase the accumulated precipitation by 10–20% from the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada for both FEB16 and MAR02 due to a ~40% increase in snow formation, validating the observational hypothesis. Model results show that local pollution increases precipitation over the windward slope of the mountains by a few percent due to increased snow formation when dust is present, but reduces precipitation by 5–8% if dust is removed on FEB16. The effects of local pollution on cloud microphysics and precipitation strongly depend on meteorology, including cloud dynamics and the strength of the Sierra Barrier Jet. This study further underscores the importance of the interactions between local pollution, dust, and environmental conditions for assessing aerosol effects on cold-season precipitation in California.


An oil and gas extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing (also called fracing, fracking, or hydrofracking) has swept the country and has raised the stakes of the energy policy debate. As operators drill thousands of new wells and inject water and chemicals down these wells in order to fracture underground shale and tight sandstone formations, concerned citizens' groups and the media have pointed to flaming tap water and have worried about chemical contamination; at the same time, industry representatives and many state regulators have sworn that the practice has never contaminated groundwater. The outpouring of attention to injection — just one stage of a complex well development process — threatens to distract from the core issues of "tight" oil and gas development, and to leave the most pressing concerns unaddressed. Through a comparison of regulation and of alleged violations of environmental and oil and gas laws at hydraulically fractured well sites, this Article illuminates the factors that must inform policy and regulatory changes that guide modern oil and gas development. The examples of violations so far suggest that the most pressing risks may predominantly arise not from the injection of chemicals and water underground but from other stages of the well development process introduced by fracturing, and from the higher rate of well drilling spurred by fracturing. This does not suggest that fracturing itself poses no risks. Rather, we must recognize the new risks introduced by several non-injection stages essential to the fracturing process, as well as the drilling enabled by fracturing, and we must shift our attention to the most problematic stages. Chemicals may spill when transported to well sites, and more and new types of wastes must be stored and disposed of, for example. Furthermore, methane may contaminate underground water sources during the drilling process preceding fracturing. If policymakers and regulators allow drilling and fracturing to continue at their current frenzied pace, it is imperative that they change course to recognize and respond to these core risks. The analysis in this Article offers an initial path forward.


Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) have been identified as a mechanism through which complete and consistent spatial data sets can be accessed and retrieved. Whilst SDIs have been developing, wireless communication technologies have been undergoing a rapid evolution. The convergence of wireless communications, positioning technology and SDIs are providing new facilities, new applications and as a result, new challenges for spatial data providers and users. To capitalise on the opportunities presented through the merger of these key areas, the design of SDIs may require modification. Naturally, different applications will have different spatial data requirements, however it is envisaged that there will be common infrastructure requirements (such as data sets, query and delivery mechanisms) that will be applicable for a range of wireless applications. One of the most important issues in relation to delivering information to wireless users is that of data currency. It is imperative that a mobile user be provided with accurate, up to date data. Whilst this is also an important issue for non-mobile users, it is particularly important for users 'on the move'. Thus rather than individual organisations duplicating and maintaining data sets, providing access through a standard SDI would be most beneficial. Infrastructure requirements for Australian wireless applications that utilise spatial information will be determined through the development of a personal navigation system for the visually impaired. The accuracy and reliability requirements of a navigation solution for a visually impaired person are much greater than for a sighted person, thus the rigour of the data content and delivery methods is of paramount importance. This paper overviews the components and issues that need to be considered when building wireless applications that utilise location information. The prototype development will also be discussed to highlight the infrastructure requirements necessary for the proposed technology combination.


Article history: Received 11 June 2014 Received in revised form 21 September 2014 Accepted 25 November 2014 Available online 29 December 2014


Recent studies have demonstrated the seriousness of bullying in American
schools. In a nationally representative sample of over 15,686 students in the United
States, 30% self-reported frequent involvement in bullying at school, with 13%
participating as a bully, 11% as a victim, and 6% as both. School bullying is associated
with numerous physical, mental, and social detriments. A relationship also exists
between student bullying behavior and school issues such as academic achievement,
school environment, and absenteeism. Prevention of school bullying should become a
priority issues for schools.
The purpose of this document is to assist administrators and teachers dealing with
bullying in their schools. Background information about the term" bullying" is provided
along with descriptions of different proven bullying programs for school settings. One
specific proven bullying program is selected and implemented for a pilot study in an
elementary/middle school setting demonstrating bullying behaviors. Methodology of the
program components is specifically outlined and results of program implementation are
evaluated. Conclusions are made discussing the importance of professional staff
development relating to the topic of bullying in the school setting.


Intergenerational groups are a community-based group concept designed to engage and mobilize often untapped resources of older adults in effective interaction with younger populations. These groups support an atmosphere of synergistic interaction. Members of each generation share reflections on interpersonal strengths and capacities and rediscover emotional and spiritual anchors and bonding. Illustrated here is Community Connections (CC), developed using the phase driven participatory culture-specific intervention model (PCSIM; Nastasi, Moore & Varjas, 2004) that included self selected local older adults, caregivers, and multicultural exchange students. The program was structured to offer mutual opportunities for activities built around exchanging cultural and life experiences. The goals were: 1) to reduce social isolation due to age, culture, or disability 2) for international students to practice English and learn about local cultural traditions, and 3) to build intergenerational 'extended family' relationships.


We show that the moments of the trace of a random unitary matrix have combinatorial interpretations in terms of longest increasing subsequences of permutations. To be precise, we show that the $2n$-th moment of the trace of a random $k$-dimensional unitary matrix is equal to the number of permutations of length $n$ with no increasing subsequence of length greater than $k$. We then generalize this to other expectations over the unitary group, as well as expectations over the orthogonal and symplectic groups. In each case, the expectations count objects with restricted "increasing subsequence" length.


Using nonparametric descriptive tools developed by Duranton and Overman (2005), we show that both new and old auto supplier plants are highly concentrated in the eastern United States. Conditional logit models imply that much of this concentration can be explained parametrically by distance from Detroit, proximity to assembly plants, and access to the interstate highway system. New plants are more likely to be located in zip codes that are close to existing supplier plants. However, the degree of clustering observed is still greater than implied by the logit estimates.


This project develops a social history of a Muslim American punk rock subculture, The Taqwacores. This social history examines the social context in the United States that has facilitated the emergence of Taqwacore, specifically the cultural, political, and social influences in the lives of Taqwacore members. This social history also examines how individuals explain and understand their involvement with Taqwacore and their combination of these two seemingly paradoxical identities. Methods include an analysis of publications about The Taqwacores to understand how the media conceptualize Taqwacore and interviews with musicians and fans in order to understand Taqwacore on an individual level, explore the personal experiences of specific Muslim Americans with Taqwacore, and determine specific motivating factors for involvement in Taqwacore. Drawing on subcultural theory, theories of punk rock, and recent studies on Islamic identity in United States, Taqwacore is conceptualized as an expression of a dual frustration toward the United States and Islam for the individuals involved. Taqwacore also serves as a form of resistance to this dual frustration, a community for those involved, a re-appropriation of punk rock within the United States, and a source of both individual and collective identity construction.


Background The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has placed an unprecedented health and economic burden on countries at all levels of socioeconomic development, emphasizing the need to evaluate the most effective vaccination strategy in multiple, diverse environments. The high reported efficacy, low cost, and long shelf-life of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine positions it well for evaluation in different settings. Methods Using data from the ongoing ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 clinical trials, an individual-based model was constructed to predict the 6-month population-level impact of vaccine deployment. A detailed probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) was developed to evaluate the importance of epidemiological, demographic, immunological, and logistical factors in determining vaccine effectiveness. Using representative countries, logistical plans for vaccination rollout at various levels of vaccine availability and delivery speed, conditional on vaccine efficacy profiles (efficacy of the booster dose, time interval between doses, and relative efficacy of the first dose) were explored.Findings and Interpretation Our results highlight how expedient vaccine delivery to high-risk groups is critical in mitigating COVID-19 disease and mortality. In scenarios where the number of vaccine doses available is insufficient for high-risk groups (those aged more than 65 years) to receive two vaccine doses, administration of a single dose of vaccine is optimal. This effect is consistent even when vaccine efficacy after one dose is just 75% of the levels achieved after two doses. These findings offer a nuanced perspective of the critical drivers of COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness and can inform optimal allocation strategies. These are relevant to high-income countries with a large high-risk group population as well as to low-income countries with younger populations, where the cost and logistical challenges of procuring and delivering two doses for each citizen represent a significant challenge.


10.1074/jbc.M113.459230 Access the most updated version of this article at doi: . JBC Affinity Sites Find articles, minireviews, Reflections and Classics on similar topics on the Alerts: When a correction for this article is posted • When this article is cited • to choose from all of JBC's e-mail alerts Click here http://www.jbc.org/content/288/29/21351.full.html#ref-list-1 This article cites 98 references, 49 of which can be accessed free at


From the Publisher:
The fault line -- that dangerous, unstable seam in the economy where powerful innovations and savage competition meet and create market-shattering tremors. Every company lives on it; no manager can control it.
In the original edition of Living on the Fault Line, Geoffrey Moore presented a compelling argument for using shareholder value (or share price) as the key driver in management decisions. Moore now revisits his argument in the post-Internet bubble world, proving that the methods he espouses are more germane than ever and showing companies how to use them to survive and thrive in today's demanding economy.
Extending the themes of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, his first two books on the dynamics of the high-tech markets, Moore shows why sensitivity to stock price is the single most important lever for managing in the future, both as a leading indicator of shifts in competitive advantage and as an employee motivator for making necessary changes in organizations heretofore impervious to change.
This revised and updated edition includes:
A deeper emphasis on core versus context, which has emerged as the key distinction in allocating resources to improve shareholder value A new Competitive Advantage Grid that will aid managers in achieving and sustaining competitive advantage, the most important component in managing for shareholder value An expanded Value Discipline Model as it relates to the Competitive Advantage Grid Analysis of the powerful new trend toward core/context analysis and outsourcing production duties Updated models of organizational change for each stage of market development

As disruptive forces continue to buffet the marketplace and rattle the staid practices of the past, Moore offers a brilliant set of navigational tools to help meet today's most compelling management challenges.


As a means to investigate the applicability of the direct tensile strength (DT) test as a surrogate fatigue crack test, the ductility and fatigue crack resistance potential of various asphalt (HMA) mixes were evaluated in the laboratory using the DT test, at ambient temperature (20°C) and a displacement loading rate of 1,27 mm/min. Various HMA mixes were included in the DT test program and the results were compared with those of the Overlay Tester, also conducted at ambient temperature. Up to 23 commonly used Texas HMA mixes with different mix design characteristics were evaluated and are discussed in this paper. The results indicated that the mix design volumetrics, such as the asphalt binder content and aggregate gradation, play a significant role in the ductility and fatigue crack resistance potential of HMA mixes. The denseto fine-graded HMA mixes with high asphalt binder content exhibited better ductility potential and laboratory fatigue crack resistance than the coarse-and open-graded mixes. Overall, the DT test was found to be a promising surrogate fatigue crack test for mix design and HMA mix screening for fatigue crack resistance in the laboratory. Recommendations to improve the test protocol are included in the paper. However, sample fabrication and test set-up were the two critical issues found to be associated with the DT test.


How Indigenous communities choose to represent spaces or spatial information is integral to constructing and archiving cultural memory, articulating current environmental use, and dealing with evidentiary issues for title or land claim cases. For Indigenous communities around the world, the legacy of Western (often, colonial) cartography and spatial theory is disconnected from the many distinct narratives of space (and time) in Native communities. Specifically in legal situations, this disconnect often reflects a power struggle between a Western, Cartesian division of space and time, and a relational, dynamic capitulation of space and time by an Indigenous group. Indigenous communities attempting to utilize Western legal forums for recognition of their rights face evidentiary hurdles caused by the ethnocentrism inherently built into legal systems. Although exceptions exist to hearsay rules, which allow oral history to be admitted as evidence and are common in multiple jurisdictions, fact finders are not comfortable placing conclusive weight on intergenerational memories. This discomfort is based on Western society's ideas about what constitutes reality and reliability and results in Indigenous communities being held to strictly Western and often overly lineal principles. Indigenous communities need concrete methods to bring their intergenerational memories into Western courtrooms and have lawyers and judges receive and understand these fully and from an Indigenous standpoint.


This thesis deals with the numerical study of multiscale problems arising in the modelling of processes of the flow of fluid in plain and porous media. Many of these processes, governed by partial differential equations, are relevant in engineering, industry, and environmental studies. The overall task of modelling and simulating the filtration-related multiscale processes becomes interdisciplinary as it employs physics, mathematics and computer programming to reach its aim. Keeping the challenges in mind, the main focus is to overcome the limitations of accuracy, speed and memory and to develop novel efficient numerical algorithms which could, in part or whole, be utilized by those working in the field of porous media. This work has essentially four parts. A single grid basic algorithm and a corresponding parallel algorithm to solve the macroscopic Navier-Stokes-Brinkmann model is discussed. An upscaling subgrid algorithm is derived and numerically tested for the same model. Moving a step further in the line of multiscale methods, an iterative Mutliscale Finite Volume (iMSFV) method is developed for the Stokes-Darcy system. Additionally, the last part of the thesis deals with ways to incorporate changes occurring at different (meso) scale level. The flow equations are coupled with the Convection-Diffusion-Reaction (CDR) equation, which models the transport and capturing of particle concentrations. By employing the numerical method for the coupled flow and transport problem, we understand the interplay between the flow velocity and filtration.


On the afternoon of 29th May 2012, a number of representatives from civil society organisations from across Europe gathered to discuss the role of the European Union (EU) in leading the debates around reforming the international drug control system. This meeting comes at a time when the EU is drafting its new Drug Strategy for 2013-2020, and when a number of government officials in many regions of the world are calling for a paradigm shift on drug control.On the morning of 29th May, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) and the Global Commission on Drug Policy organised a seminar directed at Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to discuss the issue, with the participation of two Global Commissioners – Michel Kazatchkine, physician and former Executive Director of the Global Fund, and Pavel Bem, psychiatrist and mayor of Prague, who has played a leading role in designing the current Czech drug policy. The seminar reflected the fact that a number of MEPs, as well as the European External Action Service, now seem interested in drug policy reform. On the other hand, there are signs that the European Commission and the DG-Justice seem more reluctant to support a debate on the drugs issue. The afternoon session focused on the conclusions of the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and its implication for Europe. The discussions touched upon issues related to the willingness of the EU to engage in meaningful debate around drug policy reform and harm reduction, and strategies that could be implemented to encourage more leadership among EU institutions.


Researchers at the Chicago Fed Insurance Initiative are analyzing the role that the insurance industry plays in financial markets and the economy as a whole. This article presents an overview of life insurers' financial asset holdings, the industries they invest in, and how the value of their investments would change if there was a large negative shock to asset values.


Research on sustainable management of the coastal zone is motivated by the fierce competition for natural resources between different categories of users along the coast. Knowledge-based management will be able to base its decision-making on information representing the complex nature of the coast. The research carried out in the research programme Sustainable Coastal Zone Management (SUCOZOMA) has been focused on the production of results and knowledge of a transdisciplinary character, reflecting the interaction between different activities and the human pressures it creates on the natural resources in the coastal zone. In the research programme it has been concluded that the integration between sectors also must include integrated management of resources in the outer archipelago and the open sea. The state of the coastal environment is affected by up-stream disturbances, as well as activities at sea. Integration in both directions is a necessary precondition for sustainable management. Research has shown that local influence promotes legitimacy in the exercise of management. Local actors may be increasingly involved in fishery as well as water quality management. However expert skills and specialised competence is rarely available at the local level. Therefore a strategy for sustainable coastal management must develop mechanisms for efficient exchange, dissemination and utilisation of knowledge. In 2000 SUCOZOMA was evaluated by an international scientific panel. An additional evaluation included the usability of the research results. Generally, the evaluation of the panel was very positive. Their recommendation to the research foundation MISTRA was to continue in a second phase of SUCOZOMA research, which started in 2001. Key-words coastal zone, integrated management; coastal research; integrated coastal zone management (ICZM); MISTRA


Abstract. In this study, the LMDz-INCA climate-chemistry model and up-to-date global emission inventories are used to investigate the "present" (2000) and future (2050) impacts of transport emissions (road traffic, shipping and aircraft) on global tropospheric ozone. For the first time, both impacts of emissions and climate changes on transport-induced ozone are investigated. The 2000 transport emissions are shown to mainly affect ozone in the Northern Hemisphere, with a maximum increase of the tropospheric column of up to 5 DU, from the South-eastern US to Central Europe. The impact is dominated by road traffic in the middle and upper troposphere, North of 40° S, and by shipping in the northern lower troposphere, over oceanic regions. A strong reduction of road emissions and a moderate (B1 scenario) to high (A1B scenario) increase of the ship and aircraft emissions are projected by the year 2050. As a consequence, LMDz-INCA simulations predict a drastic decrease in the impact of road emissions, whereas aviation would become the major transport perturbation on tropospheric ozone, even in the case of a very optimistic aircraft mitigation scenario. The A1B emission scenario leads to an increase of the impact of transport on zonal mean ozone concentrations in 2050 by up to +30% and +50%, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively. Despite a similar total amount of global NOx emissions by the various transport sectors compared to 2000, the overall impact on the tropospheric ozone column is increased everywhere in 2050, due to a sectoral shift in the emissions of the respective transport modes. On the opposite, the B1 mitigation scenario leads to a significant reduction (by roughly 50%) of the ozone perturbation throughout the troposphere compared to 2000. Considering climate change, and according to scenario A1B, a decrease of the O3 tropospheric burden is simulated by 2050 due to climate change (−1.2%), whereas an increase of ozone of up to 2% is calculated in the upper troposphere in the inter-tropical zone, due to enhanced lightning activity. A global impact of similar magnitude is simulated for the transport-induced ozone burden perturbation (−1.6%). As a result, the future increase in global ozone due to changes in anthropogenic emissions is lowered by 12% and by 4%, for the background and the transport-induced ozone, respectively. However, positive and negative climate effects are obtained on ozone, depending on the season, region and altitude, with an increase of the transport-induced ozone perturbation (+0.4 DU) in the already most affected area of Northern Hemisphere.


Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, national and international trials set out to encourage national reconciliation, promote peace, punish perpetrators, foster a culture of human rights, and effect justice. In this Article, Professor Mark Drumbl questions the ability of these trials to achieve these goals and suggests they may in fact aggravate ethnic identity politics, thereby threatening Rwanda's long-term stability. He argues that the highly interdependent yet dualist nature of Rwandan society, together with the widespread level of participation in and victimization by the genocide, create a situation where accountability for the violence and the deterrence of future violence can be pursued more effectively through the restorative cultivation of shame, rather than through the retributive imposition of guilt. Although criminal sanction usually attaches to deviant conduct, participation in genocide in Rwanda was not particularly deviant, nor was it an individualized, pathological transgression. Professor Drumbl asks whether there might be times and places where collective wrongdoing needs to be exposed and not hidden by the law's preference for individual fault. Despite the concerns that ought to be emerging from the Rwandan experience, international lawyers continue to push - with significant degrees of success - for selective criminal prosecution as a preferred, and potentially exclusive, response to mass atrocity. In contrast, he suggests that creating presumptions in favor of criminal trials may preempt the supervening inquiry about the suitability of those trials to the afflicted society. Professor Drumbl concludes that policy responses to mass atrocity should be founded upon contextual inquiries, not driven by globalitarian or legalistic agendas, and should recognize the uniqueness of each incident of mass atrocity and the uniqueness of the reconstruction process that should follow, instead of flattening that uniqueness. This may lead to a preference for flexible, polycentric responses within and outside of what may be customarily identified by the West as the "law."


This study examined the evolution of columnar-basalt structures using simple laboratory experiments and numerical simulation in double-diffusive finger system. Effect of various parameters like Prandtl and Rayleigh numbers has been considered in the study. Columnar-basalts are geological formations observed in some of the ponded basalt-lava found at many parts of the world. They are prismatic rock joints having polygonal cross-section with straight edges and parallel faces. The typical cross-sectional dimensions vary from few centimeters to meter size and typical height from 30-50 meters. Hence the aspect ratio of the columnar-basalt in most cases is greater than 100. The limitations for the evolution of columnar basalts provided in the literature have been discussed. An order of magnitude analysis has been presented for the thickness of the unstable layer at the interface. In this paper, we demonstrate that the double diffusive finger convection system can produce features similar to those observed in columnar basalt and can serve as an alternative, plausible explanation for the evolution of columnar basalt structure.


Determining the exact position of a forest inventory plot—and hence the position of the sampled trees—is often hampered by a poor Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal quality beneath the forest canopy. Inaccurate geo-references hamper the performance of models that aim to retrieve useful information from spatially high remote sensing data (e.g., species classification or timber volume estimation). This restriction is even more severe on the level of individual trees. The objective of this study was to develop a post-processing strategy to improve the positional accuracy of GNSS-measured sample-plot centers and to develop a method to automatically match trees within a terrestrial sample plot to aerial detected trees. We propose a new method which uses a random forest classifier to estimate the matching probability of each terrestrial-reference and aerial detected tree pair, which gives the opportunity to assess the reliability of the results. We investigated 133 sample plots of the Third German National Forest Inventory (BWI, 2011–2012) within the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. For training and objective validation, synthetic forest stands have been modeled using the Waldplaner 2.0 software. Our method has achieved an overall accuracy of 82.7% for co-registration and 89.1% for tree matching. With our method, 60% of the investigated plots could be successfully relocated. The probabilities provided by the algorithm are an objective indicator of the reliability of a specific result which could be incorporated into quantitative models to increase the performance of forest attribute estimations.