An insightful look at faith, reason, and the limits of modern liberty. While it is common for today's secularists to push organized religion to the margins of politics, it is equally common for Christians to believe that modern democracy is the only type of regime compatible with their faith. But in fact, this belief cannot be squared with the long and rich tradition of Christian political thought, as Marc D. Guerra makes clear in Christians as Political Animals. Guerra shows that a problematic shift occurred when Christian thinkers began to argue that their religion received its best political articulation in democracy. Calling on thinkers ranging from Augustine and Aquinas to twentieth-century theologians and political philosophers, Guerra argues that while modern democracy and its various attendant goods should be affirmed, Christian thought must recognize the limited scope of the political realm and maintain the proper critical distance. Christians as Political Animals reminds modern democracy of a truth it is prone to forget: civil society relies on extrapolitical goods such as love, friendship, morality, and faith for its health and survival.


*The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Shortlisted for the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize* 'THE BEST TRUE SPY STORY I HAVE EVER READ' JOHN LE CARRE A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians - now with a new afterword On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket. The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...


Since the late 1990s, numerous ridematching programmes have integrated the Internet, mobile phones, and social networking into their services. Online ridematching systems are employing a range of new strategies to create "critical mass": (1) regional and large employer partnerships, (2) financial incentives, (3) social networking to younger populations, and (4) real-time ridematching services that employ "smartphones" and automated ridematching software. Enhanced casual carpooling approaches, which focus on "meeting places", are also being explored. Today, ridesharing represents approximately 8–11% of the transportation modal share in Canada and the USA, respectively. There are approximately 638 ridematching programmes in North America. Ridesharing's evolution can be categorized into five phases: (1) World War II car-sharing (or carpooling) clubs; (2) major responses to the 1970s energy crises; (3) early organized ridesharing schemes; (4) reliable ridesharing systems; and (5) technology-enabled ridematching. While ridesharing's future growth and direction are uncertain, the next decade is likely to include greater interoperability among services, technology integration, and stronger policy support. In light of growing concerns about climate change, congestion, and oil dependency, more research is needed to better understand ridesharing's impacts on infrastructure, congestion, and energy/emissions.


This book chapter is based on a larger project with Samuel Estreicher in which we examine in detail the unjust dismissals regimes of numerous countries. The study of these laws goes beyond the text of the relevant statues and cases, as it uses input from foreign employment law practioners and available data — particularly claimants' success rates and average remedies — in an attempt to observe how the laws actually operate in practice.The conclusion drawn from this study challenges the common "American exceptionalism" premise that argues that adopting a just cause rule would place the U.S. in the same company as the rest of the world. It is true that most countries provide employees with more protection against unjust dismissals than the U.S. But even on paper, the protections in many of the surveyed countries are often weaker than the typical American view of just cause protection assumes. Moreover, the actual practice in these countries frequently reveals even less protection, particularly when remedies are taken into account. These considerations make American dismissal law, although certainly weaker, appear less than exceptional. In addition, the variances in unjust dismissal regimes suggest that many economic studies of employment protection fail to account for the full range of differences that exist among countries. For instance, a study on the effect of employment regulation on a country's or firms' economic performance should not rely solely on the laws as they are written because similar looking laws may have substantially different effects due to their available remedies or other operational disparities. Thus, studies should do more to account for these differences or, where appropriate data are unavailable, at least acknowledge that limitation.


User-generated content (UGC) has become a part of personal digital collections on the Web, as such collections often contain personal memories, activities, thoughts and even profiles. With the increase in the creation of personal materials on the Web, the needs for archiving and preserving these materials are increasing, not only for the purpose of developing personal archives but also for the purpose of capturing social memory and tracking human traces in this era. Using both survey and interview methods, this study investigated blogs, one popular type of UGC, and analyzed travel bloggers' perceptions of the value of blogs and the elements of blogs that are important for preservation. The study respondents found personal and sentimental value (e.g., a way to express themselves, a way to keep personal memories and thoughts, and a way to maintain a record for their family) to be the most important reason for preserving blogs, followed by informational value and cultural/historical value. Sharing also appeared as one of the values that respondents found in their blogs. The respondents reported that self-created blog posts (content) and information related to the blog posts (context) are more important to preserve than some other elements (behavior and appearance). Integrating what bloggers consider as most valuable and what archivists think are worth preserving may be an important step when collecting personal blogs.


The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, has always been vitally important in southern and black history. With the publication of this book, the boycott becomes a milestone in the history of American women as well. ""This autobiographical account of the creation of the boycott is the most important document on that highly significant episode since Martin Luther King's own version, Stride Towards Freedom. I feel certain that scholars and students will refer to this unique historical source for generations to come."" --J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan ""This valuable first-hand account of the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, written by an important, behind-the-scenes organizer, evokes the emotional intensity of the civil rights struggle. It ought to be required reading for all Americans who value their freedom and the contribution of black women to our history."" --Coretta Scott King ""A sharply remembered addition to the literature on what has become an event of mythic proportions, and a sound primer for those interested in community organizing. The author is scrupulously honest, modest, and gives unsung heroes much deserved praise."" --Kirkus ""This fascinating memoir provides new evidence on the origins and sustaining force of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56)."" --Anthony O. Edmonds, Library Journal ""There's no substitute for this intimate memoir; it provides an immediacy and graphic intensity never before available."" --Marge Frantz, San Jose Mercury News ""This powerful memoir is a milestone in the history of that boycott and in the American Civil Rights Movement."" --American History Illustrated ""This absorbing study may become a minor classic in the literature of the Montgomery bus boycott. . . . Garrow correctly states in his Foreword that this book is the most important participant-observer account of the Montgomery protest available to students and scholars of the black freedom movement. . . . This straightforward, sensitive memoir is must reading for students of the civil rights movement. It is a powerful commentary on how a woman and the group she led rose up to throw off an injustice thrust upon them. When Jo Ann Robinson and other Montgomery women decided no longer to play the role of contented black Southerners, they gave blacks everywhere renewed hope, and they helped to create a national leader who took them closer to the promised land."" --Jimmie L. Franklin, The Alabama Review ""In an absorbing, first-hand narrative, the dignified and unassuming Robinson focuses on the role of the Women's Political Council (WPC) and details the WPC's plans to engineer a boycott months before the heralded arrest of Rosa Parks. . . . The value of this primary source will endure long after many best-selling, secondary accounts of national politics during this period have disappeared."" --Keith D. Miller and Elizabeth Vander Lei, Explorations in Sight and Sound


A review is provided covering metal plasma production, the energetic condensation of metal plasmas, and the formation of nanostructures using such plasmas. Plasma production techniques include various approaches to ionizing metal vapour in a high-current discharge. Of special importance are different forms of ionized physical vapour deposition, namely magnetron sputtering with ionization of sputtered atoms in radio frequency discharges, metal self-sputtering, and high power impulse magnetron sputtering, filtered cathodic arcs and pulsed laser ablation. The discussion of energetic condensation focuses on the control of the kinetic energy by biasing. It also includes considerations of the potential energy and the surface and sub-surface processes occurring during ion subplantation and implantation. In the final section on nanostructures, two different approaches are discussed. In the top-down approach, the primary nanostructures are lithographically produced and metal plasma is used to conformally coat or completely fill trenches and vias. Additionally, multilayers with nanosize periods (nanolaminates) can be produced. In the bottom-up approach, thermodynamic forces are used to fabricate self-organized nanocomposites and nanoporous materials by decomposition and dealloying.


This chapter interrogates what it means to defend LWOP as an alternative to death. In demanding the abolition of the death penalty — as cruel and unusual, as violative of equal protection, as immoral, and as an inefficient deterrent — have abolitionists unwittingly erected another evil, another type of death, LWOP? One of the most visible flaws in the imposition of the death penalty has been its linkages, historically and now, to race. What does it mean that LWOP, by contrast, is largely invisible, rendering race largely invisible? What does it mean to defend LWOP, that other death, in a society where the resources to defend are miniscule compared to the resources to defend actual death? Finally, what does it mean to us as citizens to live in these new cities, newly configured, sanitized, and purged — again, often along racial lines, and almost always along class lines — via the tool of LWOP?


In addition to qualitative methods presented in chaos and complexity theories in educational research, this article addresses quantitative methods that may show potential for future research studies. Although much in the social and behavioral sciences literature has focused on computer simulations, this article explores current chaos and complexity methods that have the potential to bridge the divide between qualitative and quantitative, as well as theoretical and applied, human research studies. These methods include multiple linear regression, nonlinear regression, stochastics, Monte Carlo methods, Markov Chains, and Lyapunov exponents. A postulate for post hoc regression analysis is then presented as an example of an emergent, recursive, and iterative quantitative method when dealing with interaction effects and collinearity among variables. This postulate also highlights the power of both qualitative and quantitative chaos and complexity theories in order to observe and describe both the micro and macro levels of systemic emergence.


Both the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)  are being subjected to close scrutiny, but from different quarters. During the lead up to the British general election in 2015, the Cameron Conservative government issued a Green Paper, BBC Charter Review, July-October 2015, which broke new ground in terms of the scope of such an enquiry for its level of institutional criticism. Whilst ostensibly the document only purported to raise options for future change, and invited public submissions for consideration, there has been widespread concern about the possible serious intentions of the government for the corporation's future. Though the ABC appears to be subject to much less vitriolic attack than its British counterpart, it too faces a range of threats and abuses. Paradoxically, such aggressive scrutiny comes at a time when both broadcasting corporations enjoy record audiences, continuing high levels of public trust, and on-line market leadership as a result their successful development of new digital platforms.


Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently gained high popularity among various universities and even in global societies. A critical factor for their success in teaching and learning effectiveness is assignment grading. Traditional ways of assignment grading are not scalable and do not give timely or interactive feedback to students. To address these issues, we present an interactive-gaming-based teaching and learning platform called Pex4Fun. Pex4Fun is a browser-based teaching and learning environment targeting teachers and students for introductory to advanced programming or software engineering courses. At the core of the platform is an automated grading engine based on symbolic execution. In Pex4Fun, teachers can create virtual classrooms, customize existing courses, and publish new learning material including learning games. Pex4Fun was released to the public in June 2010 and since then the number of attempts made by users to solve games has reached over one million. Our work on Pex4Fun illustrates that a sophisticated software engineering technique-automated test generation-can be successfully used to underpin automatic grading in an online programming system that can scale to hundreds of thousands of users.


Most scholarship on Chinese legal philosophy has neglected the study of Confucian jurisprudence in practice. As a result of this incomplete portrayal, scholars predominantly view the premodern Chinese Confucian legal tradition as lacking a rule of law system, which has led to blaming Confucianism for much of China's modern and historical rule of law problems. This article seeks to complicate this view by examining Confucian jurisprudence in practice: specifically, the development of pre-Tang dynasty panwen (written legal judgments). Through analysis of specific panwen from various Chinese primary sources — many of which have never been translated into English — this article will show that even in Chinese antiquity the legal system was not solely marked by codification or the lack of the rule of law, but was far more complex and diverse than most scholars have portrayed. For example, elements of case law played an important role in Chinese legal history. Indeed, it is an especially good time to build our understanding of the use of cases and the role of panwen, in China's legal past given the Supreme People's Court's recent emphasis on the role of case law in contemporary Chinese jurisprudence.


The rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic has forced the sport industry into unchartered territory. Beginning on March 11, 2020, when the National Basketball Association suspended its season, the American sports landscape has consequently encountered an unprecedented number of temporary suspensions, postponements, and cancellations. Although most major leagues and their pertaining sports have halted to a sudden stop, professional wrestling has surprisingly continued on, including World Wrestling Entertainment's WrestleMania 36, which was held without fans in attendance. The maintenance of professional wrestling during the COVID-19 crisis has presented a unique situation, in which fans and companies involved in the sport have rallied on social media platforms behind the sport's relative normality in a time of global uncertainty. Leveraging publicly trackable Twitter data, we analyzed public sentiments toward two of the largest companies (e.g., World Wrestling Entertainment and All Elite Wrestling) in the professional wrestling industry and related trends during the widespread onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The results represent exploratory insights surrounding the continuation of professional wrestling during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Inspired by empirical studies of networked systems such as the Internet, social networks, and biological networks, researchers have in recent years developed a variety of techniques and models to help us understand or predict the behavior of these systems. Here we review developments in this field, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.


Threats to national security and public safety, whether real or perceived, result in an atmosphere conducive to the abuse of civil liberties. History is littered with examples: The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Palmer Raids during World War I, and McCarthyism in the aftermath of World War II.Unfortunately, the post-9/11 world represents no departure from this age-old trend. Evidence of post-9/11 tension between national security and civil liberties is seen in the heightened regulation of photography; scholars have labeled it the "War on Photography" - a conflict between law enforcement officials and photographers over the right to take pictures in public places. A simple Google search reveals countless incidents of overzealous law enforcement officials detaining or arresting photographers and, in many cases, confiscating their cameras and memory cards, despite the fact that these individuals were in lawful places, at lawful times, partaking in lawful activities. This article examines the so-called War on Photography and the remedies available to those who have been unlawfully detained, arrested, or have had their property seized for taking pictures in public places or private places open to the public. It discusses recent incidents that highlight the growing infringement of photography rights and the magnitude of the harm that law enforcement officials have inflicted, paying particular attention to the themes these events have in common. It explores the existing legal framework surrounding photography rights and the federal and state remedies available to those whose rights have been violated. It examines the adequacy of each remedy including: (1) declaratory and injunctive relief, (2) Section 1983 and Bivens actions, and (3) state tort remedies. It discusses the obstacles associated with each remedy and the reasons why these obstacles are particularly hard to overcome in the context of photography. It then argues that most, if not all, of the remedies discussed are either inadequate or altogether impractical considering the costs of litigation. Lastly, this article will discuss the reasons why people should be concerned about the War on Photography and possible ways to reverse the erosion of photography rights.


Value Creation and its effects on Transfer Pricing and tax law

Emerging from the OECD/G20 BEPS Project, a new, somewhat fuzzy notion of Value Creation came to permeate not only Transfer Pricing language but also wider allocation rules and anti-abuse provisions in international tax law. The notion of 'Value Creation' reframes the interpretation and application of the Arm's Length Principle (ALP) that is embedded in Articles 7 and 9 of the OECD Model Convention. This new Value Creation notion and approach assist in understanding key enterprise functions while different industry sectors manifest these concepts in various ways.

Situating such notions and this approach within the law of tax treaties and analyzing terms of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines alongside their factual context is the aim of this book. Here, law students address Transfer Pricing and Value Creation in sectors as varied as commodities trade, automotive, consumer products, food and beverages, pharmaceutical and life sciences, telecommunications, and the key topic of value creation in a digitalized economy. Our LL.M. students were required to address issues not explored in legal research and to discuss factual topics relevant for Transfer Pricing. All students focused on topics that are new to the international tax debate that keep evolving and on factual matters that often escape legal research.


Modelling languages are important in the process of software development. The suitability of a modelling language for a project depends on its applicability to the target domain. Here, domain-specific languages have an advantage over more general modelling languages. On the other hand, modelling languages like the Unified Modeling Language can be used in a wide range of domains, which supports the reuse of development knowledge between projects. This thesis treats the syntactical and semantical harmonisation of modelling languages and their combined use, and the handling of complexity of modelling languages by providing language subsets - called language profiles - with tailor-made formal semantics definitions, generated by a profile tool. We focus on the widely-used modelling languages SDL and UML, and formal semantics definitions specified using Abstract State Machines.


OBJECTIVES
To compare the effectiveness of community mental health nurse (CMHN) problem-solving and generic CMHN care, against usual general practitioner (GP) care in reducing symptoms, alleviating problems, and improving social functioning and quality of life for people living in the community with common mental disorders; and to undertake a cost comparison of each CMHN treatment compared with usual GP care.

DESIGN
A pragmatic, randomised controlled trial with three arms: CMHN problem-solving, generic CMHN care and usual GP care.

SETTING
General practices in two southern English counties were included in the study. CMHNs were employed by local NHS trusts providing community mental health services.

PARTICIPANTS
Participants were GP patients aged 18--65 years with a new episode of anxiety, depression or reaction to life difficulties and had to score at least 3 points on the General Health Questionnaire-12 screening tool. Symptoms had to be present for a minimum of 4 weeks but no longer than 6 months.

INTERVENTIONS
Patients were randomised to one of three groups: (1) CMHN problem-solving treatment, (2) generic CMHN treatment, or (3) usual GP care. All three groups of patients remained free to consult their GPs throughout the course of the study, and could be prescribed psychotropic drug treatments.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Patients were assessed at baseline, and 8 weeks and 26 weeks after randomisation. The primary outcome measure was psychological symptoms measured on the Clinical Interview Schedule -- Revised. Other measures included social functioning, health-related quality of life, problem severity and satisfaction. The economic outcomes were evaluated with a cost--utility analysis.

RESULTS
Twenty-four CMHNs were trained to provide problem-solving under supervision, and another 29 were referred patients for generic support. In total, 247 patients were randomised to the three arms of the study, referred by 98 GPs in 62 practices. All three groups of patients were greatly improved by the 8-week follow-up. No significant differences were found between the groups at 8 weeks or 26 weeks in symptoms, social functioning or quality of life. Greater satisfaction with treatment was found in the CMHN groups. CMHN care represented a significant additional health service cost and there were no savings in sickness absence.

CONCLUSIONS
The study found that specialist mental health nurse support is no better than support from GPs for patients with anxiety, depression and reactions to life difficulties. The results suggest that healthcare providers could consider adopting policies of restricting referrals of unselected patients with common mental disorders to specialist CMHNs, although there may be other roles in primary care that CMHNs could play effectively. Further research should address the predictors of chronicity in common mental disorders and target extra treatment. More research is also needed into the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of problem-solving treatment for other disorders, of facilitated self-help treatments for common mental disorders and of CMHN care for people with severe and enduring mental illnesses, as well as the prevention of mental disorders.


Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.


When "The Left Hand of Darkness first appeared in 1969, the original jacket copy read, "Once in a long while a whole new world is created for us. Such worlds are Middle Earth, Dune - and such a world is Winter." Twenty-five years and a Hugo and Nebula Award later, these words remain true. In Winter, or Gethen, Ursula K. Le Guin has created a fully realized planet and people. But Gethen society is more than merely a fascinating creation. The concept of a society existing totally without sexual prejudices is even more relevant today than it was in 1969. This special 25th anniversary edition of The Left Hand of Darkness contains not only the complete, unaltered text of the landmark original but also a thought-provoking new afterword and four new appendixes by Ms. Le Guin. When the human ambassador Genly Ai is sent to Gethen, the planet known as Winter by those outsiders who have experienced its arctic climate, he thinks that his mission will be a standard one of making peace between warring factions. Instead the ambassador finds himself wildly unprepared. For Gethen is inhabited by a society with a rich, ancient culture full of strange beauty and deadly intrigue - a society of people who are both male and female in one, and neither. This lack of fixed gender, and the resulting lack of gender-based discrimination, is the very cornerstone of Gethen life. But Genly is all too human. Unless he can overcome his ingrained prejudices about the significance of "male" and "female, " he may destroy both his mission and himself.


The R language, from the point of view of language design and implementation, is a unique combination of various programming language concepts. It has functional characteristics like lazy evaluation of arguments, but also allows expressions to have arbitrary side effects. Many runtime data structures, for example variable scopes and functions, are accessible and can be modified while a program executes. Several different object models allow for structured programming, but the object models can interact in surprising ways with each other and with the base operations of R. R works well in practice, but it is complex, and it is a challenge for language developers trying to improve on the current state-of-the-art, which is the reference implementation -- GNU R. The goal of this work is to demonstrate that, given the right approach and the right set of tools, it is possible to create an implementation of the R language that provides significantly better performance while keeping compatibility with the original implementation. In this paper we describe novel optimizations backed up by aggressive speculation techniques and implemented within FastR, an alternative R language implementation, utilizing Truffle -- a JVM-based language development framework developed at Oracle Labs. We also provide experimental evidence demonstrating effectiveness of these optimizations in comparison with GNU R, as well as Renjin and TERR implementations of the R language.


Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.


The ALICE Experiment is one of the four experiments installed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One of its detector-systems, the Transition Radiation Detector (TRD), is a gas detector designed for electron identification and charged particle tracking. The charged particle ionizes the gas along its path and electrons drift in an uniform field of 700 V/cm over 3 cm before being amplified. We implemented procedures to calibrate the drift velocity of the electrons, the time-offset of the signal, the amplification factor and the width of the Pad Response Function (PDF) characterizing the sharing of the deposited charge over adjacent pads. Physics events (pp and PbPb collisions) will be used. The performances of the algorithms were tested on simulated pp collisions at √s=14 TeV and on first real data taken with cosmic-rays in the ALICE setup. The calibration software was installed on the Data Acquisition System at CERN and executed continuously during the cosmic-ray data taking in 2008, providing a first determination of the calibration constants. This thesis presents also a study on the capability of the ALICE central barrel to detect the Z-boson through the decay Z→e+e- in pp collisions at 14 TeV. The production cross-section has small theoretical errors in QCD and a comparison between the experimental results and the theoretical calculations allows to check the understanding of the detector response at high transverse momentum. We demonstrated that the Z→e+e- is characterized by a very clean signal in the dielectron reconstructed invariant mass spectrum. At such high transverse momentum (about 45 GeV/c=mZ/2), the electrons from Z are identified with the Transition Radiation Detector. The remaining background from misidentified pions and electrons from heavy-flavored decays are rejected by the requirement of two isolated reconstructed tracks. The main challenge comes from the very small production rate. Therefore we estimated the efficiency of a trigger based on a low pT cut and electron identification with the TRD and showed that about 100 Z→e+e- can be reconstructed per year employing such a trigger. Another physics topics investigated in this thesis is the measurement of the charm and bottom production via their semileptonic decays. These measurements allow at high pT to test pQCD calculations in pp collisions and are essential prerequisites for the understanding of the Quark Gluon Plasma expected to be produced in PbPb collisions. In this work, we studied the electrons from c and b decays reconstructed in the central barrel. For 108 minimum-bias events at √s=10 TeV (as was initially expected for the year 2008), a pT of about 6 GeV/c can be reached. The electrons are identified with the Time Projection Chamber, TRD and Time-Of-Flight. First estimations of the contamination and Particle Identification efficiency based on a Bayesian approach were performed. At high pT, electrons from heavy-flavored hadrons become dominant but at low pT the main source of electrons is gamma conversion in the detector material and the π0 Dalitz decay. We showed that the expected signal-to-background ratio, which was found to be similar as in the PHENIX experiment for pp collisions at √s=200 GeV, will allow a measurement of the charm and bottom cross-sections.


See how the core components of the Windows operating system work behind the scenesguided by a team of internationally renowned internals experts. Fully updated for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, this classic guide delivers key architectural insights on system design, debugging, performance, and supportalong with hands-on experiments to experience Windows internal behavior firsthand. Delve inside Windows architecture and internals: Understand how the core system and management mechanisms workfrom the object manager to services to the registry Explore internal system data structures using tools like the kernel debugger Grasp the scheduler's priority and CPU placement algorithms Go inside the Windows security model to see how it authorizes access to data Understand how Windows manages physical and virtual memory Tour the Windows networking stack from top to bottomincluding APIs, protocol drivers, and network adapter drivers Troubleshoot file-system access problems and system boot problems Learn how to analyze crashes


America's criminal justice system is broken. The United States punishes at a higher per capita rate than any other country in the world. In the last twenty years, incarceration rates have risen 500 percent. Sentences are harsh, prisons are overcrowded, life inside is dangerous, and rehabilitation programs are ineffective. Police and prosecutors operate in the dark shadows of the legal process--sometimes resigning themselves to the status quo, sometimes turning a profit from it. The courts define punishment as "time served," but that hardly begins to explain the suffering of prisoners.Looking not only to court records but to works of philosophy, history, and literature for illumination, Robert Ferguson, a distinguished law professor, diagnoses all parts of a now massive, out-of-control punishment regime. He reveals the veiled pleasure behind the impulse to punish (which confuses our thinking about the purpose of punishment), explains why over time all punishment regimes impose greater levels of punishment than originally intended, and traces a disturbing gap between our ability to quantify pain and the precision with which penalties are handed down.Ferguson turns the spotlight from the debate over legal issues to the real plight of prisoners, addressing not law professionals but the American people. Do we want our prisons to be this way? Or are we unaware, or confused, or indifferent, or misinformed about what is happening? Acknowledging the suffering of prisoners and understanding what punishers do when they punish are the first steps toward a better, more just system.


In The Geometry of Meaning, Peter G??rdenfors proposes a theory of semantics that bridges cognitive science and linguistics and shows how theories of cognitive processes, in particular concept formation, can be exploited in a general semantic model. He argues that our minds organize the information involved in communicative acts in a format that can be modeled in geometric or topological terms -- in what he terms conceptual spaces, extending the theory he presented in an earlier book by that name. Many semantic theories consider the meanings of words as relatively stable and independent of the communicative context. G??rdenfors focuses instead on how various forms of communication establish a system of meanings that becomes shared between interlocutors. He argues that these "meetings of mind" depend on the underlying geometric structures, and that these structures facilitate language learning. Turning to lexical semantics, G??rdenfors argues that a unified theory of word meaning can be developed by using conceptual spaces. He shows that the meaning of different word classes can be given a cognitive grounding, and offers semantic analyses of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. He also presents models of how the meanings of words are composed to form new meanings and of the basic semantic role of sentences. Finally, he considers the future implications of his theory for robot semantics and the Semantic Web.


Summary Myopathy is a well-known complication of hypercortisolism and commonly involves proximal lower-limb girdle. We report a rare case of Cushing's syndrome in a 60-year-old female presenting with significant respiratory muscle weakness and respiratory failure. She had history of rheumatoid arthritis, primary biliary cirrhosis and primary hypothyroidism and presented with weight gain and increasing shortness of breath. Investigations confirmed a restrictive defect with impaired gas transfer but with no significant parenchymatous pulmonary disease. Respiratory muscle test confirmed weakness of respiratory muscles and diaphragm. Biochemical and radiological investigations confirmed hypercortisolaemia secondary to a left adrenal tumour. Following adrenalectomy her respiratory symptoms improved along with an objective improvement in the respiratory muscle strength, diaphragmatic movement and pulmonary function test. Learning points: Cushing's syndrome can present in many ways, a high index of suspicion is required for its diagnosis, as often patients present with only few of the pathognomonic symptoms and signs of the syndrome. Proximal lower-limb girdle myopathy is common in Cushing's syndrome. Less often long-term exposure of excess glucocorticoid production can also affect other muscles including respiratory muscle and the diaphragm leading to progressive shortness of breath and even acute respiratory failure. Treatment of Cushing's myopathy involves treating the underlying cause that is hypercortisolism. Various medications have been suggested to hinder the development of GC-induced myopathy, but their effects are poorly analysed.


Even in the days of an ever closer European union, Europe contains no less than four different legal cultures with respect to real estate conveyances: the Latin-German notary system, the deregulated Dutch notary system, the lawyer/solicitor system, and the Scandinavian licensed real estate broker system. The latter is of particular interest in that Scandinavian brokers play a far larger role in real estate transactions than their European counterparts. This paper examines and compares the Swedish real estate broker and the Latin notary. The Swedish broker is required by law to act as an impartial intermediary, to provide counseling to both parties, and to assist in drawing up all contracts and other documents necessary for the transaction at hand. To that end, the broker must be active and observant of the particular needs of the parties to the present transaction, always striving to enable them to reach equitable and practical agreements so as to prevent future disputes. In other words, the broker is required to tailor the transaction to fit the needs of the buyer and seller. The Latin notary profession prevails in large parts of the world, particularly the Latin-German parts of continental Europe, and Latin America. While there are divergences in the notarial laws of all countries, the similarities are greater still, and it is correct to speak of a single profession throughout all these countries. The notary carries out several important functions, the nexus of which is the authentication of legal documents. In the preparation of these documents, the notary is required to provide impartial counseling in order to tailor the transaction at hand to fit the will and needs of the parties. To uphold the integra fama of the profession, and to safeguard the proper performance of the notarial functions, lawgivers in all countries emphasize the importance of impartiality and integrity. There are national divergences as to the specific rules of conduct related to impartiality, particularly those concerning what activities are considered incompatible with the notariat, but they rest on common principles. Most importantly, not only must the publica fides be honored, it must be seen in the eyes of the public to be honored. The organization and regulation of the notary profession raises important economic issues, particularly with regard to competition/monopoly and market failures. The discussion of the regulation or deregulation of the notariat is by no means settled. Comparing the two professions, it is striking to see the enormous similarities in the legal frameworks and their respective rationales. Two common features are of particular interest. Firstly, both the Swedish broker and the Latin notary are required to assist the contracting parties in the contract phase, drawing up any necessary documents and counseling the parties as to the implications of the transaction. In that respect, both professions function as tailors to the transaction. Secondly, both the broker and the notary are required to act impartially and independently – impartially visavi the contracting parties, and independently in order to preserve the public faith in the independence and integrity of the professions. The similarities can be summarized as a function on the real estate market: impartial counseling and contract-engineering. This function exists alongside other functions, such as the brokers' traditional matchmaking, or the registration of property rights. This functional approach may prove very useful in all kinds of analyses of the real estate market, whether of political, legal, or economic nature. For instance, with respect to the merits and/or necessity of the Swedish impartiality rule, those wishing to amend the law and introduce a system of overtly partial brokers acting solely on behalf of their principal have to face the question of what is to become of counseling for the principal's counterpart. Should the counterpart be forced to choose between hiring their own legal counsel or make do without? Further, those wishing to contest the mandatory notarial intervention in real estate transactions have to face the same question: what is to happen to impartial counseling, given not only to the client but also to the client's counterpart? Both instances illustrate the common feature shared by the two examined professions: impartial contract-engineering and counseling. To complete the picture and cover the whole arena of real estate transactions, the next logical step is therefore to compare and analyze different systems for registration of property rights. Doing so will hopefully achieve a tool for examining the real estate market that will prove useful indeed, particularly in future discussions concerning European harmonization.


Written in the form of a dialog between translator and translation theorist, this article considers both the difficulty and the necessity of a reciprocal, mutually informed relationship between translation theory and practice. The starting point of the article is my experience translating the poetry of Anja Utler, a contemporary Austrian poet whose linguistic experimentation poses a significant translation challenge. Utler's poetry functions in part by means of what she calls "interweaving" ("Verflechtung"), making use of highly polysemous words to efface boundaries between landscape, body, and language. In addition to blurring semantic lines, Utler also employs certain syntactical and grammatical characteristics of the German language (such as separable prefixes) in unorthodox ways that multiply possibilities of meaning. One of the greatest difficulties for a translator, then, is to find ways of approximating this semantic and syntactic play and innovation in a language that rarely offers a one-to-one equivalent. In addition to addressing specific practical issues in translating Utler's poetry, I consider the role that translation theory played in shaping my translation strategies, and more generally the interaction between the theoretical conceptualization of translation and its actual execution. I also describe my communication with the author, who has contributed greatly to the translation process, supporting an idea of translation as collaboration. Translation theory and practice appear less as correctives to each other than as a cooperative undertaking, part of a conversation between translator, theorist, author, and reader from which, ideally, all sides benefit in the end. By portraying this exchange as an internal dialog, I hope to demonstrate that the realms of translation practice and theory are not alien to one another, but rather engaged in constant, productive exchange, both within the mind of the individual translator/theorist and on the level of translation as a social phenomenon.


How information is collected. You will be furnishing some of your personal information (such as your Social Security or other governmental identification numbers) at the time you apply to rent from us. This information will be on the rental application form or other document that you provide to us or to an apartment locator service, either on paper or electronically. How and when information is used. We may use this information in the process of verifying statements made on your rental application, such as your rental, credit and employment history. We may use the information when reviewing any lease renewal. We may also use it to assist us in obtaining payment from you for any money you may owe us in the future. How the information is protected and who has access. In our company, only authorized persons have access to your Social Security or other governmental identification number. We keep all documents containing this information in a secure area, accessible only by authorized persons. We limit access to electronic versions of the information to authorized persons only. How the information is disposed of. After we no longer need your Social Security or other governmental identification numbers, we will store or destroy the information in a manner that ensures that no unauthorized person will have access to it. Our disposal method may include physical destruction or obliteration of paper documents or electronic files containing such information. Locator services. If you found us through a locator service, please be aware that locator services are independent contractors and are not our employees—even though they may initially process rental applications and fill out lease forms. You should require any locator services you use to furnish you their privacy policies, as well.


Recognising widespread uncertainty about how to address gender within the forestry world (from researchers, as well as natural resource, development and conservation practitioners), this paper strives to provide targeted guidance. We divide gender methods into three main approaches, based on the availability of resources. In the first section, we provide a brief discussion of theory and method. Then, after discussing some all-purpose methods, we classify methods loosely into categories of 'quick and [more or less] dirty'; systematic 'academic' studies; and collaborative studies. We argue that although there is legitimate space for all three approaches, the last is the most likely to result in long-term and meaningful improvements in forests and human well being.


The thematic similarities between the works of Franz Kafka and Harold Pinter have become a fruitful topic for critical discussion over the last few decades. In this essay I discuss what I see as one of the most important themes of Kafka and Pinter?s writing: the instability of the human condition. Through the depiction of absurd interactions between characters, as well as the fragmented and distorted environments that pervade their works, Kafka and Pinter create a tension that resonates deep within the reader and the audience. My analysis of the techniques employed by Kafka and Pinter to create this unnerving tension is intended to illustrate the unique artistry these two writers share, and show why they have come to be seen as the literary representatives of the fractured and uncertain world of modern times. Using a definition of the literary absurd as that which challenges the expected notions of human action and interaction, I delve into the way Kafka and Pinter depict the absurd in their works, and how it reveals the instability of the human condition.


We have developed the AQ2200-136 compact tunable laser source module with a wide wavelength range of 200 nm (1440 to 1640 nm) and a maximum output power of +7 dBm or greater, as a plug-in module for the AQ2200 multi-application test system (MATS). When combined with the AQ2200 series of optical sensors or the AQ6317B/C/AQ6319 optical spectrum analyzer, the AQ2200-136 enables users to measure the wavelength-dependent loss (WDL) of an optical device without any personal computers. In this paper, we describe the features and structure of the AQ2200-136.


This document provides information for a report to congress on Smart Grid security as required by Section 1309 of Title XIII of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The security of any future Smart Grid is dependent on successfully addressing the cyber security issues associated with the nation's current power grid. Smart Grid will utilize numerous legacy systems and technologies that are currently installed. Therefore, known vulnerabilities in these legacy systems must be remediated and associated risks mitigated in order to increase the security and success of the Smart Grid. The implementation of Smart Grid will include the deployment of many new technologies and multiple communication infrastructures. This report describes the main technologies that support Smart Grid and summarizes the status of implementation into the existing U.S. electrical infrastructure.


The early history of the so-called 'neighbouring rights', as part of the history of copyright, has so far been given very little attention by scholars. This article sheds light on a European contest over the rights in sound recordings during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. This forms an important part of the background to the Rome Convention of 1961. The article first looks separately at how musicians' unions and the record industry were raising different demands for protective legislation, motivated by the use of new electronic media. At the beginning, no one imagined that these protections would be bundled together as 'neighbouring rights'. While the International Labour Organization (ILO) put great efforts into creating a convention protecting only the performers, another actor turned out to be more influential in the long run, proposing a hierarchical bundling of rights in which only record companies were entitled to compensation for the use of recordings. This actor was the Fascist government of Italy. The article argues that there are some continuities from the legal philosophy of Italian Fascism to the system of 'neighbouring rights' established in the Rome Convention.


This article explores three processes involved in attending to evidence of students' thinking, one of the Mathematics Teaching Practices in Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. These processes, explored during an activity on proportional relationships, are discussed in this article, another installment in the series.


From 15.11. to 20.11.2009, the Dagstuhl Seminar 09471 Computer-assisted proofs tools, methods and applications was held in Schloss Dagstuhl Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The rst section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available.


Until recently, popular biographers and most scholars viewed Alexander the Great as a genius with a plan, a romantic figure pursuing his vision of a united world. His dream was at times characterized as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Green describes his Alexander as 'not only the most brilliant (and ambitious) field commander in history, but also supremely indifferent to all those administrative excellences and idealistic yearnings foisted upon him by later generations, especially those who found the conqueror, tout court, a little hard upon their liberal sensibilities'. This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, 'Don't stand between me and the sun'. Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: 'If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes'. This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader. For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full back notes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests.


The aim of this thesis is to identify and investigate the meaning of customers' expectations in the IT-industry explained by the example of introducing a new product and to develop a strategy how expectations can be managed in the IT-industry.
The first part of the thesis deals with the reasons and the general framework for the research and defines objectives and scope of the thesis.
In the second part, results of the literature and theories about expectations are presented. These show what previous research has found out and give an overview about different types of expectations and corresponding effects. The flowing part constitutes the case study as research instrument and how it can be used to generate results. With the help of a case study of a specific example of the IT-industry the meaning of expectations regarding new products will be highlighted. Additionally, it gives_a basis to develop a strategy to manage expectations in the IT-industry.
Afterwards the results of the literature review and the case study are combined into a usable strategy to manage expectations of new products in the IT-industry. The thesis illustrates the necessary steps of the strategy and gives an assessment of the results.
In conclusion, the thesis argues that expectation management is an essential step of influencing innovation to optimize business and gives instruction to identify, manage and influence customer's expectations. Besides, this thesis addresses industries which are faced with the challenge of expectation management and offers an initial research about expectation management in the IT-industry. Furthermore, this thesis intends to provide a basic research to show the importance of expectation management and inspire following research.


From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, Postcapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change, and how we can build a more equal society. Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new. At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership, lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism. In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change.


Recent case law shows that vulnerable, previously disadvantaged private sector tenants are currently facing eviction orders – and consequential homelessness – on the basis that their leases have expired. In terms of the case law it is evident that once their leases have expired, these households do not have access to alternative accommodation. In terms of the Constitution, this group of marginalised tenants have a constitutional right of access to adequate housing and a right to occupy land with legally secure tenure. The purpose of this article is to critically analyse a number of legislative interventions, and specifically rent control, that were imposed in various jurisdictions in order to provide strengthened tenure protection for tenants. The rationale for this analysis is to determine whether the current South African landlord-tenant regime is able to provide adequate tenure protection for vulnerable tenants and therefore in the process of transforming in line with the Constitution. The legal construction of rent control was adopted in pre-1994 South Africa, England and New York City to provide substantive tenure protection for tenants during housing shortages. These statutory interventions in the different private rental markets were justified on the basis that there was a general need to protect tenants against exploitation by landlords. However, the justification for the persistent imposition of rent control in New York City is different since it protects a minority group of financially weak tenants against homelessness. The English landlord-tenant regime highlights the importance of a well-structured social sector that can provide secure, long-term housing options for low-income households who are struggling to access the private rental sector. Additionally, the English rental housing framework shows that if the social sector is functioning as a "safety net" for low-income households, the private sector would be able to uphold deregulation. In light of these comparisons and the fact that the South African social sector is not functioning optimally yet, the question is whether the South African private sector is able to provide the required level of tenure protection for struggling tenants. Recent case law shows that tenants are at liberty to lodge unfair practice complaints with the Rental Housing Tribunals on the basis that the landlords' ground for termination of the lease constitutes an unfair practice. The Court defined an unfair practice as a practice that unreasonably prejudices the tenants' rights or interests. This judicial development signifies some transformation in the private sector since it allows the Tribunals to scrutinise landlords' reasons for termination of tenancies in light of tenants' personal and socio-economic circumstances. The Tribunals are therefore empowered to weigh the interests of both parties and decide whether to confirm termination of the lease or set aside such termination. In light of this recent development, the Tribunals can provide strengthened tenure protection for destitute tenants on a case by case basis, which incorporates a flexible context-sensitive approach to the provision of secure housing rights in the landlord-tenant framework. This methodology is similar to the German approach. Even though this judicial development is welcomed, it raises some concerns with regard to landlords' property rights and specifically landlords' constitutional property rights since Tribunals are now at liberty to set aside contractually agreed grounds for termination of leases without any statutory guidance. The legislation fails to provide any information regarding legitimate grounds for termination, which might have to be rectified in future. The grounds listed in the rent control legislation should serve as a starting point to determine which grounds for termination of a lease should generally be upheld. However, German landlord-tenant law shows that a statutory ground for termination of a lease should not be imposed in an absolutist fashion but rather place a heavier burden on the tenant to prove why the lease should not come to an end.


This report is on a case study from Guatemala on malnutrition and food aid programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of food aid and/or food aid programs on the nutritional status of its recipients in two regions of Guatemala. From this investigation, empirically-based programmatic statements as to the role of food aid and its impact on human society will be presented.


Throughout his twenty-three-year legal career, Abraham Lincoln spent nearly as much time on the road as an attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit as he did in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Yet most historians gloss over the time and instead have Lincoln emerge fully formed as a skillful politician in 1858. In this innovative volume, Guy C. Fraker provides the first-ever study of Lincoln s professional and personal home away from home and demonstrates how the Eighth Judicial Circuit and its people propelled Lincoln to the presidency.Each spring and fall, Lincoln traveled to as many as fourteen county seats in the Eighth Judicial Circuit to appear in consecutive court sessions over a ten- to twelve-week period. Fraker describes the people and counties that Lincoln encountered, discusses key cases Lincoln handled, and introduces the important friends he made, friends who eventually formed the team that executed Lincoln s nomination strategy at the Chicago Republican Convention in 1860 and won him the presidential nomination. As Fraker shows, the Eighth Judicial Circuit provided the perfect setting for the growth and ascension of Lincoln. A complete portrait of the sixteenth president depends on a full understanding of his experience on the circuit, and "Lincoln s Ladder to the Presidency "provides that understanding as well as a fresh perspective on the much-studied figure, thus deepening our understanding of the roots of his political influence and acumen. "Univeristy Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools" 2013 edition"Superior Achievement" by the Illinois State Historical Society, 2013 "


A vibrant self-portrait of an artist whose work was his life. In this new collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's letters, edited by leading Fitzgerald scholar and biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, we see through his own words the artistic and emotional maturation of one of America's most enduring and elegant authors. A Life in Letters is the most comprehensive volume of Fitzgerald's letters -- many of them appearing in print for the first time. The fullness of the selection and the chronological arrangement make this collection the closest thing to an autobiography that Fitzgerald ever wrote. While many readers are familiar with Fitzgerald's legendary "jazz age" social life and his friendships with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Edmund Wilson, and other famous authors, few are aware of his writings about his life and his views on writing. Letters to his editor Maxwell Perkins illustrate the development of Fitzgerald's literary sensibility; those to his friend and competitor Ernest Hemingway reveal their difficult relationship. The most poignant letters here were written to his wife, Zelda, from the time of their courtship in Montgomery, Alabama, during World War I to her extended convalescence in a sanatorium near Asheville, North Carolina. Fitzgerald is by turns affectionate and proud in his letters to his daughter, Scottie, at college in the East while he was struggling in Hollywood. For readers who think primarily of Fitzgerald as a hard-drinking playboy for whom writing was effortless, these letters show his serious, painstaking concerns with creating realistic, durable art.


This paper reports the first successful synthesis and the structural characterization of nanocrystalline and stacking-disordered β-cristobalite AlPO4 that is chemically stabilized down to room temperature and free of crystalline impurity phases. Several batches of the title compound were synthesized and thoroughly characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy mapping in SEM, solid-state 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (31P-NMR) spectroscopy including the TRAPDOR method, differential thermal analysis (DTA), gas-sorption methods, optical emission spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and ion chromatography. Parameters that are critical for the synthesis were identified and optimized. The synthesis procedure yields reproducible results and is well documented. A high-quality XRD pattern of the title compound is presented, which was collected with monochromatic copper radiation at room temperature in a wide 2θ range of 5°–100°.


A b s t r a c t : Cloud computing is gaining acceptance in many IT organizations, as an elastic, flexible, and variable-cost way to deploy their service platforms using outsourced resources. Unlike traditional utilities where a single provider scheme is a common practice, the ubiquitous access to cloud resources easily enables the simultaneous use of different clouds. In this project, we explore this scenario to deploy a computing cluster on the top of a multicloud infrastructure, for solving loosely coupled Multi-Task Computing (MTC) applications. In this way, the cluster nodes can be provisioned with resources from different clouds to improve the cost effectiveness of the deployment, or to implement high-availability strategies. We prove the viability of this kind of solutions by evaluating the scalability, performance, and cost of different configurations of a Sun Grid Engine cluster, deployed on a multicloud infrastructure spanning a local data center and three different cloud sites: Amazon EC2 Europe, Amazon EC2 US, and Elastic Hosts. Although the test bed deployed in this work is limited to a reduced number of computing resources (due to hardware and budget limitations), we have complemented our analysis with a simulated infrastructure model, which includes a larger number of resources, and runs larger problem sizes. Data obtained by simulation show that performance and cost results can be extrapolated to large-scale problems and cluster infrastructures.


This book describes the Fourth Cooperative Community Education Workshop in particular (including photographs) as well as giving a brief description of the history and philosophy behind the workshops. According to the Foreward, "The primary purpose of the workshop is to relate the responsibilities of the teacher to the total needs of the whole child, the whole school, and the whole community. This bulletin is an attempt to interpret the philosophy and purpose of the workshop through recorded facts and activities."


Abstract The authors solve a linear problem where a potential conflict between two agents (Destination manager and Firm) arises in a tourism destination. The Destination manager has to choose how to allocate limited resources (capital and land) between either second homes or hotels. This conflict stems from the assumption of agents who have different linear preferences with respect to the allocation of limited resources. As a solution to this policy problem the authors consider three different policies: no intervention (laissez faire), taxation and temporary de-taxation policy. Comparing these different policies, they show that a compromise solution (internal solution), which results from the de-taxation policy, may be preferred by both agents over the clash of interests outcomes (corner solutions). Thus, the authors show that in a framework of "conflict" between agents a compromise solution may be preferable to both the absence of public intervention and the imposition of a tax by a public policy maker who has the discretionary "power to regulate" conflicts.


The idea of writing a research paper or developing a topic of research interest that can lead to a PhD / Doctorate degree or proposal is always an endless thinking of where, when, why, what and who. Therefore, becoming an experienced researcher and writer in any field or discipline takes a great deal of practice. The Consortium has the following objectives: • Provide a supportive setting for feedback on current research that will stimulate exchange of ideas; • Guide on the future research directions; • Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research; • Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events.


We study graph estimation and density estimation in high dimensions, using a family of density estimators based on forest structured undirected graphical models. For density estimation, we do not assume the true distribution corresponds to a forest; rather, we form kernel density estimates of the bivariate and univariate marginals, and apply Kruskal's algorithm to estimate the optimal forest on held out data. We prove an oracle inequality on the excess risk of the resulting estimator relative to the risk of the best forest. For graph estimation, we consider the problem of estimating forests with restricted tree sizes. We prove that finding a maximum weight spanning forest with restricted tree size is NP-hard, and develop an approximation algorithm for this problem. Viewing the tree size as a complexity parameter, we then select a forest using data splitting, and prove bounds on excess risk and structure selection consistency of the procedure. Experiments with simulated data and microarray data indicate that the methods are a practical alternative to Gaussian graphical models.


Lightning activity over the West Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines is usually much less frequent than over the nearby maritime continents. However, in 2005 the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) aboard the TRMM satellite observed anomalously high lightning activity in that area. In the same year the Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measured anomalously high aerosol loading. The high aerosol loading was traced to volcanic activity, and not to any factor linked to meteorology, disentangling the usual convolution between aerosols and meteorology. We show that in general lightning activity is tightly correlated with aerosol loadings at both inter‐annual and bi‐weekly time scales. We estimate that a ∼60% increase in aerosol loading leads to more than 150% increase in lightning flashes. Aerosols increase lightning activity through modification of cloud microphysics. Cloud ice particle sizes are reduced and cloud glaciation is delayed to colder temperature when aerosol loading is increased. TRMM precipitation radar measurements indicate that anomalously high aerosol loading is associated with enhanced cloud mixed phase activity and invigorated convection over the maritime ocean. These observed associations between aerosols, cloud microphysics, morphology and lightning activity are not related to meteorological variables or ENSO events. The results have important implications for understanding the variability of lightning and resulting aerosol‐chemistry interactions.


In Malaysia, postgraduate coursework and research training have expanded significantly in attracting both domestic and international students from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The task of evaluating the student learning experience in postgraduate education can point out to researchers and university educators various mismatches that would not be immediately known otherwise. In this study, 83 MA and MEd students in two public universities in Malaysia submitted written narratives to discuss their postgraduate learning experiences. Of this total, 10% of the respondents (12 postgraduate students) also volunteered to be interviewed. The findings of this qualitative study showed that the following dimensions impacted on students' learning experiences: knowledge, values and contacts acquired, professional and personal values acquired and specific learning problems encountered. The implications of the results of this study suggest that public universities in Malaysia can take proactive steps to celebrate learner diversity when addressing students' difficulties in their continuous effort to further enhance support and facilities for their postgraduate students.


The relationship between financial development and economic growth has received a lot of attention in the economic literature in recent years. This study aims to revisit different econometric approaches used in panel data in relation of financial sector development and growth. In what follows, we extend our previous study by employing updated data and also exploring more questions related to the empirical link between financial development and growth. More specifically, we will investigate the issues relevant to static and dynamic panel data effect. We investigate the role of financial development (as measured by the credits to the private sector to GDP) in enhancing growth for different groups of countries. Estimations are conducted with a panel data of 70 countries over the period 1970-2009 using both LS (fixed effect) and GMM-Difference and GMM-System estimators for dynamic panel data. While the finding of a positive correlation between indicators of financial development and economic growth cannot settle this debate, advances in computational capacity and availability of large cross-country data sets with relatively large time dimensions have enabled researchers to rigorously explore the relationship between financial development and economic growth. Empirical results reinforce the idea that financial development promotes economic growth in all econometric approaches used in this paper.


Using a constructivist inquiry paradigm, the authors attempted in their content analysis to understand the social representations on race and ethnocentrism of preservice secondary teachers studying in an urban university in a Midwest city in the United States. Although social representations can be understood as something in which our participants deeply believe, this study suggests that racial and ethnocentric biases should be examined in the context of multi- and intercultural education. The authors favor a way of revisiting taken-for-granted ideas toward traditional, liberal, and critical or radical multiculturalism. They argue for the recognition not only of the differences and diversity of students (multicultural perspective) but also of the way in which teachers understand, communicate, and interact with them (intercultural perspective).


In the last few decades, mass tort litigation has wrestled with widespread, multijurisdictional problems that have greatly stressed the caseloads of courts. Certifying for trial multiple-incident, product-liability class actions for personal injuries has promised the resolution of expansive problems. But as appellate courts have increasingly held, these actions are not appropriate for class treatment because they involve numerous individualized issues that require unmanageable individualized adjudication. Without a perceived workable alternative, many trial courts have continued to try radical class action trial plans that violate state substantive law and federal constitutional law, but which bring tremendous pressure to settle upon defendants who fear they may not be able to obtain appellate review. Attempting to defuse this crisis, Congress recently passed the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, greatly expanding federal jurisdiction for class actions. Once class actions are removed to federal court, however, the Act still provides no alternative for federal courts to the Hobson's choice framed by plaintiffs' counsel: certify a class, or be inundated with thousands of unmanageable, wasteful, and repetitive individual cases. But that is a false dichotomy. This article argues that the alternative to mass tort class actions is not such isolated repetitive litigation, but instead an expansive set of litigation networks of counsel, judges, and clients, using recent advances in information technology, that provide much of the efficiency promised by class actions without violating state substantive or federal constitutional law. As an example, the article discusses the functioning of litigation networks in the ongoing litigation concerning phenylpropanolamine (PPA), an ingredient in cough and cold remedies and appetite suppressants that has been alleged to cause stroke. By sharing information, pooling resources, developing specialized expertise, and coordinating strategy, these networks not only reduce the costs and improve the representation of individual litigation, but also develop accurate claim values for settlement of numerous cases and allow for improved case management over time through pragmatic experimentation. The article concludes that mass tort litigation networks provide a fruitful alternative to impermissible product-liability class actions for personal injuries, and that judges should deny requests to certify such class actions and instead encourage and assist in the creation and functioning of litigation networks.


Water shortages have been for a long time a serious problem in the Middle East as well as other parts of the world. The large and arid land of the Middle East has also been dependant on water which is provided by few rivers. This issue has been tackled by researchers, orientalists and exploration associations (Palestine Exploration Fund 1882, and Oliphant, 1880). The aim of this paper is to tackle ways of managing and solving chromic water shortages and hydropolitical tensions in the Middle East. None of the Middle Eastern Countries enjoys water surplus with exception of Turkey. Fortunately, some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman which suffers from water shortages enjoys fuel surplus. These countries are trying to solve their water shortages by using underground water and heavily investing in water desalination. Other countries like Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are losing their grip on their national water as a result of sever and perpetuated conflicts which have never ended since the First World War. In terms of technological progress Middle Eastern countries are also differentiated. In this respect, Turkey managed to develop itself and upgrade its social and economic conditions, but most of Arab countries are lacking behind. All of Middle Eastern countries enjoy and share rich cultural heritages related to water management and consumption. Such a richness will help to upgrade peoples' awareness regarding water consumptions and uses in different economic sectors. Middle Eastern countries suffer from physical water scarcity and the neighboring regions in Africa, Europe and Latin America suffers from economic water scarcity. In addition the regions are of little or no water scarcity lie in Northern Eurasia and Antarctica. As a result of these differences, this paper will suggest ways in which concerned countries and professional organizations may take part in bridging the gap between such physical and economic water scarcities. A projected model of cooperation between Middle Eastern countries in terms of natural resources, cultural, economic, and social enterprises needs to be developed. In addition, International community has to take part in introducing solutions to conflicts of Arabs and Israel, Iraq, Iran, Cyprus, Afghanistan, and Yemen.


"The Rough Guide to Nepal" offers an insider's guide to Nepal, from its 'Tantric' temples to its lively bars. It details all the finest Himalayan treks, with practical, up-to-date and expert advice on where to go when and what to take. It covers all the National Parks, offering advice and information on everything from tracking wildlife to hiring elephants. Dedicated chapters are devoted to mountain biking, white water rafting and other adventure sports, and there is unrivaled detail on Buddhism, Hinduism and the numerous ethnic groups that make Nepal a unique destination. "The Rough Guide to Nepal" also contains scores of detailed maps, covering everything from Pokhara and the Chitwan National Park to the Everest Base Camp trek. Make the most of your time with "The Rough Guide to Nepal".


Kids already love Charlie the Ranch Dog from the humorous picture books by Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman. Now hard-working, bacon-loving basset hound Charlie is starring in a series of illustrated books for beginning readers. In Charlie the Ranch Dog: Where's the Bacon?, a new dog comes to visit. Things get off to a bad start. Rowdy doesn't understand Charlie is the boss of the ranch. He sleeps in Charlie's bed, drinks Charlie's water, and worst of all, he eats Charlie's bacon. Charlie has to get Rowdy under control. And he really needs to find more bacon! Where's the Bacon? is a Level One I Can Read book, which means it is perfect for children learning to sound out words and sentences.


Job satisfaction is no luxury: it is an integral part of human resource policy and considerably affects productivity. But because of certain sectoral specificities, the relationship between job satisfaction and training varies significantly across sectors.

These specificities may relate to factors such as working practices in the sector, the principal forms of technology deployed in the production process, and social and cultural norms. These may all affect the relationship between worker and employer in any given sector, which has implications for the relationship between job satisfaction and training.

The latest in Cedefop's series of studies on the benefits of vocational education and training discusses how this factor varies among sectors and contains evidence of spillover effects among workplaces within a sector in industrial clusters. Such clusters usually develop around high value-added activities, which require firms to attract and retain a highly qualified workforce. To do so, firms have to adopt advanced human resource practices. When individual firms are not able to sustain the high level of training necessary, firms must cooperate and pool resources. Just such joint training efforts make it less likely that trained workers will join other firms.

The case studies collected in this report also show that public investment in training, catering to the specific needs of these high value-added firms, can be very effective in inducing firms and stakeholders to work together, generating high spillover effects across entire industrial clusters.

The evidence collected by Cedefop argues for integrating VET in regional and sectoral growth strategies. Training institutions may then act as catalysts for the further development of industrial clusters. Smart growth in Europe would directly benefit from such integrated economic policies.


This study, designed with considerable input from adult learners, focuses on influences that affect academic decision making. Using questionnaires and selected interviews, information was gathered on institutional and personal influences on academic decision making for current and future courses, along with demographic information. Three quarters of the respondents were under 39 years of age and were looking to their university education to provide knowledge and skills needed for future job opportunities. Within-group analysis revealed a stronger influence on academic decision making from the institution rather than from personal influences, despite a fairly strong positive correlation of the two sets of variables. This pattern was consistent across groups, with no differences being attributed to part- or full-time status or to year in program. Open-ended questions on the questionnaire, as well as follow-up individual interviews, allowed for the input of suggestions to improve the experiences of adult learners in post-secondary institutions. Additional preliminary course information and increased accessibility to courses and services were common themes. In general, the university experience had been very positive; however, some students expressed satisfaction at being invited to contribute suggestions that, if implemented, could improve the experience of future adult learners.


The debate over trademark use has become a hot-button issue in intellectual property (IP) law. In Confusion over Use: Contextualism in Trademark Law, Graeme Dinwoodie and Mark Janis characterize it as a dispute over whether to limit trademark holder rights in a new and unanticipated way. Yet there is another - in our view more historically accurate - way to frame the trademark use debate: the question is whether courts should, absent specific statutory authorization, allow trademark holders to assert a new and unprecedented form of trademark infringement claim. The pop-up and keyword cases involve attempts to impose third-party liability under the guise of direct infringement suits. Dinwoodie and Janis's thorough account notwithstanding, it remains the fact that, before the recent spate of Internet-related cases, no court had ever recognized a trademark claim of the sort that trademark holders are now asserting. Trademark infringement suits have always involved allegations of infringement by parties who use marks in connection with the promotion of their own goods and services. The question raised by the trademark use cases, as we view it, is whether courts should countenance a radical departure from that traditional model without specific instruction from Congress. We think they should not. In this paper, we explain the origins of trademark use doctrine in traditional limits on the scope of the trademark right and in the distinction between direct and contributory infringement. We also explain why we cannot simply rely on the likelihood of consumer confusion test to solve the problems the trademark use doctrine addresses, and we examine the difficult problem of defining the scope of the trademark use doctrine.


We present a method that consumes a large corpus of multilingual text and produces a single, unified word embedding in which the word vectors generalize across languages. In contrast to current approaches that require language identification, our method is agnostic about the languages with which the documents in the corpus are expressed, and does not rely on parallel corpora to constrain the spaces. Instead we utilize a small set of human provided word translations---which are often freely and readily available. We can encode such word translations as hard constraints in the model's objective functions; however, we find that we can more naturally constrain the space by allowing words in one language to borrow distributional statistics from context words in another language. We achieve this via a process we term artificial code-switching. As the name suggests, we induce code-switching so that words across multiple languages appear in contexts together. Not only do embedding models trained on code-switched data learn common cross-lingual structure, the common structure allows an NLP model trained in a source language to generalize to multiple target languages (achieving up to 80% of the accuracy of models trained with target-language data).


For the past thirty years nonprofit organizations have revolutionized open space and habitat conservation in the United States through the use of conservation easements. Pursuant to legislation, nonprofits may now acquire and hold perpetual restrictions that prevent alteration of the subject land's natural and ecological features. These rights can be held "in gross," with the result that the nonprofit need not own land near the restricted property and can be based in a distant location. As a result of this success, proponents in more recent years have advocated the export of "conservation easements" from the United States to other countries. A vehicle like a conservation easement and having some or perhaps all of its attributes could be employed in other countries to achieve various local and national conservation goals. My thesis, however, is that while conservation easements could be a useful tool for preservation of land outside of the U.S., they may not be the most effective or suitable framework to advance conservation in all countries. Rather than pushing for adoption of an American style "conservation easement" elsewhere, other countries and American (and global) advocates of conservation devices should engage in a process to determine a given country's appropriate conservation toolbox. That process should be free of American legal and conservation jargon and without a predisposition for U.S. legal structures, values, and policy choices. Each country must determine on its own whether private conservation restrictions meet its economic, social, and political realities and aspirations (many of which are quite different than the American experience reflected in American conservation easements) and what attributes the device should have on key issues such as duration, in gross enforcement, role of government, etc. These national and local goals can then be given life by finding an appropriate legal structure, ideally consistent with the country's own jurisprudence and system. This article will provide a framework of the major policy and legal issues that could, and in my view should, inform a country's decision to adopt private conservation restrictions. These include considerations of cost, efficiency, preference for private vs. governmental actors, the benefits and costs of perpetual limits on land, public regulation of land as an alternative, the specter of neocolonialism in environmental controls, the nature and capacity of the country's nonprofit sector, and the local legal system. Finally, the learning about conservation restrictions should be a two-way street, not just the export of American methods: the views of some other countries about governmental involvement in private conservation may teach valuable lessons to American jurisdictions about the need for an increased role of government and the public in certain aspects of the selection, modification, and termination of a some conservation easements.


Everyone needs to love and be loved -- even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are -- whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves -- and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.


This paper reviews recent changes in fire management in the Kruger National Park, and assesses the resulting fire patterns against thresholds of potential concern. In 2002, a lightning-driven approach was replaced by an approach that combined point ignitions with unplanned and lightning fires. The approach aimed to burn an annual target area, determined by rainfall and fuel conditions, in point-ignition fires of different sizes. Most of the original fire-related thresholds of potential concern (TPCs) were incorporated into the new approach. The annual target area to be burnt ranged from 12 to 24% of the park between 2002 and 2006. The total area burnt generally exceeded the targets each year, and management fires accounted for less than half of the total area burnt. The fire regime was dominated by very large fires (> 5 000 ha) which accounted for 77% of the total area burnt. New TPCs were developed to assess whether the fire regime encompassed a sufficient degree of variability, in terms of fire intensity and the spatial distribution of burnt areas. After assessment and adjustment, it appears that these TPCs have not yet been exceeded. The point-ignition approach, and its evaluation in terms of variability and heterogeneity, is based on the untested assumption that a diverse fire regime will promote biodiversity. This assumption needs to be critically assessed. We recommend that the practice of point ignitions be continued, but that greater efforts be made to burn larger areas earlier in the season to reduce large and intense dry-season fires.


This volume brings together contributions by prominent researchers in the fields of language processing and language acquisition on topics of common interest: how people refer to objects in the world, how people comprehend such referential expressions, and how children acquire the ability to refer and to understand reference. The contributors first discuss issues related to children's acquisition and processing of reference, then consider evidence of adults' processing of reference from eye-tracking methods (the visual-world paradigm) and from corpora and reading experiments. They go on to discuss such topics as how children resolve ambiguity, children's difficulty in understanding coreference, the use of eye movements to physical objects to measure the accessibility of different referents, the uses of probabilistic and pragmatic information in language comprehension, antecedent accessibility and salience in reference, and neuropsychological data from the event-related potential (ERP) recording literature.