Avian influenza A H7N9 virus remains a major threat to public health. However, no previous studies have determined the characteristics and dynamics of virus-specific T cell immune memory in patients who have recovered from H7N9 infection. Our findings showed that establishment of H7N9-specific T cell memory after H7N9 infection was prolonged in older and severely affected patients. Severely ill patients mounted lower T cell responses in the first 4 months after infection, while T cell responses tended to increase over time in older and severely ill patients. Higher levels of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells expressing the lung-homing marker CD49a were detected at 6 to 8 months after infection. Our results indicated a long-term impact of H7N9 infection on virus-specific memory T cells. These findings advance our understanding of the dynamics of virus-specific memory T cell immunity after H7N9 infection, which is relevant to the development of T cell-based universal influenza vaccines. ABSTRACT Since 2013, influenza A H7N9 virus has emerged as the most common avian influenza virus subtype causing human infection, and it is associated with a high fatality risk. However, the characteristics of immune memory in patients who have recovered from H7N9 infection are not well understood. We assembled a cohort of 45 H7N9 survivors followed for up to 15 months after infection. Humoral and cellular immune responses were analyzed in sequential samples obtained at 1.5 to 4 months, 6 to 8 months, and 12 to 15 months postinfection. H7N9-specific antibody concentrations declined over time, and protective antibodies persisted longer in severely ill patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and patients presenting with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) than in patients with mild disease. Frequencies of virus-specific gamma interferon (IFN-γ)-secreting T cells were lower in critically ill patients requiring ventilation than in patients without ventilation within 4 months after infection. The percentages of H7N9-specific IFN-γ-secreting T cells tended to increase over time in patients ≥60 years or in critically ill patients requiring ventilation. Elevated levels of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells expressing the lung-homing marker CD49a were observed at 6 to 8 months after H7N9 infection compared to those in samples obtained at 1.5 to 4 months. Our findings indicate the prolonged reconstruction and evolution of virus-specific T cell immunity in older or critically ill patients and have implications for T cell-directed immunization strategies. IMPORTANCE Avian influenza A H7N9 virus remains a major threat to public health. However, no previous studies have determined the characteristics and dynamics of virus-specific T cell immune memory in patients who have recovered from H7N9 infection. Our findings showed that establishment of H7N9-specific T cell memory after H7N9 infection was prolonged in older and severely affected patients. Severely ill patients mounted lower T cell responses in the first 4 months after infection, while T cell responses tended to increase over time in older and severely ill patients. Higher levels of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells expressing the lung-homing marker CD49a were detected at 6 to 8 months after infection. Our results indicated a long-term impact of H7N9 infection on virus-specific memory T cells. These findings advance our understanding of the dynamics of virus-specific memory T cell immunity after H7N9 infection, which is relevant to the development of T cell-based universal influenza vaccines.


This article (an updated version of the original 2012 working paper) provides the most comprehensive discussion to date of whether so-called automated, autonomous, self-driving, or driverless vehicles can be lawfully sold and used on public roads in the United States. The short answer is that the computer direction of a motor vehicle's steering, braking, and accelerating without real-time human input is probably legal. The long answer, contained in the article, provides a foundation for tailoring regulations and understanding liability issues related to these vehicles. The article's largely descriptive analysis, which begins with the principle that everything is permitted unless prohibited, covers three key legal regimes: the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, regulations enacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the vehicle codes of all fifty US states. The Geneva Convention, to which the United States is a party, probably does not prohibit automated driving. The treaty promotes road safety by establishing uniform rules, one of which requires every vehicle or combination thereof to have a driver who is "at all times ... able to control" it. However, this requirement is likely satisfied if a human is able to intervene in the automated vehicle's operation. NHTSA's regulations, which include the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) to which new vehicles must be certified, do not generally prohibit or uniquely burden automated vehicles, with the possible exception of one rule regarding emergency flashers. State vehicle codes probably do not prohibit — but may complicate — automated driving. These codes assume the presence of licensed human drivers who are able to exercise human judgment, and particular rules may functionally require that presence. New York somewhat uniquely directs a driver to keep one hand on the wheel at all times. In addition, far more common rules mandating reasonable, prudent, practicable, and safe driving have uncertain application to automated vehicles and their users. Following distance requirements may also restrict the lawful operation of tightly spaced vehicle platoons. Many of these issues arise even in the several states that expressly regulate automated vehicles. The primary purpose of this article is to assess the current legal status of automated vehicles. However, the paper includes draft language for US states that wish to clarify this status. It also recommends five near-term measures that may help increase legal certainty without producing premature regulation. First, regulators and standards organizations should develop common vocabularies and definitions that are useful in the legal, technical, and public realms. Second, the United States should closely monitor efforts to amend or interpret the 1969 Vienna Convention, which contains language similar to the Geneva Convention but does not bind the United States. Third, NHTSA should indicate the likely scope and schedule of potential regulatory action. Fourth, US states should analyze how their vehicle codes would or should apply to automated vehicles, including those that have an identifiable human operator and those that do not. Finally, additional research on laws applicable to trucks, buses, taxis, low-speed vehicles, and other specialty vehicles may be useful. This is in addition to ongoing research into the other legal aspects of vehicle automation.


The accession of Central and East European States into the European Convention of Human Rights system was both a threat and a promise to the system. The threat resulted not only from the substantial increase of the number of Member States and that of the case-load, but also from the demise of a consensus which was, originally, presupposed by the system of protection of human rights in Western Europe: original members of the Council of Europe were like-minded and the Convention system did not represent a challenge to their internal apparatus of human rights protection. This paper, however, focuses on a promise: a possibility for the European Court of Human Rights to abandon once and for all the fiction of it being merely a sort of super-appellate court which scrutinizes individual decisions rather than laws in Member States. This shift towards a quasi-constitutional role, going beyond the simple identification of wrong individual decisions so as to point to systemic legal defects, was triggered by systemic problems within the new Member States, while also facilitated by collaboration between the European Court and national constitutional courts. The emergence of so-called pilot judgments is the best and most recent illustration of this trend. The way in which a national court may form a de facto alliance with the European Court effectively pierces the veil of the State, and positions the European Court as a quasi-constitutional judicial body at a pan-European level.


Concentrations of NHx, NO3
-, free amino acids, total and organic nitrogen, and inorganic
anions were determined for 78 rain events between September 1, 2002 and August 31, 2003, on
the campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in southeastern North Carolina.
The majority of N in Wilmington rain (78%) is inorganic, occurring as NO3
- and NHx in
approximately equal proportions. Free amino acids make up a small portion of ON (11%).
Correlation analysis and back trajectory analysis indicate that regional sources, rather than local
emissions, determine the concentrations of inorganic N in UNCW rainwater and particle dry
deposition. NO3
- concentration in rainwater at UNCW has decreased from 1990 to the present
while wet deposition increased due to increased rainfall and possibly increased emissions from
growing population and expanding industry in North Carolina.
Wet and dry deposition of NHx are respectively 53% and 26% higher than a decade ago
reflecting an increase in regional and possibly local emissions. Similar temporal patterns in are
seen at UNCW and the NADP monitored sites with the greatest increase in Clinton, NC, where
NHx concentrations and depositions have increased 58% and 107% respectively. Concentrations
of H+ and major N analytes, with the exception of ON, vary significantly as a function of air
mass origin with major increases in analytes correlating with locations of known anthropogenic
sources. Seasonal and diurnal influences have a significant impact on the concentrations of H+
and N analytes in UNCW rainwater with significant concentration maximums in the spring and
significantly lower concentrations from 6:00AM to 10:00PM.
Direct atmospheric deposition is not a major source of bioavailable nitrogen to the Cape Fear
River Estuary. The average total daily NHx and NO3
- dry depositions were small in comparison
to their total amounts in the CFRE. Wet depositions of NHx reached 20% for a single event with an average per event deposition equivalent to 1.3% of NHx in the CFRE. Dry deposition
accounts for 17% of inorganic N deposition to the CFRE; though it is possibly underestimated in
this study.


Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park .  New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2013. Print. "Disintegrated. Like something had gone wrong beaming her onto the Starship Enterprise . If you've ever wondered what that feels like, it's a lot like melting, but more violent. Even in a million different pieces, Eleanor could still feel Park holding her hand. Could still feel his thumb exploring her palm. She sat completely still because she didn't have any other option.  She tried to remember what kind of animals paralyzed their prey before they ate them...Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her. That would be awesome" (p. 72). Eleanor & Park is a smart, funny young adult romance that takes place over one school year in 1986. Told in alternating voices, this is the story of two teenagers who don't quite fit in. Eleanor comes from the wrong side of the tracks and has big red hair and wears all the wrong clothes. Park is half Asian, loves comic books and alternative music. Eleanor has had a rough life, living with her mother, her mother's new husband, and her four siblings in a rundown house without even a door on the bathroom. Park's family is much more stable, yet his military veteran father and immigrant mother do not quite know what to make of Park, with his black clothes, eye makeup and love of music. Pushed together on Eleanor's first day of school when she takes the only seat left on the bus, the one beside Park, they bond over comic books and mixed tapes and help each other survive the tumult that is high school, and life. The characters, young and old, in Eleanor & Park are far from perfect, and their imperfections and weirdness make them likeable. Young adult readers will identify with these outsiders and will be cheering for them from the beginning. Some of the pop culture references may not be recognized by today's young adults; however, the specific music and comic book references are less important than what they represent in the story. Rowell has written a nuanced and balanced story that will appeal to young adult fans of realistic and romantic fiction.  The ending is satisfying without being easy and Rowell has created characters that are believable and heartwarming. Eleanor & Park won the 2013 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Best Fiction Book.  Rainbow Rowell is the author of Attachments (2011) and the recently released Fangirl (2013).  The book contains some scenes with some mild sexuality, violence, and language. It will make an excellent addition to any school or public library collection for young adult readers ages 14 and up. Highly Recommended:  4 out of 4 stars Reviewed by: Joanne de Groot Joanne de Groot is a teacher, librarian and mom who loves to read children's literature (especially with her two kids!).  She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta and teaches primarily in the Teacher-Librarianship by Distance Learning program.  Joanne teaches courses on resources for children and young adults, children's literature, educational technology and Web 2.0, and contemporary literacies.


This thesis discusses methods for the classification of finite projective planes via exhaustive search. In the main part the author classifies all projective planes of order 16 admitting a large quasiregular group of collineations. This is done by a complete search using the computer algebra system GAP. Computational methods for the construction of relative difference sets are discussed. These methods are implemented in a GAP-package, which is available separately. As another result --found in cooperation with U. Dempwolff-- the projective planes defined by planar monomials are classified. Furthermore the full automorphism group of the non-translation planes defined by planar monomials are classified.


Drawing on deconstruction, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, and subaltern studies, The Other Side of the Popular is as much a reflection on the limitations and possibilities for thinking about the politics of Latin American culture as it is a study of the culture itself. Gareth Williams pays particular attention to the close relationship between complex cultural shifts and the development of the neoliberal nation-state. The modern Latin American nation, he argues, was built upon the idea of "the people," a citizenry with common interests transcending demographic and cultural differences. As nations have weakened in relation to the global economy, this moment—of the popular as the basis of nation-building—has passed, causing seismic shifts in the relationships between governments and cultural formations. Williams asserts that these changed relationships necessitate the rethinking of fundamental concepts such as "the popular" and "the nation." He maintains that the perspective of subalternity is vital to this theoretical project because it demands the reimagining of the connections between critical reason and its objects of analysis.

Williams develops his argument through studies of events highlighting Latin America's uneasy, and often violent, transition to late capitalism over the past thirty years. He looks at the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, genocide in El Salvador, the Sendero in Peru, Chile's and Argentina's transitions to democratic governments, and Latin Americans' migration northward. Williams also reads film, photography, and literary works, including Ricardo Piglia's The Absent City and the statements of a young Salvadoran woman, the daughter of ex- guerrilleros , living in South Central Los Angeles.

The Other Side of the Popular is an incisive interpretation of Latin American culture and politics over the last few decades as well as a thoughtful meditation on the state of Latin American cultural studies.


Accountability is central to ensuring that health and human rights standards are respected protected and fulfilled. Monitoring and evaluation help to ensure effective delivery of services and contribute to accountability by providing information on progress towards the fulfilment of rights obligations. Despite an international commitment to public health policies and programmes that are based on human rights principles indicators for monitoring the promotion or violation of rights in health programmes remain fairly novel. This work represents a first step towards bridging this gap by providing a methodology for identifying existing quantitative indicators that can be used in a rights analysis of contraceptive programmes and a short set of prioritized quantitative indicators. This report also identifies the remaining gaps highlighting rights-related outcomes that we are currently not able to adequately monitor in the context of contraceptive programmes. A comprehensive approach to monitoring rights will require identifying and developing qualitative and policy indicators as well as new quantitative indicators.


In 1945, the U.N. Charter famously set out "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Having in mind traditional interstate wars, the Charter's Article 2(4) outlawed, for the first time, interstate uses of force. However, nowadays, international wars are relatively rare, while civil wars are both more numerous and increasingly destructive. Still, international law has yet to develop a regime regulating the resort to war (jus ad bellum) within a state, either by governments or opposition groups. Contemporary jus ad bellum, thus, fails to address one of the most atrocious forms of war in the modern international system.This Article puts forward a novel theory of internal jus ad bellum, equally applicable to governments as well as opposition groups. It demonstrates that the current blind-spot in international law concerning this issue is incoherent and unwarranted. By applying the revisionist approach to just war theory, this Article argues that internal resort to armed force can only be morally acceptable if undertaken in self (or other) defense against grave threats. Applying this notion to the international-legal sphere, this Article claims that collectivist doctrines such self-determination, sovereignty or democratic entitlement are not appropriate venues for an acceptable standard of internal jus ad bellum. It proceeds to locate such a possible standard in international human rights law (IHRL), which enshrines everyone's right to life. However, as the Article demonstrates, IHRL, as currently understood, fails to serve as an effective framework for internal jus ad bellum, since it collapses, during armed conflict, into international humanitarian law (IHL). The Article concludes by suggesting an understanding of IHRL that can overcome these limitations and thus serve as a working doctrine of internal jus ad bellum.


We evaluate the in-medium $D$ and $\bar D$-meson masses in hot hadronic matter induced by interactions with the light hadron sector described in a chiral SU(3) model. The effective Lagrangian approach is generalized to SU(4) to include charmed mesons. We find that the D-mass drops substantially at finite temperatures and densities, which open the channels of the decay of the charmonium states ($\Psi^\prime$, $\chi_c$, $J/\Psi$) to $D \bar D$ pairs in the thermal medium. The effects of vacuum polarisations from the baryon sector on the medium modification of the $D$-meson mass relative to those obtained in the mean field approximation are investigated. The results of the present work are compared to calculations based on the QCD sum-rule approach, the quark-meson coupling model, chiral perturbation theory, as well as to studies of quarkonium dissociation using heavy quark potential from lattice QCD.


Featuring essays from renowned scholars, this volume in the Westminster Handbooks to Christian Theology series provides an insightful and comprehensive overview of the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968). This volume offers concise descriptions of Barth's key terms and concepts, while also identifying the intricate connections within Barth's theological vocabulary. Masterfully compiled and edited, this volume features the largest team of Barth scholars ever gathered to interpret Barth's theology. The result is a splendid introduction to the most influential theologian of the modern era. Contributors include Clifford B. Anderson, Michael Beintker, Eberhard Busch, Timothy Gorringe, Garrett Green, Kevin Hector, I. John Hesselink, George Hunsinger, J. Christine Janowski, Paul Dafydd Jones, Joseph L. Mangina, Bruce L. McCormack, Daniel L. Migliore, Paul D. Molnar, Adam Neder, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Gerhard Sauter, Katherine Sonderegger, John Webster, and many others.


'Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of Man could invent. We could not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. Ifwe could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on; the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.' Sherlock Holmes. In: A Case of Identity by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


The purpose of this paper is to propose a contingency framework of e-readiness for corporate online reporting as a step towards establishing an e-readiness assessment methodology regarding corporate online reporting. This framework reflects the attempt to provide a theoretical background in the field. An extensive review of a number of instruments for assessing e-readiness as well as of other previously developed accounting frameworks was performed to identify the potential factors to be included in the proposed framework. Thirteen exploratory interviews and informal discussions were conducted with academics in the area of accounting and information technology and management information systems, and a pilot questionnaire survey was distributed to collect the perceptions of four different user-groups of corporate online reporting, (financial analysts, managers, bank credit officers and auditors) regarding the potential factors that should be included in the proposed framework. The contingency perspective was employed to integrate several internal and external factors in the form of the proposed framework. A framework was developed to integrate both endogenous and exogenous factors that recognise actual features regarding the e-readiness of corporate online reporting.


Every day, we use our computers to perform remarkable feats. A simple web search picks out a handful of relevant needles from the world's biggest haystack: the billions of pages on the World Wide Web. Uploading a photo to Facebook transmits millions of pieces of information over numerous error-prone network links, yet somehow a perfect copy of the photo arrives intact. Without even knowing it, we use public-key cryptography to transmit secret information like credit card numbers; and we use digital signatures to verify the identity of the websites we visit. How do our computers perform these tasks with such ease? This is the first book to answer that question in language anyone can understand, revealing the extraordinary ideas that power our PCs, laptops, and smartphones. Using vivid examples, John MacCormick explains the fundamental "tricks" behind nine types of computer algorithms, including artificial intelligence (where we learn about the "nearest neighbor trick" and "twenty questions trick"), Google's famous PageRank algorithm (which uses the "random surfer trick"), data compression, error correction, and much more. These revolutionary algorithms have changed our world: this book unlocks their secrets, and lays bare the incredible ideas that our computers use every day.


Since man has walked upon this earth he has faced death. It is the final stage of the growth process and is inevitable. It begins the moment man enters this world. Yet, man still has an extremely difficult time accepting and dealing with death. People do not like to think and talk about it and politely change the conversation to a less morbid topic when it is introduced.
 In the past attention has been focused on the physical of the dying. The emotional, psychological, and social needs of the terminally ill and their families have been virtually ignored. However, changes in the attitudes towards death and the treatment of the dying are slowly taking root and growing. The total needs of the patient and the family have begun to be focused on in the last two decades.
 This paper will trace the attitudes of Americans toward death and dying since the eighteenth century. An understanding of the changes that have taken place is necessary to fully appreciate the efforts made today to treat the "total" person and the family. It will also report on people and organizations that have helped to change the attitude toward death and the treatment of the dying. A small scale study has been included to appraise the perceived value of those involved in a new program or movement known as the Hospice. The final chapter contains the opinions of the researcher. References and additional suggested readings for background information are included at the end of the paper.

It should be noted initially that as used throughout this paper the term terminally ill refers to patients diagnosed as having incurable illnesses such as cancer and chronic heart disease.


Despite the abundance of published material on conducting focus groups, scant specific information exists on how to analyze focus group data in social science research. Thus, the authors provide a new qualitative framework for collecting and analyzing focus group data. First, they identify types of data that can be collected during focus groups. Second, they identify the qualitative data analysis techniques best suited for analyzing these data. Third, they introduce what they term as a micro-interlocutor analysis, wherein meticulous information about which participant responds to each question, the order in which each participant responds, response characteristics, the nonverbal communication used, and the like is collected, analyzed, and interpreted. They conceptualize how conversation analysis offers great potential for analyzing focus group data. They believe that their framework goes far beyond analyzing only the verbal communication of focus group participants, thereby increasing the rigor of focus group analyses in social science research.


Back to Black traces the long and eminent history of Black radical politics. Born out of resistance to slavery and colonialism, its rich past encompasses figures such as Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter activists of today. At its core it argues that racism is inexorably embedded in the fabric of society, and that it can never be overcome unless by enacting change outside of this suffocating system. Yet this Black radical tradition has been diluted and moderated over time; wilfully misrepresented and caricatured by others; divested of its legacy, potency, inclusivity and force for global change.

Kehinde Andrews explores the true roots of this tradition, and connects the dots to today's struggles by showing what a renewed politics of Black radicalism might look like in the 21st century.


This book "is a compendium of America's Indian Wars and the mountain men, soldiers, cowboys and pioneers who took part in them" (dust-jacket). It includes information about all the major American Indian battles, the lives of notable men who fought in the battles, and the combat techniques employed. The index begins on page 247.


Previous research has shown that men and women, on average, have different risk attitudes and may therefore see different value propositions in response to new opportunities. We use data from smallholder farm households in Mali to test whether risk perceptions differ by gender and across domains. We model this potential association across six risks (work injury, extreme weather, community relationships, debt, lack of buyers, and conflict) while controlling for demographic and attitudinal characteristics. Factor analysis highlights extreme weather and conflict as eliciting the most distinct patterns of participant response. Regression analysis for Mali as a whole reveals an association between gender and risk perception, with women expressing more concern except in the extreme weather domain; however, the association with gender is largely absent when models control for geographic region. We also find lower risk perception associated with an individualistic and/or fatalistic worldview, a risk‐tolerant outlook, and optimism about the future, while education, better health, a social orientation, self‐efficacy, and access to information are generally associated with more frequent worry—with some inconsistency. Income, wealth, and time poverty exhibit complex associations with perception of risk. Understanding whether and how men's and women's risk preferences differ, and identifying other dominant predictors such as geographic region and worldview, could help development organizations to shape risk mitigation interventions to increase the likelihood of adoption, and to avoid inadvertently making certain subpopulations worse off by increasing the potential for negative outcomes.


Abstract:At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.


The Suzuki coupling is a pioneering reaction in cross coupling, and has been thoroughly studied since. The first Suzukitype cross coupling reaction between phenylboronic acid and haloarenes was published by Suzuki and Miyaura in 1981 (Scheme 1).1 Commonly, Suzuki coupling is compared to Stille coupling seeing that boron has a similar electronegativity to tin, which is used for transmetallation in Stille coupling. Both couplings have a similar reaction scope and proceed via a similar mechanistic cycle.


The Anglo-Saxon period, stretching from the fifth to the late eleventh century, begins with the Roman retreat from the Western world and ends with the Norman takeover of England. Between these epochal events, many of the contours and patterns of English life that would endure for the next millennium were shaped. In this authoritative work, N. J. Higham and M. J. Ryan reexamine Anglo-Saxon England in the light of new research in disciplines as wide ranging as historical genetics, paleobotany, archaeology, literary studies, art history, and numismatics. The result is the definitive introduction to the Anglo-Saxon world, enhanced with a rich array of photographs, maps, genealogies, and other illustrations. The Anglo-Saxon period witnessed the birth of the English people, the establishment of Christianity, and the development of the English language. With an extraordinary cast of characters (Alfred the Great, the Venerable Bede, King Cnut), a long list of artistic and cultural achievements (Beowulf, the Sutton Hoo ship-burial finds, the Bayeux Tapestry), and multiple dramatic events (the Viking invasions, the Battle of Hastings), the Anglo-Saxon era lays legitimate claim to having been one of the most important in Western history.


Local community participation in ecotourism activities and resource protection and in protected areas can be pursued through collaborative management At present, the natural resources of the park are degrading due to indiscriminate use by the locals and visitors mainly in the form of encroachment and tourism incompatible activities. The local community was left out in decision making process where the core problem still not addressed. This study investigates the problems that affected natural resources and local community involvement in management to mitigate such problem. A survey was conducted in Bhawal National Park (BNP), Bangladesh in December 2006 to February 2007 involved 215 respondents comprising of personnel of the National Park and local community. The respondents include nature guides, food and transportation providers. It is administered by using structured interview questionnaires to elicit opinions from the respondents based on convenient sampling technique. Various statistical analysis namely Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), Descriptive statistics, Chi-square (χ²), Mann-Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test (non-parametric) were used for data analysis. Results showed that the relationship between the local community and park administration is not significant where their participation in the management is minimal. In overall the study provides the premises where the local community supported their participation in the decision making process and participate in management for a better stewardship of the park.


The copyright law of the United States (Title 1.7, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or reproduction. One of three specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship or research. If electronic transmission of reserve material is used for purposes in excess of what constitutes " fair use " , that user may be liable for copyright infringement.


The newest digital technologies - among them social media, mobility, analytics and cloud - keep changing how people, businesses and governments interact. These digital forces enable unprecedented levels of connectedness and so the world is already investing in consumer-centricity. However, these new technologies are truly still in their infancies. The transformation that is already underway will soon intensify, resulting in a paradigm shift from customer-centricity toward an everyone-to-everyone (E2E) economy. The implication for value creation and allocation will be profound. IBM research shows that many organizations are still not ready to navigate the E2E environment. To prepare for the radical disruption ahead, companies need to act now to create experiences and business models that are orchestrated, symbiotic, contextual and cognitive.


Too much of a good thing can be bad, and democracy is no exception. In the United States, the antidote to what the drafters of the Constitution called "the excess of democracy" is judicial review. Lately, however, judicial review has come under fire. Many on both sides of the political aisle accuse the Supreme Court of being overly activist and insufficiently deferential to the elected representatives of the people. I argue in this essay that criticizing the Court for its activism is exactly backwards: We need more judicial activism, not less. Courts engaging in judicial review are bound to err on one side or the other from time to time. It is much better for the health of our constitutional democracy if they err on the side of activism, striking down too many laws rather than too few. An examination of both constitutional theory and our own judicial history shows that too little activism produces worse consequences than does too much. If we cannot assure that the judges tread the perfect middle ground (and we cannot), it is better to have an overly aggressive judiciary than an overly restrained one.


SUMMARY A gentle but thorough introduction to the world of computer programming, it's written in language a 12-year-old can follow, but anyone who wants to learn how to program a computer can use it. Even adults. Written by Warren Sande and his son, Carter, and reviewed by professional educators, this book is kid-tested and parent-approved. ABOUT THIS BOOK Learn to talk to your computer in its own language! Whether you want to create a game, start a business, or solve an important problem, the first step is learning to write your own programs. Programming is a fun challenge, and it's easy to get started! This updated and revised edition of Hello World! introduces the world of computer programming in a clear and engaging style. Written by Warren Sande and his son, Carter, it is full of examples that will get you thinking and learning. Reviewed by professional educators, this book is kid-tested and parent-approved. You don't need to know anything about programming to use the book, just the basics of using a computer. If you can start a program and save a file, you'll be off and running! Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. WHAT'S INSIDEExplains concepts in clear language Lots of pictures, cartoons, and fun examples Complete set of practice questions and exercises Illustrated in full colorHello World! uses Python, a programming language designed to be easy to learn. Using fun examples, it brings to life concepts of computing looping, decisions, input and output, data structures, graphicsand many more. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Warren Sande is an electronic systems engineer who uses Python both as a "do anything" scripting language and as a way to teach computers and programming. Carter Sande is a high school student who is passionate about technology. When he's not fixing his school's network and helping his classmates recover lost homework, he likes to ride his bike and write retro video games. TABLE OF CONTENTSGetting Started Remember This: Memory and Variables Basic Math Types of Data Input GUIsGraphical User Interfaces Decisions, Decisions Loop the Loop Just for YouComments Game Time Nested and Variable Loops Collecting Things TogetherLists and Dictionaries Functions Objects Modules Graphics Sprites and Collision Detection A New Kind of InputEvents Sound More GUIs Print Formatting and Strings File Input and Output Take a ChanceRandomness Computer Simulations Skier Explained Python Battle What's Next?


The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, focused on building the organizational capabilities of nonprofits that served the disadvantaged youth in the United States, has recently been named an intermediary in the federal government's new social innovation fund (SIF), which is intended to bring together public-private funds to help expand effective solutions across three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development. SIF intermediaries would be responsible for directing resources to innovative community-based nonprofit organizations that were seeing results. Edna McConnell Clark Foundation had long been a promoter of evidence-based accountability and grant-making and saw the absence of an efficient capital market in the nonprofit sector as a major impediment to funding growth, increasing scale, and building the sustainability of successful nonprofit organizations. With its Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot (GCAP), Edna McConnell Clark Foundation had seen positive results in taking a "syndicate" approach to funding a select group of nonprofits. With it being named an SIF intermediary, Edna McConnell Clark was ready to build on its GCAP experience and continue to evolve a model that would provide, at increased efficiency, growth capital for successful organizations. The foundation hoped to build a capital aggregation approach that would serve as a model for philanthropy.


Vitamin D research is discussed in light of the hypothesis that the lower average levels of vitamin D frequently observed in autoimmune disease are not a sign of deficiency. Instead, it is proposed that the lower levels result from chronic infection with intracellular bacteria that dysregulate vitamin D metabolism by causing vitamin D receptor (VDR) dysfunction within phagocytes. The VDR dysfunction causes a decline in innate immune function that causes susceptibility to additional infections that contribute to disease progression. Evidence has been accumulating that indicates that a number of autoimmune diseases can be reversed by gradually restoring VDR function with the VDR agonist olmesartan and subinhibitory dosages of certain bacteriostatic antibiotics. Diseases showing favorable responses to treatment so far include systemic lupus erythematosis, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, sarcoidosis, Sjogren's syndrome, autoimmune thyroid disease, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, Reiter's syndrome, type I and II diabetes mellitus, and uveitis. Disease reversal using this approach requires limitation of vitamin D in order to avoid contributing to dysfunction of nuclear receptors and subsequent negative consequences for immune and endocrine function. Immunopathological reactions accompanying bacterial cell death require a gradual elimination of pathogens over several years. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed, along with the compatibility of this model with current research.


By team dynamics we mean the process by which a social system, comprising of 3 to 15 people with a common goal or task, organises itself in such a manner that the goal is reached and the task is accomplished. This can only happen so long as the preservation of the group is simultaneously assured. Therefore, any team must always work on both, the set goal and the preservation of the team. For this reason, a team does not 'consist' of people, but rather of the pattern of relationships which they establish, stabilise and change amongst themselves, including their goals and how these are handled. At the same time, you can only speak with actual people in a team. Metatheoretically, six guiding processes can be identified in which the selforganisation of each team takes place: decisions over goal setting, interaction patterns, team preservation, goal processing, team parameters and team reflection. These decision-making processes form patterns which shape every situation, including the ability to perform and the atmosphere within the team. Those who lead or advise teams can utilise the knowledge of these guiding processes to influence, systematically and on a sound theoretical basis, the dynamics of teams and, where necessary, enable changes.


Estimating survival functions has interested statisticians for numerous years. A survival function gives information on the probability of a time-to-event of interest. Research in the area of survival analysis has increased greatly over the last several decades because of its large usage in areas related to biostatistics and the pharmaceutical industry. Among the methods which estimate the survival function, several are widely used and available in popular statistical software programs. One purpose of this research is to compare the efficiency between competing estimators of the survival function. Results are given for simulations which use nonparametric and parametric estimation methods on censored data. The simulated data sets have right-, left-, or interval-censored time points. Comparisons are done on various types of data to see which survival function estimation methods are more suitable. We consider scenarios where distributional assumptions or censoring type assumptions are violated. Another goal of this research is to examine the effects of these incorrect assumptions.


After working in the Detroit auto industry and union organizing for twelve years, William Friedland turned to a research and teaching career in sociology, ultimately becoming one of the founders of the sociology of agriculture movement. Friedland came to the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1969 from Cornell University, where he had created the Cornell Migrant Health Project, a field study program in which he and his research associate, Dorothy Nelkin, sent Cornell undergraduates to work undercover as laborers in the agricultural fields of upstate New York and assist with research on the sociology of migrant labor. Friedland built on his Cornell experience when he was hired by UC Santa Cruz to establish the Board of Community Studies, an innovative, interdisciplinary academic program that integrated scholarship and community engagement in both research and teaching and that graduated over 2000 majors until it was suspended in 2010, a decision that was greeted with much political controversy.[1] The centerpiece of community studies was its field program, which offered undergraduate students six-month field placements in community organizations, training them to be community organizers and preparing them for what often became careers in public service. Michael Rotkin directed the field program for many years; an oral history with him is forthcoming in late 2013. Unlike other college-based field-study programs, the community studies curriculum—emulating the model that Friedland had innovated at Cornell—required preparatory training before the field study as well as synthetic and analytical work following completion of fieldwork. As Friedland's colleague, Michael Cowan, remarks in the introduction published in the appendix to this volume: "The impact of such educational experiences have often been profound and lasting . . . many community studies graduates currently serve as directors and key staff of social service non-profits and governmental agencies throughout and beyond the borders of California."In this oral history conducted by Sarah Rabkin, Bill Friedland describes the evolution both of the community studies program and of his sociological research.


Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors' diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins-or in our modern eating habits.


Currently more than 850 biological databases exist. The majority of biological knowledge is not in these databases but rather contained as free text in scientific literature. For systems biology tasks it is often necessary to integrate and extract data from heterogeneous databases and free text as well as to analyse the information in the context of experimental data. ONDEX is an integration framework which aims to address these challenges by combining features of database integration, text mining and sequence analysis with methods for graph-based data analysis and visualisation. The main topics of this diploma thesis are the redesign of the ONDEX backend, the development of a data exchange format, the development of a query environment and the allocation of Web services for data integration, data exchange and queries. These Web services allow backend workflow control from both local and remote workstations.


Acknowledgments. Introduction. List of Contributors. SECTION I: The Health Care Environment and Medications. 1. FDA Reform Deja vu Encore ( John J. Cohrssen ). 1.1 Introduction. 1.2 The 1992 prescription drug user fee act adds funds and changes FDA's focus. 1.3 PDUFA shortens drug review times and eliminates the drug lag. 1.4 PDUFA timetables feed safety concerns. 1.5 FDA responds to safety concerns. 1.6 The pipeline problem. 1.7 The 2007 FDA Science Board's Subcommittee on Science and Technology report. 1.8 The FDAAA of 2007 reauthorize PDUFA and provide new authority to address safety and the critical path initiative. 1.9 The impact of PDFUA on FDA. 1.10 Comparative medical benefits, comparative effectiveness and FDA. 1.11 FDA and non-inferiority trials. 1.12 FDA and CMS decisions on medicare coverage. 1.13 Preemption: FDA's role in relation to liability litigation in state courts. 1.14 FDA's exclusivity in allowing access to experimental drugs. 1.15 Conclusions. 2. Do Antidepressants Cause Suicide ( Marc Hertzman ). 2.1 Some definitional problems. 2.2 A brief history of the concerns of suicidality caused by antidepressants. 2.3 Politics rears its ugly head. 2.4 The FDA responds to fear of its own shadow. 2.5 What changes in public policy wrought. 2.6 A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. 2.7 Meanwhile back at the ranch. 2.8 Moral (maybe). 3. The Genome, Genes and Brain - Tailored Drugs ( Lawrence Adler ). 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 Issues in new drug development. 3.3 Early development of psychiatric pharmaceutical entities. 3.4 Advances in research technology. 3.5 Review of genetics. 3.6 Activation of genes by signal transduction cascades. 3.7 The human genome. 3.8 The sequencing of the genome. 3.9 DNA variation. 3.10 Genes and illness. 3.11 Genomic findings, potential targets and new drug development. 3.12 Conclusion . 4. Patenting and Licensing Concerns in Psychiatric Genetics ( Jorge A. Goldstein and Karen R. Markowicz ). 4.1 Genetic diagnoses in psychiatry. 4.2 The evolving patent landscape in psychiatry. 4.3 Approaches to solving potential problems. 4.4 Conclusions. 5. Women's Issues in Clinical Trials ( Mary Seeman ). 5.1 History. 5.2 Perceived advantages of excluding women. 5.3 Change in perspective. 5.4 Have things changed?. 5.5 Progress since 1993. 5.6 Reported current difficulties in including women. 5.7 Contraception in clinical trials. 5.8 Drugs in lactating women. 5.9 How often do women take drugs during pregnancy?. 5.10 Ethical issues: risk/benefit analysis. 5.11 Adequate information. 5.12 Adolescent women. 5.13 Recruitment and retention of women. SECTION II Clinical Trials and Mood Disorders. 6. Issues and Clues in the Pharmacological Treatment of Mood Disorders ( F. Jollant, A Ionita and P Courtet ). 6.1 What do we know about mood disorders that may be relevant for their pharmacological treatment?. 6.2 Are there clues for the pharmacological treatment of mood disorders?. 6.3 Perspectives. 7. Bipolar Disorder ( A. Bochetta ). 7.1 Trials in acute mania. 7.2 Trials in acute bipolar depression. 7.3 Trials in maintenance of bipolar disorder. 7.4 What is a mood stabilizer?. 7.5 What controlled trials cannot tell us about treatment of bipolar disorder. 8. Special Issues of Research Methodology in Bipolar Disorder Clinical Treatment Trials ( R. M. Post ). 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Efficacy-effectiveness gap. 8.3 Trials for drug registration versus those that are most clinically informative. 8.4 Needed for designs that more optimally inform clinical practice. 8.5 'Hidden' high degrees of treatment resistance. 8.6 Controversy about optimal designs and rating instruments. 8.7 The traditional RCT is expensive, cumbersome and prone to failure. 8.8 Alternative designs for pilot and proof of principle efficacy studies. 8.9 Statistical analysis of N-of-1 trials. 8.10 Statistical approaches to estimating necessary trial durations in individual patients. 8.11 Crossover trials for enhancing clinical informatics and statistical power. 8.12 Carryover effects. 8.13 Long-term trend for understudy of bipolar disorder compared to other major mental disorders. 8.14 Parallel and pressing design issues for childhood-onset bipolar illness. 8.15 Contradictory balance between inclusiveness (for generalizability) and homogeneity (for efficacy). 8.16 Assessing moderators and mediators. 8.17 Conclusions and implications. 9. The Utility of Low-dose Antidepressants ( Monica L. Zilberman, Clarice Gorenstein and Valentim Gentil ). 9.1 Introduction. 9.2 Low dose antidepressants for chief indications. 9.3 Antidepressant use for other indications. 9.4 Emotion regulation in healthy individuals. 9.5 Conclusion. SECTION III Clinical Trials in Anxiety and Other Disorders. 10. Clinical Trials for Anxiety Disorders ( Marco Mula and Gionata Strigaro ). 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 Methodological issues in treatment research for anxiety disorders. 10.3 Panic disorder with/without agoraphobia. 10.4 Generalized anxiety disorder. 10.5 Social anxiety disorder. 10.6 Post-traumatic stress disorder. 10.7 Conclusions. 11. Pharmacological Trials for the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders ( Lisa J. Merlo, Julia Arana and Amanda M. Stone ). 11.1 Psychopharmacological trials for the treatment of substance use disorder. 11.2 Definitions of substance use disorders. 11.3 Introduction to psychopharmacotherapy for SUD. 11.4 Considerations in pharmacotherapy trials for SUDs. 11.5 Conclusions and future directions. 12. Clinical Psychopharmacology of Patients with Eating Disorders ( James E Mitchell, Kristine Steffen, Scott Engel, Ross Crosby and James Roerig ). 12.1 Introduction. 12.2 Diagnostic issues. 12.3 Methodological/statistical issues. 12.4 Pharmacotherapy trials. 12.5 Pharmacotherapy/psychotherapy combined trials. 12.6 Summary. 13. ADHD Clinical Trials ( Anne Childress ). 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse). 13.3 Methylphenidate transdermal system (Daytrana). 13.4 Dexmethylphenidate (Focalin). 13.5 Dexmethylphenidate extended release (Focalin XR). 13.6 Atomoxetine (Strattera). 13.7 Extended release methylphenidate (Ritalin LA). 13.8 Modified release methylphenidate (Metadate CD). 13.9 Mixed amphetamine salts extended release (Adderall XR). 13.10 OROS methylphenidate (Concerta). 13.11 Guanfacine extended release. 13.12 SPD465. 13.13 Modafinil. 13.14 Bupropion XL. 13.15 Discussion. 14. Autism and Asperger's Spectrum Disorders ( Marc Hertzman ). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Individual entities versus a spectrum disorder. 14.3 Recent psychopharmacological approaches to autism and Asperger's spectrum disorders. 14.4 Recapitulation. 15. Pharmacological Treatments of Impulse Control Disorders ( Helga Myrseth and Stale Pallesen ). 15.1 Impulse control disorders. 15.2 Pathological gambling. 15.3 Trichotillomania. 15.4 Kleptomania. 15.5 Pyromania. 15.6 Intermittent explosive disorder. 15.7 Conclusions. SECTION IV Special Issues in Psychopharmacology. 16. Potential Benefits of Herbal Medicine for Schizophrenia: from Empirical Observations to Clinical Trials ( Zhang-Jin Zhang, Qing-Rong Tan, Xue-Chu Zhen and Yao Tong ). 16.1 Potential benefits of herbal medicine used in the treatment of schizophrenia. 16.2 Possible psychopharmacological mechanisms of herbal actions. 16.3 Search strategies for herbal agents having antischizophrenic potentials. 16.4 Specific issues in the conduct of herbal medicine trials in schizophrenia. 16.5 Conclusions. 17. Adverse Effects of Antipsychotics ( Pierre Landry, Anne-Marie Rousseau, and Leila Skalli ). 17.1 Introduction. 17.2 Pharmacology of adverse events. 17.3 Discontinuation symptoms. 17.4 Conclusion. 18. Meta Musings on Methodology ( Marc Hertzman ). 18.1 Criticisms of assumptions about clinical trials methodology. 18.2 Thoughts on alternative study designs. 18.3 Conclusion: standardization can be stultifying. Index.


Exhaust noise must meet legislation targets, customer expectations and cost reduction which call for design optimization of the exhaust systems in the design phase. One solution is to use 3 dimensional linear pressure acoustics and calculate the transfer matrix of the muffler. The transfer matrix is the basis for calculating either the insertion loss or transmission loss of a muffler. The 3D simulations in Comsol of different muffler configurations are verified by measurements in a flow acoustic test rig using the two source method.


M. Jacqui Alexander is one of the most important theorists of transnational feminism working today. Pedagogies of Crossing brings together essays she has written over the past decade, uniting her incisive critiques, which have had such a profound impact on feminist, queer, and critical race theories, with some of her more recent work. In this landmark interdisciplinary volume, Alexander points to a number of critical imperatives made all the more urgent by contemporary manifestations of neoimperialism and neocolonialism. Among these are the need for North American feminism and queer studies to take up transnational frameworks that foreground questions of colonialism, political economy, and racial formation; for a thorough re-conceptualization of modernity to account for the heteronormative regulatory practices of modern state formations; and for feminists to wrestle with the spiritual dimensions of experience and the meaning of sacred subjectivity.

In these meditations, Alexander deftly unites large, often contradictory, historical processes across time and space. She focuses on the criminalization of queer communities in both the United States and the Caribbean in ways that prompt us to rethink how modernity invents its own traditions; she juxtaposes the political organizing and consciousness of women workers in global factories in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada with the pressing need for those in the academic factory to teach for social justice; she reflects on the limits and failures of liberal pluralism; and she presents original and compelling arguments that show how and why transgenerational memory is an indispensable spiritual practice within differently constituted women-of-color communities as it operates as a powerful antidote to oppression. In this multifaceted, visionary book, Alexander maps the terrain of alternative histories and offers new forms of knowledge with which to mold alternative futures.


The Antitrust Division's Microsoft case and the Federal Trade Commission's Intel case both rested on claims that antitrust intervention was necessary to preserve innovation in technological platforms at the heart of the personal computer. Yet, because those very platforms support markets that are among the most innovative in the American economy, injudicious intervention might well have jeopardized the very innovation that antitrust should promote. In this article, we review the role of platforms in technological innovation and consider how antitrust standards should apply to them. We then examine how Microsoft resolved antitrust issues affecting platform design at various stages of the litigation and show how that experience informed the allegations and the settlement in Intel. We are particularly concerned with the parallel claims in the two cases that Microsoft and Intel each used its control over the design of a dominant platform to hinder innovations that might have made a complementary product a better substitute for the platform. This exercise should help guide future applications of monopolization standards to high technology platforms.


With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While its changes in this domain have often prompted privacy advocates and news media to critique the company, Facebook has continued to attract more users to its service. This raises a question about whether or not Facebook's changes in privacy approaches matter and, if so, to whom. This paper examines the attitudes and practices of a cohort of 18- and 19-year-olds surveyed in 2009 and again in 2010 about Facebook's privacy settings. Our results challenge widespread assumptions that youth do not care about and are not engaged with navigating privacy. We find that, while not universal, modifications to privacy settings have increased during a year in which Facebook's approach to privacy was hotly contested. We also find that both frequency and type of Facebook use as well as Internet skill are correlated with making modifications to privacy settings. In contrast, we observe few gender differences in how young adults approach their Facebook privacy settings, which is notable given that gender differences exist in so many other domains online. We discuss the possible reasons for our findings and their implications.


Bhikkhu Bodhi • This landmark volume in the Teachings of the Buddha series translates the Suttanipāta, a text that matches the Dhammapada in its concise power of expression and its centrality to the Buddhist tradition. Celebrated translator Bhikkhu Bodhi illuminates this text and its classical commentaries with elegant renderings and authoritative annotations. The Suttanipāta, or "Group of Discourses," is a collection of discourses ascribed to the Buddha that includes some of the most popular suttas of the Pāli Canon, among them the Discourse on Loving-Kindness. The suttas are primarily in verse, though several are in mixed prose and verse. The Suttanipāta contains discourses that extol the figure of the muni, the illumined sage, who wanders homeless completely detached from the world. Other suttas, such as the Discourse on Downfall and the Discourse on Blessings, establish the foundations of Buddhist lay ethics. The last two chapters—the Aṭṭhakavagga (Chapter of Octads) and the Pārāyana vagga (The Chapter on the Way to the Beyond)—are considered to be among the most ancient parts of the Pāli Canon. The Aṭṭhakavagga advocates a critical attitude toward views and doctrines. The Pārāyana vagga is a beautiful poem in which sixteen spiritual seekers travel across India to meet the Buddha and ask him profound questions pertaining to the highest goal. The commentary, the Paramatthajotikā, relates the background story to each sutta and explains each verse in detail. The volume includes numerous excerpts from the Niddesa, an ancient commentary already included in the Pāli Canon, which offers detailed expositions of each verse in the Aṭṭhakavagga, the Pārāyanavagga, and the Rhinoceros Horn Sutta. Translator Bhikkhu Bodhi provides an insightful, in-depth introduction, a guide to the individual suttas, extensive notes, a list of parallels to the discourses of the Suttanipāta, and a list of the numerical sets mentioned in the commentaries.


We describe a system for capturing microscopic surface geometry. The system extends the retrographic sensor [Johnson and Adelson 2009] to the microscopic domain, demonstrating spatial resolution as small as 2 microns. In contrast to existing microgeometry capture techniques, the system is not affected by the optical characteristics of the surface being measured---it captures the same geometry whether the object is matte, glossy, or transparent. In addition, the hardware design allows for a variety of form factors, including a hand-held device that can be used to capture high-resolution surface geometry in the field. We achieve these results with a combination of improved sensor materials, illumination design, and reconstruction algorithm, as compared to the original sensor of Johnson and Adelson [2009].


The "endowment effect" (EE) — the tendency to value an asset more when it is possessed — has been empirically studied in detail at the individual level. The prices individuals demand to sell a good they own is significantly higher than what they offer to buy it. No published study has examined the EE at the group level, however, despite implications ranging from attorney-client and international negotiation, to land use decisions, to corporate as well as legislative decisionmaking. Accordingly, this experimental study investigated the influence of group deliberation on individuals' expression of the EE: Does group deliberation attenuate or exacerbate the EE, or does it have no effect? Further, is the EE exhibited at the group level?Findings showed that where the EE exists for individuals, group deliberation exacerbated the individual effect; that is, post-deliberation individual judgments showed the EE even more strongly than pre-deliberation judgments. Contrast analysis confirmed that the EE grew larger after group discussion, as a result of an increased preference for retention of an initially allocated right. Further, the EE existed in groups' judgments.The findings have implications in at least two broad areas: decisionmaking by groups (e.g., by boards of directors) and negotiation between groups (e.g., by attorney, political, or business teams). They also raise questions and challenges about the possibility of ameliorating the EE (e.g., education and market experience). Accordingly, the study identifies, for the first time, relevant practical applications, and lays groundwork for further research.


Quarterly publication containing articles related to the preservation and restoration of historic artifacts and sites in Texas. Feature articles discuss various aspects of Texas history and heritage, often highlighting museums and collections within the state.


The book of Revelation is one of the most complicated in the New Testament. The book calls for a prophetic reaction to the world and uses some of the most violent language of the entire Bible. Brian Blount's commentary, now available as a casebound, provides a sure and confident guide through these difficult and sometimes troubling passages, seeing Revelation as a prophetic intervention and at the same time an awe-inspiring swirl of frightening violence and breathtaking hope. The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.


This article describes the object-interview as a Deleuzian space in which subjects and objects, living and nonliving, entangle together. I developed the object-interview to understand the connections that 11 Midwestern family history genealogists made between objects (e.g., documents, photographs, and other artifacts) and their ancestors. The object-interview suggests an alternative way to think and do qualitative interviews informed by poststructural theories. The method draws on French philosopher Deleuze's concepts of the fold, events, and a life, as well as conventional qualitative interview literature. Deleuze's concepts offer a way to rethink objects and subjects as fibrous, connective, and folding entities in qualitative interviews. Such a rethinking offers an alternative to subject-centered conventional qualitative interviews in which subjects are teased apart from objects and subjects primarily produce knowledge. The object-interview, then, is a Deleuzian space in which the supposed distinctions between subjects and objects, as well as other binary divisions, become indistinct, or entangled, as both subjects and objects produce knowledge. That space enabled me to create the concept ensemble of life—a constantly shifting group of objects associated with a person's life. In this article, I describe the theoretical entanglement of the object-interview, the object-interview itself, the data it produced in my dissertation study, and the significance of the method to the field of qualitative research methods.


Abstract. Terrestrial carbon resources are major drivers of development in West Africa. The distribution of these resources co-varies with ecosystem type and rainfall along a strong Northeast-Southwest climatic gradient. Soil organic carbon, a strong indicator of soil quality, has been severely depleted in some areas by human activities, which leads to issues of soil erosion and desertification, but this trend can be altered with appropriate management. There is significant potential to enhance existing soil carbon stores in West Africa, with benefits at the global and local scale, for atmospheric CO2 mitigation as well as supporting and provisioning ecosystem services. Three key factors impacting carbon stocks are addressed in this review: climate, biotic factors, and human activities. Climate risks must be considered in a framework of global change, especially in West Africa, where landscape managers have few resources available to adapt to climatic perturbations. Among biotic factors, biodiversity conservation paired with carbon conservation may provide a pathway to sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation is also a global priority with local benefits for ecosystem resilience, biomass productivity, and provisioning services such as foodstuffs. Finally, human management has largely been responsible for reduced carbon stocks, but this trend can be reversed through the implementation of appropriate carbon conservation strategies in the agricultural sector, as shown by multiple studies. Owing to the strong regional climatic gradient, country-level initiatives will need to consider carbon sequestration approaches for multiple ecosystem types. Given the diversity of environments, global policies must be adapted and strategies developed at the national or sub-national levels to improve carbon storage above and belowground. Initiatives of this sort must act locally at farmer scale, and focus on ecosystem services rather than on carbon sequestration solely.


By using an issues-oriented approach, the new edition of this respected text grabs student interest with real-life issues that hit home. This text includes new coverage and pedagogy that encourages students to think critically about hot-button issues and includes outstanding new features that take students beyond memorization and encourage them to ask questions in new ways as they learn to interpret data. Show students how biology matters - Biology's connections to real life are reflected in every chapter of this new edition, beginning with opening Impacts, Issues essays--a brief case study on a biology-related issue or research finding and is revisited throughout the chapter, reminding students of the real-world significance of basic concepts. Additional, online exercises promote critical thinking about issues students will face as consumers, parents, and citizens. Link concepts from chapter to chapter - Links to Earlier Concepts appear near the Key Concepts, to help students remember what they've learned in earlier chapters and apply it to the new material to come. At the beginning of each section, students are reminded of the earlier link that is most appropriate for their current study


One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These terms were born from socio-environmental activism, but sometimes they have also been taken up by academic political ecologists and ecological economists who, for their part, have contributed other concepts to the global environmental justice movement, such as 'ecologically unequal exchange' or the 'ecological footprint'.


LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISTS INSIST ON FREEDOM OF CHOICE; they do not want to foreclose options (Sunstein and Thaler 2003). At the same time, they believe that, in many contexts, planners cannot help influencing choosers, even if they aspire to neutrality. If influences are inevitable, shouldn't planning be undertaken with some awareness of its effects? Libertarian paternalists believe that the answer is clearly yes—and that planners in the private and public sectors should explore approaches that lead people toward welfare-increasing outcomes while also leaving them free to choose.


Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection was the Supreme Court's first effort to address the problem of judicial takings: whether or not a judicial decision can ever qualify as a taking that requires compensation under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Unfortunately, a divided Court failed to resolve the issue, which is now left for future cases.This article argues that judicial takings do exist. I also explain why this conclusion would not require federal courts to take on any unusual administrative burdens. Part II briefly discusses the background of Stop the Beach. In Part III, I defend Justice Antonin Scalia's conclusion that "the Takings Clause bars the State from taking private property without paying for it, no matter which branch [of government] is the instrument of the taking." This principle follows logically from both the text and the original meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Various rationales for distinguishing judicial takings from other takings do not overturn this simple but sound conclusion.Part IV addresses claims that enforcing a takings doctrine would lead federal courts into severe practical difficulties. A judicial takings doctrine would not require legal principles significantly different from or more complicated than other takings claims. Justice Stephen Breyer and others are wrong to suggest that such a doctrine would "invite a host of federal takings claims" that federal judges would be unable to handle.


This paper provides a reassessment and a restatement of the essential properties of gold standards. Second, it emphasizes the role of the Real Bills Doctrine in Federal Reserve policy as the primary cause of the Great Contraction of 1929-1933. It takes issue with recent articles and books that have assigned major fault to "the†gold standard for the disastrous decline of employment, prices, production, income, and welfare that characterized the Great Contraction and the ensuing Great Depression. The Real Bills Doctrine was the guiding principle for passage of The Federal Reserve Act. It proposed that the creation of money would be geared automatically to the output of real goods and services if banks and the central bank adhered to a policy of providing credit only on short-term, self-liquidating loans for legitimate business purposes. The gold standard was to continue as the fundamental determinant of the economy's stock of money, but real bills principles would take care of seasonal and cyclical variations in the demand for money. The new system, however, never operated under a true gold standard. U.S. gold stocks burgeoned after World War I, allowing the quantity-theoretic policies of the New York Fed under Benjamin Strong to fashion a stable price level policy for the monetary system until an authentic gold standard could be become operational. After Strong's death in 1928, real bills advocates on the Fed Board and in some Fed Banks controlled Fed policies. Their avowed purpose was to oversee no monetary expansion until the real economy provided the proper impetus for monetary rejuvenation. In recent decades studies analyzing the Great Contraction have overlooked, first, the fundamental properties of a true gold standard, second, the quantity of gold stocks available for credit expansion by Federal Reserve policies in the early 1930s, third, the statutory power of the Federal Reserve Board to nullify for an indefinite period the gold reserve requirements facing the Federal Reserve Banks, and, fourth, the dominating influence that the Real Bills Doctrine had over both monetary beliefs and monetary policy in that era. This paper attempts to correct these omissions, and to demonstrate that the Real Bills Doctrine, not "the†gold standard, was the intellectual and operational basis for the disastrous Fed policy of 1929-1933.


Abstract This paper compares the depth of the recent crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the recent crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and will do so for unemployment in 2010. Our data indicate that the recent crisis indeed had the potential to be another Great Depression, as shown by the speed and simultaneity of the decline in the first nine months. However, if we assume that a large second dip can be avoided, the drop in all indicators will have been smaller than during the Great Depression. This holds true specifically for GDP, employment and prices, and least for manufacturing output. The difference in the depth in the crises concurs with differences in policy reaction. This time monetary policy and fiscal policy were applied courageously, speedily and partly internationally coordinated. During the Great Depression for several years fiscal policy tried to stabilize budgets instead of aggregate demand, and either monetary policy was not applied or was rather ineffective insofar as deflation turned lower nominal interest rates into higher real rates. Only future research will be able to prove the exact impact of economic policy, but the current tentative conclusion is that economic policy prevented the recent crisis from developing into a second Great Depression. This is also a partial vindication for economists. The majority of them might not have been able to predict the crisis, but the science did learn its lesson from the Great Depression and was able to give decent policy advice to at least limit the depth of the recent crisis.


Elements of Robotics-Mordechai Ben-Ari 2017-10-25 This open access book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. Concepts and algorithms are explained through detailed diagrams and calculations. Elements of Robotics presents an overview of different types of robots and the components used to build robots, but focuses on robotic algorithms: simple algorithms like odometry and feedback control, as well as algorithms for advanced topics like localization, mapping, image processing, machine learning and swarm robotics. These algorithms are demonstrated in simplified contexts that enable detailed computations to be performed and feasible activities to be posed. Students who study these simplified demonstrations will be well prepared for advanced study of robotics. The algorithms are presented at a relatively abstract level, not tied to any specific robot. Instead a generic robot is defined that uses elements common to most educational robots: differential drive with two motors, proximity sensors and some method of displaying output to the user. The theory is supplemented with over 100 activities, most of which can be successfully implemented using inexpensive educational robots. Activities that require more computation can be programmed on a computer. Archives are available with suggested implementations for the Thymio robot and standalone programs in Python.


Boolean constraint solving technology has made tremendous progress over the last decade, leading to industrial-strength solvers, for example, in the areas of answer set programming (ASP), the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), propositional satisfiability (SAT) and satisfiability of quantified Boolean formulas (QBF). However, in all these areas, there exist multiple solving strategies that work well on different applications; no strategy dominates all other strategies. Therefore, no individual solver shows robust state-of-the-art performance in all kinds of applications. Additionally, the question arises how to choose a well-performing solving strategy for a given application; this is a challenging question even for solver and domain experts. One way to address this issue is the use of portfolio solvers, that is, a set of different solvers or solver configurations. We present three new automatic portfolio methods: (i) automatic construction of parallel portfolio solvers (ACPP) via algorithm configuration, (ii) solving the NP-hard problem of finding effective algorithm schedules with Answer Set Programming (aspeed ), and (iii) a flexible algorithm selection framework (claspfolio 2) allowing for fair comparison of different selection approaches. All three methods show improved performance and robustness in comparison to individual solvers on heterogeneous instance sets from many different applications. Since parallel solvers are important to effectively solve hard problems on parallel computation systems (e.g., multi-core processors), we extend all three approaches to be effectively applicable in parallel settings. We conducted extensive experimental studies different instance sets from ASP, CSP, MAXSAT, Operation Research (OR), SAT and QBF that indicate an improvement in the state-of-the-art solving heterogeneous instance sets. Last but not least, from our experimental studies, we deduce practical advice regarding the question when to apply which of our methods.


Static and dynamic pile tests are carried out to determine the load bearing capacity and the quality of reinforced concrete piles. As part of a round robin test to evaluate dynamic load tests, structure integrated fibre optic strain sensors were used to receive more detailed information about the strains along the pile length compared to conventional measurements at the pile head. This paper shows the instrumentation of the pile with extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometers sensors and fibre Bragg gratings sensors together with the results of the conducted static load test as well as the dynamic load tests and pile integrity tests.


"While ample evidence documents that urban children generally have better nutritional status than their rural counterparts, recent research suggests that urban malnutrition is on the rise. The environment, choices, and opportunities of urbanites differ greatly from those of rural dwellers' from employment conditions to social and family networks to access to health care and other services. Given these differences, understanding the relative importance of the various determinants of child malnutrition in urban and rural areas and especially whether they differ is key to designing context-relevant, effective program and policy responses for stemming malnutrition. This study uses Demographic and Health Survey data from 36 developing countries to address the question of whether the socioeconomic determinants of child nutritional status differ across urban and rural areas. The purpose is to answer the broader question of why child malnutrition rates are lower in urban areas. The socioeconomic determinants examined are women's education, women's status, access to safe water and sanitation, and household economic status. The analysis finds little evidence of differences in the nature of the socioeconomic determinants or in the strength of their associations with child nutritional status across urban and rural areas. As expected, however, it documents marked differences in the levels of these determinants in favor of urban areas. Large gaps in favor of urban areas are also found in the levels of key proximate determinants of child nutritional status, especially maternal prenatal and birthing care, quality of complementary feeding, and immunization of children. The conclusion is that better nutritional status of urban children is probably due to the cumulative effect of a series of more favorable socioeconomic conditions, which, in turn, seems to lead to better caring practices for children and their mothers. Given that the nature of the determinants of child nutritional status is largely the same across urban and rural areas, the same program and policy framework can be used to stem malnutrition in both. Efforts to alleviate the most critical socioeconomic constraints specific to the different environments should continue to be prioritized." Authors' Abstract


In this paper we present work on the development of a system for automated classification of digitized H&E histopathology images of prostate carcinoma (PCa). In our system, images are transformed into a tiled grid from which various texture and morphological features are extracted. We evaluate the contribution of high-level morphological features such as those derived from tissue segmentation algorithms as they relate to the accuracy of our classifier models. We also present work on an algorithm for tissue segmentation in image tiles, and introduce a novel feature vector representation of tissue classes in same. Finally, we present the classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity results of our system when performing three tasks: distinguishing between cancer and non-cancer tiles, between low and high-grade cancer and between Gleason grades 3, 4 and 5. Our results show that the novel tissue representation outperforms the morphological features derived from tissue segmentation by a significant margin, but that neither feature sets improve on the accuracy gained by features from low-level texture methods.


Although human trafficking has gained unprecedented national and international attention and condemnation over the past decade, the legal instruments developed to combat this phenomenon have thus far proved insufficient. In particular, current efforts help an alarmingly small number of individuals out of the multitudes currently understood as falling under the category of trafficked persons, and even in these few cases, the assistance provided is of questionable value. This Article thus calls for a paradigm shift in anti-trafficking policy: a move away from the currently predominant human rights approach to trafficking and the adoption of a labor approach that targets the structure of labor markets prone to severely exploitative labor practices. This labor paradigm, the Article contends, offers more effective strategies for combating trafficking. After establishing the case for the labor paradigm, the Article suggests how it can be incorporated into existing anti-trafficking regimes. The Article proposes five measures for implementing anti-trafficking policies grounded on the labor approach: prevent the criminalization and deportation of workers who report exploitation; eliminate binding arrangements; reduce recruitment fees and the power of middlemen; guarantee the right to unionize; and extend and enforce the application of labor and employment laws to vulnerable workers. Finally, the Article analyzes why this paradigm has yet to be adopted and responds to some of the main objections to a paradigm shift.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTION The AD592 is a two terminal monolithic integrated circuit temperature transducer that provides an output current proportional to absolute temperature. For a wide range of supply voltages the transducer acts as a high impedance temperature dependent current source of 1 μA/K. Improved design and laser wafer trimming of the IC's thin film resistors allows the AD592 to achieve absolute accuracy levels and nonlinearity errors previously unattainable at a comparable price.


The adoption of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2000 marked the beginning of a new era of European water policy. However, more than a decade later, the majority of European rivers are still failing to meet one of the main objectives of the WFD: the good ecological status. Pesticides are a major stressor for stream ecosystems. This PhD thesis emphasises the need for WFD managers to consider all main agricultural pesticide sources and influencing landscape parameters when setting up River Basin Management Plans and Programmes of Measures. The findings and recommendations of this thesis can help to successfully tackle the risk of pesticide contamination to achieve the WFD objectives.

A total of 663 sites that were situated in the German Federal States of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Hesse were studied (Chapter 3 and 4). In addition to an analysis of the macroinvertebrate data of the governmental WFD monitoring network, a detailed GIS analysis of the main agricultural pesticide sources (arable land and garden allotments as well as wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)) and landscape elements (riparian buffer strips and forested upstream reaches) was conducted. Based on the results, a screening approach was developed that allows an initial rapid and cost-effective identification of those sites that are potentially affected by pesticide contamination. By using the trait-based bioindicator SPEARpesticides, the insecticidal long-term effects of the WWTP effluents on the structure of the macroinvertebrate community were identified up to at least 1.5 km downstream (in some cases even 3 km) of the WWTPs. The results of the German Saprobic Index revealed that the WWTPs can still be important sources of oxygen-depleting substances. Furthermore, the results indicate that forested upstream reaches and riparian buffer strips at least 5 m in width can be appropriate measures in mitigating the effects and exposure of pesticides.

There are concerns that the future expansion of energy crop cultivation will lead to an increased pesticide contamination of ecosystems in agricultural landscapes. Therefore, the potential of energy crops for pesticide contamination was examined based on an analysis of the development of energy crop cultivation in Germany and a literature search on perennial energy crops (Chapter 5). The results indicate that the future large-scale expansion of energy crop cultivation will not necessarily cause an increase or decrease in the amounts of pesticides that are released into the environment. The potential effects will depend on the future design of the agricultural systems. Instead of creating energy monocultures, annual energy crops should be integrated into the existing food production systems. Financial incentives and further education are needed to encourage the use of sustainable crop rotations, innovative cropping systems and perennial energy crops, which may contribute to crop diversity and generate lower pesticide demands than do intensive farming systems.


MAP is the problem of finding a most probable instantiation of a set of variables given evidence. MAP has always been perceived to be significantly harder than the related problems of computing the probability of a variable instantiation (Pr), or the problem of computing the most probable explanation (MPE). This paper investigates the complexity of MAP in Bayesian networks. Specifically, we show that MAP is complete for NPPP and provide further negative complexity results for algorithms based on variable elimination. We also show that MAP remains hard even when MPE and Pr become easy. For example, we show that MAP is NP-complete when the networks are restricted to polytrees, and even then can not be effectively approximated.

Given the difficulty of computing MAP exactly, and the difficulty of approximating MAP while providing useful guarantees on the resulting approximation, we investigate best effort approximations. We introduce a generic MAP approximation framework. We provide two instantiations of the framework; one for networks which are amenable to exact inference (Pr), and one for networks for which even exact inference is too hard. This allows MAP approximation on networks that are too complex to even exactly solve the easier problems, Pr and MPE. Experimental results indicate that using these approximation algorithms provides much better solutions than standard techniques, and provide accurate MAP estimates in many cases.


Graham, Georgia.  Where Wild Horses Run .  Markham, ON., Red Deer Press,  2011. Print. Georgia Graham has written four books and illustrated fourteen.  In this picture book she captures the beauty of the wild horses of the Nemaiah Valley in British Columbia through the story of a new foal.  While she both wrote and illustrated this work, her strength is clearly in illustration.  Using chalk pastels and chalk pencils on sanded pastel paper, Graham creates realistic images of both the horses and the landscapes.  Her crouched cougar image is very well executed. The unusual layout of the images is eye-catching and allows Graham to vary the emphasis between the text and images. The book is in landscape format, allowing images to flow over two pages.  Sometimes one image will fill two pages, with text bars at the top.  Sometimes, an image will take up the top of a two page spread, with another image below and a third integrated into the text on the remaining white space. While the book is attractive and enjoyable, there are some shortcomings.  The drawings of the horses are inconsistent in their detail and sometimes in their proportions.  In two images of the foal, its legs seem disproportionately large.  Some of the horses' manes seem to be permanently flying in the wind.  In an image of two stallions fighting, parts of their manes seem to move independently, like Medusa's snakes.  While the artist is probably attempting to show agitation in the horses, the manes are quite unnatural. The Golden Stallion is also depicted with his ribs showing prominently, which would normally indicate that the animal is underfed, however, the rest of his body and those of the other horses appear to be in good condition. The text is quite simple, generally well-written and is appropriate for the intended upper elementary audience.  However, the story line takes an unnatural twist at the end.  The new foal has played with a grey colt, whom the Golden Stallion drives out of the band.  This is normal behavior.  When a cougar threatens the foal, the grey colt appears from nowhere, in an implied act of friendship, to protect the foal.  It is not realistic that a colt that has been banished from a band would interfere with a foal while the stallion is nearby.  It is much more likely that a mare, and particularly the lead mare, would chase away a cougar.  This unnecessary bit of anthropomorphizing detracts from the otherwise realistic portrayal of the animals in the text and images. In spite of the flaws, this is still a good book from a rising Alberta author and illustrator, which should be included in library collections. Recommended:  3 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


For assembly tasks parts often have to be oriented before they can be put in an assembly. The results presented in this paper are a component of the automated design of parts orienting devices. The focus is on orienting parts with minimal sensing and manipulation. We present a new approach to parts orienting through the manipulation of pose distributions. Through dynamic simulation we can determine the pose distribution for an object being dropped from an arbitrary height on an arbitrary surface. By varying the drop height and the shape of the support surface we can find the initial conditions that will result in a pose distribution with minimal entropy. We are trying to uniquely orient a part with high probability just by varying the initial conditions. We will derive a condition on the pose and velocity of a simple planar object in contact with a sloped surface that will allow us to quickly determine the final resting configuration of the object. This condition can then be used to quickly compute the pose distribution. We also present simulation and experimental results that show how dynamic simulation can be used to find optimal shapes and drop heights for a given part.


In development for thirty years, Soar is a general cognitive architecture that integrates knowledge-intensive reasoning, reactive execution, hierarchical reasoning, planning, and learning from experience, with the goal of creating a general computational system that has the same cognitive abilities as humans. In contrast, most AI systems are designed to solve only one type of problem, such as playing chess, searching the Internet, or scheduling aircraft departures. Soar is both a software system for agent development and a theory of what computational structures are necessary to support human-level agents. Over the years, both software system and theory have evolved. This book offers the definitive presentation of Soar from theoretical and practical perspectives, providing comprehensive descriptions of fundamental aspects and new components. The current version of Soar features major extensions, adding reinforcement learning, semantic memory, episodic memory, mental imagery, and an appraisal-based model of emotion. This book describes details of Soar's component memories and processes and offers demonstrations of individual components, components working in combination, and real-world applications. Beyond these functional considerations, the book also proposes requirements for general cognitive architectures and explicitly evaluates how well Soar meets those requirements.