PURPOSE
To examine neonatal risk and associated nursery costs for infants with delivery following untreated preterm labor at 34, 35, or 36 weeks' gestation, by assessing the incidence of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), and need for ventilatory assistance.

DESIGN
Infants with preterm birth at 34, 35, or 36 weeks were identified from a database of prospectively collected clinical information and pregnancy outcomes of women receiving outpatient preterm-labor management services, in addition to routine prenatal care. Cases of singleton gestations with delivery related to spontaneous preterm labor were analyzed. Data were divided into three groups by gestational week at delivery.

METHODOLOGY
Descriptive and statistical methods were used to compare maternal demographics, pregnancy outcome, and nursery costs. A cost model was utilized.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
2849 infants were studied. Risk of NICU admission decreased by 47.4 percent from weeks 34 to 35 and 41.8 percent from weeks 35 to 36. Risk of RDS decreased by 25.4 percent from weeks 34 to 35, and 40.7 percent from weeks 35 to 36. Mean nursery costs per infant delivering at 34, 35, and 36 weeks were $11,439 +/- $19,774, $5,796 +/- $11,858, and $3,824 +/- $9,135, respectively (p < .001).

CONCLUSION
Rates of NICU admission, RDS, ventilator use, and nursery-related costs decreased significantly with each week gained. The data indicate that benefit is derived in prolonging pregnancy beyond 34 weeks.


In this paper, the model of Kottgen, Barkey and Socie, which corrects the elastic stress and strain tensor histories at notches of a metallic specimen under non-proportional loading, is improved. It can be used in connection with any multiaxial s -e -law of incremental plasticity. For the correction model, we introduce a constraint for the strain components that goes back to the work of Hoffmann and Seeger. Parameter identification for the improved model is performed by Automatic Differentiation and an established least squares algorithm. The results agree accurately both with transient FE computations and notch strain measurements.


In financial mathematics stock prices are usually modeled directly as a result of supply and demand and under the assumption that dividends are paid continuously. In contrast economic theory gives us the dividend discount model assuming that the stock price equals the present value of its future dividends. These two models need not to contradict each other - in their paper Korn and Rogers (2005) introduce a general dividend model preserving the stock price to follow a stochastic process and to be equal to the sum of all its discounted dividends. In this paper we specify the model of Korn and Rogers in a Black-Scholes framework in order to derive a closed-form solution for the pricing of American call options under the assumption of a known next dividend followed by several stochastic dividend payments during the option's time to maturity.


Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many others are addressed in this highly engaging guide.Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment, offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. The first critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishment, this book explores – among others – the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice, and the unified theory of punishment. Thom Brooks examines several case studies in detail, including capital punishment, juvenile offending, and domestic abuse. Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and groundbreaking.


Article history: Received 12 October 2014 Received in revised form 26 December 2014 Accepted 1 January 2015 Available online 17 February 2015


This article restructures the current debate surrounding the "overcriminalization" of corporate law by comparing the powerful tools of federal prosecutors with the sometimes insurmountable procedural impediments their civil counterparts, private plaintiffs, must overcome in private litigation surrounding the same corporate misconduct. Although the past five years have seen prosecutors accumulating over 1000 indictments of corporate officers, the same years have seen a decline in the ability of shareholder plaintiffs to receive civil redress for the same wrongs. I frame my analysis in the lexicon of statistical error. Which system, the criminal system or the civil system, is erring in creating more false positives or false negatives? If a court is to determine whether a corporate defendant is guilty, then a false positive finding by the court is a "Type I" error. However, if the defendant actually is culpable, but a court finds the defendant not culpable, a false negative, we say that the system has created a "Type II" error. No system, either a criminal law system or a civil system, can eliminate both Type I and Type II errors. Traditionally, the public has found Type I errors in criminal law fairly intolerable, and has preferred to err on the side of Type II errors. On the other hand, because civil penalties do not threaten liberty and livelihoods as much as criminal penalties, our system has been more tolerant of Type I errors in private litigation. However, post-2002, changes in prosecutorial strategy, substantive laws, and sentencing guidelines have combined to create a criminal law system that creates an intolerable number of Type I errors in prosecutions of corporate misconduct. Ironically, due to laws creating additional obstacles for private plaintiffs in both federal securities law litigation and state law fiduciary duty litigation, the civil system creates an unusually high number of Type II errors in trials for the same or similar misconduct. This article argues that not only is this prosecutorial paradox adverse to traditional preferences regarding protections of criminal defendants, but it is also potentially dangerous to vulnerable shareholders. As the public outcry regarding overcriminalization causes prosecutors and legislators to decrease criminal prosecutions, investors will be left with no other recourse but a private litigation system that is currently "undercivilized."


This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles.


Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are exploiting the United States' economy. The widespread belief is that illegal aliens cost more in government services than they contribute to the economy. This belief is undeniably false. [E]very empirical study of illegals' economic impact demonstrates the opposite . . .: undocumenteds actually contribute more to public coffers in taxes than they cost in social services. Moreover, undocumented immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy through their investments and consumption of goods and services; filling of millions of essential worker positions resulting in subsidiary job creation, increased productivity and lower costs of goods and services; and unrequited contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs. Eighty-five percent of eminent economists surveyed have concluded that undocumented immigrants have had a positive (seventy-four percent) or neutral (eleven percent) impact on the U.S. economy. Undocumented immigrants, like all U.S. citizens and residents, are required to pay taxes. Despite the historic and strong American opposition to taxation without representation, undocumented immigrants (except in rare and unusual cases) have not enjoyed the right to vote on any local, state or federal tax or other matter for almost eighty years. Nevertheless, each year undocumented immigrants add billions of dollars in sales, excise, property, income and payroll taxes, including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes, to federal, state and local coffers. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants go out of their way to file annual federal and state income tax returns. Yet undocumented immigrants are barred from almost all government benefits, including food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, federal housing programs, Supplemental Security Income, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and the earned income tax credit (EITC). Generally, the only benefits federally required for undocumented immigrants are emergency medical care, subject to financial and category eligibility, and elementary and secondary public education. Many undocumented immigrants will not even access these few critical government services because of their ever-present fear of government officials and deportation. Undocumented immigrants living in the United States are subject to the same income tax laws as documented immigrants and U.S. citizens. However, because of their status most unauthorized workers pay a higher effective tax rate than similarly situated documented or U.S. citizens. Yet, these workers and their families use fewer government services than similarly situated documented immigrants or U.S. citizens. Moreover, unauthorized workers have been denied remedies by the U.S. Supreme Court under the National Labor Relations Act and may be challenged to receive protection under wage and hour, anti-discrimination and workers' compensation laws. As a result, undocumented immigrants provide a fiscal windfall and may be the most fiscally beneficial of all immigrants. Despite their net positive contribution to public coffers, hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter the U.S. each year without documents because of impracticable quota and labor certification requirements. These immigration restrictions combined with the additional tax or tariff on undocumented immigrants are inconsistent with economically efficient immigration policy. Moreover, the high effective tax rate imposed on the poorest undocumented working families relative to their less unfortunate friends and neighbors is inconsistent with fundamental tax policy. This Article describes and analyzes the separate, unequal and unrepresented federal taxation of undocumented immigrants.


We systematically assessed the effects of mattress firmness on sleep, pain, and daytime functioning, finding that mattress firmness has statistically significant effects on both sleep and daytime functioning and that individuals varied widely in the mattress that optimized their sleep. A convenience sample of 128 healthy adults living in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area was recruited to assess the effects of mattress firmness on pain, duration of sleep, sleep quality, and next-day function in healthy sleepers. Our study used a Latin-square randomization design, and subjects slept in their homes on seven test mattresses for approximately 4 weeks per mattress. The firmness of these inner-spring mattresses is typical of mattresses sold in the US marketplace. Mattress firmness was found to significantly affect 9 out of 11 key actigraphic and diary-derived measures of sleep. Though pain was generally minimal for subjects, beds could be distinguished by different levels of morning pain. The "best" and "worst" mattresses were distributed relatively evenly across all mattresses studied.


Description: This paper reports on programs that have helped young people in developing countries practise healthier behaviours, including delaying sexual debut, reducing the number of sexual partners, and increasing the use of methods of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS. It is addressed to program planners, administrators, policymakers, and donors interested in developing evidence-based strategies and programs to promote better health for youth.


We describe a method for the acquisition of deformable human geometry from silhouettes. Our technique uses a commercial tracking system to determine the motion of the skeleton, then estimates geometry for each bone using constraints provided by the silhouettes from one or more cameras. These silhouettes do not give a complete characterization of the geometry for a particular point in time, but when the subject moves, many observations of the same local geometries allow the construction of a complete model. Our reconstruction algorithm provides a simple mechanism for solving the problems of view aggregation, occlusion handling, hole filling, noise removal, and deformation modeling. The resulting model is parameterized to synthesize geometry for new poses of the skeleton. We demonstrate this capability by rendering the geometry for motion sequences that were not included in the original datasets. help. We are grateful to Vicon Motion Systems for their permission to use the beta release of the Vicon iQ software.


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Thus begins our Constitution.


Enhancing the quality of surgical interventions is one of the main goals of surgical robotics. Thus we have devised a surgical robotic system for maxillofacial surgery which can be used as an intelligent intraoperative surgical tool. Up to now a surgeon preoperatively plans an intervention by studying two dimensional X-rays, thus neglecting the third dimension. In the course of the special research programme "Computer and Sensor Aided Surgery" a planning system has been developed at our institute, which allows the surgeon to plan an operation on a three dimensional computer model of the patient. Transposing the preoperatively planned bone cuts, bore holes, cavities, and milled surfaces during surgery still proves to be a problem, as no adequate means are at hand: the actual performance of the surgical intervention and the surgical outcome solely depend on the experience and the skill of the operating surgeon. In this paper we present our approach of a surgical robotic system to be used in maxillofacial surgery. Special stress is being laid upon the modelling of the environment in the operating theatre and the motion planning of our surgical robot.


The Lisbon strategy could reinvigorate Europe's economy and boost employment. In 2000 the European leaders agreed to stimulate economic growth and employment and make Europe's economy the most competitive in the world. Read also the accompanying press release . If Europe would really reach the goals they set, Europe's Gross Domestic Product could increase by 12 to 23% and employment by about 11%. This paper draws this conclusion after having analysed five of the most important Lisbon goals: the internal market for services, the reduction of administrative burdens, goals on improving human capital, the 3% target on research and development expenditures, and the 70% target on the employment rate. Using CPB's general equilibrium model for the world economy we have simulated the consequences for Europe of reaching the Lisbon targets in these fields.


With 42 million people now living with HIV/AIDS expanding access to antiretroviral treatment for those who urgently need it is one of the most pressing challenges in international health. Providing treatment is essential to alleviate suffering and to mitigate the devastating impact of the epidemic. It also presents unprecedented opportunities for a more effective response by involving people living with HIV/AIDS their families and communities in care and will strengthen HIV prevention by increasing awareness creating a demand for testing and counselling and reducing stigma and discrimination. The challenges are great. Sustainable financing is essential. Drug procurement and regulatory mechanisms must be established and strengthened. Health care workers must be trained infrastructure improved communities educated and diverse stakeholders mobilized to play their part. This series Perspectives and Practice in Antiretroviral Treatment provides examples of how such challenges are being overcome in the growing number of developing countries in which antiretroviral treatment programmes are underway. The case studies and analyses in this series show how governments civil society organizations private corporations and others are successfully providing antiretroviral treatment and care to people with HIV/AIDS even in the most resource-constrained settings. In documenting these pioneering programmes WHO hopes that their experiences will both inform and inspire everyone who is working to make access to treatment a reality. (excerpt)


Along with other European countries following the end of World War II, Italy adopted a new constitution. Its drafters intended that it safeguard against the abuses of power and the horrors that had occurred. One of the innovations of the new constitution was the introduction of the concept of judicial review of the constitutionality of laws into the Italian legal system. The Italian Constitutional Court contemplated by the 1948 Constitution was established in 1956. This work lays out the politically challenging cases that arose during the 1948-1956 transition period from efforts to use the justice system to resolve charges of misconduct and collaboration with the fascist regime during the period of the war. As the Italian courts experimented with their approach to the constitutionally-granted new power of judicial review, they demonstrated sensitivity to either upholding or countermanding acts of the non-elected transitional government on constitutional grounds, preferring in key instances to rely on other tools of statutory interpretation to resolve the cases presented to them. The launch of the Constitutional Court in 1956 overcame any diffidence of Italian courts to judicial review of the constitutionality of laws and was the moment in which the innovative principles established by the 1948 constitution received full endorsement and application. From its very first decision in 1956, the Italian Constitutional Court, as a freshly established institution directly legitimated by the constitution, determined the "peremptory" status of the civil rights' provisions of the constitution and their direct applicability without further implementation, rejecting the view that they had a merely "programmatic" nature. It thereby began its continuing and flourishing role as a voice, without ambiguity, of the central position of constitutional review of laws in the Italian legal system.


How can mathematics education foster the skills that are appropriate for innovative societies? Mathematics education is heavily emphasised worldwide, nevertheless it is still considered to be a stumbling block for many students. While there is almost a consensus that mathematics problems appropriate for the 21st century should be complex, unfamiliar and non-routine (CUN), most of the textbooks still mainly include routine problems based on the application of ready-made algorithms.
The time has come to introduce innovative instructional methods in order to enhance mathematics education and students' ability to solve CUN tasks. Metacognitive pedagogies can play a key role in this. These pedagogies explicitly train students to "think about their thinking" during learning. They can be used to improve not just academic achievement (content knowledge and understanding, the ability to handle unfamiliar problems etc.) but also affective outcomes such as reduced anxiety or improved motivation. This strong relationship between metacognition and schooling outcomes has implications for the education community and policy makers.
This book is designed to assist practitioners, curriculum developers and policy makers alike in preparing today's students for tomorrow's world.


OBJECTIVE
To estimate the cost effectiveness of conventional versus intensive blood glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes.

DESIGN
Incremental cost effectiveness analysis alongside randomised controlled trial.

SETTING
23 UK hospital clinic based study centres.

PARTICIPANTS
3867 patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes (mean age 53 years).

INTERVENTIONS
Conventional (primarily diet) glucose control policy versus intensive control policy with a sulphonylurea or insulin.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Incremental cost per event-free year gained within the trial period.

RESULTS
Intensive glucose control increased trial treatment costs by pound 695 (95% confidence interval pound 555 to pound 836) per patient but reduced the cost of complications by pound 957 (pound 233 to pound 1681) compared with conventional management. If standard practice visit patterns were assumed rather than trial conditions, the incremental cost of intensive management was pound 478 (-pound 275 to pound 1232) per patient. The within trial event-free time gained in the intensive group was 0.60 (0.12 to 1.10) years and the lifetime gain 1.14 (0.69 to 1.61) years. The incremental cost per event-free year gained was pound 1166 (costs and effects discounted at 6% a year) and pound 563 (costs discounted at 6% a year and effects not discounted).

CONCLUSIONS
Intensive blood glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes significantly increased treatment costs but substantially reduced the cost of complications and increased the time free of complications.


Objectives/Goals The objective of this experiment is to determine whether the growth rate of the plants will be affected negatively by an increase in transpiration rate due to high winds. I believe that the plants with low or zero wind will have better growth rate than plants with high wind. The water consumption of the high wind plants will be larger compared to the low or zero wind plants. Methods/Materials Fifteen tomato plants of approximately same height, width, weight, and moisture content were transplanted into plastic containers. The plants were equally divided into three groups, the High Wind group, the Low Wind group, and the Zero Wind group. Water was added to equate the mass of each plant to 500-520grams, which was measured using a triple beam balance. The experiment table was set up to keep light, wind speed, temperature, and humidity constant for each group. Wind, temperature, and humidity were all measured with Kestrel 3000 instrument. To ensure all data calculated only the net transpiration, each container was covered with a lid to prevent evaporation from the soil. Temperature was regulated with a space heater. Each day#s experiment started by turning on lights for plants and turning on fan that generated wind of 5.0+mph for high wind group, 1.0-1.5mph for the low wind group and the zero wind group were protected in a cardboard box. Data was collected by taking the measurements of the newest leaf for height and the longest opposing leaves for width. The weight of each plant was calculated (original weight # experimental weight) at the end of each experimental day to show the water consumption of each plant. The experiment lasted for twelve days with each day repeating the same procedure as specified. Results The experimental results suggest that wind inhibits growth rate and promotes water loss in the form of transpiration. Slowing down the ambient wind to the plants conserves the soil water an increases the growth rate. Conclusions/Discussion The results suggested that wind induced transpiration will decrease growth rates and increase water consumption. The wind-induced transpiration promoted soil water consumption in the high wind plants and conserved soil water in plants subjugated to little or zero wind. The results suggest that it would be beneficial for farmers to protect their crops with natural barriers such as trees and shrubs to conserve soil water and to achieve maximum plant growth.


We reconstructed water quality changes for 1800 to 2000 in Charlotte Harbor (Florida), a shallow subtropical estuary, by using a suite of biological and geochemical proxies in dated sediments collected in the region of a present day, midsummer hypoxic zone. The declining freshwater loading into the estuary from 1931 to the 1980s is not the probable causal agent encouraging the appearance or expansion of a hypoxia zone (measuring up to 90 km2 in summer). Rather, the reconstructed trends in nitrogen loading indicate increased phytoplankton production has likely caused a decline in bottom water oxygen concentrations. Sedimentary biogenic silica (BSi), carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus concentrations increased concurrently with known or inferred changes in nutrient loadings. There were direct relationships between phytoplankton pigments and BSi, heavier δ34S with increased carbon loading, and sequestration of P, Al, and Fe as carbon loading increased. The results from the sediment analyses and the results from mixing models using C:N ratios and δ13C suggest an estuarine system that is responsive to increased carbon loading from the nitrogen‐limited phytoplankton community and whose sediments are becoming increasingly anoxic as a result. The present nitrogen loading is about three times above that prior to the 1800s, suggesting that without management intervention the anticipated doubling of the watershed's population from 1990 to 2020 will greatly increase the nitrogen loading to this estuary and will lead to much higher amounts of phytoplankton biomass and accumulation and exacerbate hypoxic conditions.


Seismic profiles extending from the southern South African shelf into the deep sea reveal a strong erosional activity, which affects large parts of the continental margin. Recent to Oligocene sequences, and in places the whole sedimentary column, appear to have been removed. Mass movements were considered as the origin of this erosion. However, structures indicating slumping could only be identified in a few places, The erosional activity is confined to specific water depths, which correlate well with the activity levels of water masses observed here. We thus suggest that the Agulhas Current, Antarctic Intermediate Water, North Atlantic Deep Water, and Antarctic Bottomwater have intensively shaped the sedimentary sequences for a considerable period. It is difficult to estimate the duration of the erosion. Numerical simulation of sediment transport and erosion is needed to indicate the onset of the erosional activity.


Are you prepared for a dental emergency? Thousands of dental emergencies—from injuries to a painful, abscessed tooth—take place every day. Would you know what to do if your child broke a tooth or had a tooth knocked out while playing outdoors? What if you had a bad toothache in the middle of the night and couldn't get to the dentist until the next day? Knowing what to do can lessen the pain and save a tooth that might otherwise be lost. Keep your dental office phone number and an emergency number where the dentist can be reached after hours with other emergency numbers, such as your family doctor, and fire and police departments. Some families post these numbers on the refrigerator or inside a kitchen cabinet door near the phone. Call the dentist immediately for instructions on how to handle a dental emergency. Toothache: Rinse the mouth with warm water to clean it out. Gently use dental floss or an interdental cleaner to remove any food or other debris that may be caught between the teeth. Never put aspirin or any other painkiller against the gums near the aching tooth. This could burn gum tissue. If the toothache persists, try to see the dentist. Don't rely on painkillers. They may temporarily relieve pain but your dentist should evaluate the condition. Knocked-out (avulsed) tooth: Try to find the tooth! This may not be as easy as you think if the injury took place on a playground, basketball court or while skateboarding, so try to stay calm. Hold the tooth by the crown and rinse the root in water if the tooth is dirty. Don't scrub it or remove any attached tissue fragments. If it's possible, gently insert and hold the tooth in its socket while you head to the dentist. If that's not possible, put the tooth in a cup of milk and bring it to the dentist. Time is critical for successful reimplantation, so try to get to your dentist immediately. Broken tooth: Rinse your mouth with warm water to clean the area. Use cold compresses on the outside of the cheek to help reduce the swelling. Tongue or lip bites or wounds: Clean the area gently with a clean cloth and apply cold compresses to reduce any swelling. If the bleeding can't be controlled, go to a hospital emergency room or clinic. You may able to reduce bleeding from the tongue by pulling it forward and using gauze to put pressure on the wound. Objects caught between teeth: Try to gently remove the object with dental floss. Never use a sharp instrument to remove any object that is stuck between your teeth. If you can't dislodge the object with floss, contact your dentist. Possible broken jaw: Apply cold compresses to control swelling. Get to the hospital emergency room immediately.


The most popular general univariate polarization indices for discrete (Esteban and Ray 1994), and continuous (Duclos, Esteban and Ray 2004) variables are combined and extended to describe the extent of polarization between agents in a distribution defined over a collection of many discrete and continuous agent characteristics. A formula for the asymptotic variance of the index is also provided. The implementation of the index is illustrated with an application to Chinese urban household data drawn from six provinces in the years 1987 and 2001 (years spanning the growth and urbanization period subsequent to the economic reforms). The data relates to household adult equivalent log income, adult equivalent living space, which are both continuous variables and the education of the head of household which is a discrete variable. For this data set combining the characteristics changes the view of polarization that would be inferred from considering the indices individually.


In recent years, the development of new technologies based on the green fluorescent protein and FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) has introduced a new perspective in the study of cAMP signalling. Real-time imaging of fluorescent biosensors is making it possible to visualize cAMP dynamics directly as they happen in intact, living cells, providing important and original insights for our understanding of the spatiotemporal organization of the cAMP/PKA (protein kinase A) signalling pathway.


In the wake of the events of September 2008, money market mutual funds have made significant changes to the way they invest. Those changes have been driven by business and investment needs as well as by substantial revisions to the regulatory framework in which funds operate. Yet, some policymakers and market participants are calling for additional regulatory or legislative action. This paper lays out the important role that money market mutual funds play in the short-term capital markets, traces the successful regulatory history of money market mutual funds and argues that more reforms could create, rather than reduce, systemic risk. The first phase of these changes involved a number of amendments to Rule 2a-7, which governs the operation of mutual funds. The final rule changes released by the SEC in February 2010 included, among other things, tightened limits on portfolio maturity, greater disclosure obligations and heightened responsibilities for boards of money market funds. When announcing the new rules in January 2010, SEC Chairman Schapiro indicated a possible second phase of reform that could include other "more fundamental" changes that the SEC would examine: a floating net asset value (or NAV), more frequent disclosure of mark-to-market NAVs, mandatory redemptions-in-kind for large redemptions, a private liquidity facility and a two-tiered system of money market funds in which the NAVs for some funds would float and the NAVs for others would not. The Obama administration is also examining possible changes to money market funds. In June 2009, the administration instructed the President's Working Group on Financial Markets to study whether fundamental changes are needed to reduce the susceptibility of money market funds to runs, including possibly prohibiting money market funds from relying on a stable NAV. These reforms are being considered at a time when others, such as former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, have called for money market funds to be regulated like banks. Missing from the debate so far has been an acknowledgment of the enormous benefits that money market funds have provided over the last 40 years, both to investors and to the financial system as a whole. For both individual and institutional investors, money market mutual funds provide a commercially attractive alternative to bank deposits. Money market funds offer greater investment diversification, are less susceptible to collapse than banks and offer investors greater disclosure on the nature of their investments and the underlying assets than traditional bank deposits. For the financial system generally, money market mutual funds reduce pressure on the FDIC, reduce systemic risk and provide essential liquidity to capital markets because of the funds' investments in commercial paper, municipal securities and repurchase agreements. Despite these benefits, the changes under consideration, particularly a floating NAV, likely would curtail significantly, or potentially eliminate altogether, the money market fund industry as we know it. In this paper, I explore the advantages that funds have offered and the risks to the financial system from destabilizing the money market fund industry through these so-called reforms. After a brief introduction explaining the operations of money market funds and a summary of the history of the industry, I describe the experiences of money market funds during the financial crisis. While much attention rightfully has been paid to the problems of the Reserve Primary Fund, the money market fund industry as a whole weathered the crisis quite well. Except for remaining shareholders in the Reserve Primary Fund, who in the end received more than 98 cents on each dollar invested, no money market fund investor suffered a loss of principal during the financial crisis. That said, money market funds did come under pressure and the federal government responded with its Temporary Guarantee Program. Prior to that program, some general purpose institutional money market funds experienced significant redemptions as investors looked to other investments such as Treasury bills and government money market funds. In section IV of the paper, I describe in detail some of the advantages of money market funds, which I believed have been overlooked in the current policy debate. In particular, I discuss the following: •Money market funds reduce pressure on the FDIC: Banks suffer from a fundamental mismatch between their liabilities (which are deposits that can be withdrawn at any time) and their assets (which normally are in the form of much longer-term and illiquid commitments such as mortgages or commercial loans). Because of this mismatch, banks are susceptible to runs in the absence of deposit insurance. The FDIC has served as a back stop to protect depositors and, thus, has decreased the propensity for runs on banks. Still, the less pressure that is placed on the FDIC's limited resources the better, particularly in light of the alarming rate at which banks continue to fail. Money market funds provide an alternative to bank deposits without the need for FDIC insurance. The $2.9 trillion that investors have placed in money market mutual funds would likely be deposited at banks if money market mutual funds did not exist. A stable $1.00 NAV and features such as check writing and no limits on the number of withdrawals make money market funds an attractive investment for short-term cash management. At the same time, money market funds do not suffer from the same structural mismatch between their assets and liabilities because of the liquidity and maturity requirements of Rule 2a-7. •Money market funds reduce systemic regulatory risk: Having all short-term savings subject to one regulatory regime creates systemic risk. The different regulation of banks and money market funds serves as an important method to diversify the regulatory risks involved in protecting short-term savings. Some have called for money market funds to be regulated like banks, citing functional similarities such as check-writing services. Doing so would be a mistake. Imposing the bank regulatory scheme on money market funds would increase, rather than decrease, systemic risk. Homogenous regulatory practices create the possibility that the oversight practices miss the next potential financial crisis. •Money market funds provide valuable liquidity by investing in commercial paper, municipal securities and repurchase agreements: Money market funds are significant participants in the commercial paper, municipal securities and repurchase agreement (or repo) markets. Money market funds hold almost 40% of all outstanding commercial paper, which is now the primary source for short-term funding for corporations, who issue commercial paper as a lower-cost alternative to short-term bank loans. The repo market is an important means by which the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy and provides daily liquidity to global financial institutions. In light of the many benefits that money markets funds provide, policymakers should be careful not to disrupt the operations of the money market industry by making more fundamental changes. These "reforms" are being discussed in the context of a regulatory structure that is already robust. In sections V and VI of the paper, I explain a number of the requirements in Rule 2a-7 and caution against making additional fundamental changes. The strength of Rule 2a-7 is underscored by the success and reliability of money market funds to investors over the last 40 years. Like all regulatory regimes, policymakers should evaluate periodically whether improvements can be made. In the case of money market funds, those improvements should come within the context of Rule 2a-7, should not alter the basic structure of the funds and should not seek to impose arbitrarily a regulatory regime designed for a fundamentally different type of entity. The proponents of more fundamental changes claim that they would reduce systemic risk. However, changes such as abandoning the stable $1.00 NAV could end the money market fund industry by causing a massive inflow of money to banks, which would increase the overall risk of the financial system.


Background: Osteosarcoma is the most frequent malignant bone tumor in pediatric patients occurring in the second decade of life between ages 10 and 15. An understanding of the balance between innate immunity, tumor angiogenesis and thyroid hormone status may assist in pediatric osteosarcoma diagnostics and therapeutics. Serum tumor markers open up new prospects for early diagnosis and treatment of pediatric osteosarcoma. Objectives: The aim of this work was to investigate the possible role of natural IgM antibodies to angiogenin (ANG-IgM) as an early biomolecule involved in the progression of pediatric osteosarcoma and identify the combination of serum markers differentiating between osteosarcoma patients and healthy individuals. Methods: We studied 50 pediatric patients newly diagnosed with osteosarcoma (average age 14.5 years). The comparative group consisted of 50 patients with other types of pediatric bone tumors matched for age, gender and ethnicity. In addition, a healthy control group including 50 age- and sex-matched children was included in the study. Serum ANG-IgM levels were determined by novel ELISA technique (INR, Mexico City, Mexico). Serum fT3 levels were measured using a commercial ELISA kit (Diagnostic Automation, INC. CA, USA) according to the manufacturer's protocols. Results: The level of ANG-IgM was higher in all types of bone tumors compared to normal healthy children. No significant difference was detected in the level of ANG-IgM among boys and girls. Statistically significant difference was found across the different types of bone tumors. Significant correlation was observed between serum levels of ANG-IgM and fT3 in children. Conclusions: Combinations of ANG-IgM and fT3 may be administered together. The potential effect of an intrinsic dynamic balance of tumor angiogenesis residing within a single hormone (fT3) is an attractive concept for regulation of osteosarcoma vascularization.


South Africa currently allows labour broking although this area of commerce is problematic. The trade union movement, government and organised business are presently debating the future regulation of this industry. Namibia has experimented with, and failed, to place a legislative ban on labour broking. The Supreme Court of Appeal of Namibia considered International Labour Organisation conventions and provisions of their Constitution before concluding that labour broking should be regulated but not prohibited. In this article it is argued that South African policy makers can gain valuable insights from the Namibian experience. It is submitted that it would be appropriate for Parliament to take cognisance of international and foreign principles and to accept amendments that would provide for stricter regulation for labour broking, rather than placing an outright ban on this economic activity.


"Legal Realism" now has sufficient cache that scholars from many different fields and countries compete to claim the mantle of the "Realist program": from political scientists who study judicial behavior, to the "law and society" scholars associated with the Wisconsin New Legal Realism project, to philosophers interested in a naturalized jurisprudence. But what does it mean to be a "legal realist"? What unites the two most famous "old" Legal Realisms — the American and the Scandinavian — with the "new legal realism" invoked, variously, by sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists, among others? There are, of course, other "legal realisms," old and new, from the "free law" movement in Germany more than a century ago, to the Italian realism of the Genoa School today. My focus, however, shall be on the old and new Realisms that are probably most familiar. Is there anything they all share? I argue that (1) American and Scandinavian Realism have almost nothing in common — indeed, that H.L.A. Hart misunderstood the latter as he did the former, and that the Scandinavians are closer to Hart and even Kelsen than they are to the Americans; (2) all Realists share skepticism about the causal efficacy of legal doctrine in explaining judicial decisions ("the Skeptical Doctrine") (though the Scandinavian skepticism on this score is not at all specific to the legal domain, encompassing all explanation in terms of norms); (3) American Realism almost entirely eschewed social-scientific methods in its defense of the Skeptical Doctrine, contrary to the impression given by much recent work by "new" legal realists; (4) the myth that the American Realists were seriously interested in social science derives mainly from two unrepresentative examples, Underhill Moore's behaviorism and Llewellyn's work with the Cheyenne Indians. Moore's case is a cautionary note in taking au courant social science too seriously; and Llewellyn's work was necessitated by the fact that the "primitive" peoples he wanted to study did not write their judicial opinions down. For any modern legal culture, such "field work" would be unnecessary on Llewellyn's view.


Significant earthquakes are increasingly occurring within the continental interior of the United States, including five of moment magnitude (Mw) ≥ 5.0 in 2011 alone. Concurrently, the volume of fluid injected into the subsurface related to the production of unconventional resources continues to rise. Here we identify the largest earthquake potentially related to injection, an Mw 5.7 earthquake in November 2011 in Oklahoma. The earthquake was felt in at least 17 states and caused damage in the epicentral region. It occurred in a sequence, with 2 earthquakes of Mw 5.0 and a prolific sequence of aftershocks. We use the aftershocks to illuminate the faults that ruptured in the sequence, and show that the tip of the initial rupture plane is within ∼200 m of active injection wells and within ∼1 km of the surface; 30% of early aftershocks occur within the sedimentary section. Subsurface data indicate that fluid was injected into effectively sealed compartments, and we interpret that a net fluid volume increase after 18 yr of injection lowered effective stress on reservoir-bounding faults. Significantly, this case indicates that decades-long lags between the commencement of fluid injection and the onset of induced earthquakes are possible, and modifies our common criteria for fluid-induced events. The progressive rupture of three fault planes in this sequence suggests that stress changes from the initial rupture triggered the successive earthquakes, including one larger than the first.


Considers the implications for budgeting and performance measurement of the emphasis on strategic management of human and information resources to obtain global competitive advantage. Summarizes relevant research, noting increasing use of economic value added, non‐financial measures and the balanced scorecard; and explaining Simons' (1995) "levers of control" framework. Illustrates how this can be applied to the budgeting process, stressing the importance of interactive control systems which capture an integrated set of critical performance measures, and uses Skandia (insurance, Sweden) as an example. Lists the ten non‐financial performance metrics identified by Ernst & Young (1997) as important to investors and discusses the ten differences between budgeting in a traditional as opposed to a balanced scorecard environment put forward by Govindarajan and Shank (1992). Concludes that the need for multinationals to be flexible means that control and measurement systems must be aligned with strategic goals, taking account of national cultures, investors' expectations and demands for employee empowerment.


Making a decision is often a matter of listing and comparing positive and negative arguments. In such cases, the evaluation scale for decisions should be considered bipolar, that is, negative and positive values should be explicitly distinguished. That is what is done, for example, in Cumulative Prospect Theory. However, contrary to the latter framework that presupposes genuine numerical assessments, human agents often decide on the basis of an ordinal ranking of the pros and the cons, and by focusing on the most salient arguments. In other terms, the decision process is qualitative as well as bipolar. In this article, based on a bipolar extension of possibility theory, we define and axiomatically characterize several decision rules tailored for the joint handling of positive and negative arguments in an ordinal setting. The simplest rules can be viewed as extensions of the maximin and maximax criteria to the bipolar case, and consequently suffer from poor decisive power. More decisive rules that refine the former are also proposed. These refinements agree both with principles of efficiency and with the spirit of order-of-magnitude reasoning, that prevails in qualitative decision theory. The most refined decision rule uses leximin rankings of the pros and the cons, and the ideas of counting arguments of equal strength and cancelling pros by cons. It is shown to come down to a special case of Cumulative Prospect Theory, and to subsume the "Take the Best" heuristic studied by cognitive psychologists.


The purpose of this study was to determine the leisure time physical activity (LTPA) participation and physical fitness (PF) levels of South African women of the various ethnic groups. Individuals between the ages of 30 and 60 years (x=41.0; ±=4.6) who were part of a cross-sectional non-randomized availability population who voluntarily participated, were used in this study. The group that formed part of the physical activity survey included 3273 subjects (Asian =262; black=1357; coloured=239; white=1415) while the group for the physical fitness analysis included 3060 subjects (Asian=248; black=1015; coloured=199; white=1225). Subjects who used medication such as beta-adrenergic suppressors that could affect the fitness test were excluded from participating. Statistical analysis was done using the CSS: Statistica computer software to determine profile analysis of the participants. The results indicated that 85% of coloured women reported low physical activity participation, followed by black and Asian women where 83% of the participants indicated low physical activity participation, while 75% of white women revealed low physical activity levels. In contrast, 10% of the white women indicated high LTPA participation while only 5% of coloured women were very active. In the case of black and Asian participants, 8% and 6% respectively indicated high LTPA levels. Regarding physical fitness, 57%, 50%, 49% and 39% of the black, Asian, coloured and white respondents respectively showed low physical fitness levels, while 10%, 6%, and 5% of the white, Asian/black and coloured respondents showed high levels of physical fitness. This high prevalence of physical inactivity and unfitness may lead to various health problems and can increase the prevalence of hypokinetic ailments in adult women, increased health care costs and even premature death. Key words : Physical activity, physical fitness, women, hypokinesis.


This paper presents the results of a preliminary survey of emerging demonstration and readiness activities to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and carbon stock enhancement (REDD+) across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The survey was conducted between November and December 2008, and the information collected was updated until May 2009. While the results of the survey offer a useful snapshot of the landscape of REDD+ activities, they do not capture all the dynamics associated with this rapidly evolving field. As the international debate on REDD+ continues, some projects surveyed may have changed their core objectives and activities, while others may never get off the ground. Another limitation of the survey is the ongoing lack of any clear definition of what constitutes a REDD+ demonstration activity. Despite these shortcomings, this survey offers insights on current trends to inform future REDD+ investments. In total the survey found over 100 REDD+ activities: 44 demonstration activities, 65 readiness activities (including those by the Forest Carbon Partnerhship Facility and the UN-REDD Programme) and 12 activities where carbon is not an explicit goal. Indonesia has by far the most demonstration activities in the pipeline, making Asia the region with the largest number of REDD+ activities. Many projects (68%) are still in the planning stage. A preliminary assessment of incipient REDD+ investments shows the following. First, REDD+ initiatives, especially demonstration activities, tend to target countries where deforestation or the risk of deforestation is significant, which suggests realised carbon effectiveness considerations. Second, poor governance contexts do not discourage REDD+ investments, although cost-efficiency considerations may suggest otherwise. Third, although there is scope for natural equity and co-benefits, there is also a risk of trade-offs between carbon effectiveness and cobenefits. Dry forests - where many rural poor live and where there are high levels of biodiversity - tend to be carbon poor and, thus, feature far less in REDD+ demonstration activities than humid forests. Balancing trade-offs between cost-effectiveness and co-benefit considerations will likely become a central challenge for REDD+ policies and activities. Spatially explicit, high-resolution, environmental and socioeconomic data can offer new scope for REDD+ investments to enhance carbon goals while securing REDD+ co-benefits. Policy makers, donors, and other investors in REDD+ and/or REDD+ co-benefits could assemble such data to enhance their investment choices, monitor their outcomes, and thus provide valuable lessons to inform the national and global REDD+ architecture. Although performance-based payments analogous to payments for environmental services (PES) are core features of the REDD+ idea, the survey further shows that REDD+ policies will require more than PES-type REDD+ schemes. Investments in improved governance and broader policy reforms are equally important to address the root causes of forest emissions. Finding the right policy mix in different country contexts is an important challenge ahead.


Automatic methods for music navigation and music recommendation exploit the structure in the music to carry out a meaningful exploration of the "song space". To get a satisfactory performance from such systems, one should incorporate as much information about songs similarity as possible; however, how to do so is not obvious. In this paper, we build on the ideas of the Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) that have been successfully used in the document retrieval community. Under this probabilistic framework, any song will be projected into a relatively low dimensional space of "latent semantics", in such a way that all observed similarities can be satisfactorily explained using the latent semantics. Therefore, one can think of these semantics as the real structure in music, in the sense that they can explain the observed similarities among songs. The suitability of the PLSA model for representing music structure is studied in a simplified scenario consisting of 4412 songs and two similarity measures among them. The results suggest that the PLSA model is a useful framework to combine different sources of information, and provides a reasonable space for song representation.


Dendrochronology, the science of tree-rings is a tool which has been widely used for many years for understanding changes in the environment, as trees react to environmental changes over time. In the contemporary situation, where climate warming in the Arctic is unequivocal and its effects on the Alpine and tundra ecosystems are seen pronouncedly in the past decade, the role of dendro-studies and the use of trees and shrubs alike as proxies of change has become critical. Studies clearly indicate that warming in the Arctic and Alpine tundra has resulted in increased vegetation in recent years. Shrubs, in these sensitive ecosystems, have proven to be highly instrumental as they likely benefit from this warming and hence are good indicators and auditees of this change. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the potential of shrubs in the evolving field of dendro-ecology/climatology.
Studies from classical dendrochronology used annual rings from trees. Further, because of shrub sensitivity to contemporary change, shrub-based dendrochronological research has increased at a notable scale in the last decade and will likely continue. This is because shrubs grow even beyond the tree line and promise environmental records from areas where tree growth is very limited or absent. However, a common limitation noted by most shrub studies is the very hard cross-dating due to asynchronous growth patterns. This limitation poses a major hurdle in shrub-based dendrochronological studies, as it renders weak detection of common signals in growth patterns in population stands. This common signal is traced by using a 'site-chronology'.

In this dissertation, I studied shrub growth through various resolutions, starting from understanding radial growth within individuals along the length of the stem, to comparison of radial growth responses among male and female shrubs, to comparing growth responses among trees and shrubs to investigation of biome-wide functional trait responses to current warming. Apart from Chapter 4 and Chapter 6, I largely used Juniperus communis sp. for investigations as it is the most widely distributed woody dioecious species often used in dendro-ecological investigations in the Northern Hemisphere.

Primarily, we investigated radial growth patterns within shrubs to better understand growth within individuals by comparing different stem-disks from different stem heights within individuals. We found significant differences in radial growth from different stem-disks with respect to stem heights from same individuals. Furthermore, we found that these differences depending on the choice of the stem-disk affect the resulting site-chronology and hence climate-sensitivity to a substantial extent and that the choice of a stem-disk is a crucial precursor which affects climate-growth relationships.
Secondly, we investigated if gender difference – often reported causing differential radial growth in dioecious trees – is an influential factor for heterogeneous growth. We found that at least in case of Juniperus communis. L and Juniperus communis ssp nana. WILLD there is no substantial gender biased difference in radial growth which might affect the site-chronology. We did find moderate differences between sexes in an overall analysis and attribute this to reproductive effort in females.
In our study to test the potential of shrubs for reconstruction, we used a test case of Alnus viridis ssp crispa. We found a strong correlation between ring-width indices and summer temperature. Initially, the model failed the stability tests when we tested the stability of this relation using a response function model. However, using wood-anatomical analysis we discovered that this was because of abnormal cell-wall formation resulting in very thin rings in the year 2004. Pointer year analysis revealed that the thin rings were caused because of a moth larval outbreak and when corrected for these rings the model passed all stability tests.
Furthermore, to see if trees and shrubs growing in same biomes react to environmental changes similarly, a network analysis with sites ranging from the Mediterranean biome to the Ural Mountains in Russia was carried out. We found that shrubs react better to the current climate warming and have a decoupled divergent temperature response as compared to coexisting trees. This outcome reiterated the importance of shrub studies in relation to contemporary climate change. Even though trees and shrubs are woody forms producing annual rings, they have very different growth patterns and need different methods for analysis and data treatment.
Finally, in a domain-wide network analysis from plant-community vegetation survey, we investigated functional relationships between plant traits (leaf area, plant height, leaf nitrogen content, specific leaf area (SLA), and leaf dry matter content (LDMC)) and abiotic factors viz. temperature and soil moisture. We found a strong relation between summer temperature and community height, SLA and LDMC on a spatial scale. Contrarily, the temporal-analysis revealed SLA and LDMC lagged and did not respond to temperature over the last decade. We realized that there are complex interactions between intra-specific and inter-specific plant traits which differ spatially and temporally impacting Arctic ecosystems in terms of carbon turn over, surface albedo, water balance and heat-energy fluxes. We found that ecosystem functions in the Arctic are closely linked with plant height and will be indicative of warming in the short term future becoming key factors in modelling ecosystem projections.


Born in 1876, Natalie Barney-beautiful, charismatic, brilliant and wealthy-was expected to marry well and lead the conventional life of a privileged society woman. But Natalie had no interest in marriage and made no secret of the fact that she was attracted to women. Brought up by a talented and rebellious mother-the painter Alice Barney-Natalie cultivated an interest in poetry and the arts. When she moved to Paris in the early 1900s, she plunged into the city's literary scene, opening a famed Left Bank literary salon and engaging in a string of scandalous affairs with courtesan Liane de Pougy, poet Renee Vivien, and painter Romaine Brooks, among others. For the rest of her long and controversial life Natalie Barney was revered by writers for her generous, eccentric spirit and reviled by high society for her sexual appetite. In the end, she served as an inspiration and came to know many of the greatest names of 20th century arts and letters-including Proust, Colette, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Truman Capote.A dazzling literary biography, Wild Heart: A Life is a story of a woman who has been an icon to many. Set against the backdrop of two different societies-Victorian America and Belle Epoque Europe--Wild Heart: A Life beautifully captures the richness of their lore.


Mounting regulatory pressure, scarcity of competent personnel, and significant budgetary problems are leading more and more communities to consider private-sector contract operations and maintenance (O&M) of water and wastewater facilities. At present, there are about 400 O&M contracts in the United States for municipal water and wastewater facilities with rated capacities over 1 million gallons per day. This represents about 5 percent of all facilities. When properly implemented, contract O&M can provide greater accountability for operations, allow community leaders to shift the risk of meeting environmental standards to the private sector, and bring added expertise to the increasingly complex operating environment of water and wastewater systems. Contract O&M also offers a more predictable operations budgeting process, and an opportunity for local overnments to realize operational savings that can be shifted to investments in capital facilities. While cost savings is often cited as the primary reason municipal officials consider contract O&M, price alone should not determine contractor selection. In addition to a guaranteed price, the contractor is providing professional management, technical expertise, and financial controls for water and wastewater operations. Hence, a contractor with a record of successful operations is the key to achieving maximum benefit from private contract O&M. Equally necessary is a relationship of mutual trust between the contractor and the municipality. An objective and unbiased procurement process is important in early development of this relationship. Since contract O&M is a professional service that provides management, financial, and human resources capabilities, a procurement process similar to that used in securing other professional services should be used. Professional operation, efficiency, and performance are the keys. For many municipal officials contracting out raises concern over loss of daily operating control. The owner is placing millions of dollars of assets in the hands of a contractor for operation and maintenance, yet the owner will continue to be the permit holder and be ultimately responsible for overall performance. It is important for the owner and contractor to develop an agreement that affords the owner a level of accountability, as well as liability and fine protection, that can substitute for the owner's direct control. If this is accomplished, private operation of municipal water and wastewater facilities is a valuable option for community leaders


Divide-and-Conquer is a common strategy to manage the complexity of system design and verification. In the context of System-on-Chip (SoC) design verification, an SoC system is decomposed into several modules and every module is separately verified. Usually an SoC module is reactive: it interacts with its environmental modules. This interaction is normally modeled by environment constraints, which are applied to verify the SoC module. Environment constraints are assumed to be always true when verifying the individual modules of a system. Therefore the correctness of environment constraints is very important for module verification.
Environment constraints are also very important for coverage analysis. Coverage analysis in formal verification measures whether or not the property set fully describes the functional behavior of the design under verification (DuV). if a set of properties describes every functional behavior of a DuV, the set of properties is called complete. To verify the correctness of environment constraints, Assume-Guarantee Reasoning rules can be employed.
However, the state of the art assume-guarantee reasoning rules cannot be applied to the environment constraints specified by using an industrial standard property language such as SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA).
This thesis proposes a new assume-guarantee reasoning rule that can be applied to environment constraints specified by using a property language such as SVA. In addition, this thesis proposes two efficient plausibility checks for constraints that can be conducted without a concrete implementation of the considered environment.
Furthermore, this thesis provides a compositional reasoning framework determining that a system is completely verified if all modules are verified with Complete Interval Property Checking (C-IPC) under environment constraints.

At present, there is a trend that more of the functionality in SoCs is shifted from the hardware to the hardware-dependent software (HWDS), which is a crucial component in an SoC, since other software layers, such as the operating systems are built on it. Therefore there is an increasing need to apply formal verification to HWDS, especially for safety-critical systems.
The interactions between HW and HWDS are often reactive, and happen in a temporal order. This requires new property languages to specify the reactive behavior at the HW and SW interfaces.
This thesis introduces a new property language, called Reactive Software Property Language (RSPL), to specify the reactive interactions between the HW and the HWDS.
Furthermore, a method for checking the completeness of software properties, which are specified by using RSPL, is presented in this thesis. This method is motivated by the approach of checking the completeness of hardware properties.


A 27-year-old male patient fasted under supervision for 382 days and has subsequently maintained his normal weight. Blood glucose concentrations around 30 mg/100 ml were recorded consistently during the last 8 months, although the patient was ambulant and attending as an out-patient. Responses to glucose and tolbutamide tolerance tests remained normal. The hyperglycaemic response to glucagon was reduced and latterly absent, but promptly returned to normal during carbohydrate refeeding. After an initial decrease was corrected, plasma potassium levels remained normal without supplementation. A temporary period of hypercalcaemia occurred towards the end of the fast. Decreased plasma magnesium concentrations were a consistent feature from the first month onwards. After 100 days of fasting there was a marked and persistent increase in the excretion of urinary cations and inorganic phosphate, which until then had been minimal. These increases may be due to dissolution of excessive soft tissue and skeletal mass. Prolonged fasting in this patient had no ill-effects.


For the past several years, the news media have carried countless stories about soaring defaults among subprime mortgage borrowers. Although concern over this segment of the mortgage market is certainly justified, subprime mortgages only account for about onequarter of the total outstanding mortgages in the United States. The remaining 75 percent are prime loans that are made to borrowers with good credit, who fully document their income and make traditional down payments. While default rates on prime loans are significantly lower than those on subprime loans, they are also increasing rapidly. For example, among prime loans made in 2005, 2.2 percent were 60 days or more overdue 12 months after the loan was made (our definition of default). For loans made in 2006, this percentage nearly doubled to 4.2 percent, and for loans made in 2007 it rose by another 20 percent, reaching 4.8 percent. By comparison, the percentage of subprime loans that had defaulted after 12 months was 14.6 percent for loans made in 2005, 20.5 percent for loans made in 2006, and 21.9 percent for loans made in 2007. To put these figures in perspective, only 1.4 percent of prime loans and less than 7 percent of subprime originated in 2002 defaulted within their first 12 months.1 How do we account for these historically high default rates? How have recent trends in home prices and economic conditions affected mortgage markets? One of the things we want to consider, specifically, is whether prime and subprime loans responded similarly to home price dynamics.


The goal of this study is to determine how H2O and HDO measurements in water vapor can be used to detect and diagnose biases in the representation of processes controlling tropospheric humidity in atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs). We analyze a large number of isotopic data sets (four satellite, sixteen ground-based remote-sensing, five surface in situ and three aircraft data sets) that are sensitive to different altitudes throughout the free troposphere. Despite significant differences between data sets, we identify some observed HDO/H2O characteristics that are robust across data sets and that can be used to evaluate models. We evaluate the isotopic GCM LMDZ, accounting for the effects of spatiotemporal sampling and instrument sensitivity. We find that LMDZ reproduces the spatial patterns in the lower and mid troposphere remarkably well. However, it underestimates the amplitude of seasonal variations in isotopic composition at all levels in the subtropics and in midlatitudes, and this bias is consistent across all data sets. LMDZ also underestimates the observed meridional isotopic gradient and the contrast between dry and convective tropical regions compared to satellite data sets. Comparison with six other isotope-enabled GCMs from the SWING2 project shows that biases exhibited by LMDZ are common to all models. The SWING2 GCMs show a very large spread in isotopic behavior that is not obviously related to that of humidity, suggesting water vapor isotopic measurements could be used to expose model shortcomings. In a companion paper, the isotopic differences between models are interpreted in terms of biases in the representation of processes controlling humidity. Copyright © 2012 by the American Geophysical Union.


Biomass to energy conversion is particularly attractive on the microscale were internal combustion engines such as microturbines may be utilized coupled to an indirect gasification system. The authors have developed the IPRP technology based on rotary kiln pyrolisys and a pilot plant was built in Italy powered by an 80 kWEl microturbine fired by pyrolysis biomass syngas. This paper describes CFD numerical investigations carried out to study the combustion process occurring inside the annular rich-quick-lean combustion chamber of the given microturbine. A RANS analysis has been performed in order to simulate both natural gas and syngas combustion. A mechanisms based on two reduced and detailed chemical kinetic were taken into account and applied to carry out the CFD simulations. The numerical results obtained for NG are presented and compared with the experimental data on emission to validate the numerical assumptions. The combustion mechanism are used also in pyrolysis gas combustion case to investigate the operation of the microturbine fuelled with this biomass derived fuel.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Abstract. We present a novel 28 yr dataset of Earth's black-sky surface albedo, derived from AVHRR instruments. The dataset is created using algorithms to separately derive the surface albedo for different land use areas globally. Snow, sea ice, open water and vegetation are all treated independently. The product features corrections for the atmospheric effect in satellite-observed surface radiances, a BRDF correction for the anisotropic reflectance properties of natural surfaces, and a novel topography correction of geolocation and radiometric accuracy of surface reflectance observations over mountainous areas. The dataset is based on a homogenized AVHRR radiance timeseries. The product is validated against quality-controlled in situ observations of clear-sky surface albedo at various BSRN sites around the world. Snow and ice albedo retrieval validation is given particular attention using BSRN sites over Antarctica, Greenland Climate Network stations on the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), as well as sea ice albedo data from the SHEBA and Tara expeditions. The product quality is found to be comparable to other previous long-term surface albedo datasets from AVHRR.


This Article explores the historical and present-day significance of proposals for copyright reform advanced by the controversial American poet, Ezra Pound, in 1918. These proposals have never been discussed by legal scholars and have received but scant attention from literary scholars. Yet, like William Wordsworth and Mark Twain, whose efforts to reform copyright law are much better known, Pound is a major writer whose views shed considerable light on the state of copyright law and the conditions of authorship in his time. Pound's proposed statute-offered as a "cure" for American book piracy-begins by making authors' copyrights exclusive and perpetual, and goes on, surprisingly, to introduce broad compulsory-license provisions that would prevent authors and their heirs from interfering with later efforts to disseminate authors' works, and would require publishers only to pay a fixed royalty on sales. The tension in Pound's proposal between a perpetual, exclusive copyright and expansive compulsory licenses shows him to be an inheritor of two legal and economic traditions: on the one hand, a Lockean and Romantic belief in a strong property rule grounded in an author's natural rights and unique personality, and, on the other, an anti-monopoly, free-trade preference for a liability rule that would encourage wide dissemination of affordable works to serve the public interest. As the author of such a dual-purpose proposal, Pound emerges as remarkably and presciently alert to the dangers currently posed by lengthy copyright terms unaccompanied by limitations that adequately protect the public. Today, the estates of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Samuel Beckett, and other modernist authors use extended copyrights to discourage or control use of those authors' works by scholars, critics, and others. Pound's perpetual, royalty-based copyright would, in principle, have removed or reduced such obstacles to the study and enjoyment of modernist authors. Moreover, Pound's draft statute anticipates recent proposals by Richard Posner, Lawrence Lessig, and others for mitigating the conflict between the lengthy copyright monopoly and the needs of the public.


As a PHP developer, you have some great tools for developing web applications. Ruby on Rails is another key tool to add to your web development toolbox. Rails is a high-level web development framework that emphasizes high productivity and clean code. However, the Ruby language and Rails framework take a different approach from the way many PHP developers write applications. Ruby lies at the foundation of Rails, and we'll teach you the Ruby language from the beginning by building on your existing foundation of PHP. We'll explore Ruby through parallel code examples that illustrate the differences between the languages, and help you understand the Ruby idioms and how they differ from popular PHP code and style. You'll then learn the Rails framework by iteratively building a complete application, starting from the home page through to a finished product. Along the way, you'll build your skills as a Rails developer by learning the Rails fundamentals such as MVC structure, domain modeling, and testing. In addition to serving as a guide to learning both Ruby and Rails from a PHP developer's perspective, this book includes two extensive reference chapters. They map the most common PHP tasks to their equivalents in the Ruby and Rails world, giving you at-a-glance information that you'll refer to often.


In defining audit quality, DeAngelo (1981) assumes no variation in auditor's technical competency in discovering a breach. Instead, we relax this assumption and utilize principal components analysis technique to extract auditor quality from human capital factors of an audit firm. With the auditor quality, this study examines the association between auditor size and performance. In terms of market segment, audit firms are divided into public company audit market firms (PCAMFs) and non-public company audit market firms (NCAMFs). Based on path analysis, we find that auditor size has direct effect on performance and indirect effect through auditor quality. Auditor quality associates with both auditor size and performance positively. In further, auditor size has more contribution to performance of PCAMFs than that of NCAMFs. Auditor quality of PCAMFs explains more variation of financial performance than do NCAMFs. The results indicate that PCAMFs earn more financial performance through the upgrade of auditor quality.


This Article generates a data set (twelve courts and thirty-two decisions) of foreign judicial citations to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The purpose of this Article is to learn what happens when a case is deterritorialized and reconstituted in a different national scenario, and to conceptualize how courts around the world use foreign authority. Analysis reveals that few foreign courts used Brown in decisions involving education or race and ethnicity. Foreign courts used the case as a form of factual evidence, as a guide in understanding the proper role of a court with respect to decision making, and as a source of substantive law in discussions on equal protection. Specifically, the article illustrates the ways in which justices on both the New Zealand Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court of South Africa used Brown in discussions of same-sex marriage. Although central to comparative law, the legal transplant metaphor does not adequately explain the transnational use of Brown. By incorporating sociological theories of diffusion and innovation, the article attempts to reconcile some of the flaws of the transplant metaphor and argue that conceptualizing judiciaries' use of foreign law as a cosmopolitan conversation is more appropriate. Cosmopolitan conversation has led to forms of legal learning and innovation when courts have cited, interpreted, and infused their own meaning into the Brown decision.


This paper re-considers the widespread use of value-added approaches to estimate school 'effects', and shows the results to be very unstable over time. The paper uses as an example the contextualised value-added scores of all secondary schools in England. The study asks how many schools with at least 99% of their pupils included in the VA calculations, and with data for all years, had VA measures that were clearly positive for five years. The answer is - none. Whatever it is that VA is measuring, if it is measuring anything at all, it is not a consistent characteristic of schools. To find no schools with five successive years of positive VA means that parents could not use it as a way of judging how well their primary age children would do at age 16 in their future secondary school. Contextualised value-added (CVA) is used here for the calculations because there is good data covering five years that allows judgement of its consistency as a purported school characteristic. However, what is true of CVA is almost certainly true of VA approaches more generally, whether for schools, colleges, departments or individual teachers, in England and everywhere else. Until their problems have been resolved by further development to handle missing and erroneous data, value-added models should not be used in practice. Commentators, policy-makers, educators and families need to be warned. If value-added scores are as meaningless as they appear to be, there is a serious ethical issue wherever they have been or continue to be used to reward and punish schools or make policy decisions.


One major research focus in the Material Science and Engineering Community in the past decade has been to obtain a more fundamental understanding on the phenomenon 'material failure'. Such an understanding is critical for engineers and scientists developing new materials with higher strength and toughness, developing robust designs against failure, or for those concerned with an accurate estimate of a component's design life. Defects like cracks and dislocations evolve at
nano scales and influence the macroscopic properties such as strength, toughness and ductility of a material. In engineering applications, the global response of the system is often governed by the behaviour at the smaller length scales. Hence, the sub-scale behaviour must be computed accurately for good predictions of the full scale behaviour. Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations promise to reveal the fundamental mechanics of material failure by modeling the atom to atom interactions. Since the atomistic dimensions are of the order of Angstroms ( A), approximately 85 billion atoms are required to model a 1 micro- m^3 volume of Copper. Therefore, pure atomistic models are prohibitively expensive with everyday engineering computations involving macroscopic cracks and shear bands, which are much larger than the atomistic length and time scales. To reduce the computational effort, multiscale methods are required, which are able to couple a continuum description of the structure with an atomistic description. In such paradigms, cracks and dislocations are explicitly modeled at the atomistic scale, whilst a self-consistent continuum model elsewhere. Many multiscale methods for fracture are developed for "fictitious" materials based on "simple" potentials such as the Lennard-Jones potential. Moreover, multiscale methods for evolving cracks are rare. Efficient methods to coarse grain the fine scale defects are missing. However, the existing multiscale methods for fracture do not adaptively adjust the fine scale domain as the crack propagates. Most methods, therefore only "enlarge" the fine scale domain and therefore drastically increase computational cost. Adaptive adjustment requires the fine scale domain to be refined and coarsened. One of the major difficulties in multiscale methods for fracture is to up-scale fracture related material information from the fine scale to the coarse scale, in particular for complex crack problems. Most of the existing approaches therefore were applied to examples with comparatively few macroscopic cracks.

Key contributions

The bridging scale method is enhanced using the phantom node method so that cracks can be modeled at the coarse scale. To ensure self-consistency in the bulk, a virtual atom cluster is devised providing the response of the intact material at the coarse scale. A molecular statics model is employed in the fine scale where crack propagation is modeled by naturally breaking the bonds. The fine scale and coarse scale models are coupled by enforcing the displacement boundary conditions on the ghost atoms. An energy criterion is used to detect the crack tip location. Adaptive refinement and coarsening schemes are developed and implemented during the crack propagation. The results were observed to be in excellent agreement with the pure atomistic simulations. The developed multiscale method is one of the first adaptive multiscale method for fracture.
 A robust and simple three dimensional coarse graining technique to convert a given atomistic region into an equivalent coarse region, in the context of multiscale fracture has been developed. The developed method is the first of its kind. The developed coarse graining technique can be applied to identify and upscale the defects like: cracks, dislocations and shear bands. The current method has been applied to estimate the equivalent coarse scale models of several complex fracture patterns arrived from the pure atomistic simulations. The upscaled fracture pattern agree well with the actual fracture pattern. The error in the potential energy of the pure atomistic and the coarse grained model was observed to be acceptable.
 A first novel meshless adaptive multiscale method for fracture has been developed. The phantom node method is replaced by a meshless differential reproducing kernel particle method. The differential reproducing kernel particle method is comparatively more expensive but allows for a more "natural" coupling between the two scales due to the meshless interpolation functions. The higher order continuity is also beneficial. The centro symmetry parameter is used to detect the crack tip location. The developed multiscale method is employed to study the complex crack propagation. Results based on the meshless adaptive multiscale method were observed to be in excellent agreement with the pure atomistic simulations.
 The developed multiscale methods are applied to study the fracture in practical materials like Graphene and Graphene on Silicon surface. The bond stretching and the bond reorientation were observed to be the net mechanisms of the crack growth in Graphene. The influence of time step on the crack propagation was studied using two different time steps. Pure atomistic simulations of fracture in Graphene on Silicon surface are presented. Details of the three dimensional multiscale method to study the fracture in Graphene on Silicon surface are discussed.


Change in perceived relationship quality among unmarried first-time parents was examined using a subsample of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Mothers (N = 990) and fathers (N = 885) were interviewed at childbirth and one year postpartum. A significant but small decline in perceived relationship quality was found, with mothers experiencing greater decline than fathers. Greater declines were predicted by parents being in steady relationships at childbirth, and for mothers only, fathers' provision of transportation support at childbirth. Less decline was predicted by fathers' presence at childbirth and parents reporting less chance of marriage. For fathers, less education predicted less decrease in perceived relationship quality. Ten recommendations based upon these results are offered for family life educators and clinicians.


When California's Proposition 8 (Prop. 8) eliminated the right to matTy a person of the same sex, it aggravated a fissure between the black community and the gay community. Though Prop. 8 had nothing to do with race on the surface, the controversy that followed its passage was charged with racial blame. This Article uses the Prop. 8 controversy, including the ensuing Perry litigation challenging the law, as a window into relations between the black and gay communities. Although the matTiage equality movement bills itself as a descendant of the black civil rights movement, it often treats its forefather as dead: The political rhetoric and legal arguments of the gay rights movement routinely embrace postracialism, the notion that American society has moved beyond racial difference and hierarchy. Such arguments imply that the struggle for racial justice is over, with g,-ays supplanting blacks as the paradigmatic stigmatized minority. In the words of 1he Advocate, a leading Lesbian Gay Bisexual T ransgender (LG BT) periodical, "Gay Is the New Black." This is the first Article to identify the postracial narratives at the heart of matTiage equality argumentation-in the media, on the streets, and in the courts. I show that such claims reflect an oppression Olympics, undermine black-gay relations, and are not dictated by constitutional precedent. Moreover, such claims may inadvertently constrict equality for both groups, marking the end of civil rights for both the black and LGBT communities. I urge the matTiage equality movement to attend to race carefully, taking account of the history of the Supreme Court's application of strict scrutiny to race and the ongoing subordination affiicting the black community decades after securing formal equality. This analysis casts doubt on whether the LGBT community should aspire to be "the new black." Attending to the trajectory ofblack claims for civil rights could lead matTiage equality advocates to create doctrinal space for remedial efforts necessary to transform formal equality into equality in fact.


Strength, conditioning, and nutrition play an important role in preparing athletes to perform to the best of their ability. For this reason, nearly all competitive teams employ strength and conditioning specialists to prepare their athletes for competition, and most teams have sport dietitians and/or nutrition consultants as part of their performance-enhancement team. Academic and professional preparation of strength and conditioning and sport-nutrition specialists in kinesiology programs has opened up a number of career opportunities for students and scholars. In addition, advances in technology have enhanced the ability of strength and conditioning specialists and sport nutritionists to monitor athletes during training and competition. This paper provides an overview of the history, professional preparation, program components, and general principals of strength and conditioning and sport nutrition and the impact they have had on high-level performance, as well as future trends in these fields.


This article explores the use of grounded theory to generate conceptualizations of emergent social patterns in research data. The naming of patterns and their abstraction across time, place and people, are discussed. The constant comparative method employed in grounded data analysis is offered as a developmental tool for enhancing researchers' abilities to conceptualize and form emergent theories. Conceptual levels, descriptions, power and flawed approaches to analysis are explored at length.


Extensions of Shallow Water Equations The subject of the thesis of Michael Hilden is the simulation of floods in urban areas. In case of strong rain events, water can flow out of the overloaded sewer system onto the street and damage the connected houses. The dependable simulation of water flow out of a manhole ("manhole") and over a curb ("curb") is crucial for the assessment of the flood risks. The incompressible 3D-Navier-Stokes Equations (3D-NSE) describe the free surface flow of water accurately, but require expensive computations. Therefore, the less CPU-intensive (factor ca.1/100) Shallow Water Equations (SWE) are usually applied in hydrology. They can be derived from 3D-NSE under the assumption of a hydrostatic pressure distribution via depth-integration and are applied successfully in particular to simulations of river flow processes. The SWE-computations of the flow problems "manhole" and "curb" differ to the 3D-NSE results. Thus, SWE need to be extended appropriately to give reliable forecasts for flood risks in urban areas within reduced computational efforts. These extensions are developed based on physical considerations not considered in the classical SWE. In one extension, a vortex layer on the ground is separated from the main flow representing its new bottom. In a further extension, the hydrostatic pressure distribution is corrected by additional terms due to approximations of vertical velocities and their interaction with the flow. These extensions increase the quality of the SWE results for these flow problems up to the quality level of the NSE results within a moderate increase of the CPU efforts.


If you're serious about exam success, it's time to Concentrate! Company Law Concentrate is the essential study and revision guide for law students looking for extra marks. The clear, succinct coverage enables you to quickly grasp the fundamental principles of this area of law and helps you to succeed in exams. This guide has been rigorously reviewed and is endorsed by students and lecturers for level of coverage, accuracy, and exam advice. Packed with essential information, key cases, revision tips, exam q & as, and more, Company Law Concentrate is also supported by extensive online resources to take your learning further (http://www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/orc/concentrate): * Plan your revision using the printable topic overviews * Pinpoint which areas you need to concentrate on with the diagnostic test * Test your knowledge of company law with the multiple choice questions and receive feedback on your answers * Improve your essay skills using the outline answers for guidance on what to include and how to structure your answer * Revise the facts and discussions of key cases using the interactive flashcards * Learn the important terms and definitions using the interactive glossary * Check that you have covered the main points of a topic using the key facts lists * Take your research deeper with the further reading suggestions * Achieve better marks following the advice on revision and exam technique by experienced examiner Nigel Foster * Keep up-to-date on all the latest developments in the law with the author's Twitter feed and the Company Law Concentrate Facebook page.


The BlackBerry is cool, and the BlackBerry is fun, but the BlackBerry also means serious business. For those of you who bought your BlackBerry to help get your life organized and free yourself from the ball-and-chain of desktop computing, BlackBerry at Work: Productivity for Professionals is the book to show you how. There are plenty of general-purpose BlackBerry guides, but this book shows you how to complete all the traditional smartphone tasks, like to-dos, calendars, and email, and become even more efficient and productive. Youll learn mechanisms for developing effective workflows specific to the features of the BlackBerry and also efficient strategies for dealing with the specialized aspects of business and professional lifestyles. After giving a professionally targeted introduction to the built-in applications and configuration options, this book details the BlackBerrys enterprise features. This book also delves into App World, the BlackBerrys source for third-party software. It discusses some of the best business and vertical applications, and shows you how to take advantage of this wealth of add-ons and professional functionality. The only business-specific guide to the BlackBerry. Improve your productivity with innovative mobile workflows that free you from the desktop. Make the BlackBerry work for you so you can work better. The authors of BlackBerry for Work have decided to direct their share of the proceeds from the book to a charity in India. The Mitr Foundation is a Trust founded in the city of Hyderabad, with the objective of contributing its might towards the empowerment of the girl child through education. Somewhere between the elite and the underprivileged lies the core essence of our endeavor. Shikha has pledged to undertake the responsibility of educating 3 children. What youll learn How to purchase a BlackBerry and configure it specifically for business How to integrate built-in BlackBerry platform features into an everyday professional workflow How to access enterprise-wide data and computing features Specific organizational tips and sample workflows for different types of professions How to deploy the BlackBerry platform across groups both large and small The secrets of BlackBerry platform customization and personalization Who is this book for? You have already purchased or are considering purchasing a BlackBerry. You know its the most reliable smartphone around, but you actually want to use it to make your professional life more efficient, productive, and lest we forget, fun! The BlackBerry has inherent uses for a broad range of professions, including management, sales, medical/dental, legal, real estate, training and education, human resources, and information technology, so there are many of you (or should I say us?). Some of us are novice mobile device users, and others are highly experienced mobile pros. No matter, because every professional BlackBerry user across this continuum of experience wants to learn to work smarter, better, and more efficiently. This book shows you how to use your BlackBerry to do this.


Part of the Other Computer Sciences Commons, and the Science and Mathematics Education Commons An indexed, print copy of the Proceedings is also available for purchase at: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/charleston. You may also be interested in the new series, Charleston Insights in Library, Archival, and Information Sciences. Find out more at: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/charleston-insights-library-archivaland-information-sciences.


The goal of this thesis is to develop a video retrieval system that supports relevance feedback. One research approach of the thesis is to find out if a combination of implicit and explicit relevance feedback returns better retrieval results than a system using explicit feedback only. Another approach is to identify a model to weight existing feature categories. For this purpose, a state-of-the-art analysis is presented and two systems implemented, which run under the conditions of the international TRECVID workshop. It will be a basis system for further research approaches in the field of interactive video retrieval. Amongst others, it shall participate in the 2006 search task of the mentioned workshop.