A review of:

Harley, Diane. "Why Study Users? An Environmental Scan of Use and Users of Digital Resources in Humanities and Social Sciences Undergraduate Education." First Monday 12.1 (Jan. 2007). 7 May 2007 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_1/harley/index.html .

Abstract

Objective – (1) To map the digital resources available to undergraduate educators in the humanities and the social sciences, (2) to survey faculty about their use of digital resources, and (3) to examine how understanding use and users can benefit the integration of resources into teaching.

Design – A mixed-methods approach, which included a survey, conducting discussion groups, and in-depth interviews.

Setting – Academic institutions in the United States.

Subjects – (1) "Various stakeholders"; (2) 31 instructors from three institutions, and 4500 full-time and part-time faculty and graduate students (at California public research universities, liberal arts colleges and community colleges); and (3) 13 digital resource providers and two other stakeholders, and 16 site owners or user researchers.

Methods – (1) A literature review, combined with discussions with various stakeholders. (2) Four sessions of discussion groups with 31 instructors from three institutions formed the basis for developing a faculty survey instrument. The survey was distributed both on paper and online. (3) Collection of data on cost and collaborative development strategies, in-depth interviews with 13 digital resource providers and two other stakeholders, combined with a two day workshop with 16 experts, both on the subject of online educational resources.

Main results – (1) Concerning the humanities and social sciences digital resource landscape, the main results of the literature study were the conclusions that the field of online education studies is complicated by a lack of common vocabulary, definitions, and analyses; and that different stakeholder interests and agendas also influence the understanding of how digital resources are used. With the help of discussion groups, an attempt at creating a typology for digital resources available to undergraduates was made, looking at type of resource, origin, and type of role of the provider or site owner. From the article, it is unclear whether or not this attempt at classification was successful.
(2) Concerning faculty use or non-use of digital resources, the most important result was the insight that personal teaching style and philosophy influence resource use more than anything else, and this also seemed to be the most important reason for not using digital resources. Faculty use digital resources for a number of reasons, to improve student learning, provide context, and also because it is expected of them. More than 70% of faculty maintain their own collection of digital resources. However, the lack of efficient tools for collecting, managing, and using these resources in teaching is seen as a problem. There is also a variation between scholarly fields, where faculty in different disciplines require different types of resources and use them in different ways, and for different educational reasons.
(3) Concerning how understanding use and users can benefit the integration of resources in teaching, the results of the interviews show a lack of common terms, metrics, methods, or values for defining use and users; but a shared desire to measure how and for what purpose digital resources were being used. Few of the providers had any plans to evaluate use and users in a systematic way.
Conclusion – The digital landscape is complicated. Faculty use is determined by personal teaching style and philosophy. Digital resource providers would like to know more about how and for what purpose digital resources are being used. Experts see a number of areas for further research, the results of which might help clarify the situation.

The only way to understand the value of digital resources is to measure their impact and outcomes, but further work is needed to provide common vocabulary, metrics, and methods for evaluation.


The capability to validate and view or play binary file formats, as well as to convert binary file formats to standard or current file formats, is critically important to the preservation of digital data and records. This paper describes the extension of context-free grammars from strings to binary files. Binary files are arrays of data types, such as long and short integers, floating-point numbers and pointers, as well as characters. The concept of an attribute grammar is extended to these context-free array grammars. This attribute grammar has been used to define a number of chunk-based and directory-based binary file formats. A parser generator has been used with some of these grammars to generate syntax checkers (recognizers) for validating binary file formats. Among the potential benefits of an attribute grammar-based approach to specification and parsing of binary file formats is that attribute grammars not only support format validation, but support generation of error messages during validation of format, validation of semantic constraints, attribute value extraction (characterization), generation of viewers or players for file formats, and conversion to current or standard file formats. The significance of these results is that with these extensions to core computer science concepts, traditional parser/compiler technologies can potentially be used as a part of a general, cost effective curation strategy for binary file formats.


This paper investigates the conflict between hand crafted bespoke tailoring and computerised mass market tailoring in the UK, in order to assess the overall place for this traditional technique within fashion design. It supports a need for retaining the heritage of traditional skills practiced in bespoke tailoring and justifies this as a luxury the consumer can and should afford. The research emphasises the pedagogic approach to the delivery and understanding of tailoring technology in the fashion design courses at University of Huddersfield. This understanding underpins the student's perception of pattern cutting, fit, sizing, proportion and an overall approach to making clothes. Fashion tutors at Huddersfield believe that when students are taught to appreciate the luxury, heritage and skill of bespoke tailoring, it equips them with the confidence and expertise to create any type of garment. The luxury of the traditional tailoring process is in the time, craft and experience instilled into each garment. A bespoke tailor is a sculptor whose medium is cloth. He moulds a shell out of this cloth that refines and accentuates the human form. It is a unique service in which the client's individual measurements are applied to the creation of a garment made to their exact size specifications. Particular attention is given to the detail, quality and excellence in the work. Bespoke tailoring as a fashionable look had a revived popularity in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Many fashion designers at the cutting edge of the fashion industry such as Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen pushed the look of tailoring and the craft traditions of bespoke to the forefront of directional fashion, which in turn provoked a resurgence of interest in the craft. Holding court in a 1998 interview in English Vogue, Vivienne Westwood said: "I don't understand this desperate need to always move forward. To strive for the new is the most conformist thing you can do. Everyone can tell you about what is new and clever, but no-one can tell you what is good! There is a myth that the past is irrelevant, that progress is the only thing" (Holgate, 1998). The paper analyses how the bespoke industry considers the incorporation of new and computerised technology. In so doing, it considers how the fashion industry could determine the future of tailoring. This could either be through contemporary fashion's emphasis on the idiom as a look, or in the vast advances in technological development that could enhance it, in order to make bespoke more widely available. The paper culminates by considering realistic strategies as the technology within an accessible and computerised mass market industry grows and develops. It highlights that its marketing and promotion as a luxurious craft with an un-rivalled heritage, at the cutting edge of the industry, could be the key to the customer buying into its continued existence. Word count (including title page and references); 5294 BESPOKE TAILORING: THE LUXURY AND HERITAGE WE CAN AFFORD


We estimate a panel data model of household incomes in Hungary and Russia during the 1990s. The model allows for nonlinear dynamics in endogenous household incomes and for endogenous attrition. Our estimates reveal nonlinearity in the dynamics, consistent with the claim that income inequality is bad for growth in mean income. We do not find evidence of an unstable dynamic equilibrium, such that a vulnerable household will never recover from a large transient shock. While our results indicate that households generally bounce back from shocks, the concavity we find in the recursion diagram implies that the adjustment process is slower for poorer households.


Geographic information increasingly is produced and consumed on mobile devices. The rise of mobile mapping is challenging traditional design conventions in research, industry, and education, and cartographers and GIScientists now need to accommodate this mobile context. This entry introduces emerging design considerations for mobile maps. First, the technical enablements and constraints that make mobile devices unique are described, including Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and other sensors, reduced screensize and resolution, reduced processing power and memory capacity, less reliable data connectivity, reduced bandwidth, and physical mobility through variable environmental conditions. Scholarly influences on mobile mapping also are reviewed, including location-based services, adaptive cartography, volunteered geographic information, and locational privacy. Next, two strategies for creating mobile maps are introduced—mobile apps installed onto mobile operating systems versus responsive web maps that work on mobile and nonmobile devices—and core concepts of responsive web design are reviewed, including fluid grids, media queries, breakpoints, and frameworks. Finally, emerging design recommendations for mobile maps are summarized, with representation design adaptations needed to account for reduced screensizes and bandwidth and interaction design adaptations needed to account for multi-touch interaction and post-WIMP interfaces.


A bad credit score may cost a borrower tens of thousands of dollars, but it is not clear how it is calculated. The formula is a trade secret, immune from scrutiny. Lenders are moving beyond scoring to "credit analytics," which tracks a consumer's every transaction. Buy generic products instead of branded ones, and you may find your credit card's interest rate rising and its limit falling. This essay critiques automation in the consumer-facing side of the finance industry. Reputation systems are creating new (and largely invisible) disadvantaged groups, disfavored due to error or unfairness. You may be one of those affected, labeled in a database as "unreliable," "high medical cost," "declining income," or some other derogatory term. Since it is nearly impossible to find out exactly how one has been categorized by data brokers and other information collectors, those disadvantaged by secret, automated processes can't even organize for better treatment. This essay documents their plight, and how current law fails to help. I propose new principles to guide the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and other regulators as they address the growth of unaccountable financial data sources.


Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping . . . waiting . . . and though unwanted . . . unbidden . . . it will stir . . . open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us . . . guides us . . . passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love . . . the clarity of hatred . . . and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace . . . but we would be hollow . . . Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we'd be truly dead. Joss Whedon b.1964


The two main forcings that can counteract to some extent the positive forcings from greenhouse gases from pre-industrial times to present day are the aerosol and related aerosol-cloud forcings, and the radiative response to changes in surface albedo. Here, we quantify the change in radiative forcing and land surface temperature that may be obtained by increasing the albedos of roofs and pavements in urban areas in temperate and tropical regions of the globe by 0.1. Using the catchment land surface model (the land model coupled to the GEOS-5 Atmospheric General Circulation Model), we quantify the change in the total outgoing (outgoing shortwave+longwave) radiation and land surface temperature to a 0.1 increase in urban albedos for all global land areas. The global average increase in the total outgoing radiation was 0.5 W m−2, and temperature decreased by ∼0.008 K for an average 0.003 increase in surface albedo. These averages represent all global land areas where data were available from the land surface model used and are for the boreal summer (June–July–August). For the continental US the total outgoing radiation increased by 2.3 W m−2, and land surface temperature decreased by ∼0.03 K for an average 0.01 increase in surface albedo. Based on these forcings, the expected emitted CO2 offset for a plausible 0.25 and 0.15 increase in albedos of roofs and pavements, respectively, for all global urban areas, was found to be ∼57 Gt CO2. A more meaningful evaluation of the impacts of urban albedo increases on global climate and the expected CO2 offsets would require simulations which better characterize urban surfaces and represent the full annual cycle.


Work craving theory addresses how work-addicted individuals direct great emotion-regulatory efforts to weave their addictive web of working. They crave work for two main emotional incentives: to overcompensate low self-worth and to escape (i.e., reduce) negative affect, which is strategically achieved through neurotic perfectionism and compulsive working. Work-addicted individuals' strong persistence and self-discipline with respect to work-related activities suggest strong skills in volitional action control. However, their inability to disconnect from work implies low volitional skills. How can work-addicted individuals have poor and strong volitional skills at the same time? To answer this paradox, we elaborated on the relevance of two different volitional modes in work craving: self-regulation (self-maintenance) and self-control (goal maintenance). Four hypotheses were derived from Wojdylo's work craving theory and Kuhl's self-regulation theory: (H1) Work craving is associated with a combination of low self-regulation and high self-control. (H2) Work craving is associated with symptoms of psychological distress. (H3) Low self-regulation is associated with psychological distress symptoms. (H4) Work craving mediates the relationships between self-regulation deficits and psychological distress symptoms at high levels of self-control. Additionally, we aimed at supporting the discriminant validity of work craving with respect to work engagement by showing their different volitional underpinnings. Results of the two studies confirmed our hypotheses: whereas work craving was predicted by high self-control and low self-regulation and associated with higher psychological distress, work engagement was predicted by high self-regulation and high self-control and associated with lower symptoms of psychological distress. Furthermore, work styles mediated the relationship between volitional skills and symptoms of psychological distress. Based on these new insights, several suggestions for prevention and therapeutic interventions for work-addicted individuals are proposed.


In late June 2013, Fordham CLIP completed a study, "Internet Jurisdiction: A Survey of German Scholarship and Cases." This project provides a survey of the case law and legal literature analyzing jurisdiction for claims arising out of Internet activity in Germany. A companion study, released simultaneously, explores similar issues as they are treated in the United States. The goal of the report is to identify trends in legal literature and case law and to serve as a comprehensive, objective resource to assist scholars and policy-makers looking to learn about the issues of jurisdiction on the Internet with a focus on the German legal system and relevant EU laws. The research survey shows that, although various trends can be identified within German and EU case law, no consensus on the treatment of international jurisdiction can be ascertained. Although the academic literature demonstrates awareness of the problems and pitfalls in Internet-related cases, clear solutions are seldom offered. Moreover, notwithstanding German Federal Supreme Court and European Court of Justice decisions that have set the stage for further development, the research indicates that the coexistence of German and European Law, as well as the presence of separate subject matter-specific legal regimes, preclude the identification of any real consensus views.


Current Economics Textbooks and Economists justify a theory of consumer behavior based on utility maximization on a priori grounds. This methodology follows Lionel Robbins' idea that economic theory is based on logical deduction from postulates which are 'simple and indisputable facts of experience.' Strong evidence has emerged from many different lines of research that these 'simple and indisputable facts of experience' are contradicted by human behavior. In this article, we summarize some of main contradictions between predictions of utility theory and actual human behavior. Efforts to resolve these contradictions continue to be made within orthodox frameworks, but it appears likely that a paradigm shift is required.


Prior to the emergence of peer-to-peer technology, the Copyright Act's distribution right was largely dormant. Most enforcement actions were premised upon violations of the reproduction right. The relatively few cases invoking the distribution right involved arcane scenarios. During the past several years, direct enforcement of the Copyright Act against file sharers has brought the scope of the distribution right to center stage. Whereas the 1909 Act expressly protected the rights to "publish" and "vend," the 1976 Act speaks of a right to "distribute." Interpreting "distribute" narrowly, some courts have held that copyright owners must prove that a sound recording placed in a peer-to-peer share folder was actually downloaded to establish violation of the distribution right. Other courts hold that merely making a sound recording available violates the distribution right. The ramifications for copyright enforcement in the Internet age are substantial. Under the narrow interpretation, the relative anonymity of peer-to-peer transmissions in combination with privacy concerns make enforcement costly and difficult. A broad interpretation exposes millions of peer-to-peer users to potentially crushing statutory damages. Drawing upon the historical development of copyright law and the legislative history of the Copyright Act of 1976, this article explains why Congress selected the term "distribute" in its last omnibus revision of copyright law, shows unequivocally that Congress intended to encompass broadly the 1909 Act rights to "publish" and "vend" within the right to distribute, and rejects the position that Congress required proof of "actual distribution" to prove violation of the distribution right. This critical legislative history has been notably absent from treatise accounts and briefing on the liability standard in the file sharing cases, leaving courts without a compass to navigate this statutory terrain. This article traces the origins of the key legislative terms to elucidate the scope of the distribution right in the Internet age.


Close to Kaiserslautern is the town of Trippstadt, which, together with five other small towns forms a local administration unit (Verbandsgemeinde) called Kaiserslautern-Sud. Trippstadt has its own beautiful public swimming pool, which causes problems though; the cost for the upkeep of the pool is higher than the income and thus has to be divided among the towns belonging to the Verbandsgemeinde. Because of this problem the administration wanted to find out which fraction of the total number of pool visitors came from the different towns. They planned to ask each pool guest where he came from. They did this for only three days though because the waiting lines at the cashiers became unbearably long and they could see that because of this the total number of guests would decrease. Then they wondered how to find a better method to get the same data and that was when I was asked to help with the solution of the problem.


In this thesis, an approach is presented that turns the currently unstructured process of automotive hazard analysis and risk assessments (HRA), which relies on creativity techniques, into a structured, model-based approach that makes the HRA results less dependent on experts' experience, more consistent, and gives them higher quality. The challenge can be subdivided into two steps. The first step is to improve the HRA as it is performed in current practice. The second step is to go beyond the current practice and consider not only single service failures as relevant hazards, but also multiple service failures. For the first step, the most important aspect is to formalize the operational situation of the system and to determine its likelihood. Current approaches use natural-language textual descriptions, which makes it hard to ensure consistency and increase efficiency through reuse. Furthermore, due to ambiguity in natural language, it is difficult to ensure consistent likelihood estimates for situations.
The main aspect of the second step is that considering multiple service failures as hazards implies that one needs to analyze an exponential number of hazards. Due to the fact that hazard assessments are currently done purely manually, considering multiple service failures is not possible. The only way to approach this challenge is to formalize the HRA and make extensive use of automation support.
In SAHARA we handle these challenges by first introducing a model-based representation of an HRA with GOBI. Based on this, we formalized the representation of operational situations and their likelihood assessment in OASIS and HEAT, respectively. We show that more consistent situation assessments are possible and that situations (including their likelihood) can be efficiently reused. The second aspect, coping with multiple service failures, is addressed in ARID. We show that using our tool-supported HRA approach, 100% coverage of all possible hazards (including multiple service failures) can be achieved by relying on very limited manual effort. We furthermore show that not considering multiple service failures results in insufficient safety goals.


This dissertation takes a welfare perspective to analyze how rural households in developing countries manage risks ex-ante and cope with shocks ex-post. The first part looks at risk-coping strategies and analyzes the socio-economic consequences of AIDS-related mortality in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter 2 shows that households in rural Zambia are able to stabilize their per-capita incomes after the death of a prime-age member. Yet, risk-sharing arrangements appear to spread the burden beyond directly afflicted households. Chapter 3 demonstrates for North-Western Tanzania that the age at parental bereavement has important consequences for children's long-term capital accumulation in terms of both health and education. These effects, however, depend on the gender of the deceased parent. Preferences of the surviving parent partly protect same-sex children from the detrimental effects of orphanhood, suggesting that risks are not equally shared within households. The second part of the dissertation explores risk-management strategies and investigates the income diversification patterns of farm households in sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter 4 analyzes the dichotomy of the non-agricultural sector in Western Kenya and the resulting poverty and inequality implications. The results show that only rich households are able to overcome the entry barriers into high-return activities. Low-return activities, however, are not concentrated among the poor. The chapter also provides evidence that high-return non-agricultural activities are associated with increased agricultural productivity. Chapter 5 examines the determinants of diversification in Burkina Faso between 1994 and 2003. Diversification into non-agricultural activities appears to be mainly motivated by insurance motives. Yet, the patterns of diversification also reflect structural change offering better opportunities in the non-farm sector. The final part of the dissertation concentrates on Eastern Europe and looks at the welfare implications of international migration for those who stay behind and the migrants themselves. Chapter 6 examines the reasons for reduced labor supply of migrant-sending households in Moldova. The findings do not support the common view that decreased labor market activity is the result of remittances-driven leisure consumption. Instead, the departure of a migrant appears to raise remaining members' productivity in home production. In addition, young adults in migrant families are substantially more likely to pursue higher education. Chapter 7 investigates the economic drivers of human trafficking. Based on a household survey on human trafficking from Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, the analysis finds that the individual risk of falling victim to human trafficking is closely related to the size of regional migration flows. The reasons are lower recruitment costs for traffickers and, to a lesser extent, negative self-selection into migration. Together, these findings illustrate that rural households in the developing world have developed various informal strategies to cope with shocks and reduce their exposure to risks. While these strategies help households to temporarily smooth income or consumption, they are likely to perpetuate poverty and reduce economic growth in the longer run. Consequently, measures that protect households from risks should play a prominent role in rural development strategies.


A farmers' field survey was conducted in 2009 to evaluate soil fertility management practices and their constraints in certain hill and valley farming systems of Nepal. Thirty households from Okharpouwa village development committee (VDC), Nuwakot and thirty households from Fulbari VDC, Chitwan districts were surveyed using semi-structured questionnaires. In addition, key informants' interview, checklist survey, observation in the field and documentation of the individual cases were carried out during this research. The study revealed that farm yard manure (FYM) was the major source of nutrients, although the use of poultry manure, goat manure, green manure and chemical fertilizers was also common. We realized that the management of FYM and that of other types of organic manure in the manure pit and in the field was not efficient in conserving nutrients. Similarly, farmers preferred the continuous cultivation of cereal or commercial crops, without mixing the crops or rotating with legumes, the sliced terrace risers in hills, which constrained better production in hills and valleys of Nepal. The specific problems in hills included erosion and leaching of nutrients, soil acidification, while those of valley lands included the imbalanced use of fertilizers, intensive cropping, and crop failure due to improper management.


Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives when interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the key ideas and algorithms of reinforcement learning. Their discussion ranges from the history of the field's intellectual foundations to the most recent developments and applications. The only necessary mathematical background is familiarity with elementary concepts of probability.The book is divided into three parts. Part I defines the reinforcement learning problem in terms of Markov decision processes. Part II provides basic solution methods: dynamic programming, Monte Carlo methods, and temporal-difference learning. Part III presents a unified view of the solution methods and incorporates artificial neural networks, eligibility traces, and planning; the two final chapters present case studies and consider the future of reinforcement learning.


Transporting solid particles in oil and gas flow cause erosion damage to the pipeline and fittings. The aim of this thesis is to study the effect of impact velocity on the erosion damage in 90 degree long elbow by using two different erosion models namely, Oka model and E/CRC model. Those correlation applied at air-borne sand eroding, methane-borne sand eroding, mixed gas-borne sand eroding, and multiphase (gas- oil) borne sand eroding Inconel 625. The commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code STAR-CCM+ is used to obtain the average and maximum erosion rate by using the above mentioned models and compared them with the previous results.


We describe a seriation algorithm for ranking a set of n items given pairwise comparisons between these items. Intuitively, the algorithm assigns similar rankings to items that compare similarly with all others. It does so by constructing a similarity matrix from pairwise comparisons, using seriation methods to reorder this matrix and construct a ranking. We first show that this spectral seriation algorithm recovers the true ranking when all pairwise comparisons are observed and consistent with a total order. We then show that ranking reconstruction is still exact even when some pairwise comparisons are corrupted or missing, and that seriation based spectral ranking is more robust to noise than other scoring methods. An additional benefit of the seriation formulation is that it allows us to solve semi-supervised ranking problems. Experiments on both synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that seriation based spectral ranking achieves competitive and in some cases superior performance compared to classical ranking methods.


The study of persuasion long has been a central preoccupation of communication theorists and critics. As a cornerstone in communication theory. persuasion research has provided the impetus for inquiries into how symbolic behavior effects social and personal change. A number of metatheoretical issues have emerged from empirical studies of gender and persuasibility that are of concern to feminist theorists. Scott (1988) argues that poststructural theory, or deconstruction. is an avenue for understanding how "traditions of (Western) philosophy have systematically and repeatedly construed the world hierarchically in terms of masculine universals and feminine specificities" (p. 33). Scott contends that such a construction has put a "conceptual hold" on our thinking about gender and behavior (p. 33). Research on gender and persuasibility suffers from this conceptual hold and is ripe for deconstruction to bring about alternative ways for communication theorists to think about the relationship between gender and persuasibility. The following analysis focuses specifically on persuasive messages
and attitude change rather than the general concept of influenceability which entails compliance, agreement, conformity, and related ideas.


In petroleum community, the oil field optimization, i.e., minimizing the operational cost and maximizing the oil recovery, is a challenging problem. One of the popular oil recovery techniques is waterflooding, which injects water into the oil reservoir to extract oil. Thus, the knowledge about injector-producer relationships (IPRs), i.e., which injectors contribute to the production of which producers, is a key for field optimization. The difficulty associated with field optimization is that the underlying structure of oil fields is unknown and it continuously changes over time. Recently, a capacitance-resistive model (CRM) has been proposed to investigate the IPRs. The CRM is a predictive model that predicts production rates given water injection rates. It consists of two sets of parameters, connectivity and time constant. The connectivity parameter quantifies the contribution of an injector to the production of a producer and the time constant parameter does the degree of fluid storage between the two wells. Three constraints are posed on the two sets of parameters: (1) the sum of the connectivity parameters of an injector to all other producers should be 1; (2) individual connectivity parameters should fall between 0 and 1 (this implies a nonnegativity constraint as well); and (3) nonnegativity constraint that the time constant parameters should be positive real numbers. Estimating parameters is mapped to a parameter estimation problem for continuous nonlinear systems with constraints. The challenge is that an oil reservoir consists of hundreds of injection and production wells, with which the number of CRM parameters increasing quadratically.
We propose two different approaches for the parameter estimation problem. First, we propose a new constrained nonlinear optimization method. The parameter estimation problem for the CRM is mapped to a large-scale constrained nonlinear optimization problem. Nonlinear optimization is challenging due to the nonconvex property of the objective function and/or constraints. Identifying a global optimum is extremely hard even without constraints. The curse of dimensionality makes the problem more difficult to solve: as the number of parameters increases, the number of local optima is likely to increase. Moreover, there is no analytical solution for constrained nonlinear parameter estimation problems due to the constraints. For the large-scale optimization problem, we developed a hybrid constrained nonlinear optimization (HCNO) method, which is based on sequential quadratic programming (SQP) with a quasi-Newton method in line search framework. The constrained nonlinear time constant parameters are estimated by the SQP so that the constrained nonlinear system is converted to a constrained linear system. And then, the constrained linear connectivity parameters are estimated by the constrained linear least squares (CLLS) method using a projected Hessian. The coupled optimization is repeated until convergence. The experimental results show that HCNO outperforms the base SQP method in terms of search time and prediction accuracy, i.e., faster convergence to better solutions.
Second, we developed a factor graph-based probabilistic inference approach. The proposed method is based on greedy forward search and belief propagation in a factor graph for the learning of the graph structure and parameter estimation. To initiate the node and edge search, an initial factor graph is created by introducing an inductive bias, the locality principle. The graph structure is learned on the fly guided by belief discrepancies, estimation error, and correlation analysis iteratively. At each round, the partially constructed graph is the input for the learning process at the next round. The observed data is exploited as evidences by local propagation. To reduce the estimation error caused by the discretization of the continuous search spaces for the CRM parameters, the expected values are computed for theparameters. This learning process is repeated until a stopping criterion is satisfied. Experimental results show that the elapsed time for the message passing and the node and edge search is less than the search time of HCNO for a large number of parameters, with the prediction accuracy comparable to that of the optimization method. It is shown that the messages converge to a stable equilibrium as time goes on in the loopy belief probabilistic system as advocated in [46] and the approximation results in the high prediction accuracy.


In this thesis, the coupling of the Stokes equations and the Biot poroelasticity equations for fluid flow normal to porous media is investigated. For that purpose, the transmission conditions across the interfaces between the fluid regions and the porous domain are derived. A proper algorithm is formulated and numerical examples are presented. First, the transmission conditions for the coupling of various physical phenomena are reviewed. For the coupling of free flow with porous media, it has to be distinguished whether the fluid flows tangentially or perpendicularly to the porous medium. This plays an essential role for the formulation of the transmission conditions. In the thesis, the transmission conditions for the coupling of the Stokes equations and the Biot poroelasticity equations for fluid flow normal to the porous medium in one and three dimensions are derived. With these conditions, the continuous fully coupled system of equations in one and three dimensions is formulated. In the one dimensional case the extreme cases, i.e. fluid-fluid interface and fluid impermeable solid interface, are considered. Two chapters of the thesis are devoted to the discretisation of the fully coupled Biot-Stokes system for matching and non-matching grids, respectively. Therefor, operators are introduced that map the internal and boundary variables to the respective domains via Stokes equations, Biot equations and the transmission conditions. The matrix representation of some of these operators is shown. For the non-matching case, a cell-centred grid in the fluid region and a staggered grid in the porous domain are used. Hence, the discretisation is more difficult, since an additional grid on the interface has to be introduced. Corresponding matching functions are needed to transfer the values properly from one domain to the other across the interface. In the end, the iterative solution procedure for the Biot-Stokes system on non-matching grids is presented. For this purpose, a short review of domain decomposition methods is given, which are often the methods of choice for such coupled problems. The iterative solution algorithm is presented, including details like stopping criteria, choice and computation of parameters, formulae for non-dimensionalisation, software and so on. Finally, numerical results for steady state examples, depth filtration and cake filtration examples are presented.


Travis and Charley have just met. It's Charley's last night in town, and Travis can't let her leave without getting her to go on a date. In a future where real people are rapidly being supplanted by lifelike androids, sometimes one shot is all you get! Intelligence may be artificial, but the emotion is real in this futuristic romance from the writer of 12 Reasons Why I Love Her and the cartoonist behind Between Gears.


European Bioinformatics Institute, New York University Langone Medical Center, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Oregon Health and Science University. The contents of this document may be freely copied and distributed in any media, provided the authors, plus the institutions, are credited, as stated under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. For more information see our license. This is just an excerpt of a full-length report for this pathway. To access the complete report, please download it at the Reactome Textbook. 15/12/2022


The Secure Border Initiative (SBI), launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2005, is a cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in seeking a technological quick fix to the problem of unauthorized immigration. SBI calls not only for fencing the U.S.-Mexico border in the literal sense, but constructing a "virtual fence" as well. Since physical fencing can be climbed over, broken through, or dug under, it is complemented in SBI by a system of cameras and sensors—known as "SBInet"—that will, in theory, alert the Border Patrol whenever an unauthorized border crossing occurs. However, SBI has not gone according to plan. Hundreds of miles in new fencing and vehicle barriers have been erected at the border at a cost of $2.4 billion, but there is no evidence this is enhancing border security or deterring unauthorized immigrants. And SBInet has been plagued by persistent technical problems, shoddy testing, and missed deadlines since the Boeing Corporation received over $1 billion worth of DHS contracts to develop it.


The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Secretary of Education to submit a report on private student loans. This report addresses the following topics, as set forth in the Act:

1) The private lenders, their market and their products, as they have evolved and performed over time,

2) The consumers of these products, their characteristics, and shopping, usage and repayment behaviors,

3) Consumer protections, including recent changes and possible gaps,

4) Fair lending compliance information currently available and its implications, and

5) Statutory or legislative recommendations to improve consumer protections.


Studies of voter turnout across states find that those with more facilitative registration laws have higher turnout rates. Eliminating registration barriers altogether is estimated to raise voter participation rates by up to 10%. This article presents panel estimates of the effects of introducing registration that exploits changes in registration laws and turnout within states. New York and Ohio imposed registration requirements on all of their counties in 1965 and 1977, respectively. We find that the introduction of registration to counties that did not previously require registration decreased participation over the long term by three to five percentage points. Though significant, this is lower than estimates of the effects of registration from cross-sectional studies and suggests that expectations about the effects of registration reforms on turnout may be overstated.


This Article suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court, through its decisions in cases alleging race discrimination, stands as a major barrier to racial equality in the United States. There are several aspects of its decisions that lead to this result. Between 1868 and 1954, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, while it had been interpreted to strike down a few blatant forms of de jure discrimination, allowed government to separate the races based on the separate but equal fiction. Beginning in 1954, Brown and a series of subsequent decisions attacked this fiction and for a period of nearly twenty years the Court was intent on eliminating the vestiges of segregation in the schools, approving broad remedial orders. This changed drastically beginning in 1974 when the Court began limiting the available remedies and relieving school systems of the burdens imposed by court orders. Around the same time, the Court decided that equal protection plaintiffs needed to show a discriminatory governmental purpose in order to trigger meaningful constitutional protection. This meant that facially neutral laws and practices with discriminatory effects were largely constitutional. Beginning with Bakke in 1978, the Court made it difficult, and eventually nearly impossible, for government to take affirmative steps designed to promote equality. A majority of the Court determined that invidious and benign racial classifications should be treated the same under the Equal Protection Clause, with both subjected to strict scrutiny. This completed the Court's interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in a manner that makes it a real barrier to racial equality: government is free to engage in invidious discrimination as long as it masks the real purpose, and affirmative steps designed by government to promote equality will be struck down as a violation of equal protection. Ironically, the constitutional amendment designed to promote freedom and equality for the newly-freed slaves now stands in the way of true freedom and equality.


In this horizontally oriented painting, two men, in the foreground, are recognizable depictions of Paul Newman and Tom Cruise from the movie titled The Color of Money. In the background, a car and a woman are seen on the right side of the picture. The older man has his arm around the shoulder of the younger man and is holding a roll of money in front of the face of the younger man. The background is a light bright green color. The young man wears a pink and purple plaid shirt and blue jacket. The older man wears a green coat and has gray hair.


In this work, we develop a framework for analyzing an executive's own- company stockholding and work effort preferences. The executive, character- ized by risk aversion and work effectiveness parameters, invests his personal wealth without constraint in the financial market, including the stock of his own company whose value he can directly influence with work effort. The executive's utility-maximizing personal investment and work effort strategy is derived in closed form for logarithmic and power utility and for exponential utility for the case of zero interest rates. Additionally, a utility indifference rationale is applied to determine his fair compensation. Being unconstrained by performance contracting, the executive's work effort strategy establishes a base case for theoretical or empirical assessment of the benefits or otherwise of constraining executives with performance contracting. Further, we consider a highly-qualified individual with respect to her choice between two distinct career paths. She can choose between a mid-level management position in a large company and an executive position within a smaller listed company with the possibility to directly affect the company's share price. She invests in the financial market including the share of the smaller listed company. The utility maximizing strategy from consumption, investment, and work effort is derived in closed form for logarithmic utility and power utility. Conditions for the individual to pursue her career with the smaller listed company are obtained. The participation constraint is formulated in terms of the salary differential between the two positions. The smaller listed company can offer less salary. The salary shortfall is offset by the possibilityto benefit from her work effort by acquiring own-company shares. This givesinsight into aspects of optimal contract design. Our framework is applicable to the pharmaceutical and financial industry, as well as the IT sector.


Background/Context Institutional theories sometimes characterize the normative influence of institutions as diffusing like waves and as exerting uniform pressures on individuals. This article contributes to a growing literature on the microfoundations of institutions, investigating how intraorganizational networks mediate the diffusion of institutions on teachers' instructional practices. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study focused on the normative influence of reading policy on teaching practice in the early 2000s. We chose to focus on reading during this period, which was marked by an unusual level of policy coherence. Federal and state agencies, as well as school districts, implemented a number of policies and programs to encourage teachers to follow the National Reading Panel's (2000) recommendations to emphasize basic skills development in reading instructional practices. Setting The research took place in 11 elementary schools. An important note is that the pressure teachers experienced in these schools to adopt the practices recommended by the National Reading Panel was indirect. The schools in the study did include three Title I schools, but no schools in programs that required them to adopt these practices. All schools used state-adopted curricula in reading that were aligned with recommended practices. Population/Participants/Subjects All faculty members in the 11 schools were part of the study from 2004 to 2008. The sample in the final analysis (n = 136) included teachers with direct responsibilities for teaching reading in a single school over these 4 years. This figure represents 84.47% of our original sample (N = 161). Research Design This study is a longitudinal observational study that includes social network data and multilevel analysis. We surveyed faculty four times in waves conducted in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008. Data Collection and Analysis The primary source of data was a survey that asked teachers to identify their close colleagues and colleagues who provided them with help on reading instruction (including measures of frequency of interaction). The dependent measure in our analyses was based teachers' responses to items about instructional practices in reading, especially skills-based instructional practices. We fit multilevel models to estimate the extent to which reading practices were a function of teachers' interactions with colleagues and their membership in subgroups, which were identified from the indicators of closest colleagues using Frank's algorithm. Findings/Results Teachers' practices did not conform exclusively to the new normative regime but rather depended on exposure to external professional development in reading instruction and on local norms of practice in their schools and collegial subgroups. Over time, moreover, subgroups' practices diverged with respect to teachers' implementation of skills-based reading instructional practices. Conclusions/Recommendations Our study findings provide strong evidence that local social dynamics such as the ones we illuminate here are key in shaping the implementation trajectory of any instructional practice or reform. Policies may set the stage for adopting particular practices and direct resources toward certain kinds of supports through curriculum and professional development programs they incentivize. However, teachers' interactions with colleagues mediate the response to these directions and incentives in ways that can produce outcomes that diverge widely from policy makers' intentions.


This article indicates that there are various rights, or privileges, of the Crown (so - called ' Crown prerogatives' ) which still exist under English law and which are at variance with modern society and human rights. Indeed, one would assert the Crown prerogative is the biggest impediment in English based legal systems to an extension of human rights at present, since it is so ample in scope and yet so indeterminate in nature. This article argues that martial law - that is, the right of the Crown to apply military law to civilians (which often resulted in their summary trial and execution in past rebellions) - should be abolished. It is unnecessary and contrary to modern human rights. Also abolished should be the right of the Crown to billet members of the armed forces on the public - now governed by legislation. Finally, the Crown prerogative to forcibly conscript able-bodied male subjects into the army and navy should be abolished. It was replaced by legislation during World War I and II since it was thought to be too uncertain, legally. In conclusion, if these Crown prerogatives were abolished throughout the Commonwealth it would remove much old law and help human rights. It would also allow legislation enacted by Parliament to cover the field, as and when required in the case of martial law.


Will developing countries adopt policies that promote the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops, or will they select policies that slow the spread of the GM crop revolution? The evidence so far is mixed. In some prominent countries such as China, policies are in place that encourage the independent development and planting of GM crops. Yet in a number of other equally prominent countries the planting of GM crops is not yet officially approved. The inclination of developing countries to promote or block the spread of GM crops can be judged by the policy choices they make in five separate areas: intellectual property rights (IPR) policy, biosafety policy, trade policy, food safety policy, and public research investments. Paarlberg discusses various policy options related to GM crops: (1) Intellectual Property Rights; (2) Biosafety; (3) Trade; (4) Food Safety and Consumer Choice; and (5) Public Research Investments. The appropriate policies for each of these must be adopted by developing countries.


Dipping our bread in oil tins we talked of morning peeling open our rooms to a moment of almonds, olives and wind when we did not yet know what we were. The days in Mallorca were alike: footprints down goat-paths from the beds we had left, at night the stars locked to darkness. At that time we were learning to dance, take our clothes in our fingers and open ourselves to their hands. The veranera was with us. For a month the almond trees bloomed, their droppings the delicate silks we removed when each time a touch took us closer to the window where


The massive electric power blackout in the northeastern U.S. and Canada on August 14-15, 2003 catalyzed discussions about modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. Industry sources suggested that investments of $50 to $100 billion would be needed. This work seeks to better understand an important piece of information that has been missing from these discussions: What do power interruptions and fluctuations in power quality (power-quality events) cost electricity consumers? We developed a bottom-up approach for assessing the cost to U.S. electricity consumers of power interruptions and power-quality events (referred to collectively as "reliability events"). The approach can be used to help assess the potential benefits of investments in improving the reliability of the grid. We developed a new estimate based on publicly available information, and assessed how uncertainties in these data affect this estimate using sensitivity analysis.


We are at the cusp of a historic shift in our conceptions of the Fourth Amendment driven by dramatic advances in surveillance technology. Governments and their private sector agents continue to invest billions of dollars in massive data-mining projects, advanced analytics, fusion centers, and aerial drones, all without serious consideration of the constitutional issues that these technologies raise. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled an end to its silent acquiescence in this expanding surveillance state. In that case, five justices signed concurring opinions defending a revolutionary proposition: that citizens have Fourth Amendment interests in substantial quantities of information about their public or shared activities, even if they lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in the constitutive particulars. This quantitative approach to the Fourth Amendment has since been the subject of hot debate on and off the courts. Among the most compelling challenges are questions about quantitative privacy's constitutional pedigree, how it can be implemented in practice, and its doctrinal consequences. This Article takes up these challenges. The conversation after Jones has been dominated by proposals that seek to assess and protect quantitative privacy by focusing on the informational "mosaics" assembled by law enforcement officers in the course of their investigations. We think that this case-by-case approach both misunderstands the Fourth Amendment issues at stake and begets serious practical challenges. Drawing on lessons from information privacy law, we propose as an alternative that legislatures and courts acting in the shadow of Jones focus on the technologies. Under this technology-centered approach, any technology that is capable of facilitating broad programs of continuous and indiscriminate surveillance would be subject to Fourth Amendment regulation. This does not mean that government would be barred from using these technologies. Rather, it would require that the terms of their deployment and use reflect a reasonable balance between privacy concerns and law enforcement's interests in preventing, detecting, and prosecuting crime. This Article offers concrete proposals for how legislatures and courts might strike this balance while providing the clear guidance and predictability that critics of the mosaic theory rightly demand.


Kutchi Dress of the Pashtun Peoples, Afghanistan.

Full-length. Bodice of various fabrics and embellishments. Rounded neckline with slight standing/band collar of primarily yellow bead-work with blue bead squares containing red bead centers. "Collar" below neckline of pendant silver-colored coins. Shoulder areas of purple with primarily yellow stitching forming scroll-work. Front "bib" of dark red outlined with same bead-work as neckline, and sewn with 9 horizontal rows of green tear-drop shaped beads and a line of silver-colored coins. Center part of bodice of black fabric with all-over red reflective circles. Wide "waist" of dress with geometric bead-work band of white, green, red, blue, and orange, with band of small circular mirrors and two lower borders of fringe tipped with white and green beads, and lowest border of coins. Sleeves of dark green velvet with bands of rickrack of silver and gold, and stitching matching the shoulder areas. Edged with bead-work and with row of silver-colored coins. Skirt is full-length, and full, and is of dark blue/black fabric printed with white and grey pattern of small flower blossoms, paisley shapes, dots, leaves, etc. Hem of dress with wide embroidered band, upper section with horizontal band of squares of various colors (reddish, green, orange, pale green, purple), center band of yellow, and lower band of reddish/magenta. Unlined.

No labels or tags.


We are interested in identifying the material category, e.g. glass, metal, fabric, plastic or wood, from a single image of a surface. Unlike other visual recognition tasks in computer vision, it is difficult to find good, reliable features that can tell material categories apart. Our strategy is to use a rich set of low and mid-level features that capture various aspects of material appearance. We propose an augmented Latent Dirichlet Allocation (aLDA) model to combine these features under a Bayesian generative framework and learn an optimal combination of features. Experimental results show that our system performs material recognition reasonably well on a challenging material database, outperforming state-of-the-art material/texture recognition systems.


*** This Article identifies a new and previously unrecognized trend in class-action settlements: releases for the defendant's future conduct. Such releases, which hold the defendant harmless for wrongs it will commit in the future, are unusually dangerous to class members and to the public. Even more than the "future claims" familiar to class-action scholars, future-conduct releases pose severe informational problems for class members and for courts. Worse, they create moral hazard for the defendant, give it concentrated power, and thrust courts into a prospective planning role they are ill-equipped to handle. Courts should guard against the dangers of future-conduct releases with a standard and a rule. The standard is heightened scrutiny for all settlements containing such releases; the Article describes the warning signs courts must be alert to and the safeguards courts should insist on. The rule is parity of preclusion: a class-action settlement may release future-conduct claims if and only if they could have been lost in litigation. Parity of preclusion elegantly harmonizes a wide range of case law while directly addressing the normative problems with futureconduct releases. The Article concludes by applying its recommendations to seven actual future-conduct settlements, in each case yielding a better result or clearer explanation than the court was able to provide.


'An inexhaustible tourist at the farther reaches of the mind, Sacks presents, in sparse, unsentimental prose, the stories of seven of his patients. The result is as rich, vivid and compelling as any collection of short fictional stories' Independent on Sunday As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us. Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation but also adaptation are inescapable facts of life. 'Sacks' great gift is his capacity to place himself in the position of his subjects, to see the world the way they see it and to empathize with their condition with great compassion but without patronage or pity' Daily Telegraph 'Writing simply and beautifully, Sacks uses individual case histories to reveal the infinite complexities of the human mind' Daily Mail


The Anthropocene diagnosis, in which humanity has become a
disruptive geological force, indicates an irresolvable political paradox. The
political demos is inevitably and necessarily bounded. The Anthropocene,
however, heralds the anthropos—the globalized more-than-human identity.
The anthropos challenges the maintenance of political boundaries, yet any
robust response to ecological predicament must be underpinned by a decisive
demos. This article, informed by theories of political agonism, suggests
that this paradox importantly provokes ongoing political contestation of the
inevitable yet contingent exclusions from politics and the proper place of
political boundaries in the Anthropocene. The article concludes that the
Anthropocene diagnosis provides an opportunity for a lively democratic politics
in which the demos is always prompted to reimagine itself and asks, who
are "we" in the Anthropocene?


Want to learn about databases without the tedium? With its unique combination of Japanese-style comics and serious educational content, The Manga Guide to Databases is just the book for you. Princess Ruruna is stressed out. With the king and queen away, she has to manage the Kingdom of Kod's humongous fruit-selling empire. Overseas departments, scads of inventory, conflicting prices, and so many customers! It's all such a confusing mess. But a mysterious book and a helpful fairy promise to solve her organizational problems-with the practical magic of databases. In The Manga Guide to Databases, Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management. We follow along as they design a relational database, understand the entity-relationship model, perform basic database operations, and delve into more advanced topics. Once the Princess is familiar with transactions and basic SQL statements, she can keep her data timely and accurate for the entire kingdom. Finally, Tico explains ways to make the database more efficient and secure, and they discuss methods for concurrency and replication. Examples and exercises (with answer keys) help you learn, and an appendix of frequently used SQL statements gives the tools you need to create and maintain full-featured databases. (Of course, it wouldn't be a royal kingdom without some drama, so read on to find out who gets the girl-the arrogant prince or the humble servant.) This EduManga book is a translation of a bestselling series in Japan, co-published with Ohmsha, Ltd., of Tokyo, Japan.


This Working Paper analysis the hypothetical transfer and conveyance of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.'s assets to a new state-owned entity by the Venezuelan Government, and the possible creditor responses to such action, on account of the Venezuela's NOC current financial-distress situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of Venezuelan law, which might provide certain legal remedies under Civil, Commercial and Administrative law—although with somehow little practical success expectations, given other factors and externalities—as well as from the perspective of U.S. law, which is of particular relevance, given (i) significant asset exposure in the U.S., where PDVSA—through CITGO—maintains an important operation, (ii) the contractual terms in the bulk of Venezuela and PDVSA's financial indebtedness relies on U.S. law and provides for submission to the jurisdiction of NY courts, and (iii) many creditors are actually U.S. persons. Thus, this Working Paper examines the above situation, given the multiple issues and complexities on the case, starting from the very nature of PDVSA as an state-owned entity under Venezuelan law, but with particular emphasis on the creditors' side of the equation and the theory of fraudulent transfer, which is analyzed both from the standpoint of Venezuelan law, as well as from U.S. insolvency framework and international law in general.


Abstract This paper studies the remittances' effect on economic growth. Using panel data techniques, the authors estimate several specifications to provide support of such relationship for MENA countries over the period 1980–2009. The findings provide new robust evidence on how remittances are used in MENA countries and detect the main channels which may interfere in this process. Estimation outcomes show that the most important part of remittances is consumed and that remittances stimulate growth only when they are invested. Moreover, empirical results suggest that remittances can enhance growth by encouraging human capital accumulation. Human capital is therefore an effective channel through which remittances stimulate growth in MENA countries.


BACKGROUND
The relatively new class of antidepressant, the selective serotonin reputake inhibitors (SSRIs), may be better tolerated than the older tricyclic antidepressants. This review compares the efficacy of SSRIs with other antidepressants.

OBJECTIVES
To examine the relative efficacy of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) compared to other antidepressants.

SEARCH STRATEGY
The search strategy included a search of (a) Electronic bibliographic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE); (b) reference lists of related reviews (c) reference lists of all located studies (d) contact with the manufacturer and (e) the Cochrane Group register of controlled trials

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials comparing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors with other kinds of antidepressants in the treatment of patients with depressive disorders. The outcome measures assessed included measures of the severity of depression.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Data were collected from each study the main outcome measurefrom each study. These included: mean Hamilton depression rating scale, mean Montgomery & Asberg depression rating scale, Clinical Global Impression rating scale. An analysis of standardised mean difference of these scales was performed using Review Manager 3.1 software. The presence of heterogeneity of treatment effect was assessed

MAIN RESULTS
Ninety-eight trials contributed data to the analysis of the relative efficacy of SSRIs and related drugs with comparator antidepressants (Figure 3 & Appendix 3). Analysis of efficacy was based upon 5044 patients treated with an SSRI or related drug, and 4510 treated with an alternative antidepressant. The standardised effect size for SSRIs and related drugs together versus alternative antidepressants using a fixed effects model was 0.035 (95% CI -0.006 to 0.076; Q = 149.25, df = 97, p < 0.001).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There are no clinically significant differences in effectiveness between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants. Treatment decisions need to be based on considerations of relative patient acceptability, toxicity and cost.


About Deloitte Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.


This report describes the work done and results obtained in third year of the CATNETS project. Experiments carried out with the different configurations of the prototype are reported and simulation results are evaluated with the CATNETS metrics framework. The applicability of the Catallactic approach as market model for service and resource allocation in application layer networks is assessed based on the results and experience gained both from the prototype development and simulations.


The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux and Unix performance, while illuminating performance issues that are relevant to all operating systems. Youll gain deep insight into how systems work and perform, and learn methodologies for analyzing and improving system and application performance. Gregg presents examples from bare-metal systems and virtualized cloud tenants running Linux-based Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and the illumos-based Joyent SmartOS and OmniTI OmniOS. He systematically covers modern systems performance, including the traditional analysis of CPUs, memory, disks, and networks, and new areas including cloud computing and dynamic tracing. This book also helps you identify and fix the unknown unknowns of complex performance: bottlenecks that emerge from elements and interactions you were not aware of. The text concludes with a detailed case study, showing how a real cloud customer issue was analyzed from start to finish. Coverage includes Modern performance analysis and tuning: terminology, concepts, models, methods, and techniques Dynamic tracing techniques and tools, including examples of DTrace, SystemTap, and perf Kernel internals: uncovering what the OS is doing Using system observability tools, interfaces, and frameworks Understanding and monitoring application performance Optimizing CPUs: processors, cores, hardware threads, caches, interconnects, and kernel scheduling Memory optimization: virtual memory, paging, swapping, memory architectures, busses, address spaces, and allocators File system I/O, including caching Storage devices/controllers, disk I/O workloads, RAID, and kernel I/O Network-related performance issues: protocols, sockets, interfaces, and physical connections Performance implications of OS and hardware-based virtualization, and new issues encountered with cloud computing Benchmarking: getting accurate results and avoiding common mistakes This guide is indispensable for anyone who operates enterprise or cloud environments: system, network, database, and web admins; developers; and other professionals. For students and others new to optimization, it also provides exercises reflecting Greggs extensive instructional experience.


We have found that non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors taking either a conceptual physics or astronomy course at two regional comprehensive institutions score significantly lower preinstruction on the Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) in comparison to national average STEM majors. Based on LCTSR score, the majority of non-STEM students can be classified as either concrete operational or transitional reasoners in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, whereas in the STEM population formal operational reasoners are far more prevalent. In particular, non-STEM students demonstrate significant difficulty with proportional and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Prescores on the LCTSR are correlated with normalized learning gains on various concept inventories. The correlation is strongest for content that can be categorized as mostly theoretical, meaning a lack of directly observable exemplars, and weakest for content categorized as mostly descriptive, where directly observable exemplars are abundant. Although the implementation of research-verified, interactive engagement pedagogy can lead to gains in content knowledge, significant gains in theoretical content (such as force and energy) are more difficult with non-STEM students. We also observe no significant gains on the LCTSR without explicit instruction in scientific reasoning patterns. These results further demonstrate that differences in student populations are important when comparing normalized gains on concept inventories, and the achievement of significant gains in scientific reasoning requires a reevaluation of the traditional approach to physics for non-STEM students.


Ryan, Carrie.  The Dark and Hollow Places , New York: Delacorte Press, 2011. Print. The statement "You don't understand!" is quite probably true when you are a teenage survivor in a post-apocalyptic zombie dystopia. Carrie Ryan does occasionally employ some very typical teenage truisms in her efforts to make the reader comprehend and feel all the varieties of potential duress zombie apocalypses might create in young adults. ("You don't understand!" is actually part of one of the few, fraught exchanges.) But if the dialogue can be a bit stilted there is very little of it and that seems to be part of Ryan's intent. Her characters are isolated and traumatized. They struggle against their well-founded sense of nihilism as they shake off their stoicism. Annah, the protagonist, finds herself inexorably drawn into emotional relationships despite knowing the living dead are everywhere, waiting to feast on the living, and that many in the dwindling herds of the healthy are not to be trusted. The devolving world Annah negotiates is conveyed through her interior dialogue, which is entirely steeped in her myopic self-loathing, until she is drawn into a small community of other survivors who, despite their shortcomings, represent the last vestiges of humanity who are still ethically-grounded and emotionally alive. Ryan lavishes much attention on the stark details and doesn't shrink from describing the lurid nuances of her world's unceasing violent and melancholy perils. The pacing can be a bit laborious; Ryan favours the stricken, suspenseful crawl of internalized dread over the rush of descriptive action. The Dark and Hollow Places is a zombie dystopia about the feelings of its survivors and Ryan places her principals in situations that create wrenching dilemmas which lead to unpredictable outcomes. More the pity that Annah and her friends never become particularly interesting. Their motivations are clearly mapped and all their damage laid before us but they fail to cohere in the imagination as multifaceted individuals. There is not enough descriptive complexity beyond the essential narrative mechanics to make the characters convincingly quicken to life. The Dark and Hollow Places is the final book in Ryan's Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy. Recommended with reservations:  2 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Matilda Roche Matilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta's metadata but children's illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda's super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.


The Bill of Rights originated as a constraint only on the federal government. As every law student learns, therefore, in the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment takings claim against a state. This Article shows, however, that early state courts regularly invoked and applied the provisions of the Bill of Rights in reviewing state law and state executive action. Barron meant only that the federal courts would not apply the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. State courts could decide independently to apply those provisions against their own state governments, and the jurisdictional limits of the 1789 Judiciary Act shielded those state court decisions from Supreme Court review. Largely forgotten today, state court applications of the Federal Bill of Rights against state government represented a vibrant body of constitutional law in the early Republic. Restoring this history challenges the conventional account that states were mostly unconstrained until ratification of the Reconstruction-era amendments, and that only in the mid-twentieth century did courts begin to protect adequately the rights of individuals. Instead, early constitutional law was multifaceted, sophisticated, and innovative, with a diverse set of jurists invoking and applying an array of constitutional rules to keep government at all levels in check.The history of the Federal Bill of Rights in the early state courts points also to some deficiencies of modern constitutional law. Compared to the antebellum era, constitutional law today is radically consolidated. Among other things, state courts cannot extend federal constitutional protections beyond the limits the Supreme Court itself sets; this leaves individuals with fewer places to turn to protect their rights. Consolidation is also inconsistent with federalism. The historical practice of allowing state courts leeway to interpret independently the Federal Constitution reflected the importance of state courts in our constitutional design and the benefits that accrue to the system as a whole when individual state courts are able to make different choices. In addition, consolidation has weakened state constitutional law, as developed and applied by the state courts. Incorporation of federal constitutional protections, as defined by the Supreme Court, has displaced state constitutional law as the principal source of individual rights. Rather than decide independently what provisions of their own state constitutions mean, state courts have tended to hew to the Supreme Court's understandings of analogous provisions in the Federal Constitution. State courts have lost their voices under the Federal Constitution and they have fallen out of practice speaking under their state constitutions. Finally, consolidation helps account for the enormous tension that is characteristic of our current regime when federal constitutional rights are, ultimately, dependent upon the decisions of the Supreme Court.


A unique guide to the design and implementation of simulation softwareThis book offers a concise introduction to the art of building simulation software, collecting the most important concepts and algorithms in one place. Written for both individuals new to the field of modeling and simulation as well as experienced practitioners, this guide explains the design and implementation of simulation software used in the engineering of large systems while presenting the relevant mathematical elements, concept discussions, and code development.The book approaches the topic from the perspective of Zeigler's theory of modeling and simulation, introducing the theory's fundamental concepts and showing how to apply them to engineering problems. Readers will learn five necessary skills for building simulations of complicated systems:Working with fundamental abstractions for simulating dynamic systemsDeveloping basic simulation algorithms for continuous and discrete event modelsCombining continuous and discrete event simulations into a coherent wholeApplying strategies for testing a simulationUnderstanding the theoretical foundations of the modeling constructs and simulation algorithmsThe central chapters of the book introduce, explain, and demonstrate the elements of the theory that are most important for building simulation tools. They are bracketed by applications to robotics, control and communications, and electric power systems; these comprehensive examples clearly illustrate how the concepts and algorithms are put to use. Readers will explore the design of object-oriented simulation programs, simulation using multi-core processors, and the integration of simulators into larger software systems.The focus on software makes this book particularly useful for computer science and computer engineering courses in simulation that focus on building simulators. It is indispensable reading for undergraduate and graduate students studying modeling and simulation, as well as for practicing scientists and engineers involved in the development of simulation tools.


Background Malaria and bacterial infections account for most infectious disease deaths in developing countries. Prompt treatment saves lives, but rapid deterioration often prevents the use of oral therapies; delays in reaching health facilities providing parenteral interventions are common. Rapidly and reliably absorbed antimalarial/antibacterial rectal formulations used in the community could prevent deaths and disabilities. Rectal antimalarial treatments are currently available; rectal antibacterial treatments are yet to be developed. Assessment of the likely cost-effectiveness of these interventions will inform research priorities and implementation. Methods and Findings The burden of malaria and bacterial infections worldwide and in Sub-Saharan and Southern Africa (SSA) and South and South-East Asia (SEA) was summarised using published data. The additional healthcare costs (US$) per death and per Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) avoided following pre-referral treatment of severe febrile illness with rectal antimalarials, antibacterials or combined antimalarial/antibacterials in populations at malaria risk in SSA/SEA were assessed. 46 million severe malaria and bacterial infections and 5 million deaths occur worldwide each year, mostly in SSA/SEA. At annual delivery costs of $0.02/capita and 100% coverage, rectal antimalarials ($2 per dose) would avert 240,000 deaths in SSA and 7,000 deaths in SEA at $5 and $177 per DALY avoided, respectively; rectal antibacterials ($2 per dose) would avert 130,000 deaths in SSA and 27,000 deaths in SEA at $19 and $97 per DALY avoided, respectively. Combined rectal formulations ($2.50 per dose) would avert 370,000 deaths in SSA and 33,000 deaths in SEA at $8 and $79 per DALY avoided, respectively, and are a cost-effective alternative to rectal antimalarials or antibacterials alone. Conclusions Antimalarial, antibacterial and combined rectal formulations are likely to be cost-effective interventions for severe febrile illness in the community. Attention should focus on developing effective rectal antibacterials and ensuring that these lifesaving treatments are used in a cost-effective manner.


The Cultural Cognition Project (CCP) at Yale Law School and the Project on Law and Mind Sciences (PLMS) at Harvard Law School draw on similar research and share a similar goal of uncovering the dynamics that shape risk perceptions, policy beliefs, and attributions underlying our laws and legal theories. Nonetheless, the projects have failed to engage one another in a substantial way. This Article attempts to bridge that gap by demonstrating how the situationist approach taken by PLMS scholars can crucially enrich CCP scholarship. As a demonstration, the Article engages the case of Scott v. Harris, 127 S. Ct. 1769 (2007), the subject of a recent CCP study. In Scott, the Supreme Court relied on a videotape of a high-speed police chase to conclude that an officer did not commit a Fourth Amendment violation when he purposefully caused the suspect's car to crash by ramming the vehicle's back bumper. Challenging the Court's conclusion that "no reasonable juror" could see the motorist's evasion of the police as anything but extremely dangerous, CCP Professors Dan M. Kahan, David A. Hoffman, and Donald Braman showed the video to 1,350 people and discovered clear rifts in perception based on ideological, cultural, and other lines. Despite the valuable contribution of their research in uncovering the influence of identity-defining characteristics and commitments on perceptions, Kahan, Hoffman, and Braman failed to engage what may well be a more critical dynamic shaping the cognitions of their subjects and the members of the Supreme Court in Scott: the role of situational frames in guiding attributions of causation, responsibility, and blame. As social psychologists have documented - and as PLMS scholars have emphasized - while identities, experiences, and values matter, their operation and impact is not stable across cognitive tasks, but rather is contingent on the way in which information is presented and the broader context in which it is processed. In large part, the Scott video is treated - both by the Supreme Court and by Kahan, Hoffman, and Braman - as if it presents a neutral, unfiltered account of events. This is incorrect. Studies of viewpoint bias suggest that the fact that the video offers the visual and aural perspective of a police officer participating in the chase - rather than that of the suspect or a neutral third party - likely had a significant effect on both the experimental population and members of the Court. Had the Supreme Court watched a different video of the exact same events taken from inside the suspect's car, this case may never have been taken away from the jury. Any discussion of judicial "legitimacy" - in both the descriptive and normative sense - must start here. The real danger for our justice system may not ultimately be the "visible fiction" of a suspect's version of events, as Justice Scalia would have it, or cognitive illiberalism as Kahan, Hoffman, and Braman would, but the invisible influence of situational frames systematically prejudicing those who come before our courts.


This paper aims to study the current challenges of Chinese language education in the multilingual societies of Hong Kong and Singapore through policy documents. After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the role of Putonghua is far more important than before due to political and economic reasons. However, the medium of instruction for the Chinese Language subject in Hong Kong has long been Cantonese since the British colony days. A change in the medium of instruction from mother-tongue Cantonese to Putonghua is a shift from L1 to L2. This paper will discuss the feasibility of this long term policy of Hong Kong Education Bureau with reference to Singapore's experience. Currently, Singapore faces the problem of declining standard of reading and writing in Huayu (Putonghua in China) and this paper will investigate the reason for that and suggest possible remedies.


This rich compilation of case studies in research ethics is designed for use by course instructors and workshop leaders. The use of case studies in workshops and formal courses is an especially valuable teaching tool, as students and workshop participants can grapple with ethical dilemmas and uncertainties in concrete situations. The editors have collected 64 case studies, based on episodes that have occurred in global health research throughout the world. Eight chapters comprise the cases under the following titles: Defining research; Issues in study design; Harm and benefit; Voluntary informed consent; Standard of care; Obligations to participants and communities; Privacy and confidentiality; and Professional ethics. Each chapter begins with an introduction that outlines the issues and provides some guidance for the topics addressed in the cases, and ends with a brief annotated list of suggested readings. Questions for discussion follow each case. In each chapter there is crossreferencing to cases in other chapters. Appropriately for a World Health Organization (WHO) publication, the case studies describe research that takes place in lowand middle-income countries. In several instances, the case begins with a caveat such as: "Although this case study is based on research that took place in the 1970s, the questions that it raises remain relevant today." Readers may wonder why the editors chose cases from research that was conducted more than 30 years ago. Since the editors point out that the questions posed by each case remain relevant, it would have been better to choose more up-to-date examples. Case studies not only have to be credible as instructional materials, they also have to be timely. Knowledgeable physicians and researchers can become impatient with material they consider irrelevant to their current or future experience. Nevertheless, some cases have become classics in the field of research ethics and should, for that reason, be included in a collection such as this. An example is case 12, "Short-course AZT to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV", which took place in the late 1990s. A degree of overlap in the content of different chapters is inevitable but can be confusing. An example is the inclusion of cases involving the ethics of placebo controls in chapter 2, Issues in study design, and the material covered in the introduction to chapter 5, Standard of care. In chapter 2, cases 8, 9, 10 and 12 all pose the central question of the ethics of a study design that includes a placebo control. Chapter 5 does not include any cases in which the ethical question revolves around placebo controls. However, most of the introduction to chapter 5 discusses the paragraph in the Declaration of Helsinki that deals with placebos. The fault in this confusion does not lie entirely with the editors of this casebook. Unfortunately, the phrase "standard of care" in the context of research is systematically ambiguous. Sometimes it refers to what the control group receives in a randomized, controlled trial (as in the placebo cases in chapter 2 and the Declaration of Helsinki discussion in the introduction to chapter 5). Sometimes the phrase refers to what participants in a prevention trial receive if they acquire the "target disease", the one the research is designed to prevent (case 32, Testing a new HIV vaccine). Sometimes it is even used in a third sense to denote ancillary medical services that may be provided to research subjects (as in case 35). Chapter 6, Obligations to participants and communities, includes a discussion of ancillary care in the introduction, and several of the cases illustrate this third sense of "standard of care". This confusion runs throughout the literature on research ethics and it would have been helpful to readers if the editors had clarified the ambiguity. Despite these minor shortcomings, this collection of cases is a valuable resource for workshop leaders and faculty teaching courses in global health research. WHO is to be commended for its choice of worldclass experts to edit this publication. ■


The phylogenetic relationships of the Fungiidae, a family of predominantly free-living, zooxanthellate, reef corals, were studied by sequencing a part of the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) and the complete ribosomal Internal Transcribed Spacers (ITS) I & II of specimens from various locations in the IndoWest Pacific. Some sequences were retrieved by using fungiidspecific primers on DNA-extracts from parasitic gastropods liv ing with these corals. The analyses were performed both including and excluding intraspecific variation to investigate the poten tial effect of saturation. Even though the present molecular phylogeny reconstructions largely reflect those based on morpho logical characters, there are some distinct differences. Three major clades are distinguished, one of which consists of species with relatively long tentacles. The two other major clades cannot yet be clearly separated from each other morphologically. Several polyphyletic taxa were detected and some genera and species that previously were considered closely related to each other, appear not to be so. Proposed nomenclatorial changes include amongst others the upgrading of subgenera in Fungia to genus level. A few species moved from one genus to another. Among all Fungiidae, the loss of the ability to become free-living appears to have evolved independently as reversals in four separate clades, including two that were previously assumed to be sister groups. The evolution of corals with additional (secondary) mouths leading to polystomatous growth forms from corals with only a single primary mouth (monostomatous growth form) appears to have occurred independently ten times: seven times by extrastomatal budding and three times by intrastomatal budding. In two clades, Herpolitha and Polyphyllia, both mechanisms co-evolved. In general there is no clear relationship between the loss of a freeliving phase and the evolution of multiple mouths.


The BP oil spill of 2010 focused considerable attention on the operating conduct of BP, on the potential liability of BP and other entities associated with the Spill, and on the Fund that BP established to provide compensation to victims of the Spill. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the nature and scope of insurance covering losses caused by catastrophic environmental disasters such as oil spills. BP's establishment of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, and the compensation that will be paid by that facility, are likely to dampen awareness of these mismatches. What might otherwise been a very dramatic demonstration of the ways in which our insurance and liability systems fall short in such situations will probably be much more muted. Future spills, however, may not follow this pattern. Understanding the structure of insurance and liability that are and are not available when spills occur is therefore critical to developing satisfactory approaches to dealing with the consequences of spills. This Article identifies the matches, and mismatches, between the losses resulting from oil spills, the insurance available to the victims of spills, the liability of the parties responsible for losses caused by spills, and the insurance available to the parties who face such liability. The Article then attempts to make sense of the situation it has identified, considering three explanations for the mismatches: difficulties associated with proving the cause of pure economic loss, traditional challenges to the insurance of pollution loss and liability, and pre-existing portfolio diversification by potential spill defendants that discourages the purchase of large amounts of insurance. Finally, the Article critically analyzes two proposals that have been made for remedying the insurance mismatches in this field: the imposition of an ex ante drillers' tax on the amount of their potential liability in excess of their combined assets and liability insurance, and the imposition of mandatory liability insurance requirements far in excess of the amounts of insurance that are currently available or purchased.


When using machine learning techniques for learning a function approximation from given data it is often a di cult task to select the right modeling technique. In many real-world settings is no preliminary knowledge about the objective function available. Then it might be beneficial if the algorithm could learn all models by itself and select the model that suits best to the problem. This approach is known as automated model selection. In this work we propose a generalization of this approach. It combines the predictions of several into one more accurate ensemble surrogate model. This approach is studied in a fundamental way, by first evaluating minimalistic ensembles of only two surrogate models in detail and then proceeding to ensembles with three and more surrogate models. The results show to what extent combinations of models can perform better than single surrogate models and provides insights into the scalability and robustness of the approach. The study focuses on multi-modal functions topologies, which are important in surrogate-assisted global optimization.


Aetosaur scutes assigned to Acaenasuchus geoffreyi Long and Murry, 1995, are juvenile scutes of Desmatosuchus haplocerus (Cope, 1892), so A. geoffreyi is a junior subjective synonym of D. haplocerus. Scutes previously assigned to Acaenasuchus lack anterior bars and a strong radial pattern of elongate pits and ridges, but do possess an anterior lamina and a raised boss emanating from the mid-dorsal surface of the scute. Desmatosuchus is the only aetosaur with this combination of features, and the replacement of the anterior bar with a lamina is an autapomorphy of Desmatosuchus. Other characters used by previous workers to distinguish Acaenasuchus from Desmatosuchus include deeply incised pitting on the dorsal scutes and the division of the raised boss posteriorly into two lateral flanges in Acaenasuchus. We interpret the deeply incised pitting as an artifact of ontogenetic variation. The more exaggerated pits and thin grooves on the scutes of "Acaenasuchus" represent a juvenile stage of development,
an ontogenetic feature we have observed on other aetosaurs, notably Aetosaurus. The divided
boss is the most unique characteristic of "Acaenasuchus/' but even this feature could also represent immature development. Further, of the four localities (the Blue Hills, the Placerias quarry and the Downs' quarry-all near St. John's, AZ, and another locality near Winslow, AZ) that have produced scutes assigned to Acaenasuchus, two (the Placerias and Downs' quarries) also produce abundant adult specimens of Desmatosuchus, and all four localities are in strata of equivalent (latest Carnian) age. Thus, in all critical details of morphology, except size, scutes assigned to Acaenasuchus appear to represent scutes of Desmatosuchus. The apparent rarity and limited geographic and stratigraphic range of Acaenasuchus relative to Desmatosuchus are artifacts of preservational and collecting biases.