Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human. Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks. Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems. While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear. Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship and love. This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em.


We have employed transgenic methods combined with embryonic grafting to analyse the mechanisms of regeneration in Xenopus tadpoles. The Xenopus tadpole tail contains a spinal cord, notochord and segmented muscles, and all tissues are replaced when the tail regenerates after amputation. We show that there is a refractory period of very low regenerative ability in the early tadpole stage. Tracing of cell lineage with the use of single tissue transgenic grafts labelled with green fluorescent protein (GFP) shows that there is no de-differentiation and no metaplasia during regeneration. The spinal cord, notochord and muscle all regenerate from the corresponding tissue in the stump; in the case of the muscle the satellite cells provide the material for regeneration. By using constitutive or dominant negative gene products, induced under the control of a heat shock promoter, we show that the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) and Notch signalling pathways are both essential for regeneration. BMP is upstream of Notch and has an independent effect on regeneration of muscle. The Xenopus limb bud will regenerate completely at the early stages but regenerative ability falls during digit differentiation. We have developed a procedure for making tadpoles in which one hindlimb is transgenic and the remainder wild-type. This has been used to introduce various gene products expected to prolong the period of regenerative capacity, but none has so far been successful.


This Article challenges the conventional wisdom that the law had little to say about immigration before 1875. Instead, it offers a reframing of immigration law history as including what scholars have previously thought of as "settlement history": The immigration of whites to the western territories. The Article focuses on a particular group of immigrants - the so-called Mercer Girls - to explore both how the failure to invoke exclusionary immigration law and the presence of other kinds of laws (including homestead acts and anti-miscegenation statutes) functioned to shape the population of the nascent western territories. A close look at this type of immigration and this group of immigrants in particular facilitates a reconceptualization not only of narratives of American westward immigration, but also of the way immigration law actually works, both on its own and in tandem with other doctrinal schemes. The story of the Mercer immigrants can help us put exclusionary immigration law in context as part of a broad set of legal strategies used to produce, shape, and maintain populations. More importantly, it shows us that the study of restriction only tells part of the story of our country. To understand whether immigration policy is meeting its goals, we must look to see how the law fosters immigration as well as how the law restricts it.


Words, language, culture, and literature are so important to us human beings that it should come as little surprise that they are part of our law. This article considers language and law in general with a focus on issues of criminal justice, both domestic and international. I examine how and why comparative law is valuable in a criminal procedure course, and generally for domestic and international criminal justice. My examination begins by looking back to our common roots in crime, punishment, and expiation, with a special focus on the role of torture and its impact on current criminal justice systems. Comparative law also serves as a springboard from which to ponder law and philosophy in the context of a basic or advanced criminal procedure course. International criminal courts provide a useful example of the value and challenges of comparative law because they are actually experiments in mixing legal systems and procedures as they function in the arena of international law. Although wholesale or simplistic borrowing is wrong and often harmful, carefully comparing how disparate systems resolve similar problems is most helpful. To elucidate this, I use the examples of "verdict" and "to represent." They look the same on paper, but manifest quite differently in practice in America and in Europe — prime examples of why comparative analysis can be so illuminating. It should not be surprising that comparative analysis is crucial to courses or parts of courses in international or transnational criminal law, as functionally, those are mixed systems — requiring a mixture of international law and domestic law or of international law and that of two or more domestic legal systems. This is especially so in international law, which functions as a mixed jurisdiction essentially comprised of Romano-Germanic and Common Law elements and approaches. Those who understand and can work with both the Romano-Germanic and the Common Law systems will be more able to understand the nuances of international law, its methods, analytical style, and sources. This will help them succeed in practice, scholarship and teaching. This article and the benefits of comparative analysis apply to the study of most subjects in any legal system. My points apply to practitioners, students, policy makers, judges, human rights activists, and many more professions, especially as the world shrinks. Comparative analysis of the sort I suggest herein provides a deeper understanding of the subject, in addition to some understanding of foreign systems. Law is at least partially a form of language; it arises from the culture and language of the various nations and peoples of the world. Comparative study is more than a leisure activity. It provides insight into law (even one's own, in its deepest cultural sense) and a more transparent prism through which to understand law, culture, and language, including one's own law, culture, and language, acting like a perfect prism through which we perceive not merely a white light (a country's legal system), but all the colors that are essential parts (culture and language) of that white light. Revealing those colors — those essential parts — allows us to analyze and compare them and gain a far deeper understanding of a country's legal system. To be sure, law is more than just language, but its essence has many of the characteristics and fullness, including the cultural imprint, that a language has. Perhaps, too, there is a spiritual or cosmological element to law, language, and scholarship. I use the term "language" not only its usual sense of the words we use to speak and write, but also as a metaphor for law as language which includes all the cultural depth that imbues language with its soul or spirit.


The revolution in information technology transforms not only information and its uses but, more important, knowledge and the ways we generate and manage it. Knowledge is now seen as input, output, and capital, even if imperfectly accounted for or understood. Many businesses and public agencies are convinced that knowledge can be managed in sophisticated, rational ways and that networking and information technology are essential tools for doing so. In this collection, experts from North America and Europe look at the transformation of knowledge in the global economy in light of the rapid changes in information technology, the resulting explosion of data, the recognition of intangibles as sources of value and liability, and the increasingly blurred distinction between private and public knowledge.The appeal of the Internet as boundary-spanning knowledge infrastructure, bridging all sectors of the economy, is shadowed by another infrastructure of rights-based contracts, practices, and institutions. The contributors address the ways in which the processes for creating and organizing knowledge interact with information technology, business strategy, and changing social and economic conditions. They discuss the balkanization that results from the complexity of the knowledge economy, the variety of knowledge resources, the great diversity of institutional and market contexts, and competing models of control and cooperation--and of proprietary and non-proprietary knowledge.Contributors:Berglind A¯Â?Â?A¯Â?Â?sgeirsdA¯Â?Â?A¯Â?Â?ttir, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Kim B. Clark, Iain M. Cockburn, Patrick Cohendet, Robin Cowan, Paul A. David, Jan Fagerberg, Brian Fitzgerald, Dominque Foray, Peter A. Freeman, Fred Gault, Dietmar Harhoff, Margaret Hedstrom, C. Suzanne Iacono, Brian Kahin, John Leslie King, Kurt Larsen, Josh Lerner, Bengt-A¯Â?Â?A¯Â?Â?ke Lundvall, David C. Mowery, Arti K. Rai, Bhaven Sampat, Martin Schaaper, Tom Schuller, W. Edward Steinmueller, Stefan Thomke, Jean Tirole, Reinhilde Veugelers, StA¯Â?Â?A¯Â?Â?phan Vincent-Lancrin, Eric von Hippel, Andrew Wyckoff


Transcription is a practice central to qualitative research, yet the literature that addresses transcription presents it as taken for granted in qualitative studies. In this article the author provides a review of three decades of literature on transcription between 1979 and 2009. The review establishes core understandings and issues that have informed the transcription literature, including the ways it is said that transcription is overlooked in qualitative research. Discussion of the literature raises the need for more empirical studies that examine transcription in qualitative research, and suggests specific questions that qualitative researchers might address in relation to transcription and its reporting.


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In 1905 the Supreme Court of Georgia became the first state high court to recognize a freestanding "right to privacy" tort in the common law. The landmark case was Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Co. Must it be a cause for deep jurisprudential concern that the common law right to privacy in wide currency today originated in Pavesich's explicit judicial interpretation of the requirements of natural law? Must it be an additional worry that the court which originated the common law privacy right asserted that a free white man whose photograph is published without his consent in a city newspaper is like a slave in bondage? I argue that the jurisprudence of Pavesich need not be troubling. Pavesich's natural law argument was supplemented by several positive law arguments. The positive law arguments were a strong enough basis for finding a right to privacy in the common law, as indeed Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis had previously argued. The observation that the Pavesich court's natural law argument ran alongside positivistic arguments suggests that the arresting, high-toned natural law and slavery appeals in Pavesich are inessential rhetorical throwaways. But I maintain that the natural law argument and slavery analogy features of Judge Andrew Jackson Cobb's opinion extolling the "liberty of privacy" are (1) of critical importance to a full contextual understanding of the decision and (2) illuminate the contemporary case for recognizing invasions of privacy as civil injuries to freedom and self-determination. One can poke holes in the logic of Thomas Aquinas and John Locke as scholars have done for centuries. But one can as easily choose to celebrate the spirit of the natural law tradition. The natural law tradition represents efforts rhetorically, rationally, and intuitively to derive principles of justice and goodness from basic facts about human characteristics, needs, and desires, where otherwise binding sovereign law may fall short.


Abstract Many countries in the SADC region have experienced serious problems concerning immigrants and refugees. The problems troubled and escalated in the region during the 1990s up to date. In the main, this has been due to the nature of the conflicts and violence experienced by the citizens of the countries involved. The purpose of this study is to highlight the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in its attempt to solve the immigrant and refugee problem in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region with special reference to South Africa. For this study, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were adopted. As previously stated, the focus on the study will be on South Africa as one of the SADC countries. However, it should be noted that although the focus is on South Africa, lessons learnt from other countries proved useful for this study. Furthermore, the study examines and critiques the various challenges as experienced by the UNHCR. A narrative approach was chosen to discuss the findings of the study. The findings show that most immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers felt unsafe in their countries of origin; therefore, they headed to neighbouring countries which in this case included South Africa. In this study, the researcher is mindful of the fact that the refugee status determination is conducted not by governments but by the UNHCR.


The Berg River is one of the main rivers in the Cape Region; it is essential for the local economy and ecology, as it supplies water to agriculture and industries, provides drinking water for the greater Cape Town region, and supports rich aquatic ecosystems. The Berg River is impacted by both diffuse pollution from agricultural run-off and point-source pollution from urban and industrial wastewater. Construction of a dam on the headwaters of the Berg River in 2007 has changed the hydrology of the upper catchment. Pelagic nutrient dynamics in the Berg River are well documented. The opposite is however true for riparian nutrient dynamics. We studied changes in riparian nutrient storage over a gradient in elevation (a proxy for flooding frequency and drought) and human influence (the Berg River dam and lateral nutrient and pollutant input). Our results show that nutrient concentrations in the riparian sediments reflect nutrient concentrations in the river. N concentrations in the sediment increased up to 1 000%, while P concentrations rose up to 200% with increasing human influence. For biogenic Si, we found generally low concentrations throughout the whole gradient sampled (all < 0.5 mg BSi g-1 sediment). Sediments closer to the river appear to have more efficient recycling and export of nutrients into the river. Overall, we conclude that the observed patterns indicate the necessity of incorporating nutrient status and management of riparian habitats in the Berg River monitoring strategy.


Field-effect transistor (FET) sensors and in particular their nanoscale variant of silicon nanowire transistors are very promising technology platforms for label-free biosensor applications. These devices directly detect the intrinsic electrical charge of biomolecules at the sensor's liquid-solid interface. The maturity of micro fabrication techniques enables very large FET sensor arrays for massive multiplex detection. However, the direct detection of charged molecules in liquids faces a significant limitation due to a charge screening effect in physiological solutions, which inhibits the realization of point-of-care applications. As an alternative, impedance spectroscopy with FET devices has the potential to enable measurements in physiological samples. Even though promising studies were published in the field, impedimetric detection with silicon FET devices is not well understood.
The first goal of this thesis was to understand the device performances and to relate the effects seen in biosensing experiments to device and biomolecule types. A model approach should help to understand the capability and limitations of the impedimetric measurement method with FET biosensors. In addition, to obtain experimental results, a high precision readout device was needed. Consequently, the second goal was to build up multi-channel, highly accurate amplifier systems that would also enable future multi-parameter handheld devices.
A PSPICE FET model for potentiometric and impedimetric detection was adapted to the experiments and further expanded to investigate the sensing mechanism, the working principle, and effects of side parameters for the biosensor experiments. For potentiometric experiments, the pH sensitivity of the sensors was also included in this modelling approach. For impedimetric experiments, solutions of different conductivity were used to validate the suggested theories and assumptions. The impedance spectra showed two pronounced frequency domains: a low-pass characteristic at lower frequencies and a resonance effect at higher frequencies. The former can be interpreted as a contribution of the source and double layer capacitances. The latter can be interpreted as a combined effect of the drain capacitance with the operational amplifier in the transimpedance circuit.
Two readout systems, one as a laboratory system and one as a point-of-care demonstrator, were developed and used for several chemical and biosensing experiments. The PSPICE model applied to the sensors and circuits were utilized to optimize the systems and to explain the sensor responses. The systems as well as the developed modelling approach were a significant step towards portable instruments with combined transducer principles in future healthcare applications.


We review the ontological and pedagogical origins of International Development graduate education in the context of increasing pressures to 'professionalise' graduate curricula. We apply Giroux's concept of 'vocationalisation' to argue that professionalisation risks undermining the field's intellectual foundations in an elusive quest to equip students with functional rather than intellectual skills. Acknowledging ever-growing competition among graduates for gainful employment in this sector, we argue that instructors of International Development should recommit to the field's reflective tradition by creating spaces for transformative education and develop a repoliticised ethos that critically engages global capitalism.


In 1966 the popular interest in the Academy Awards propelled Paramount Pictures to produce The Oscar (Embassy Pictures-Paramount Pictures, 1966), a film based on the homonymous novel by Richard Sale. The Oscar tells the story of an unscrupulous actor willing to do anything in his power to obtain the golden statuette, regardless of whom he has to take down along the way. Building up on fantasies of social mobility, we see the protagonist (Frankie) display his vanity, arrogance and greed to create a less than likeable character whose only hope to put his career back on track lies in obtaining the precious statuette. The movie intends to be a sneak peek behind the scenes of the biggest award ceremony, but also behind the lifestyle of the Hollywood elites, their glory and their misery as part of the Hollywood disposal machinery. Despite not being financed or officially supported by the Academy, the film intertwines elements of fiction and reality by using real footage of the event, and featuring several contemporary representatives of the movie industry such as Edith Head, Hedda Hopper, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, playing cameo roles, adding up to the inter-textual capacities of the story. Head's participation was particularly exploited for the promotion of the film, taking advantage of her position at Paramount, her status as a multiple winner, and her role as a fashion consultant for the Academy Awards. This paper is an analytical account of the film's production process. Through a close look to its publicity, it will unravel how the studios relied on the awards, and all possible inter-textual capacities to promote the film, despite the Academy's distancing from the project.


In this thesis, the quasi-static Biot poroelasticity system in bounded multilayered domains in one and three dimensions is studied. In more detail, in the one-dimensional case, a finite volume discretization for the Biot system with discontinuous coefficients is derived. The discretization results in a difference scheme with harmonic averaging of the coefficients. Detailed theoretical analysis of the obtained discrete model is performed. Error estimates, which establish convergence rates for both primary as well as flux unknowns are derived. Besides, modified and more accurate discretizations, which can be applied when the interface position coincides with a grid node, are obtained. These discretizations yield second order convergence of the fluxes of the problem. Finally, the solver for the solution of the produced system of linear equations is developed and extensively tested. A number of numerical experiments, which confirm the theoretical considerations are performed. In the three-dimensional case, the finite volume discretization of the system involves construction of special interpolating polynomials in the dual volumes. These polynomials are derived so that they satisfy the same continuity conditions across the interface, as the original system of PDEs. This technique allows to obtain such a difference scheme, which provides accurate computation of the primary as well as of the flux unknowns, including the points adjacent to the interface. Numerical experiments, based on the obtained discretization, show second order convergence for auxiliary problems with known analytical solutions. A multigrid solver, which incorporates the features of the discrete model, is developed in order to solve efficiently the linear system, produced by the finite volume discretization of the three-dimensional problem. The crucial point is to derive problem-dependent restriction and prolongation operators. Such operators are a well-known remedy for the scalar PDEs with discontinuous coefficients. Here, these operators are derived for the system of PDEs, taking into account interdependence of different unknowns within the system. In the derivation, the interpolating polynomials from the finite volume discretization are employed again, linking thus the discretization and the solution processes. The developed multigrid solver is tested on several model problems. Numerical experiments show that, due to the proper problem-dependent intergrid transfer, the multigrid solver is robust with respect to the discontinuities of the coefficients of the system. In the end, the poroelasticity system with discontinuous coefficients is used to model a real problem. The Biot model, describing this problem, is treated numerically, i.e., discretized by the developed finite volume techniques and then solved by the constructed multigrid solver. Physical characteristics of the process, such as displacement of the skeleton, pressure of the fluid, components of the stress tensor, are calculated and then presented at certain cross-sections.


Abstract As an island nation with some 85% of the population residing within 50 km of the coast, Australia faces significant threats into the future from sea level rise. Further, with over 710,000 addresses within 3 km of the coast and below 6-m elevation, the implication of a projected global rise in mean sea level of up to 100 cm over the 21st century will have profound economic, social, environmental, and planning consequences. In this context, it is becoming increasingly important to monitor trends emerging from local (regional) records to augment global average measurements and future projections. The Australasian region has four very long, continuous tide gauge records, at Fremantle (1897), Auckland (1903), Fort Denison (1914), and Newcastle (1925), which are invaluable for considering whether there is evidence that the rise in mean sea level is accelerating over the longer term at these locations in line with various global average sea level time-series reconstructions. These long records have been converted to relative 20-year moving average water level time series and fitted to second-order polynomial functions to consider trends of acceleration in mean sea level over time. The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000. Short period trends of acceleration in mean sea level after 1990 are evident at each site, although these are not abnormal or higher than other short-term rates measured throughout the historical record.


For the set of graphs with a given degree sequence, consisting of any number of $2's$ and $1's$, and its subset of bipartite graphs, we characterize the optimal graphs who maximize and minimize the number of $m$-matchings. We find the expected value of the number of $m$-matchings of $r$-regular bipartite graphs on $2n$ vertices with respect to the two standard measures. We state and discuss the conjectured upper and lower bounds for $m$-matchings in $r$-regular bipartite graphs on $2n$ vertices, and their asymptotic versions for infinite $r$-regular bipartite graphs. We prove these conjectures for $2$-regular bipartite graphs and for $m$-matchings with $m\le 4$.


The Internet of Things (IoT) relies on sensor devices to measure real-world phenomena in order to provide IoT services. The sensor readings are shared with multiple entities, such as IoT services, other IoT devices or other third parties. The collected data may be sensitive and include personal information. To protect the privacy of the users, the data needs to be protected through an encryption algorithm. For sharing cryptographic cipher-texts with a group of users Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) is well suited, as it does not require to create group keys. However, the creation of ABE cipher-texts is slow when executed on resource constraint devices, such as IoT sensors. In this paper, we present a modification of an ABE scheme, which not only allows to encrypt data efficiently using ABE but also reduces the size of the cipher-text, that must be transmitted by the sensor. We also show how our modification can be used to realise an instantaneous key revocation mechanism.


Qualitative research into the everyday information-seeking practices of eight diverse households in the city of Melbourne, Australia permitted insights into the variability in dynamics around information practices. The current study combines an information practice approach to information-seeking with finer detail on use of the Internet. Rather than treat the Internet as a monolithic entity, this study looks separately at the use of more recent Internet technologies such as social media and Wikipedia. The study examines the type of information that people seek, the ways in which they stay informed and their engagement with a range of information resources. In particular, the study illustrates the enormous disparity in the level of information resources available to participants. It also illustrates the extent to which use of the search engine, Google, has become naturalised within the everyday information practices of some Internet users in Australia. This study indicates that public libraries still have particular importance for more disadvantaged members of the population.


Access to the justice system, which I broadly define as the opportunity to resolve the merits of a legal claim, is declining. One source of this decline is the Civil Rules. In this article, I examine how the institutional failings of the civil rulemaking process have allowed for the production of rules that diminish access. Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that the Civil Rules should facilitate the "just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution" of legal claims. While the Civil Rules Committee considers this timeworn mandate when drafting the rules, there is no agreement about how to interpret this three-part directive. I argue that one interpretive principle should be access to the justice system. Examining the history, I demonstrate that proponents of the Rules Enabling Act and court-based rulemaking envisioned and designed the rules with access firmly in mind. Indeed, although access was not the only concern, it was on equal footing with competing concerns, such as systemic efficiency. Over time, as the perception of a litigation explosion has created political pressure to reduce access to the justice system, rulemakers have responded by creating rules that do just that. I argue that access should be restored to its original status as a co-equal principle of civil rulemaking and that one way to do so is to modify the structure of the rulemaking process. Under the current institutional structure, the rulemaking body is more attuned to a view of litigation intent on reducing access. I offer a spectrum of structural reforms that have the potential to reduce this bias. These proposals include modifying the Committee's composition to be more representative of litigants and passing legislation that mandates access will be considered in the rulemaking process.


Abstract A study of the nonlinear behavior of growing density-wave oscillations is presented in the framework of a reduced-order model. Nonlinear effects are included in both the hydraulic and neutron kinetics equations, where both were found to contribute to the observed limit cycles. In this paper, Part I, the basic concepts were developed and applied to the global oscillation mode, where only the fundamental neutron flux mode excitation is considered. Approximate analytical solutions for the limit cycle amplitude and the time evolution of the transient were derived. In Part II, the model order is increased to allow the representation of the azimuthal neutron flux harmonic and the simulation of growing regional mode oscillations. Analysis demonstrates that the regional mode, unlike the global mode, may not always reach a stable limit cycle, and if it does, the regional limit cycle amplitudes are large compared with the global mode. An extended reduced-order model has been developed for use as an accurate quantitative tool for simulating actual reactor situations, whereas the current paradigm restricts the applicability of reduced-order models to gaining qualitative insights.


If, in the description of one constitutional scholar, text, history, structure, prudence, and doctrine are the building blocks of constitutional argument, then the California Supreme Court's landmark 1979 decision in Robins v. Pruneyard constructed a building without a supporting foundation, sturdy walls, or a covering roof. The court invoked the Liberty of Speech Clause in the California Constitution to impose duties upon private landowners, not merely upon government, to facilitate the political speech of others. But Pruneyard was a disembodied policy decision, severed from constitutional text, history, context, and developed legal reasoning. In this Article, the author revisits the Pruneyard decision, through a scrupulous analysis of the text and the context of the typical state constitutional speech clause, together with a fresh examination of original historical sources in state constitutional drafting. The author further addresses the continuing interplay in constitutional law between freedom of speech and guarantees for private property, insisting that weakening the latter ultimately compromises the former. Because Pruneyard has received persistent attention in ongoing constitutional debates for more than two decades, because more than thirty states share a similar text for (and much of the same history of) a constitutional liberty of speech clause, because Pruneyard is a period piece from a particular epoch in American constitutionalism, and because the jurisprudence of constitutional interpretation has progressed beyond that stage, the story of Pruneyard is a cautionary tale with national resonance.


We introduce a method for deriving aerosol spectral radiative forcing along with single scattering albedo, asymmetry parameter, and surface albedo from airborne vertical profile measurements of shortwave spectral irradiance and spectral aerosol optical thickness. The new method complements the traditional, direct measurement of aerosol ra-diative forcing efficiency from horizontal flight legs below gradients of aerosol optical thickness, and is particularly useful over heterogeneous land surfaces and for homogeneous aerosol layers where the horizontal gradient method is impractical. Using data collected by the Solar Spectral Flux Radiometer (SSFR) and the Ames Airborne Tracking Sun-photometer (AATS-14) during the MILAGRO (Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Observations) experiment , we validate an over-ocean spectral aerosol forcing efficiency from the new method by comparing with the traditional method. Retrieved overland aerosol optical properties are compared with in-situ measurements and AERONET retrievals. The spectral forcing efficiencies over ocean and land are remarkably similar and agree with results from other field experiments.


The model and design of a generic security provider provides a comprehensive set of security services, mechanisms, encapsulation methods, and security protocols for Java applications. The model is structured in four layers; each layer provides services to the upper layer and the top layer provide services to applications. The services reflect security requirements derived from a wide range of applications; from small desktop applications to large distributed enterprise environments. Based on the abstract model, this paper describes design and implementation of an instance of the provider comprising various generic security modules: symmetric key cryptography, asymmetric key cryptography, hashing, encapsulation, certificates management, creation and verification of signatures, and various network security protocols. This paper also describes the properties for extensibility, flexibility, abstraction, and compatibility of the Java security provider.


Contrary to the expectations and dreams nourished by many people that the end of the 'Trio-Crisis Initiators' in Africa: Colonialism (1960s) Cold War (1998) and Apartheid (1994), will bring stability and succour to the continent, however, the new era could as well be perceived as a turbulent period. This paper establishes the relationship between poverty, conflict and development (PCD) in analysing instability in the African continent. In its analysis, the paper examines several variable factors that can help in the explanations of the relationship between PCD in Africa. These variable factors includes: economic, political, population, climate and environment, ethnic composition, militarization, poor growth and political corruption. None of these varying factors can unilaterally explain the relationship between poverty, conflict and development as issues behind Africa's instability. However, the paper argues that political corruption stands out as the most persuasive, compelling and primary explanation for the (causal) relationship(s) between PCD, though, it is not an exclusive one. While, the paper recognises that there are both exogenous and endogenous trends that influence political corruption, the paper adopts the endogenous (domestic political corruption) perspective, because political governance is now more controlled at home. The paper employs the human needs theory for analysis.


Inspired by Kirchhoff's kinetic analogy, the special Cosserat theory of rods is for- mulated in the language of Lagrangian mechanics. A static rod corresponds to an abstract Lagrangian system where the energy density takes the role of the Lagrangian function. The equilibrium equations are derived from a variational principle. Noether's theorem relates their first integrals to frame-indifference, isotropy and uniformity. These properties can be formulated in terms of Lie group symmetries. The rotational degrees of freedom, present in the geometri- cally exact beam theory, are represented in terms of orthonormal director triads. To reduce the number of unknowns, Lagrange multipliers associated with the orthonormality constraints are eliminated using null-space matrices. This is done both in the continuous and in the discrete setting. The discrete equilibrium equations are used to compute discrete rod configurations, where different types of boundary conditions can be handled.


Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.


God gave us emotions to experience life, not destroy it! Lysa TerKeurst admits that she, like most women, has had experiences where others bump into her happy and she comes emotionally unglued. We stuff, we explode, or we react somewhere in between. What do we do with these raw emotions? Is it really possible to make emotions work for us instead of against us? Yes, and in her usual inspiring and practical way, Lysa will show you how. Filled with gut-honest personal examples and biblical teaching, Unglued will equip you to: Know with confidence how to resolve conflict in your important relationships. Find peace in your most difficult relationships as you learn to be honest but kind when offended. Identify what type of reactor you are and how to significantly improve your communication. Respond with no regrets by managing your tendencies to stuff, explode, or react somewhere in between. Gain a deep sense of calm by responding to situations out of your control without acting out of control.


The classic bestseller by Benjamin Graham, "The Intelligent Investor" has taught and inspired hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Since its original publication in 1949, Benjamin Graham's book has remained the most respected guide to investing, due to his timeless philosophy of "value investing", which helps protect investors against the areas of possible substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies with which they will be comfortable down the road. Over the years, market developments have borne out the wisdom of Graham's basic policies, and in today's volatile market, "The Intelligent Investor" is the most important book you will ever read on making the right decisions to protect your investments and make them a success. Featuring new chapter updates - which append every chapter of Graham's book, leaving his original text untouched - from noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, this HarperBusiness Essentials edition of the timeless classic offers readers an even clearer understanding of Graham's wisdom as it should be applied today.


This is national Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year 2013. They lied to protect their country. He told the truth to save it. It is a gripping historical thriller from the bestselling author of Fatherland. January 1895. On a freezing morning in the heart of Paris, an army officer, Georges Picquart, witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of twenty thousand spectators baying 'Death to the Jew!' The officer is rewarded with promotion: Picquart is made the French army's youngest colonel and put in command of 'the Statistical Section' - the shadowy intelligence unit that tracked down Dreyfus. The spy, meanwhile, is given a punishment of medieval cruelty: Dreyfus is shipped off to a lifetime of solitary confinement on Devil's Island - unable to speak to anyone, not even his guards, his case seems closed forever. But gradually Picquart comes to believe there is something rotten at the heart of the Statistical Section. When he discovers another German spy operating on French soil, his superiors are oddly reluctant to pursue it. Despite official warnings, Picquart persists, and soon the officer and the spy are in the same predicament. Narrated by Picquart, An Officer and a Spy is a compelling recreation of a scandal that became the most famous miscarriage of justice in history. Compelling, too, are the echoes for our modern world: an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in the name of national security, a newspaper witch-hunt of a persecuted minority, and the age-old instinct of those in power to cover-up their crimes.


ABSTRACT Our purpose was to assess the knowledge and attitudes, source of HIV and AIDS information, and behaviors related to HIV and AIDS among female college students in Taiwan and to explore the factors associated with knowledge and attitudes of HIV and AIDS among female college students in Taiwan. We employed a descriptive cross-sectional design. Using a mail survey, the investigators collected data from a convenience sample of 99 female undergraduate students at a 4-year university in Taiwan. The self-administrated questionnaire included a demographic questionnaire and the International AIDS Questionnaire—Chinese Version. Our study revealed that the majority of respondents (68%) were sexually active in the last year. Findings revealed that the sexually active women had more overall HIV and AIDS knowledge and attitudes compared to those who were not sexually active. Overall, findings revealed a significant number of participants were not aware of HIV and AIDS facts and held many myths about the transmission of HIV and AIDS. Accurate HIV and AIDS information is the first step in preventing the spread of this epidemic. Ideally, the fight against AIDS should involve the family, education system, mass media, and society at large; however, the lack of necessary knowledge, values, and skills often results in ineffective and inconsistent HIV and AIDS prevention programs.


The Danish Ministry of Culture has funded a project to set up a model for costing preservation of digital materials held by national cultural heritage institutions. The overall objective of the project was to increase cost effectiveness of digital preservation activities and to provide a basis for comparing and estimating future cost requirements for digital preservation. In this study we describe an activity-based costing methodology for digital preservation based on the Open Archice Information System (OAIS) Reference Model. Within this framework, which we denote the Cost Model for Digital Preservation (CMDP), the focus is on costing the functional entity Preservation Planning from the OAIS and digital migration activities. In order to estimate these costs we have identified cost-critical activities by analysing the functions in the OAIS model and the flows between them. The analysis has been supplemented with findings from the literature, and our own knowledge and experience. The identified cost-critical activities have subsequently been deconstructed into measurable components, cost dependencies have been examined, and the resulting equations expressed in a spreadsheet. Currently the model can calculate the cost of different migration scenarios for a series of preservation formats for text, images, sound, video, geodata, and spreadsheets. In order to verify the model it has been tested on cost data from two different migration projects at the Danish National Archives (DNA). The study found that the OAIS model provides a sound overall framework for the cost breakdown, but that some functions need additional detailing in order to cost activities accurately. Running the two sets of empirical data showed among other things that the model underestimates the cost of manpower-intensive migration projects, while it reinstates an often underestimated cost, which is the cost of developing migration software. The model has proven useful for estimating the costs of preservation planning and digital migrations. However, more work is needed to refine the existing equations and include the other functional entities of the OAIS model. Also the user-friendliness of the spreadsheet tool must be improved in future versions of the model. The CMDP is presently closing its second phase, where it has been extended to include the OAIS Functional Entity Ingest. This has also enabled us to adjust the theoretical model further, especially regarding the accuracy and precision of the model and in relation to the underlying parameters used in the equations, such as migration frequency and format complexity. Understanding the nature of digital preservation cost is prerequisite for increasing the overall efficiency, and achieving first quality for preservation of cultural heritage materials.


We introduce a technique for creating novel, enhanced thumbnails of Web pages. These thumbnails combine the advantages of plain thumbnails and text summaries to provide consistent performance on a variety of tasks. We conducted a study in which participants used three different types of summaries (enhanced thumbnails, plain thumbnails, and text summaries) to search Web pages to find several different types of information. Participants took an average of 67, 86, and 95 seconds to find the answer with enhanced thumbnails, plain thumbnails, and text summaries, respectively. As expected, there was a strong effect of question category. For some questions, text summaries outperformed plain thumbnails, while for other questions, plain thumbnails outperformed text summaries. Enhanced thumbnails (which combine the features of text summaries and plain thumbnails) had more consistent performance than either text summaries or plain thumbnails, having for all categories the best performance or performance that was statistically indistinguishable from the best.


The older population is increasing, as is life expectancy. Technical devices are becoming more widespread and used for many everyday tasks. Knowledge about new technology is important to remain as an active and independent part of the society. However, if an old user group should have equal access to this technology, new demands will be placed on the design of interfaces and devices. With respect to old users it is and will be important to develop technical devices and interfaces that take the age-related decline in physical and cognitive abilities into account. The aim of this work was to investigate to what extent the age-related cognitive decline affects performance on different computer-related tasks and the use of different interfaces. With respect to the use of computer interfaces, two studies were conducted. In the first study, the information was presented with a hierarchical structure. In the second study the information was presented as a 3D-environment, and it was also investigated how an overview map could support navigation. The third study examined the age-related cognitive decline in the use of a small mobile phone display with a hierarchical information structure. The results from the studies showed that the most pronounced age-related difference was found in the use of the 3D-environment. Within this environment, prior experience was found to have the largest impact on performance. Regarding the hierarchical information structures, prior experience seemed to have a larger impact on performance of easy tasks, while age and cognitive abilities had a larger impact on performance of more complex tasks. With respect to navigation aids, the overview map in the 3D-environment did not reduce the age-differences; however, it contributed to a better perceived orientation and reduced the feeling of being lost.


Two $2$-cell embeddings $\imath : X \to S$ and $\jmath : X \to S$ of a connected graph $X$ into a closed orientable surface $S$ are congruent if there are an orientation-preserving surface homeomorphism $h : S \to S$ and a graph automorphism $\gamma$ of $X$ such that $\imath h =\gamma\jmath$. Mull et al. [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 103(1988) 321–330] developed an approach for enumerating the congruence classes of $2$-cell embeddings of a simple graph (without loops and multiple edges) into closed orientable surfaces and as an application, two formulae of such enumeration were given for complete graphs and wheel graphs. The approach was further developed by Mull [J. Graph Theory 30(1999) 77–90] to obtain a formula for enumerating the congruence classes of $2$-cell embeddings of complete bipartite graphs into closed orientable surfaces. By considering automorphisms of a graph as permutations on its dart set, in this paper Mull et al.'s approach is generalized to any graph with loops or multiple edges, and by using this method we enumerate the congruence classes of $2$-cell embeddings of a bouquet of circles and a dipole into closed orientable surfaces.


In a significant break with traditional evidence rules and policies, Federal Rules of Evidence 413-414 allow jurors to use the accused's prior sexual misconduct as evidence of character and propensity to commit the sex crime charged. As reflected in their legislative history, these propensity rules rest on the assumption that sexual predators represent a small number of highly deviant and recidivistic offenders. This view of who commits sex crimes justified the passage of the sex-crime propensity rules and continues to influence their continuing adoption among the states and the way courts assess such evidence under Rule 403. In depending on this image of sex crime perpetrators, legislators and judges have ignored the contrary psychological and criminological evidence. Most critiques of the sex-propensity Rules concentrate on the unfairness part of the Rule 403 equation, but we approach them in a novel way, focusing instead on the absence of empirical support for their so-called probative value. This article examines the empirical support for the probative value of such evidence, revealing that current policy rests on bogus psychology and false empirical assertions. Rules 413-414 typify the regrettable seat-of-the-pants psychologizing on which evidence rule drafters rely too often; the approach eschews a nuanced approach to questions of recidivism and the different types of sex offenders. We argue that rulemakers should look to the disciplines engaged in the empirical study of perpetrator behavior before asserting notions of deviance and recidivism to justify radical changes to evidence law. Finally, we offer specific guidance to judges about how to conceptualize the probative value of evidence of prior sexual misconduct and how to incorporate this knowledge in applying their discretion in admitting sex-crime propensity evidence.


In this authoritative Handbook, leading experts from international statistical offices and universities explain in detail the treatment and role of input-output statistics in the System of National Accounts. Furthermore, they address the derivation of input-output coefficients for the purpose of economic and environmental modeling, the building of applied general equilibrium models, the use of these models for efficiency analysis, and the extensions to stochastic and dynamic input-output analysis. As well as revealing and exploring the theoretical foundations, the Handbook also acts as a useful guide for practitioners.


Functional neuroimaging studies have implicated the fusiform gyri (FG) in structural encoding of faces, while event-related potential (ERP) and magnetoencephalography studies have shown that such encoding occurs approximately 170 ms poststimulus. Behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies suggest that processes involved in face recognition may be strongly modulated by socially relevant information conveyed by faces. To test the hypothesis that affective information indeed modulates early stages of face processing, ERPs were recorded to individually assessed liked, neutral, and disliked faces and checkerboard-reversal stimuli. At the N170 latency, the cortical three-dimensional distribution of current density was computed in stereotactic space using a tomographic source localization technique. Mean activity was extracted from the FG, defined by structure-probability maps, and a meta-cluster delineated by the coordinates of the voxel with the strongest face-sensitive response from five published functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. In the FG, approximately 160 ms poststimulus, liked faces elicited stronger activation than disliked and neutral faces and checkerboard-reversal stimuli. Further, confirming recent results, affect-modulated brain electrical activity started very early in the human brain (approximately 112 ms). These findings suggest that affective features conveyed by faces modulate structural face encoding. Behavioral results from an independent study revealed that the stimuli were not biased toward particular facial expressions and confirmed that liked faces were rated as more attractive. Increased FG activation for liked faces may thus be interpreted as reflecting enhanced attention due to their saliency.


Background : Innovation is a key prerequisite for being organisationally competitive. Therefore, it is imperative that enterprises grow and mature their innovation capability. Knowledge management plays a fundamental role in the ability of enterprises to innovate successfully.
Objectives : There are no formal guidelines for using knowledge management to grow innovation capability maturity. The researchers intended to develop a knowledge management framework that enables innovation capability.
Method : The scope of the research did not allow for the practical implementation of the framework. However, five industry and subject theory experts evaluated the applicability and usability of the framework.
Results : All five experts reported that enterprises could use knowledge management tools and organisational facilitating conditions to allow innovation capability maturity to grow. The importance of the framework is that it gives guidelines for using knowledge management as a vehicle for growing innovation capability maturity.
Conclusion : The framework determines whether enterprises' organisational conditions and knowledge management tools are sufficient to sustain or grow their innovation capability maturity.


"To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?" -Mahatma Gandhi


ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are considerable. Essential ActionScript 3.0 focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, along with the Flash Player API. Essential ActionScript has become the #1 resource for the Flash and ActionScript development community, and the reason is the author, Colin Moock. Many people even refer to it simply as "The Colin Moock book."And for good reason: No one is better at turning ActionScript inside out, learning its nuances and capabilities, and then explaining everything in such an accessible way. Colin Moock is not just a talented programmer and technologist; he's also a gifted teacher.Essential ActionScript 3.0 is a radically overhauled update to Essential ActionScript 2.0. True to its roots, the book once again focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, but also adds a deep look at the centerpiece of Flash Player's new API: display programming. Enjoy hundreds of brand new pages covering exciting new language features, such as the DOM-based event architecture, E4X, and namespaces--all brimming with real-world sample code.The ActionScript 3.0 revolution is here, and Essential ActionScript 3.0's steady hand is waiting to guide you through it.Adobe Developer Library is a co-publishing partnership between O'Reilly Media and Adobe Systems, Inc. and is designed to produce the number one information resources for developers who use Adobe technologies. Created in 2006, the Adobe Developer Library is the official source for comprehensive learning solutions to help developers create expressive and interactive web applications that can reach virtually anyone on any platform. With top-notch books and innovative online resources covering the latest in rich Internet application development, the Adobe Developer Library offers expert training and in-depth resources, straight from the source.


Abstract The social cost of carbon – or marginal damage caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions – has been estimated by a U.S. government working group at $21/tCO2 in 2010. That calculation, however, omits many of the biggest risks associated with climate change, and downplays the impact of current emissions on future generations. Our reanalysis explores the effects of uncertainty about climate sensitivity, the shape of the damage function, and the discount rate. We show that the social cost of carbon is uncertain across a broad range, and could be much higher than $21/tCO2. In our case combining high climate sensitivity, high damages, and a low discount rate, the social cost of carbon could be almost $900/tCO2 in 2010, rising to $1,500/tCO2 in 2050. The most ambitious scenarios for eliminating carbon dioxide emissions as rapidly as technologically feasible (reaching zero or negative net global emissions by the end of this century) require spending up to $150 to $500 per ton of reductions of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Using a reasonable set of alternative assumptions, therefore, the damages from a ton of carbon dioxide emissions in 2050 could exceed the cost of reducing emissions at the maximum technically feasible rate. Once this is the case, the exact value of the social cost of carbon loses importance: the clear policy prescription is to reduce emissions as rapidly as possible, and cost-effectiveness analysis offers better insights for climate policy than costbenefit analysis.


Your students need clear, complete answers to their questions about research, writing, and grammar and they often need them at a moment s notice. As their teacher, you are their greatest resource, but you can t be available 24/7. For help with work in class and at home and especially for questions at odd hours, students can turn to "A Pocket Style Manual." The thoughtfully revised seventh edition makes it even easier for students to effectively and independently address their writing and research challenges. With 325 documentation models in four styles and coverage of drafting thesis statements, writing correctly and effectively, finding and evaluating sources, and writing research papers, "A Pocket Style Manual" supports writers across the disciplines. Our newest set of online materials, LaunchPad Solo, provides all the key tools and course-specific content that you need to teach your class. The "LaunchPad Solo for A Pocket Style Manual" includesexercises, sample student writing, and LearningCurve game-like adaptive quizzing.To package LaunchPad Solo free with "A Pocket Style Manual," use ISBN 978-1-319-01282-3."


The church's response towards orphans and vulnerable children as a result of HIV AIDS: A theological biblical perspective By its very nature the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) should invoke response and challenge from all sectors of society, including the church and the academia (theological practitioners). However, in the early years of HIV and AIDS, more or less 30 years ago, the church has been apathetic in its response and engagement with issues relating to HIV and AIDS. Due to the fact that the HIvirus and the AIDS disease raises moral, ethical, gender, cultural, sexual and spiritual matters, it took a considerable long time for the church to become involved. In theological practice the response and involvement in HIV and AIDS matters was also initially characterised by theological impotency. This article therefore, provides a philosophical, theological and biblical basis and reflection to the church especially, in Africa, to effectively respond to the plight, crisis and scourge of HIV and AIDS and its impact to orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC). The effects and repercussions of this pandemic are everywhere glaring, especially in developing nations. This worldwide epidemiology of HIV and AIDS has evoked resources from many national governments (particularly in developing countries), the United Nations bodies, Non-Profit Organisations, etcetra. Indeed, the bone-chilling statistics emanate from the World Health Organisation, AIDS conferences and newspaper articles The latest statistics on people infected with HIV and people living with AIDS, including the OVC, sends shock waves throughout the world. The apathetic and largely disengagement by the church towards the OVC, paucity and dearth of theological publications in current times on this subject and topic indicate that the church in Africa needs to come to terms with her theological and biblical mandate to care for the OVC. This article therefore provides a synopsis and survey of how God's people (Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament) were commanded by God to care for OVC. Based on the biblical text, the contemporary church in Africa should break the vicious and dangerous cycle of silence, apathy and disengagement and start alleviating the plight of OVC.


This article, prepared for a symposium at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, considers whether the Taxing Clause provides an alternative constitutional basis, as some have recently argued, for the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 - the requirement, going into effect in 2014, that most individuals acquire satisfactory health insurance or pay a penalty. The article concludes that the Taxing Clause arguments are misguided. At best, the Clause can provide authority for the penalty, not for the mandate as a whole. Furthermore, the article questions whether the penalty will be a tax at all - if not, the Taxing Clause is obviously irrelevant - or, if it will be a tax, whether constitutional limitations on the taxing power will be satisfied. In particular, the article takes seriously whether the penalty might be a capitation tax, a form of direct tax that would have to meet an onerous apportionment rule to be valid. And the article argues that the penalty will not be a "tax on incomes" exempted from apportionment by the Sixteenth Amendment. The bottom line is this: relying on the Taxing Clause makes the analysis of the individual mandate more complicated than it needs to be, and the focus of constitutional analysis should return to where it has always belonged: the Commerce Clause.


Rapid growth in subprime lending over the past decade has led to rising concerns about abusive practices by subprime lenders. By early 2004, those concerns prompted Georgia and more than 30 other states to pass laws designed to eliminate abusive or predatory lending practices by the financial services firms, including those with federal charters, operating within their boundaries. In 2003, the OCC concluded that federal law preempts the provisions of the Georgia Fair Lending Act (GFLA) that would otherwise affect national banks' real estate lending. In early 2004, the OCC adopted a final rule providing that state laws that regulate the terms of credit are preempted. The OCC has asserted that the growing number of state anti-predatory lending laws impose substantial compliance costs on banks, especially smaller, multistate banking organizations that must spread them over smaller levels of output. If these arguments are correct, preemption should reduce expected costs, increase expected revenue, and boost expected bank profitability, especially for smaller banking firms with multistate operations. Opponents of preemption have argued that material preemption benefits for national banks imply a significant competitive disadvantage for state banks and could induce enough state bank charter conversions to endanger the dual banking system. In this study, an event study approach is used to obtain empirical evidence on the performance effects of preemption. The sample consists of 43 national bank-dominated and 75 state bank-dominated holding companies observed over the October 2002 – January 2004 time period. Briefly, there is not strong evidence of preemption benefits when all national bank-dominated holding companies are viewed as a single group. The univariate tests of portfolio returns and cross-sectional regression results reveal that preemption benefits are larger for smaller, multistate national bank holding companies than they are for both larger national bank companies and similarly sized peers that operate in a single state. This finding is consistent with the view that state anti-predatory lending laws like the GFLA impose a proportionately greater compliance burden on smaller, multistate companies unable to realize economies of scale, which is reduced by preemption. The evidence does not strongly support the notion that preemption places state banking companies at a significant competitive disadvantage. In fact, the excess returns of smaller state banking companies, which comprise the bulk of the state bank holding company sample, tend to be positive rather than negative and typically do not differ significantly from national bank companies with similar characteristics. …


This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one's own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual's ability to do the same.This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens' rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom.Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration. The data used to create the rankings are publicly available online and we invite others to adopt their own weights to see how the overall state freedom rankings change.


A growing number of primary and secondary (K-12) school systems nationwide are adopting cloud-based educational technologies ("ed tech"), tools which "enable the transition of computing resources — including information processing, collection, storage, and analysis — away from localized systems (i.e., on an end user's desktop or laptop computer) to shared, remote systems (i.e., on servers located at a data center away from the end user accessible through a network)" in the course of educational and/or academic administrative work. Cloud-based ed tech possesses unique innovative potential that can best be unlocked when the opportunities it presents are considered alongside the importance of protecting student privacy. This paper, building upon findings of the ongoing Student Privacy Initiative under the auspices of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, provides a snapshot of key aspects of a diverse — and heated — law, policy, and implementation debate that is taking place in the rapidly evolving cloud-based ed tech landscape. It aims to provide policy and decision-makers at the school district, local government, state government, and federal government levels with greater information about and clarity around the avenues available to them in evaluating privacy options. This analysis focuses on three overarching questions: who in the educational system should make cloud-based ed tech decisions; when is parental consent needed for the adoption of these technologies; and how can data transferred, stored, and analyzed through these products be kept secure and, as necessary, de-identified?Though there is often no bright line rule that can strike an ideal balance of these and other imperatives — including normative commitments, innovative educational opportunities, and evolving privacy attitudes and expectations — the authors offer the following pragmatic recommendations based on the cloud ed tech landscape at this moment in time: (1) Employing (temporary) centralization of cloud-based ed tech decision-making at the district level to foster the legal, technical, and other expert oversight necessary in this complex space without stifling capacity for local experimentation; (2) Examining the adoption of user-friendly labeling of cloud-based ed tech products to increase transparency and encourage compliance with parental consent and other legal requirements; and (3) Adopting FIPPs (Fair Information Practice Principles) and other best practice standards by industry providers to increase data security and protection.Critically, any such recommendations must preserve room for future development as the student privacy and ed tech picture continues to evolve. The authors also recognize that the proposed practices are in flux and have to be read as a supplement rather than a substitute for careful consideration of more fundamental reform of the current student privacy framework.


OBJECTIVES
Chemoradiation is the treatment of choice for squamous carcinoma of the anal canal, resulting in the same local control rates as surgery but with the advantage of organ function preservation. We aimed to review all cases of anal canal carcinoma treated at Groote Schuur Hospital between 2000 and 2004 and to assess treatement outcome.

METHODS
The records for 31 patients presenting during this period were reviewed. Patient and tumour characteristics were recorded. Twenty-six patients were treated with chemoradiation. Local failure-free, colostomy-free and overall survival were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method.

RESULTS
Compared with the literature, the median patient age was younger and the stage was more advanced in this study. The complete response rate for all stages with chemoradiation was 80%. The local failure-free survival at 5 years was 60.7%. Colostomy-free and overall survival at 5 years were 59.2% and 65.6%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
The patients presented with locally advanced disease. Chemoradiation is effective treatment for this group of patients and the majority avoid a permanent colostomy as they preserve anal sphincter function.


For all those readers curious to read the actual texts of the Gnostic Gospels, here is the definitive collection of all the Gnostic Gospels and Gospel like texts. o Marvin Meyer, premier scholar of Gnostic and other Christian literature outside the New Testament, presents every Gnostic Gospel and Jesus text with a brilliant overall introduction, introductions to each text, and notes that explain everything the reader needs to know to understand the text. He includes his latest translations of not only the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, but other texts such as the Secret Book of John, which some scholars regard as the second part of the New Testament Gospel of John. The material is largely from the discovery at Nag Hammadi, freshly translated and introduced, but also includes texts found elsewhere. The texts, especially taken together, present an image of Jesus as the ultimate wisdom teacher, a kind of mysterious Jewish Zen master, who scandalized listeners by his radical egalitarianism (regarding women, slaves, the poor, the marginalized as of equal status, or more, with establishment male believers) and his insistence on living the message, spiritual experience, vs. outer observance only. o For those wanting to learn more after reading The Da Vinci Code. This book provides the definitive next book for those looking for expert presentation of the alternative Gnostic stream of Christianity, in which there is no talk of crucifixion and Mary Magdalene is presented as the disciple that Jesus loved best. "Marv is one of the original secret gospels scholars who has done an enormous amount of work to bring these texts to light. All of his research on the Nag Hammadi texts is having an incredible impact on our knowledge of early Christian history it is virtually redefining it." Dr. Elaine Pagels, Princeton University "


Body sensations play a crucial role in the etiology and maintenance of diverse anxiety and health problems (e.g., in panic disorder or respiratory diseases) as they may be perceived as threatening and consequently elicit anxious responses. The factors that may affect the perception of bodily sensations as a threat and thus modulate the anxious response to body sensations have so far rarely been studied. Therefore, the present thesis targeted at elucidating the effect of contextual (i.e., the predictability, expectation, and proximity of a threat) and dispositional factors (i.e., tendency to fear arousal sensations or trait fear of suffocation) on the defensive response to body sensations.
In study 1, it was investigated how a personality factor, that is, fear of suffocation, affects the acquisition of fear to body sensations (i.e., mild dyspnea induced by inspiratory resistive loads) and contexts when faced with a predictable and unpredictable respiratory threat (i.e., severe dyspnea). Study 2 aimed at examining the main and interactive effects of the tendency to fear arousal sensations, again a personality trait factor, and current arousal expectations as varied by situational variables on anxious responding to arousal sensations. In this study, expected and unexpected arousal sensations were induced by administering caffeine in coffee or bitter lemon soda, respectively. Moreover, in study 3, it was explored how subjective anxiety, bodily symptoms, and defensive respiratory responses change and might culminate into active defense behavior (i.e., escape/active avoidance) during increasing dyspnea that was evoked by inspiratory resistive loads increasing in intensity. For a detailed analysis of the factors that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of avoidance of or escape from increasing dyspnea, in study 4 changes in subjective, autonomic, somatic reflex and brain responses were analyzed during repeated avoidance of increasing dyspnea.
In study 1, it was demonstrated that only individuals who fear suffocation learned to fear mild dyspnea preceding the onset of severe dyspnea and developed anxiety during a context of unpredictable respiratory threat. Moreover, the data from study 2 indicate that individuals who fear arousal sensations show an increased attention allocation towards unexpected arousal sensations and higher threat appraisal when expecting arousal sensations. Increasing intensity of dyspnea as provoked in study 3 led to increased defensive respiratory responses that were associated with increased symptom reports in individuals with high compared to low fear of suffocation. Moreover, culminating dyspnea elicited repeated avoidance behavior preceded by increases in defensive respiratory mobilization. The analysis of repeated avoidance of increasing dyspnea in study 4 revealed that physiological fear responses might be involved in the initial initiation of this avoidance behavior while no indication of response preparation and physiological arousal was related to persistent avoidance.
Taken together, the present data suggest that the fear of suffocation, as well as the tendency to fear arousal sensations along with the predictability, expectation, or proximity of interoceptive threat, may increase the perceived threat and thus the anxious response to body sensations. Therefore, contextual and dispositional factors may set the stage for the culmination of body sensations into defensive action and might contribute to the development of pathological anxiety and fear of body sensations. The present findings are integrated into the current literature and discussed in relation to the development and maintenance of pathological anxiety and fear of body sensations.


Legal doctrines vary in the extent to which they apply either detailed, categorical rules or broad, open-ended standards that allow for case-specific adjudication. Antitrust law is generally thought of as inhabiting the standards end of this spectrum. In fact, however, despite the generality of the enabling statutes antitrust law is rife with categorical distinctions. In Part I, we explore not only the well-known distinction between conduct that is per se illegal and conduct judged under the rule of reason, but also a number of categorical distinctions the courts draw, either to help delineate the scope of the per se rule or to create distinctions within the scope of the rule of reason itself. By and large these rules don't come from the antitrust statutes. They are created by courts, who are in effect converting case-specific standards en masse into categorical rules. In Part II, we identify a number of problems with these distinctions. One problem is administrative: courts spend a great deal of time trying to parse conduct in order to put it on one side or another of the lines they have created. Indeed, in many cases courts spend more time on categorization than they do on actual economic analysis of the case itself. Second, judicial antitrust categories are subject to manipulation. Parties go to great lengths to fit into a box that will give them more favorable treatment, sometimes by legal argument, sometimes by restructuring a transaction, and sometimes by concealing or misrepresenting the facts of that transaction. Third, a number of the categories the courts have created make no sense, whether because they have lost their meaning over time, because their boundaries have eroded, because they actually tell us very little of relevance to the competitive effects of the transaction, or because they are simply dumb. The net result is a mess. Categories have become conclusions, displacing the fact-specific economic analysis in which antitrust law is supposed to be engaging. In Part III, we argue that there is a better way. We evaluate the costs and benefits of the judicial creation of categories, and contend that the complex of antitrust boxes the courts have created today does more harm than good. We don't mean to suggest there is no value to categories, and that everything must be thrown into a pure cost-benefit analysis. Some rules (the per se rule against price fixing, for instance) make sense. Rather, the important thing is to make sure that the categories we use have empirical support, and that they are communicating valuable information to courts about the competitive effects of a general practice. We think the courts have gone too far in the creation of rules in a variety of cases. Finally, we suggest that courts make more use than they do of certain tools - the doctrine of direct economic effect and empirical evidence - as powerful filters for distinguishing good from bad antitrust claims.


The Korean Journal of Helicobacter and Upper Gastrointestinal Research is an Open-Access Journal. All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ORIGINAL ARTICLE ISSN 1738-3331, https://doi.org/10.7704/kjhugr.2018.18.2.115 The Korean Journal of Helicobacter and Upper Gastrointestinal Research, 2018;18(2):115-119


Of all the French cultural exports over the last 150 years or so, 'pataphysics--the science of imaginary solutions and the laws governing exceptions--has proven to be one of the most durable. Originating in the wild imagination of French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry and his schoolmates, resisting clear definition, purposefully useless, and almost impossible to understand, 'pataphysics nevertheless lies around the roots of Absurdism, Dada, futurism, surrealism, situationism, and other key cultural developments of the twentieth century. In this account of the evolution and influence of 'pataphysics, Andrew Hugill offers an informed exposition of a rich and difficult territory, staying aloft on a tightrope stretched between the twin dangers of oversimplifying a serious subject and taking a joke too seriously. Drawing on more than twenty-five years' research, Hugill maps the 'pataphysical presence (partly conscious and acknowledged but largely unconscious and unacknowledged) in literature, theater, music, the visual arts, and the culture at large, and even detects 'pataphysical influence in the social sciences and the sciences. He offers many substantial excerpts (in English translation) from primary sources, intercalated with a thorough explication of key themes and events of 'pataphysical history. In a Jarryesque touch, he provides these in reverse chronological order, beginning with a survey of 'pataphysics in the digital age and working backward to Jarry and beyond. He looks specifically at the work of Jean Baudrillard, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, J. G. Ballard, Asger Jorn, Gilles Deleuze, Roger Shattuck, Jacques Prevert, Antonin Artaud, Rene Clair, the Marx Brothers, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Raymond Roussel, Jean-Pierre Brisset, and many others.


"This paper explores risk sharing in the Zone Lacustre, Mali, as viewed through the lens of consumption smoothing. We find that idiosyncratic shocks appear to have little impact on consumption, and that households respond to these shocks in a variety of ways. In general, nonpoor households are more likely to enter into new income-generating activities while poor households are more likely to engage in credit or gift exchange or to ration consumption. When we construct a stronger test for consumption smoothing, we find that changes in household income lead to modest changes in consumption. Covariant shocks, as measured by village/round dummies, always lead to changes in consumption. These results are robust to concerns regarding bias resulting from measurement error or endogeneity of changes in income. Lastly, we find that households with access to improved water control infrastructure are less vulnerable than those that rely on rainfall or the flooding of the Niger River." Authors' Abstract


This study proposes a new framework that can effectively apply unit testing to concurrent programs, which are difficult to develop and debug. Test-driven development, a practice enabling developers to detect bugs early by incorporating unit testing into the development process, has become wide-spread, but it has only been effective for programs with a single thread of control. The order of operations in different threads is essentially non-deterministic, making it more complicated to reason about program properties in concurrent programs than in single-threaded programs. Because hardware, operating systems, and compiler optimizations influence the order in which operations in different threads are executed, debugging is problematic since a problem often cannot be reproduced on other machines. Multi-core processors, which have replaced older single-core designs, have exacerbated these problems because they demand the use of concurrency if programs are to benefit from new processors.
The existing tools for unit testing programs are either flawed or too costly. JUnit, for instance, assumes that programs are single-threaded and therefore does not work for concurrent programs; ConTest and rstest predate the revised Java memory model and make incorrect assumptions about the operations that affect synchronization. Approaches such as model checking or comprehensive schedule-based execution are too costly to be used frequently. All of these problems prevent software developers from adopting the current tools on a large scale.
The proposed framework (i) improves JUnit to recognize errors in all threads, a necessary development without which all other improvements are futile, (ii) places some restrictions on the programs to facilitate automatic testing, (iii) provides tools that reduce programmer mistakes, and (iv) re-runs the unit tests with randomized schedules to simulate the execution under different conditions and on different machines, increasing the probability that errors are detected.
The improvements and restrictions, shown not to seriously impede programmers, reliably detect problems that the original JUnit missed. The execution with randomized schedules reveals problems that rarely occur under normal conditions.
With an effective testing tool for concurrent programs, developers can test programs more reliably and decrease the number of errors in spite of the proliferation of concurrency demanded by modern processors.


This thesis is concerned with stochastic control problems under transaction costs. In particular, we consider a generalized menu cost problem with partially controlled regime switching, general multidimensional running cost problems and the maximization of long-term growth rates in incomplete markets. The first two problems are considered under a general cost structure that includes a fixed cost component, whereas the latter is analyzed under proportional and Morton-Pliska
transaction costs.

For the menu cost problem and the running cost problem we provide an equivalent characterization of the value function by means of a generalized version of the Ito-Dynkin formula instead of the more restrictive, traditional approach via the use of quasi-variational inequalities (QVIs). Based on the finite element method and weak solutions of QVIs in suitable Sobolev spaces, the value function is constructed iteratively. In addition to the analytical results, we study a novel application of the menu cost problem in management science. We consider a company that aims to implement an optimal investment and marketing strategy and must decide when to issue a new version of a product and when and how much
to invest into marketing.

For the long-term growth rate problem we provide a rigorous asymptotic analysis under both proportional and Morton-Pliska transaction costs in a general incomplete market that includes, for instance, the Heston stochastic volatility model and the Kim-Omberg stochastic excess return model as special cases. By means of a dynamic programming approach leading-order optimal strategies are constructed
and the leading-order coefficients in the expansions of the long-term growth rates are determined. Moreover, we analyze the asymptotic performance of Morton-Pliska strategies in settings with proportional transaction costs. Finally, pathwise optimality of the constructed strategies is established.


He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court - but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game. Coaxed to swing a racket while still in the crib, forced to hit hundreds of balls a day while still in grade school, Agassi resented the constant pressure even as he drove himself to become a prodigy, an inner conflict that would define him. Now, in his beautiful, haunting autobiography, Agassi tells the story of a life framed by such conflicts. Agassi makes us feel his panic as an undersized seven-year-old in Las Vegas, practicing all day under the obsessive gaze of his violent father. We see him at thirteen, banished to a Florida tennis camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning fast return. And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world's best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target. Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match, and every public relationship. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals, Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals the depression that shatters his confidence, and the mistake that nearly costs him everything. Finally, he recounts his spectacular resurrection and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one. In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf. With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, Open will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi's game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed and power.


Abstract The knowledge of the actual magnitude and main features of tourism flows in a given destination is an essential prerequisite for the evaluation of tourism impacts and externalities. Indeed, many pleasure trips are often characterized by the visit to more than a single destination. Although the topic is well-documented in literature, the empirical results are limited to a few pioneering studies. The lack may be attributable to the failure of tourism organizations to collect data on multi-destination trip behaviour. This can be seen, for example, in the system of European statistics on tourism (according to the Council Directive 95/57 EC), where information on the average number of visited destinations within a single trip is not provided. This paper aims at discussing the main implications of multi-destination trips, both on tourism statistics and on destination management. It also proposes to describe the research design and main preliminary results of a survey on incoming tourism in Sicily. Some remarks dealing with the positive and negative impacts of unobserved tourism and of multi-destination trips are reported at the end.


Superheated steam drying has been a subject of research for many decades. Many researchers have claimed that superheated steam drying is saving energy and produces better product quality compared to air drying. Superheated steam can be distinguished from air drying by the diffusion step in the drying process. Steam drying does not include moisture diffusion from the interior of the particle to its surface. However, in air drying, diffusion is the main and the limiting step. This paper is presenting a review to the models have been used to describe drying under superheated steam. Also, modelling was carried out to all the steps that take place in the drying process. These steps are: initial condensation on the surface of the particle, diffusion of the initially condensed vapour to the interior of the particle, evaporation of the initially condensed vapour and finally drying of the whole particle due to receding core model. Understanding these steps is very important for controlling the quality of the dried products and preventing difficulties such as sticking. These steps were modelled using MATLAB software. Numerical solutions with finite difference Euler's method were used to solve the equations describe the drying steps. The theoretical results were then formulated in figures to show the behaviour of the whole drying process. Comparison of the theoretical results from this study with experimental data was left for the upcoming article.


We undertook a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with white (n = 32) and Pakistani and Indian (n = 32) respondents who had type 2 diabetes, which explored their perceptions and understandings of disease causation. We observed subtle, but important, differences in the ways in which these respondent groups attributed responsibility and blame for developing the disease. Whereas Pakistani and Indian respondents tended to externalise responsibility, highlighting their life circumstances in general and/or their experiences of migrating to Britain in accounting for their diabetes (or the behaviours they saw as giving rise to it), white respondents, by contrast, tended to emphasise the role of their own lifestyle 'choices' and 'personal failings'. In seeking to understand these differences, we argue for a conceptual and analytical approach which embraces both micro- (i.e. everyday) and macro- (i.e. cultural) contextual factors and experiences. In so doing, we provide a critique of social scientific studies of lay accounts/understandings of health and illness. We suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the research encounter (that is, to who is looking at whom and in what circumstances) to understand the different kinds of contexts researchers have highlighted in presenting and interpreting their data.


Abstract. The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) on the NASA B200 aircraft has acquired extensive datasets of aerosol extinction (532 nm), aerosol optical depth (AOD) (532 nm), backscatter (532 and 1064 nm), and depolarization (532 and 1064 nm) profiles during 18 field missions that have been conducted over North America since 2006. The lidar measurements of aerosol intensive parameters (lidar ratio, depolarization, backscatter color ratio, and spectral depolarization ratio) are shown to vary with location and aerosol type. A methodology based on observations of known aerosol types is used to qualitatively classify the extensive set of HSRL aerosol measurements into eight separate types. Several examples are presented showing how the aerosol intensive parameters vary with aerosol type and how these aerosols are classified according to this new methodology. The HSRL-based classification reveals vertical variability of aerosol types during the NASA ARCTAS field experiment conducted over Alaska and northwest Canada during 2008. In two examples derived from flights conducted during ARCTAS, the HSRL classification of biomass burning smoke is shown to be consistent with aerosol types derived from coincident airborne in situ measurements of particle size and composition. The HSRL retrievals of AOD and inferences of aerosol types are used to apportion AOD to aerosol type; results of this analysis are shown for several experiments.