The new full-colour Rough Guide to Guatemala is the definitive guide to this fascinating Central American country. Fully updated, detailed accounts of every attraction, along with clear, colour maps, will show you everything Guatemala has to offer, from ancient Mayan cities to beautiful rainforest scenery and stunning lakes. The Rough Guide is packed full of insider tips about off-the-beaten-track destinations, hiking trails, surf spots, kayak and rafting trips and jungle walks, plus all the best hotels, cafes, restaurants and bars for every budget. Whether you're taking in the grand Mayan site of Tikal, the graceful, colonial architecture of Antigua, a traditional market or an adventurous jungle trek, The Rough Guide to Guatemala will help you make the most of your holiday. Kiado: Rough Guides Nyelv: angol 376 oldal Megjelenes eve: 2012 Szallitasi hataridő: 4-5 nap


Largely due to the "linguistic turn" that has dominated the humanities since the mid-twentieth century, many contemporary scholars and artists habitually equate works of art with highly coded texts to be deciphered, deconstructed, or otherwise interpreted. Here, meaning, value, and impact have been fundamentally linked to art's capacity to "speak," to represent, to raise questions about representation, to convey a message, or articulate a concept. Much visual culture scholarship has tried to engage with art and the image-world outside of these logics.

Within this quest to consider art differently, Jorella Andrews and Simon O'Sullivan pay attention to the asignifying character of art, or simply its affective qualities. Drawing on the work of key thinkers (for O'Sullivan, the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Jean-Francois Lyotard) and turning to paradigmatic works of art (for Andrews, film and video pieces by Rosalind Nashashibi and Jayne Parker), they contextualize these art-related matters in relation to a significant recent rise in new thinking about objects, objectness, and objectivity within philosophy, critical theory, and ethics.


Wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent is a significant source of anthropogenic N loading to urban streams and has been shown to impact the ability of streams to provide ecosystem services of nutrient retention and denitrification. If a stream is unable to provide these services, then the downstream systems will receive higher N loads potentially causing eutrophication and reduction of biodiversity. Corbicula fluminae (Asian clam) is an invasive species that has been shown to filter feed at a very high rate. I hypothesized that Corbicula functions to remove anthropogenic N at a sufficient rate to impact suspended particulate matter (seston) dynamics in a stream receiving treated urban wastewater. Stable isotope analysis was used as a tool to evaluate trophic relationships between seston and Corbicula. Fieldwork was conducted on North Buffalo Creek , NC, USA. Two laboratory experiments were performed to evaluate Corbicula filtering rate both in the presence and absence of stream sediment. Ash free dry mass (AFDM), a15N, a13C, C/N ratio, and chlorophyll a were measured over the course of 12 h in order to determine Corbicula impact on these seston variables over time. Field and experimental results showed that Corbicula in North Buffalo Creek was not filtering as has been described previously. My results indicate that Corbicula pedal feeds in the sediment. Therefore, instead of providing an ecosystem service of removing sewage-derived N from the water column, Corbicula returns sediment bound nutrients to the water column, thereby contributing further to downstream eutrophication.


There's an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams, Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams; Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey, And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday. There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there's moss about the pool, And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool: In the silent sunken pathways springs a herbage sparse and spare, Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air. There is not a living creature in the lonely space around, And the hedge~encompass'd d quiet never echoes to a sound. As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind; I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more, As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before. Then a sadness settles o'er me, and a tremor seems to start For I know the flow'rs are shrivell'd hopes the garden is my heart.


Background The review summarized here provides a global overview of the uses and impacts of medico-legal evidence in cases of sexual assault of adolescents and adults. It examines the existing peer-reviewed scholarly and grey literature from industrialized and developing regions. Over 400 items on sexual assault, including books, journal articles, news articles, research reports, annual reports, discussion papers and monographs, were examined. The review outlines the historical and contemporary medico-legal responses to sexual assault victims, broadly describing the professionals, protocols and procedures involved in the collection and processing of medico-legal evidence. Findings are presented from studies that have evaluated the legal impact of such evidence in sexual assault cases, and factors that may create barriers to its successful use in criminal justice proceedings are discussed. The review identifies salient knowledge gaps and offers research recommendations for addressing them.


Images of climate change and global warming—including tens of thousands of photographs, charts, graphs, cartoons, illustrations, and moving images—have been spread across magazines, television, and films, and are scrolling down the growing array of websites devoted to some aspect of environmental news and climate change. The content of climate imagery falls into several broad categories, and not all of them have been effective in educating people about the dangers and causes of climate change or encouraging civic action and involvement. A new framing of local climate impacts and positive actions may encourage more people to take action.


This series of delightful storybooks is a flexible resource designed to help teachers engage and motivate young learners in the classroom. They are an ideal way to support children in the early stages of learning English. Teacher's Books and Audio Cassettes/CDs make the Storybooks simple to use: the Teacher's Books cover the entire level and include step-by-step teaching notes with ideas for classes of different ability, photocopiable worksheets, and 'If you have time' sections suggesting original ideas for games and activities. The Audio Cassettes/CDs feature all the titles in each level read aloud, exposing children to different voices while they have fun listening to the dramatisations. At levels 3 and 4 selected titles are designed to be read as a play. Watch your pupils' confidence in English grow as they act out the stories together!


The Prose Edda is a text on Old Norse Poetics, written about 1200 by the Norwegian poet and politican Snorri Sturlson, who also wrote the Heimskringla. The Prose Edda contains a wide variety of lore which a Skald (poet) of the time would need to know. The text is of interest to modern readers because it contains consistent narratives of many of the plot lines of Norse mythology. Although Snorri was a Christian, he treated the ancient Pagan mythology with great respect. To this end, Snorri created a quasi-historical backstory for the Norse Gods. Hence the Prose Edda is of interest because it contains one of the first attempts to devise a rational explanation for mythological and legendary events. It is also notable because it contains fragments of a number of manusripts which Snorri had access to, but which are now lost.


The significance of this qualitative study is in showing, for the first time, what American teachers are teaching about the Iraq war and their conceptions of controversy and balanced instruction in the context of their lessons. Through in-depth interviews, five high school social studies teachers' lessons related to the Iraq war were examined and analyzed through the lenses of Issues-Centered Education and teachers' curriculum gatekeeping. Findings show that teachers' conception of controversy and balanced instruction influences the way they teach about public controversies. Furthermore, the Iraq war controversy provides a unique opportunity to see how the Iraq war is taught during war time.


A dominating set $S$ of a graph $G$ is a global (strong) defensive alliance if for every vertex $v\in S$, the number of neighbors $v$ has in $S$ plus one is at least (greater than) the number of neighbors it has in $V\setminus S$. The dominating set $S$ is a global (strong) offensive alliance if for every vertex $v\in V\setminus S$, the number of neighbors $v$ has in $S$ is at least (greater than) the number of neighbors it has in $V\setminus S$ plus one. The minimum cardinality of a global defensive (strong defensive, offensive, strong offensive) alliance is denoted by $\gamma_a(G)$ ($\gamma_{\hat a}(G)$, $\gamma_o(G)$, $\gamma_{\hat o}(G))$. We compare each of the four parameters $\gamma_a, \gamma_{\hat a}, \gamma_o, \gamma_{\hat o}$ to the independent domination number $i$. We show that $i(G)\le \gamma ^2_a(G)-\gamma_a(G)+1$ and $i(G)\le \gamma_{\hat{a}}^2(G)-2\gamma_{\hat{a}}(G)+2$ for every graph; $i(G)\le \gamma ^2_a(G)/4 +\gamma_a(G)$ and $i(G)\le \gamma_{\hat{a}}^2(G)/4 +\gamma_{\hat{a}}(G)/2$ for every bipartite graph; $i(G)\le 2\gamma_a(G)-1$ and $i(G)=3\gamma_{\hat{a}}(G)/2 -1$ for every tree and describe the extremal graphs; and that $\gamma_o(T)\le 2i(T)-1$ and $i(T)\le \gamma_{\hat o}(T)-1$ for every tree. We use a lemma stating that $\beta(T)+2i(T)\ge n+1$ in every tree $T$ of order $n$ and independence number $\beta(T)$.


Tokenplan is a planner based on the use of Petri nets. Its main feature is the flexibility it offers in the way it builds the planning graph. The Fifth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling planning competition validated its behavior with a graphplan-like behavior. The next step is to demonstrate the benefits we expect from our planner in planning problems involving optimization and uncertainty handling.


Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a heterogeneous and fatal disease of the lung vasculature, where metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction may drive pathogenesis. Similar to the Warburg effect in cancer, a shift from mitochondrial oxidation to glycolysis occurs in diseased pulmonary vessels and the right ventricle. However, appreciation of metabolic events in PH beyond the Warburg effect is only just emerging. This Review discusses molecular, translational, and clinical concepts centered on the mitochondria and highlights promising, controversial, and challenging areas of investigation. If we can move beyond the "mountains" of obstacles in this field and elucidate these fundamental tenets of pulmonary vascular metabolism, such work has the potential to usher in much-needed diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the mitochondrial and metabolic management of PH.


Accurate climate surfaces are vital for applications relating to groundwater recharge modelling, evapotranspiration estimation, sediment yield, stream flow prediction and flood risk mapping. Interpolated climate surface accuracy is determined by the interpolation algorithm employed, the resolution of the generated surfaces, and the quality and density of the input data used. Although the primary input data of climate interpolations are usually meteorological data, other related (independent) variables are frequently incorporated in the interpolation process. One such variable is elevation, which is known to have a strong influence on climate. This research investigates the potential of 4 additional variables for inclusion in the interpolation process. Three of the variables, namely, slope gradient, slope aspect and hillshade, are related to topography, while the fourth is related to large water bodies (i.e. distance to oceans). Correlation analyses were used to determine the suitability of each of the 4 variables for interpolating climate surfaces in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Although moderate correlations were identified between climate records and distance to oceans, no significant correlation was found for slope gradient, slope aspect and most variations of hillshade. However, a moderate correlation was identified between rainfall records and hillshade with a 180° azimuth. This variable was consequently used in various combinations with distance to oceans and elevation to generate 8 sets of high-resolution (i.e. 3 arc second) climate surfaces of the Western Cape. According to an accuracy assessment of the resulting surfaces, distance to oceans reduced the mean error of monthly mean maximum daily temperature interpolations by 27%. Distance to oceans also improved the accuracy of monthly mean minimum daily temperature interpolations for October through April. Although hillshade (180° azimuth) did not improve accuracies for temperature interpolations, it did improve the accuracy of monthly rainfall surfaces for 4 months of the year. The combinations of input variables that produced the lowest monthly mean errors were used to generate a new set of surfaces using all available meteorological data. A pair-wise comparison of the new interpolated surfaces with existing climate surfaces revealed that the surfaces created using our methodology are, in general, more accurate than any existing interpolations.


Since Solem's provocative claim in the early 1980s that land snails in tropical forests are neither abundant nor diverse, at least 30 quantitative-ecological papers on tropical land snail communities have appeared. Jointly, these papers have shown that site diversity is, in fact, high in tropical forests; often more than 100 species have been recorded per site, which is somewhat more than normally found at sites in higher latitudes. At the same time, however, point diversities (which usually range between 10 and 30 species per quadrat) appear to be no different from the ones recorded for temperate localities, which suggests that the number of ways in which syntopic resource space can be subdivided among different land snail species has an upper limit that is no higher under tropical conditions. The available data do not allow much analysis of the ecological structuring processes of communities besides very coarse ones, e.g. the proportions of carnivores versus herbivores and Pulmonata versus non-pulmonates. Also, these first 30 years of research have shown that a number of serious methodological and conceptual issues need to be resolved for the field to move ahead; in particular whether empty shells from the forest floor may be used as a proxy for the contemporaneous communities. I make a number of suggestions for ways in which these obstacles may be removed. First, studies should be preceded by exploratory nested sampling in contiguous quadrats of increasing size, spanning several orders of magnitude. The shape of the triphasic species-area curve and nonlinear regression of the small-area end of the curve will help identify the quadrat and site areas that allow ecologically more meaningful studies. Second, researchers should be more aware of the trophic levels of species and restrict their analyses within guilds and within body size classes as much as possible. Testing species abundance distributions against ecologically explicit theoretical models may be a fruitful avenue for research. Finally, I argue that studies of this nature require species abundances that may only be found in tropical land snail communities that live on calcareous substrate, and therefore I suggest that malacologists aiming to understand community structure focus on limestone sites initially.


Qualitative data collection, especially conducting in-person interviews, presents challenges for researchers whose participants are geographically dispersed. Often alternative means of interviewing using communication technology are necessary. This was true for this focused ethnographic research exploring the experiences of participants who were connected to a particular cultural group by virtue of their similar experience but who were not located in the same geographical area. The purpose of this paper is to present the experience of using videoconferencing technology to collect experiential data from undergraduate nursing students and preceptors who were dispersed over a 640,000 square kilometer area in western and northern Canada during a rural hospital-based preceptorship. Recommendations for using videoconferencing as a medium for conducting in-depth qualitative interviews include using a high-bandwidth connection such as SuperNet or Web conferencing, and evaluating whether the type of information sought is likely to be shared in other than in-person face-to-face situations.


We are surrounded by images as never before: on Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube; on thousands of television channels; in digital games and virtual worlds; in media art and science. Without new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems, today's information explosion would be unmanageable. The digital image represents endless options for manipulation; images seem capable of changing interactively or even autonomously. This volume offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on these new image worlds and new analytical approaches to the visual. Imagery in the 21st Century examines this revolution in various fields, with researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities meeting to achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of the image in our time. The contributors explore and discuss new critical terms of multidisciplinary scope, from database economy to the dramaturgy of hypermedia, from visualizations in neuroscience to the image in bio art. They consider the power of the image in the development of human consciousness, pursue new definitions of visual phenomena, and examine new tools for image research and visual analysis.


Intellectual property rights (hereafter, "IPR") are legitimate exclusive rights, which confer upon their owners two basic prerogatives: the right to prevent any third party from applying or using the subject-matter of the IPR and, correlatively, the right to set the conditions of a licence in consideration for use of the IPR and as a reward for the innovative contribution contained therein. These exclusive rights are recognized in all patent laws as well as in the TRIPS agreement. Relying on the EC Treaty rule on abuse of a dominant position (Article 82 EC), the European Court of Justice (hereafter, the "ECJ") indicated in Magill and IMS that in certain exceptional circumstances IPR holders may be forced to grant a licence to other firms. The European Commission (hereafter, the "Commission") relied on this line of case law to mandate Microsoft in its March 2004 Decision to license its interoperability information to its competitors on the downstream market for work-group servers. This decision of the Commission was recently confirmed by the Court of First Instance of the EC (hereafter, the "CFI"), hence signaling that the first prerogative attached to the holding of an IPR, i.e. the right to exclude, could be subject to limitations under EC competition rules. More recently, the European Commission has taken an interest in the level of royalties that are charged by IP holders. The Commission adopted in February 2008 a decision imposing a fine of 899 million euros on Microsoft for non-compliance with its obligation to licence its downstream competitors under its March 2004 Decision. This decision required Microsoft to licence its interoperability information on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. This aspect of the decision effectively placed limits on the second prerogative attached to the possession of an IPR, i.e. the right to set the conditions attached to the granting of a licence. The bone of contention between the Commission and Microsoft related to the royalties Microsoft wanted to charge its competitors for the licence in question. The Commission rejected Microsoft's initial demand of a royalty rate of 3.87% of a licensee's product revenues for a patent licence and of 2.98% for a licence giving access to the secret interoperability information. Under the pressure of periodic penalty payments for non-compliance, Microsoft eventually agreed to provide a licence giving access to the interoperability information for a flat fee of 10,000 euros and an optional worldwide patent licence for a reduced royalty rate of 0.4% of licensees' product revenues.Yet, Microsoft has not been the only high-technology firm targeted by Commission investigations. In August 2007, the European Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Rambus on the ground that it infringed Article 82 EC by claiming unreasonable royalties for the licensing of certain patents for "Dynamic Random Access Memory" chips (DRAMs) subsequent to a so-called "patent ambush". In October 2007, the European Commission also decided to open formal antitrust proceedings against Qualcomm following complaints lodged by Ericsson, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, NEC and Panasonic, alleging that Qualcomm's licensing terms and conditions are not Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory ("FRAND") and, therefore, may breach EC competition rules. These last cases are particularly important as they are linked to the way in which firms seek to fund their research and development ("R&D") efforts and, in particular, to the funding of innovation through technology licensing. In the last two decades, the reliance upon "licensing" strategies as a source of revenue for IPR holders has seen a dramatic increase. Put simply, in return for an adequate remuneration (typically a royalty, but there may be other forms of consideration), innovators (licensors) grant to other firms (licensees) the right to use their proprietary technology to manufacture products for sale in downstream markets. IPR licensing strategies are not only pursued by organizations without manufacturing capabilities (e.g., university research centers). IPR holders active in downstream product markets (hereafter, "vertically-integrated firms") may be licensing their technologies to reap additional profits from their R&D expenditures, but also to obtain access to other firms' technologies through cross-licensing agreements. Licensing agreements are widely seen as pro-competitive. They typically benefit both licensors and licensees. The licensee gains access to new technologies, which it can use to improve its manufacturing operations or embed in its products to increase their functionalities. The licensor accrues revenues from his initial R&D expenditures that can be invested in the development of new technologies, which will in turn lead to additional revenues, hence creating a virtuous circle of innovation. Licensing agreements are generally heavily negotiated between licensors and licensees, which in the vast majority of the cases reach mutually satisfactory agreements. Yet, tensions may arise between licensors and licensees over the terms of their IPR licensing deals. Such tensions are particularly likely to arise when licensing agreements have the potential to be worth hundreds of millions of Euros and small variations in terms and conditions can be financially significant for both parties. Against this background, the objective of this paper is not to offer a comprehensive discussion of the complex relationship between IPR and competition law or even of the application of competition rules to licensing arrangements. Instead, it seeks to address what seems to be a growing reliance on competition rules to control the level of royalties IPR owners are entitled to charge their licensees. In order to keep the discussion brief, this paper's focus will be relatively narrow. First, this paper focuses on the application of EC competition rules, and in particular Article 82 EC, to IPR licensing agreements. Cases decided or investigations launched under Section 2 of the Sherman Act or other US antitrust law provisions are not reviewed. Second, this paper focuses on competition law issues arising from the licensing of IPR that are essential to an industry standard. This paper is divided into five parts. Following this introduction, Part II briefly explains the importance of standardization and the so-called FRAND regime, which applies to licensing agreements covering patents that are essential to a given industry standard. Then, Part III addresses the issues of market definition and the assessment of dominance in high-technology industries, which raise a number of complex issues that need to be considered carefully. Part IV analyses various licensing practices that may allegedly amount to abuses of a dominant position with a specific focus on price discrimination and what EC law refers to as "excessive" pricing. Finally, Part V contains a brief conclusion in which it is argued that technology markets are particularly complex and competition rules must thus be applied cautiously in such sectors as the risks of false positives are high and the impact of such risks on innovation can be large. Thus, in the absence of exclusionary practices - either at the upstream or downstream levels - competition law has little or no role to play when it comes to assessing the level of royalties agreed between licensors and licensees.


In the past few years, companies around the world have spent an increasing amount of resources addressing issues broadly classified as compliance. In the area of bribery there has been significant enforcement with strong financial and behavioral penalties under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"). The United Kingdom has introduced a new anti-bribery regime this year, which has increased companies' awareness of the possible negative impact from breaking the law. Similarly, corporate governance legislative initiatives, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, have transformed the compliance landscape for many companies.During this same period, there have been significant theoretical and empirical contributions as to the effects on a firm's performance of various corporate governance measures designed to reduce criminal behavior on the part of firms and individual managers. Quite a bit of this literature has focused on improved detection of wrong-doing. Given these changes, it is surprising that U.S. antitrust has not been on the cutting edge of compliance and detection. Antitrust's primary contribution has been the introduction of leniency programs around the world. In many ways leniency is effective in destabilizing existing cartels. However, it may be, in some cases, that leniency may actually strengthen certain cartels. Moreover, leniency may not be going after the right kinds of cartels - the worst offenders in terms of overcharges - and may instead be going after the cartels that are easy to find. Recent work suggests that the U.S. leniency program has not led to optimal deterrence.If we take these critiques of leniency and cartel detection seriously (especially relative to detection of other types of corporate crimes) antitrust needs to come up with additional ways to promote cartel detection. This article focuses on some suggestions to improve detection and compliance for antitrust with regard to cartels.


An algorithm for automatic parallel generation of three-dimensional unstructured computational meshes based on geometrical domain decomposition is proposed in this paper. Software package build upon proposed algorithm is described. Several practical examples of mesh generation on multiprocessor computational systems are given. It is shown that developed parallel algorithm enables us to reduce mesh generation time significantly (dozens of times). Moreover, it easily produces meshes with number of elements of order 5 · 107, construction of those on a single CPU is problematic. Questions of time consumption, efficiency of computations and quality of generated meshes are also considered.


Real-Time availability of information is of most importance in large scale distributed interactive simulation in network-centric communication. Information generated from multiple federates must be distributed and made available to interested parties and providing the required QoS for consistent communication. The remainder of this paper discuss design alternative for realizing high performance distributed interactive simulation (DIS) application using the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS), which is a QoS enabled publish/subscribe platform standard for time-critical, data-centric and large scale distributed networks. The considered application, in the civil domain, is used for remote education in driving schools. An experimental design evaluates the bandwidth and the latency performance of DDS and a comparison with the High Level Architecture performance is given.


Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is often used to study liquid crystals and liquid crystal systems. In this work, the factors that influence the IR absorbance of nematic liquid crystals and their consequences on FT-IR imaging are examined. In the IR spectrum of E7, ordering in the nematic phase causes a 28.7% reduction in the nitrile band height relative to the isotropic phase, and the combination of ordering and liquid crystal director alignment causes a 65.0% decrease in the nitrile band height. For a phase-separated blend of E7 and 10% NOA65 polymer, the FT-IR images were found to be concentration-based for the polymer-specific carbonyl band and phase/alignment-based, which masked the concentration dependence, for the liquid crystal-specific nitrile band. These findings were exploited to produce an FT-IR image of the isotropic-to-nematic phase transition of neat E7. This transition image emphasizes the dependence of liquid crystal bands on ordering and alignment and the need for caution in the interpretation of FT-IR images of liquid crystals and liquid crystal systems.


and its ability to respond to the crises of tomorrow? Since the end of the Cold War, humanitarian activity has grown exponentially to the point that, given the development of such organizations in number, weight, and professionalization, it is now possible to speak of a 'humanitarian sector' or an 'industry'.1 Polymorphic and complex, this sector is composed of different systems or 'networks of networks' with no central governance. We see three main components to this sector today: non-governmental organizations of extremely diverse size and missions, the United Nations humanitarian agencies, and finally, the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The largest of these organizations, whose headquarters are all in the Western world, manage large and constantly increasing budgets, and exercise an influence that, while fluid, is nonetheless real and one of a truly international civil society. Several factors today seem to demonstrate profound changes in the humanitarian sector. These are factors related first to the development of crises and vulnerabilities and the risks that are emerging, second to the environment around humanitarian action and the contemporary challenges to compliance with humanitarian principles, law, and access to victims, and third to new methods and changes in the composition of the sector itself. In this edition, the Review gives the floor to representatives of a number of humanitarian organizations and research centres to discuss each of these three aspects of change that we think are critical to the future of humanitarian action.


Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher* Hardback pictorial. Travel the World's Most Spectacular Routes. Have you dreamed of a travel experience where the journey is as much a part of the pleasure as the destination itself? Great Journeys presents more than 70 of the greatest journeys you could undertake, from ancient trails, like Machu Picchu, through to modern classics, like Route 66. Let Lonely Planet tell you what it feels like to take the trip and give you the information you need to start bringing your dreams to life. Explore the world! Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Andrew Bain, Sarah Baxter, Simon Sellars, Adam Skolnick About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013


Based on the growing scholarly recognition of domestic influences on foreign policy, political parties are considered to be among the main drivers behind foreign policy in most parliamentary democracies. In order to understand party influences on the governmental foreign policy agenda, we examine what determines the congruence between party manifestos and the ensuing government agreements in Belgium from 1978 to 2008. We find that a combination of variables related to political parties' negotiation position during government formation and regarding their ideological left-right position co-determine their impact on the content of the coalition agreement in terms of foreign policy priorities. This study shows that political parties differ in their foreign policy priorities and that they compete to see these priorities included in the future government's policy program.


Moca is a cell phone-facilitated clinical information system to improve diagnostic, screening and therapeutic capabilities in remote resource-poor settings. The software allows transmission of any medical file, whether a photo, x-ray, audio or video file, through a cell phone to (1) a central server for archiving and incorporation into an electronic medical record (to facilitate longitudinal care, quality control, and data mining), and (2) a remote specialist for real-time decision support (to leverage expertise). The open source software is designed as an end-to-end clinical information system that seamlessly connects health care workers to medical professionals. It is integrated with OpenMRS, an existing open source medical records system commonly used in developing countries.


"This study was designed to test the influence of the congruence between mothers' and fathers' fathering identity standards on fathers' later involvement with their children. Using two waves of data from the Fragile Families Study of Child Well-being, the effect of identity standard congruence at the time of the child's birth on father involvement one year later was tested using structural equation modeling with 2,107 sets of parents who shared varying relationship statuses (married, cohabiting, romantic noncohabiting, nonromantic). Also tested was whether this effect was mediated by fathers' satisfaction with the father identity and whether parents' relationship status at birth and at one year moderated the effect. Consistent with Burke's (1991, 1997) identity verification model, identity congruence did predict later involvement, such that when identity standards were more congruent, fathers were more involved with their children. Contrary to what was suggested by identity theory, identity satisfaction did not mediate the effect between congruence and involvement, and parents' relationship status only partially moderated the effect. Specifically, the effect of congruence on involvement was not moderated by parents' relationship status, but the association between identity satisfaction and involvement was stronger for noncohabiting fathers than cohabiting fathers. These findings suggest the need for broader conceptualizations of distress within identity theory. Further, it highlights differences between family structures in the ways in which identity translates into behavior -- personal satisfaction with an identity was more strongly associated with involvement when fathers did not reside with their children/children's mothers."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


A long, boring summer--that's what Anastasia has to look forward to when her best friend goes off to camp. She's thrilled when old Mrs. Bellingham answers her ad for a job as a Lady's Companion. Anastasia is sure her troubles are over--she'll be busy and earn money!But she doesn't expect to have to polish silver and serve at Mrs. Bellingham's granddaughter's birthday party as a maid! As if that isn't bad enough, she accidentally drops a piece of silverware down the garbage disposal and must use her earnings to pay for it! Is the summer destined to be a disaster?


An aged count once lived in Switzerland, who had an only son, but he was stupid, and could learn nothing. Then said the father, "Hark thee, my son, I can get nothing into thy head, let me try as I will. Thou must go from hence, I will give thee into the care of a celebrated master, who shall see what he can do with thee." The youth was sent into a strange town, and remained a whole year with the master. At the end of this time, he came home again, and his father asked, "Now, my son, what hast thou learnt?" "Father, I have learnt what the dogs say when they bark." "Lord have mercy on us!" cried the father; "is that all thou hast learnt? I will send thee into another town, to another master." The youth was taken thither, and stayed a year with this master likewise. When he came back the father again asked, "My son, what hast thou learnt?" He answered, "Father, I have learnt what the birds say." Then the father fell into a rage and said, "Oh, thou lost man, thou hast spent the precious time and learnt nothing; art thou not ashamed to appear before mine eyes? I will send thee to a third master, but if thou learnest nothing this time also, I will no longer be thy father." The youth remained a whole year with the third master also, and when he came home again, and his father inquired, "My son, what hast thou learnt?" he answered, "Dear father, I have this year learnt what the frogs croak." Then the father fell into the most furious anger, sprang up, called his people thither, and said, "This man is no longer my son, I drive him forth, and command you to take him out into the forest, and kill him." They took him forth, but when they should have killed him, they could not do it for pity, and let him go, and they cut the eyes and the tongue out of a deer that they might carry them to the old man as a token. The youth wandered on, and after some time came to a fortress where he begged for a night's lodging. "Yes," said the lord of the castle, "if thou wilt pass the night down there in the old tower, go thither; but I warn thee, it is at the peril of thy life, for it is full of wild dogs, which bark and howl without stopping, and at certain hours a man has to be given to them, whom they at once devour." The whole district was in sorrow and dismay because of them, and yet no one could do anything to stop this. The youth, however, was without fear, and said, "Just let me go down to the barking dogs, and give me something that I can throw to them; they will do nothing to harm me." As he himself would have it so, they gave him some food for the wild animals, and led him down to the tower. When he went inside, the dogs did not bark at him, but wagged their tails quite amicably around him, ate what he set before them, and did not hurt one hair of his head. Next morning, to the astonishment of everyone, he came out again safe and unharmed, and said to the lord of the castle, "The dogs have revealed to me, in their own language, why they dwell there, and bring evil on the land. They are bewitched, and are obliged to watch over a great treasure which is below in the tower, and they can have no rest until it is taken away, and I have likewise learnt, from their discourse, how that is to be done." Then all who heard this rejoiced, and the lord of the castle said he would adopt him as a son if he accomplished it successfully. He went down again, and as he knew what he had to do, he did it thoroughly, and brought a chest full of gold out with him. The howling of the wild dogs was henceforth heard no more; they had disappeared, and the country was freed from the trouble. After some time he took it into his head that he would travel to Rome. On the way he passed by a marsh, in which a number of frogs were sitting croaking. He listened to them, and when he became aware of what they were saying, he grew very thoughtful and sad. At last he arrived in Rome, where the Pope had just died, and there was great difficulty as to whom they should appoint as his successor. They at length agreed that the person should be chosen as pope who should be distinguished by some divine and miraculous token. And just as that was decided on, the young count entered into the church, and suddenly two snow-white doves flew on his shoulders and remained sitting there. The ecclesiastics recognized therein the token from above, and asked him on the spot if he would be pope. He was undecided, and knew not if he were worthy of this, but the doves counselled him to do it, and at length he said yes. Then was he anointed and consecrated, and thus was fulfilled what he had heard from the frogs on his way, which had so affected him, that he was to be his Holiness the Pope. Then he had to


Timing is everything. Even the most meritorious lawsuit will be dismissed if the statute of limitations has run on the plaintiff's claim. In class action litigation, this hurdle is particularly daunting. Supreme Court precedent makes clear that if a class action complaint is timely filed, then the claims of all class members are deemed timely. Likewise, if a motion to certify the class is denied, absent class members may seek to intervene in the pending action or to file individual actions and either way, the statute of limitations is tolled from the date of filing of the class action complaint until denial of the motion to certify. But what if the absent class members seek to present their claims collectively in the context of a successive class action? Is the statute of limitations tolled in this context as well? Intuitively, one might think that the same policies that justify tolling in the first two situations also justify tolling in the successive class action context. Yet a majority of the federal Courts of Appeals that have addressed this issue have denied tolling in the successive class action context. Given the volume of class action litigation, the lack of control that absent class members have over the timing of the certification decision, and the devastating effect the statute of limitations may have on their claims, it behooves us to understand why the courts have resolved the tolling issue for successive class actions differently and whether such differential treatment is justified. This Article analyzes three sets of policies that have influenced the courts in this context: the policies underlying statutes of limitations; the policies underlying Rule 23; and the policies underlying preclusion doctrine. A careful analysis of these competing policies calls the majority rule into question in two common circumstances: where certification initially was denied because of a problem with the class representative or because of a problem with the class itself that the successive class action seeks to remedy. Only where there is a problem with the class itself and the successive class action fails to address that problem does the combination of relevant policies counsel against tolling.


From a global perspective, the single most noticeable fact about corporate governance is the radical dichotomy between dispersed ownership and concentrated ownerships systems, with the latter being much in the majority. Several prominent academics have offered grand theories to explain when dispersed share ownership arises, which have emphasized either legal or political preconditions. Nonetheless, mounting evidence suggests that these theories are overgeneralized and, in particular, do not account for the appearance (to varying degrees) of dispersed ownership in all securities markets. This article concludes that neither legal rules nor political conditions can adequately explain the spread of dispersed ownership across both the U.S. and the U.K., which developments occurred at different times, in different political and legal environments, and were precipitated by different exogenous factors. Instead, this article offers an alternative and simpler explanation: dispersed ownership arises principally from private ordering, with legal rules playing a minor role at best. Intermediaries - investment bankers, stock exchanges, and others - fill the void created by legal shortcomings and create bonding mechanisms that allow dispersed ownership to spread beyond the limited geographic area in which the founding entrepreneur is known and trusted. This process has two steps: (1) the appearance of numerous minority shareholders, gradually spreading across a broad geographic area, and (2) the break-up of controlling blocks. At the latter stage, historical contingencies have played a major role. In the United States, the merger boom of the 1890s played a critical role, and in the U.K. punitive tax changes compelled controlling shareholders to sell. The only common denominators across the two countries were: (1) political changes followed once share ownership dispersion was achieved, as law followed the market; and (2) private ordering and self-regulation encouraged minority owners to invest and protected their voting and control rights. This may suggest that in decentralized political economies (in which political and economic power tend to be separated and in which self-regulation is more common, such as the U.S. and the U.K.), dispersed ownership is more likely to arise, but it can arise for individual firms through private ordering in any market.


In the darkest depths of a corporate merger agreement lies the MAC clause, a term that permits the acquirer to walk away from a transaction if, between signing and closing, the target company experiences a "Material Adverse Change." Multi-billion dollar deals rise or fall based on the anticipated interpretation of a MAC clause, and invocation of the clause in a sensitive transaction could trigger the collapse of the global financial system. In short, the MAC clause is the most important contract term of our time. And yet - due to an almost total lack of case law - no one knows what it means.In this Article I explain the MAC clause using a new conceptual tool for drafting and interpreting contracts, the "standard clause analysis." For each default rule of Contract law, practitioners can be expected to develop a "standard clause analog" in order to easily contract around the default. Given this relationship between default rules and their standard clause analogs, if one is given, the other can be deduced. This is the "standard clause analysis," and it can be used in two ways, which I call "forward" and "reverse." In a forward standard clause analysis, one begins with a default rule and advances to its standard clause analog. It can be used to predict the existence of standard clause analogs that have yet to be observed. And in a reverse standard clause analysis, one begins with a standard clause and advances to the default rule with which it is associated. The reverse analysis is a powerful method for interpreting contract terms.After introducing and describing the standard clause analysis, I put it to practical use. I begin by applying the forward analysis to the common law doctrine of Frustration, and predict that a "Frustration clause" exists, or will soon come into being, and that it would resemble a reverse-Force Majeure clause and be found in relatively high-value contracts. These predictions are then confirmed with several examples of Frustration clauses observed in the real world: The Morals clause, the Walkaway clause and, most notably, the MAC clause.Then I apply the reverse analysis to the MAC clause and show it to be a standard clause analog of the Frustration doctrine that alters the default rule by (a) permitting excuse on the basis of a significant (but less than total) loss in contractual value, (b) excusing the acquirer based on frustration of a "secondary" (as opposed to its "primary") purpose, and (c) shifting major exogenous risks (such as an economic recession or a natural disaster) from the target to the acquirer.I conclude with a case study to demonstrate the difference between the MAC clause and the default Frustration doctrine: Bank of America's recent $50 billion acquisition of Merrill Lynch in late 2008. During the brief three-month period between signing and closing, Merrill lost an astounding $15 billion, but the conventional wisdom - shared by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, among others - is that Merrill's loss failed to trigger the MAC clause. I disagree. While the default Frustration doctrine would not have offered any relief, Bank of America did indeed have viable grounds to invoke the MAC clause, properly understood, and walk away from the Merrill deal.


Phizzwhizzing new cover look and branding for the World's NUMBER ONE Storyteller! BOY, Roald Dahl's bestselling autobiography, is full of hilarious anecdotes about his childhood and school days, illustrated by Quentin Blake. As a boy, all sorts of unusual things happened to Roald Dahl. There was the time he and four school friends got their revenge on beastly Mrs Prachett in her sweet shop. There are stories of holidays in fishing boats, African adventures and the days of tasting chocolate for Cadbury's. You'll hear tales of horrible school bullies and the motor-car accident when Roald's nose was nearly sliced clean off . . . Roald Dahl vividly shares his memories; some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. All are true. You can listen to all of Roald Dahl's stories on Puffin Audiobooks, read by some very famous voices, including Kate Winslet, David Walliams and Steven Fry - plus there are added squelchy sound effects from Pinewood Studios! Also look out for new Roald Dahl apps in the App store and Google Play- including the disgusting TWIT OR MISS! and HOUSE OF TWITS inspired by the revolting Twits.


We present the work developed within the science team of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer SpectroImager (VSI) during the Phase A studies. VSI aims at delivering ∼ 1 milliarcsecond resolution data cubes in the near-infrared, with several spectral resolutions up to 12 000, by combining up to 8 VLTI telescopes. In the design of an instrument, the science case plays a central role by supporting the instrument construction decision, defining the top-level requirements and balancing design options. The overall science philosophy of VSI was that of a general user instrument serving a broad community. The science team addressed themes which included several areas of astrophysics and illustrated specific modes of operation of the instrument: a) YSO disks and winds; b) Multiplicity of young stars; c) Exoplanets; d) Debris disks; e) Stellar surface imaging; f) The environments of evolved stars; g) AGN tori; h) AGN's Broad Line Region; i) Supermassive black-holes; and j) Microlensing. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: a) The accessible targets and related science are extremely sensitive to the instrument limiting magnitude; the instrument should be optimized for sensitivity and have its own fringe tracker. b) Most of the science cases are readily achievable with on-axis fringe tracking, off-axis fringe tracking enabling extra science. c) In most targets (YSOs, evolved stars and AGNs), the interpretation and analysis of circumstellar/nuclear dust morphology requires direct access to the gas via spectral resolved studies of emission lines, requiring at least a spectral resolution of 2 500. d) To routinely deliver images at the required sensitivity, the number of telescopes in determinant, with 6 telescopes being favored. e) The factorial increase in the number of closure phases and visibilities, gained in a single observation, makes massive surveys of parameters and related science for the first time possible. f) High dynamic range imaging and very high dynamic range differential closure phase are possible allowing the study of debris disks and characterization of pegasides. g) Spectro-imaging in the near-infrared is highly complementary to ALMA, adaptive optics and interferometric imaging in the thermal infrared.


Get your A in gear! They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes(TM) has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'(TM) motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because: - They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.- They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.- The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time. And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!


The growing importance of knowledge-based competition has prompted many firms to build international cooperative ventures for skills acquisition and knowledge building. Based on an empirical study of a close collaboration in the knowledge intensive area between a British and a Japanese high-technology firm, the paper examines how the socially embedded nature of knowledge can impede cross-national collaborative work and knowledge sharing. The paper uses Michael Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowledge' in a much wider societal context. It develops a conceptual model for analysing the main differences and 'points of friction' between the British 'professional' and the Japanese 'organisational' models of organisation of knowledge in high-level technical work. It shows how the dominant form of knowledge held in organisations, its degree of tacitness, and the way in which it is structured, utilised and transmitted can vary considerably between firms in different societal settings. The study demonstrates a strong presence of 'societal effects' on the knowledge base of the firm and how this might impose a limit on knowledge sharing and organisational learning across national boundaries.


The world is getting digitalized, demands for new and emerging technologies have reached its peak, and customer demands have taken a U-turn. To cope with such unique requirements many systems and system devices are into the market and one of such enhancing technology is MEMS. MEMS are systems of small size, light weight, enhanced performance and reliability finding widest of applications in sectors of Automotive and instrumentation. A typical MEMS Sensor is at least one order of magnitude smaller than the traditional sensors used to measure instantaneous flow quantities like Pressure and Velocity. In this we focus on the outlook of measurement of Pressures like fluctuating wall pressure and wall shear stress and provide general background Design Criteria. These micro pressure sensors can also resolve all relevant scales even in high Reynolds number turbulent flows and arrays of micro pressure sensors make it feasible. MEMS sensor measure the pressure in term of deflection of sensing plate. In this paper we have designed and simulated the micro pressure sensor using MEMS tool COMSOL Multiphysics. The analysis is carried out for different parameters and results are verified.


In the present paper a kinetic model for vehicular traffic leading to multivalued fundamental diagrams is developed and investigated in detail. For this model phase transitions can appear depending on the local density and velocity of the flow. A derivation of associated macroscopic traffic flow equations from the kinetic equation is given. Moreover, numerical experiments show the appearance of stop and go waves for highway traffic with a bottleneck.


WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult I had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.


The present study examines the impact of several industry characteristics on the propensity to collude using a dataset on the existence of collusion across Dutch industries during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The results of the Probit model with sample selection indicate that our sample of Dutch concerted practices is non-random in the sense that it only consists of anti-competitive agreements that were subject of an antitrust immunity behavior. Our bivariate probit model with sample selection indicates that concerted practices are less likely to be seen in service industries relative to manufacturing industries. The results also show that it is more likely that firms engaged in concerted practices in unconcentrated industries. Furthermore, we could not find a non-linear relationship between concentration and the presence of collusion. There is also strong evidence from all the regressions that concerted practices are less likely in industries where entry is more possible. Interestingly, our estimation results indicate that there is a positive correlation between cartel prevalence and import penetration, which implies that import competition did not discipline firm behavior and foreign importers joined the cartel paradise in the Netherlands. As to the role of measures of asymmetry on concerted practice prevalence, the association between patenting activity and propensity to engage in collusion is ambiguous in the current setting, while advertising intensity, as the second measure of asymmetry, is associated with increased likelihood of collusion. Contrary to the previous empirical findings, market growth has been found to have a negative effect on the probability of a concerted practice in an industry. Furthermore, our proposition that growing demand might attract new entrants, which, in turn, hampers collusion, has been falsified in the current context.


We focus on the problem of sequential decision making in partially observable environments shared with other agents of uncertain types having similar or conflicting objectives. This problem has been previously formalized by multiple frameworks one of which is the interactive dynamic influence diagram (I-DID), which generalizes the well-known influence diagram to the multiagent setting. I-DIDs are graphical models and may be used to compute the policy of an agent given its belief over the physical state and others' models, which changes as the agent acts and observes in the multiagent setting.

As we may expect, solving I-DIDs is computationally hard. This is predominantly due to the large space of candidate models ascribed to the other agents and its exponential growth over time. We present two methods for reducing the size of the model space and stemming its exponential growth. Both these methods involve aggregating individual models into equivalence classes. Our first method groups together behaviorally equivalent models and selects only those models for updating which will result in predictive behaviors that are distinct from others in the updated model space. The second method further compacts the model space by focusing on portions of the behavioral predictions. Specifically, we cluster actionally equivalent models that prescribe identical actions at a single time step. Exactly identifying the equivalences would require us to solve all models in the initial set. We avoid this by selectively solving some of the models, thereby introducing an approximation. We discuss the error introduced by the approximation, and empirically demonstrate the improved efficiency in solving I-DIDs due to the equivalences.


Recent evidence has suggested that conflict between parents and children is not always detrimental to children's well-being; parent-child conflict can be beneficial to children's problem-solving ability and social skills when it occurs in the context of a supportive parent-child relationship. The current study explored the idea that parent-child conflict and parent sensitivity are interrelated behaviors that create a pattern of interaction. Past research has also recognized that parent-child relationships are affected by multiple levels of context. Therefore, a second avenue of exploration in the current study was how stress and vulnerability in the family context was associated with the conflict styles that parents and children use. Results demonstrated that parent-child conflict and parent sensitivity behaviors can be categorized into three conflict styles. A positive style, demonstrated among mother-child and father-child pairs when children were 54 months old and in 1st grade, was characterized by high parent sensitivity and low parent-child conflict. A moderate style, characterized by average sensitivity and low-to-moderate conflict, and an abrasive style, characterized by low sensitivity and high conflict, were identified for both parents at 54 months and mother-child pairs at 1st grade. At 1st grade, some father-child pairs were also classified as either dynamic, characterized by high sensitivity and moderate-to-high conflict, or disengaged, characterized by low-to-moderate sensitivity and low-to-moderate conflict. Stress originating from the child's behavior tended to be more predictive of a more negative parent-child conflict style in preschool, whereas stress originating from the parent tended to be more predictive of a more negative conflict style in 1st grade. Generally, family stress was related to a more negative conflict style when parents' vulnerability to the negative effects of stress was also high. And finally, the accumulation of child-centered stress for mothers and parent-centered stress for fathers across the transition to elementary school was associated with a more negative parent-child conflict style at 1st grade.


In recent times, the Malaysian public has expressed fears of increasing crime rate. However, the authorities have tried to dispel public fears by stating that crime rate has actually taken a dip and public worry is more a matter of perception rather than a fear caused by a real and genuine basis. The police point out that there will be a time gap between reduction of crime rate and a raise in public confidence as public confidence does not go up immediately when there has been an improvement in the crime situation. This paper investigated the level of fear of the public pertaining to being a victim of crime. Additionally, this paper investigated the factors that influenced the public opinion of the police such as police effectiveness in combating crime, corruption, brutality and personal links between police and the public. It is essential that the public should have a positive perception of the police force so that the force may be able to count on public cooperation in their efforts to combat crime and maintain public order. A sample size of 407 was taken for this study. The sample was stratified according to age groups and the level of education. It was found that most of the educated members from urban areas were not happy with the police as they felt that the police could be more effective in combating crime. This group also registered a higher fear level of being a crime victim. Fear of becoming a crime victim amongst the respondents. The respondents also felt that the recently repealed Emergency Ordinance (EO) which enables detention without trial should be reinstated. The public also felt that the police need more formidable intelligence gathering and the courts should mete out heavier punishment.


This thesis covers two important fields in financial mathematics, namely the continuous time portfolio optimisation and credit risk modelling. We analyse optimisation problems of portfolios of Call and Put options on the stock and/or the zero coupon bond issued by a firm with default risk. We use the martingale approach for dynamic optimisation problems. Our findings show that the riskier the option gets, the less proportion of his wealth the investor allocates to the risky asset. Further, we analyse the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market quotes on the Eurobonds issued by Turkish sovereign for building the term structure of the sovereign credit risk. Two methods are introduced and compared for bootstrapping the risk-neutral probabilities of default (PD) in an intensity based (or reduced form) credit risk modelling approach. We compare the market-implied PDs with the actual PDs reported by credit rating agencies based on historical experience. Our results highlight the market price of the sovereign credit risk depending on the assigned rating category in the sampling period. Finally, we find an optimal leverage strategy for delivering the payments promised by a Constant Proportion Debt Obligation (CPDO). The problem is solved via the introduction and explicit solution of a stochastic control problem by transforming the related Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Equation into its dual. Contrary to the industry practise, the optimal leverage function we derive is a non-linear function of the CPDO asset value. The simulations show promising behaviour of the optimal leverage function compared with the one popular among practitioners.


This study is investigating the relationship between emotional intelligence and agility of the workforce in order to determine how indicators of emotional intelligence facilitate the agility at the individual level. Statistical Population of this study includes managers, supervisors and staffs of food companies and the simple random sampling method is used. Data has been analyzed by using hierarchical regression statistical methods and comparing average. The survey results have showed that emotional intelligence factors have an impact on workforce agility .The results also have revealed that factors which are related to interpersonal competence (Self-awareness, self-control and self-motivation) have more effects on the agility than factors which are related to social competence (empathy and relation management) and have a greater role in workforce agility changes. Use of the results of this survey in the selection and training of human resources help to create appropriate environment for changing management and organizations movement to agility.


Focus on Writing is an academic writing program that provides students with essential tools to master not only the key steps in the writing process, but also the grammatical structures, lexical knowledge, and rhetorical modes essential for academic writing. This five-level series progresses with students as they grow in confidence and ability from sentence level (Book 1) through paragraphs (Books 1-3) and essays (Books 3-5). Each unit leads writers step-by-step through the process of prewriting, writing a first draft, revising, and editing before producing a final draft. Not only do students write an entire paragraph or essay in each unit, they are also given plenty of practice at the sentence and word levels. Features: * Each unit teaches students how to use one or more common organizational structures: narrative, description, opinion, persuasion, compare-contrast, problem-solution, and cause-effect. * High-interest readings and a choice of writing assignments provide a springboard for students' writing. * Grammar presentation and practice correlated to Focus on Grammar make the connection between grammar and writing clear. * Building Word Knowledge mini-lessons and exercises teach students' how to use word forms, collocations, idioms, compounds, descriptive details, phrasal verbs and other types of vocabulary in their writing. * Revision and Editing checklists for each writing assignment help students rewrite and polish their first drafts. *Online Teacher's Manuals contain model lesson plans, unit overviews, timed writing assignments, authentic student models, and answer keys.


Solar photo-voltaic (PV) and wind offer to bring both clean energy and clean water to remote regions and peri-urban areas in the world, outside the conventional electric grids. One out of seven people has no electric power available that would bring light to the home, cook the food, pump to access water and purify or re-use it. Off-grid systems are scalable and can be designed to any size, from household to village and community levels. The renewable energy cost development is remarkable and can make electric power affordable also for the poorest.
 Renewables promise an end to the era where energy security is closely related to geopolitics. The expenditure is up-front capital cost while "fuel" is free. With renewables, there is no geopolitical pressure where one country has deposits of a fossil fuel while another does not.
 This book aims to show how clean water and clean energy are reachable for all while contributing to both a better climate and a healthier life.
 ISBN: 9781789062953 (eBook)


The story of Captain D. Michael Abrashoff and his command of USS Benfold has become legendary inside and outside the Navy. Now Abrashoff offers this fascinating tale of top-down change for anyone trying to navigate today's uncertain business seas. When Captain Abrashoff took over as commander of USS Benfold, a ship armed with every cutting-edge system available, it was like a business that had all the latest technology but only some of the productivity. Knowing that responsibility for improving performance rested with him, he realized he had to improve his own leadership skills before he could improve his ship. Within months he created a crew of confident and inspired problem-solvers eager to take the initiative and take responsibility for their actions. The slogan on board became "It's your ship," and Benfold was soon recognized far and wide as a model of naval efficiency. How did Abrashoff do it? Against the backdrop of today's United States Navy-Benfold was a key player in our Persian Gulf fleet-Abrashoff shares his secrets of successful management including: *See the ship through the eyes of the crew: By soliciting a sailor's suggestions, Abrashoff drastically reduced tedious chores that provided little additional value. *Communicate, communicate, communicate: The more Abrashoff communicated the plan, the better the crew's performance. His crew would eventually call him "Megaphone Mike," since they heard from him so often. *Create discipline by focusing on purpose: Discipline skyrocketed when Abrashoff's crew believed that what they were doing was important. Listen aggressively: After learning that many sailors wanted to use the GI Bill, Abrashoff brought a test official aboard the ship-and held the SATs forty miles off the Iraqi coast. From achieving amazing cost savings to winning the highest gunnery score in the Pacific Fleet, Captain Abrashoff's extraordinary campaign sent shock waves through the U.S. Navy. It can help you change the course of your ship, no matter where your business battles are fought.


Examining developments in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this authoritative collection of essays studies the evolving practice of constitutional law and constitutionalism in Asia. It provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse constitutional issues and developments in sixteen East, Southeast and South Asian countries. It also discusses the types of constitutionalism that exist and the general trends in constitutional developments whilst offering comparative, historical and analytical perspectives on Asian constitutionalism. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars alike.


Xmrk encodes a putative transmembrane glycoprotein of the tyrosine kinase family and is a melanoma‐inducing gene in Xiphophorus. We attempted to investigate the biological function of the putative Xmrk receptor by characterizing its signalling properties. Since a potential ligand for Xmrk has not yet been identified, it has been difficult to analyse the biochemical properties and biological function of this cell surface protein. In an approach towards such analyses, the Xmrk extracellular domain was replaced by the closely related ligand‐binding domain sequences of the human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) and the ligand‐induced activity of the chimeric HER‐Xmrk protein was examined. We show that the Xmrk protein is a functional receptor tyrosine kinase, is highly active in malignant melanoma and displays a constitutive autophosphorylation activity possibly due to an activating mutation in its extracellular or transmembrane domain. In the focus formation assay the HER‐Xmrk chimera is a potent transforming protein equivalent to other tyrosine kinase oncoproteins.


In a globally fast-changing world, dedicated conservationists play a central role in societies moving towards the achievement of sustainable development. How do people become advocates for nature? Research suggests that childhood experiences in natural places are core determinants for the development of environmental stewardship. In many developing countries, however, access to intact natural environments is limited. This study explores formative influences on individuals who actively contribute to nature conservation and environmental education (EE) in Madagascar. We conducted nine semi-structured interviews with participants in a national EE workshop. Formative experiences were reported mainly from university years, and influential persons were researchers and high school teachers, many from abroad. The media also play a considerable role, while negative experiences, familial influences, or experience of natural areas during childhood were rarely mentioned. In contrast to former studies, the results suggest that direct experiences of nature can still be decisive in determining a young person's path as a dedicated environmental practitioner during young adulthood. Role models who are active in the conservation and sustainable development fields can compensate for a lack of familial models. These findings might require a rethinking of current educational practices in Madagascar because children might not be the only important group to target with educational interventions.


Spiritus 4 (2004): 84–90 © 2004 by The Johns Hopkins University Press I Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me, untie or break that knot again; Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.1


This thesis discusses device physics, modeling and design issues of nanoscale transistors at the quantum level. The principle topics addressed in this report are 1) an implementation of appropriate physics and methodology in device modeling, 2) development of a new TCAD (technology computer aided design) tool for quantum level device simulation, 3) examination and assessment of new features of carrier transport in nano-scale transistors, and 4) exploration of device design issues near the ultimate scaling limit with the help of the developed tools. We concentrate on the technical issues by investigating a double-gate structure, which has been widely accepted as the ideal device structure for ultimate CMOS scaling. We focus on quantum effects and non-equilibrium, near-ballistic transport in extremely scaled transistors (in contrast to quasi-equilibrium, scattering-dominant transport in long channel devices), where a non-equilibrium Green's function formalism (NEGF) has been used to deal with the quantum transport problem.


Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries. Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history. All the Lives in this volume are presented for the first time in English translation, together with authoritative editions of their Greek texts.


We exploit the falloff of acuity in the visual periphery to accelerate graphics computation by a factor of 5-6 on a desktop HD display (1920x1080). Our method tracks the user's gaze point and renders three image layers around it at progressively higher angular size but lower sampling rate. The three layers are then magnified to display resolution and smoothly composited. We develop a general and efficient antialiasing algorithm easily retrofitted into existing graphics code to minimize "twinkling" artifacts in the lower-resolution layers. A standard psychophysical model for acuity falloff assumes that minimum detectable angular size increases linearly as a function of eccentricity. Given the slope characterizing this falloff, we automatically compute layer sizes and sampling rates. The result looks like a full-resolution image but reduces the number of pixels shaded by a factor of 10-15. We performed a user study to validate these results. It identifies two levels of foveation quality: a more conservative one in which users reported foveated rendering quality as equivalent to or better than non-foveated when directly shown both, and a more aggressive one in which users were unable to correctly label as increasing or decreasing a short quality progression relative to a high-quality foveated reference. Based on this user study, we obtain a slope value for the model of 1.32-1.65 arc minutes per degree of eccentricity. This allows us to predict two future advantages of foveated rendering: (1) bigger savings with larger, sharper displays than exist currently (e.g. 100 times speedup at a field of view of 70° and resolution matching foveal acuity), and (2) a roughly linear (rather than quadratic or worse) increase in rendering cost with increasing display field of view, for planar displays at a constant sharpness.


Abstract. The cloud Optical Centroid Pressure (OCP) is a satellite-derived parameter that is commonly used in trace-gas retrievals to account for the effects of clouds on near-infrared through ultraviolet radiance measurements. Fast simulators are desirable to further expand the use of cloud OCP retrievals into the operational and climate communities for applications such as data assimilation and evaluation of cloud vertical structure in general circulation models. In this paper, we develop and validate fast simulators that provide estimates of the cloud OCP given a vertical profile of optical extinction. We use a pressure-weighting scheme where the weights depend upon optical parameters of clouds and/or aerosols. A cloud weighting function is easily extracted using this formulation. We then use fast simulators to compare two different satellite cloud OCP retrievals, from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), with estimates based on collocated cloud extinction profiles from a combination of CloudSat radar and MODIS visible radiance data. These comparisons are made over a wide range of conditions to provide a comprehensive validation of the OMI cloud OCP retrievals. We find generally good agreement between OMI cloud OCPs and those predicted by CloudSat. However, the OMI cloud OCPs from the two independent algorithms agree better with each other than either does with the estimates from CloudSat/MODIS. Differences between OMI cloud OCPs and those based on CloudSat/MODIS may result from undetected snow/ice at the surface, cloud 3-D effects, cases of low clouds obscurred by ground-clutter in CloudSat observations and by opaque high clouds in CALIPSO lidar observations, and the fact that CloudSat/CALIPSO only observes a relatively small fraction of an OMI field-of-view.


#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.


This article investigates the application of capital budgeting techniques and the incorporation of risk into the capital budgeting process among a sample of South African industrial firms listed on the JSE Securities Exchange for at least ten years. Previous international and local research on this topic indicated a preference for the internal rate of return (IRR) as a capital budgeting method over the net present value (NPV), and that risk incorporation was relatively rarely incorporated into the capital budgeting process. The results of this study indicate that the NPV is just as popular as, and sometimes more so than, the IRR. Furthermore, compared to previous studies, risk is incorporated into evaluating capital budgeting projects more often. Sensitivity analysis is the most popular method, but adjustments to the cash flows and discount rate are becoming more popular. During the last decade the use of non-financial criteria to accept or reject a project has also increased in South Africa.


A New Jersey resident, injured while working in his home state, seeks relief from the United Kingdom manufacturer of a shearing machine marketed at trade shows held at various American locations. What reason is there to prevent New Jersey from providing a forum for its injured resident? In J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, a plurality of the United States Supreme Court invoked both "individual liberty" and "sovereign authority" to justify its conclusion that New Jersey lacked personal jurisdiction over the British defendant. But the plurality's failure to identify the liberty and sovereignty interests at stake have left personal-jurisdiction jurisprudence even more conceptually muddled and practically confused than it was before the Court's most recent foray into the area.When Pennoyer v. Neff controlled issues of personal jurisdiction, sovereignty's role was clear: a state could not exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant unless the state had physical power over that defendant. Since the Court abandoned Pennoyer and replaced it with International Shoe's emphasis on "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice," the Court has struggled to explain why state lines should be relevant at all in personal-jurisdiction cases. In World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, the Court offered its best explanation to date, recognizing that "the sovereign power to try causes in their courts" was an essential attribute of state sovereignty, but emphasizing that "[t]he sovereignty of each State, in turn, implied a limitation on the sovereignty of all of its sister States." As abstract as it is, that explanation provides a touchstone for invocations of sovereignty in personal-jurisdiction cases: The inquiry must focus on the impact a forum state's exercise of jurisdiction will have on the sovereign interests of other states or countries, not on the connection between the defendant and the forum state. If the United Kingdom were prepared to require its corporations to submit to worldwide jurisdiction as the price for obtaining corporate status, there would be no sovereignty-based reason for the Supreme Court to limit New Jersey's power to assert jurisdiction over an entity incorporated in the United Kingdom.Recognizing that personal jurisdiction's concern with sovereignty should focus on whether the forum state's assertion of jurisdiction impermissibly interferes with the interests of some other state also sheds light on the liberty interest emphasized in the J. McIntyre opinion. If limits on New Jersey's personal jurisdiction protect the United Kingdom's interest in regulating persons, entities, and activities within the United Kingdom's sphere of sovereign authority, the same limits also safeguard the liberty interests of persons and entities who act in accordance with the United Kingdom's regulatory scheme. That is, jurisdictional rules protect an entity against defending itself in a forum likely to ignore the legal norms and rules the entity might reasonably expect to govern its legal affairs.These concerns about the sovereign interests of other jurisdictions and the expectations of parties who rely on particular rules of law dominate the discussion in a closely related doctrinal area: choice of law. Not surprisingly, choice of law is the "elephant in the room" in most personal-jurisdiction cases. The Supreme Court's explicit acknowledgment that choice of law plays a role in jurisdictional determinations has been grudging at best. But the Court's holdings (and the doctrinal rules it has developed) have — with narrow exceptions — been consistent with the premise that choice of law is a critical factor in jurisdictional determinations. The cases in which the Court has held that the forum lacked personal jurisdiction have almost uniformly been cases in which application of forum law posed an unjustified threat to the regulatory scheme of another jurisdiction and a concomitant danger to defendants who assumed that their actions would be governed by that regulatory scheme. Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, decided concurrently with J. McIntyre, fits that pattern; J. McIntyre does not.Part I explores the reasons for imposing limits on personal jurisdiction and argues that both the sovereignty and liberty bases for those limits are rooted in choice-of-law concerns: balancing the forum state's interest against the power of the defendant's home state to regulate local activity, and the right of local actors to rely on their home state's regulatory scheme. When application of forum law would not interfere with the power of the home state to regulate purely local activity and would not interfere with the reasonable reliance interests of the defendant, there is no persuasive reason to limit the forum's exercise of personal jurisdiction.Part II explains how many of the principal features of existing personal-jurisdiction doctrine — including the decline of in-rem jurisdiction, the narrow limits on general jurisdiction, and the "purposeful availment" standard for specific jurisdiction — are consistent with a primary focus on choice of law.Part III then examines the implications of J. McIntyre for personal-jurisdiction jurisprudence. The plurality opinion — if it were ever to become law — would repudiate much of the jurisdictional learning of the past forty years and would jeopardize the ability of states to protect their citizens against defective products purchased through e-commerce. The concurring opinion, however, holds out hope that J. McIntyre will prove to be a momentary aberration, and that the Court will ultimately expand the scope of personal jurisdiction to reflect the diminished incidence and significance of truly local markets.


The journalist Mona Eltahawy is no stranger to controversy. Through her articles and actions she has fought for the autonomy, security, and dignity of Muslim women, drawing vocal supporters and detractors. Now, in her first book, "Headscarves and Hymens," Eltahawy has prepared a definitive condemnation of the repressive forces-political, cultural, and religious-that reduce millions of women to second-class citizens.Drawing on her years as a campaigner for and commentator on women's issues in the Middle East, she explains that since the Arab Spring began in 2010, women in the Arab world have had two revolutions to undertake: one fought alongside men against oppressive regimes, and another fought against an entire political and economic system that represses women in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and other nations.Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action, confronting a "toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend." A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, "Headscarves and Hymens" is as illuminating as it is incendiary.


Here in a short, compact and concise format is the basics of how to persuade more people more effectively, more ethically, and more often. Ziglar draws from his fundamental selling experiences and shows that while the fundamentals of selling may remain constant, sales people must continue learning, living, and looking: learning from the past without living there; living in the present by seizing each vital moment of every single day; and looking to the future with hope, optimism, and education. His tips will not only keep your clients happy and add to your income, but will also teach you ideas and principles that will, most importantly, add to the quality of your life. Content drawn from Ziglar on Selling.


Using as a case study the recent decision on costs in the Biowatch matter, this article critically examines the traditional fundamental rules on costs in the light of the needs of constitutional and a fortiori public interest litigation. The fundamental rules on costs are taken to include the two traditional principles (that costs are a matter of judicial discretion and that to a successful party should be awarded his costs), the requirement that the discretion be exercised judicially, the test for interference in costs orders in a court of appeal, and the characterisation of costs orders as requiring the exercise of only a narrow discretion on appeal. In the light of the decisions in the Biowatch matter it is argued that the current rules do not meet the new needs of constitutional and/or public interest litigation as regards access to justice, equal protection and benefit of the law, proportionality, and the accountability of the judiciary. Suggestions are made for possible reform.


An Introduction to Programming by the Inventor of C++ Preparation for Programming in the Real World The book assumes that you aim eventually to write non-trivial programs, whether for work in software development or in some other technical field. Focus on Fundamental Concepts and Techniques The book explains fundamental concepts and techniques in greater depth than traditional introductions. This approach will give you a solid foundation for writing useful, correct, maintainable, and efficient code. Programming with Todays C++ (C++11 and C++14) The book is an introduction to programming in general, including object-oriented programming and generic programming. It is also a solid introduction to the C++ programming language, one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. The book presents modern C++ programming techniques from the start, introducing the C++ standard library and C++11 and C++14 features to simplify programming tasks. For Beginners And Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New The book is primarily designed for people who have never programmed before, and it has been tested with many thousands of first-year university students. It has also been extensively used for self-study. Also, practitioners and advanced students have gained new insight and guidance by seeing how a master approaches the elements of his art. Provides a Broad View The first half of the book covers a wide range of essential concepts, design and programming techniques, language features, and libraries. Those will enable you to write programs involving input, output, computation, and simple graphics. The second half explores more specialized topics (such as text processing, testing, and the C programming language) and provides abundant reference material. Source code and support supplements are available from the authors website.


China did not succumb to the Asian crisis of 1997-99, despite two apparent sources of vulnerability: a weak financial system and increased export competition from the Asian crisis economies. This article argues that both sources of vulnerability were more apparent than real. China's experience (especially its use of capital controls) does not offer a blueprint for other countries, because other countries would not want to replicate China's inefficient, non-market-oriented financial system.


This e-book and the accompanying handbook attack many of the most crucial difficulties encountered by both native and non-native English speakers when translating scientific and engineering material from German. The e-book is like a miniature encyclopaedia dealing with the fundamental conceptual basis of science, engineering and mathematics, with particular regard to terminology . It provides didactically organised dictionaries, thesauri and a wide range of microglossaries highlighting polysemy, homonymy, hyponymy, context, collocation, usage as well as grammatical, lexical and semantic considerations essential to accurate translation. It also supplies a wide variety of reference material and illustrations useful to self-taught professional technical translators, translator trainers at universities, and especially to student translators. All the main branches of industrial technology are examined, such as mechanical, electrical, electronic, chemical, nuclear engineering, and fundamental terminologies are provided for a broad range of important subfields: automotive engineering, plastics, computer systems, construction technology, aircraft, machine tools . The handbook provides a useful introduction to the e-book, enabling readers proficient in two languages to acquire the basic skills necessary for technical translation by familiarity with fundamental engineering conceptions themselves. An additional source for sample texts can be found on the author's website http://people.freenet.de/Michael_Hann/index.html