Changes in the level of closed lakes such as the glacial Lake Lisan/Near East, that occupied the Jordan Rift Valley between 80 to 15 ka BP, reflect climatic changes in evaporation and precipitation patterns. However, in an actively subsiding basin such as the Dead Sea (water level today is at -423 m relative to mean sea level), tectonic activity could also contribute to lake level recession. The retreat of Lake Lisan left behind a sequence of shoreline terraces and deposits of aragonite and gypsum. The ability to determine shore line elevations and to date them offers an excellent possibility to evaluate hydrologic changes, paleoclimatic conditions and tectonic activity of the lake basin during the Last Glacial. By the end of the Pleistocene, Lake Lisan receded sharply and was followed by the current Dead Sea at ~10 ka BP. Both lakes experienced several rises and regressions due to climatic change. However, the most recent lowering of the Dead Sea level since the beginning of the twentieth century of more than 30 m is mainly due to the impact of upstream freshwater diversion together with mineral extraction by the salt industry in the southern Dead Sea basin. This recent level drop left behind a unique landscape of shore line terraces, allowing investigation of the recent lake regression in detail. Therefore the dissertation aims at (1) examining the most recent changes in the Dead Sea level and shore morphology and developing a terrain model of the Dead Sea Rift Valley that allows calculating the area and volume losses of the lake for the various stages of its recession. (2) investigating geomorphological characteristics of Lake Lisan erosional terraces along the eastern side of the Dead Sea (e.g., elevation, gradient, width, length, etc.) and dating them. This investigation will help to reconstruct the lake level history and correlate the level changes with paleoclimatic conditions. Moreover, it should give additional water level data and rates of level retreat for Lake Lisan; and (3) investigating geochemical and mineralogical characteristics of the terrace stromatolites (AAS and XRD) and analyzing their stable isotope composition. This should provide indicators on the lake levels and on the lake water chemistry as well as on paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic conditions. The main results of this study are as follow: (1) Well-correlated and dated profiles of the modern shoreline terraces of the Dead Sea are presented for the first time. The timing and amplitude of the lake level change recorded in these terraces forms an analogue to past level changes of the paleo-Dead Sea and even to level changes of other lakes. (2) A terrain model of the Dead Sea Rift Valley was developed based on SRTM data that served as a tool to calculate the volume and area functions versus altitude of the Dead Sea. The model was further used in macro-engineering implications to calculate the water input requirements of the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea and therefore the capacity of the projected Dead Sea-Red Sea Canal. The water volume loss calculated by this study (0.47 km³/a) and the ground water inflow to the Dead Sea (ca. 0.5 km³/a) suggest that the RSDS should has a capacity of ~1 km³/a in order to stop the lake level drop. However, ca. 1.3 km³/a is required in order to fill the lake back to levels as of 30 years ago. (3) The morphological and chronological evidence presented in this study allowed generating a high resolution curve of the lake level for MIS 2 (32-10 ka BP). It can now be assumed with certainty that the lake stood as high as -150 m, removing the doubt on the highest stand found along the western coast. However, this is not the highest stand of the lake during MIS 2, much higher terraces up to -137 m were identified in the field and dated between 30 and 32 ka BP. (4) Discovery of high-level terraces of Lake Lisan > -137 m and up to 0 m along the eastern escarpment and dating of their stromatolites revealed the time and the exact elevation of the highest lake stand. This also clarified the previous doubt on the paleoenvironment conditions of the early stage of Lake Lisan as well as on the transition period from Lake Samra to Lake Lisan. The newly discovered maximal level is 150 m higher than previously reconstructed and occurred at the beginning of the last glacial period (79-76 ka BP). This allowed presenting a new curve of the lake level during the last glacial period, including new fixes on past lake level elevations as well as on the chronology of the regression and transgression cycles. (5) The new curve allows correlating the lake level with global climatic records: transgressions occurred during the warm MIS 5 and 3, while regressions occurred during the cold MIS 4, 2, and the cold Heinrich events 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. This demonstrates a strong linkage between the paleoclimate of the Jordan valley and monsoon-affected North Africa rather than that with Europe and the North Atlantic. X-ray analysis, Mg/Ca ratios and isotope analyses of the stromatolites correlate well with transgression-regression phases of the lake. Dominance of calcite in stromatolites at -76 to 0 m and low isotope values in addition to inferred low Mg/Ca ratios of the lake water (i.e. ~2) imply a high fresh water input of the lake during the period of the highest stands. A high Mg/Ca ratio of the lake water of > 7 inferred from stromatolites at -350 m and the existence of aragonite as the sole mineral in this sample reflect low fresh water input and high evaporation rates of the lake during its regression to this low level. Low Mg/Ca ratios and low stable isotope values of stromatolites at -247 to -101 m in addition to the existence of calcite as a main mineral phase indicate wet climatic conditions that caused a lake transgression during MIS 3. The appearance of more aragonite in stromatolites at -137 to -154 m inferring a change to high Mg/Ca ratios and high stable isotope values points to a return to dry climatic conditions that caused a regression of Lake Lisan during MIS 2 between 32 and 22 ka BP.


Material Supplemental http://genome.cshlp.org/content/suppl/2011/11/23/gr.133009.111.DC1.html References http://genome.cshlp.org/content/22/3/577.full.html#ref-list-1 This article cites 66 articles, 25 of which can be accessed free at: License Commons Creative http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. described at a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License), as ). After six months, it is available under http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml first six months after the full-issue publication date (see This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the


The traditional North American elementary classroom is dominated by traditional passive furniture. With the continual use of the traditional typologies of desks and chairs, the classroom furniture fails to challenge the student's development and engage the imagination of the users. As research shows that children learn most through movement, emotions, and exploration, the passive furniture hinders a well-rounded learning experience. In this study, the approach for designing new furniture that fosters a sense of creativity, independence, and active learning is not only guided by the researcher's experiences, but also involves insight from elementary students and teachers. This thesis investigation used a participatory approach to enable the examination of the current activities and interactions occurring within the first and second grade classroom. Using the characteristics of middle childhood, the third teacher theory, and affordance, the researcher developed a line of furniture for active learning that enables the students to shape their learning environment and experience. The resulting classroom furniture provides for intimate interactions, physical activity, social development, and personal customization.


Abstract. The details of aerosol processes and size distributions
in the stratosphere are important for both heterogeneous chemistry and
aerosol–radiation interactions. Using in situ, global-scale measurements of
the size distribution of particles with diameters > 3 nm from the
NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom), we identify a mode of aerosol
smaller than 12 nm in the lowermost stratosphere (LMS) at mid- and high
latitudes. This mode is substantial only in the Northern Hemisphere (NH)
and was observed in all four seasons. We also observe elevated SO2, an
important precursor for new particle formation (NPF) and growth, in the NH
LMS. We use box modelling and thermodynamic calculations to show that NPF
can occur in the LMS conditions observed on ATom. Aircraft emissions are
shown as likely sources of this SO2, as well as a potential source of
nucleation mode particles directly emitted by or formed in the plume of the
engines. These nucleation mode particles have the potential to grow to
larger sizes and to coagulate with larger aerosol, affecting heterogeneous
chemistry and aerosol–radiation interactions. Understanding all sources and
characteristics of stratospheric aerosols is important in the context of
anthropogenic climate change as well as proposals for climate intervention
via stratospheric sulfur injection. This analysis not only adds to the,
currently sparse, observations of the global impact of aviation, but also
introduces another aspect of climate influence, namely a size distribution
shift of the background aerosol distribution in the LMS.


The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the consequent accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, have had consequences far beyond Japan itself. Reactions to the accident in three major economies Japan, the UK, and Germany, all of whom were committed to relatively ambitious climate change targets prior to the accident are examined. In Japan and Germany, the accident precipitated a major change of policy direction. In the UK, debate has been muted and there has been essentially no change in energy or climate change policies. The status of the energy and climate change policies in each country prior to the accident is assessed, the responses to the accident are described, and the possible impacts on their positions in the international climate negotiations are analysed. Finally, the three countries' responses are compared and some differences between them observed. Some reasons for their different policy responses are suggested and some themes, common across all countries, are identified Policy relevance The attraction of nuclear power has rested on the promise of low-cost electricity, low-carbon energy supply, and enhanced energy independence. The Fukushima accident, which followed the Japanese tsunami of March 2011, has prompted a critical re-appraisal of nuclear power. The responses to Fukushima are assessed for the UK, Germany, and Japan. Before the accident, all three countries considered nuclear as playing a significant part in climate mitigation strategies. Although the UK Government has continued to support nuclear new build following a prompt review of safety arrangements, Japan and Germany have decided to phase out nuclear power, albeit according to different timescales. The factors that explain the different decisions are examined, including patterns of energy demand and supply, the wider political context, institutional arrangements, and public attitudes to risk. The implications for the international climate negotiations are also assessed.


The production of black holes at Tevatron and LHC in spacetimes with compactified space-like large extra dimensions is studied. Either black holes can already be observed in p collisions at ?s = 1.8 TeV or the fundamental gravity scale has to be above 1.4 TeV. At LHC the creation of a large number of quasi-stable black holes is predicted, with lifetimes beyond several hundred fm/c. A cut-off in the high-PT jet cross section is shown to be a unique signature of black hole production. This signal is compared to the jet plus missing energy signature due to graviton production in the final state as proposed by the ATLAS collaboration.


Differential group achievements in competitive spheres like business, government, and academia, in conjunction with professed organizational commitments to fairness and equal opportunity, fuel claims that unconscious discrimination operates widely in society today. But attempts to blame disparities by race or sex on inadvertent bias must be approached with caution in the current climate. Many allegations concerning unconscious discrimination do not properly allege category-based treatment at all but rather target the disparate impact, or differential effects, of category-neutral criteria. Such impacts often reflect well-documented supply side disparities between groups in human capital development, qualifications, and behavior. These patterns are not most effectively addressed by focusing on unconscious processes, but rather by scrutinizing neutral practices for efficiency and social usefulness and also by attempting to eliminate underlying group differences in the ability to compete for social rewards.Likewise, allegations of unconsciously motivated disparate treatment, which are based on the contention that race or sex plays a causal role in social outcomes, should be scrutinized for alternative, non-discriminatory explanations for observed disparities, including supply side differences between groups. In addition, some disparities attributed to unconscious bias could just as well be explained by old-fashioned statistical or rational discrimination, which is also fueled by real, average, observable differences in performance by race or sex. In general, sweeping and categorical claims of unconscious discrimination are unwarranted without specific evidence that this process is actually operating in a given case. Such evidence is hard to come by. In many cases, supporting such claims requires excluding alternative explanations - including supply side explanations for observed disparities in group success.


Disability and New Media examines how digital design is triggering disability when it could be a solution. Video and animation now play a prominent role in the World Wide Web and new types of protocols have been developed to accommodate this increasing complexity. However, as this has happened, the potential for individual users to control how the content is displayed has been diminished. Accessibility choices are often portrayed as merely technical decisions but they are highly political and betray a disturbing trend of ableist assumption that serve to exclude people with disability. It has been argued that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Kent and Ellis build on this notion using more recent Web 2.0 phenomena, social networking sites, virtual worlds and file sharing.

Many of the studies on disability and the web have focused on the early web, prior to the development of social networking applications such as Facebook, YouTube and Second Life. This book discusses an array of such applications that have grown within and alongside Web 2.0, and analyzes how they both prevent and embrace the inclusion of people with disability.


In addition to his better known artistic, scientific and engineering talents, Leonardo da Vinci has an extensive reputation as a cartographer, drawing maps for a wide range of hydroengineering projects for the rulers of Florence, Milan, Arezzo and the Vatican, amongst others. However, he is not generally acknowledged as authoring a world map (or mappamundi) spanning the globe, which was the domain of a few specialized cartographers of the era. Nevertheless, there is a world map among his papers in the Royal Library, Windsor, which is one of the very first to name the Americas, and has the correct overall configuration of the continents, including an ocean at the north pole and a continent at the south pole. Moreover, it has a unique cartographic projection onto eight spherical-geometry triangles that provide close to isometric projection throughout the globe. Although the authenticity of this world map has been questioned, there is an obscure page of his notebooks in the Codex Atlanticus containing a sketch of this precise form of global projection, tying him securely to its genesis. Moreover, the same notebook page contains sketches of eight other global projections known at that time (early C16th), from the Roman Ptolomaic conic section projection to Rosselli's [i] oval planispheric projection. This paper explores further remarkable aspects of the geometry and history of Da Vinci's unique mappamundi.


Antibacterial agents act against bacterial infection either by killing the bacterium or by arresting its growth. They do this by targeting bacterial DNA and its associated processes, attacking bacterial metabolic processes including protein synthesis, or interfering with bacterial cell wall synthesis and function.

Antibacterial Agents is an essential guide to this important class of chemotherapeutic drugs. Compounds are organised according to their target, which helps the reader understand the mechanism of action of these drugs and how resistance can arise. The book uses an integrated "lab-to-clinic" approach which covers drug discovery, source or synthesis, mode of action, mechanisms of resistance, clinical aspects (including links to current guidelines, significant drug interactions, cautions and contraindications), prodrugs and future improvements. Agents covered include:

 • agents targeting DNA - quinolone, rifamycin, and nitroimidazole antibacterial agents
• agents targeting metabolic processes - sulfonamide antibacterial agents and trimethoprim
• agents targeting protein synthesis - aminoglycoside, macrolide and tetracycline antibiotics, chloramphenicol, and oxazolidinones
• agents targeting cell wall synthesis - β-Lactam and glycopeptide antibiotics, cycloserine, isonaizid, and daptomycin

 Antibacterial Agents will find a place on the bookshelves of students of pharmacy, pharmacology, pharmaceutical sciences, drug design/discovery, and medicinal chemistry, and as a bench reference for pharmacists and pharmaceutical researchers in academia and industry.


Ferguson, Sarah. Ballerina Rosie . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print. The Duchess of York recounts the tale of Rosie Red Curls, a little girl who loves to dance and dreams of becoming a prima ballerina. When her mother takes her to her first ballet lesson, Rosie struggles with the steps and is the least graceful girl in class. Rosie becomes discouraged until one Saturday, she wakes to find a gift of red ballet slippers by her bed. She's now able to dance beautifully. She thinks it is because of her shoes until her dance teacher tells her that she was always talented, she just needed to practice and build confidence. At some point, most little girls dream of becoming a famous ballerina and will be drawn to the book. Unfortunately, the story is uninspiring and a bit corny. The stated intended age range is 4 through 8 but the book is much too short and simplistic for most 7 and 8 year olds, though it may still appeal to younger girls. The moral about hard work paying off would likely not come through clearly for young girls. While the illustrations by Diane Goode are colourful and fun, they depict young girls en pointe performing steps that are much too advanced for their age. They are, however, typical ballet poses which is perhaps why they were used. Aspiring ballerinas would be better off reading tales of actual ballets, as Rosie does before bed, and viewing more realistic photographs of dancers. Not recommended: 1 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Trish Chatterley Trish is a Public Services Librarian for the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library at the University of Alberta. In her free time she enjoys dancing, gardening, and reading books of all types.


I KNOW not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world's hopeful expectation.


Qualitative researchers have used the observational strategies of video recording and participant observation to investigate specific phenomena. Although there have been recent advances in the separate use of these strategies, there is evidence that there is benefit in combining these observational approaches to study particular phenomena. The purpose of the paper is to present a discussion about the application of these observational methods as blended approaches. The authors draw on their own experience as researchers and that of others to explore how these observational strategies could be combined for use in a singular study. They provide directions for researchers who select observation as a primary research strategy.


This essay examines the implications of new historical research on the origins of EU law for legal theory. Based on a review of the recent work of Morten Rasmussen, Bill Davies, Anne Boerger-de Smedt, Karin van Leeuwen, and Alexandre Bernier, the essay demonstrates how this historical research improves our understanding of two important themes in comparative law — comparative legal traditions and legal transplants. By examining the legal actors in different jurisdictions responsible for building an area of public law — the economic law of the fledgling European Communities — the new historical research contributes to the legal traditions literature on legal elites, which has traditionally focused entirely on private law. Historical research on the founding treaties and early litigation before the Court of Justice also contributes to the comparative law theory of transplants by illustrating how and why domestic law was transplanted into the relatively understudied context of supranational law. In this essay, however, I take issue with the claim that the recent historical research undermines the conceptualization of the European legal order, today, as a constitutional order. If constitutionalization is defined as the routine application and enforcement of EU law, then there is considerable evidence that the current legal order approximates more closely a federal legal system than public international law. Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, historical research demonstrating that the origins of EU law were more contested and contingent than originally believed does not in itself provide sufficient grounds for inferring that the current status of the European legal order is uncertain. As shown by a large body of social science research on path dependence, many resilient institutional systems have been put on self-reinforcing paths by contingent events and highly contested beginnings.


f you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.


And that was what she often felt the need of—to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.


Nurses have probably always known that their decisions have important implications for patient outcomes. Increasingly, however, they are being cast in the role of active decision makers in healthcare by policy makers and other members of the healthcare team. In the UK, for example, the Chief Nursing Officer recently outlined 10 key tasks for nurses as part of the National Health Service's modernisation agenda and the breaking down of artificial boundaries between medicine and nursing.1 As well, nurses are expected to access, appraise, and incorporate research evidence into their professional judgment and clinical decision making.2 This active engagement with research evidence is the focus of this paper. We will explore why it is necessary to consider the clinical decision making context when examining the ways in which nurses engage with research based information. We will also consider the relation between the accessibility and usefulness of information from different sources and the decisions to which such information is applied. Finally, we will argue that if we are to encourage nurses to actively engage with research evidence during clinical decision making, we need to better understand the relation between the decisions that nurses make and the knowledge that informs them.

In this paper, we draw heavily on the findings of 2 major studies conducted at the University of York between 1997 and 2002.3–,9 2 case studies were conducted in 3 geographical areas with different hospital types, population characteristics, and levels of health service provision. We purposively sampled participants according to a sampling frame constructed around variables deemed to be theoretically significant for clinical decision making.7 Data collection comprised 200 indepth interviews with nurses and managers; 400 hours of non-participant observation of "decision making and information use in action"; 4000 practice based documents audited for characteristics such …


Pan Am, Gimbel's, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland - all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. "Creative destruction," he said, is the driving force of capitalism. Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as "the most sophisticated conservative" of the 20th Century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril - to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter's view, the general prosperity produced by the "capitalist engine" far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind. During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the spectre of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983 - the centennial of the birth of both men - Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate. "Prophet of Innovation" is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter's writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world's greatest economist, lover, and horseman - and admitted to failure only with the horses.


About Thich Nhat Hanh (1) One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh (called Thay by his students) has led an extraordinary life. Born in central Vietnam in 1926 he joined the monkshood at the age of sixteen. The Vietnam War confronted the monasteries with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and remain meditating in the monasteries, or to help the villagers suffering under bombings and other devastation of the war. Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, helping to found the "engaged Buddhism" movement. His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefit of individuals and society. In Saigon in the early '60s, Thich Nhat Hanh founded the School of Youth Social Service, a grass-roots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some 10,000 student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, Nhat Hanh also founded a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam. After visiting the U.S. and Europe in 1966 on a peace mission, he was banned from returning to Vietnam in 1966. On subsequent travels to the U.S., he made the case for peace to federal and Pentagon officials including Robert McNamara. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Subsequently, Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. In 1982 he founded Plum Village, a Buddhist community in exile in France, where he continues his work to alleviate suffering of refugees, boat people, political prisoners, and hungry families in Vietnam and throughout the Third World. He has also received recognition for his work with Vietnam veterans, meditation retreats, and his prolific writings on meditation, mindfulness, and peace. He has published some 85 titles of accessible poems, prose, and prayers, with more than 40 in English, including the best selling Call Me by My True Names, Peace Is Every Step, Being Peace, Touching Peace, Living Buddha Living Christ, Teachings on Love, The Path of Emancipation, and Anger. In September 2001, just a few days after the suicide terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, he addressed the issues of non-violence and forgiveness in a memorable speech at Riverside Church in New York City. In September of 2003 he addressed members of the US Congress, leading them through a two-day retreat. Thich Nhat Hanh continues to live in Plum Village in the meditation community he founded, where he teaches, writes, and gardens; and he leads retreats worldwide on "the art of mindful living." Thich Nhat Hanh's key teaching is that, through mindfulness, we can learn to live in the present moment instead of in the past and in the future. Dwelling in the present moment is, according to Nhat Hanh, the only way to truly develop peace, both in one's self and in the world. How to pronounce Thich Nhat Hanh? The English pronunciation is: Tik * N'yat * Hawn. However since Vietnamese is a tonal language, this is only a close approximation for how one would pronounce it in Vietnamese. By his students he is affectionately known as Thay (pronounced "Tay" or "Tie"), which is Vietnamese for "teacher. …


Humor researchers have emphasized the role that sex differences and attitudes toward women play in moderating amusement with sexist humor. In-group/out-group conflict and the adherence to hostile sexist attitudes have been shown to accurately determine the evaluation of sexist humor. The present research contributes to this literature by addressing the role that the social context plays in determining whether people adopt a humor mindset versus a serious mindset for interpreting sexist humor. We hypothesized that the norms of some social contexts (office) discourage the adoption of a non-serious "humor mindset" for interpreting sexist humor, leading people to perceive the humor as offensive. In contrast, the norms of other contexts (comedy club) encourage the adoption of a non-serious humor mindset, causing people to perceive the humor as less offensive. One hundred eighteen women and 84 men were prompted to imagine themselves in a comedy club, office or neutral setting and then asked to rate both sexist and neutral jokes in terms of offensiveness. It was found that imagining oneself in a comedy club significantly reduces offensiveness ratings of sexist humor. The office context had the opposite effect, where offensiveness ratings increased. Thus the adoption of a non-critical humor mindset can be manipulated by social context. The evaluation of sexist humor is not merely a function of gender in-group/out-group differences or attitudes towards women. The social context in which the jokes were told is also an influential piece to the puzzle.


The main research aim of this Ph-D thesis is to develop students�understanding of the nature of science on the background of Alexander von Humboldt's legacy for Grade 5 and Grade 6 classrooms in Baden-Wurttemberg schools. The Ph-D research questions are: 1.What conceptions do students of the age group 10-12 regarding the nature of science hold? 2.Does students� understanding of science change as a result of discovery-based science activities taken from Alexander von Humboldt� scientific observations during his expedition to Latin America between 1799-1804? If yes, in what way? This was done by: 1.Gathering background information about students� images of scientists and how they work. 2.Designing the most appropriate learning environment for improving their understanding of science. At the beginning of the intervention study, Humboldt�s life was used as a stimulus of student�s thoughts about science at. Students were put in the same situation of a scientist: posing a question about a theme of their interest, designing and realizing an experiment in order to satisfy their curiosity. By doing so, students� understandings of the construction of scientific knowledge would be improved. After a preliminary study between June and July 2002 at the Bammental Gymnasium, a case study took place from March till July 2003 at the Realschule Linkenheim for students of Grade 5. Students� epistemologies about science and scientists at the Realschule Linkenheim were collected by using the current trends in science education research: pre- and post-questionnaires, classroom observation, pre- and post- interviews, the Draw-A-Scientist-Task and portfolio work. This intervention study was realized in 26 school sessions and all the work sessions were also video taped. Students� views about their actual nature of science aspects were characterized and coded using a framework drawing on the following areas: characteristics of scientists, history of science and the epistemology about science and scientists. Finally, students were asked to write about their learning process by using portfolios. As to the recommendations: This study suggests that in order to develop some aspects of the nature of science, students need a free space at school to realize hands-on inquiry and a trained teacher who can translate to his students besides content knowledge, the nature of knowledge and the historical evolution of scientific knowledge.


"This paper assesses the economy-wide impact of implementing and financing a universal or basic income grant (BIG) in South Africa. The various financing scenarios suggested by the proponents of the grant are presented, and these are compared using an applied general equilibrium model for the South African economy. The results indicate that the required changes in direct and indirect tax rates needed to finance the grant without increasing the government deficit are substantially higher than currently predicted. Furthermore, the alternative of reducing government recurrent expenditure to finance the BIG will undoubtedly undermine other government policy objectives. The paper therefore proposes a shift in the current debate, away from determining which of the individual financing options is preferable, towards an acknowledgement that a 'balanced' approach is likely to provide the only feasible scenario. Furthermore, the impact of the grant on economic growth is found to hinge on its ability to enhance factor productivity. These results suggest that the possibility of South Africa becoming the continent's first welfare state is as likely to rest with the macroeconomic impacts of financing the grant, as with the ability of the grant to address the country's prevailing poverty." Author's Abstract.


According to a recent survey the great majority of players in logistics are planning to adopt one or more robotic solutions until 2019. Technical solutions for automation of processes in logistics are often available as a market-ready product, but the lack of standardization and skepticism towards long term investments are often the reasons why these solutions are not implemented on a large scale. This paper is set to bridge the gap between the world of technologies and the one of applications in order to help investors, robot producers and system integrators to decide on which branch of logistics to set their focus. The three main branches Courier Express Parcel (CEP), contract logistics and production logistics are briefly defined and distinguished through their characteristic factors and parameters. Then a method based on the analysis of three parameters (operative costs, required performance and flexibility) in the three branches is set to identify the most convenient branch of logistics for investing in new technologies, namely the one in which the risk of investment is lower, the return is higher and faster. The conclusion of the method shows that higher labor costs, strict regulations and higher standardization make the production logistics the most suitable branch for investments in emerging automation solutions.


I document in this paper a puzzle that has not received previous attention in the literature. In 1980-98, median per capita income growth in developing countries was 0.0 percent, as compared to 2.5 percent in 1960-79. Yet I document in this paper that variables that are standard in growth regressions - policies like financial depth and real overvaluation, and initial conditions like health, education, fertility, and infrastructure generally improved from 1960-79 to 1980-98. Developing country growth should have increased instead of decreased according to the standard growth regression determinants of growth. The stagnation seems to represent a disappointing outcome to the movement towards the "Washington Consensus" by developing countries. I speculate that worldwide factors like the increase in world interest rates, the increased debt burden of developing countries, the growth slowdown in the industrial world, and skill-biased technical change may have contributed to the developing countries' stagnation, although I am not able to establish decisive evidence for these hypotheses. I also document that many growth regressions are mis-specified in a way similar to the Jones (1995) critique that a stationary variable (growth) is being regressed on non-stationary variables like policies and initial conditions. It may be that the 1960-79 period was the unusual period for LDC growth, and the 1980-98 stagnation of poor countries represents a return to the historical pattern of divergence between rich and poor countries.


Corner detection is a fundamental step in image processing, and it takes an important role in target tracking, image stitching and three-dimension reconstruction. Harris algorithm is widely used in corner detection for simple calculation and its detection result is not affected by image rotation and light intensity changes. Harris algorithm uses integral differential mask to extract the image gradient, and the edges information remains in the low frequency part of images. When dealing with images with a large number of edge information, integral differential weakens the low frequency part of images obviously, thus the detection result is not really good. Besides, Harris algorithm does not have the property of scale-invariant. For these reasons, fractional differential and multiple scale-space method are put forward in this article to improve Harris algorithm. Experiments show that the detection result of improved algorithm is better than original Harris algorithm in dealing with images of much detailed information.


"This study determined if properly and improperly fitted lacrosse helmets provide adequate stabilization of the head, and therefore the cervical spine, in the spine boarded athlete. A 3 x 3 repeated measures design was used with head to helmet range of motion (flexion/extension, side bending, and rotation) and helmet condition (properly fitted, improperly fitted and no helmet) as independent variables. Also a 2 x 2 repeated measures design was used with testing condition (improperly fitted helmet, and properly fitted helmet) and range of motion conditions (head to thorax motion and helmet to thorax). Eighteen healthy collegiate men's lacrosse players were asked to move their heads through three planes of motion after being secured to the spine board under each of the three helmet conditions. The changes in range of motion in the cervical spine were then calculated. In sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes the head to thorax range of motion available in both the improperly fitted and properly fitted helmet was significantly greater than the no helmet condition (F(2,34)=34.48; p<.0001), (F(2,34)=17.18; p<.0001), (F(2,34)=39.72; p<.0001). In the sagittal plane the range of motion was greater in the improperly fitted helmet than the properly fitted helmet. There was no difference in the helmet to thorax range of motion between properly and improperly fitted helmet conditions. The head to thorax range of motion was significantly greater than the head to helmet range of motion in all three planes, sagittal (F(1, 17)=279.59; p<.0001), frontal (F(1, 17)=184.05; p<.0001), and transverse (F(1, 17)=211.43; p<.0001). Thus, the cervical spine was stabilized better when the lacrosse helmet was removed. Adjusting the fit of the helmet only improved head immobilization in the sagittal plane. "--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


For the eighth year in a row, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has produced the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR). These reports measure trends in effectiveness of care, patient safety, timeliness of care, patient centeredness, and efficiency of care. New this year are chapters on care coordination, health system infrastructure. The reports present, in chart form, the latest available findings on quality of and access to health care.

The National Healthcare Quality Report tracks the health care system through quality measures, such as the percentage of heart attack patients who received recommended care when they reached the hospital or the percentage of children who received recommended vaccinations. The National Healthcare Disparities Report summarizes health care quality and access among various racial, ethnic, and income groups and other priority populations, such as residents of rural areas and people with disabilities.

The reports have been revised based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine that can be found in their report, Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports.


Causality is an inextricable part of the educational process, as our understanding of what works in education depends on our ability to make causal attributions. Yet, the research and policy literature in education tends to define causality narrowly as the attribution of educational outcomes to intervention effects in a randomized control trial context. This reduction of the educational process to simple input – output relationships leaves important questions unattended about how change is produced in educational systems, and how observed results can be predicted based on the propensity toward change in the baseline settings of those systems. This paper considers these questions from a Complex Dynamical Systems perspective, and concludes that answers to them can qualify the findings from at least some experiments.


A fully automatic procedure is proposed to rapidly compute the permeability of porous materials from their binarized microstructure. The discretization is a simplified version of Peskin's Immersed Boundary Method, where the forces are applied at the no-slip grid points. As needed for the computation of permeability, steady flows at zero Reynolds number are considered. Short run-times are achieved by eliminating the pressure and velocity variables using an Fast Fourier Transform-based and 4 Poisson problembased fast inversion approach on rectangular parallelepipeds with periodic boundary conditions. In reference to calling it a fast method using fictitious or artificial forces, the implementation is called FFF-Stokes. Large scale computations on 3d images are quickly and automatically performed to estimate the permeability of some sample materials. A matlab implementation is provided to allow readers to experience the automation and speed of the method for realistic three-dimensional models.


The rise in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") enforcement actions has been well documented. Against the backdrop of aggressive enforcement and the resulting multi-million dollar fines and penalties is the undeniable fact that, in most instances, there is no judicial scrutiny of the FCPA enforcement theories. The end result is that the FCPA often means what the enforcement agencies say it means. Because of the "carrots" and "sticks" relevant to resolving a government enforcement action, FCPA defendants are nudged to accept resolution vehicles notwithstanding the enforcement agencies' untested and dubious enforcement theories or the existence of valid and legitimate defenses. The end result is often the facade of FCPA enforcement. This article discusses various pillars that contribute to the facade of FCPA enforcement and highlights that the FCPA, during its decade of resurgence, is being enforced like no other law. This article does not argue, or even suggest, that every FCPA enforcement action is unwarranted or that no company or individual has ever violated the FCPA. Rather, this article demonstrates that a significant majority of recent FCPA enforcement actions are a facade"including those that allege clear instances of corporate bribery"yet are resolved without FCPA anti-bribery charges. The facade of FCPA enforcement matters. Even though the resolution vehicles typically used to resolve an FCPA enforcement action are not subject to judicial scrutiny and the vehicles do not necessarily reflect the triumph of the enforcement agencies' theories, in the absence of substantive FCPA case law, these privately negotiated resolution vehicles have come to represent de facto FCPA case law. The facade of FCPA enforcement also breeds inefficient overcompliance by risk averse business actors fearful of enterprise - threatening liability because of the enforcement agencies' untested and dubious theories. Because the factors that contribute to the facade are being modeled by other nations when enforcing their own bribery laws, the facade of FCPA enforcement is a global issue affecting a broad segment of the marketplace. Identifying and acknowledging the existence of a problem is a necessary first step to crafting solutions. This article exposes the facade of FCPA enforcement, argues that addressing the facade and subjecting FCPA enforcement actions to greater judicial scrutiny is in the public interest, and encourages more FCPA defendants to challenge the enforcement agencies and further expose the facade of FCPA enforcement.


Compressive sampling is a new paradigm for sampling, based on sparseness of signals or signal representations. It is much less restrictive than Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory and thus explains and systematises the widespread experience that methods such as the Hogbom CLEAN can violate the Nyquist-Shannon sampling requirements. In this paper, a CS-based deconvolution method for extended sources is introduced. This method can reconstruct both point sources and extended sources (using the isotropic undecimated wavelet transform as a basis function for the reconstruction step). We compare this CS-based deconvolution method with two CLEANbased deconvolution methods: the Hogbom CLEAN and the multiscale CLEAN. This new method shows the best performance in deconvolving extended sources for both uniform and natural weighting of the sampled visibilities. Both visual and numerical results of the comparison are provided.


hen I first met Semali, he was sitting behind his office computer wearing a white baseball cap and reading e-mail. An assistant professor of education at Penn State, Semali has two master's degrees from Stanford in communications and education, and a Ph.D. in social sciences and comparative education from UCLA – an education few would consider oppressive. But as I got to know him, I began to understand better both Semali's frustration and the roots of his harsh remark: Education is slavery of the mind.


Notwithstanding the ongoing academic debate, little is known empirically about how unincorporated alternative entities - LLCs and LPs - actually utilize the contractual freedom afforded under Delaware law. To what extent do alternative entities take advantage of contractual freedom to wholly eliminate fiduciary duties? And to what extent do alternative entities employ so-called "uncorporate" substitutes - certain contractual devices designed to discipline and incentivize mangers - in lieu of fiduciary duties? In response to calls for empirical evidence on this issue, this study analyzes the operating agreements of every publicly traded Delaware alternative entity in existence as of June 2011. This study, the first of its kind, provides a snapshot of contractual freedom as it is applied under Delaware alternative entity law. In particular, this study finds that the use of fiduciary waiver and exculpation provisions among publicly traded Delaware alternative entities is widespread. Yet, despite the widespread use of such provisions, this study also finds that publicly traded alternative entities have either failed to adopt uncorporate substitutes or adopted uncorporate substitutes that only trivially constrain managerial discretion. Thus, this study suggests that publicly traded alternative entities have largely utilized the freedom of contract to reduce managerial accountability to investors without committing to significant offsetting constraints on managerial discretion.


There is a world-wide drive to provide early medical care at primary healthcare rather than specialist level. There are many sound reasons for this, but it places an enormous responsibility on the family practitioner to have a wide general knowledge of the many conditions he or she may have to diagnose and treat or refer. Orthopaedic problems ranging from backache through degenerative arthritis to minor musculoskeletal injuries form a very large part of any primary healthcare practice, and the importance of adequate orthopaedic pre-graduate training cannot be exaggerated. As orthopaedics is largely a 'hands-on' discipline, most of the practical training has traditionally taken place during the internship period. The questions are whether this provides an adequate level of competence for the recently qualified doctor, and if not what should be done to rectify matters.
Naidoo first drew attention to the poor orthopaedic skills in junior doctors in South Africa in his assessment of orthopaedic trauma referrals to a regional hospital in 2009.1 The following year Dachs et al. tested a group of interns before their orthopaedic rotation using a standardised validated examination and reported a 91% failure rate.2 In a follow-up study, reported in this issue of the SAOJ, the same authors tested a second group to find out if a 2-month orthopaedic internship improved the candidates' performance.3 It did not. Confirmation that the miserable performance of the first group was representative was provided by a similar 94% failure rate in the second group before, and an insignificantly better 86% after, the orthopaedic rotation.
The causes of this alarming failure of orthopaedic teaching must be identified and corrected at different levels:
1. Pre-graduate teaching. The major issues here appear to be the time allocated to orthopaedic teaching, and the type of teaching offered. The syllabus should be fairly standardised throughout the various departments, and should not be a problem. It is important that a candidate should not be able to pass his final examination in surgery without passing orthopaedics: realistically many students will not study a subject that is not critical to qualifying.
Orthopaedic contact time for students in this country varies enormously and is probably inadequate. Dedicated orthopaedic training time in four of five South African medical schools I questioned varied from 90 to 130 hours; in the fifth it was 283 hours. This compares poorly with the 250 hours my niece receives in a graduate medical course in Britain. What may be equally important is at which point in their training students are taught, and the methods used. Integrated teaching of different but related specialities helps a student to develop the broad view of a problem essential to a good generalist.
However, teaching for instance anaesthetics and other surgical specialities together carries the risk of diluting the importance of each component speciality. It is probably better to provide a concentrated programme in each discipline and only later, after each has been mastered, teach students how they inter-relate.
When should orthopaedics be taught? Ideally in the penultimate year of training, when the student is relatively mature, and has a grounding in the basic disciplines. This should then be supplemented by a short, dedicated revision period in the final year.
Many medical schools still have a six-year MBChB programme with the final year being a student internship. This is impossible to justify given the current two-year internship plus one year community service required before full registration. That sixth year should be abandoned or put to better use.
Modern education emphasises the use of small group teaching. There is still a place for formal lectures, but this is mainly to outline the area to be covered, and provide material for self-study - so lecture notes are essential to reinforce the spoken word. As medical knowledge expands it is the lecturers' duty to digest a complex issue and give the student the basic principles to be used in practice. It is also important that any teacher should arouse his students' interest and communicate his own enthusiasm for a subject.
It is probably better to provide a concentrated programme in each discipline and only later, after each has been mastered, teach students how they inter-relate.
One problem with interactive teaching in present-day medical classes is that the 'small groups' consist of 10 to 30 students, far too large for effective individual teaching. A second is the shortage of doctors in training hospitals with spare time to teach them in a busy clinic.
Finally we cannot ignore the students' own responsibility to study orthopaedics to the necessary level.
2. Internship. This must be seen as an extension of training in medical school and not a period of exploitation before HPCSA registration. The community service year is the time for a doctor to pay any debt to society, while bridging the gap to independent medical practice.
Focused training in practical orthopaedics at the start of the surgical rotation has been shown to be effective. Vermaak and Potgieter demonstrated a useful improvement in interns' knowledge of orthopaedic and general trauma management after a 10-hour introductory course at the start of their six-month surgical rotation.4 Similar but expanded courses are obviously needed on a much larger scale.
Inadequate supervision and practical instruction by registrars and specialists are probably major causes of an intern's failure to benefit from his time in orthopaedics. Many peripheral hospitals do not have the staff needed to train and supervise interns. Too often an intern in a larger hospital is used as a dogsbody in the ward to take blood, write forms, etc., with little opportunity to learn from working with their seniors in theatre or the clinic.
Another serious problem is the trauma overload in all levels of hospital in this country; the result is poor exposure of interns to cold orthopaedics.
The training element of internship must be recognised and enforced at each hospital with an intern allocation.
Focused training in practical orthopaedics at the start of the surgical rotation has been shown to be effective
These disturbing findings about intern competence in orthopaedics are a serious challenge to our speciality. It is surely time for the SAOA to assess the various training and intern programmes, compare them to overseas programmes, and provide some guidance on how the problem should be tackled.

References
1. Naidoo ND. An evaluation of the quality of orthopaedic trauma referrals to a regional hospital. SA Orthopaedic Journal 2009;8(1):66-69.         [ Links ]
2. Dachs et al. assessment of undergraduate orthopaedic training at medical schools in South Africa. SA Orthopaedic Journal 2010;9(4):33-37.         [ Links ]
3. Dachs. et al. Assessing musculo-skeletal training in South Africa. SA Orthopaedic Journal 2014;13(3)        [ Links ]
4. Vermaak DP, Potgieter JWT. Evaluation of a new general trauma course with an orthopaedic focus for newly qualified doctors. SA Orthopaedic Journal 2012;11(2):68-71.         [ Links ]

Prof JA Shipley Professor Emeritus University of the Free State Bloemfontein


Joyce, Gare.  Northern Dancer: King of the Racetrack .  Markham, ON:  Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2012. Print. It is not often that you find a biography of an animal, but in this case, the animal was a national icon.  According to Gare Joyce, Northern Dancer, the great racehorse "made more money as an accomplished racehorse and sire than any Canadian athlete in history – even more than Wayne Gretzky ".  The book begins with a genealogical chart that shows that of the 19 horses starting in the 2011 Kentucky Derby, 18 were descended from Northern Dancer. This book chronicles Northern Dancer from his birth through to his wins and standing at stud until his death at age 29.  Through his story, the reader also learns about the world of North American thoroughbred racing.  We meet the great jockeys:  Ron Turcotte, Willie Shoemaker and Bill Hardtack who all rode Northern Dancer to victories. We learn about the development of racehorses and the major races:  The Preakness, The Belmont, The Kentucky Derby and the Queen's Plate.    Joyce writes informally and conversationally, as though he is telling one long story.  For example, he tells us that Northern Dancer "became unruly around his stall…At least once he ripped the shirt off his trainer." Later we are told that a trainer inadvertently let Northern Dancer run hard the day before a race and people thought that no thoroughbred could "run the equivalent of two races on two consecutive days.   As it turned out, the only ones hurting after the Florida Derby were those who hadn't bet on the heavily favoured Northern Dancer."  The text is accompanied by many photos of Northern Dancer, including archival images of horse and jockey in races, at the wire and in the winners' circle.  Overall, this is an enjoyable story of a remarkable horse.  Northern Dancer: King of the Racetrack is highly recommended for junior high school libraries and public libraries everywhere. Highly recommended:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


If a wave function does not describe microscopic reality then what does? Reformulating quantum mechanics in path-integral terms leads to a notion of "precluded event" and thence to the proposal that quantal reality differs from classical reality in the same way as a set of worldlines differs from a single worldline. One can then ask, for example, which sets of electron trajectories correspond to a Hydrogen atom in its ground state and how they differ from those of an excited state. We address the analogous questions for simple model that replaces the electron by a particle hopping (in discrete time) on a circular lattice.


An investigation was carried out with the primary objective of ascertaining whether it is possible to develop a model for determining the feasibility of retrofitting hydropower to existing dams in South Africa. The need for such a model is primarily due to the growing importance of small-scale hydropower projects resulting from the global shift towards renewable energy and the South African energy crisis, the increased price of energy and the introduction of feed-in tariffs for renewables. The model is intended for engineers, typically working on behalf of a client who would like a simple first order assessment of feasibility. It therefore takes all technical, environmental, social and financial considerations into account in order to provide a recommendation on whether or not a project would be feasible. Achieving the primary objective required an in-depth study of the theory and literature related to the current electricity situation in South Africa as well as all the different components and considerations of hydropower projects. This theoretical knowledge could then be utilised to develop a computer model which combines the most important considerations into a cohesive whole in order to make a recommendation on feasibility. The accuracy and applicability of the model could then be ascertained through testing, using actual case studies in South Africa. Three test cases were utilised which yielded positive results. A number of difficulties were encountered. These related mainly to the development of an accurate means for pricing the different components primarily due to a lack of response from suppliers. Such issues were solved through the use of theoretical formulas and studies which provided good results. Ultimately, a model was developed which includes financial, environmental and social considerations and provides values that are accurate enough as an initial tool in determining whether or not to continue with a retrofitted hydropower project.


Background Educational policy makers and test critics often assert that standardized test scores are strongly influenced by factors beyond individual differences in academic achievement such as family income and wealth. Unfortunately, few empirical studies consider the simultaneous and related influences of family income, parental education, and high school achievement on college admissions test scores. Focus Of Study This research was animated by the nagging question of the association of family income with SAT performance. For example, is the relationship between family income and SAT performance non-linear? Does the relationship differ markedly by race? More importantly, how strong are the effects of poverty on SAT performance? Research Design This study is a secondary analysis of a large national sample of Black and White college-bound high school students who took the SAT in 2003 (N = 781,437). Data Collection and Analysis Employing data from the College Board's Student Descriptive Questionnaire, this study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate the effects of family income on SAT scores for Black and White examinees accounting for the simultaneous effects of parental education and high school achievement. Findings/Results Results suggest the effects of family income on SAT scores, though relatively modest in contrasts to high school achievement, are substantial, non-linear, and nearly twice as large for Black students. Moreover, the unstandardized direct effect of high school achievement on SAT performance is not enough to address the substantial effects of poverty for Black students. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings are discussed with respect to social inequality and educational opportunity in college admissions.


Starting with the wide-spread publication of the residual effects of pesticide use on the health of humans and the environment by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the 1970's, U.S. conventional farming techniques have been placed in an undesired spotlight. More recently, the Global Warming crisis has led to another  expansion of the American consumer's environmental-  consciousness, which has been reflected in the consumer's choice in terms of food purchases. According the Organic Trade  Association's 2011 Organic Industry Survey, "U.S. sales of organic food and beverages have grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010. Sales in 2010 represented 7.7 percent growth over 2009 sales." Perceived effects of organic farming systems include increased sustainability of soil fertility and avoidance of nutrient pollution, while conventional farming techniques are expected to produce a higher crop yield. This paper will focus on the  environmental impact of conventional versus organic farming systems on nutrient pollution and crop yield.


Abstract. Nitryl chloride (ClNO2) is a radical reservoir species that releases chlorine radicals upon photolysis. An integrated analysis of the impact of ClNO2 on regional photochemistry in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA) during the Korea–United States Air Quality Study (KORUS-AQ) 2016 field campaign is presented. Comprehensive multiplatform observations were conducted aboard the NASA DC-8 and at two ground sites (Olympic Park, OP; Taehwa Research Forest, TRF), representing an urbanized area and a forested suburban region, respectively. Positive correlations between daytime Cl2 and ClNO2 were observed at both sites, the slope of which was dependent on O3 levels. The possible mechanisms are explored through box model simulations constrained with observations. The overall diurnal variations in ClNO2 at both sites appeared similar but the nighttime variations were systematically different. For about half of the observation days at the OP site the level of ClNO2 increased at sunset but rapidly decreased at around midnight. On the other hand, high levels were observed throughout the night at the TRF site. Significant levels of ClNO2 were observed at both sites for 4–5 h after sunrise. Airborne observations, box model calculations, and back-trajectory analysis consistently show that these high levels of ClNO2 in the morning are likely from vertical or horizontal transport of air masses from the west. Box model results show that chlorine-radical-initiated chemistry can impact the regional photochemistry by elevating net chemical production rates of ozone by ∼25 % in the morning.


The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) was pleased to present the AAAI 2008 Spring Symposium Series, held Wednesday through Friday, March 26–28, 2008 at Stanford University, California. The titles of the eight symposia were as follows: (1) AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management, (2) Architectures for Intelligent Theory-Based Agents, (3) Creative Intelligent Systems, (4) Emotion, Personality, and Social Behavior, (5) Semantic Scientific Knowledge Integration, (6) Social Information Processing, (7) Symbiotic Relationships between Semantic Web and Knowledge Engineering, (8) Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science The goal of the AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management AAAI symposium was to investigate the various approaches and standards to represent business rules, business process management and the semantic web with respect to expressiveness and reasoning capabilities. The focus of the Architectures for Intelligent Theory-Based Agents AAAI symposium was the definition of architectures for intelligent theory-based agents, comprising languages, knowledge representation methodologies, reasoning algorithms, and control loops. The Creative Intelligent Systems Symposium included five major discussion sessions and a general poster session (in which all contributing papers were presented). The purpose of this symposium was to explore the synergies between creative cognition and intelligent systems. The goal of the Emotion, Personality, and Social Behavior symposium was to examine fundamental issues in affect and personality in both biological and artificial agents, focusing on the roles of these factors in mediating social behavior. The Semantic Scientific Knowledge Symposium was interested in bringing together the semantic technologies community with the scientific information technology community in an effort to build the general semantic science information community. The Social Information Processing's goal was to investigate computational and analytic approaches that will enable users to harness the efforts of large numbers of other users to solve a variety of information processing problems, from discovering high-quality content to managing common resources. The goal of the Symbiotic Relationships between the Semantic Web and Software Engineering symposium was to explore how the lessons learned by the knowledge-engineering community over the past three decades could be applied to the bold research agenda of current workers in semantic web technologies. The purpose of the Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science symposium was to identify ways that topics in AI may be used to motivate greater student participation in computer science by highlighting fun, engaging, and intellectually challenging developments in AI-related curriculum at a number of educational levels. Technical reports of the symposia were published by AAAI Press.


The regulation of macrophage recruitment and retention into the vascular wall is critical in the progression of atherosclerosis and aortic aneurysm formation. This can be mediated by chemokine activation of multiple G-protein coupled receptors. The Regulator of G-Protein Signalling-1 (RGS1) acts to deactivate the intracellular response to sustained chemokine stimulation. We have found that RGS-1 is up-regulated with atherosclerotic plaque progression and with monocyte-macrophage activation. However little is known about the role of RGS-1 in macrophage function in vivo.

Rgs1 deficient macrophages have significantly enhanced migratory responses to atherogenic chemokines (p<0.05) and have impaired desensitisation to repeated chemokine re-stimulation (p<0.001). In vivo, RGS1 has a role in the accumulation of macrophages in atherosclerotic lesions and during Angiotensin-II aortic aneurysm rupture. In the absence of RGS1, atherosclerosis is attenuated in early lesions in the aortic root and aortas of ApoE-/- mice (p<0.001) which is accompanied by fewer macrophages in the aortic root. Rgs1-/-ApoE-/- mice are protected from Angiotensin-II induced aneurysm rupture compared to ApoE-/- mice with 94% survival vs. 56% (p=0.0147). Rgs1-/-ApoE-/- mice have significantly fewer CD11b+ myeloid cells and CD14+ macrophages in aortas than ApoE-/- mice (p<0.05) after 5 days of Angiotensin-II infusion.

Following bone marrow transplantation, recipient mice receiving ApoE-/- bone marrow were more susceptible to aortic aneurysm rupture (p=0.0124), indicating bone marrow-derived RGS-1 is required for aneurysm rupture. Furthermore, Angiotensin II treatment increased systolic blood pressure to a greater extent in Rgs1-/-ApoE-/- mice than ApoE-/- mice suggesting aneurysm formation in these mice is independent of Ang-II induced hypertension and this is mediated by vascular-derived RGS-1.To gain insight into the mechanism by which RGS1 regulates trafficking, we selectively labelled circulating inflammatory monocytes in vivo to track their movement into aortas following Ang II infusion. We found an accumulation of labelled CD45+ cells in the aortas of ApoE-/- mice from day 3 to day 5 but not in Rgs1-/-ApoE-/- mice indicating RGS1 as a regulator of macrophage retention in aortic aneurysms.

These findings identify a novel role for RGS1 in leukocyte function and vascular inflammation and identifies RGS1 as a potential target for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.


In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, two men secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between them. Sir Mark Sykes was a visionary politician; Francois Georges-Picot a diplomat with a grudge. The deal they struck, which was designed to relieve tensions that threatened to engulf the Entente Cordiale, drew a line in the sand from the Mediterranean to the Persian frontier. Territory north of that stark line would go to France; land south of it, to Britain. Against the odds their pact survived the war to form the basis for the post-war division of the region into five new countries Britain and France would rule. The creation of Britain's 'mandates' of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, and France's in Lebanon and Syria, made the two powers uneasy neighbours for the following thirty years. Through a stellar cast of politicians, diplomats, spies and soldiers, including T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, A Line in the Sand vividly tells the story of the short but crucial era when Britain and France ruled the Middle East. It explains exactly how the old antagonism between these two powers inflamed the more familiar modern rivalry between the Arabs and the Jews, and ultimately led to war between the British and the French in 1941 and between the Arabs and the Jews in 1948. In 1946, after many years of intrigue and espionage, Britain finally succeeded in ousting France from Lebanon and Syria, and hoped that, having done so, it would be able to cling on to Palestine. Using newly declassified papers from the British and French archives, James Barr brings this overlooked clandestine struggle back to life, and reveals, for the first time, the stunning way in which the French finally got their revenge.


To charge and discharge the ASTROMAG superconducting magnet in space requires retractable gas-cooled leads which must operate in a vacuum. This report describes the design and test of 500 ampere retractable gas-cooled leads made from 6061-T4 aluminum tubes. Aluminum is attractive for gas-cooled electrical leads in space because of its low mass density and the desire for short leads. Initial tests showed that retractable gas-cooled leads could operate in a vacuum from a source of normal helium. The pressure drop through the leads was low enough to permit a superconducting magnet to be charged and discharged while the leads vent into space. The leads were stable at currents above 700 amperes. The voltage drop across the contact between the upper and lower leads was as low as 1.2 mV per lead out of a total voltage drop of 42 mV per lead when the leads carried 714 amperes. The gas required for cooling was comparable to the more conventional copper gas-cooled current leads. In a second test seven months later. The contact resistance between the lead sections had increased considerably. In the second test, the contact resistance was repeatable for one lead but not for the other.


Humans often judge others egocentrically, assuming that they feel or think similarly to themselves. Emotional egocentricity bias (EEB) occurs in situations when others feel differently to oneself. Using a novel paradigm, we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the developmental capacity to overcome such EEB in children compared with adults. We showed that children display a stronger EEB than adults and that this correlates with reduced activation in right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) as well as reduced coupling between rSMG and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) in children compared with adults. Crucially, functional recruitment of rSMG was associated with age-related differences in cortical thickness of this region. Although in adults the mere presence of emotional conflict occurs between self and other recruited rSMG, rSMG-lDLPFC coupling was only observed when implementing empathic judgements. Finally, resting state analyses comparing connectivity patterns of rSMG with that of right temporoparietal junction suggested a unique role of rSMG for self-other distinction in the emotional domain for adults as well as for children. Thus, children's difficulties in overcoming EEB may be due to late maturation of regions distinguishing between conflicting socio-affective information and relaying this information to regions necessary for implementing accurate judgments.


HOW HAD MRS. OLINSKI CHOSEN her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team? It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski's team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen? It happened at least partly because Noah had been the best man (quite by accident) at the wedding of Ethan's grandmother and Nadia's grandfather. It happened because Nadia discovered that she could not let a lot of baby turtles die. It happened when Ethan could not let Julian face disaster alone. And it happened because Julian valued something important in himself and saw in the other three something he also valued. Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they had been chosen. This is a tale about a team, a class, a school, a series of contests and, set in the midst of this, four jewel-like short stories -- one for each of the team members -- that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers.


The last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century are typically characterized as the era in which the criminal jury trial came to an end. Although criminal juries did not completely disappear, their role became smaller and smaller across that time frame. Most studies of this phenomenon attribute that decline to the rise of plea bargains in that same period. Specifically, these studies lead to the conclusion that institutional factors, such as case loads and the political pressure on elected prosecutors to be "tough on crime," made plea bargains an increasingly attractive option for the State. They are based on the assumption that the rise of plea bargains caused the decline of criminal juries. Yet this explanation does not appear to fit the case of late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century Chicago. In that period the felony courts in Chicago, like felony courts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston, did make increasing use of plea bargains and jury trials declined, as well. But the data suggests that the greater use of pleas did not lead to the decline of criminal juries, so much as result from efforts to avoid jury trials. To explore this possibility, this article begins with a review of studies of plea bargaining in the Chicago and Cook County felony courts. The data in that scholarship suggests that the desire to avoid trials prompted the resort to plea agreements. Then, to consider why that might be so, this article explores the contemporary views of criminal juries by unpacking a trial from late nineteenth-century Chicago, People v. Coughlin, and the various objections to the jury that arose at different moments in that trial. These objections, made by new accounts, judges, lawyers, legal scholars and political figures, reveal the full range of ambivalence about criminal juries in Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century. Yet as deep as that unhappiness was, Illinois law failed to respond to those concerns, in part because they were challenges to fundamental aspects of the Anglo-American common law tradition. That resistance to reform may have reflected an abiding commitment to the ideal of the jury, but it made plea agreements an attractive alternative.


Pro bono has undergone a profound transformation. Whereas for most of American legal history, pro bono was ad hoc and individualized, dispensed informally as professional charity, within the last twenty-five years it has become centralized and streamlined, distributed through an elaborate institutional structure by private lawyers acting out of professional duty. Pro bono has thus emerged as the dominant means of dispensing free representation to poor and underserved clients, eclipsing state-sponsored legal services and other nongovernmental mechanisms in importance. This Article examines the causes, features, and consequences of pro bono's institutionalization. It begins with an analysis of the forces behind pro bono's institutional rise, emphasizing the role of the organized bar, federal legal services, the nonprofit sector, and big law firms. This Article then maps the contours of pro bono's institutional architecture, analyzing the structures of organizational collaboration, mechanisms of efficiency, strategies for accountability, and processes of adaptation that define pro bono's operational identity. It concludes by probing the systemic consequences of pro bono's new institutional centrality, weighing the pragmatic benefits of leveraged law firm resources against the limitations imposed by the dependence on private lawyers beholden to commercial client interests.


This study on the influence of soil textual properties and land use cover type on soil erosion of a characteristics ultisols. Betem, Cross River State, Nigeria was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between land use type and soil loss in the context of a characteristics ultisols. Soil samples were manually collected from the respective land use types with the aid of soil auger at the depth of 0-15cm for the laboratory analysis of particle size distribution while data on sediment yield deposit were obtained through the use of sediment traps or dishes placed at the foot of the respective slopes. The result of the textural characteristics revealed that particle size distribution showed large proportion of sand. Thus, sand ranged from 72-78% with a mean of 75.0%, silt ranged from 11-12% with a mean of 11.0% while clay ranged from 12.0% - 16% with a mean of 14.0%. The result showed that sand was the dominant particle fraction and any soil that is characterized by huge sand proportion can be vulnerable to erosion perturbation. The various land cover types have revealed their potentials in reducing erosion perturbation. The result of sediment yield obtained under these land use types revealed the following ranges and means: bare land surface ranged from 40-360g with a mean of 182.2g, cassava plot, ranged from 30-238 with a mean of 107.6g, bush fallow ranged from 4-150g with a mean of 30.0g; secondary forest plot ranged from 2-48 with a mean of 15.0 grams while primary forest plot has a range of 1-45 with a mean of 13.4g respectively. The study revealed that it is the unguided use of land that exposes soils to the direct effect of weather elements hence the major cause of soil erosion in the area. The study, therefore suggests an appropriate land or soil management system that can guarantee adequate protection of soil and other variable components of the environment.


This work is concerned with dynamic flow problems, especially maximal dynamic flows and earliest arrival flows - also called universally maximal flows. First of all, a survey of known results about existence, computation and approximation of earliest arrival flows is given. For the special case of series-parallel graphs a polynomial algorithm for computing maximal dynamic flows is presented and this maximal dynamic flow is proven to be an earliest arrival flow.


Although multiculturalism is a phenomenon strongly accented in the postmodern scientific discourse, the multitude of the aspects and processes manifested within multidimensional areas of human life and cultural communities (diversified by cultural differences) require current, up-to-date, precise, and innovative interpretation of its discursive, theoretical and empirical meanings.Undertaking this challenge, the themes tackled within the framework of the journal "Multicultural Studies" set on one hand, the proposed discourse in empirical foundation, revealing wide range of cutting-edge research and empirical perspectives investigating multiculturalism, and on the other focusing on the specificity of cultural indicators, as the latter are subject to ongoing transformation in the context of institutionally and informally manifested multiculturalism, i.e. within the framework of cultural transmission, socialization, acculturation, education, resocialization, intercultural education, as well as upon contacts with cultural difference within professional activities, etc.


Design and technology is an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject. Using creativity and imagination, pupils design and make products that solve real and relevant problems within a variety of contexts, considering their own and others' needs, wants and values. They acquire a broad range of subject knowledge and draw on disciplines such as mathematics, science, engineering, computing and art. Pupils learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens. Through the evaluation of past and present design and technology, they develop a critical understanding of its impact on daily life and the wider world. High-quality design and technology education makes an essential contribution to the creativity, culture, wealth and well-being of the nation.


The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence was pleased to present the 2010 Fall Symposium Series, held Thursday through Saturday, November 11-13, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. The titles of the eight symposia are as follows: (1) Cognitive and Metacognitive Educational Systems; (2) Commonsense Knowledge; (3) Complex Adaptive Systems: Resilience, Robustness, and Evolvability; (4) Computational Models of Narrative; (5) Dialog with Robots; (6) Manifold Learning and Its Applications; (7) Proactive Assistant Agents ; and (8) Quantum Informatics for Cognitive, Social, and Semantic Processes. The highlights of each symposium are presented in this report.


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Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) is a small, short-lived deciduous tree found throughout the eastern United States. Redbud is also known as Judastree. According to legend, Judas Iscariot hanged himself from a branch of the European species Cercis siliquastrum (13). Eastern redbud is a strikingly conspicuous tree in the spring because it flowers before other tree leaves form. The wood is heavy, hard, and close-grained, but because of the small size and irregular shape of the tree it is of no commercial value as a source of lumber. This tree is most valued as an ornamental and is extensively planted.


Abstract: We show that the physical mechanism of population transfer in a 3-level system with a closed loop of coherent couplings (loop-STIRAP) is not equivalent to an adiabatic rotation of the dark-state of the Hamiltonian but coresponds to a rotation of a higher-order trapping state in a generalized adiabatic basis. The concept of generalized adiabatic basis sets is used as a constructive toolto design pulse sequences for stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) which give maximum population transfer also under conditions when the usual condition of adiabaticty is only poorly fulfilled. Under certain conditions for the pulses (generalized matched pulses) there exists a higher-order trapping state, which is an exact constant of motion and analytic solutions for the atomic dynamics can be derived.


With the publication of Holbrook et al. (2003) the field of seismic oceanography experienced a major momentum. Several authors since then (Nandi et al., 2004; Holbrook and Fer, 2005; Paramo and Holbrook, 2005) could show that those reflections within the water column correspond to thin layers with strong vertical temperature gradients. Those reflections hence represent a chance to trace those temperature gradients over large distances.Weak seismic reflections within the water column south of South Africa gave rise to the question whether here traces of the Agulhas Current or Agulhas Retroflection can be observed. A careful reprocessing of the data led to the imaging of fields of reflections pointing towards a 135 km broad and about 1000 m deep reaching well stratified area with strong reflection amplitudes and several weaker reflections extending down to at least 1500 m water depth over the whole area of investigation.To image both the boundaries between the water masses as reflections and the different properties of the long wavelength velocity variations in depth special imaging technigues like prestack depth migration analysis were performed. Further, the temperature gradients from the short wavelength properties as velocity and density contrasts were determind by a two step inversion of acoustic amplitude versus angle analysis to better quantify the variations of the water masses of the Agulhas Current.References:Holbrook, W.S., and I. Fer, Ocean internal wave spectra inferred from seismic reflection transects, 2005, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L15604, doi:10.1029/2005GL023733.Nandi, P., W.S. Holbrook, S. Pearse, P. Paramo, and R.W. Schmitt, 2004, Seismic reflection imaging of Norwegian Sea water mass boundaries, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L23311, doi:10.1029/2004GL021325.Paramo, P., and W. S. Holbrook, 2005, Temperature contrasts in the water column inferred from amplitude-versus-offset analysis of acoustic reflections, Geophys. Res. Lett., v. 32, L24611, doi:10.1029/2005GL024533.


This volume sets out to provide a comprehensive description of the grammar of Gooniyandi, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the southern-central Kimberley region of Western Australia. It covers phonetics and phonology, word phrase and clause structure, and the semantics of closed-class grammatical items. The major focus is, however, on meaning: how do Gooniyandi speakers mean with and in their language. To this end, the theoretical framework of systemic functional grammar, particularly as elaborated in Halliday's recent work, is adopted. Certain refinements to the theory are proposed in order to better account for the Gooniyandi evidence. Of obvious importance to those studying Australian aboriginal languages, this work has an importance to a wider audience for its effective presentation of theory justification.


In this fully expanded and updated third edition of the bestselling classic, you learn why verbal abuse is more widespread than ever, and how you can deal with it. You'll get more of the answers you need to recognize abuse when it happens, respond to abusers safely and appropriately, and most important, lead a happier, healthier life. In two all-new chapters, Evans reveals the Outside Stresses driving the rise in verbal abuse--and shows you how you can mitigate the devastating effects on your relationships. She also outlines the Levels of Abuse that characterize this kind of behavior--from subtle, insidious put-downs that can erode your self-esteem to full-out tantrums of name-calling, screaming, and threatening that can escalate into physical abuse. Drawing from hundreds of real situations suffered by real people just like you, Evans offers strategies, sample scripts, and action plans designed to help you deal with the abuse--and the abuser. This timely new edition of The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Third Edition puts you on the road to recognizing and responding to verbal abuse, one crucial step at a time!


Measuring the global Internet is a perpetually challenging task for technical, economic and policy reasons, which leaves scientists as well as policymakers navigating critical questions in their field with little if any empirical grounding. On February 12-13, 2009, CAIDA hosted the Workshop on Active Internet Measurements (AIMS) as part of our series of Internet Statistics and Metrics Analysis (ISMA) workshops which provide a venue for researchers, operators, and policymakers to exchange ideas and perspectives. The two-day workshop included presentations, discussion after each presentation, and breakout sessions focused on how to increase potential and mitigate limitations of active measurements in the wide area Internet. We identified relevant stakeholders who may support and/or oppose measurement, and explored how collaborative solutions might maximize the benefit of research at minimal cost. This report describes the findings of the workshop, outlines open research problems identified by participants, and concludes with recommendations that can benefit both Internet science and communications policy. Slides from workshop presentations are available at http://www.caida.org/workshops/isma/0902/.


Inoculation of macaques with live attenuated SIV strains has been shown to protect against subsequent challenge with wild-type SIV. The protective mechanism(s) remain obscure. To study the effect in more detail, we have investigated the role of virus-specific CTL responses in macaques infected with an attenuated SIV strain (pC8), which has a four–amino acid deletion in the nef gene, as compared with the wild-type SIVmac32H clone (pJ5). Cynomolgus macaques infected with pC8 were protected against subsequent challenge with pJ5 and did not develop any AIDS-like symptoms in the 12 months after infection. The pC8-induced protection was associated with high levels of virus-specific CTL responses to a variety of viral antigens. In contrast, pJ5-infected macaques had little, if any, detectable CTL response to the viral proteins after three months. The latter group of macaques also showed increased Fas expression and apoptotic cell death in both the CD4+ and CD8+ populations. In vitro, pJ5 but not pC8 leads to an increase in FasL expression on infected cells. Thus the expression of FasL may protect infected cells from CTL attack, killing viral-specific CTLs in the process, and providing a route for escaping the immune response, leading to the increased pathogenicity of pJ5. pC8, on the other hand does not induce FasL expression, allowing the development of a protective CTL response. Furthermore, interruption of the Fas-FasL interaction allows the regeneration of viral-specific CTL responses in pJ5-infected animals. This observation suggests an additional therapeutic approach to the treatment of AIDS.


The development of intelligent environments is considered an important step towards the realization of the ambient intelligence vision. Intelligent environments are technologically augmented everyday spaces, which intuitively support human activity. The IE conferences traditionally provide a leading edge forum for researchers and engineers to present their latest research and to discuss future directions in the area of intelligent environments. This article briefly presents the content of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE09), which was held July 20–21 at the Castelldefels campus, of the Technical University of Catalonia, near Barcelona, Spain.