Blinding (masking): in an experimental study, refers to whether patients, clinicians providing an intervention, people assessing outcomes, and/or data analysts were aware or unaware of the group to which patients were assigned. In the design section of Evidence-Based Nursing abstracts of treatment studies, the study is identified as blinded, with specification of who was blinded; unblinded, if all parties were aware of patients' group assignments; or unclear if the authors did not report or provide us with an indication of who was aware or unaware of patients' group assignments. Cluster randomisation: randomisation of groups of people rather than individuals; this approach is often used to avoid ''contamination'' when the way in which people in one group are treated or assessed is likely to modify the treatment or assessment of people in other groups. Concealment of randomisation: concealment of randomisation is specified in the design section of Evidence-Based Nursing abstracts of treatment studies as follows: allocation concealed (deemed to have taken adequate measures to conceal allocation to study group assignments from those responsible for assessing patients for entry in the trial [ie, central randomisation; sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed envelopes; sealed envelopes from a closed bag; numbered or coded bottles or containers; drugs prepared by the pharmacy; or other descriptions that contain elements convincing of concealment]); allocation not concealed (deemed to have not taken adequate measures to conceal allocation to study group assignments from those responsible for assessing patients for entry in the trial [ie, no concealment procedure was undertaken, sealed envelopes that were not opaque or were not sequentially numbered, or other descriptions that contained elements not convincing of concealment]); unclear allocation concealment (the authors did not report or provide a description of an allocation concealment approach that allowed for the classification as concealed or not concealed). Confidence interval (CI): quantifies the uncertainty in measurement; usually reported as 95% CI, which is the range of values within which we can be 95% sure that the true value for the whole population lies. Diagnostic (gold or criterion or reference) standard: the current best available measure of an outcome; used for assessing properties of a new diagnostic or screening test. The results from a new test are compared with the results from the diagnostic standard to assess the usefulness of the new test (ie, its sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios). Effect size: a measure of effect that is typically used for continuous data when different scales are used to measure an outcome and is usually defined as the difference in means between the intervention and control groups divided by the standard deviation of the control or both groups; it can be used for combining results across studies in a meta-analysis. Fixed effects model: gives a summary estimate of the magnitude of effect in meta-analysis. It takes into account within-study variation but not between-study variation and hence is usually not used if there is significant heterogeneity. Hazard ratio: the weighted relative risk over the entire study period; often reported in the context of survival analysis. Intention to treat analysis (ITT): all patients are analysed in the groups to which they were randomised, even if they failed to complete the intervention or received the wrong intervention. Likelihood ratio (for positive and negative results): a way of summarising the findings of a study of a diagnostic test for use in clinical situations where there may be differences in the prevalence of the disease. The likelihood ratio for a positive test is the likelihood that a positive test result comes from a person that really does have the disorder rather than one that does not have the disorder [sensitivity/ (1–specificity)]. The likelihood ratio for a negative test is the likelihood that a negative test result comes from a person with the disorder rather than one without the disorder [(12sensitivity)/specificity]. Number needed to harm (NNH): number of patients who, if they received the experimental treatment, would lead to 1 additional person being harmed compared with patients who receive the control treatment; this is calculated as 1/ absolute risk increase (rounded to the next whole number), accompanied by the 95% confidence interval. Number needed to treat (NNT): number of patients who need to be treated to prevent 1 additional negative event (or to promote 1 additional positive event); this is calculated as 1/ absolute risk reduction (rounded to the next whole number), accompanied by the 95% confidence interval. Odds ratio (OR): describes the odds of a patient in the experimental group having an event divided by the odds of a patient in the control group having the event or the odds that a patient was exposed to a given risk factor divided by the odds that a control patient was exposed to the risk factor. Random effects model: gives a summary estimate of the magnitude of effect in meta-analysis. It takes into account both within-study and between-study variance and gives a wider confidence interval to the estimate than a fixed effects model if there is significant between-study variation. Relative risk increase (RRI): the proportional increase in bad outcomes between experimental and control participants; it is reported as a percentage (%). Relative risk reduction (RRR): the proportional reduction in bad outcomes between experimental and control participants; it is reported as a percentage (%). Weighted mean difference: in a meta-analysis, used to combine outcomes measured on continuous scales (eg, height), assuming that all trials measured the outcome on the same scale; the mean, standard deviation, and sample size of each group are known, and weight given to each trial is determined by the precision of its estimate of effect.


When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter Y2K to March 2004 , what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalisation? And with this flattening' of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in one place, has the world got too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the 21st century; what it means to countries, companies, communities and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.


The history of the litigation in the carriage tax case, Hylton v. United States (1796), including the extraordinary steps taken to present a case to the Supreme Court in which the tax would be ratified, suggests that the case was far more important than the simple amount of revenue at stake. This article explores the motivation behind the imposition of the carriage tax, and its defense in Hylton, as a part of the effort s of Hamilton and his fellow Federalists to create a robust federal government. That federal government would include revenue officers whose loyalties were primarily to the federal government not the state governments, and a federal power to tax that was neither limited to excise and other transaction-based taxes nor constrained by the apportionment clause.


Two recent novels portray the substantively unhappy and morally unfulfilling lives of young associates who work long hours in large, elite law firms. As it turns out, their search for love, happiness, and moral purpose is largely in vain. In the rarefied atmosphere of both fictitious firms, the best and the brightest while away their best years doing document reviews, drafting due diligence memoranda that no one will read, and otherwise presiding over legal matters with lots of zeros but precious little intrinsic interest. If this is what large law firm practice is like, the reader is bound to ask why large law firm jobs are so coveted. Is it really all about money?In this review essay, we compare Kermit Roosevelt's and Nick Laird's bleak portrayals with findings from a unique dataset on law firm profitability, prestige, hours worked, and various measures of several associate satisfactions. We also mine the findings of several empirical studies that track the experience of lawyers over time. We observe that higher firm profitability is associated with higher salaries, bonuses, and prestige. Yet, higher profits also have a statistically significant relationship with longer hours, a less family-friendly workplace, less interesting work, less opportunity to work with partners, less associate training, less communication regarding partnership, and a higher reported likelihood of leaving the firm within the next two years. Nonetheless, graduates from the nation's most elite law schools tend to gravitate toward the most profitable and prestigious (and most grueling) law firms. The attraction of the most elite firms may be superior outplacement options. Or perhaps, as both novels intimate, it may stem from a reluctance to make hard life choices.The available empirical evidence suggests that success within the elite law firm environment often entails a difficult array of personal and professional trade-offs. Although we find our empirical data to be informative, the novel may be a particularly effective vehicle for examining the rather existential nature of these choices. Thus, we suspect that the accounts drawn by Roosevelt and Laird will resonate with many elite, large law firm lawyers.In the Shadow of the Law. By Kermit Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2005. Pp. 346. $24.Utterly Monkey: A Novel. By Nick Laird. London & New York: Harper Perennial. 2005. Pp. 344. $13.95.


A variety of proposals for preferred methodological approaches has been advanced in the recent artificial intelligence (AI) literature Rather than advocating a particular approach, this article attempts to explain the apparent confusion of efforts in the field in terms of differences among underlying methodological perspectives held by practicing researchers The article presents a review of such perspectives discussed in the existing literature and then considers a descriptive and relatively specific typology of these differing research perspectives. It is argued that researchers should make their methodological orientations explicit when communicating research results, to increase both the quality of research reports and their comprehensibility for other participants in the field. For a reader of the AI literature, an understanding of the various methodological perspectives will be of immediate benefit, giving a framework for understanding and evaluating research reports In addition, explicit attention to methodological commitments might be a step towards providing a coherent intellectual structure that can be more easily assimilated by newcomers to the field.


Educational administrators in the North Carolina Community College System
(NCCCS) play a key role in the decisions to adopt or reject educational innovations and
as a result are the gatekeepers of technology innovations reaching students. In this study
the innovation-decision process and other aspects of the diffusion of innovation model
are used to consider how the educational innovation of photovoltaic (PV) skills training is
diffusing through the NCCCS. The research questions asked how widespread is
awareness, how do administrators become aware, how widespread is adoption, and what
are the reasons cited for adoption decisions. Subquestions investigated the relationship
between awareness and administrator background and college enrollment, adoption and
college enrollment, and the relationship between credit and noncredit administrators in
the same college. The study collected and analyzed data from two surveys of NCCCS
college credit and noncredit (continuing education) administrators and enrollment data.
Over 90% of respondents were generally aware of PV skills training. The
awareness rates were lower for more specific knowledge of PV skills training
organizations, certifications, and accreditations. News reports, the NCCCS Code Green
initiative and Curriculum Improvement Project were most frequently cited as sources of
learning about PV skills training. Credit administrators at colleges with larger enrollment
were somewhat more likely to have been aware of PV skills training for more time than
administrators at colleges with smaller enrollments. Enrollment was not associated with
awareness for noncredit administrators. The credit and noncredit administrators at the
same colleges learned about PV skills training at different times and in different ways.
Administrator background and employment history were not related to awareness.
Adoption was defined as courses offered with PV skills as the primary subject and
as PV skills added into the content of existing courses. The reported adoption rates were
21% for PV as a primary skill in credit courses and 35% for noncredit courses. The
reported adoption rates were 36% for PV as an added skill in credit courses and 39% for
noncredit courses. Credit and noncredit administrators were consistent in the factors they
rated as important in their adoption decisions. The reasons cited as very important in the
adoption decisions were internal issues of faculty and resources, and external issues of
potential employment and requests by area businesses.
Recommendations for future practice include forming a statewide organization of
credit and noncredit technology deans to increase the awareness and reduce the time of
adoption of new technology training topics, coordinating the credit and noncredit
programs introducing new technology topics within individual community colleges, and
including credit and noncredit faculty and administrators in future NCCCS technology curriculum improvement projects. Recommendations for future research include a
longitudinal study of the implementation and confirmation stages of PV skills training in
the NCCCS, examining the relationship between future NCCCS curriculum improvement
project activities and awareness and adoption of the curriculum under study, examining
the impact of statewide associations of faculty in similar fields and adoption of new
technology training, and investigating the interaction of credit and noncredit
administrators within individual colleges and across the NCCCS and how the interactions
relate to becoming aware of and adopting new technology training programs.


This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author's/s' institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact firstname.lastname@example.com or consult our website: www.benjamins.com


Colleges and universities increasingly face pressure to take the lead in solving complex problems. Developing and sustaining interdisciplinary research centers that collaborate with community partners can be an effective method of approaching complex challenges. We use the example of interdisciplinary research centers designed to specifically work with tactical athlete organizations (e.g., military, police, fire) as one example of how research centers can be developed and produce important outcomes. A 10-step process is outlined for finding partners, executing projects, and growing research centers which are mutually beneficial to the partner organization and the academic institution. With vision, commitment, and persistence, interdisciplinary research centers can solve complex problems and have meaningful impacts in the community.


To identify the impacts of regional electricity prices and building type on the economics of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, 207 rate structures across 77 locations and 16 commercial building types were evaluated. Results for expected solar value are reported for each location and building type. Aggregated results are also reported, showing general trends across various impact categories.


Facility Location Problems are concerned with the optimal location of one or several new facilities, with respect to a set of existing ones. The objectives involve the distance between new and existing facilities, usually a weighted sum or weighted maximum. Since the various stakeholders (decision makers) will have different opinions of the importance of the existing facilities, a multicriteria problem with several sets of weights, and thus several objectives, arises. In our approach, we assume the decision makers to make only fuzzy comparisons of the different existing facilities. A geometric mean method is used to obtain the fuzzy weights for each facility and each decision maker. The resulting multicriteria facility location problem is solved using fuzzy techniques again. We prove that the final compromise solution is weakly Pareto optimal and Pareto optimal, if it is unique, or under certain assumptions on the estimates of the Nadir point. A numerical example is considered to illustrate the methodology.


"The world food situation is currently being rapidly redefined by new driving forces. Income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalization, and urbanization are transforming food consumption, production, and markets. The influence of the private sector in the world food system, especially the leverage of food retailers, is also rapidly increasing. Changes in food availability, rising commodity prices, and new producer–consumer linkages have crucial implications for the livelihoods of poor and food-insecure people. Analyzing and interpreting recent trends and emerging challenges in the world food situation is essential in order to provide policymakers with the necessary information to mobilize adequate responses at the local, national, regional, and international levels. It is also critical for helping to appropriately adjust research agendas in agriculture, nutrition, and health. Not surprisingly, renewed global attention is being given to the role of agriculture and food in development policy, as can be seen from the World Bank's World Development Report, accelerated public action in African agriculture under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and the Asian Development Bank's recent initiatives for more investment in agriculture, to name just a few examples." from Text


Hack your antivirus software to stamp out future vulnerabilities The Antivirus Hacker's Handbook guides you through the process of reverse engineering antivirus software. You explore how to detect and exploit vulnerabilities that can be leveraged to improve future software design, protect your network, and anticipate attacks that may sneak through your antivirus' line of defense. You'll begin building your knowledge by diving into the reverse engineering process, which details how to start from a finished antivirus software program and work your way back through its development using the functions and other key elements of the software. Next, you leverage your new knowledge about software development to evade, attack, and exploit antivirus softwareall of which can help you strengthen your network and protect your data. While not all viruses are damaging, understanding how to better protect your computer against them can help you maintain the integrity of your network. Discover how to reverse engineer your antivirus software Explore methods of antivirus software evasion Consider different ways to attack and exploit antivirus software Understand the current state of the antivirus software market, and get recommendations for users and vendors who are leveraging this software The Antivirus Hacker's Handbook is the essential reference for software reverse engineers, penetration testers, security researchers, exploit writers, antivirus vendors, and software engineers who want to understand how to leverage current antivirus software to improve future applications.


William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until 1994.


Schultz Nicholson, Lorna.  Puckster's First Hockey Sweater and Puckster's First Hockey Game . Toronto:  Fenn/Tundra, 2011.  Print. These two volumes are the first in the new Puckster series, a collaboration between Fenn/Tundra of Tundra Books and Hockey Canada.  The stories are about an after-school team of hockey-playing animals.  The team is inclusive in terms of gender, ability, colour and species, being comprised of  a raccoon, a squirrel, a brown bear, a moose who plays on a sledge, a pink fox who is female, and of course, Puckster, who is a polar bear.  The dressing room also appears to be unisex. Each book tells a story that also teaches values.  In Puckster's First Hockey Sweater , the animals want team sweaters, so they work as a team to make enough money by shoveling snow.  In Puckster's First Hockey Game , they play a see-saw game which ends in a tie.  Throughout they console and encourage each other as they score and are scored upon.  Each player is shown making an important contribution to the team. On the last page of each book is a definition or a hockey tip. Lorna Schultz Nicholson includes lots of hockey detail and authentic "hockey talk".  For example, Francois "blasted a shot right into the five-hole, between the goalie's pads". Puckster wonders "…what should he do.  Deke or shoot?" Parents who are fans will find the text comfortable and familiar. Kelly Findley's cartoon illustrations are bright and her characters are expressive.  She has worked as a graphic designer with Hockey Canada, which probably accounts for the fact that the team wears current Team Canada sweaters. Both the use of the current Team Canada images and references to players such as Hayley Wickenheiser and Roberto Luongo will date these books in time.  However, they are fun books for today's young hockey fans and players and the values they teach are laudable.  Highly recommended for elementary school and public libraries. Highly recommended:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


The series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), including its subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI), has established itself as a medium for the publication of new developments in computer science and information technology research and teaching - quickly, informally, and at a high level. The cornerstone of LNCS's editorial policy is its unwavering commitment to report the latest results from all areas of computer science and information technology research, development, and education. LNCS has always enjoyed close cooperation with the computer science R & D community, with numerous renowned academics, and with prestigious institutes and learned societies. Our mission is to serve this community by providing a most valuable publication service. LNCS commenced publication in 1973 and quite rapidly attracted attention, not least because of its thus far unprecedented publication turnaround times. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a substantial growth in the series, particularly in terms of volumes published. In the late 1990s we developed a systematic approach to providing LNCS in a full-text electronic version, in parallel to the printed books. Another new feature introduced in the late 1990s was the conceptualization of a couple of color-cover sublines. Still, original research results reported in proceedings and postproceedings remain the core of LNCS.


In recognition of continuing difficulties that are experienced in performing computational analyses (CAE) on real turbine blades, this paper explores current developments in areas of integrated geometry handling, multi-domain meshing and multi-disciplinary analysis. The application of an integrated software framework first for CAD repair, then for surface and volume meshing, and finally for combined fluid, thermal and stress analysis can go some way to easing pains. The focus here is to demonstrate how it is possible in a single simulation environment, and using a finite volume methodology, to deal with real turbine blade geometries in terms of CAD handling, and then to perform conjugate-heat transfer and stress analyses using one mesh which is generated to be continuous through the fluid (external and internal passages) and blade metal. Possible gains to productivity become obvious.Copyright © 2008 by ASME


Many modern writers have criticized the notion that property consists of a bundle of rights in some determinate thing as a weak conception that invites increased government control over private property, especially real estate. This article rejects that conception for the following reasons. First, the notion of property as a bundle of rights long antedates the Progressive era, when it lay at the center of both Roman and common law views of property. Second, the bundle-of-rights theory does not imply that private property has no determinate meaning. To the contrary, traditional systems of private property all had a coherent bundle of rights that included exclusive possession, use, development and disposition of property that belonged to the original owner who acquired by first possession. Thereafter, the division of property rights created by voluntary transactions, such as leases or mortgages, may have made it somewhat more difficult to identify "the owner," philosophically. But it had the far greater advantage of allowing for gains from trade. The use of this system, moreover, implies strong protection against state control, so long as it is understood that the state must pay for each stick in the bundle that it takes and is never allowed to say that it can take one or more sticks for free so long as the original owner keeps some residual sticks.


It is self-evident that as the avifauna of a country becomes better known, the number of additions to its avifauna one can expect to make in a given period, must decrease. On the other hand, it may be said that for the same reason the value of each addition increases. During a stay in Suriname of about a year in 1965/66 I found 17 species of birds which had not been previously recorded from the country (Mees, 1968). A second stay of a year's duration (November 1971-November 1972), yielded eleven additions to the avifauna of Suriname: nine of these are based on material collected, whereas two are based on field-observations only. With one of the species being represented by two subspecies, and one held over from my previous stay when lack of comparative material made me uncertain of its identity, a total of 13 forms is here recorded for the first time from Suriname. As my impression was that the avifauna of the lowland-forest of Suriname is now reasonably well-known, I concentrated during my second stay on the higher levels, and on the southern savannas. Although the mountains of Suriname rise only to a maximum of 1280 m, scarcely more than mole-hills by Colombian standards, and an endemism as known from Mt. Roraima (2810 m) was not to be expected, I hoped, nevertheless, to obtain something new. Unfortunately, difficulties of finance and of organization prevented a visit to the level of about 1000 m that I had hoped to attain, but even at the very modest elevations of 450-550 m at which I worked, several species of birds were found which do not appear to occur in the adjacent lowlands. After my own short visit to the Sipaliwini Savanna on the Brazilian border (Jan.-Febr. 1966) and Renssen's somewhat longer stay (Jan.-March


An important literature on Russian civil society discusses its evolution, challenges, and prospects under Vladimir Putin. In particular, scholars show how the regime skillfully uses a mixture of coercive and channeling strategies to direct civil society into the 'right path', namely in the service of the regime. Perhaps the most glaring example of channeling strategies is the direct creation of CSOs from above, such as pro-regime youth groups. These groups are mean to orient public participation into accepted limits fixed by the state, often mimicking and duplicating grassroot organizations. But to what extent have they been effective in creating loyalty for the regime? In this paper, I focus on the little success that one of the most famous pro-regime youth groups, Nashi (Ours), paradoxically achieved in channeling civil society. While Nashi undeniably brought important benefits to some participants at the individual level, its effects at the societal level are significantly more limited. This is because, I argue, Nashi's fate, just like many other state-projects, depended primarily on internal competition among self-interested elites. Instead of representing a coherent state strategy toward the youth and civil society, Nashi was mirroring the influence of power-maximizing individuals. The arguments of this paper are drawn from participant observations and from interviews with (then) current and former Nashi activists, as well as with other civil society experts


Human behavior is complex and every individual is different from another, the challenge of an effective organization is in successfully matching the task, the manager and the subordinate. Under ideal situation, a manager would first analyze the task, then determine the required skills and assemble a team that complement each other skills; thereby creating an enriching & conflict free team. In reality, a manager has to use the existing resources for a given task, and must have the ability to understand the differences in individual behaviors and use them appropriately to increase the synergy.


Hierachical planning can be improved by explanation-based learning (EBL) of abstract plans from detailed, successfully solved planning problems. Abstract plans, expressed in well-established terms of the domain, serve as useful problem decompositions which can drastically reduce the planning complexity. The learned plan abstraction must be valid for a class of planning cases rather than for a single case, to ensure their successful application in a larger spectrum of new situations. A hierarchical organization of the newly learned knowledge must be archieved to overcome the utility problem in EBL. This paper presents a new formal model of shared plan abstraction and the closely related explanation-based procedure S-PABS. Unlike other apporaches to plan abstraction, our model allows a total different terminology to be introduced at the abstract level. Finally, an unsupervised incremental procedure for constructing a hierachy of shared abstract plans is proposed, as a kind of concept formation over explanations.


We all remember the twin aims of the Erie rule from first-year civil procedure. A federal court sitting in diversity must use forum state law if it is necessary to avoid "forum shopping" and the "inequitable administration of the laws." This Article offers a reading of the twin aims and a systematic analysis of their proper role in federal and state court. I argue that the twin aims apply in diversity cases not because they protect state interests, but because they serve the federal purposes standing behind the diversity statute. So understood, they are about separation of powers, not federalism. Through the twin aims, state law is incorporated into federal procedural common law in order to serve federal interests.This reading does not merely have important consequences for diversity cases. It also has an impact on the role of the twin aims outside diversity. If the twin aims have their source in the purposes standing behind the congressional grant of jurisdiction, rather than respect for state interests, the fact that a federal court entertains a state law action is neither a necessary nor a sufficient reason for the twin aims to apply. The twin aims might apply to federal courts when entertaining federal causes of action. Conversely, they might not apply to a federal court when entertaining state law actions under jurisdictional statutes other than diversity.I therefore examine four jurisdictional scenarios in order to assess the role of the twin aims in each: a federal court entertaining a federal cause of action, a state court entertaining a federal cause of action (sometimes called reverse-Erie), and a federal court entertaining a state law action under supplemental jurisdiction and under bankruptcy. In the course of my argument, I suggest a resolution to the current circuit split about whether a federal court sitting in bankruptcy should use forum state choice-of-law rules. I also argue that the Supreme Court has wrongly assumed that the twin aims apply in a reverse-Erie context. As a result, it has improperly limited state courts' powers when entertaining federal civil rights actions — most recently in Haywood v. Drown, 556 U.S. 729 (2009).This Article offers an original justification of the twin aims in diversity cases, and the first comprehensive explanation of their role in a variety of other jurisdictional contexts.


[1] The breeding method is a conceptually simple and computationally cheap ensemble generation technique. Bred vectors (BV) are dynamically obtained from the nonlinear model and correspond to the spatial structures with fast-growing fluctuations at each time. These vectors have a characteristic localized spatial structure, with only a small number of significant values corresponding to the leading fluctuation areas. The temporal and spatial growth of the BV interacts making the spatial structure a key factor of the dynamics. In this paper we introduce a new breeding technique, Logarithmic Bred Vectors (LBV), which allows growing vectors with tuneable spatial structure, more (or less) localized. This yields ensembles with different spatiotemporal dynamics (different spread, etc.). This is done by introducing a new parameter (the geometrical mean) which controls the spatial correlation of the bred vectors, from uncorrelated vectors similar to random perturbations, to fully correlated and localized vectors similar to standard bred vectors. The new method increases the diversity of the ensemble and allows the spread to grow faster preserving the model performance in terms of the root mean square error. Consequently, the ensembles can be calibrated for a desired lead time (for instance a shorter forecast range). The concepts are illustrated using a chain of diffusively coupled Lorenz systems. Preliminary evidence of the possible application in operative weather prediction models is also presented.


Cholera is re-emerging as a threat on the global public health stage. The number of reported cases worldwide is back at the peak level observed two decades ago,1 new Vibrio cholerae strains have appeared and antimicrobial resistance has increased. Weak surveillance systems and the possibility of travel and trade sanctions contribute to widespread underreporting of cholera cases, which results in great uncertainty surrounding global disease burden estimates. Such estimates suggest that about 1.4 billion people are at risk of cholera and that the risk is highest among children under five years of age. Annually 2.8 million cases and 91 000 deaths from cholera occur in endemic countries; non-endemic countries contribute another 87 000 cases and 2500 deaths.2 Although effective preventive and therapeutic regimens are well established, clearly cholera remains poorly controlled in both outbreak and endemic contexts.

Cholera-related morbidity and mortality are particularly high during humanitarian crises. Large cholera epidemics in Zimbabwe (2008–2009), Haiti (2011) and now Sierra Leone (2012) have made the international community aware of the need to not merely control endemic disease, but also to strengthen epidemic preparedness and response capacity. In 2011, the Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly issued a resolution calling for a reinvigorated focus on cholera and defined a range of actions required of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its Member States towards creating an integrated, comprehensive strategy for cholera prevention and control.3 As part of this strategy, WHO is facilitating a multi-partner initiative aimed at establishing a stockpile of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) for use in outbreak response as an adjunct to established prevention and control measures. This approach was endorsed in September 2011 by global cholera experts, who affirmed that such a stockpile is both necessary and feasible.4 There are currently two stockpile candidate oral cholera vaccines, both prequalified by WHO.

A WHO technical working group convened in April 2012 and defined the required characteristics of a stockpiled vaccine, the epidemiological and operational considerations for deployment, and the mechanisms for stockpile governance, replenishment and appraisal.5 This working group agreed on an initial OCV stockpile of 2 million annual doses to be available for epidemic response in low-income countries. The International Coordinating Group (ICG) has a decade of experience as a decision-making partnership that oversees the meningococcal and yellow fever vaccine stockpiles and their deployment. The ICG is composed of experts from four organizations: Medecins sans Frontieres, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the United Nations Children's Fund and WHO, which is both a decision-making partner and the ICG's secretariat. All members of the ICG, including WHO, will oversee the proposed OCV stockpile.

The WHO technical working group emphasized that deployment of the stockpiled vaccine must be guided by epidemiological, technical and operational evidence, some of which remains incomplete and must be consolidated as experience is gained. While acknowledging the difficulties in predicting outbreaks and the need for more detailed empirical data, the working group created an advisory framework for assessing outbreak severity based on three criteria: the biological susceptibility of the population, the social vulnerability of the population and the risk of spatial extension. For each of these criteria, the working group defined epidemiological and demographic indicators, thresholds for deciding when to deploy the vaccine and indicators for determining the anticipated impact of a vaccination campaign. The framework proposed by the working group is intended only to inform decision-making; actual deployment of the OCV from the stockpile would follow not only an analysis of these indicators, but also an assessment of programmatic factors, such as local capacity to organize a mass vaccination campaign and prevailing security conditions.

Progress is being made on the working group's action plans for 2012. The work streams are focused on advocacy for funding, negotiations with vaccine producers and preparedness planning for countries and regions. A stockpile evaluation group has been established to define and implement the detailed monitoring required. As experience and data accrue, the results of this evaluation should enable continuous improvement in the structure and functioning of the stockpile. Successful assessment of a stockpile vaccination campaign will require reinforcement of surveillance systems in most locations where an epidemic is likely to arise.

Public health interventions, such as case management, enhanced environmental control, improved hygiene and sanitation and social mobilization, should form the backbone of all cholera control programmes. In turn, these interventions depend on effective surveillance and strong health-care systems. This initial, necessarily small, OCV stockpile will not constitute sufficient preparedness for a large or sustained epidemic, its use should complement existing measures as part of a reinvigorated and comprehensive approach to meeting the new challenges involved in global cholera control and prevention.


This paper addresses both the efficiency and the portability of a computer program in charge of the baseband signal processing of a GNSS receiver. Efficiency, in this context, refers to optimizing the speed and memory requirements of the software receiver. Specifically, the interest is focused on how fast the software receiver can process the incoming stream of raw signal samples and, in particular, if signal processing up to the position fix can be executed in real-time (and how many channels the host computer executing the receiver application can sustain in parallel). This is achieved by applying the concept of parallelization at different abstraction levels. The paper describes strategies based on task, data and instructionlevel parallelism, as well as actual implementations released under an open source license and the results obtained with different commercially available computing platforms. At the same time, the proposed solution also addresses portability, understood as the usability of the same software in different computing environments.


Some may call it the first manifesto of the twenty-first century, for it lays down a new way to think about architecture. Others may think of it as the last architectural treatise, for it provides a discursive container for ideas that would otherwise be lost. Whatever genre it belongs to, SITELESS is a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere. Its author, a young French architect practicing in Tokyo, admits he "didn't do this out of reverence toward architecture, but rather out of a profound boredom with the discipline, as a sort of compulsive reaction." What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? he asks. The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published. The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing -- and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. SITELESS presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from. The forms, drawn freehand (to avoid software-specific shapes) but from a constant viewing angle, are presented twelve to a page, with no scale, order, or end to the series. After setting down 1001 forms in siteless conditions and embryonic stages, Blanciak takes one of the forms and performs a "scale test," showing what happens when one of these fantastic ideas is subjected to the actual constraints of a site in central Tokyo. The book ends by illustrating the potential of these shapes to morph into actual building proportions.


Reverse engineering and software evolution research has been focused mostly on analyzing single software systems. However, rarely a project exists in isolation; instead, projects exist in parallel within a larger context given by a company, a research group or the open-source community. Technically, such a context manifests itself in the form of super-repositories, containers of several projects developed in parallel. Well-known examples of such super-repositories include SourceForge and CodeHaus. We present an easily accessible platform which supports the analysis of such super-repositories. The platform can be valuable for reverse engineering both the projects and the structure of the organization as reflected in the interactions and collaborations between developers. Throughout the paper we present various types of analysis applied to three open-source and one industrial Smalltalk super- repositories, containing hundreds of projects developed by dozens of people.


"A "supermarket revolution" has been underway in developing countries since the early 1990s. Supermarkets (here referring to all modern retail, which includes chain stores of various formats such as supermarkets, hypermarkets, and convenience and neighborhood stores) have now gone well beyond the initial upper- and middle-class clientele in many countries to reach the mass market. Within the food system, the effects of this trend touch not only traditional retailers, but also the wholesale, processing, and farm sectors. The supermarket revolution is a "two-edged sword." On the one hand, it can lower food prices for consumers and create opportunities for farmers and processors to gain access to quality-differentiated food markets and raise incomes. On the other hand, it can create challenges for small retailers, farmers, and processors who are not equipped to meet the new competition and requirements from supermarkets. Developing-country governments can put in place a number of policies to help both traditional retailers and small farmers pursue "competitiveness with inclusiveness" in the era of the supermarket revolution. Some countries are already taking such steps, and their experiences offer lessons for others." from Author's text


Transcript:
 Governor Christie: This is going to be a great thing for the senior citizens of Belleville and what we know is that in today's society with the expenses of things being so high that we need to be able to provide affordable housing and affordable activities for our seniors. And that it shouldn't be that they have to leave their own hometown to be able to do that. This is where many of you have raised your families, where you've lived your lives and you shouldn't have to leave the place where you raised your children and lived your lives in order to be able to have affordable housing for yourself as you get older. And so when Joe and the mayor and the Council came to the state, came to Commissioner Constable, came to the HMFA and said can we help? This project was so worthy and to be honest so overdue that I felt like there was no time to wait. We needed to do this and do it quickly so you know when Joe's calling me every day asking me about this, that helps to motivate you. And then I start calling Rich Constable and Anthony Marchetta every day and we get on them and things get done and I think that's what people expect of government now. So I want to thank all of you for giving me the chance to come home to Essex County to be able to announce some good news, to be able to continue to work with my partners in Essex county government in terms of making this county even better than it is today. It was a great place to grow up for myself, my brother and my sister, Essex County was a great place to grow up. And New Jersey is still a great place and getting to be even a better place to raise our children and our grandchildren. The only way we'll keep that going is if we work together, work together to get things done, work together to make sure that we use the tax money we get in as effective and efficient way as possible and make sure that each and every one of us remembers in public office that our obligation is to serve the people who put us here in the first place, not to serve ourselves. Thank you all very much.


The Ernst Strungmann Forum seeks to link justice, sustainability, and diversity agendas. In support, this chapter discusses how linkages between these three concepts have formed and changed in the climate change discourse, particularly in light of the recent Paris Agreement. As the latest addition to the portfolio of international climate change agreements, the Paris Agreement establishes a landscape in which nation-states, subnational actors, and transnational networks will be able to reconfigure existing linkages between sustainability, diversity, and justice, and perhaps improve upon them.
Here, three possible developments are identified which may substantially influence the reconfiguration process. Recognition is given to the sustainability and justice deficits that have plagued the "top-down" character of the international climate change discourse, and it is hypothesized that the Paris Agreement opens the door for "bottom-up" movements to claim a larger segment of climate change policy decision making and design. In turn, the "polycentric" landscape created by such "movement from below" appears to emphasize concepts such as inclusivity and transparency perhaps allowing for explicit climate justice commitments. Finally, to advance societal transformation and embrace diversity, it is hypothesized that the scientific endeavor needs to be transformed from a purely analytical pursuit to an effort that makes use of the wide range of scientific competences and provides support for transformative innovations to change unsustainable sociotechnical systems.


Location is a fundamental service for mobile computing. Typical GPS receivers, although widely available for navigation purposes, may consume too much energy to be useful for many applications. Observing that in many sensing scenarios, the location information can be post-processed when the data is uploaded to a server, we design a cloud-offloaded GPS (CO-GPS) solution that allows a sensing device to aggressively duty-cycle its GPS receiver and log just enough raw GPS signal for post-processing. Leveraging publicly available information such as GNSS satellite ephemeris and an Earth elevation database, a cloud service can derive good quality GPS locations from a few milliseconds of raw data. Using our design of a portable sensing device platform called CLEON, we evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the solution. Compared to more than 30 seconds of heavy signal processing on standalone GPS receivers, we can achieve three orders of magnitude lower energy consumption per location tagging.


Highly conserved, complex and interacting morphogen signalling pathways regulate adult stem cells and control cell fate determination across numerous different organs. In homeostasis, the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway predominantly promotes cell differentiation. Localised expression of ligand sequestering BMP antagonists, such as Gremlin 1 (Grem1), necessarily restricts BMP activity within the stem cell niche and facilitate stemness and self‐renewal. In a new paper, Rowan, Jahns et al show that acute deletion of Grem1 in adult mice, using a ubiquitous ROSA26‐Cre recombinase, induced not only severe intestinal enteropathy but also hypocellular bone marrow failure suggestive of stem cell niche collapse in both tissues. Grem1 has an increasingly recognised pleiotrophic role in a number of organ systems and is implicated across a wide range of disease states. Although the importance of Grem1 in intestinal stem cell regulation has been well described, a putative function in haematopoietic niche maintenance is novel and requires further exploration. Moreover, the complex and context‐specific regulation of Grem1, among a host of functionally convergent but structurally disparate BMP antagonists, warrants further research as we learn more about the pathogenic consequences of deranged expression of this small, but important, protein. © 2020 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.


Since the original prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. "In Search of Lost Time" is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is the "Penguin Proust" that makes Proust accessible to a new generation. Each volume is translated by a different, superb translator working under the general editorship of Professor Christopher Prendergast, University of Cambridge.


Two decades have passed since the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 launched a grand experiment in market-based environmental policy: the SO2 cap-and-trade system. That system performed well but created four striking ironies. First, by creating this system to reduce SO2 emissions to curb acid rain, the government did the right thing for the wrong reason. Second, a substantial source of this system's cost-effectiveness was an unanticipated consequence of earlier railroad deregulation. Third, it is ironic that cap-and-trade has come to be demonized by conservative politicians in recent years, since this market-based, cost-effective policy innovation was initially championed and implemented by Republican administrations. Fourth, court decisions and subsequent regulatory responses have led to the collapse of the SO2 market, demonstrating that what the government gives, the government can take away.


Two indigent men stand before two separate judges. Both will be sent to prison if they lose their cases. One receives appointed counsel, but the other does not. This discrepancy seems terribly unjust, yet the Supreme Court has no problem with it. It recently affirmed in Turner v. Rogers, that where an indigent individual is subject to criminal charges that can result in incarceration, he has a right to appointed counsel, but where an indigent individual is subject to civil proceedings where incarceration is a consequence, he does not. In other words, criminal and civil proceedings have different rules, and the right to appointed counsel is no exception. This Article argues that because the consequence of these proceedings is exactly the same, the right to appointed counsel should be the same. Prison is prison. This consequence, and not just doctrinal distinctions, should guide the Court's analysis in deciding whether an indigent individual receives appointed counsel. By systematically examining the Court's narratives in both criminal and civil right-to-counsel cases, this Article seeks to determine why the Court continues to treat the same situation so differently. The Court states that it is driven solely by doctrine, but it uses radically different language to discuss the individuals, attorneys, and nature of the proceedings in the criminal versus civil setting. This Article argues that the Court's different goals in the criminal and civil context better explain the Court's approach than doctrinal distinctions alone. With criminal cases, its goal is legitimacy, while with civil cases, its primary goal is efficiency. This Article questions the Court's "doctrinal-oriented" approach in the civil context, and argues that what the Court is really doing is allowing its treatment of cases in the broader civil justice system to affect its jurisprudence in this context. It does this even when the consequence of a typical civil case is so different. After all, the result in a case like Turner is prison, not monetary damages or injunctive relief. Instead of taking this doctrinal-oriented approach, this Article argues that the Court's analysis should be "consequence-driven." Where prison is the consequence, the Court's underlying analysis of right to counsel should be the same whether the proceeding is criminal or civil. Using the Court's decision in Turner, the Article shows how a consequence-driven approach could have changed the result in that case.


Above my grandmother's desk hung a picture of a bunch of flowers in a vase. At the age of twelve, I became aware that sunflowers were in the vase. At some point, I was told that a well-known artist named Van Gogh made the picture. When I was in high school, I noticed the Ben-Day dots of color that comprised the picture; this evidence
suggested, to me, that this was a picture of a picture. It was a copy; and, given that my
grandparents were smart, they knew it was a copy. At first, I admit, I felt snobbish and dismayed over the cheap imitation that hung before me; after all, I had made some of my own paintings by then and knew its "value." When I asked my grandmother why she had the picture above her desk, she explained that they framed it and hung it on their wall because it pleased them to look at it, not because it was a valued object. What changed was not the picture of sunflowers; my understanding of the picture
changed. The act of situating ourselves in space, whether with pictures, furniture, people, etc., is how I understand that we make ourselves at home. Through the alteration of actual, and visual, spaces and with materials found in, or used for, the purposes of Home , my thesis explores the geographies and constructions of the internal psyche as predicated on perception.


With the tremendous growth in international trade and investments, international commercial arbitration has become a frequently used mechanism to settle investment/trade/contractual disputes. Most people are of the opinion that resolution of dispute by litigation in court is time consuming and money consuming whereas arbitration may speed the resolution and lower the expenses of disputes. However to ensure the integrity of the arbitral process and protect the public interest, the courts must support and supervise that process. On the other hand, to prevent the confidence of users of the arbitral system from being damaged, the level of judicial control should not be too high. The debate in international commercial arbitration is what scale of judicial intervention should be allowed. While it is argued that arbitration must be free from courts, in order to be effective, it is also accepted that arbitration needs the support of national courts to be effective. Flowing from this contention laws and rules has been formulated to balance the competing interests. In this paper, the author discusses the key features of international commercial arbitration, theories behind judicial intervention in international commercial arbitration and the role of domestic courts on the major concepts of international commercial arbitration such as; arbitration agreement, the concept of arbitrality, seperability, competence-competence, assistance in taking evidence and, recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards by court without which the arbitral process cannot hold. The author concludes that the increasing growth in international trade and investments require the presence of active international commercial arbitration to settle disputes but since arbitration is private in nature, parties need courts to enforce the arbitration agreement and enforce arbitral awards. That there is need to sensitize domestic courts to support the arbitral process, without which arbitration will remain ineffective, particularly in developing economies.


The Delaware law regarding defensive tactics has a consistent and unnoticed undercurrent: it favors defenses against attacks that would concentrate corporate ownership. Similar trends seem to be developing in European merger and acquisition law, albeit trying to foster dispersed ownership by discouraging defenses because it starts from an environment of concentrated ownership. Professor Georgakopoulos argues that pursuit of dispersed ownership is justified from an economic perspective and that defenses are intimately related with dispersed ownership. The "semi-entrenched" control that Delaware provides and that firms consistently choose in IPO's and prefer compared to golden parachutes is argued to be desirable despite having been consistently vilified in previous academic commentary. Dispersed ownership enables investor diversification that allows investors to use the stock market as a vehicle for savings. Investor trading attracts speculator informed trading, which induces greater price accuracy, further reducing risk for investors and improving capital allocation by the market. Defenses prevent control from being ephemeral and, thus, allow entrepreneurs to relinquish majority control so as to make the transition to dispersed ownership. Defenses also facilitate venture capital. The dispersion in a successful IPO of the VC's controlling stake is more valuable for the entrepreneur who thereby obtains working control if that control is not ephemeral. Moreover, the good minority protection that is necessary for small minority discounts increases the credibility of the VC?s commitment to break up the controlling stake. The potential for temporarily low prices exposes skilled management to the risk of a takeover that is not justified by performance. In addition, a bias against hostile offers provides a delaying buffer in a world of changing technology. Publicly owned firms need not be ruthless in the updating of their methods of production. Allowing firms this slack mitigates the social problem of workforce retraining in a way superior to a centralized system of taxation and retraining expense. Finally, hostile takeovers are costly for investors, reducing their apparently large payoffs. The reduced likelihood of hostile takeovers due to defenses ensures that shareholders with short holding periods can invest in the stock market without fear of the negative implications of a buyout for taxes, repetitive transaction costs, and repeated undertaking of the investing gamble. In a world where price errors are conceivable, a bias against hostile offers ensures that the investing public will not suffer from systemic cherry-picking by private LBO funds. The resulting continued reliance on the equity markets for the raising of capital ensures that there is no bias in favor of firms that can raise capital internally. The article concludes with a search for the optimal intensity of takeover defenses as a function of ownership dispersion, expected stock price accuracy, and speed of technological change. The US and EU defense schemes are reexamined in this light.


African swine fever virus (ASFV) is one of the most threatening animal viruses which has dramatically expanded its distribution range within the last years. ASFV was first described and is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa where it is transmitted in a sylvatic cycle between indigenous suids and Ornithodoros soft ticks. Therefore, ASFV is the only known DNA-arbovirus and, in addition to that, the only member of the genus Asfivirus within the family Asfarviridae. Being highly infectious to domestic pigs and wild boar, the virus was introduced into Georgia in 2007 and has subsequently spread throughout eastern Europe reaching the European Union in 2014. Despite almost 100 years of intensive research and the occurrence of African swine fever (ASF) on four continents including Europe, many aspects of its epidemiology, vector dynamics and virus evolution are unknown. In our study, first evidence is presented on endogenous ASFV-like (EASFL)- elements which are integrated into the genome of ASFV natural vectors, O. moubata soft ticks. Through a series of experiments including next-generation sequencing, infection experiments, phylogenetic and BEAST analyses as well as PCR-screening, evidence is provided that these elements belong to an ancestral ASFV strain that might have existed 50,000 to 30,000 years BCE. Further results suggest that the EASFL-elements are involved in protecting ticks against ASFV infection and might belong to a generalised tick defence mechanism. In order to evaluate factors influencing ASFV epidemiology in eastern Europe, experiments were conducted on possible indigenous vector species and circulating virus isolates. In the absence of the natural tick vector, blow fly larvae were considered as possible mechanical vectors involved in ASFV transmission and persistence. Results are presented that even after feeding on highly infectious wild boar tissue, fly larvae and pupae showed no contamination with infectious virus. On the contrary, the maggots appeared to have inactivated the virus in the organ tissue through their salivary secretions. Further experiments conducted on an ASFV-strain isolated from northeastern Estonia resulted in the first report of an ASFV-strain with attenuated phenotype isolated in Eastern Europe. Results from NGS-analyses provided evidence for a major genome reorganisation in that strain that included a large deletion and a duplication of multiple ASFV genes.
Taken together, this study provides novel insights into the epidemiology of ASF and evolution of ASFV one of the major threats to animal health worldwide and therefore does not only contribute significantly to basic research but possibly also to specific knowledge necessary for future disease management.


Context: A District Heating System (DHS) uses a central heating plant to produce and distribute hot water in a community. Such a plant is connected with consumers' premises to provide them with hot water and space heating facilities. Variations in the consumption of heat energy depend upon different factors like difference in energy prices, living standards, environmental effects and economical conditions etc. These factors can manage intelligently by advanced tools of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as smart metering. That is a new and emerging technology; used normally for metering of District Heating (DH), district cooling, electricity and gas. Traditional meters measures overall consumption of energy, in contrast smart meters have the ability to frequently record and transmit energy consumption statistics to both energy providers and consumers by using their communication networks and network management systems. Objectives: First objective of conducted study was providing energy consumption/saving suggestions on smart metering display for accepted consumer behavior, proposed by the energy providers. Our second objective was analysis of financial benefits for the energy provides, which could be expected through better consumer behavior. Third objective was analysis of energy consumption behavior of the residential consumes that how we can support it. Moreover, forth objective of the study was to use extracted suggestions of consumer behaviors to propose Extended Smart Metering Display for improving energy economy. Methods: In this study a background study was conducted to develop basic understanding about District Heat Energy (DHE), smart meters and their existing display, consumer behaviors and its effects on energy consumption. Moreover, interviews were conducted with representatives of smart heat meters' manufacturer, energy providers and residential consumers. Interviews' findings enabled us to propose an Extended Smart Metering Display, that satisfies recommendations received from all the interviewees and background study. Further in this study, a workshop was conducted for the evaluation of the proposed Extended Smart Metering Display which involved representatives of smart heat meters' manufacture and residential energy consumers. DHE providers also contributed in this workshop through their comments in online conversation, for which an evaluation request was sent to member companies of Swedish District Heating Association. Results: Informants in this research have different levels of experiences. Through a systematic procedure we have obtained and analyzed findings from all the informants. To fulfill the energy demands during peak hours, the informants emphasized on providing efficient energy consumption behavior to be displayed on smart heat meters. According to the informants, efficient energy consumption behavior can be presented through energy consumption/saving suggestions on display of smart meters. These suggestions are related to daily life activities like taking bath and shower, cleaning, washing and heating usage. We analyzed that efficient energy consumption behavior recommended by the energy providers can provide financial improvements both for the energy providers and the residential consumers. On the basis of these findings, we proposed Extended Smart Metering Display to present information in simple and interactive way. Furthermore, the proposed Extended Smart Metering Display can also be helpful in measuring consumers' energy consumption behavior effectively. Conclusions: After obtaining answers of the research questions, we concluded that extension of existing smart heat meters' display can effectively help the energy providers and the residential consumers to utilize the resources efficiently. That is, it will not only reduce energy bills for the residential consumers, but it will also help the energy provider to save scarce energy and enable them to serve the consumers better in peak hours. After deployment of the proposed Extended Smart Metering Display the energy providers will able to support the consumers' behavior in a reliable way and the consumers will find/follow the energy consumption/saving guidelines easily.


This thesis explored how historic school facilities can be altered to meet ever evolving educational needs without sacrificing their distinctive historic character. The schools analyzed in this study are North Carolina high schools built in the 1920s that still remain as schools. High schools from the 1920s represent buildings that were constructed in an educational boom period in the country and became icons for their surrounding community. Today as older schools continue to be closed and are replaced with more costly and resource demanding new construction, the importance of finding ways to continue to utilize and preserve these iconic buildings becomes more evident. The six historic high schools selected for this study serve as a model for the ongoing preservation and utilization of school buildings for evolving educational needs. For each of the six selected high schools, the methods of analysis included review of the National Register of Historic Places nominations, archival research, visual analysis of archival photographs and architectural plans, and site visits (documented with current photographs) to determine how alterations have been made to the interior of each school while still retaining historic character. The ways in which technology was implemented and how the campus was able to expand were also evaluated. The evaluation led to the identification of how high school buildings from this era remain as viable educational facilities. The study generated a variety of similarities and differences as to how each school addressed certain renovation issues. The findings therefore may serve to highlight examples for designers, school boards, and communities to utilize in hopes of preserving and continuing the utilization of historic schools instead of demolishing or adapting them for different uses.


On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface. Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?" This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley's famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States.


"Increasingly, twenty-first century musicians are expected to render 'historically informed' performances. The necessary scholarship for this type of performance is gathered through examining surviving iconography, published critiques, method books, performance practice essays, and surviving instruments. Fre´de´ric Blasius's Nouvelle me´thode de clarinette is a relevant source with respect to early French repertoire, and the information is most likely applicable to the interpretation of his surviving works. To fully understand the content of early repertoire and method books, it is necessary to examine the fingerings, articulation, and ornamentation suggestions through the medium for which it was intended: the five-key boxwood clarinet. The absence of tangible aural sources makes the pedagogy of this instrument difficult to assess, and musicians are often tempted to gravitate towards the familiar sound and playing techniques of the modern clarinet. This study examines the current performance practice of the early clarinet. Twenty-one early clarinet specialists from around the world were asked to fill out a questionnaire on the modern approach to early clarinet technique. Answers were compiled and compared to surviving method books in six essays. A list of available fingering chart compilations, and a list of works offering complete translations of early methods was provided to help aspiring clarinetists undertaking the study of the five-key clarinet. Mathieu-Fre´de´ric Blasius was a prolific composer, conductor, performer, and pedagogue of the Classical era and his influence helped establish the foundation for the present day excellence of French wind players. Blasius's output for clarinet comprises Nouvelle me´thode de clarinette, several chamber music works, and four clarinet concertos. The latter illustrate virtuoso writing and playing characteristics of clarinetists at the Paris Conservatoire upon its foundation. Unfortunately, many of Blasius's works have been lost or forgotten. The parts to IIe Concerto de clarinette have only one surviving copy, located in the Edwin A. Fleisher Music Collection of the Philadelphia Free Library. They contain several inconsistencies with respect to articulations, dynamics, and ornamentation. This study presents a revised performance edition of the concerto in full score, reintroducing a significant French concerto of the early nineteenth-century to the clarinet repertoire."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


In this paper, we present the results of a pilot study in Denmark of cross cultural effects on Think Aloud usability testing. We provide an overview of previous research on cross cultural usability evaluation with a special focus on the relationship between the evaluator and the test user. This relation was studied in an experiment with usability testing of a localized clipart application in which eight participants from Denmark and India formed pairs of evaluator-test user. The test users were asked to think aloud and the evaluators' role were to facilitate the test users thinking aloud and hereby identify usability problems with the clipart application. Data on the evaluators' and test users' behaviour were recorded and analyzed by coding and summarizing statistics on these behavioural events. The results show that Think Aloud Usability Test of a localized application is most effectively performed, in terms of number of think aloud events and number of usability problems found, when both the evaluators and the test users are local. These results are however limited to the Danish context and need to be investigated in other cultural settings. Author


Contrary to the fictional account of James Fenimore Cooper, the Mohegan/Mohican nation did not vanish with the death of Chief Uncas more than three hundred years ago. In the remarkable life story of one of its most beloved matriarchs 100-year-old medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon Medicine Trail tells of the Mohegans' survival into this century. Blending autobiography and history, with traditional knowledge and ways of life, Medicine Trail presents a collage of events in Tantaquidgeon's life. We see her childhood spent learning Mohegan ceremonies and healing methods at the hands of her tribal grandmothers, and her Ivy League education and career in the white male-dominated field of anthropology. We also witness her travels to other Indian communities, acting as both an ambassador of her own tribe and an employee of the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Finally we see Tantaquidgeon's return to her beloved Mohegan Hill, where she cofounded America's oldest Indian-run museum, carrying on her life's commitment to good medicine and the cultural continuance and renewal of all Indian nations. Written in the Mohegan oral tradition, this book offers a unique insider's understanding of Mohegan and other Native American cultures while discussing the major policies and trends that have affected people throughout Indian Country in the twentieth century. A significant departure from traditional anthropological "as told to" American Indian autobiography, Medicine Trail represents a major contribution to anthropology, history, theology, women's studies, and Native American studies.


■ Mixed-initiative systems are a popular approach to building intelligent systems that can collaborate naturally and effectively with people. But true collaborative behavior requires an agent to possess a number of capabilities, including reasoning, communication, planning, execution, and learning. We describe an integrated approach to the design and implementation of a collaborative problem-solving assistant based on a formal theory of joint activity and a declarative representation of tasks. This approach builds on prior work by us and by others on mixed-initiative dialogue and planning systems.


Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States, in terms of casualties, suffering, and financial cost. Often overlooked among Katrina's victims are the 8,000 inmates who were incarcerated at Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) when Katrina struck. Despite a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, these men and women, some of whom had been held on charges as insignificant as public intoxication, remained in the jail as the hurricane hit, and endured days of rising, toxic waters, a lack of food and drinking water, and a complete breakdown of order within OPP. When the inmates were finally evacuated from OPP, they suffered further harm, waiting for days on a highway overpass before being placed in other correctional institutions, where prisoners withstood exposure to the late-summer Louisiana heat and beatings at the hands of guards and other inmates. Finally, even as the prison situation settled down, inmates from the New Orleans criminal justice system were marooned in correctional institutions throughout the state, as the judicial system in New Orleans ceased to function.The resulting effects were both tragic and unconstitutional, as the suffering at OPP could have been prevented. This Article asserts that prison administrators have a constitutional duty to plan for emergencies, and argues that the failures of New Orleans officials to do so violated prisoners' Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights, as well as internationally recognized human rights standards. With the wealth of training and planning materials available to prison officials and the knowledge of possible emergencies, it is unconscionable for prisons to have nonexistent or inadequate plans. Assessing change through litigation and legislation, this Article advocates a mixed approach, using judicial and legislative remedies for the abhorrent violations of well-established prisoners' rights. The Article recommends that states develop mechanisms, such as emergency courts, to enable the administration of justice to resume promptly following serious natural or man-made disasters. Prisons and courts should internalize the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, which demonstrated the consequences of inadequate preparation and planning for prisoners' safety during and after a major emergency.


Dramatic global amphibian declines have recently led to an increased concern for many species of this animal class. The enigmatic Hula painted frog (Latonia nigriventer), the first amphibian to be declared extinct but unexpectedly rediscovered in 2011, has remained one of the rarest and most poorly understood amphibians worldwide. Gathering basic biological information on this species, along with an understanding of its disease-related threats remains fundamental for developing risk assessments and conservation strategies. Our surveys in recent years confirmed that L. nigriventer is a localised species with elusive habits. The species appears to follow an opportunistic breeding phenology and has a tadpole morphology similar to its well-studied sister group Discoglossus. However, the adults' extended annual presence in the aquatic habitat is a major difference from species of Discoglossus. We detected the amphibian chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), in northern Israel and on Hula painted frogs but did not observe any signs of chytridiomycosis in this species. Our preliminary data on aspects of the innate immunity of L. nigriventer suggest that the skin mucosome of this species contains antimicrobial peptides and a bacterial community differing from other syntopic frogs (Pelophylax bedriagae). The combined knowledge of both natural history and innate immunity of L. nigriventer provides valuable insights to direct future research and conservation management of this critically endangered frog species.


Contract law is applied countless times every day, in every manner of transaction large or small. Rarely are those transactions reflected in an agreement produced by a lawyer; quite the contrary, almost all contracts are concluded by persons with no legal training and often by persons who do not have a great deal of education. In recent years, moreover, technological advances have provided novel methods of creating contracts. Those facts present practitioners of contract law with an interesting conundrum: The law must be sensible and stable if parties are to have confidence in the security of their arrangements; but contract law also must be able to handle changing social and economic circumstances, changes that occur at an ever-increasing speed. Contract law, originally designed to handle agreements reached by persons familiar with one another, evolved over time to solve the problems posed by contract formation that was done at a distance — that is, contract law had developed to handle first paper, then telegraphic, and finally telephonic communications. It has handled those changes very well. In the 1990s, however, things began to change. The rise in computer use by individuals coupled with the advent of the World Wide Web gave rise to two parallel developments, both of which challenged the law of contract formation. Increased computer use created a demand for software programs designed for the consumer market, and those programs were commonly transferred to users by way of standard-form licenses that were packaged with the software and thus unavailable before the consumer paid for the software. Also, parties in large numbers began to use electronic means — the computer — to enter into bargained-for relationships. The turn of the millennium brought two electronic contracting statutes, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act ("E-Sign") and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act ("UETA"), which removed any doubts that contracts entered into electronically could satisfy the Statute of Frauds. Encouraged by the certainty given by those statutes, internet businesses started offering contract terms on their websites, asking customers to consent to terms by clicking an icon, or by not seeking express assent at all by presenting terms of use by hyperlink. The ease of presenting terms comprised of thousands of words by an internet hyperlink makes it easy for a vendor in its terms of use and terms of service to ask us to give up privacy rights and intellectual property rights. Modern communications technologies therefore make it easier for parties to engage in risky transactions. Nevertheless, we believe that, with few exceptions, the common law of contracts is sufficiently malleable to address the problems arising out of that behavior and where it is not, regulation of contract terms is appropriate. This Article examines those developments.


Background/Context As concerns mount about the shortage of students entering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, policy makers throughout the United States are contemplating strategies to maintain and enhance our nation's economic vitality and international competitiveness. Within this policy and program environment, researchers have focused considerable attention on improving STEM education at different stages of the educational pipeline, yet we lack evidence on how resources from one educational setting may influence outcomes in a successive educational setting. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus The purpose of the study is to examine individual- and school-level factors that influence students' pathways to the STEM fields during college. Focusing on the importance of high school-to-college linkages, our research questions address the individual and institutional factors that affect students' likelihoods of majoring in a STEM field in college. Research Design The study is based on data collected through the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, a nationally representative survey of high school sophomores who were followed through high school and into college. Students who were enrolled in a four-year institution at the end of 2006 and had declared a major were included in the analytic sample. Analysis In addition to performing descriptive and factor analyses, we used cross-classified hierarchical general linear modeling to examine students' backgrounds, aptitudes, attitudes, dispositions, and experiences in relation to majoring in a STEM field, as well as institutional factors that constitute students' secondary and postsecondary environments. Findings/Conclusions Findings from the study revealed significant effects in relation to race, academic preparation, attitudes and dispositions toward math and science, college choice considerations, and postsecondary experiences. Although no institutional effects were uncovered at the high school level, both postsecondary sector and selectivity significantly influenced propensities toward majoring in a STEM discipline. The study concludes with several policy recommendations related to K–16 collaborations, dual-enrollment programs, and developmental considerations for teachers and counselors working with high school students.


A prime motivation for using XML to directly represent pieces of information is the ability of supporting ad-hoc or 'schema-later' settings. In such scenarios, modeling data under loose data constraints is essential. Of course, the flexibility of XML comes at a price: the absence of a rigid, regular, and homogeneous structure makes many aspects of data management more challenging. Such malleable data formats can also lead to severe information quality problems, because the risk of storing inconsistent and incorrect data is greatly increased. A prominent example of such problems is the appearance of the so-called fuzzy duplicates, i.e., multiple and non-identical representations of a real-world entity. Similarity joins correlating XML document fragments that are similar can be used as core operators to support the identification of fuzzy duplicates. However, similarity assessment is especially difficult on XML datasets because structure, besides textual information, may exhibit variations in document fragments representing the same real-world entity. Moreover, similarity computation is substantially more expensive for tree-structured objects and, thus, is a serious performance concern. This thesis describes the design and implementation of an effective, flexible, and high-performance XML-based similarity join framework. As main contributions, we present novel structure-conscious similarity functions for XML trees - either considering XML structure in isolation or combined with textual information -, mechanisms to support the selection of relevant information from XML trees and organization of this information into a suitable format for similarity calculation, and efficient algorithms for large-scale identification of similar, set-represented objects. Finally, we validate the applicability of our techniques by integrating our framework into a native XML database management system; in this context we address several issues around the integration of similarity operations into traditional database architectures.


Abstract. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbonaceous aerosol were measured at a sub-urban site near Mexico City in March of 2006 during the MILAGRO study (Megacity Initiative: Local and Global Research Objectives). Diurnal variations of hydrocarbons, elemental carbon (EC) and hydrocarbon-like organic aerosol (HOA) were dominated by a high peak in the early morning when local emissions accumulated in a shallow boundary layer, and a minimum in the afternoon when the emissions were diluted in a significantly expanded boundary layer and, in case of the reactive gases, removed by OH. In comparison, diurnal variations of species with secondary sources such as the aldehydes, ketones, oxygenated organic aerosol (OOA) and water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) stayed relatively high in the afternoon indicating strong photochemical formation. Emission ratios of many hydrocarbon species relative to CO were higher in Mexico City than in the U.S., but we found similar emission ratios for most oxygenated VOCs and organic aerosol. Secondary formation of acetone may be more efficient in Mexico City than in the U.S., due to higher emissions of alkane precursors from the use of liquefied petroleum gas. Secondary formation of organic aerosol was similar between Mexico City and the U.S. Combining the data for all measured gas and aerosol species, we describe the budget of total observed organic carbon (TOOC), and find that the enhancement ratio of TOOC relative to CO is conserved between the early morning and mid afternoon despite large compositional changes. Finally, the influence of biomass burning is investigated using the measurements of acetonitrile, which was found to correlate with levoglucosan in the particle phase. Diurnal variations of acetonitrile indicate a contribution from local burning sources. Scatter plots of acetonitrile versus CO suggest that the contribution of biomass burning to the enhancement of most gas and aerosol species was not dominant and perhaps not dissimilar from observations in the U.S.


Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullshit statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena"). Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bullshit statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural belief). Parallel associations were less evident among profundity judgments for more conventionally profound (e.g., "A wet person does not fear the rain") or mundane (e.g., "Newborn babies require constant attention") statements. These results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bullshit and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity.


This Article focuses on the role of the Constitution in the 1830 Congressional debate over the Buffalo to Washington to New Orleans National Road. It takes as its inspiration David Currie's monumental study of the ante-bellum Congress as constitutional interpreter. It moves beyond Currie, however, in the intensity of its focus on a single congressional debate.The debate over the National Road was largely a proxy for the larger struggles over slavery and sectionalism. The Road's supporters generally represented Northern or Western states and took a nationalist view of the Constitution. They understood the Union as an organic entity, a single nation, comprising a single People, united to attain large and shared objectives. They understood the Constitution as facilitating these objectives. They were bold in the various creative if not novel constructions they placed on the Constitution. They paid little heed to arguments about states' rights or limited and enumerated constitutional powers.The opposition was centered in the South although it drew support from some Northern sympathizers. They viewed the highway as a threat to the Southern slave-based economy and mustered various constitutional objections to it. The Constitution was one of limited and enumerated powers, they argued, and it did not include the authority to construct highways. Similarly, they argued, the Constitution created a loose "confederacy" of sovereign states, united for only a few specifically identified purposes. States' rights was, on this analysis, the central organizing principle of the Constitution. In all of this, the great concern was with the preservation of an "agricultural" way of life, understood by all to refer euphemistically to plantation slavery.It becomes apparent that the contest over slavery, which was certainly the greatest constitutional debate of the nineteenth century - and very possibly the greatest constitutional struggle of all time - was playing out principally outside the purview of the judiciary. It was taking place, rather, in the halls of Congress and the court of public opinion.


Oppel, Kenneth. This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein . Toronto: Harper Collins, 2011. Print. Victor has always felt less than worthy compared to his twin brother, Konrad, who is the better swordsman, the more gracious gentleman, and the beloved of their cousin Elizabeth, whom they both love dearly. Yet when Konrad falls mysteriously and deathly ill, Victor's love for his brother encourages him to follow a dangerous quest. Victor is a passionate, if somewhat arrogant, protagonist, who is at times unlikeable, yet strangely alluring. Victor has recently stumbled upon the hidden Dark Library in the family's chateau, a library filled with ancient scientific works by such legendary alchemists as Paracelsus and Agrippa. In direct violation of his father's orders, Victor wishes to create the Elixir of Life that he believes will save his brother. He, Elizabeth, and their family friend, Henry, seek the help of local alchemist and outcast, Julius Polidori, whose apothecary shop is coincidentally located in Wollstonecraft Alley. Polidori promises to translate the ancient texts and instruct Victor on how to collect the three necessary ingredients for the elixir. The recovery of each of the key substances frequently puts the characters in life-threatening situations while testing their bravery and dedication to their quest. This dark tale ends in such a foreboding way, promising future adventures for Victor. This is an absorbing gothic tale that serves as a prequel to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . Aimed at teens, it will hopefully serve as a unique way to get young adults interested in both classic literature and the history of science and magic. This book will likely appeal to those who enjoyed the later darker novels in the Harry Potter series, as it too explores the interconnections between faith, science, and magic. Paracelsus and Agrippa were mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , in which alchemy was also a prevalent theme. Readers will find the adventure captivating, and may want to watch for the movie version, which is expected to be released in 2013. Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Trish Chatterley Trish is a Public Services Librarian for the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library at the University of Alberta. In her free time she enjoys dancing, gardening, and reading books of all types.


The European countries that explored and colonized North America utilized the international law Doctrine of Discovery to claim the sovereign, property, and human rights of Indigenous peoples. Discovery was developed primarily in the fifteenth century by Spain, Portugal, England, and the Church and was designed to control the acquisition of non-European lands. The assumed superiority of European religions and civilizations played a major role in justifying Discovery. Starting with the fifteenth century papal bulls and the later English Royal charters, the primary goals of colonization were alleged to be "propagating Christian Religion" and bringing "human civility" to the "pagan," "heathen," "Infidels and Savages" who "yet live[d] in Darkness and miserable ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God." The United States Supreme Court expressly adopted the Doctrine of Discovery in 1823 in Johnson v. M'Intosh and expressly relied on Christian religion and Euro-American civilization to justify its decision. The goals of, and the justifications for, Discovery continued to be part of United States Indian policy and Manifest Destiny until nearly the end of the twentieth century.