This document is part of a technical report series on conservation projects funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) and the Conservation International Pacific Islands Program (CI-Pacific). The main purpose of this series is to disseminate project findings and successes to a broader audience of conservation professionals in the Pacific, along with interested members of the public and students. The reports are being prepared on an ad-hoc basis as projects are completed and written up. In most cases the reports are composed of two parts, the first part is a detailed technical report on the project which gives details on the methodology used, the results and any recommendations. The second part is a brief project completion report written for the donor and focused on conservation impacts and lessons learned. The CEPF fund in the Polynesia-Micronesia region was launched in September 2008 and will be active until 2013. It is being managed as a partnership between CI Pacific and CEPF. The purpose of the fund is to engage and build the capacity of non-governmental organizations to achieve terrestrial biodiversity conservation. The total grant envelope is approximately US$6 million, and focuses on three main elements: the prevention, control and eradication of invasive species in key biodiversity areas (KBAs); strengthening the conservation status and management of a prioritized set of 60 KBAs and building the awareness and participation of local leaders and community members in the implementation of threatened species recovery plans. Since the launch of the fund, a number of calls for proposals have been completed for 14 eligible Pacific Island Countries and Territories (Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Fiji, Niue, Cook Islands, Palau, FSM,
Marshall Islands, Tokelau Islands, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, Eastern Island, Pitcairn and Tokelau). By late 2012 more than 90 projects in 13 countries and territories were being funded. The Polynesia-Micronesia Biodiversity Hotspot is one of the most threatened of Earth's 34
biodiversity hotspots, with only 21 percent of the region's original vegetation remaining in pristine condition.  The Hotspot faces a large number of severe threats including invasive species, alteration or destruction of native habitat and over exploitation of natural resources.  The limited land area exacerbates these threats and to date there have been more recorded bird extinctions in this
Hotspot than any other.  In the future climate change is likely to become a major threat especially for low lying islands and atolls which could disappear completely.


"Given the number of undernourished people in the developing world and the increasingly complex risks to food security, policymakers are faced with an enormous agenda. Freeing people from hunger will require more and better-targeted investments, innovations, and policy actions, driven by a keen understanding of the dynamic risks and forces that shape the factors affecting people's access to food and the links with nutrition. The International Food Policy Research Institute's (IFPRI's) International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) provides insight into the management of these risks through appropriate policy actions. By projecting future global food scenarios to 2050, IMPACT explores the potential implications of policy action and inaction in several main risk areas as well as the effects on child malnutrition in the developing world, commodity prices, demand, cereal yields, production, and net trade. In the progressive policy actions scenario, which assumes increased investment in rural development, health, education, and agricultural research and development, developing country governments and the international community are able to dramatically reduce the number of food-insecure people, leading to a worldwide decline in hunger. Under these conditions, Latin America and China are able to virtually eliminate child malnutrition by 2050. Bolstered by the development and dissemination of improved technologies and better infrastructure, crop production and yields increase in developing countries. Notably, the bulk of the growth in production is driven by yield increases rather than by expanding land area. Spurred by growth in the agricultural sector, average incomes in developing countries increase. Rising incomes bolster demand for high-value agricultural products, such as meat, dairy, and fruits and vegetables; global livestock production more than doubles, for example. Average per capita calorie supplies for developing countries exceed 3,400 per day, well in excess of minimum requirements. The policy failure scenario assumes greater political discord and more extensive agricultural protectionism, together with the failure of policies to deal with food emergencies related to conflict. Slow growth and trade restrictions lead to stagnation in average per capita calorie availability, which remains only slightly above minimum requirements until after 2030, when availability increases. In addition, crucial investments in agriculture, rural development, and poverty reduction are forgone or displaced. Because of limited investment in agricultural research and technology, this scenario has a high level of crop area expansion as a result of relatively rapid population growth and slim yield improvements in developing countries. This scenario also results in flat maize prices, declining per capita cereal demand, falling beef prices, and relatively flat meat demand. As a result of the policies in this scenario, the number of malnourished children in developing countries rises between 1997 and 2015, after which there are only modest declines. In the technology and natural resource management failure scenario, yield growth falls even more than under the preceding scenario, forcing farmers to move into marginal producing areas, which causes a more rapid expansion of cereal area into less productive land that does not compensate for the yield shortfalls (and causes environmental degradation). As a result, cereal prices rise substantially through 2030 and then fall off only gradually. Beef and other meat prices, which are affected by the price of feed, follow a similar pattern. Developing-country per capita calorie availability is essentially unchanged over 1997–2050 and remains at a barely adequate average level. Given unequal access to the food that is available, millions of people actually consume less than the minimum. The occurrence of child undernourishment is even higher than under the policy failure scenario in all developing-country regions. Overall, the technology and natural resource management failure scenario results in the worst impact on food security and child malnourishment in the developing world. The progressive policy scenario outlines several of the most crucial positive steps. National governments and the international community must assume a new focus on agricultural growth and rural development, along with increasing their investments in education, social services, and health. Policies to encourage synergistic growth in the nonfarm sectors are also needed to spur broad-based economic growth. Underpinning these strategies and research agendas must be a firm commitment to reducing hunger and improving the welfare of the world's undernourished people." From Authors' Executive Summary


South elevation of the Schlemmer House; In 1925, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius with the construction of three semidetached houses for the Bauhaus masters and a detached house for its director. The plot lies in a small pine-tree wood where Ebertallee stands today. In 1926, Gropius and the Bauhaus masters Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer as well as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were able to move in with their families. With this ensemble of buildings, Gropius aimed, using industrially prefabricated and simple "building block" construction elements, to put the principles of efficient construction into practice--both in relation to the architecture and the building process itself. The semidetached houses are essentially all the same: Each half of the house shares the same floor plan, albeit mirrored and rotated by 90°. Only on the second floor do the halves of the houses differ; the western section always features two additional rooms. Comprehensive renovation work on the preserved Masters' Houses started in 1992. In the Muche-Schlemmer House the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation holds special events and exhibitions together with the city. Source: Bauhaus Dessau [website]; http://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/ (accessed 5/8/2011)


In contrast to developed countries, developing nations are especially reliant on trade taxes, particularly tariffs, as a source of government revenue. As such, tariff liberalization provides them with an incentive to switch towards other revenue generating trade barriers such as anti-dumping duties. The effectiveness of this is potentially limited due to the greater enforcement challenges with the exporter specific anti-dumping relative to broad-based tariffs. We examine this by estimating the impact of anti-dumping measures for 82 importing countries from 2008-2014. We find that anti-dumping's trade effects are larger for countries with greater policy enforcement, especially in low income countries. Although the results are somewhat sensitive to the measure of enforcement, our overall findings indicate that for countries with weak enforcement, tariff liberalization combined with a shift towards non-tariff barriers like anti-dumping is likely to lower government revenues and hamper their ability to provide the infrastructure and education needed for development.


The purpose of this instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) was to understand (a) the impact of human resource capital on ethnic minority middle school students' engagement in a mathematics community of practice and (b) the impact of this engagement on their mathematics identities. Case study methodology was used to collect data from nine participants. Qualitative data collection methods were used, including observations, audio taped individual and focus group interviews of participants, participants' responses to mathematics scenarios and a thorough examination of weekly journal logs kept by the participants. Data were analyzed using Creswell's (2003) content analysis coding procedures. The two themes that emerged from analysis of the data were sociocultural capital and personal capital. Sociocultural capital of the participants was demonstrated through their interactions as a mathematics community of learners including collaboration with peers, communication with peers, and the sense of community the participants perceived within the mathematics classroom [community of practice]. Other indicators of sociocultural capital in this study were participants' social networks with their peers and family members as well as their views of the relevance of mathematics in extracurricular activities and mathematics-related careers. Participants' personal capital was demonstrated by their intrinsic motivation, including factors of self motivation and self regulation; and by participants' extrinsic motivation, which includes the expectations of participants' families, participants' individual career goals and their prior knowledge and experiences. Implications for relevant classroom practices and further research are recommended.


In 2008 Harm Reduction International released the Global State of Harm Reduction, a report that mapped responses to drug-related HIV and hepatitis C epidemics around the world for the first time. The report has since been published every two years.

The Global State of Harm Reduction 2012 presents the major developments in harm reduction policy adoption and programme implementation that have occurred since 2010, enabling some assessment of global progress. It also explores several key issues for developing an integrated harm reduction response, such as building effective harm reduction services for women who inject drugs, access to harm reduction services by young people, drug use among men who have sex with men, global progress toward drug decriminalisation and sustainability of services in challenging environments.

This report, and other global state of harm reduction resources, are designed to provide reference tools for a wide range of audiences, such as international donor organisations, multilateral and bilateral agencies, civil society and non-governmental organisations, including organisations of people who use drugs, as well as researchers and the media.


Neurophenomenological studies seek to utilize first-person self-report to elucidate cognitive processes related to physiological data. Grounded theory offers an approach to the qualitative analysis of self-report, whereby theoretical constructs are derived from empirical data. Here we used grounded theory methodology (GTM) to assess how the first-person experience of meditation relates to neural activity in a core region of the default mode network—the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). We analyzed first-person data consisting of meditators' accounts of their subjective experience during runs of a real time fMRI neurofeedback study of meditation, and third-person data consisting of corresponding feedback graphs of PCC activity during the same runs. We found that for meditators, the subjective experiences of "undistracted awareness" such as "concentration" and "observing sensory experience," and "effortless doing" such as "observing sensory experience," "not efforting," and "contentment," correspond with PCC deactivation. Further, the subjective experiences of "distracted awareness" such as "distraction" and "interpreting," and "controlling" such as "efforting" and "discontentment," correspond with PCC activation. Moreover, we derived several novel hypotheses about how specific qualities of cognitive processes during meditation relate to PCC activity, such as the difference between meditation and "trying to meditate." These findings offer novel insights into the relationship between meditation and mind wandering or self-related thinking and neural activity in the default mode network, driven by first-person reports.


Fooling around with Photoshop to create interesting composite artwork is all well and good. But if you rely on Photoshop to meet tough production challenges in a fast-paced professional environment, fooling around won't cut it! You need results, and you need them now: This book delivers! In this copiously illustrated volume, best-selling authors David Blatner and Bruce Fraser offer scads of hands-on production techniques as well as clear explanations of the concepts that drive them, so that you can get the best results possible on your own Photoshop CS2 projects. You'll learn about managing color, getting great scans, correcting tones and colors, and more. You also find complete coverage of all of Photoshop CS2's newest features: integration with Adobe Bridge; Vanishing Point; super-tight integration with the rest of Adobe's Creative Suite 2; and more. Throughout, the emphasis is on efficiency: the time-saving tips and professional shortcuts that will allow you to work faster, smarter, and more creatively with Photoshop CS2.


The article suggests that the legal academy is in a time of transition between promotion and tenure rules based on traditional methods of publication and contemporary electronic and interdisciplinary possibilities for publication. While a number of articles contain recommendations for newer law professors about the process of scholarship, most of those articles are between five and twenty years old and do not address publishing in the age of blogs, expedited reviews, electronic submissions, and open-access databases. The substance and length of what law professors write, the formats in which they do so, and the fora in which they publish are evolving. This article breaks new ground in offering advice for those who have recently joined the academy on how to comply with promotion and tenure guidelines while taking advantage of publishing opportunities in the electronic age. Although it gives special emphasis to newer faculty and to issues raised by modern technology, the article is not limited to those sorts of issue. Professors who have been writing for years may find some useful nuggets about citation practices regarding blogs, the impact of recent law review limits on article length, electronic methods of browsing journals and articles in other disciplines, access to government documents, and posting on open-access archives.


"Big data" refers to novel ways in which organizations, including government and businesses, combine diverse digital data sets and then use statistics and other data mining techniques to extract from them both hidden information and surprising correlations. While big data promises significant economic and social benefits, it also raises serious privacy concerns. In particular, big data challenges the Fair Information Practices (FIPs) as embodied in various privacy laws including the EU Data Protection Directive. This past January, the European Commission released a proposal to reform and replace the Directive by adopting a new Regulation. In this paper, I argue that this Regulation relies too heavily on the discredited informed choice model, and therefore fails to fully engage with the coming big data tsunami. My contention is that when this advancing wave arrives, it will so overwhelm the core privacy principles of informed choice and data minimization on which the Directive rests that reform efforts alone will prove inadequate. Rather, an adequate response must combine legal reform with encouragement of new business models premised on consumer empowerment and supported by a personal data ecosystem. This new business model is important for two reasons: first, existing business models have proven time and again that privacy regulation is no match for them. Businesses inevitably collect and use more and more personal data, and while consumers realize many benefits in exchange, there is little doubt that businesses, not consumers, control the market in personal data with their own interests in mind. Second, a new business model, which I describe in this paper, promises to stand processing of personal data on its head by shifting control over both the collection and use of data from firms to individuals. This "control shift" — and this alone — stands a chance of making the FIPs efficacious by giving individuals the capacity to benefit from big data and hence the motivation to learn about and control how their data is collected and used, while also enabling businesses to profit from a new breed of services that are both data-intensive and imbued with privacy values.


Description: The birth origins of the Pharmaceutical Industry can be traced back to more humble antecedents than just chemistry labs. The earliest incidents of recognition of the antiseptic properties of the dyestuffs is around the late 19th century. The invention of penicillin can yet be recognized as a major milestone for the emergent industry which firmly consolidated its R&D efforts in the 1950's. Further in the 1960's the patent regulation support gave a further impetus to the industry in new discoveries and relaxed controls on clinical development with the booming spend on healthcare as economies boomed globally. The global presence of the pharmaceutical industry is evident with the roll out of continent specific R&D programs and drugs which help companies maximize penetration of markets and garner increased revenues with intercontinental treatment demand of patients being serviced from often one or two mega research centers in the continent. The pharmaceutical industry is under mounting scrutiny because of rapidly increasing expenditures for drugs worldwide. Drug expenditures are now the fastest-growing component of health care costs, increasing at the rate of about 15 percent per year. They account for about eight percent of health care spending, and at their current rate of increase, they will soon surpass spending for physicians' services and, for many health care organizations, the costs of hospitalization. This R'search brings you a complete analysis of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Brazil. The report covers a brief profile of the global pharmaceutical industry, the TRIPS agreement, offshoring in the pharmaceutical industry, economic trends in the industry, competition in the industry, and the key players in the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil – complete with a SWOT analysis of the leading companies in the market.


When ASP.NET hit the street a couple of years ago, it was a real eye-opener. Microsoft's tool for creating dynamic, server side web applications introduced Web Forms, a feature with the same rapid drag and drop convenience enjoyed by Visual Basic developers, along with a method for creating XML-based web services. ASP.NET was more than an upgrade of Active Server Pages it was a quantum leap ahead. Now Microsoft has a new version of ASP.NET as part of its upcoming next generation release of the Visual Studio .NET development platform. ASP.NET 2.0 is already available in beta release, and web developers are anxious to get a good look at it. That's exactly what our new Developer's Notebook allows you to do. More than just an introduction to ASP.NET 2.0, this practical guide acquaints you with all of the new features through nearly 50 hands-on projects. Each one places emphasis on changes in the new release that can increase productivity, simplify programming tasks, and help you add functionality to your applications. For example, ASP.NET 2.0 includes master pages, themes, and skins so you can build applications with a consistent page layout and design. Other changes allow for the automatic creation of web pages for use on mobile devices, while wizards and controls allow you to perform frequent tasks (like data access) without having to write a single line of code. ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook also includes suggestions for further experimentation, links to on-line documentation, and practical notes and warnings from the author regarding changes to the new version. The new Developer's Notebooks series from O'Reilly offers an in-depth first look at important new tools for software developers. Emphasizing example over explanation and practice over theory, they focus on learning by doing you'll get the goods straight from the masters, in an informal and code-intensive style. If you want to get up to speed on ASP.NET 2.0 before its official release, this all lab, no lecture book will get you there.


Adiabatic quantum optimization has attracted a lot of attention because small scale simulations gave hope that it would allow to solve NP-complete problems efficiently. Later, negative results proved the existence of specifically designed hard instances where adiabatic optimization requires exponential time. In spite of this, there was still hope that this would not happen for random instances of NP-complete problems. This is an important issue since random instances are a good model for hard instances that can not be solved by current classical solvers, for which an efficient quantum algorithm would therefore be desirable. Here, we will show that because of a phenomenon similar to Anderson localization, an exponentially small eigenvalue gap appears in the spectrum of the adiabatic Hamiltonian for large random instances, very close to the end of the algorithm. This implies that unfortunately, adiabatic quantum optimization also fails for these instances by getting stuck in a local minimum, unless the computation is exponentially long.


The influence of ethnic identity, acculturation, and mattering on wellness was examined for 176 minority and 286 nonminority adolescents attending a public high school. Participants completed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, the Stephenson Multigroup Acculturation Scale, the General Mattering Scale, the Mattering to Others Questionnaire, and the Wellness Evaluation of Life Style-Teenage. Analysis of structural equation models revealed that, for the total sample, mattering and acculturation explained a significant portion of the variance of wellness in six areas: spirituality, self direction, schoolwork, leisure, love, and friendship. Ethnic identity explained a significant portion of the variance for minority students. Implications for school counselors are discussed.


Teaching Jewish holidays in secular kindergartens in Israel is a major part of the early childhood education curriculum and often revolves around myths of heroism. The telling of these stories frequently evokes strong nationalist feelings of identification with fighting as they describe survival wars and conflicts in which the heroes are mostly male fighters and Jewish victory over the enemy is celebrated. Thus the teaching of the holidays hidden agenda strengthens ceremonial, patriarchal and national ideas. This paper proposes a number of educational alternatives in accordance with critical feminist pedagogy and Jewish values of social justice. The article focuses on three major holidays: Hanukah, Purim and Passover. It shows in each one of them the conventional reading of the holiday which is the traditional way it is being taught in secular kindergartens, the holiday through a critical feminist pedagogy lens and application in early childhood classrooms.


Entering her fortieth year, Beverly Donofrio, a "lapsed Catholic," inexplicably begins collecting Virgin Mary memorabilia at yard sales. Her search for kitsch, however, soon becomes a spiritual quest, leading her to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Medjugorje. There, she learns that Mary comes into your life only when pride steps out and receives a bonus: hope. In Looking for Mary, Donofrio offers the universal story about a woman who-in a quest for the Blessed Mother-finds herself.


This essay fuses critical pedagogical concepts of selected scholars with real-life narratives of teaching English as a Second Language in Japan. This exposition of critical pedagogues, JET Programme participants and students addresses the challenges of practicing a critical pedagogy overseas. In particular, this essay explores the context of Japan and the subject of English as for future ESL teachers. Rather than practicing a consistent critical pedagogy regardless of geographical location, this essay claims that ESL teachers are in risk unconsciously practicing a contained pedagogy.


Adam Smith's outlook still inspires and informs modern sensibilities and argumentation. It is of interest beyond Smith aficionados whether a particular line of modern thought "fits" Smith. One important such dispute involves recent "left Smithian" writers who argue that he was more open to government intervention—especially on behalf of the poor—than had previously been believed. Perhaps the best short statement of this view is Emma Rothschild's 1992 essay "Adam Smith and Conservative Economics." Although insightful in many ways, this article seems to imply—in the historical context of the British grain supply crisis of 1795-96—that a minimum wage law is consistent with a Smithian worldview. Rothschild associates opposition to a minimum wage policy (as proposed in 1795), an opposition elaborated and defended by William Pitt, with "principles of political economy" and coldness toward the poor. Advocacy of the policy, led by Samuel Whitbread, marked, according to Rothschild, a warmth and compassion true to Smith but since forsaken by posterity. The tension Rothschild sees in the debate between these two men isn't, however, found in Smith's own writings or in the actual discussion Pitt and Whitbread held in Parliament. A closer look at this historical episode invites reconciliation between the ostensibly opposed strands of "warmth" and "principle" in Smith's writing and in our own thought today.


As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution. Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules-these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues-and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them-and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare's work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.


We provide a test for statistical discrimination or rational stereotyping in in environments in which agents learn over time. Our application is to the labor market. If profit maximizing firms have limited information about the general productivity of new workers, they may choose to use easily observable characteristics such as years of education to 'statistically discriminate' among workers. As firms acquire more information about a worker, pay will become more dependent on actual productivity and less dependent on easily observable characteristics or credentials that predict productivity. Consider a wage equation that contains both the interaction between experience and a hard to observe variable that is positively related to productivity and the interaction between experience and a variable that firms can easily observe, such as years of education. We show that the wage coefficient on the unobservable productivity variable should rise with time in the labor market and the wage coefficient on education should fall. We investigate this proposition using panel data on education, the AFQT test, father's education, and wages for young men and their siblings from NLSY. We also examine the empirical implications of statistical discrimination on the basis of race. Our results support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination, although they are inconsistent with the hypothesis that firms fully utilize the information in race. Our analysis has wide implications for the analysis of the determinants of wage growth and productivity and the analysis of statistical discrimination in the labor market and elsewhere.


The time children spend with their parents affects their development. Parenting programs can help parents use that time more effectively. Text-messaged-based parenting curricula have proven an effective means of supporting positive parenting practices by providing easy and fun activities that reduce informational and behavioral barriers. These programs may be more effective if delivered during times when parents are particularly in need of support or alternatively when parents have more time to interact with their child. This study compares the effects of an early childhood text-messaging program sent during the weekend to the same program sent on weekdays. We find that sending the texts on the weekend is, on average, more beneficial to children's literacy and math development. This effect is particularly strong for initially lower achieving children, while the weekday texts show some benefits for higher achieving children on higher order skills. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that the parents of lower achieving students, on average, face such high barriers during weekdays that supports are not enough to overcome these barriers, while for parents of higher achieving students, weekday texts are more effective because weekdays are more challenging, but not so difficult as to be untenable for positive parenting.


BACKGROUND
Target values for cardiovascular risk factors in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) are stated in guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. We studied secular trends in risk factors over a 12-year period among CHD patients in the region of Münster, Germany.

METHODS
The cross-sectional EUROASPIRE I, II and III surveys were performed in multiple centers across Europe. For all three, the Münster region was the participating German region. In the three periods 1995/96, 1999/2000, and 2006/07, the surveys included (respectively) 392, 402 and 457 ≤ 70-year-old patients with CHD in Münster who had sustained a coronary event at least 6 months earlier.

RESULTS
The prevalence of smoking remained unchanged, with 16.8% in EUROASPIRE I and II and 18.4% in EUROASPIRE III (p=0.898). On the other hand, high blood pressure and high cholesterol both became less common across the three EUROASPIRE studies (60.7% to 69.4% to 55.3%, and 94.3% to 83.4% to 48.1%, respectively; p<0.001 for both). Obesity became more common (23.0% to 30.6% to 43.1%, p<0.001), as did treatment with antihypertensive and lipid-lowering drugs (80.4% to 88.6% to 94.3%, and 35.0% to 67.4% to 87.0%, respectively; p<0.001 for both).

CONCLUSION
The observed trends in cardiovascular risk factors under-score the vital need for better preventive strategies in patients with CHD.


The theory of uniquely decipherable (UD) codes has been widely developed in connection with automata theory, combinatorics on words, formal languages, and monoid theory. Recently, the concepts of multiset decipherable (MSD) and set decipherable (SD) codes were developed to handle some special problems in the transmission of information. Unique decipherability is a vital requirement in a wide range of coding applications where distinct sequences of code words carry different information. However, in several applications, it is necessary or desirable to communicate a description of a sequence of events where the information of interest is the set of possible events, including multiplicity, but where the order of occurrences is irrelevant. Suitable codes for these communication purposes need not possess the UD property, but the weaker MSD property. In other applications, the information of interest may be the presence or absence of possible events. The SD property is adequate for such codes. Lempel (1986) showed that the UD and MSD properties coincide for two-word codes and conjectured that every three-word MSD code is a UD code. Guzman (1995) showed that the UD, MSD, and SD properties coincide for two-word codes and conjectured that these properties coincide for three-word codes. In an earlier paper (2001), Blanchet-Sadri answered both conjectures positively for all three-word codes {c1,c2,c3} satisfying |c1|=|c2|≤|c3|. In this note, we answer both conjectures positively for other special three-word codes. Our procedures are based on techniques related to dominoes.


This report presents the properties of a specification of the domain of process planning for rotary symmetrical workpieces. The specification results from a model for problem solving in this domain that involves different reasoners, one of which is an AI planner that achieves goals corresponding to machining workpieces by considering certain operational restrictions of the domain. When planning with SNLP (McAllester and Rosenblitt, 1991), we will show that the resulting plans have the property of minimizing the use of certain key operations. Further, we will show that, for elastic protected plans (Kambhampati et al., 1996) such as the ones produced by SNLP, the goals corresponding to machining parts of a workpiece are OE-constrained trivial serializable, a special form of trivial serializability (Barrett and Weld, 1994). However, we will show that planning with SNLP in this domain can be very difficult: elastic protected plans for machining parts of a workpiece are nonmergeable. Finally, we will show that, for sufix, prefix or sufix and prefix plans such as the ones produced by state-space planners, it is not possible to have both properties, being OEconstrained trivial serializable and minimizing the use of the key operations, at the same time.


The Ninth Circuit's decision in Perry v. Brown, authored by Judge Reinhardt, has been widely lauded by marriage equality proponents for its creative minimalism. In keeping with commentators' expectations, the court found a way to determine that California's Proposition 8 violated the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, namely that the provision took away an entitlement that had previously been enjoyed by same-sex couples — the right to the appellation of one's partnership as a "marriage" — for no rational reason. The people of California's categorization and differential treatment of same-sex couples as compared with opposite-sex couples, the court held, failed the test of minimal rationality required for upholding state action. The two types of couples were simply too indistinguishable to carry the weight of the difference between them that the people of California had tried to codify. Thus, the court struck down the state constitutional amendment.The court did so, however, by relying heavily on facts peculiar to California's political history, thereby limiting the case's disruption of democratic processes in both California and elsewhere, and, not incidentally, minimizing the size of the target the case presents should the presumptively hostile Supreme Court review the decision. First, Proposition 8 removed an entitlement that had been granted by the California Supreme Court just a few years earlier. The case thus arose in a posture not shared by other cases involving same-sex marriage: what was at stake was the constitutionality of a referendum that took away — rather than failed to grant — same-sex marriage. Second, California, by statute, guarantees to same-sex couples a "domestic partnership" which statutorily grants all of the legal incidents of marriage, including rights of parentage and adoption. Because of the first fact — that what the Court was faced with was the withdrawal of a preexisting right — the Court did not have to reach the question of whether same-sex couples possess a "right to marry" where it has never before been recognized. Because of the second fact — that all that was at stake in California was the appellation "marriage" since the domestic partnership laws guaranteed to same-sex couples all other incidents of marital status — there was no need for the Court to decide whether there would be a "rational basis" for a state to refuse to grant the right to marry to same-sex couples on the basis of the purported superiority of child-raising in families headed by opposite-sex partners: the case simply does not raise these questions, since California's statutory scheme grants equal family status to both sorts of couples, and Proposition 8 did not upset that. The court did not, therefore, have to decide that there exists a "fundamental right to marry," or that any restriction on the rights of gay people to marry would violate fundamental constitutional values. Rather, it narrowly held that Proposition 8, which stripped gay citizens only of the appellation "married" and left all other incidents of marriage intact, worked a dignitary and psychic harm on gay and lesbian partners, and did so for no defensible reason. This decision is thus of no relevance to cases challenging a state's refusal to extend marriage to include gays and lesbians, and it is of no relevance to cases challenging a state's withdrawal of such a right if that right is also accompanied by a denial of concrete benefits and accompanied by some explanation — such as the superiority of hetero-sexual parenting — for the decision to do so. Perry v. Brown is nothing more than a sui generis decision for a unique set of facts. Thus, creative minimalism.


Temple University Owls Athletic Training Society (OATS), committed to education and community involvement, formed a relationship with Lanning Square Elementary School (LSE). Located less than 10 miles from campus in Camden, NJ, a high incidence of poverty, violence, and one-parent families is the norm. Through a grant, OATS adopted the fifth-grade classes at LSE for 1 year, beginning with letter exchanges between OATS students and elementary students. OATS traveled to LSE for their holiday party, met their pen pals, and provided healthy snacks. In the spring, the LSE completed a health/wellness unit and visited Temple. Students shared several health activities including learning about bones/muscles in the anatomy laboratory, stretching properly, and exercising. They received lunch and Temple mementos. OATS raised money the following year to continue the project. This allowed OATS and administrators to participate positively in our community, promote diversity, and introduce healthy lifestyles to youngsters.


In this contribution the software design and implementation of an analysis server for the computation of failure probabilities in structural engineering is presented. The structures considered are described in terms of an equivalent Finite Element model, the stochastic properties, like e.g. the scatter of the material behavior or the incoming load, are represented using suitable random variables. Within the software framework, a Client-Server-Architecture has been implemented, employing the middleware CORBA for the communication between the distributed modules. The analysis server offers the possibility to compute failure probabilities for stochastically defined structures. Therefore, several different approximation (FORM, SORM) and simulation methods (Monte Carlo Simulation and Importance Sampling) have been implemented. This paper closes in showing several examples computed on the analysis server.


Empirical evidence suggests that searching deeper in game trees using the minimax propagation rule usually improves the quality of decisions significantly. However, despite many recent theoretical analyses of the effects of minimax look ahead, however, this phenomenon has still not been convincingly explained. Instead, much attention has been given to so-called pathological behavior, which occurs under certain assumptions. This article supports the view that pathology is a direct result of these underlying theoretical assumptions. Pathology does not occur in practice, because these assumptions do not apply in realistic domains. The article presents several arguments in favor of minimaxing and focuses attention on the gap between their analytical formulation and their practical meaning. A new model is presented based on the strict separation of static and dynamic aspects in practical programs. finally, certain methods of improving minimax look-ahead are discussed, drawing on insights gained from this research.


Autobiography has generally been recognized for its literary and artistic aspects, and as a result has been largely overlooked as an instructional method in adult and continuing education. This paper argues for a wider use of autobiography in adult and continuing education programs, proposing that autobiography actually encompasses not only the artistic and literary aspects of life writing, but also the theoretical and philosophical. Based on the autobiographical writings of adult learners collected over a decade of teaching, the author suggests that in the course of bringing these dimensions of their lives together, these writers further not only their understanding of themselves and their world, but also their commitment to educational practice, action, and change.


Italy is very rich in a culture of traditional values, which can be seen from family structure, to food, to art, to religion. As a result, it is extremely important to know how Italians live their daily lives before engaging in an international business venture. Therefore, in order for Panera Bread to succeed in such a traditional society, the company must analyze Italy's culture and economy to fully understand the best way to enter the foreign market and compete with local businesses.

By taking an in depth look at Italian culture and economy several things become clear in terms of market entry and product positioning. Therefore, marketing efforts surrounding this knowledge give Panera Bread, and other foreign businesses, the advantage of the proper knowledge to reach the desired target market in the most effective manner.


Three independent single particle mass spectrometers measured Pb in individual aerosol particles. These data provide unprecedented sensitivity and statistical significance for the measurement of Pb in single particles. This paper explores the reasons for the frequency of Pb in fine particles now that most gasoline is unleaded. Trace amounts of Pb were found in 5 to 25% of 250 to 3000 nm diameter particles sampled by both aircraft and surface instruments in the eastern and western United States. Over 5% of particles at a mountain site in Switzerland contained Pb. Particles smaller than 100 nm with high Pb content were also observed by an instrument that was only operated in urban areas. Lead was found on all types of particles, including Pb present on biomass burning particles from remote fires. Less common particles with high Pb contents contributed a majority of the total amount of Pb. Single particles with high Pb content often also contained alkali metals, Zn, Cu, Sn, As, and Sb. The association of Pb with Zn and other metals is also found in IMPROVE network filter data from surface sites. Sources of airborne Pb in the United States are reviewed for consistency with these data. The frequent appearance of trace Pb is consistent with widespread emissions of fine Pb particles from combustion sources followed by coagulation with larger particles during long-range transport. Industrial sources that directly emit Pb-rich particles also contribute to the observations. Clean regions of the western United States show some transport of Pb from Asia but most Pb over the United States comes from North American sources. Resuspension of Pb from soil contaminated by the years of leaded gasoline was not directly apparent.


In this paper, we explore different linguistic structures encoded as convolution kernels for the detection of subjective expressions. The advantage of convolution kernels is that complex structures can be directly provided to a classifier without deriving explicit features. The feature design for the detection of subjective expressions is fairly difficult and there currently exists no commonly accepted feature set. We consider various structures, such as constituency parse structures, dependency parse structures, and predicateargument structures. In order to generalize from lexical information, we additionally augment these structures with clustering information and the task-specific knowledge of subjective words. The convolution kernels will be compared with a standard vector kernel.


Here Robert Jenson offers a systematic theologian's careful reading of the Song of Songs. Jenson focuses on the overt sense of the book as an erotic love poem in order to discover how this evocative poetry solicits a theological reading. Jenson finds a story of human love for God in this complex poetic book and offers a commentary that elucidates and inspires.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.


The stories of advocates in the disability rights movement remain largely undocumented, especially in the area of the arts. This research uses ethnographic fieldwork to document such stories in the interviewee's own words. The resulting portrait of disability, advocacy, and the arts also details the story of interviewee and interviewer, and of the fieldworking process as a whole. This thesis focuses on the life history and life story of musician Jim Whalen and his contributions to the disability rights and arts movement. The fieldstudy explores the stories, creations, beliefs, motives, feelings, philosophies, thoughts, and life histories, of not only Whalen but also of the researcher and others intersecting with Whalen's life and work, including writer Steve Kuusisto. An ethnographic methodology, including both in-depth interviews and participant observation, comprise the research design. The researcher uses the interdisciplinary-research tools of fieldwork in order to document and represent his findings. In this study, advocacy and art are understood as vehicles to reframe current notions about disability. In addition to insight into the disability rights movement at this point in time, the stories included provide an arsenal of techniques, concepts, and tools to help disability advocates understand, reframe, and renegotiate life experiences, in particular through art. In conjunction with reframing ideas such as "This is normal for me" and renegotiating experiences such as "Always stops right now," other advocacy tools discovered include "Summoning the dragon," "Not if, but how," and "Everyone has a why." The final product is part word portrait, part life history, part snapshot, part auto-ethnography, part biography, part oral history, part cultural history, part narrative, part ethnography --it is both an explanation and an ode to the two central themes from which the title is born: "Disability is my culture" and "Disability is beautiful."


The former New York Times film critic, Vincent Canby, wrote all of us have different thresholds at which we suspend disbelief, and then gladly follow fictions to conclusions that we find logical. Any recording is a fiction, a falsity, even in its most pure form. It is the responsibility, if not the duty, of the recording engineer, and producer, to create a universe so compelling and transparent that the listener isnt aware of any manipulation. Using basic recording techniques, and standard manipulation of audio, a recording is made, giving the listener an experience that is not merely logical but better than reality. How does this occur? What techniques can be applied? How does an engineer create a convincing loudspeaker illusion that a listener will perceive as a plausible reality? Recordings will be played.


In the age of global biotechnology, DNA can exist as biological material in a test tube, as a sequence in a computer database, and as economically valuable information in a patent. In The Global Genome, Eugene Thacker asks us to consider the relationship of these three entities and argues that -- by their existence and their interrelationships -- they are fundamentally redefining the notion of biological "life itself."Biological science and the biotech industry are increasingly organized at a global level, in large part because of the use of the Internet in exchanging biological data. International genome sequencing efforts, genomic databases, the development of World Intellectual Property policies, and the "borderless" business of biotech are all evidence of the global intersections of biology and informatics -- of genetic codes and computer codes. Thacker points out the internal tension in the very concept of biotechnology: the products are more "tech" than "bio," but the technology itself is fully biological, composed of the biomaterial labor of genes, proteins, cells, and tissues. Is biotechnology a technology at all, he asks, or is it a notion of "life itself" that is inseparable from its use in the biotech industry?The three sections of the book cover the three primary activities of biotechnology today: the encoding of biological materials into digital form -- as in bioinformatics and genomics; its recoding in various ways -- including the "biocolonialism" of mapping genetically isolated ethnic populations and the newly pervasive concern over "biological security"; and its decoding back into biological materiality -- as in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Thacker moves easily from science to philosophy to political economics, enlivening his account with ideas from such thinkers as Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, and Paul Virilio. The "global genome," says Thacker, makes it impossible to consider biotechnology without the context of globalism.


Bank erosion is one of the dominant geomorphological processes in the southern part of the Pannonian Basin. The consequences of bank erosion on the territory of Serbia and the Republic of Srpska were analysed including landscape degradation (lateral migration), socio-economic (land loss, land use changes, economical losses) and geopolitical consequences. The analysis covered the Danube River and the Drina River as the international river border, the Bosna River as a boundary watercourse along the administrative border and the Kolubara River with dominantly antropogenic impacts on the rate of bank erosion . The total amount of lateral migration of the Kolubara riverbed for the period 19252010 is 155 m and the Bosna riverbed for the period 19582012 is 352.2 m. Lateral migration has caused serious problems through loss of arable land (approximately 40 ha) and land use changes in both basins, but also economic loss due to the reduction of agricultural production. For the protection of the Bosna River banks it is necessary to invest 7.91 million Euros, while in the case of the Kolubara River for their recovery 2.54 million Euros were needed. The geopolitical consequences due to the bank erosion acting and lateral migration of the river course were analysed on three paradigmatic examples: the Danube River (the border between Serbia and Croatia), Drina River (the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Bosna River (the border between the Republic of Srpska and the Federation of B&H). The results of this investigation are applicable in the field of water and soil resources management, hydrotechnical works, geopolitical studies, as well as in different aspects of the environmental protection.


Sometimes, reading is very boring and it will take long time starting from getting the book and start reading. However, in modern era, you can take the developing technology by utilizing the internet. By internet, you can visit this page and start to search for the book that is needed. Wondering this the shadow child is the one that you need, you can go for downloading. Have you understood how to get it?


Laws send messages, some of which may be heard at the moment of enactment. But much of a law's expressive impact is bound up in its enforcement. Although scholars have extensively debated the wisdom of expressive legislation, their discussions in the context of domestic criminal law have focused largely on enactment-related messaging, rather than on expressive enforcement. This Article uses hate crime laws—the paradigmatic example of expressive legislation—as a case study to challenge conventional understandings of the messaging function of lawmaking. The Article asks: How do institutional incentives shape prosecutors' enforcement decisions, and how do these decisions affect the message of hate crime laws? To answer that question, the Article presents original data from the first multistate qualitative empirical study of hate crime prosecution. The findings help to explain a paradox: In archetypal hate crime cases involving animus directed at a victim's core identity features—such as race or sexual orientation—prosecutors may decline to include hate crime charges because of statutory incentives, difficulty of proving motive, and concerns about jury reaction. Conversely, hate crime enforcement may be appealing to prosecutors in precisely those cases that are least likely to further the expressive purposes of hate crime laws. After exploring this mismatch, the Article identifies some areas where there may be irreconcilable tensions between the expressive goals of legislators and the incentives of prosecutors and, in other areas, offers recommendations to align legislative goals with enforcement practices.


In figuring eminence in the social sciences, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) is of great importance. Yet the SSCI selection process is a black box. Scrutiny of the SSCI journal list reveals that the stated SSCI journal selection criteria are vague and applied inconsistently. The Nation, The New Republic, and many other periodicals that fail to meet most conditions said to be a criterion for inclusion are nonetheless included in the SSCI. I investigate whether the process and resultant list are, not merely inconsistent, but ideologically biased. Although it is impossible to determine with great confidence whether there is an ideological bias, I present a variety of evidence of bias in favor of journals of a social democratic orientation and against journals of a classical liberal orientation.


Molecular formula C14H7O7NaS.H2O CAS Number 130-22-3 Storage instructions Store at Room Temperature. The product can be stored for up to 12 months. Solubility overview Soluble in water to 1 mg/ml Handling Wherever possible, you should prepare and use solutions on the same day. However, if you need to make up stock solutions in advance, we recommend that you store the solution as aliquots in tightly sealed vials at -20°C. Generally, these will be useable for up to one month. Before use, and prior to opening the vial we recommend that you allow your product to equilibrate to room temperature for at least 1 hour. Need more advice on solubility, usage and handling? Please visit our frequently asked questions (FAQ) page for more details. Source Synthetic Product datasheet


We investigate hadron production as well as transverse hadron spectra in nucleus-nucleus collisions from 2 A·GeV to 21.3 A·TeV within two independent transport approaches (UrQMD and HSD) that are based on quark, diquark, string and hadronic degrees of freedom. The comparison to experimental data demonstrates that both approaches agree quite well with each other and with the experimental data on hadron production. The enhancement of pion production in central Au+Au (Pb+Pb) collisions relative to scaled pp collisions (the 'kink') is well described by both approaches without involving any phase transition. However, the maximum in the K + /π + ratio at 20 to 30 A·GeV (the 'horn') is missed by ∼ 40%. A comparison to the transverse mass spectra from pp and C+C (or Si+Si) reactions shows the reliability of the transport models for light systems. For central Au+Au (Pb+Pb) collisions at bombarding energies above ∼ 5 A·GeV, however, the measured K ± m T-spectra have a larger inverse slope parameter than expected from the calculations. The approximately constant slope of K ± spectra at SPS (the 'step') is not reproduced either. Thus the pressure generated by hadronic interactions in the transport models above ∼ 5 A·GeV is lower than observed in the experimental data. This finding suggests that the additional pressure-as expected from lattice QCD calculations at finite quark chemical potential and temperature-might be generated by strong interactions in the early pre-hadronic/partonic phase of central Au+Au (Pb+Pb) collisions.


The colorist is responsible for the critical final stage of refinement of the film and broadcast image. Using all of the controls modern color correction software provides, colorists refine the mood, create style, add polish to scenes, and breathe life into the visuals. The craft of color correction can take considerable trial and error to learn, while the art of color grading takes years to perfect. Alexis Van Hurkman draws on his wealth of industry experience to provide a thoroughly updated edition of what has become the standard guide to color correction. Using a friendly, clear teaching style and a slew of real-world examples and anecdotes, Alexis demonstrates how to achieve professional results for any project, using any number of dedicated grading applications, or even an editing programs built-in color correction tools. From the most basic methods for evaluating and correcting an overall image to the most advanced targeted corrections and creative stylizations, Color Correction Handbook, Second Edition, is your one-stop guide. Among many valuable concepts and techniques, youll learn to: Set up a professional color correction environment using the latest technologies and adhere to the most up-to-date standards Work with log-encoded media and LUTs Analyze shots quickly and correct errors of color and exposure Create idealized adjustments for key features such as skin tone, skies, and product shots Develop strategies for balancing clips in a scene to match one another for continuity, and grading greenscreen clips destined for visual effects Master a variety of stylistic techniques used to set a scenes mood Apply principles of color and contrast to add depth and visual interest Browse valuable research about memory colors, audience preferences, and critical corrections for achieving appealing skin tones and controlled environments Follow along with the downloadable files that accompany this book, including HD footage, cross-platform exercises, and project files.


Lifelong Education Copyright © 2020 Yingying Xu doi: 10.18282/le.v9i5.1206 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. Original Research Article


Abstract. Reflected solar radiance from the Earth–atmosphere system is polarized. Radiance measurements can be affected by light's state of polarization if the radiometric sensor has polarization dependence. To enable the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission for inter-calibration of the imagers with polarization dependence, such as the MODIS, the polarization state of the light must be known with sufficient accuracy. For this purpose, the polarized solar radiation from the ocean–atmosphere system is studied with an adding-doubling radiative transfer model (ADRTM). The Cox–Munk ocean wave slope distribution model is used in calculation of the reflection matrix of a wind-ruffled ocean surface. An empirical foam spectral reflectance model and an empirical spectral reflectance model for water volume below the surface are integrated in the ocean-surface model. Solar reflectance from the ADRTM is compared with that from the discrete-ordinate radiative transfer (DISORT) model. Sensitivity studies are conducted for various ocean-surface and atmospheric conditions for the stratification of polarization distribution models (PDMs), which are to be used in the inter-calibration of the polarization-sensitive imager measurements with the CLARREO data. This report presents the first accurate approach for making the spectral PDMs over broad solar spectra, which cannot be achieved by empirical PDMs based on the data from polarimetric sensors.


Summary Until recently, vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) were the only available oral anticoagulants evaluated for long-term treatment of patients with coronary heart disease (CHD), particularly after an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Despite efficacy in this setting, VKAs are rarely used because they are cumbersome to administer. Instead, the more readily manageable antiplatelet agents are the mainstay of prevention in ACS patients. This situation has the potential to change with the introduction of non-VKA oral anticoagulants (NOACs), which are easier to administer than VKAs because they can be given in fixed doses without routine coagulation monitoring. The NOACs include dabigatran, which inhibits thrombin, and apixaban, rivaroxaban and edoxaban, which inhibit factor Xa. Apixaban and rivaroxaban were evaluated in phase III trials for prevention of recurrent ischaemia in ACS patients, most of whom were also receiving dual antiplatelet therapy with aspirin and clopidogrel. Although at the doses tested rivaroxaban was effective and apixaban was not, both agents increased major bleeding. The role for the NOACs in ACS management, although promising, is therefore complicated, because it is uncertain how they compare with newer antiplatelet agents, such as prasugrel, ticagrelor or vorapaxar, and because their safety in combination with these other drugs is unknown. Ongoing studies are also now evaluating the use of NOACs in non-valvular atrial fibrillation patients, where their role is established, with coexistent ACS or coronary stenting. Focusing on CHD, we review the results of clinical trials with the NOACs and provide a perspective on their future incorporation into clinical practice. Note: The review process for this paper was fully handled by Christian Weber, Editor in Chief.


Germans of the generation born just before the outbreak of World War I lived through a tumultuous and dramatic century. This book tells the story of their lives and, in so doing, offers a new history of twentieth-century Germany, as experienced and made by ordinary human beings. On the basis of sixty-two oral-history interviews, this book shows how this generation was shaped psychologically by a series of historically engendered losses over the course of the century. In response, this generation turned to the collective to repair the losses it had suffered, most fatefully to the community of the "Volk" during the Third Reich, a racial collective to which this generation was passionately committed and which was at the heart of National Socialism and its popular appeal.


Focusing on the neoliberal symbolic urban reconstruction of the Macedonian capital, known as "Skopje 2014", the PhD work deals with urban space production through storytelling. Embracing the criticism put forward in the political, cultural and social debates that have spun around Skopje's reconstruction, the artistic-based research sought to relate and analyze the symbolic narratives of "Skopje 2014" and the vernacular and civic narratives of Skopje and locate overlapping, divergent, complementary or conflictual aspects of their respective narrative structures. Informed by subjective citizens' stories and experiences of the urban as well as binaural sonic observations of the city, the research findings were presented in the form of an interactive audio guided walk through the city. The thesis is organized in three chapters, preceded by an INTRODUCTION and followed by a CONCLUSION. CHAPTER ONE sets the theoretical context, presents the case study "Skopje 2014", and discusses the research design. The audio guided walk is presented in CHAPTER TWO. Its content consists of five tracks, or subchapters, conceptualized and named as five different aspects of the city: THE MODERNIST CITY, THE FEMALE CITY, THE MEMORY CITY, THE POSTCOMMUNIST CITY and THE TOURIST CITY, according to the discourses related to these tracks. CHAPTER THREE, the EPILOGUE, is the final discussion of the research project, in which several meta-conclusions are drawn.


Maintaining complex software systems tends to be a costly activity where software engineers spend a significant amount of time trying to understand the system's structure and behavior. As early as the 1980s, operation and maintenance costs were already twice as expensive as the initial development costs incurred. Since then these costs have steadily increased. The focus of this thesis is to reduce these costs through novel interactive exploratory visualization concepts and to apply these modern techniques in the context of services offered by software quality analysis.

Costs associated with the understanding of software are governed by specific features of the system in terms of different domains, including re-engineering, maintenance, and evolution. These features are reflected in software measurements or inner qualities such as extensibility, reusability, modifiability, testability, compatability, or adatability. The presence or absence of these qualities determines how easily a software system can conform or be customized to meet new requirements. Consequently, the need arises to monitor and evaluate the qualitative state of a software system in terms of these qualities. Using metrics-based analysis, production costs and quality defects of the software can be recorded objectively and analyzed.

In practice, there exist a number of free and commercial tools that analyze the inner quality of a software system through the use of software metrics. However, most of these tools focus on software data mining and metrics (computational analysis) and only a few support visual analytical reasoning. Typically, computational analysis tools generate data and software visualization tools facilitate the exploration and explanation of this data through static or interactive visual representations. Tools that combine these two approaches focus only on well-known metrics and lack the ability to examine user defined metrics. Further, they are often confined to simple visualization methods and metaphors, including charts, histograms, scatter plots, and node-link diagrams.

The goal of this thesis is to develop methodologies that combine computational analysis methods together with sophisticated visualization methods and metaphors through an interactive visual analysis approach. This approach promotes an iterative knowledge discovery process through multiple views of the data where analysts select features of interest in one of the views and inspect data items of the select subset in all of the views. On the one hand, we introduce a novel approach for the visual analysis of software measurement data that captures complete facts of the system, employs a flow-based visual paradigm for the specification of software measurement queries, and presents measurement results through integrated software visualizations. This approach facilitates the on-demand computation of desired features and supports interactive knowledge discovery - the analyst can gain more insight into the data through activities that involve: building a mental model of the system; exploring expected and unexpected features and relations; and generating, verifying, or rejecting hypothesis with visual tools. On the other hand, we have also extended existing tools with additional views of the data for the presentation and interactive exploration of system artifacts and their inter-relations.

Contributions of this thesis have been integrated into two different prototype tools. First evaluations of these tools show that they can indeed improve the understanding of large and complex software systems.


Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature * 2018 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults * 2018 Rainbow Book List * A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017"Well-paced, brimming with drama, and utterly vital."--Kirkus (starred review)This charming and bittersweet coming-of-age story featuring two girls of color falling in love is part To All the Boys I've Loved Before and part Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.Sixteen-year-old Sana Kiyohara has too many secrets. Some are small, like how it bothers her when her friends don't invite her to parties. Some are big, like the fact that her father may be having an affair. And then there's the one that she can barely even admit to herself--the one about how she might have a crush on her best friend.When Sana and her family move to California, she begins to wonder if it's finally time for some honesty, especially after she meets Jamie Ramirez. Jamie is beautiful and smart and unlike anyone Sana's ever known.There are just a few problems: Sana's new friends don't trust Jamie's crowd; Jamie's friends clearly don't want her around anyway; and a sweet guy named Caleb seems to have morethan-friendly feelings for her. Meanwhile, her dad's affair is becoming too obvious to ignore.Sana always figured that the hardest thing would be to tell people that she wants to date a girl, but as she quickly learns, telling the truth is easy.what comes after it, though, is a whole lot more complicated.


Speed controlled circulators for domestic heating system have been on the market since the early nineties. The majority of these circulators have built-in pump control curves, which adjust the speed and thereby the pressure to the actual flow and heat demand. Circulators normally have a variety of pump control curves to accommodate for variations in heating systems. This can further improve comfort and reduce energy consumption. To benefit from this option the right setting of the circulator pump control curve must be done after it is installed. In most cases this is not possible, because information about the particular heating system is not available. This paper describes a new control method AUTOADAPT, which automatically adapts the setting of the circulator to the heating system where it is installed. Circulators with AUTOADAPT function measure and analyse the heating system characteristics during operation and adjust the setting of the pump control curve accordingly. Field test results from Germany have shown that in 75% of the cases the AUTOADAPT had chosen a setting same comfort level and lower


Leverage the power of Android fragments to develop dynamic user interfaces for your apps Overview Learn everything you need to know to provide dynamic multi-screen UIs within a single activity Integrate the rich UI features demanded by todays mobile users Understand the basics of using fragments and how to use them to create more adaptive and dynamic user experiences In Detail To create a dynamic and multi-pane user interface on Android, you need to encapsulate UI components and activity behaviors into modules that you can swap into and out of your activities. You can create these modules with the fragment class, which behaves somewhat like a nested activity that can define its own layout and manage its own lifecycle. When a fragment specifies its own layout, it can be configured in different combinations with other fragments inside an activity to modify your layout configuration for different screen sizes (a small screen might show one fragment at a time, but a large screen can show two or more). Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments shows you how to create modern Android applications that meet the high expectations of todays users. You will learn how to incorporate rich navigation features like swipe-based screen browsing and how to create adaptive UIs that ensure your application looks fantastic whether run on a low cost smartphone or the latest tablet. This book looks at the impact fragments have on Android UI design and their role in both simplifying many common UI challenges and providing new ways to incorporate rich UI behaviors. You will learn how to use fragments to create UIs that automatically adapt to device differences. We look closely at the roll of fragment transactions and how to work with the Android back stack. Leveraging this understanding, we then explore several specialized fragment-related classes like ListFragment and DialogFragment as well as rich navigation features like swipe-based screen browsing. What you will learn from this book Understand the role and capabilities of fragments Explore the fragment-oriented features of Android Studio Create an app UI that works effectively on smartphones and tablets Use fragments to create engaging navigation capabilities like swipe-based screen browsing Work with special purpose fragment classes like ListFragment and DialogFragment Dynamically manage fragments using the FragmentTransaction class Learn appropriate application design for communicating between fragments Efficiently handle fragment creation and lifecycle Simplify cross-thread UI handling with fragments Form multi-screen UIs that run within a single activity Approach A fast-paced tutorial that guides you through everything you need to know about dynamic UI design for Android devices. Who this book is written for This book is for developers with a basic understanding of Android programming who would like to improve the appearance and usability of their applications. Whether youre looking to create a more interactive user experience, create more dynamically adaptive UIs, provide better support for tablets and smartphones in a single app, reduce the complexity of managing your app UIs, or you are just trying to expand your UI design philosophy, then this book is for you.


Besides being an icon of the Syrian revolution, Razan cofounded the Local Coordination Committees in Syria (LCC) and the Violation Documentation Center (VDC), which documents all human rights violations in Syria. She co-founded the local development and small projects support office (LDSPS) as well which aims to help the people in Syria generally, and in Eastern Ghouta more specifically, to provide basic needs and essential services and support to medical and development centers. Her and her colleagues work is very well recognized by the inhabitants in Ghouta. Her kidnapping and the kidnapping of her colleagues indicates yet again the endeavor of some to undermine any form of civil action to help Syrians in the liberated areas to rule and provide for themselves. We, at the VDC and LDSPS, condemn with the strongest words this kidnapping and ask for the immediate release of Razan, Samira, Wael and Nazim without any conditions. We also hold all armed groups operating in the area accountable for the safety and safeguard of the Ghouta inhabitants and Razan and her colleagues. We hold them accountable as well for the safe release of Razan and her colleagues and their safe return to their homes. Such armed groups should ensure that such kidnapping in never repeated again in the future in the area they control. The Dignity and Freedom revolution is undergoing one of its most critical moments now and we hope that it will be able to avoid this trap set from its enemies to undermine its credibility and stray its path.


If youve been charged with setting up storage area networks for your company, learning how SANs work and managing data storage problems might seem challenging. Storage Area Networks For Dummies, 2nd Edition comes to the rescue with just what you need to know. Whether you already a bit SAN savvy or youre a complete novice, heres the scoop on how SANs save money, how to implement new technologies like data de-duplication, iScsi, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet, how to develop SANs that will aid your companys disaster recovery plan, and much more. For example, you can: Understand what SANs are, whether you need one, and what you need to build one Learn to use loops, switches, and fabric, and design your SAN for peak performance Create a disaster recovery plan with the appropriate guidelines, remote site, and data copy techniques Discover how to connect or extend SANs and how compression can reduce costs Compare tape and disk backups and network vs. SAN backup to choose the solution you need Find out how data de-duplication makes sense for backup, replication, and retention Follow great troubleshooting tips to help you find and fix a problem Benefit from a glossary of all those pesky acronyms From the basics for beginners to advanced features like snapshot copies, storage virtualization, and heading off problems before they happen, heres what you need to do the job with confidence!


Over the last decade, the economic linkages between Switzerland and the rest of the world have been transformed. First, merchanting and the chemical industry account for an increasing share of international trade, with chemicals exports expanding robustly in recent years despite the European crisis and the strong Swiss franc. Second, the nature of international financial integration has changed. While private investors drove Switzerland's financial flows and net foreign assets before the financial crisis, the foreign reserves accumulation by the Swiss National Bank has been playing a major role since. Third, asset prices and foreign exchange movements led to substantial capital losses in foreign assets which fully absorbed the surplus on the current account. Finally, the crisis has weakened the role of foreign trade as an engine of growth and narrowed it across sectors.


This musical composition was created from data of microbes - bacteria, algae and other microorganisms - sampled in the English Channel. (Above, the USS Winston S. Churchill traverses the English Channel.) Argonne National Laboratory biologist Peter Larsen created the songs as a unique way to present and comprehend large datasets. Some marine microbial taxa are most often present in the L4 Station community at very low abundance, but occasionally become highly dominant community members. To link these microbial blooms to relevant physical parameters, the chords in this composition are derived from changes in chlorophyll A concentrations and salinity. The melody for each measure is derived from the relative abundances of typically rare taxa that were observed to occasionally bloom to higher abundance in the following order: Cyanobacteria, Vibrionales, Opitulates, Pseudomondales, Rhizobiales, Bacillales, Oceanospirallales, and Sphingomonadales. More information at http://www.anl.gov/articles/songs-key... Photo: USS Winston S. Churchill and Royal Navy HMS Cumberland transit the English Channel, courtesy U.S. Navy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnavy/5...)


In today's business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product families, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 28th CIRP Design Conference 2018.


In this work we introduce a new bandlimited spherical wavelet: The Bernstein wavelet. It possesses a couple of interesting properties. To be specific, we are able to construct bandlimited wavelets free of oscillations. The scaling function of this wavelet is investigated with regard to the spherical uncertainty principle, i.e., its localization in the space domain as well as in the momentum domain is calculated and compared to the well-known Shannon scaling function. Surprisingly, they possess the same localization in space although one is highly oscillating whereas the other one shows no oscillatory behavior. Moreover, the Bernstein scaling function turns out to be the first bandlimited scaling function known to the literature whose uncertainty product tends to the minimal value 1.


The law of defamation treats corporations almost identically to natural persons. In most common law countries, corporations may bring defamation actions, and the elements are the same for corporate plaintiffs as for natural person plaintiffs, as are the defences. So too, are the principles for awarding damages.Both people and corporations have valuable reputations worthy of legal protection. However, given the significantly different effect of reputational injury on humans than on corporations, the principles applied in quantifying damages to each should differ. Aggravating factors relating to emotional injuries should not be considered in assessing reputational injury to corporations, because corporations cannot suffer such injuries. Specifically, I focus on the relevance to the quantification of damages of: a) the defendant's failure to apologize; b) the defendant's malice; and c) the aim of vindicating reputation. Examples are drawn primarily from Canadian law but also from the laws of other common law countries.The article first argues against treating a defendant's failure to apologize to a corporation as a factor aggravating damages. The only relevance to a corporation of an apology is as a form of setting the record straight. Thus, an apology may mitigate damages but a failure to apologize will often have no effect on damages. Yet the law treats a failure to apologize as aggravating damages.Similarly, the defendant's malice is considered a factor aggravating damages, but since corporations cannot be upset, embarrassed or insulted, it is not clear that malice should be relevant to calculating their compensatory damages. Finally, courts should no longer award damages in order to vindicate corporate reputation. The interest in human dignity may justify the vindicatory goal of defamation law. However, given that corporations have no dignity to protect, and given a number of problems associated with attempting to award damages to vindicate reputation, it is not justifiable to award corporations damages to vindicate their reputations.


Multi-Scale Singularity Trees (MSSTs) represents the deep structure of images in scale-space and provide both the connections between image features at different scales and their strengths. In this report we present and evaluate an algorithm that exploits the MSSTs for image matching. Two versions of the algorithm is presented: an exact and an approximation. Several experiments are conducted to empirically evaluate the MSST matching algorithm under image distortions. Further, the performance of the MSST matching algorithm is measured on three databases: the ORL face database, magazine covers, and the COIL database. Finally the performance is compared with algorithms based on the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT), and the Position of Catastrophes (CAT).


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Never doubt with our offer, because we will always give what you need. As like this updated book, you may not find in the other place. But here, it's very easy. Just click and download, you can own the lonely wife. When simplicity will ease your life, why should take the complicated one? You can purchase the soft file of the book right here and be member of us. Besides this book, you can also find hundreds lists of the books from many sources, collections, publishers, and authors in around the world.


We introduce a family of variational ansatz states for chains of anyons which optimally exploits the structure
of the anyonic Hilbert space. This ansatz is the natural analog of the multiscale entanglement renormalization
ansatz for spin chains. In particular, it has the same interpretation as a coarse-graining procedure and is
expected to accurately describe critical systems with algebraically decaying correlations. We numerically
investigate the validity of this ansatz using the anyonic golden chain and its relatives as a testbed. This
demonstrates the power of entanglement renormalization in a setting with non-Abelian exchange statistics,
extending previous work on qudits, bosons, and fermions in two dimensions.


WARNING: SUICIDALITY and ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of citalopram or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction in risk with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older. Depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide. Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber. Citalopram is not approved for use in pediatric patients. (See WARNINGS: Clinical Worsening and Suicide Risk, PRECAUTIONS: Information for Patients, and PRECAUTIONS: Pediatric Use.)


This research is an effort to look into academic activities after school that help secondary school students in cognition development through Hermeneutic analyse for students of Pantai Remis Secondary School, Perak. This research is also to show that Hermeneutic understanding method can be applied effectively to identify academic activities after school that help secondary school students in their cognition development. This research involved 20 secondary school students from Form 1 to Form 3. They were asked to write a reflective essay about academic activities that they did after school hours. Their reflective essays were made a research text that will be using Hermeneutic analyse to find out academic activities that help their cognition development. This research shows that if a student can do positive activities after school such as doing revision, going for tuition, attending classes, doing homework, studying at home, doing module paper, involving school work, carrying out exercises, attending extra classes, involving in ritual study, going to class and attending study with teacher, involving in preparation class, doing mathematic exercises, reading, doing notes, going to library to study, reading geography, reading notes from internet, watching Astro channel that shows education programmes and reading books, thus they can help their cognition development and become excellent students in academic.


Have you ever wondered how your GPS can find the fastest way to your destination, selecting one route from seemingly countless possibilities in mere seconds? How your credit card account number is protected when you make a purchase over the Internet? The answer is algorithms. And how do these mathematical formulations translate themselves into your GPS, your laptop, or your smart phone? This book offers an engagingly written guide to the basics of computer algorithms. In Algorithms Unlocked, Thomas Cormen -- coauthor of the leading college textbook on the subject -- provides a general explanation, with limited mathematics, of how algorithms enable computers to solve problems. Readers will learn what computer algorithms are, how to describe them, and how to evaluate them. They will discover simple ways to search for information in a computer; methods for rearranging information in a computer into a prescribed order ("sorting"); how to solve basic problems that can be modeled in a computer with a mathematical structure called a "graph" (useful for modeling road networks, dependencies among tasks, and financial relationships); how to solve problems that ask questions about strings of characters such as DNA structures; the basic principles behind cryptography; fundamentals of data compression; and even that there are some problems that no one has figured out how to solve on a computer in a reasonable amount of time.


Commentators have poured forth a loud and sustained outcry over the past few years that sees property rule treatment of intellectual property (IP) as a cause of excessive transaction costs, thickets, anticommons, hold-ups, hold-outs, and trolls, which unduly tax and retard innovation, competition, and economic growth. The popular response has been to seek a legislative shift towards some limited use of weaker, liability rule treatment, usually portrayed as "just enough" to facilitate transactions in those special cases where the bargaining problems are at their worst and where escape hatches are most needed. This essay is designed to make two contributions. First, it shows how a set of changes in case law over just the past few years have hugely re-shaped the patent system from having several major, and helpful, liability-rule pressure-release valves, into a system that is fast becoming almost devoid of significant property rule characteristics, at least for those small entities that would most need property rule protection. The essay then explores some harmful effects of this shift, focusing on the ways liability rule treatment can seriously impede the beneficial deal-making mechanisms that facilitate innovation and competition. The basic intuition behind this bad effect of liability rules is that they seriously frustrate the ability for a market-challenging patentee to attract and hold the constructive attention of a potential contracting party (especially one that is a larger more established party) while preserving the option to terminate the negotiations in favor of striking a deal with a different party. At the same time, liability rules can have an additional bad effect of helping existing competitors to coordinate with each other over ways to keep out new entrants. The essay is designed to contribute to the literature on IP in particular, as well as the broader literatures on property and coordination, by first showing how a seemingly disconnected set of changes to the legal rules impacting a particular legal regime like the patent system can have unintended and sweeping harmful consequences, and then by exploring why within the more middle range of the spectrum between the two poles of property rules and liability rules, a general shift towards the property side may be preferred by those seeking an increase in access and competition.


In this paper I introduce a new description of the crystal $B(\Lambda_0)$ of $\widehat{\mathfrak{sl}}_\ell$. As in the Misra-Miwa model of $B(\Lambda_0)$, the nodes of this crystal are indexed by partitions and the $i$-arrows correspond to adding a box of residue $i$. I then show that the two models are equivalent by interpreting the operation of regularization introduced by James as a crystal isomorphism.


Distance-regularity of a graph is in general not determined by the spectrum of the graph. The spectral excess theorem states that a connected regular graph is distance-regular if for every vertex, the number of vertices at extremal distance (the excess) equals some given expression in terms of the spectrum of the graph. This result was proved by Fiol and Garriga [From local adjacency polynomials to locally pseudo-distance-regular graphs, J. Combinatorial Th. B 71 (1997), 162-183] using a local approach. This approach has the advantage that more general results can be proven, but the disadvantage that it is quite technical. The aim of the current paper is to give a less technical proof by taking a global approach.


Gastrointestinal perforation is a complication associated with steroid therapy or hypercortisolism, but it is rarely observed in patients with Cushing's disease in clinical practice, and only one case has been reported as a presenting symptom. Herein, we report a rare case of Cushing's disease in which a patient presented with gastrointestinal perforation as a symptom. A 79-year-old man complained of discomfort in the lower abdomen for 6 months. Based on the endocrinological and gastroenterological examinations, he was diagnosed with Cushing's disease with a perforation of the descending colon. After consultation with a gastroenterological surgeon, it was decided that colonic perforation could be conservatively observed without any oral intake and treated with parenteral administration of antibiotics because of the mild systemic inflammation and lack of abdominal guarding. Despite the marked elevated levels of serum cortisol, oral medication was not an option because of colonic perforation. Therefore, the patient was submitted to endonasal adenomectomy to normalize the levels of serum cortisol. Subsequently, a colostomy was successfully performed. Despite its rarity, physicians should be aware that gastrointestinal perforation may be associated with hypercortisolism, especially in elderly patients, and immediate diagnosis and treatment of this life-threatening condition are essential. If a perforation can be conservatively observed, endonasal adenomectomy prior to laparotomy is an alternative treatment option for hypercortisolism. Learning points Thus far, only one case of gastrointestinal perforation as a presenting clinical symptom of Cushing's disease has been reported. Physicians should be aware that gastrointestinal perforation might be associated with hypercortisolism in elderly patients because elevated levels of serum cortisol may mask the clinical signs of perforation. Because of this masking effect, the diagnosis of the perforation also tends to be delayed. Although parenteral administration of etomidate is a standard treatment option for decreasing the elevated levels of serum cortisol, endonasal adenomectomy prior to laparotomy is an alternative treatment option if etomidate therapy is unavailable.