While it is true that a large number of immigrants to this country entered through sea ports during the 19th century, they were not the only arriving legal immigrants. The west coast has its own very different picture of arriving legal immigrants, one that includes subjugation, treaties, and dusty townships, as well as assumptions and mischaracterizations. This essay explores the treaties and statutes that directly affected Mexican permanent legal immigration to the United States. We begin with a discussion of 19th Century immigration, but quickly turn to the immigrant visa program. The paper then discusses the availability of administrative and regularization remedies to undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States. These three particular programs represent the primary means by which Mexicans have lawfully and permanently immigrated to the United States in the past 160 years. We purposely excluded discussions of temporary lawful immigrants and legal migration to the United States, focusing instead on the processes that have made it possible for Mexicans to legally and permanently settle in the United States.The evolution and manipulation of these programs by political forces leaves a legacy worthy of inquiry. Mexicans intending to make a permanent home in the United States confronted enormous obstacles in their pursuit of this status. Although Mexicans were not summarily excluded in the way Asians were, the United States sought to limit their settlement in the United States. At several points in history Mexican immigrants were encouraged, threatened, or forced to depart the United States irrespective of their right to lawfully reside in the United States. The waves of displacement disrupted advances in permanent legal resettlement. Furthermore, statutes and regulations were manipulated to discourage permanent Mexican immigration. Then as now, the United States misconstrued the unique relationship between Mexico and the United States choosing to sidestep the realities of the countries' interconnectedness, and leaving the Mexican immigration problem no closer to resolution.


During the course of the network neutrality debate, advocates have proposed extending common carriage regulation to broadband Internet access services. Others have endorsed extending common carriage to a wide range of other Internet-based services, including search engines, cloud computing, Apple devices, online maps, and social networks. All too often, however, those who focus exclusively on the Internet era pay too little attention to the lessons of the legacy of regulated industries, which has long struggled to develop a coherent rationale for determining which industries should be subject to common carriage. Of the four rationales for determining the scope of common carriage — whether industry players (1) hold themselves out as serving all comers, (2) are "affected with a public interest," (3) are natural monopolies, or (4) offer transparent transmission capability between points of the customers choosing without change — each has been discredited or is inapplicable to Internet-based technologies.Moreover, common carriage has long proven difficult to implement. Nondiscrimination is difficult to enforce when products vary in terms of quality or cost and forecloses demand-side price discrimination schemes (such as Ramsey pricing) that can increase economic welfare. In addition, the academic literature has long noted that the obligation to keep rates reasonable is difficult to apply, has trouble accommodating differences in quality, provides weak incentives to economize, creates systematic biases toward inefficient solutions, raises difficult questions about how to allocate common costs, deters innovation, and requires collusion by creating entry barriers, standardizing products, pooling information, providing advance notice of any pricing changes, and allowing the government to serve as the cartel enforcer. Three historical examples — early local telephone companies known as competitive access providers, the detariffing of business services, and Voice over Internet Protocol — provide concrete illustrations of how refraining from imposing common carriage regulation can benefit consumers.


The Supreme Court's products liability preemption jurisprudence is a small but expanding area that traces its beginnings to the early 1990s with Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., and continues, most recently, through the 2008 decision of Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. At first glance, the United States Supreme Court's preemption jurisprudence in the realm of products liability cases is a nearly incoherent muddle. But a closer view actually reveals an unmistakable pattern: in every case, the Court, with only one exception, has adopted the position of the relevant federal agency as to whether the plaintiff's state law claims should be preempted by that agency's regulations. The Court is hardly forthright about its dependence upon agencies. My article proposes a new agency reference model to fill the doctrinal gap. The model serves two functions: a lens through which we might better understand what the Court has been doing, for the past fifteen years, in the product liability preemption cases that it has decided, and a prescriptive approach for the cases that it, and lower courts, will face down the road. The thorniest preemption cases arise where Congress has been silent as to the preemptive effect of its own legislation; where a statute that it has issued says nothing or else says contradictory things about the relationship of that law to state law claims. The tall interpretive task is left to courts and to agencies. The agency reference model is an effort to clarify the relationship between these two actors; a relationship that needs direction and parameters, not only to provide coherence and predictability to the law in this area, but, this article suggests, to guide courts to the optimal result in preemption cases. Under this model, courts should look to agencies to supply the data and analysis necessary to determine if preemption is appropriate; i.e., to determine when a uniform, national regulatory policy with respect to a certain product makes the most sense or, instead, whether such regulation is better left to the states, in which case a plaintiff's common law claim should be permitted to proceed. This model simply acknowledges and exploits the fact that agencies are best equipped to provide the information central to this determination (a fact that the Court apparently already recognizes). The role played by an agency might be significant in two respects. First, there is a degree of regulatory scrutiny employed by the agency in its review and approval of products. In addition, an agency often weighs in contemporaneously on factors that arguably determine the preemptive effect of its regulatory actions. Second, an agency may assume a distinct interpretive role as administrator of the congressional legislation, and has a variety of means at its disposal to express its position on preemption, from formal notice-and-comment rulemaking to less formal interpretive statements and preambles to litigation briefs. Finally, an agency may share its views before courts (including the Supreme Court) tasked with deciding preemption questions. The model acknowledges that there is good reason to be chary of agencies acting in their interpretive, as distinct from regulatory, capacity. Most of the arguments in favor of agencies' comparative expertise speak to the rigor of the product review and approval process. While it is certainly the case that an agency might manipulate its regulatory record at the time of its product review, that danger pales in comparison to the risk of an agency's post hoc rationalization of its actions in litigation briefs, or promulgation of interpretive rules and preambles. For this reason, the model incorporates various checks on agency preemptive power.


[1] During the July 2002 CRYSTAL-FACE field program based from Key West, Florida, aircraft measurements showed that long-lived thin tropopause cirrus (TTC) layers were often present above thunderstorm anvils. This paper describes these clouds and explores their possible origins. Measurements showed that the horizontal dimensions of TTC layers were nearly identical to convectively formed anvils beneath, but that TTC did not appear to have originated from convective detrainment. Rather, they appeared to have formed in stably stratified air derived from high altitudes near the tropopause. TTC were separated vertically from the top of the anvil by ∼1 km, they lacked precipitation particles, and they were strongly depleted in HDO, all of which indicate in situ formation. However, compared to surrounding clear air near the tropopause, TTC were enriched in moisture and trace gases. The degree of enrichment was consistent with mixing of air near the tropopause with the same convective air mass that produced the anvil. Unlike surrounding air, TTC had embedded a monochromatic gravity wave with a wavelength of 2 km and an amplitude of several hundred meters. This evidence, supported by a photograph from CRYSTAL-FACE, leads to the conjecture that TTC originate as stratiform pileus clouds that form near the tropopause ahead of vigorous convective uplift. We hypothesize that the pileus are penetrated by the convection, moistened through turbulent mixing, and once the convection subsides, they are sustained by radiative cooling due to the presence of the anvil layer beneath.


The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101 In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers. With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life. From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts. This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.


Learners differ from each other in many ways particularly in cognitive abilities. These factors eventually affect their learning abilities. Thus teachers should look into learner differences in intelligence before designing a teaching and learning program for them. Gardner proposed a much broader view of the definition of intelligence than a number of other theorists with his theory of multiple intelligences. The important of the idea of multiple intelligences in education lies in the fact that learners vary in their abilities, and thus teachers need to find out the best strategies to use related to their variations, or to develop programs that instruct students in different domains. This paper attempts to provide a brief overview of the eight multiple intelligences connected with Howard Gardner's theory. The article also suggests some ways for teachers to incorporate the intelligences into their daily lesson planning for practical use in language teaching and learning.


2 The UK Department for International Development (DFID) supports policies, programmes and projects to promote poverty reduction globally. DFID provided funds for the Migrating out of Poverty RPC as part of that goal but the views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone. FAO disclaimer: The designations employed and the presentation of material in this working paper do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of FAO. All rights reserved. FAO encourages reproduction and dissemination of material in this information product. Non-commercial uses will be authorized free of charge, upon request. Reproduction for resale or other commercial purposes, including educational purposes, may incur fees. Applications for permission to reproduce or disseminate FAO copyright materials, and all other queries concerning rights and licences, should be addressed by e-mail to email@example.com or to the Chief,


The aim of this study was to analyze the variables that may affect the application of the technology to produce handicrafts. The method used to determine the sample unit of craft businesses of rural households that will be interviewed are acidental sampling. This study uses a quantitative analytical approach. Quantitative analysis using descriptive statistics and regression of binary logistic analysis. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the variables that significantly influence the application of technology in rural craftsmen in Bangli Regency is the income and education level. The higher the income level, the higher the possibility of craftsmen applying modern technologies. Likewise, the education level, the higher the education level, assuming other variables constant, the possibility of applying the technology will be higher. While the age and type of business does not significantly influence the application of technology.


Achieve IELTS is written by experienced IELTS teachers and examiners and offers a unique approach to preparing students for the IELTS examination. It is a two-level, student-centred course that not only prepares students for the test but also for academic life after IELTS. This popular IELTS preparation course has been completely revised. The Student's and Teacher's Books have been redesigned. The Student's Books have new and updated listening and reading texts, and almost all of the photographs, charts and graphs have been replaced.


This paper proposes a new paradox: the paradox of toil. Suppose everyone wakes up one day and decides they want to work more. What happens to aggregate employment? This paper shows that, under certain conditions, aggregate employment falls; that is, there is less work in the aggregate because everyone wants to work more. The conditions for the paradox to apply are that the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction, much as during the Great Depression in the United States and, perhaps, the 2008 financial crisis in large parts of the world. The paradox of toil is tightly connected to the Keynesian idea of the paradox of thrift. Both are examples of a fallacy of composition.


A comprehensive, must-have handbook of matrix methods with a unique emphasis on statistical applications This timely book, A Matrix Handbook for Statisticians, provides a comprehensive, encyclopedic treatment of matrices as they relate to both statistical concepts and methodologies. Written by an experienced authority on matrices and statistical theory, this handbook is organized by topic rather than mathematical developments and includes numerous references to both the theory behind the methods and the applications of the methods. A uniform approach is applied to each chapter, which contains four parts: a definition followed by a list of results; a short list of references to related topics in the book; one or more references to proofs; and references to applications. The use of extensive cross-referencing to topics within the book and external referencing to proofs allows for definitions to be located easily as well as interrelationships among subject areas to be recognized. A Matrix Handbook for Statisticians addresses the need for matrix theory topics to be presented together in one book and features a collection of topics not found elsewhere under one cover. These topics include: * Complex matrices * A wide range of special matrices and their properties * Special products and operators, such as the Kronecker product * Partitioned and patterned matrices * Matrix analysis and approximation * Matrix optimization * Majorization * Random vectors and matrices * Inequalities, such as probabilistic inequalities Additional topics, such as rank, eigenvalues, determinants, norms, generalized inverses, linear and quadratic equations, differentiation, and Jacobians, are also included. The book assumes a fundamental knowledge of vectors and matrices, maintains a reasonable level of abstraction when appropriate, and provides a comprehensive compendium of linear algebra results with use or potential use in statistics. A Matrix Handbook for Statisticians is an essential, one-of-a-kind book for graduate-level courses in advanced statistical studies including linear and nonlinear models, multivariate analysis, and statistical computing. It also serves as an excellent self-study guide for statistical researchers.


The sun is setting on the Western world. Slowly but surely, the direction in which the world spins has reversed: where for the last five centuries the globe turned westwards on its axis, it now turns to the east...For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture - and is shaping the modern world. This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world's great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won - and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again. A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.


This article provides an analysis of how military history museums in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Poland, and the United States exhibit and contextualize weapon technologies that were developed in the two world wars. The article focuses on technologies (gas warfare, the atomic bomb, tanks, and the V2 long-range rocket) that are directly connected to military success and innovation but also relate to dehumanization and destruction. By employing the analytical concepts of experientiality and of antagonistic, cosmopolitan, and entangled memory, this article demonstrates how museums can create open or closed narratives, steer the visitor toward particular interpretations, enhance or deconstruct the authentic aura of technological artifacts, and stage the symbolic potential of technologies. In addition, it shows how museums can educate visitors and allow them to experience the ambiguities, controversies, and complexities of these technologies.


The first chapter gives basic definitions and theorems concerning set functions and set function integrals. The lemmas and theorems are presented without proof in this chapter. The second chapter deals with absolute continuity and Lipschitz condition. Particular emphasis is placed on the properties of max and min integrals. The third chapter deals with approximating absolutely continuous functions with bounded functions. It also deals with the existence of the integrals composed of various com-binations of bounded functions and finitely additive functions. The concluding theorem states if the integral of the product of a bounded function and a non-negative finitely additive function exists, then the integral of the product of the bounded function with an absolutely continuous function exists over any element in a field of subsets of a set U.


Mobility and Computing have experienced an amazing evolution during the last decade, impacting business, economy, and society, enabling new organizational models, new ways of working, new inter-organizational dynamics, increased flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness in all sectors of activity. The Handbook of Research on Mobility and Computing: Evolving Technologies and Ubiquitous Impacts discusses the main issues, challenges, opportunities, and trends related to this explosive range of new developments and applications, in constant evolution, and impacting every organization and society as a whole. This two volume handbook supports post-graduate students, teachers, and researchers, as well as IT professionals and managers. It is a valuable addition to any research collection.


. With the advances of the computer technology, structural optimization has become a prominent field in structural engineering. In this study an unconventional approach of structural optimization is presented which utilize the Energy method with Integral Material behaviour (EIM) , based on the Lagrange's principle of minimum potential energy. The equilibrium condition with the EIM, as an alternative method for nonlinear analysis, is secured through minimization of the potential energy as an optimization problem. Imposing this problem as an additional constraint on a higher cost function of a structural property, a bilevel programming problem is formulated. The nested strategy of solution of the bilevel problem is used, treating the energy and the upper objective function as separate optimization problems. Utilizing the convexity of the potential energy, gradient based algorithms are employed for its minimization and the upper cost function is minimized using the gradient free algorithms, due to its unknown properties. Two practical examples are considered in order to prove the efficiency of the method. The first one presents a sizing problem of I steel section within encased composite cross section, utilizing the material nonlinearity. The second one is a discrete shape optimization of a steel truss bridge, which is compared to a previous study based on the Finite Element Method.


Abstract Background: The healthcare of Batswana (citizens of Botswana) as indicated in the country's Vision 2016 is one of the top priorities of the government of Botswana, yet Botswana's National Health Policy, the Immigration Policy and the National Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme Framework all are silent on the obligations of the government to provide health services to the immigrant and refugee population. In view of the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Botswana, South Africa and other sub-Saharan countries, it is critical that reproductive health services be as affordable and accessible for the immigrants and refugees as they are for other residents in Botswana. This study measured the views of the primary healthcare providers in Botswana on the perceived reproductive health needs of immigrants and refugees and the availability and accessibility of reproductive healthcare services to the immigrant and refugee populations in the country. This information will be important for policy makers, the government of Botswana and the private sector to shape intervention measures to assist immigrants and refugees in seeking and accessing the desired reproductive health services. Methods: The study targeted all 4 667 medical doctors and nurses who were serving in various hospitals and clinics in 23 health districts of Botswana as at June 2005 when this study was conducted. Using NCS Pearson statistical software, the sample size for the study was determined to be 851. This estimated sample size was allocated to the 23 health districts (strata) using probability proportional to size (PPS). Having obtained the sample size for each district, the healthcare providers to be interviewed from each health district were selected randomly and in proportion to the number of doctors and nurses in each district. Questionnaires were administered to these healthcare providers by research assistants, who explained the purpose of the study and obtained informed consent. The questionnaires were coded to ensure the anonymity of the respondents. It contained questions about the healthcare providers' demographic characteristics, their opinions on the reproductive health needs of immigrants and refugees, and their views on factors that influence the accessibility of these services to immigrants and refugees. Data were collected from 678 doctors and nurses (about 80% of the targeted sample). Results: The majority of the healthcare providers indicated that the most important reproductive health needs of the immigrants and refugees, namely pregnancy-related services (prenatal, obstetrics, postnatal conditions), treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV/AIDS treatment and counselling and family planning were not different from those of the locals. However, some major differences noted between the local population and the foreigners were (i) that antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and prevention of mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) programmes were never accessible to the non-citizens; and (ii) that while treatments and other health services were free to Batswana, a fee was charged to non-citizens. Although 86% of the 21 studied reproductive health services were available in the healthcare system more than 50% of the time, only 62% of them were accessible to the immigrants and refugees 50% of the time. The major reasons for inability to access these services were: (i) The immigrants and refugees have to pay higher fees to access the reproductive health services; (ii) Once an immigrant or refugee is identified as HIV positive, there are no further follow-ups on the patient such as detecting the immune status using a CD4 count or testing the viral load; (iii) The immigrants and refugees do not have referral rights to referral clinics/hospitals for follow-ups in case of certain health conditions; and (iv) The immigrants and refugees are required to join a medical aid scheme to help offset part of the costs for the desired services. Conclusions: The study recommended that the government of Botswana should improve the availability of reproductive health services to immigrants and refugees, and expunge those laws and practices that make it difficult for immigrants and refugees to access the available reproductive health services.


The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of the largest research and higher education organisations in the world focusing on engineering and natural sciences. At present KIT, under the chairmanship of its executive board, is installing an extensive current research information system (CRIS) covering all institutes and facilities of the organisation. The assumption underlying the project is that a consistent overview of research performance has become fundamental for the international competitiveness of research institutions and is increasingly important for strategic decisions at the executive level. Ultimately, it also leads to better data and control in rankings at higher education assessments. The new research information system systematically maps all of KIT's processes and instruments to obtain, connect, present and utilise the research metadata of active researchers. This reduces the documentation workload for researchers, for the executive level and central units such as the library, and at the same time allows for and facilitates an overall view and the aggregation and visualisation of research metadata. Our vision is to build a federally structured network of systems that gathers information on KIT's publications, research competence, research projects, patents and technological offers by retrieving data from external and internal sources as well as directly from the researchers. The network facilitates linking and aggregating of data and provides unique identifiers for individual researchers and organizational units. With its consistent data model the research information system also fosters the organisational development of KIT, which was formed in 2009 by the merger of a university and a national research centre. The researchers and their activities are at the core of the research information system. The system substantially reduces their administrative burden in documenting project information and publications. Automatic data import from external online sources and repositories has the big advantage that publication data are acquired and validated only once and can be used subsequently for manifold purposes such as websites, CVs, publication lists and reference management software. Due to the complexity of workflows, internal and external sources and the organisational infrastructure that is required for such an implementation, KIT has chosen a commercial software solution (by AVEDAS AG) as the basic installation, and in cooperation with AVEDAS will expand it and adjust it to a tailor-made system that covers the entire KIT publication and research life cycle. The CRIS at KIT is part of a larger integrated and service-oriented approach to information management (Karlsruhe Integrated Information Management — KIM).


This study investigated length and age relationships for a sample of red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, from the South Atlantic between the years 1977 – 2006, a period of time that included 3 different management schemes for this species. Total lengths ranged from 197 to1,001 mm with a mean total length of 573 mm. Fractional ages of these fish ranged from 0.5 to 53.67 years with corresponding calendar ages ranging from 1 to 54 years. Von Bertalanffy models were derived using both observed lengths with fractional age and back-calculated lengths to the last annulus. There was no biological difference in theoretical growth between observed and back-calculated lengths. When back-calculating lengths from otolith radius taken along the transverse plane compared to along the sulcal groove, there was no difference in estimates between measurement axes. Mean length, mean age, mean length-at-age, and von Bertalanffy curves were used to test for differences in growth between geographical area, fishery type, and regulatory period. Regulatory periods consisted of the no regulation period (1977 – 1982), the FMP period (1983 – 1991) where a minimum size limit of 305 mm total length was instituted for red snapper, and the Amendment 4 period (1992 – 2006), where the minimum size limit was raised to 508 mm total length. No differences in growth were found between fish caught in the Carolinas (NC/SC/GA) and those caught in Florida or between fish caught in the recreational fishery as opposed to the commercial fishery. However, red snapper 2 – 5 years old were significantly larger at age in the Amendment 4 period than in the other two periods. This shows evidence for a size selective fishery due to the increase in size limits. Von Bertalanffy models, corrected for size limit effects, showed there was no difference in the growth pattern between areas, fisheries, or regulatory periods, therefore, one corrected von Bertalanffy model (Lt = 896 * (1 – e -0.25 (t + 0.16))) was used to represent growth for the entire South Atlantic red snapper population from 1977 to 2006.


From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job. A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control. Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws - and the very scary part we all play in it.


In the first months of 2011, Internet communications were disrupted in several North African countries in response to civilian protests and threats of civil war. In this paper, we analyze episodes of these disruptions in two countries: Egypt and Libya. Our analysis relies on multiple sources of large-scale data already available to academic researchers: BGP interdomain routing control plane data, unsolicited data plane traffic to unassigned address space, active macroscopic traceroute measurements, RIR delegation files, and MaxMind's geolocation database. We used the latter two data sets to determine which IP address ranges were allocated to entities within each country, and then mapped these IP addresses of interest to BGP-announced address ranges (prefixes) and origin autonomous systems (ASs) using publicly available BGP data repositories in the US and Europe. We then analyzed observable activity related to these sets of prefixes and ASs throughout the censorship episodes. Using both control plane and data plane data sets in combination allowed us to narrow down which forms of Internet access disruption were implemented in a given region over time. Among other insights, we detected what we believe were Libya's attempts to test firewall-based blocking before they executed more aggressive BGP-based disconnection. Our methodology could be used, and automated, to detect outages or similar macroscopically disruptive events in other geographic or topological regions.


Mashups have become the driving force behind the development of personal learning environments (PLEs). Creating mashups in an ad hoc manner is, however, for end users with little or no programming background not an easy task. Various tools and platforms have been built in an attempt to support mashup creation. These platforms, however, are still considered complex and do not address crucial challenges in mashup development today, such as scalability, interoperability, reuse, and automatic service invocation and mediation. In this paper, we leverage the possibility to use the concept of model-driven mashup development (MDMD) as an approach that can drastically tackle the aforementioned issues and drive the rapid and user-friendly creation of mashups. We then present the conceptual and technical details of PLEF-Ext as a flexible framework for end-user, model-driven development (MDD) of mashup PLEs.


Preliminary existential hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of data based on 24 protocols, and our own reflexive discussion, reveals how "kindred spirit connections" manifest in myriad elusive, evocative ways. These special connections are experienced variously from briefly felt moments of friendship to enduringly profound body-soul love connections. This paper explicates five intertwined dimensions: shared bonding; the mutual exchange and affirmation of fellowship; the destined meeting or relationship; immediate bodily-felt attraction; and the pervasive presence of love. A wide ranging literature around the theme of love is outlined and the concept of kindred spirit is briefly applied to the psychotherapy practice context.


Orientation: Organisational bullying experiences manifest themselves as an intense unconscious systemic dynamic involving the bully, the victim and the organisational culture. The relatedness between the objects is characterised by valences and mutual defence mechanisms such as splitting, projection and projective identification.
Research purpose: The purpose of this research was to describe organisational bullying experiences from the system psychodynamic perspective.
Motivation for the study: Individual psychology tends to simplify organisational bullying by focussing on the bully's symptomatic behaviour. Systems psychodynamic thinking focuses on the behavioural dynamics in the relationship between the bully and victim, and the relatedness of both with the organisational system.
Research design, approach and method: Qualitative and descriptive research, using six participants as case studies, was undertaken. Data was gathered through Free Association Narrative Interviewing and analysed using discourse analysis.
Main findings: Three themes manifested themselves, namely, snakes and hyenas, a complex interconnected dyad, and the institutionalisation of bullying. The research hypothesis integrating these three themes was presented.
Practical / managerial implications: In resolving organisational bullying Industrial Organisational psychologists need to pursue this phenomenon not only in terms of its symptoms, but in a holistic, systemic and role related manner addressing all of its parts.
Contribution / value-add: The systemic understanding of organisational bullying implies the complexity of studying the behaviour of all parts - the bully, the victim, their dyadic relationship as well as how bullying is institutionalised in the organisational setting, climate and culture.


The ASP.NET MVC 4 Framework is the latest evolution of Microsofts ASP.NET web platform. It provides ahigh-productivity programming model that promotes cleaner code architecture, test-driven development, and powerful extensibility, combined with all the benefits of ASP.NET. ASP.NET MVC 4 contains a number of significant advances over previous versions. New mobile and desktop templates (employing adaptive rendering) are included together with support for jQuery Mobile for the first time. New display modes allow your application to select views based on the browser that's making the request while Code Generation Recipes for Visual Studio help you auto-generate project-specific code for a wide variety of situtations including NuGet support. In this fourth edition, the core model-view-controller (MVC) architectural concepts are not simply explained or discussed in isolation, but are demonstrated in action. Youll work through an extended tutorial to create a working e-commerce web application that combines ASP.NET MVC with the latest C# language features and unit-testing best practices. By gaining this invaluable, practical experience, youll discover MVCs strengths and weaknesses for yourselfand put your best-learned theory into practice. The book's authors, Steve Sanderson and Adam Freeman, have both watched the growth of ASP.NET MVC since its first release. Steve is a well-known blogger on the MVC Framework and a member of the Microsoft Web Platform and Tools team. Adam started designing and building web applications 15 years ago and has been responsible for some of the world's largest and most ambitious projects. You can be sure you are in safe hands. What youll learn Gain a solid architectural understanding of ASP.NET MVC 4, including basic MVC Explore the entire ASP.NET MVC Framework Learn what's new in version 4 and how how best to apply these new features See how MVC and test-driven development work in action Capitalize on your existing knowledge quickly and easily through comparison of features in classic ASP.NET to those in ASP.NET MVC Who this book is for This book is for web developers with a basic knowledge of ASP.NET and C# who want (or need) to start using the new ASP.NET MVC 4 Framework. Table of Contents1. The Big Idea 2. Your first MVC Application 3. The MVC Pattern 4. Essential Language Features 5. Working with Razor 6. Essential Tools for MVC 7. Sports Store: A Real Application 8. Sports Store: Navigation 9. Sports Store: Cart 10. Sports Store: Admin 11. Sports Store: Security and Finishing Touches 12. Overview of MVP Projects 13. URL Routing 14. Advanced Routing Features 15. Controllers and Actions 16. Filters 17. Controller Extensbility 18. Views 19. Helper Methods 20. Templated Helper Methods 21. URL and Ajax Helper Methods 22. Model Binding 23. Model Validation 24. Bundles and Display Modes 25. Web API 26. Deployment


This study is the final part of a larger project with an action research approach focusing on food distribution (FD) within municipal service and care for elderly persons, living at home (≥ 65 years), from various perspectives. The aim was to describe the decision-makers' the politicians and top level administrative manager's views on the FD service, and to give feedback from the results of earlier studies based on information given by FD receivers, the perspectives of involved professionals, and the results of an intervention study and further to report the decision-makers suggestions for which areas should be taken into consideration as starting points to improve the FD process and practice. Data was gathered in two steps: step 1, through individual interviews (n=12) with the decision-makers during the spring of 2009, step 2a through feedback from previous studies, received during the autumn of 2011 and step 2b from discussions based on the feedback. The interview data was analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings indicated a discrepancy between the reality and the political visions. It was shown that decision-maker's needed to make decisions despite their uncertain knowledge of the complexity of the FD programme. They considered what has been, what is, and will be, when setting goals. Their goal was that elderly person's rights and needs should be fulfilled. This included freedom of choice and individual consideration. In addition, it meant, meeting elderly people's medical and social needs. Three areas were found to require facilitation for change related to FD: 1) the monitoring of the elderly's health and wellbeing while providing FD, 2) the increasing of professional competence, and 3) the creation of a forum for inter-professional communication. The findings in this study have implications for nursing, gerontology and public administration.


Pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure such as sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails, can all be used for transportation, recreation, and fitness. These types of infrastructure have been shown to create many benefits for their users as well as the rest of the community. Some of these benefits are economic, such as increased revenues and jobs for local businesses, and some are non-economic benefits such as reduced congestion, better air quality, safer travel routes, and improved health outcomes. While other studies have examined the economic and non-economic impacts of the use of walking and cycling infrastructure, few have analyzed the employment that results from the design and construction of these projects. In this study we estimate the employment impacts of building and refurbishing transportation infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. We analyze various transportation projects and use state-specific data to estimate the number of jobs created within each state where the project is located. The data for this study were gathered from departments of transportation and public works departments from 11 cities in the United States. Using detailed cost estimates on a variety of projects, we use an input-output model to study the direct, indirect, and induced employment that is created through the design, construction, and materials procurement of bicycle, pedestrian, and road infrastructure. We evaluate 58 separate projects and present the results by project, by city, and by category. Overall we find that bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located. Pedestrian-only projects create an average of about 10 jobs per $1 million and multi-use trails create nearly as many, at 9.6 jobs per $1 million. Infrastructure that combines road construction with pedestrian and bicycle facilities creates slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending, and road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million. On average, the 58 projects we studied create about 9 jobs per $1 million within their own states. If we add the spill-over employment that is created in other states through the supply chain, the employment impact rises by an average of 3 additional jobs per $1 million.


A pairwise balanced design, $B(K;v)$, is a block design on $v$ points, with block sizes taken from $K$, and with every pair of points occurring in a unique block; for a fixed $K$, $B(K)$ is the set of all $v$ for which a $B(K;v)$ exists. A set, $S$, is a PBD-basis for the set, $T$, if $T=B(S)$. Let $N_{a(m)}=\{n:n\equiv a\bmod m\}$, and $N_{\geq m}=\{n:n\geq m\}$; with $Q$ the corresponding restriction of $N$ to prime powers. This paper addresses the existence of three PBD-basis sets. 1. It is shown that $Q_{1(8)}$ is a basis for $N_{1(8)}\setminus E$, where $E$ is a set of 5 definite and 117 possible exceptions. 2. We construct a 78 element basis for $N_{1(8)}$ with, at most, 64 inessential elements. 3. Bennett and Zhu have shown that $Q_{\geq8}$ is a basis for $N_{\geq8}\setminus E'$, where $E'$ is a set of 43 definite and 606 possible exceptions. Their result is improved to 48 definite and 470 possible exceptions. (Constructions for 35 of these possible exceptions are known.) Finally, we provide brief details of some improvements and corrections to the generating/exception sets published in The CRC Handbook of Combinatorial Designs .


There is great confusion among scholars and courts about whether and when appellate courts may, or must, defer to trial courts' findings of social fact in constitutional rights cases. The Supreme Court has never directly decided the question and indeed has addressed it only once, in passing. A common assumption, promoted by scholars and adopted as binding by some circuits, is that the deferential, clearly-erroneous standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a)(6) does not apply to social facts. This article challenges that assumption. There is nothing in the text of the rule that supports this conclusion. Moreover, except in certain, readily identifiable circumstances, it makes sense for appellate courts to defer to trial courts' findings of social fact. Federal bench trials are better suited than the appellate process to vetting social facts when laws are challenged as violating constitutional rights. There is rarely a reason, other than rhetorical, for appellate courts to venture beyond the trial record to determine key social facts in such cases. In the instances when such facts are missing, a remand for further factfinding at the trial level will often be workable and appropriate. Since a court's findings of social fact can determine whether constitutional rights claims succeed or fail, it is crucial to achieve a clearer understanding of the roles and respective authority of appellate and trial courts in factfinding in constitutional rights cases. This article sorts out the tangle of rules and precedents concerning appellate review of trial court factfinding in the constitutional rights context. It then proposes a framework for assessing whether and when appellate courts should defer to trial courts' findings of social fact in constitutional rights cases.


Temporal information is essential for effective perception and action in the dynamic environment in which we exist. However, our ability to use information about time intervals flexibly to direct attention to an expected point in time has until recently been unexplored. Here we report a series of behavioural, neuroimaging and electrophysiological experiments that investigate and define the ability to orient attention in the temporal domain. These studies reveal that we are able to orient attention selectively to different time intervals, enhancing behavioural performance. These effects are mediated by a left-hemisphere dominant frontal-parietal system, which partially overlaps with the networks involved in spatial orienting. The optimisation of behaviour by temporal orienting appears to be achieved via motor-related mechanisms, in contrast to the typical perceptual enhancements produced by spatial attention. From a more general perspective, these findings illustrate the flexibility of attentional functions in the human brain.


The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how eight high-achieving African American high school adolescents who participated in an early college academy program at a historically Black high school constructed their academic identity. Using the interpretive lens of sociocultural theory and racial identity development, the negotiations of these adolescents were explored as they navigated their own identities, which ultimately revealed their beliefs about their academic achievement. Through the use of an instrumental case study, data were collected from individual interviews, focus groups, observations, archival document reviews, and researcher's field notes. A content analysis was conducted. Findings of this study revealed that participants demonstrated strong academic identities. All eight participants enjoyed school and believed that schooling was a nonnegotiable necessary for a successful future in the world. They chose to attend the early college program, in part, because of the historic legacy and traditions of the high school, even though society's views of the school were oftentimes contradictory to what they believed to be true. Though the participants acknowledged the benefits and the drawbacks of being in their high school and particularly the early college program, they described some of their peers who attended the traditional school within the same high school in similar stereotypical ways they sought hard to negate about themselves. Participants' families positively influenced their academic identity development and served as motivation for them to achieve. While the participants recalled experiences where racial discrimination was exposed through the societal curriculum, they "put race aside" when thinking about their own academic achievement, for they considered race having no bearing on their educational successes; however, they used their academic achievement as a form of resistance to how society deemed them to be. Implications for school administrators, educational policy makers, and classroom teachers are provided. Suggestions for future research are also shared.


Is the Internet democratizing American politics? Do political Web sites and blogs mobilize inactive citizens and make the public sphere more inclusive? The Myth of Digital Democracy reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse but in fact empowers a small set of elites--some new, but most familiar. Matthew Hindman argues that, though hundreds of thousands of Americans blog about politics, blogs receive only a miniscule portion of Web traffic, and most blog readership goes to a handful of mainstream, highly educated professionals. He shows how, despite the wealth of independent Web sites, online news audiences are concentrated on the top twenty outlets, and online organizing and fund-raising are dominated by a few powerful interest groups. Hindman tracks nearly three million Web pages, analyzing how their links are structured, how citizens search for political content, and how leading search engines like Google and Yahoo! funnel traffic to popular outlets. He finds that while the Internet has increased some forms of political participation and transformed the way interest groups and candidates organize, mobilize, and raise funds, elites still strongly shape how political material on the Web is presented and accessed. The Myth of Digital Democracy. debunks popular notions about political discourse in the digital age, revealing how the Internet has neither diminished the audience share of corporate media nor given greater voice to ordinary citizens.


Around the world, primary and secondary schools are challenged to implement appropriate programs for their gifted and talented students. In this paper, we present how our community's public school system and our college of engineering collaboratively developed and implemented a program on Nanotechnology for a group of forty 9–11 year olds on a completely self-sustaining basis. The program's objectives and outcomes are aligned with our state's Core Science and Academic Standards. Modest student fees (US $30 per child) cover the training and salary for undergraduate students to serve as instructors, as well as the salary for the K-12 teachers/mentors to be present as additional support during the sessions. After completing the program, the children met over 90% of the objectives. Subjectively, the program was highly regarded by both parents and students. Survey results from children who attended the program and their parents were 5.00/5.00 and 4.79/5.00, respectively.


Although stereoscopic cinema was invented very early in the history of film, it did not become the standard for cinematic representations. With the latest digital wave of stereoscopic 3D cinema many shortcomings of earlier technologies have been eliminated, but debate remains about the aesthetic principles of stereoscopy. This article explores and evaluates basic approaches to aesthetic design in stereoscopic films.


Hillstone and Trend Micro offer a joint solution – the Advanced Threat Defense Platform – by integrating the industry leading Hillstone NGFW/iNGFW with Trend Micro's leading breach detection technology. The Advanced Threat Defense Platform provides automatic threat identification, threat warning, and threat blocking. It dramatically reduces threat response time by taking rapid remedial action following any security breach, thereby reducing human resource costs and significantly improving a timely response.


The "Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete" ("Code") covers the materials, design, and construction of structural concrete used in buildings and where applicable in nonbuilding structures. The Code also covers the strength evaluation of existing concrete structures. Among the subjects covered are: contract documents; inspection; materials; durability requirements; concrete quality, mixing, and placing; formwork; embedded pipes; construction joints; reinforcement details; analysis and design; strength and serviceability; flexural and axial loads; shear and torsion; development and splices of reinforcement; slab systems; walls; footings; precast concrete; composite flexural members; prestressed concrete; shells and folded plate members; strength evaluation of existing structures; provisions for seismic design; structural plain concrete; strut-and-tie modeling in Appendix A; alternative design provisions in Appendix B; alternative load and strength reduction factors in Appendix C; and anchoring to concrete in Appendix D. The quality and testing of materials used in construction are covered by reference to the appropriate ASTM standard specifications. Welding of reinforcement is covered by reference to the appropriate American Welding Society (AWS) standard. Uses of the Code include adoption by reference in general building codes, and earlier editions have been widely used in this manner. The Code is written in a format that allows such reference without change to its language. Therefore, background details or suggestions for carrying out the requirements or intent of the Code portion cannot be included. The Commentary is provided for this purpose. Some of the considerations of the committee in developing the Code portion are discussed within the Commentary, with emphasis given to the explanation of new or revised provisions. Much of the research data referenced in preparing the Code is cited for the user desiring to study individual questions in greater detail. Other documents that provide suggestions for carrying out the requirements of the Code are also cited.


This article addresses current questions about the importance of key/generic skills in higher education, based on a Meta-evaluation methodology. It is argued that key skills are a matter of debate among educators and other researchers in the neo- and post-Ford economy. The article also analyzes questions that relate to the rationality of key/generic skills, such as whether these skills are occupationally or professionally specific, whether they are professionally or organizationally specific, and how they can be transferred or taught in higher education. The authors' findings reveal that, first, key skills are specific to particular social domains and, second, there are strategies in line with Bridges's distinction of transferable and transferring skills that can be employed to transfer key skills. Also with regard to key/generic skills, the authors assert that there are ranges of preparatory work to be done in higher education or other educational institutions and that fluency can only be achieved through practice in specific contexts. The limitation of these findings is that there remains a high degree of indeterminacy because the "generic" elements that are taught in higher education must still be applied in a wide range of different contexts.


HBO's hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R R Martin's internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A STORM OF SWORDS: BLOOD AND GOLD is the SECOND part of the third volume in the series. 'Colossal, staggering ...one of the greats' SFX The Starks are scattered. Robb Stark may be King in the North, but he must bend to the will of the old tyrant Walder Frey if he is to hold his crown. And while his youngest sister, Arya, has escaped the clutches of the depraved Cersei Lannister and her son, the capricious boy-king Joffrey, Sansa Stark remains their captive. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Daenerys Stormborn, the last heir of the Dragon King, delivers death to the slave-trading cities of Astapor and Yunkai as she approaches Westeros with vengeance in her heart.


This report reviews those legal issues. First, it suggests that legislation related to cross-border facility permitting is unlikely to raise significant constitutional questions, despite the fact that such permits have traditionally been handled by the executive branch alone pursuant to its constitutional "foreign affairs" authority. Next, it observes generally that state oversight of pipeline siting decisions does not appear to violate existing federal law or the Constitution. Finally, the report suggests that State Department's implementation of the existing authority to issue presidential permits appears to allow for judicial review of its National Environmental Policy Act determinations.


Three scandals have reshaped business regulation over the past thirty years: the securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken in 1988, the Enron implosion of 2001, and the Goldman Sachs "ABACUS" enforcement action of 2010. The scandals have always been seen as unrelated. This Article highlights a previously unnoticed transactional affinity tying these scandals together — a deal structure known as the synthetic collateralized debt obligation involving the use of a special purpose entity ("SPE"). The SPE is a new and widely used form of corporate alter ego designed to undertake transactions for its creator's accounting and regulatory benefit. The SPE remains mysterious and poorly understood despite its use in framing transactions involving trillions of dollars and its prominence in foundational scandals. The traditional corporate alter ego was a subsidiary or affiliate with equity control. The SPE eschews equity control in favor of control through preset instructions emanating from transactional documents. In theory, these instructions are complete or very close thereto, making SPEs a real-world manifestation of the "nexus of contracts" firm of economic and legal theory. In practice, however, formal designations of separateness do not always stand up under the strain of economic reality. When coupled with financial disaster, the use of an SPE alter ego can turn even a minor compliance problem into a scandal because of the mismatch between the traditional legal model of the firm and the SPE's economic reality. The standard legal model looks to equity ownership to determine the boundaries of the firm: equity is inside the firm, while contract is outside. Regulatory regimes make inter-firm connections by tracking equity ownership. SPEs escape regulation by funneling inter-firm connections through contracts, rather than equity ownership. The integration of SPEs into regulatory systems requires a ground-up rethinking of traditional legal models of the firm. A theory is emerging, not from corporate law or financial economics, but from accounting principles. Accounting has responded to these scandals by abandoning the equity touchstone in favor of an analysis in which contractual allocations of risk, reward, and control operate as functional equivalents of equity ownership — an approach that redraws the boundaries of the firm. Unfortunately, corporate and securities law hold out no prospects for similar responsiveness. Accordingly, we await the next alter-ego-based innovation from Wall Street's transaction engineers with an incomplete menu of defensive responses.


From Techie to Bossteaches technical people who are making or mulling the transition from team player to team leader all the management techniques and soft leadership skills they never needed before--but need now, pronto. Veteran team lead and project manager Scott Cromar lays out the classical management training course, but stripped down to precisely the essentials that techies need to start managing on the fly. He gets it that a front-line techie getting a field promotion to team leader just doesn't have the time to wade through an MBA textbook bulging with irrelevant material. The author appreciates how you got to the place where you need this book. Management tapped you instead of some experienced manager from the outside because you know the technical challenges, company culture, and team players better than anyone else: you're ready to hit the ground running. But the skills that make you an excellent techie are not sufficient to make you a successful manager. The rules of your world have abruptly changed. You will now be judged not by your puzzle-solving elegance but by how effectively your team contributes to the organization's bottom line. Techniques and tips for all aspects of management--project, time, scope, risk, dependency, earned value, quality, team roles, distributed team, global team, and conflict management 90-day plan pointers, such as managing your boss, selecting early wins, defining scope, gathering requirements, developing a WBS, documenting procedures, and compliance Troubleshooting techniques such as Current Reality Tree and Ishikawa diagrams Project scheduling methods, including work breakdown structures and dependency management with GANTT and PERT charts Requirements analysis using UML and Agile Who this book is for This book teaches management-caliber techies the skills they'll need to make the jump to being successful project managers and multifunctional operational team leaders, on their way to becoming senior project managers, system and network administrators, and program managers. Table of Contents Moving into Management Your Transition Plan Time Management Project Management Documenting Policies and Procedures Building your Team Resolving Conflicts Budgets Root Cause Analysis Influence Networks Managing a Dispersed Team Managing Software Development Teams Visualizing Requirements Integrating Third-Party Software Managing Outside Your Specialty Taking Care of Yourself GanttProject PERT and Gantt Analysis From Techie to Boss shows you how to translate and adapt the analytic skills that made you an outstanding techie to your new responsibilities as a technical manager. Even more crucially, this book teaches you a whole new set of interpersonal, organizational, and metrical skills you never needed before, but without which you cannot succeed as a manager. What you'll learnThe new skills you'll learn for leading technical teams include:


Throughout 2010 IDPC has been seeking to develop a drug policy network in South East Europe. After a first meeting in Athens, Greece, in March 2010 the Network gathered again in Ohrid, Macedonia, last September. The aim of the Network is to promote collaboration and exchange of information among the participants. This session was attended by 27 participants, both from NGOs and national governments and focused on two topics: harm reduction, and the Roma population. This report summarises the main discussions that took place during the seminar. A working group meeting was also held at the margins of this seminar to discuss the way forward for the Network. A summary of the decisions taken during that meeting is also provided in the report.


Copyright © 2019 The Korean Society of Neurosonology This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. pISSN 2635-425X eISSN 2635-4357 https://doi.org/10.31728/jnn.2019.00066


Background: Vertigo without other neurological symptoms is usually not supposed to be due to a vascular cause. How-ever, hypoperfusion of the anterior cerebellar artery can lead to ischemia of the vestibular labyrinth and/or vestibular nuclei in the pontomedullary region whereas hypoperfusion of the posterior cerebellar artery can cause ischemia of the vestibulocerebellum, all resulting in isolated vertigo. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of pa-tients with vertebrobasilar ischemic attacks referred to our outpatient dizziness clinic during the years 1999-2009. Pa-tients who presented only with vertigo (+/– vomiting and unsteadiness) were selected. Their clinical data, findings and treatment responses were recorded. Results: Amongst about one hundred patients with vertebrobasilar TIA we found 24 patients with monosymptomatic presentation. Their mean age was 67.3 years, fifteen were men. In most of the patients the vertigo attacsk were multiple and lasted from minutes to hours. All but four patients had at least one vascular risk factor at the time of presentation ,among them 13 had multiple vascular risk factors. Seven patients had evidence of chronic ischemic changes on brain CT or MRI .Aspirin (100 - 325 mg/die) was started in 15 patients. Three patients were started on clopidogrel (75 mg/die) because of aspirin intolerance and two patients on warfarin due to atrial fibrilla-tion. In two patients who were treated with aspirin prior to their vertigo attack, clopidogrel or dipyridamol were added. The mean time period from first attack to treatment initiation was 5.2 months. The mean follow up period was 27.4 months. In 18 patients the attacks have completely resolved after treatment initiation. Three patients had further vertigo attacks despite treatment. Two patients with vertigo episodes where a vascular etiology was not suspected, developed later an ischemic stroke in the vertebrobasilar territory (anterior cerebellar artery and vertebral artery infarct). Conclusions: The differential diagnosis of a vertigo attack presenting in a monosymptomatic form should include vertebrobasilar TIA, especially in individuals with vascular risk factors. In view of lack of a specific test for establishing the diagnosis antiplatelets should be administered on empirical grounds since early administration of therapy can abolish further attacks and prevent a vertebrobasilar stroke. Warfarin should be preserved for patients with cardiac conditions that warrant antiocoagulation for stroke prevention.


Web applications increasingly integrate third-party services. The integration introduces new security challenges due to the complexity for an application to coordinate its internal states with those of the component services and the web client across the Internet. In this paper, we study the security implications of this problem to merchant websites that accept payments through third-party cashiers (e.g., PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout), which we refer to as Cashier-as-a-Service or CaaS. We found that leading merchant applications (e.g., NopCommerce and Interspire), popular online stores (e.g., Buy.com and JR.com) and a prestigious CaaS provider (Amazon Payments) all contain serious logic flaws that can be exploited to cause inconsistencies between the states of the CaaS and the merchant. As a result, a malicious shopper can purchase an item at an arbitrarily low price, shop for free after paying for one item, or even avoid payment. We reported our findings to the affected parties. They either updated their vulnerable software or continued to work on the fixes with high priorities. We further studied the complexity in finding this type of logic flaws in typical CaaS-based checkout systems, and gained a preliminary understanding of the effort that needs to be made to improve the security assurance of such systems during their development and testing processes.


This paper describes the implementation and results of a field demonstration wherein residential electric water heaters and thermostats, commercial building space conditioning, municipal water pump loads, and several distributed generators were coordinated to manage constrained feeder electrical distribution through the two-way communication of load status and electric price signals. The field demonstration took place in Washington and Oregon and was paid for by the U.S. Department of Energy and several northwest utilities. Price is found to be an effective control signal for managing transmission or distribution congestion. Real-time signals at 5-minute intervals are shown to shift controlled load in time. The behaviors of customers and their responses under fixed, time-of-use, and real-time price contracts are compared. Peak loads are effectively reduced on the experimental feeder. A novel application of portfolio theory is applied to the selection of an optimal mix of customer contract types.


Change your habit to hang or waste the time to only chat with your friends. It is done by your everyday, don't you feel bored? Now, we will show you the new habit that, actually it's a very old habit to do that can make your life more qualified. When feeling bored of always chatting with your friends all free time, you can find the book enPDF nursing in society a historical perspective and then read it.


In one volume for the first time, this revised and updated examination of how J.R.R.Tolkien came to write his original masterpiece 'The Hobbit' includes his complete unpublished draft version of the story, together with notes and illustrations by Tolkien himself. For the first time in one volume, The History of the Hobbit presents the complete unpublished text of the original manuscript of J.R.R.Tolkien's The Hobbit, accompanied by John Rateliff's lively and informative account of how the book came to be written and published. As well as recording the numerous changes made to the story both before and after publication, it examines - chapter-by-chapter - why those changes were made and how they reflect Tolkien's ever-growing concept of Middle-earth. The Hobbit was first published on 21 September 1937. Like its successor, The Lord of the Rings, it is a story that "grew in the telling", and many characters and story threads in the published text are completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to read aloud to his young sons as part of their "fireside reads". As well as reproducing the original version of one of literature's most famous stories, both on its own merits and as the foundation for The Lord of the Rings, this new book includes many little-known illustrations and previously unpublished maps for The Hobbit by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensive annotations and commentaries on the date of composition, how Tolkien's professional and early mythological writings influenced the story, the imaginary geography he created, and how Tolkien came to revise the book years after publication to accommodate events in The Lord of the Rings. Like Christopher Tolkien's The History of The Lord of the Rings before it, this is a thoughtful yet exhaustive examination of one of the most treasured stories in English literature. Long overdue for a classic book now celebrating 75 years in print, this companion edition offers fascinating new insights for those who have grown up with this enchanting tale, and will delight those who are about to enter Bilbo's round door for the first time.


The development of mobile devices has occurred with unprecedented pace since the late nineties, and the increase of generic services has proliferated in most developed countries, driven by the expanding technological capabilities and performance of mobile platforms. This dissertation investigates how consumer objectives, orientation and behavior can aid in explaining the adoption and use of a new type of mobile devices: "app phones". This dissertation focuses its effort on two focal influences of adoption and use; social influences and competing forces. Through a qualitative case study and field study this dissertation explores early adoption and use of iPhones. The case study is a one-shot cross-sectional case study that investigates five individuals, related through the same social network, and their decision to adopt an iPhone prior to its release in Denmark. This adoption decision engenders high switching costs as adopters lack references to imitate and need skills to unlock and jailbreak their iPhones to make them work on Danish networks. The specific purpose of the case study is to explore how social influences impact mobile users' early adoption decisions, as it is well known in the literature that people with similar characteristics, tastes, and beliefs often associate in the same social networks and, hence, influence each other. The field study is cross-sectional with multiple snapshots and explores fifteen individuals part of the same university study, who recieves an iPhone for a period of seven months short after its release in Denmark. The specific purpose of the field study is to explore how competing forces of iPhone usage influence assimilation, i.e. the degree to which the iPhone is used, over time. The dissertation is reported through four articles and is directed at both academic researchers and practitioners. The study emphasizes the importance of social influences and competing forces in the investigation of adoption and use of certain mobile devices.


Individuals with Lynch syndrome, sometimes referred to as hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), have an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) as well as other cancers. The increased risk is due to inherited mutations in mismatch repair (MMR) genes, which reduce the ability of cells to repair DNA damage. Screening for Lynch syndrome in individuals newly diagnosed with colorectal cancer has been proposed as part of a strategy that combines tests and interventions to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer in the relatives of the colorectal cancer patients with Lynch Syndrome.


Three of the greatest plays in American literature collected in one volumeThis important new omnibus edition features an illuminating foreword by playwright John Guare and an extensive afterword for each play drawing on unpublished letters and other unique documentary material prepared by Tappan Wilder.Our Town--Wilder's timeless 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning look at love, death, and destiny is celebrated around the world and performed at least once each day in the United States. The Skin of our Teeth--Wilder's 1942 romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1943.The Matchmaker--Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!.


Machine learning is often used to build predictive models by extracting patterns from large datasets. These models are used in predictive data analytics applications including price prediction, risk assessment, predicting customer behavior, and document classification. This introductory textbook offers a detailed and focused treatment of the most important machine learning approaches used in predictive data analytics, covering both theoretical concepts and practical applications. Technical and mathematical material is augmented with explanatory worked examples, and case studies illustrate the application of these models in the broader business context. After discussing the trajectory from data to insight to decision, the book describes four approaches to machine learning: information-based learning, similarity-based learning, probability-based learning, and error-based learning. Each of these approaches is introduced by a nontechnical explanation of the underlying concept, followed by mathematical models and algorithms illustrated by detailed worked examples. Finally, the book considers techniques for evaluating prediction models and offers two case studies that describe specific data analytics projects through each phase of development, from formulating the business problem to implementation of the analytics solution. The book, informed by the authors' many years of teaching machine learning, and working on predictive data analytics projects, is suitable for use by undergraduates in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or statistics; by graduate students in disciplines with applications for predictive data analytics; and as a reference for professionals.


The Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is a commercially important species
that also performs critical ecosystem functions, affecting water quality and providing
habitat for fish and invertebrates. However, populations of C. virginica have drastically
declined, especially over the last 50 years. In recent years, disease caused by the
protozoan parasite, Perkinsus marinus (Dermo), has been a major factor contributing to
the decline of oyster populations. Exposure to one or more environmental stressors, such
as increased particulate loading and declining water quality, may adversely affect oysters,
making them more susceptible to infection. This study compares P. marinus infection in
intertidal oysters from three tidal creeks in southeastern North Carolina that vary in
historic water quality conditions. Prevalence and intensity of P. marinus infection was
compared over time and among creeks for both natural oyster populations and hatchery
stock outplants using RFTM tissue assay. Oyster tissue condition, growth, and mortality
were also compared. Infection was nearly 100% prevalent across sampling periods,
among creeks, and in both hatchery and natural oysters. However, despite high
prevalence, overall infection intensities were low. Infection intensity among the creeks
did not follow historic water quality patterns, but did vary with specific factors.
Temporal patterns of P. marinus infection and tissue condition were apparent in both
hatchery and natural oysters. Infection intensities were highest and oyster condition was
lowest during November 2005 while infection was at its lowest and condition was at its
highest in February 2006. Infection levels and condition also differed between oyster
types with hatchery oysters having higher infection intensity and lower condition than
natural oysters. Infection intensity and oyster condition were also correlated with aspects of water quality in the tidal creeks. The results of this study have implications not only
for restoration, but also for understanding oyster and parasite biology in the intertidal
environment. They suggest that conditions of the intertidal environment may impact
seasonal cycles of P. marinus infection in the southeastern United States and may even
affect the parasite itself. Overall, the results underscore the idea that a variety of factors
likely interact to influence P. marinus infection levels in oysters and oyster health.


Reliable Group Data Delivery (RGDD) is a pervasive traffic pattern in data centers. In an RGDD group, a sender needs to reliably deliver a copy of data to all the receivers. Existing solutions either do not scale due to the large number of RGDD groups (e.g., IP multicast) or cannot efficiently use network bandwidth (e.g., end-host overlays). Motivated by recent advances on data center network topology designs (multiple edge-disjoint Steiner trees for RGDD) and innovations on network devices (practical in-network packet caching), we propose Datacast for RGDD. Datacast explores two design spaces: 1) Datacast uses multiple edge-disjoint Steiner trees for data delivery acceleration. 2) Datacast leverages in-network packet caching and introduces a simple soft-state based congestion control algorithm to address the scalability and efficiency issues of RGDD. Our analysis reveals that Datacast congestion control works well with small cache sizes (e.g., 125KB) and causes few duplicate data transmissions (e.g., 1.19%). Both simulations and experiments confirm our theoretical analysis. We also use experiments to compare the performance of Datacast and BitTorrent. In a BCube(4, 1) with 1Gbps links, we use both Datacast and BitTorrent to transmit 4GB data. The link stress of Datacast is 1.01, while it is 1.39 for BitTorrent. By using two Steiner trees, Datacast finishes the transmission in 16.9s, while BitTorrent uses 52s.


William Barak Bridge, Melbourne. Entry in the 'Snapped: Melbourne in a moment' photography competition 2012. Please contact Melbourne Library Service if you would like to enquire about obtaining permission to reproduce this photograph.


C O N S E R V A T I O N A L E R T  World's Mammals in Crisis ............................................................................................................................................................. 220  More Than Mammals ...................................................................................................................................................................... 223  The "Dow Jones Index" of Biodiversity ........................................................................................................................................... 225


Schooling is not the same as learning. Although access to schooling in Afghanistan has improved significantly in the last decade, 4th grade Afghan students are not learning. Using the 2017 Afghanistan SABER Service Delivery survey, we find that after spending 4 years in primary school, two-thirds of Afghan students (65 percent) have only fully mastered the Language curriculum for Grade 1. In particular, one-third could identify a picture from a given word, and less than 15 percent could comprehend a simple paragraph. Their performance in Mathematics is even more worrisome as less than half of them (46 percent) have mastered the Mathematics curriculum for Grade 1. Most 4th grade Afghan students lack both multiplication and division skills, and almost none could solve word problems, compute fractions, identify shapes, or calculate an area. We also find that students in Community Based Education (CBE) schools tend to significantly outperform those in public schools. However, even though these 4th grade students have been in the system for 4 years, they only display the knowledge of a 1st grade student. Following the World Development Report (2018) framework, we find that the learning crisis in Afghanistan is driven by a combination of the following four key determinants: unskilled teachers, weak school management practices, lack of school inputs and infrastructure, and unprepared learners. In particular, while 4th grade teachers in Afghanistan have low absence rates (15 percent) and high time on task (80 percent), they struggle to help students learn as most have very low content and pedagogical knowledge, as well as poor teaching skills. Based on these findings, the report also provides a series of technical policy suggestions.


Objective: Assess if preoperative Ca125 levels can predict stage & likelihood of debulking in ovarian cancer. Methods: Ca125 assessed in 591 patients with ovarian cancers managed in Sheffield. Results: (Table 1) Ca125 was raised (.35IU) in: 85% of all ovarian cancers; 89% of epithelial ovarian cancers (EOC); 100% of primary peritoneal tumours (PPT); 60% of borderline tumours. Ca125 levels increased from FIGO stage I to IV and were significantly higher in stage III/IV compared to stage I, and in patients with residual disease compared to those with no residual disease post-operatively (p = 0.02 Independent sample t-test). No significant difference in Ca125 was seen between optimally or sub-optimally debulked patients. Receiver operator curves (ROC) curves using Ca125 as a diagnostic predictor, show good separation of stage I from stage II/ III/IV disease and of patients with no residual disease from those with residual disease, with AUC (area under curve) values of 0.690.82. If Ca125 cut-off levels for predicting residual disease and stage II/III/IV disease are selected as 284IU & 205IU respectively, sensitivity of 71% and 74%, and specificity of 70% and 74% respectively are achieved. Conclusions: Pre-operative Ca125 levels can be used as a predictor of patients likely to have residual disease and FIGO stage greater than stage I disease, with sensitivities and specificities of 70-74%. Ca125 cannot however accurately predict exact stage or likelihood of optimal versus sub-optimal debulking.


It is a central premise of modern American immigration law that immigrants, by virtue of their non-citizenship, are properly subject to an extra-constitutional regulatory authority that is inherent in national sovereignty and buffered against judicial review. The Supreme Court first posited this constitutionally exceptional authority, which is commonly known as the "plenary power doctrine," in the 1889 Chinese Exclusion Case. There, the Court reconstructed the federal immigration power from a form of commercial regulation rooted in Congress's commerce power, to an instrument of national self-defense against invading hordes of economically and racially degraded foreigners.Today, generations after the United States abandoned overtly racist immigration policies, such as Chinese exclusion and national origins quotas, the Supreme Court continues to reaffirm Congress and the President's virtually unchecked authority over the admission, exclusion, and removal of non-citizens, as though such authority were a logical concomitant of national sovereignty. Accordingly, modern judicial defenders of the plenary power doctrine generally turn a blind eye to the indecorous racial reasoning deployed by its architects. This Article argues that although the language of race and invasion has been purged from the vocabulary, and perhaps worldview, of most modern policymakers and judges, the logic of foreign aggression remains indispensible in accounting for a power unmoored from the Constitution and shielded from judicial scrutiny. Throughout the nation's first century, the Supreme Court found nothing constitutionally exceptional about a statute that governed foreigners engaged in the process of immigration. Immigrants' non-citizenship was incidental to the nature of the regulatory authority to which they were subject. Non-citizenship became a trigger for extra-constitutional authority only in the final decades of the nineteenth century, as Chinese and "new" European migrants alike increasingly became understood as fundamentally and permanently alien to the national character. This Article demonstrates that it was precisely this perception of immigrants' essential, indelible foreignness — their racial difference, their inability to assimilate, their corrosive effect on American citizenship — that gave substance to the metaphor of racial invasion, and thus to the Court's analogy between immigration regulation and war. The Court's intemperate defense of American citizenship against invading foreign races cannot, therefore, be swept aside as anachronistic dicta cluttering the otherwise logically sound foundation of immigration exceptionalism; rather, it is the cornerstone of the entire edifice.


This paper aims at historicizing the contexts that reorient the concept of development in Brazil, from the 30s to the 80s, going through the neoliberal adjustment of the 90s, to the current inflections that question if the new massive and strategic interventionism of the State in social policies for the poorest points to a new model of development. The analysis presents inflections of the cepalino model, Cepal's theory (Economic Commission for Latin America) of the 50s and 60s, in order to prioritize the social dimensions to mediate contradictions amongst economics, politics and institutional affairs. The leading thread adopts two analytical vectors: the topic of conflict (redistribution) and integration. The former is established on class coalitions and confrontation between national actors and multilateral agencies; integration, in the counterface of the conflict, takes into consideration the opening of public policies as well as the innovation of social and political actors in new arrangements oriented to the objectives of the social welfare and citizenship, from a more supported perspective.


The long-running debate about whether judges have adequate resources has begun to boil. State and federal legislatures are slashing court budgets, with many courts receiving up to 20 percent reductions. In recent years, judges have been resigning or retiring in droves. The remaining judicial vacancies are often left unfilled. Those judges that remain will be forced to spend considerably less time on each case. In response to this impending crisis, scholars have just begun systematically and empirically to consider how resource limitation affects judging. These studies are of vital importance, not only because they are so topical, but also because they have found evidence of a potential link between the amount of resources that appellate judges have and the likelihood that they will be deferential to the lower courts or to their colleagues. For example, a reduction in available resources correlates with lower reversal rates. Because this academic movement is in its infancy, however, its techniques and findings leave plenty of room for growth. No one has yet analyzed how the availability of resources affects the accuracy of judicial decisions. The answer is a pivotal concern for those in control of court budgets and personnel. If judges are able to do their jobs as well or better with less (and they are willing to accept less), then cutting budgets could very well be a wise savings measure. If judges make more errors or become so dissatisfied that they no longer want to continue, then stripping courts of resources could be very dangerous, if not destructive.Here, I use behavioral experimentation to show how the amount of resources available to judges interacts with the power of law to constrain them. Using a judicial simulation with law students from several law schools, I uncover evidence suggesting that reducing resources can increase the likelihood that judges will follow the straightforward dictates of the law. Before budget cutters rejoice, however, it appears that this enhancement to legal constraint comes with a cost - namely, a significant reduction in the judges' sense that they have reached righteous results. The evidence supports the idea that boosting constraint in this way might increase judge dissatisfaction, perhaps exacerbating the problem of bench vacancies.


This Dissertation is a peace project. It traces the rise of aspects of the myth of American Exceptionalism since the founding of the American Republic -- a sense of superiority by the US with respect to the rest of the world, together with a 'salvific mission' to raise up other nations to accord with its own particular world view. It draws attention to the contribution of this world view to creating tension, and sometimes conflict, internationally. It then examines some of the major world changes since World War II that first resulted in the US achieving a substantial degree of economic, political and military dominance, but that in more recent decades have constituted a diffusion of power to other state and non-state actors. As part of this examination it includes statements made by students in South Indian universities during the summer of 2010. Together, the changes constitute grounds for re-formulation of the myth, and the final Chapter of the Dissertation proposes an educational protocol oriented to the American public education system intended to promote good 'global citizenship' in pursuit of the objective of pre-empting, reducing, or remediating tensions that might otherwise escalate into various forms of violence both at home and abroad.


About 55 percent of Saskatchewan's seniors live outside the province's 12 cities, in towns, villages, and rural municipalities, and are therefore at a distance from the two provincial universities. In order to assess the University of Saskatchewan's Extension Division's outreach development process, the author interviewed 11 individuals. The sample group had participated in at least one outreach course delivering university-level subject matter. The returns from the structured interview indicate very positive evaluations and high satisfaction levels. In contrast, earlier needs identification studies in Saskatchewan indicated that seniors, in general, are not strongly motivated to participate in university-level programs. Closer examination of the data from such studies indicate that this general response pattern may be misleading.


In this paper, we are going to propose the first mathematical model for Multi- Period Hub Location Problems (MPHLP). We apply this mixed integer program- ming model on public transport planning and call it Multi-Period Hub Location Problem for Public Transport (MPHLPPT). In fact, HLPPT model proposed earlier by the authors is extended to include more facts and features of the real-life application. In order to solve instances of this problem where existing standard solvers fail, a solution approach based on a greedy neighborhood search is developed. The computational results substantiate the efficiency of our solution approach to solve instances of MPHLPPT.


The Uprising is an Autonomist manifesto for today's precarious times, and a rallying cry in the face of the catastrophic and irreversible crisis that neoliberalism and the financial sphere have established over the globe. In his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi argues that the notion of economic recovery is complete mythology. The coming years will inevitably see new surges of protest and violence, but the old models of resistance no longer apply. Society can either stick with the prescriptions and "rescues" that the economic and financial sectors have demanded at the expense of social happiness, culture, and the public good; or it can formulate an alternative. For Berardi, this alternative lies in understanding the current crisis as something more fundamental than an economic crisis: it is a crisis of the social imagination, and demands a new language by which to address it. This is a manifesto against the idea of growth, and against the concept of debt, the financial sector's two primary linguistic means of manipulating society. It is a call for exhaustion, and for resistance to the cult of energy on which today's economic free-floating market depends. To this end, Berardi introduces an unexpected linguistic political weapon--poetry: poetry as the insolvency of language, as the sensuous birth of meaning and desire, as that which cannot be reduced to information and exchanged like currency. If the protests now stirring about the world are to take shape and direction, then the revolution will be neither peaceful nor violent--it will be linguistic, or will not be at all.


Sustainable forest management gives the opportunity to better integrate the way local populations use their customary "village terroirs" in the logging activities. This requirement is explicitly stated in all forest laws of the Congo Basin countries but its implementation on the field remains under documented. In Cameroon, 30 forest management plans (FMP) for logging concessions have been reviewed to assess how they effectively include customary use rights. The integration of use rights into the FMPs is heterogeneous but always with very low enforcement. The weak influence of the FMP application on local practices is confirmed with an empirical survey that shows that natural, financial, and physical capitals in two villages of the eastern region of Cameroon have been little affected by the adjoining logging concession over the latest 13 years. Extrasector policies such as agriculture, road infrastructure, techniques, and land tenure are the real drivers of socioeconomic change at the local scale. Their impacts are facilitated by the presence of the logging concessions, which can contribute indirectly to improve local livelihoods.