The effects of an industrial gas turbine's Exhaust Collector Box (ECB) geometry on static pressure recovery and total pressure loss were investigated in this study. This study aims to further understand how exit boundary conditions affect the performance of a diffuser system. In this investigation, the exhaust diffuser remained constant through each test, with collector box geometries being varied. The same uniform velocity profile was maintained at the diffuser inlet for all geometries considered. The local pressure recovery through the diffuser with 4 axial ports at 4 circumferential locations was reported along with 14 locations in the accompanying ECB. A system performance analysis for each geometry was conducted using the total pressure loss from inlet to exit of the model. Velocity and total pressure profiles obtained with a hotwire anemometer and Kiel probe at the exit of the diffuser and at the exit of the ECB are also presented in this study. Three (3) different ECB geometries are investigated at a Reynolds number of 60,000. Results obtained from these experimental tests are used to validate the accuracy of a 3-dimensional RANS with realizable k-e turbulence CFD model from the commercial software package Star-CCM+. The study confirms the existence of two strong counter-rotating helical vortices at the exit of the ECB which significantly affect the flow within the diffuser. Evidence of a strong recirculation zone within the ECB was found to force separation within the exhaust diffuser. Extending the length of the ECB proved to decrease the total pressure loss of the system by up to 19% experimentally. Additionally, the realizable k-e turbulence was able to accurately represent the total pressure loss of the system within 5%. Despite the extremely complex flow field within the ECB, the computational domain reasonably represented the system in both magnitude and trends.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Clinical Research is expanding into an international and more regulated environment, specifically its quality management. Pharmaceuticals and Research Organizations are investing significant amounts of money as well as the regulatory agencies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are improving and developing regulations and meetings to standardize globally these practices. Therefore this Thesis integrates and extends the FDA and EMA recommendation of implementing "Risk based quality management" in Clinical Research protocol execution with a multisource point of view and the proposal of adding a Risk Management Report as an output, which will work also as an input for future protocols implementation. Diverse articles and regulations related with Quality Management and Clinical Research Processes were reviewed to work as a base for the analysis of this thesis. Risk Based Quality Management is the actual trend and newly implemented process to improve quality in clinical research. The goal of this Thesis is to combine the different actual factors, methods and regulations in order to expand Risk Based Quality Management and reach a better degree in quality and standardization. The question therefore is whether this redesigned Risk Based Quality Management process can really be incorporated with the actual practices, and if it is possible to adopt it in Clinical Research.


"Adaptation to climate change" as a new field of knowledge challenges agricultural and horticultural (vocational) education and extension. Farmers and horticulturists are confronted with vague scientific findings at best. A broad variety of global climate scenarios is "projected" onto regions and exact predictions are usually not possible. Often, personal observations and experiences seem to contradict scientific assertions. Under this condition farmers and policy makers must decide about future land use.

What does this imply for capacity building? How to transform insecurity into concrete educational measures and programs?

The authors discuss their first experiences within a German R&D network (INKA BB) in which they develop capacity building programs. Two examples from urban agriculture / urban gardening will be used as case studies. Strengths and weaknesses of the development processes and their management will be discussed.

Since the topic is complex and adaptation is a continuous activity, learning in connection with climate change adaptation ideally begins on elementary level, continues in higher and vocational training, and does not end with extension. In other words: "learning chains" must be developed which enable life-long learning in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments.

Competencies are needed beyond classical technological and economic skills. Problem solving - from problem perception, analysis, generation of alternative solutions, to implementation and evaluation - with a key competence in critical analysis and reflection of contemporary research findings - gain in importance.

In INKA BB, participation is seen as axiomatic. As a consequence, an action-oriented, participatory approach has been chosen which enables mutual learning among partners from research, formal and informal, elementary, higher and vocational education.

A crucial point is the question of "Who could be the bridge between science and the educational practitioner?" In INKA BB, a specific working group (the subproject on "Knowledge Management and Transfer") facilitates the development processes and therefore plays a liaison role between theory and practice. In the long-run, sustainable ownership of this process must be achieved. A combination of network building, mutual learning in permanent work groups, provision of technical trainings, and joint planning, testing, monitoring and evaluation is seen as a precondition.


Wilson Bay is a shallow estuarine embayment found within the New River Estuary. Previous work sponsored by NC WRRI examined phytoplankton bloom species composition, rainfall and nutrient levels within the New River Estuary. This study focused on the influence of nutrients in forming blooms using a bioassay format measuring phytoplankton growth over a 7 day incubation period. Growth rates were measured by fluorometric readings and visual eye counts preformed on natural populations that were incubated and treated with nutrient addition and exclusions. Additions consisted of sodium nitrate (NaNo3), ammonium chloride (NHCl), urea (CO(NH2)2) and a complete control, including phosphate, silicate, vitamins and trace metals. Exclusions minus nitrogen, minus phosphate, minus silicate, and unenriched controls were also measured. Ambient nutrient levels were measured in sample water before nutrients were added. Previous work done on Wilson Bay showed to often be nitrogen limiting. The unexpected amounts of rainfall during the study period provided data that showed that Wilson Bay was nitrogen limited with nitrogen additions giving the greatest stimulation. The study period (March-September 2003) had abundant amounts of rainfall compared to the previous (2002) which was a drought years. Wilson Bay blooms are strongly affected by local weather and the rate and types of nutrient delivery.


The present PhD thesis is mainly focused on synthesis, characterization and catalytic application of functionalized triphenylphosphine (TPP) ligands and their complexes. We developed a simple and effective strategy to immobilize TPP: A methylester group attached to one of the phenyl rings of TPP allowes the derivatization of the ligand with 3-trimethoxysilylpropylamine, a typical silane coupling agent used for the covalent immobilization of organic compounds on silica surfaces. The resulting functionalized TPP was further coordinated to Pd, Rh and Ru precursors to achieve homogeneous complexes which can be tethered on silica by the post synthetic grafting method and co-condensation method. The obtained heterogeneous catalysts exhibited excellent activity, selectivity and reusability in Suzuki, hydrogenation and transfer hydrogenation reactions. In order to investigate the stability of the catalysts, different types of characterizations such as TEM, solid state NMR of the used catalysts as well as AAS of filtrate and leaching tests were carried out. The results prove the practicability and efficiency of our method. This strategy was further modified to generate an anionic side chain linked to the TPP core by simply replacing the trimethoxysilylpropylamine group by sodium(3-amino- 1-propanesulfonate), which allowes the immobilization on imidazolium modified SBA-15 through electrostatic interaction. The obtained material was further reacted with PdCl2(CNPh)2 and the resulting hybrid material was used for the hydrogenation of olefins allowing mild reaction conditions. The catalyst shows excellent activity, selectivity and stability and it can furthermore be reused for at least ten times without any loss of activity. TEM images of the used catalyst clearly show the absence of palladium nanoparticles, proving the high stability of the palladium compound. By AAS no palladium could be detected in the products and further leaching tests very- fied the reaction to be truly heterogeneous. This concept of non-covalent immobili- zation guarantees a tight bonding of the catalytically active species to the surface in combination with a high mobility, which should be favorable for other catalyses.


We use a novel disaggregate sectoral euro area dataset with a regional breakdown that allows explicit estimation of the sectoral component of price changes (rather than interpreting the idiosyncratic component as sectoral as done in other papers). Employing a new method to extract factors from over-lapping data blocks, we find for our euro area data set that the sectoral component explains much less of the variation in sectoral regional inflation rates and exhibits much less volatility than previous findings for the US indicate. Country- and region-specific factors play an important role in addition to the sector-specific factors. We conclude that sectoral price changes have a 'geographical' dimension, as yet unexplored in the literature, that might lead to new insights regarding the properties of sectoral price changes.


We introduce a new approach to tone management for photographs. Whereas traditional tone-mapping operators target a neutral and faithful rendition of the input image, we explore pictorial looks by controlling visual qualities such as the tonal balance and the amount of detail. Our method is based on a two-scale non-linear decomposition of an image. We modify the different layers based on their histograms and introduce a technique that controls the spatial variation of detail. We introduce a Poisson correction that prevents potential gradient reversal and preserves detail. In addition to directly controlling the parameters, the user can transfer the look of a model photograph to the picture being edited.


For decades, the immigration adjudication system has been under relentless attack from both the left and the right. The left has been concerned with the fairness of the proceedings, the accuracy and consistency of the outcomes, and the acceptability of both the procedures and the outcomes to the parties and to the public. The right has focused on the fiscal costs and elapsed times of these proceedings. This Article demonstrates that all of these criticisms have been well founded and that the roots of the problems are severe underfunding, reckless procedural shortcuts, the politicization of the process, and a handful of adjudicators personally ill suited to the task.Over the years, commentators and commissions have offered thoughtful solutions, but consensus has proven elusive. This Article calls for redesigning the entire system. For the trial phase, this Article endorses previous proposals for converting the current immigration judges into administrative law judges, who enjoy greater job security, and moving them from the Department of Justice into a new, independent executive branch tribunal. For the appellate phase, this Article proposes radical surgery, replacing both administrative appeals and regional court of appeals review with a single round of appellate review by a new, Article III immigration court. The new court would be staffed by experienced Article III district and circuit judges serving two-year assignments. This new system would significantly depoliticize the hiring, judging, supervision, and control of immigration adjudicators. It would consolidate the two current, largely duplicative rounds of appellate review into one, in the process restoring the Article III jurisdiction that Congress stripped away in 1996. It would save tax dollars and speed the removal process, thus reducing not only prolonged detention, but also what some believe is a meaningful incentive to file frivolous appeals to delay removal. It would preserve both specialized expertise and a generalist perspective. And it is politically realistic, permitting all sides to meet the specific objectives they hold most dear while requiring each side to make only modest concessions.


The most up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative pharmacology text in health medicine―enhanced by a new full-color illustrations Organized to reflect the syllabi in many pharmacology courses and in integrated curricula, Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, Fourteenth Edition covers the important concepts students need to know about the science of pharmacology and its application to clinical practice. Selection of the subject matter and order of its presentation are based on the authors' many years' experience in teaching this material to thousands of medical, pharmacy, dental, podiatry, nursing, and other health science students. To be as clinically relevant as possible, the book includes sections that specifically address the clinical choice and use of drugs in patients and the monitoring of their effects, and case studies that introduce clinical problems in many chapters. Presented in full color and enhanced by more than three hundred illustrations (many new to this edition), Basic and Clinical Pharmacology features numerous summary tables and diagrams that encapsulate important information. URI https://lib.hpu.edu.vn/handle/123456789/32475 Collections Sociology [2978] DSpace software copyright © 2002-2016 DuraSpace Contact Us | Send Feedback Theme by Basic and clinical pharmacology 


In a recent Chicago Fed Letter, I examined the motivations for, and the consequences of, the tremendous wave of U.S. bank mergers during the 1980s and 1990s. In that document I reached three main conclusions. First, I argued there is little evidence of any systematic reduction in competition in retail banking or small business financing markets as a result of the bank merger wave. Although the largest commercial banks have a much more prominent national position today than 20 years ago, these banks' shares of local banking markets have not increased materially.


The main aim of this thesis work is to find/implement various methods that convert Conventional Stereoscopic 3D Video (CSV) to Multiview video (MVV). The work investigates different methods that can produce multiple views given a stereoscopic pair from a frame of a particular video sequence and continues with the process of selecting the best among investigated methods that has optimum quality and speed. In contrast to the existing algorithms, this work disregards the physical depth but instead focus on pixel value correspondence. The intermediate view generation in this work is not considered as a geometrical problem, but a morphing problem. Different morphing algorithms (mesh, field and thin plate spline morphing techniques) are considered for conversion. Performance of each morphing algorithm is in turn compared using different correspondence matching techniqes. The investigated methods aim to produce arbitrary number of novel synthesized camera views from a sparse view set. Mesh morphing algorithm is found to be a better candidate in terms of signal to noise ratio, but requires accurate correspondences at edges of an object in a particular scene and also needs more execution time to generate more number of views. A new approach to field morphing has been introduced in this thesis work, which performs better in terms of execution time and also found to produce intermediate views with reasonable signal to noise ratio. This approach is observed to bring good trade off between speed and accuracy. This conversion has an advantage it can be used as a decompression mechanism that can produce multiple views required for an Autostereoscopic 3D display from a stereoscopic left and right pair. This approach also brings the benefit of backward compatibility as present standards for CSV may be used to provide multiview 3D video to high fidelity Autostereoscopic 3D displays of the future. This work has applications in free view point television, video conferencing systems etc.,


In recent years, direct payments—a type of farm commodity program payment—have made up a large share of Federal agriculture assistance that could be withheld from farmers who fail to comply with highly erodible land conservation (conservation compliance and sodbuster) or wetland conservation (swampbuster) provisions, known collectively as environmental compliance requirements. If direct payments are sharply reduced or eliminated to help reduce the Federal budget defi cit, compliance incentives would be reduced on many farms, potentially increasing environmental quality problems. Some farmers will still be subject to compliance through existing Federal agricultural programs(e.g., conservation or disaster programs) or programs that may succeed direct payments. Making federally subsidized crop insurance subject to compliance could also make up some of the lost incentive to farmers.


Studying the stem cell niche architecture is a crucial step for investigating the process of oncogenesis and obtaining an effective stem cell therapy for various cancers. Recently, it has been observed that there are two groups of stem cells in the stem cell niche collaborating with each other to maintain tissue homeostasis. One group comprises the border stem cells, which is responsible to control the number of non-stem cells as well as stem cells. The other group, central stem cells, regulates the stem cell niche. In the present study, we develop a bi-compartmental stochastic model for the stem cell niche to study the spread of mutants within the niche. The analytic calculations and numeric simulations, which are in perfect agreement, reveal that in order to delay the spread of mutants in the stem cell niche, a small but non-zero number of stem cell proliferations must occur in the central stem cell compartment. Moreover, the migration of border stem cells to the central stem cell compartment delays the spread of mutants. Furthermore, the fixation probability of mutants in the stem cell niche is independent of types of stem cell division as long as all stem cells do not divide fully asymmetrically. Additionally, the progeny of central stem cells have a much higher chance than the progeny of border stem cells to take over the entire niche.


Amen Assoation for the Advancement of Science Science serves its readers as a forum for the presentation and discussion of important issues related to the advancement of science, including the presentation of minority or conflicting points of view, rather than by publishing only material on which a consensus has been reached. Accordingly, all articles published in Science-including editorials, news and comment, and book reviews-are signed and reflect the individual views of the authors and not official points of view adopted by the AAAS or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated.


Of all the bilateral relationships between Arab states, the Jordanian-Syrian relationship has been among the most tumultuous. Jordanian-Syrian relations have, more often than not, been marked by varying degrees of mutual hostility and even violence. These periods of animosity have been so frequent that they amounted to a local 'Cold War' even in the midst of the many other conflicts in the region. But with regime changes in both Amman and Damascus, a marked thaw has emerged in Jordanian-Syrian relations, seemingly ending another long period of acrimony. But this type of event has happened once before: in the late 1970s when Jordan and Syria shifted from antagonism to alliance. This article examines both the historic and current attempts to end the Jordanian-Syrian Cold War, so that the earlier episode may shed some light on the present and future of Jordanian-Syrian relations.


Defining a formal domain ontology is generally considered a useful, not to say necessary step in almost every software project. This is because software deals with ideas rather than with self-evident physical artefacts. However, this development step is hardly ever done, as ontologies rely on well-defined and semantically powerful AI concepts such as description logics or rule-based systems, and most software engineers are largely unfamiliar with these. Gaevic and his co-authors try to fill this gap by covering the subject of MDA application for ontology development on the Semantic Web. Part I of their book describes existing technologies, tools, and standards like XML, RDF, OWL, MDA, and UML. Part II presents the first detailed description of OMGs new ODM (Ontology Definition Metamodel) initiative, a specification which is expected to be in the form of an OMG language like UML. Finally, Part III is dedicated to applications and practical aspects of developing ontologies using MDA-based languages. The book is supported by a website showing many ontologies, UML and other MDA-based models, and the transformations between them. "The book is equally suited to those who merely want to be informed of the relevant technological landscape, to practitioners dealing with concrete problems, and to researchers seeking pointers to potentially fruitful areas of research. The writing is technical yet clear and accessible, illustrated throughout with useful and easily digestible examples." from the Foreword by Bran Selic, IBM Rational Software, Canada. "I do not know another book that offers such a high quality insight into UML and ontologies." Steffen Staab, U Koblenz, Germany


The purposes of this study were to examine the impact of a faith community nursing program on a culturally diverse community and to identify nursing interventions that faith community nurses use in their specialized practice with individuals, families, groups, communities, and society. This study, based on Roy's Adaptation Model, used a qualitative design to assess the impact of a faith community nursing program. Questionnaires with open-ended questions were mailed to 112 faith community members, clergy representatives, and faith community nurses with 46% (n = 52) returned. Responses were analyzed with content analysis. Findings indicated that this faith community nursing program had many positive health, social, educational, cultural, financial, and spiritual benefits in the lives of culturally diverse people in the faith community and in the greater community. Participants reported living healthier, helping others, increasing and sharing knowledge, using culturally appropriate behaviors, saving money, experiencing increased hope, comfort, and inspiration, and achieving balance between physical and spiritual health. The description of the program impact was complemented by over 90 nursing interventions that faith community nurses use in their practice. Faith community nurses facilitated holistic health care, promoted health and well-being, and helped prevent or minimize illnesses as they ministered to culturally diverse populations. The faith community nurses associated with this nursing program had multiple opportunities to reduce health disparities in vulnerable, underserved, minority, and at-risk populations through innovative, collaborative, and economical strategies while simultaneously and intentionally focusing on spiritual care. Implications for nursing practice, education, and research were presented.


Since the 1980s, important and progressive reforms have profoundly reshaped the structure of the Chinese banking system. Many empirical studies suggest that financial reform promoted bank competition in most mature and emerging economies. However, some earlier studies that adopted conventional approaches to measure competition concluded that bank competition in China declined during the past decade, despite these reforms. In this paper, we show both empirically and theoretically that this apparent contradiction is the result of flawed measurement. Conventional indicators such as the Lerner index and Panzar- Rosse H-statistic fail to measure competition in Chinese loan markets properly due to the system of interest rate regulation. By contrast, the relatively new Profit Elasticity (PE) approach that was introduced in Boone (2008) as Relative Profit Differences (RPD) does not evidence these shortcomings. Using balance sheet information for a large sample of banks operating in China during 1996-2008, we show that competition actually increased in the past decade when the PE indicator is used. We provide additional empirical evidence that supports our results. We find that these, firstly, are in line with the process of financial reform, as measured by several indices, and secondly are robust for a large number of alternative specifications and estimation methods. All in all, our analysis suggests that bank lending markets in China have been more competitive than previously assumed.


--Dietary sugar intake unlikely to have any impact, scientists caution Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have discovered how two cancer-promoting genes enhance a tumor's capacity to grow and survive under conditions where normal cells die. The knowledge, they say, may offer new treatments that starve cancer cells of a key nutrient - sugar. However, the scientists caution that research does not suggest that altering dietary sugar will make any difference in the growth and development of cancer. "Cancer cells adapt to living within the inner layers of a tumor, a place where circulating nutrients are relatively scarce," says Nickolas Papadopoulos, Ph.D., associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. "We wanted to know what makes these cancer cells survive under such conditions." Working with colorectal cancer cell lines that carry two of the most common cancer genes - KRAS and BRAF - they went on a hunt for genes that were controlled by KRAS and BRAF and allowed cancer cells to be more fit for survival. Nearly half of all colon cancer patients carry KRAS mutations in their tumors and another five percent of these patients have alterations in BRAF. The findings were published online in the August 6, 2009 issue of Science Express. Their hunt quickly narrowed to one gene, GLUT1, which was consistently turned on at high levels in cells laden with KRAS and BRAF mutations. Proteins made by GLUT1 are located on the cell surface and transport glucose into cells' interiors. With increased expression of the GLUT1 gene, cells make more GLUT1 transporters and ingest more glucose. "We think increased GLUT1 is a survival adaptation that makes cancer cells very efficient at gathering what little sugar exists in these areas," says Bert Vogelstein, M.D., director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics and Clayton Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, as well as Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In various experiments, the Johns Hopkins investigators tested how cancer cells with KRAS and BRAF mutations fare in both standard and low glucose conditions, comparing them with so-called "wildtype" cancer cells that do not have the KRAS or BRAF gene mutations. In one set of experiments, they placed both types of cancer cell lines - those with KRAF/BRAF mutations or without -- in lab dishes with normal and high glucose environments. In the glucose-depleted environment, cells with KRAS/BRAF mutations had far better uptake of glucose than wildtype cells. When they knocked out the GLUT1 gene, this difference disappeared. Next, the scientists tested whether cancer cells with KRAS/BRAF mutations would outpace growth of cells without these mutations. They mixed both groups of cells together and placed them in normal and low glucose environments. Both sets grew equally well in normal conditions, but on the lab dishes with low glucose, cancer cells with the KRAS/BRAF mutations survived while those without the mutations quickly died. As a result, the KRAS/BRAF mutant cells rapidly became the predominant cell in the population. "These gene mutations clearly give colon cancer cells the ability to grow in sugar-depleted environments, such as those in tumors," says Papadopoulos. To determine whether this metabolic change could be used to treat tumors with KRAS or BRAF mutations, the team tested an investigational drug called bromopyruvate, which inhibits glucose metabolism. Results showed that the drug blocked cancer growth in mice with implanted human tumors containing KRAS or BRAF mutations and had no toxic side effects in the mice. The research was funded by the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research and National Institutes of Health. Additional participants in the research include Jihye Yun, Carlo Rago, Ian Cheong, Phillipp Angenendt, Kerstin Schmidt, Shibin Zhou, Luis A. Diaz Jr., Victor Velculescu, Kenneth W. Kinzler of Johns Hopkins; Ray Pagliarini of Novartis, Harith Rajagopalan of Brigham and Women's Hospital; James K.V. Wilson of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Sandy Markowitz of Case Western Reserve University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Christoph Lengauer of Sanofi-Aventis. Under agreements between the Johns Hopkins University, Genzyme Molecular Oncology, Novartis, Wyeth, Amgen, Glaxo-Smith-Kline and Horizon, Yun, Velculescu, Rajagopalan, Pagliarini, Lengauer, Kinzler, Vogelstein, and Papadopoulos are entitled to a share of the royalties and licensing fees received by the University on cell lines described in this news release, some of which are the subject of patent applications. The University and Velculescu, Kinzler and Vogelstein also own stock in Genzyme, which is subject to certain restrictions under University policy. The terms of these arrangements are being managed by the University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.


Portfolios have a long tradition in teacher education and now these are available in electronic form. At the same time, there are increasing demands for primary teachers to be technologically capable and confident in classrooms. When teacher educators wish to respond through the introduction of new technologies such as e-portfolios, there are significant issues of professional learning. This paper discusses one response, a collaborative self-study, around the introduction of an e-portfolio as a pedagogical device. It highlights two key aspects of the study: first, it considers how collaborative self-study as a methodology proved crucial for sustaining lecturer motivation and commitment to the innovation; second, it describes how the e-portfolio was used to enhance the student experience in the science curriculum area which can be a challenging curriculum area for some students. Finally, some recommendations for practice are put forward for consideration.


"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:5-11).


Many known planning tasks have inherent constraints concerning the best order in which to achieve the goals. A number of research efiorts have been made to detect such constraints and to use them for guiding search, in the hope of speeding up the planning process.

We go beyond the previous approaches by considering ordering constraints not only over the (top-level) goals, but also over the sub-goals that will necessarily arise during planning. Landmarks are facts that must be true at some point in every valid solution plan. We extend Koehler and Hoffmann's definition of reasonable orders between top level goals to the more general case of landmarks. We show how landmarks can be found, how their reasonable orders can be approximated, and how this information can be used to decompose a given planning task into several smaller sub-tasks. Our methodology is completely domain- and planner-independent. The implementation demonstrates that the approach can yield significant runtime performance improvements when used as a control loop around state-of-the-art sub-optimal planning systems, as exemplified by FF and LPG.


Genealogies of the Citizen-Devotee: Popular Cinema, Religion and Politics in South India Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda This dissertation is a genealogical study of the intersections between popular cinema, popular religion and politics in South India. It proceeds with a particular focus on the discursive field of Telugu cinema as well as religion and politics in the state of Andhra Pradesh from roughly the 1950s to the 2000s. Telugu cinema continued to produce mythological and devotional films based mostly on Hindu myths and legends many decades after they ceased to be major genres in Hindi and many other Indian languages. This was initially seen simply as an example of the insufficiently modernized and secularized nature of the South Indian public, and of the enduring nature of Indian religiosity. However, these films acquired an even greater notoriety later. In 1982, N.T. Rama Rao, a film star who starred in the roles of Hindu gods like Rama and Krishna in many mythologicals set up a political party, contested and won elections, and became the Chief Minister of the state, all in the space of a year. For many political and social commentators this whirlwind success could only be explained by the power of his cinematic image as god and hero! The films thus came to be seen as major contributing factors in the unusual and undesirable alliance between cinema, religion and politics. This dissertation does not seek to refute the links between these different fields; on the contrary it argues that the cinema is a highly influential and popular cultural institution in India and as such plays a very significant role in mediating both popular religion and politics. Hence, we need a fuller critical exploration of the intersections and overlaps between these realms that we normally think ought to exist in independent spheres. This dissertation contributes to such an exploration. A central argument it makes is about the production of the figure of the citizen-devotee through cinema and other media discourses. Through the use of this hyphenated word, citizen-devotee, this study points to the mutual and fundamental imbrication of the two ideas and concepts. In our times, the citizen and devotee do not and cannot exist as independent figures but necessarily contaminate each other. On the one hand, the citizendevotee formulation indicates that the citizen ideal is always traversed by, and shot through with other formations of subjectivity that inflect it in significant ways. On the other hand, it points to the incontrovertible fact that in modern liberal democracies, it is impossible to simply be a devotee (bhakta) where one's allegiance is only to a particular faith or mode of being. On the contrary, willingly or unwillingly one is enmeshed in the discourse of rights and duties, subjected to the governance of the state, the politics of identity and the logics of majority and minority and so on. Religion as we know it today is itself the product of an encounter with modern rationalities of power and the modern media. Hence, the modern hybrid formation—the citizen-devotee. The first full length study of the Telugu mythological and devotional films, this dissertation combines a historical account of Telugu cinema with an anthropology of film making and viewership practices. It draws on film and media theory to foreground the specificity of these technologies and the new kind of publics they create. Anthropological theories of religion, secularism and the formation of embodied and affective subjects are combined with political theories of citizenship and governmentality to complicate our understanding of the overlapping formations of film spectators, citizens and devotees.


What happens when the Supreme Court of the United States decides a case impacting one or more publicly-traded firms? While many have observed anecdotal evidence linking decisions or oral arguments to abnormal stock returns, few have rigorously or systematically investigated the behavior of equities around Supreme Court actions. In this research, we present the first comprehensive, longitudinal study on the topic, spanning over 15 years and hundreds of cases and firms. Using both intra- and interday data around decisions and oral arguments, we evaluate the frequency and magnitude of statistically-significant abnormal return events after Supreme Court action. On a per-term basis, we find 5.3 cases and 7.8 stocks that exhibit abnormal returns after decision. In total, across the cases we examined, we find 79 out of the 211 cases (37%) exhibit an average abnormal return of 4.4% over a two-session window with an average $|t|$-statistic of 2.9. Finally, we observe that abnormal returns following Supreme Court decisions materialize over the span of hours and days, not minutes, yielding strong implications for market efficiency in this context. While we cannot causally separate substantive legal impact from mere revision of beliefs, we do find strong evidence that there is indeed a "law on the market" effect as measured by the frequency of abnormal return events, and that these abnormal returns are not immediately incorporated into prices.


The Educational Technology Primer grew out of the realization that
today's teacher education students have different needs than their predecessors.
Current students arrive on campus less intimidated by technology
and more experienced with the use of technology in instruction. However,
many introductory educational technology texts still highlight the acquisition
of basic technology operations; knowledge and skills that made sense
when students entering an introductory educational technology course
lacked technology experiences, but not today.


LT World (www.lt-world.org) is an ontology-driven web portal aimed at serving the global language technology community. Ontology-driven means, that the system is driven by an ontological schema to manage the research information and knowledge life-cycles: identify relevant concepts of information, structure and formalize them, assign relationships, functions and views, add states and rules, modify them. For modelling such a complex structure, we employ (i) concepts from the research domain, such as person, organisation, project, tool, data, patent, news, event (ii) concepts from the LT domain, such as technology and resource (iii) concepts from closely related domains, such as language, linguistics, and mathematics. Whereas the research entities represent the general context, that is, a research environment as such, the LT entities define the information and knowledge space of the field, enhanced by entities from closely related areas. By managing information holistically ― that is, within a research context ― its inherent semantics becomes much more transparent. This paper introduces LT World as a reference information portal through ontological eyes: its content, its system, its method for maintaining knowledge-rich items, its ontology as an asset.


This paper presents a multilayered architecture that enhances the capabilities of current QA systems and allows different types of complex questions or queries to be processed. The answers to these questions need to be gathered from factual information scattered throughout different documents. Specifically, we designed a specialized layer to process the different types of temporal questions. Complex temporal questions are first decomposed into simple questions, according to the temporal relations expressed in the original question. In the same way, the answers to the resulting simple questions are recomposed, fulfilling the temporal restrictions of the original complex question. A novel aspect of this approach resides in the decomposition which uses a minimal quantity of resources, with the final aim of obtaining a portable platform that is easily extensible to other languages. In this paper we also present a methodology for evaluation of the decomposition of the questions as well as the ability of the implemented temporal layer to perform at a multilingual level. The temporal layer was first performed for English, then evaluated and compared with: a) a general purpose QA system (F-measure 65.47% for QA plus English temporal layer vs. 38.01% for the general QA system), and b) a well-known QA system. Much better results were obtained for temporal questions with the multilayered system. This system was therefore extended to Spanish and very good results were again obtained in the evaluation (F-measure 40.36% for QA plus Spanish temporal layer vs. 22.94% for the general QA system).


The many competing schools of thought concerning themselves with industrial clusters have at least one thing in common: they all agree that clusters are real life phenomena characterized by the co-localization of separate economic entities, which are in some sense related, but not joined together by any common ownership or management. So hierarchies they are certainly not. Yet, it is usually taken for granted that clusters, almost regardless of how they are defined, all expatriate the 'swollen middle' of various hybrid 'forms of long-term contracting, reciprocal trading, regulation, franchising and the like' residing somewhere between hierarchies and markets. This fundamental (but usually implicit) assumption would, perhaps, be justified if markets could be reduced to events of exchange of property rights, between large numbers of price-taking anonymous buyers and sellers supplied with perfect information as they are commonly conceived in mainstream economics. One of the original attractions of Neoclassical price theory was precisely that it promised a way of analysing the economy in general and market exchange in particular independently of specific institutional settings. However, introducing transaction costs as more than fees paid to intermediaries leads inevitably to comparative institutional analysis and, not to be forgotten, to the perception of markets as institutions with specific characteristics of their own. Some sets of characteristics are so common that they represent a specific market organization or market form. The cluster is one such specific market organization that is structured along territorial lines because this enables the building of a set of institutions that are helpful in conducting certain kinds of economic


The number of guest virtual machines that can be consolidated on one physical host is typically limited by the memory size, motivating memory overcommitment. Guests are given a choice to either install a "balloon" driver to coordinate the overcommitment activity, or to experience degraded performance due to uncooperative swapping. Ballooning, however, is not a complete solution, as hosts must still fall back on uncooperative swapping in various circumstances. Additionally, ballooning takes time to accommodate change, and so guests might experience degraded performance under changing conditions. Our goal is to improve the performance of hosts when they fall back on uncooperative swapping and/or operate under changing load conditions. We carefully isolate and characterize the causes for the associated poor performance, which include various types of superfluous swap operations, decayed swap file sequentiality, and ineffective prefetch decisions upon page faults. We address these problems by implementing VSwapper, a guest-agnostic memory swapper for virtual environments that allows efficient, uncooperative overcommitment. With inactive ballooning, VSwapper yields up to an order of magnitude performance improvement. Combined with ballooning, VSwapper can achieve up to double the performance under changing load conditions.


In India, the term 'sick units' refers to economically unviable firms which are kept alive 'in the public interest' by means of subsidies of various kinds. Since this practice is common, and large parts of the industrial sector are affected, this phenomenon is referred to as industrial sickness. As of March 2001, the Reserve Bank of India counted over a quarter of a million of sick units with outstanding credit worth more than a quarter of a trillion of Indian Rupees, i.e. about 1.2 percent of Indian GDP. Recognizing that scarce resources are wasted on a great scale, the Government of India enacted special legislation to tackle the problem, namely, the Sick Industrial Companies Act. Based on a rich panel data set of some 4,400 manufacturing companies covering the 1988-1999 period, this thesis investigates the causes of sickness and the responses of firms to the policies that are supposed to remedy it. Chapter 1 motivates the topic, briefly summarizes existing contributions and introduces the dataset. Chapter 2 deals with Indian industrial policy, much of which is still a legacy of the attempt at planning a so-called mixed economy, with the state supposedly 'occupying the commanding heights'. Until the deregulation process of the early 1990s dismantled discrete barriers to entry, the economic environment involved a labyrinthine system of industrial licensing, the promotion of priority sectors, the regulation of foreign trade, capital flows and investment, protection of jobs in the regulated sector, and directed credit provided by public financial institutions. Chapter 3 first discusses various concepts of sickness. In the following several descriptive statistics from the given firm-level dataset are presented to provide a picture of the dimensions of sickness and its patterns over industries, time, location (state), form of ownership, firm-size and firm-age. The 'stylized facts' section is rounded out with an investigation of the relation between a firm's health status and measures of its profitability, single-factor productivity and liabilities, with firms classified by ten manufacturing sectors. Decreasing sickness rates in the early days of reforms stand vis-a-vis erratic rises in industrial sickness from the mid 1990s onwards. This finding raises two questions: (i) have the reforms ultimately failed to foster productive efficiency? or (ii) is increased sickness in the mid and late 90s just a reflection of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and its attempt to harden budgets? Chapter 4 draws on the former by analyzing productivity and efficiency in 10 separate Indian manufacturing industries over 3 important sub-periods, viz. pre-reform (1989-'91), transition phase (1992-'96), and post-reform (1997-'99). The results corroborate previous results on the general downturn of aggregate manufacturing performance after 1991. Moreover it is shown that sectoral downturns in productivity and mean efficiency went with greater variation in firm performance. Diverging firm-wise efficiency scores combined with increasing failure rates lead to the supposition that NEP reforms have not been generally unsuccessful, but that economically viable firms have considerably benefited from the changes in policy. The key hypothesis of chapter 5 is that prior to the 1991 reforms preferential treatment irrespective of economic viability established systematic disincentives to perform well, and once these were withdrawn, then firms fell into sickness. This hypothesis is tested by running a panel probit model, wherein observed health status in the late nineties is regressed against (i) dummy variables that capture the effect of the policy shock on formerly protected types of firms, (ii) pre-reform measures of budget softness, and (iii) pre-reform measures of economic distress. In a second part, it is investigated whether measures that lowered barriers to entry, and so sharpened competition, affected the dispersion of efficiency levels among firms and the incidence of sickness. While chapter 5 concentrates on reductions in barriers to entry, chapter 6 is more concerned with the remaining barriers to exit (of labor and firms). The starting point is the notion that the status of sickness entails great advantages to the incumbent management and the shareholders (exemptions from debt repayment or other obligations and generous financial assistance) as well as to politicians: once a company has fallen sick, the old management is replaced by a government appointed director. An agency model is tested, the core of which states that the politician-manager rescues the firm, because employment guarantees increase his popularity and his chances of getting re-elected. Inference from single-equation estimation mostly supports the model, but a simultaneous systems approach (a particular choice of the capital structure and the sickness status) would reject it.


Over the last decades, many research groups have studied the mould behavior and the solidification in the continuous casting of steel billets. The process was analyzed by various measurement techniques, calculations and/or analytical or numerical simulations. For a better understanding of the detailed phenomena influencing the casting process performance and billet quality, it is possible today to combine newest developments in coupled 3D numerical heat and mass transport simulations with computational optimization methods based on genetic algorithms. In this contribution, the authors show the use of these genetic algorithms for autonomous multi-objective numerical optimization of the continuous casting process of steel billets. A primary objective for the optimization was to find the best possible coupling between casting speed, spray nozzle layout and liquid pool depth. This has to be done while still keeping the surface temperatures within narrow constraints. The overall goal is to increase the productivity and to make no compromise concerning the quality of the final product. The use of a multi-objective optimization algorithm made it possible to follow each of these objectives simultaneously. Further evaluation of the results allows an estimation of the sensitivity of the casting quality to process parameters.


Clinical vignette: An 8-year-old boy presents to the pediatric ICU after two days of cough with increasing secretions. The patient is progressing to respiratory failure and requires noninvasive mechanical ventilation. His past medical history is remarkable for premature birth at 25 and 6/7 weeks gestational age, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, epilepsy, and gastrostomy tube dependence. His chest x-ray is remarkable for multifocal opacities that are consistent with atelectasis. A complete blood count reveals a wbc count of 9.2 with a normal differential, Hg of 11.7, and platelet count of 276,000. A respiratory viral panel from a nasal swab returns positive for rhinovirus. Additional patient history from the parents uncovers that he has been hospitalized three times over the course of the past 2 years with a similar presentation.


I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.


The complexity of cancer chemotherapy requires pharmacists be familiar with the complicated regimens and highly toxic agents used. This column reviews various issues related to preparation, dispensing, and administration of antineoplastic therapy, and the agents, both commercially available and investigational, used to treat malignant diseases.


What impact does a forced sale have upon a property owner's wealth? And do certain characteristics of a property owner such as whether they are rich or poor or whether they are black or white, tend to affect the price yielded at a forced sale? This Article addresses arguments made by some courts and legal scholars who have claimed that certain types of forced sales result in wealth maximizing, economic efficiencies. The Article addresses such economic arguments by returning to first principles and reviewing the distinction between sales conducted under fair market value conditions and sales conducted under forced sale conditions. This analysis makes it clear that forced sales of real or personal property are conducted under conditions that are rarely likely to yield market value prices. In addition, the Article addresses the fact that judges and legal scholars have utilized a flawed economic analysis of forced sales in cases that often involve property that is owned by low- to middle-class property owners in part because those who are wealthier own their property under more stable ownership structures or utilize private ordering to avoid the chance that a court might order a forced sale under the default rules of certain common ownership structures. The Article also raises the possibility for the first time that the race or ethnicity of a property owner may affect the sales price for property sold at a forced sale, resulting in a "double discount," i.e. a discount from market value for the forced sale and a further discount attributable to the race of the property owner. If minorities are more susceptible to forced sales of their property than white property owners or if there does exist a phenomenon in which minorities suffer a double discount upon the sale of their property at a forced sale, then forced sales of minority-owned property could be contributing to persistent and yawning racial wealth gaps.


The Correspondence Section serves as a forum for opinion exchange about subjects of general intrest such as dermatologic training, relations between dermatologists and pharmaceutical houses, governmental control of dermatology and medical practice in general, peculiarities of dermatology related to geographic, climatic, or racial factors, the flow of information and publications, as well as other concerns the readership might have. Contributions are welcome and should conform to the usual format for correspondence. Manuscripts will undergo standard editorial procedures. Submit all correspondence to Roberto Cortèz Franco, MD, Editor, Puente del Piedra 150–504(T2), Tlalpan, D.F. 14050, Mexico. Fax: 52 (5) 665 7691. E-mail: email@example.com


The recent growth of empirical scholarship in law, which some have termed "empirical legal studies," has received much attention. A less noticed implication of this trend is its potential impact on the manner of scholarly production in legal academia. A common prediction is that academic collaboration rises with scholarly specialization. As the complexity of a field grows, more and more diverse types of human capital are needed to make a contribution. This paper presents two tests of whether empiricism has spurred more co-authorship in law. First, the paper shows that the fraction of articles in the top fifteen law reviews that were empirical or co-authored (or both) trended upwards between 2000 and 2010. The increase in empirical articles accounted for a substantial share of the growth in co-authored articles, and the correlation between co-authorship and empiricism persisted after controlling for numerous other influences. Second, the paper examines the articles published since 1989 in two prominent, faculty-edited journals specializing in law & economics: the Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization. Co-authored articles were far more common in these journals than in the general-interest, student-edited law reviews – a pattern which itself is consistent with the specialization hypothesis. The share of articles without empirical analysis or formal models in these journals plummeted over this period, while co-authorship rose sharply. These results support the view that specialization, and specifically the growth of empirical scholarship, has contributed to the trend of co-authorship in legal academia.


Abstract. We compare coincident, in situ, balloon-borne measurements of temperature (T) and pressure (P) by two radiosondes (Vaisala RS92, Intermet iMet-1-RSB) and similar measurements of relative humidity (RH) by RS92 sondes and frost point hygrometers. Data from a total of 28 balloon flights with at least one pair of radiosondes are analyzed in 1-km altitude bins to quantify measurement differences between the sonde sensors and how they vary with altitude. Each comparison (T, P, RH) exposes several profiles of anomalously large measurement differences. Measurement difference statistics, calculated with and without the anomalous profiles, are compared to uncertainties quoted by the radiosonde manufacturers. Excluding seven anomalous profiles, T differences between 19 pairs of RS92 and iMet sondes exceed their measurement uncertainty limits (2 σ) 31% of the time and reveal a statistically significant, altitude-independent bias of 0.5 ± 0.2 °C. Similarly, RS92-iMet P differences in 22 non-anomalous profiles exceed their uncertainty limits 23% of the time, with a disproportionate 83% of the excessive P differences at altitudes >16 km. The RS92-iMet pressure differences increase smoothly from −0.6 hPa near the surface to 0.8 hPa above 25 km. Temperature and P differences between all 14 pairs of RS92 sondes exceed manufacturer-quoted, reproducibility limits (σ) 28% and 11% of the time, respectively. About 95% of the excessive T differences are eliminated when 5 anomalous RS92-RS92 profiles are excluded. Only 5% of RH measurement differences between 14 pairs of RS92 sondes exceed the manufacturer's measurement reproducibility limit (σ). RH measurements by RS92 sondes are also compared to RH values calculated from frost point hygrometer measurements and coincident T measurements by the radiosondes. The influences of RS92-iMet Tand P differences on RH values and water vapor mixing ratios calculated from frost point hygrometer measurements are examined.


This combination of theoretical, topical and geographical focus integrates the social and natural science approaches to problems of ecology in development in South-west Asia. Permits coherent treatment, in an argument of reasonable length, of (1) some of the major areas of accumulation of ecological knowledge and insight in relation to development, (2) the changes of emphasis in ecological interests among planners, (3) the development and integration of theory (especially the efforts to straddle the boundaries of sociological and ecological understanding), (4) the changing perceptions of man's relation to nature, and (5) the underlying moral problems of management and welfare. The changes of orientation in each of these arenas over the last decade are treated below not simply as another stage of progress to confirm our faith in the perfectibility of man, but as a function of a larger historical process of increasing awareness and communication, the beginnings of which would have to be sought at least as far back as the Industrial Revolution.


An international debate continues to unfold in banking law, corporate governance, and finance on whether the capital structure of the world's largest financial institutions is too heavily dependent on debt, too little on equity. Two of us, with co-authors, have argued elsewhere that there is no socially beneficial purpose for this over-reliance on debt and, indeed, that such reliance increases the likelihood of taxpayer bailouts, with their associated economic, financial, and social costs. Some academics and bankers continue to insist, however, that increased equity is costly for banks and for society. The arguments proffered in defense of these propositions contradict the most basic insights from corporate finance, and often neglect to distinguish private costs from social costs in explaining their preference for debt-heavy capital structures.While there are overwhelming costs that excessive bank debt can have on the broader economy, some contend that there may be some benefits from debt for a firm's corporate governance. In particular, some academics have argued that debt is useful because it "disciplines" bank management. The idea suggests that creditors with hard claims against the firm will monitor the firm to prevent bank management from misusing the free cash flows that the banks' economic activities generate. If these benefits exist and are substantial, we may face a vexing tradeoff: too much debt creates dramatic social costs, moral hazard, and systemic risk, while too little may have negative consequences for firm governance. The challenge is to find a way of optimizing that tradeoff.This Article engages that challenge, and introduces a new kind of financial institution – called a Liability Holding Company (LHC) – that appropriately balances the social costs of excessive private leverage with the purported benefits for corporate governance that such leverage might create. Our proposal places an increased liability version of the bank's equity in a conjoined but separately controlled entity, the LHC, that also owns other assets to which the banks' liabilities have recourse in the event of failure. The equity shares of the LHC - a holding company subject to a unique regulatory regime supervised by the Federal Reserve, similar to Bank Holding Companies or Financial Holding Companies - are then traded in public markets. The LHC thus aims to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the role of the government as the effective guarantor of the systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), thus reducing the distortions that current implicit governmental guarantees create. It additionally allows banks the benefits of two boards: an advising board, that the bank managers may appoint, and the monitoring board housed at the LHC, appointed by the LHC's own public shareholders. This dual board structure resolves some important issues raised in the long-standing debate about the role corporate boards should play. We discuss in detail how this proposal would function within the present legal and regulatory environment - particularly within the contexts of bank regulation, corporate governance, and Dodd-Frank - and address counter-arguments and alternative proposals.


A tying arrangement is a seller's requirement that a customer may purchase its "tying" product only by taking its "tied" product. In a variable proportion tie the purchaser can vary the amount of the tied product. For example, a customer might purchase a single printer, but either a contract or technological design requires the purchase of varying numbers of printer cartridges from the same manufacturer. Such arrangements are widely considered to be price discrimination devices, but their economic effects have been controversial. Tying has been attacked on the theory that price discrimination of this sort reduces consumer welfare. We show that this argument is based on a misunderstanding of the kind of price discrimination that is involved in variable proportion ties. The great majority of them almost certainly produce both welfare gains and net consumer benefits. We also consider and reject the argument that tying produces greater welfare losses when viewed from an ex ante rather than an ex post perspective. That argument rests on a flawed premise about the sources of the increased returns to innovations whose distribution requires tying. Further, it ignores the important role of fixed costs in producing innovation incentives. We also show that tying in concentrated markets produces significant benefits from the elimination of double marginalization, which occurs when firms in complementary markets have market power and the two are unable to coordinate their output. In other cases ties effect two-part tariffs, which can also address double marginalization problems. Then we extend our analysis to bundled discounts, focusing on the possibility of increased harm that can occur if the monopolist increases the standalone price of one good when inaugurating the bundled discount. Antitrust's per se rule is reserved for practices that are so likely to cause antitrust harm and have so little to defend them that detailed case-by-case assessment is thought to be unnecessary. They can be condemned categorically simply upon a showing that a few basic conditions are satisfied and that they belong in a particular class of restraints. No kind of unilaterally imposed tying arrangement, even by a monopolist, falls into that category. Rather, the case for antitrust harm from tying is ambiguous at best and requires detailed scrutiny into market power, rationales for tying, and anticompetitive effects - all the subject of antitrust's traditional rule of reason. Finally, we recommend that courts in antitrust cases forget about price discrimination or leveraging as independent anticompetitive concerns and focus on foreclosure, or antitcompetitive exclusion.


In this paper, the role of risk governance is examined in relation to higher risk study abroad programs and activities involving post-secondary students. In the face of increased global uncertainties, post-secondary institutional legal and financial risk thresholds can conflict with an ethic of global solidarity, mutuality and academic freedom. A relational standard of care augments prescriptive diagnostics of informed consent and exemption/appeal structures, safeguarding faculty and student liberty and security through deliberative, informed choice. This approach provides a viable means to pursue ethical internationalization in post-secondary education, as it places value on global human wellbeing through sharing of knowledge, skills and resources, aligning safety with values of solidarity and mutuality.


The economic value of cereal forage for feeding beef cattle is dependent on both its yield and feeding value (i.e., crude protein, minerals, detergent fiber, energy, digestibility and animal performance). The objective of this study was to identify oat varieties grown in the Peace Region of Alberta, Canada, with superior forage yield and feed quality for beef cattle production. Nine oat varieties were compared in field experiments from 2009 to 2011. Significant differences between the tested oat varieties were observed for the plant height, forage dry matter (DM) yield and several of the protein, fiber, macro minerals, micro minerals, energy and digestibility parameters. Three of the 4 taller oat varieties (Murphy, Foothill, CDC Baler and Waldern) also ranked high in DM. Based on the DM data, Murphy and AC Mustang were identified as the high forage yield potential varieties in the study area. However, most of the quality indicators, used for grouping the varieties, indicated that the low potential DM group (probably due to the presence of CDC SO-I) appeared to have slightly better forage quality than the high and the medium potential forage DM yield groups. The tested oat varieties had sufficient levels of some nutrition parameters but not for some others. Because of these inconsistencies, some form of commercial mineral supplement would be required to optimize the health, growth and reproduction of beef cattle. The implications of the results obtained in this study in relation to beef cattle production system are highlighted.


The establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice is one of the key objectives of the Treaty of Amsterdam. Measures to harmonize criminal law as well as measures in the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters are an integral part of the strategy by which to attain this objective. On the basis of the conclusions of the European Council meeting at Tampere (1999), it is obvious that measures are needed so as to guarantee the real mutual recognition of judicial decisions in criminal matters, including the pretrial decisions, and to guarantee the free circulation of criminal evidence. The original Corpus Juris study (1997) had elaborated a number of guiding principles in relation to the protection of the financial interests of theEuropean Union within the framework of the European Judicial Space, including the European Public Prosecutor. This follow-up to the Corpus Juris study aims to analyse the feasibility of the Corpus Juris in relation to the legislation of the Member States and also to analyse the horizontal and vertical cooperation in the Member States. The publication of the follow-up study consists of four volumes. Volume I includes a final synthesis, with a new version of the Corpus Juris (Corpus Juris 2000), and syntheses on the feasibility of the Corpus Juris (draft of 1997) in relation to the legislation of the Member States. Volumes II and III include the 15 national reports concerning the 35 articles of the Corpus Juris (1997 draft). Volume IV relates only to questions concerning horizontal and vertical co-operation. The study was carried out in 1998-1999 upon the request of the European Parliament and the Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, by researchers from the Association of European Lawyers for the Protection of the Financial Interests of the European Union.


John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States, was born in Buffalo, New York, January 27, 1955. He married Jane Marie Sullivan in 1996 and they have two children Josephine and John. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979. He served as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1979–1980 and as a law clerk for then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1980 Term. He was Special Assistant to the Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice from 1981–1982, Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, White House Counsel's Office from 1982–1986, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice from 1989–1993. From 1986–1989 and 1993–2003, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2003. President George W. Bush nominated him as Chief Justice of the United States, and he took his seat on September 29, 2005.


According to the dispute resolution literature, one advantage of arbitration over litigation is that arbitration enables the parties to customize their dispute resolution procedures. For example, parties can choose the qualifications of the arbitrator(s), the governing procedural rules, the limitation period, recoverable damages, rules for discovery and the presentation of evidence and witnesses, and the specificity of required arbitrator findings. While other scholars have questioned whether parties to arbitration agreements frequently take advantage of this customization, there is little solid empirical information about the topic. In this article, we study the arbitration clauses found in a random sample of 910 CEO employment contracts entered into during the time period 1995 to 2005 to determine how much customization actually takes place. We find only a small number of instances where fine-grained customization has occurred. Parties pay very little attention to customizing arbitral proceedings in these employment contracts, although there is a significant increase in the practice over time. We find this result surprising given that CEO contracts are heavily negotiated documents. Unexpectedly, we find that about half of the arbitration clauses in our contracts carve out a subset of potential claims or types of relief by reserving a right for the parties to seek such relief or file such claims in court. This phenomenon of customizing the circumstances under which parties will use arbitration has received almost no attention in the academic literature to date. In particular, we find that the types of claims carved out for court resolution are those involving firm efforts to protect the value of its information, reputation, and innovation. CEOs and companies in the information technology business are not significantly more likely to carve out such claims, and the use of these carveouts is increasing over time, suggesting that such carveouts are increasingly valuable to all firms. Unfortunately, California court regulation of arbitration clauses in employment contracts has significantly dampened the use of carveouts in contracts between CEO's and their firms located in California. Our data suggests that court efforts to protect employees by scrutinizing the specific carveouts we observe is both unnecessary and destructive.


This report is part of a strategy to promotes trade competitiveness within the East Asia and Pacific Region. It presents an overview of the logistics issues facing East Asia countries and proposes a development agenda for them. Based on the recognition that the countries have basic differences in their level of development, extent of openness, and composition of trade, it begins by discussing the benefits of improved logistics. The East Asian countries are organized into an action matrix, with an analysis of the logistics needs appropriate to each group. The country working papers (volumes 2, 3, & 5)discuss the assessment of preset logistics services and the impediments they impose upon, and opportunities they offer for, expanded trade, including policy reform proposals. The special report on ports (volume 4) addresses port development in relation to urban growth.


This paper is based on a study that was done by utilising construction and demolition debris that had been effectively recycled, in structural members. The steel tubular columns were filled with different types of waste material, as well as recycled aggregate concrete, instead of normal conventional concrete. The results were subsequently analysed. The behaviour of circular and square concrete-filled steel tubular sections (CFSTs) under axial load, in which coarse aggregate had been partially replaced by recycled aggregates, is presented. The effects of steel tube dimensions, shapes and the confinement of concrete are also examined. Measured column strengths are compared with the values predicted by Eurocode 4, Australian Standards and American Codes. Twelve specimens were tested with 20 MPa concrete and steel sections with diameter-to-thickness ratios of 18,5, 25,3 and 36,0. The columns were of two different shapes - a circular-shaped set with diameters of 76 mm and 89 mm, and a square-shaped set with sizes 72 mm and 91 mm. The circular-shaped columns of 76 mm diameter and the square-shaped columns with 72 mm diameter are 900 mm long. The circular columns with a diameter of 89 mm and the square columns of 91 mm diameter are 350 mm long. Eurocode 4 (EC4) gives the best estimation for both conventional and recycled aggregate concrete. However, the American Concrete Institute (ACI) / Australian Standards (AS) equation predicted lower values than measured during the experiments. Hence the ACI/AS equation has been modified by introducing a multiplying factor 'k' to predict good results for columns of L/D < 12. The values of k factor for L/D ratio varying from 4 to 12 are suggested in this study. From the results it has been noted that square columns save 30% of steel when compared with circular columns. It was also observed that the ultimate load of steel tubular columns filled with recycled aggregate concrete is higher than that of conventional concrete and columns filled with recycled aggregate concrete, and can result in a 10% saving in the cost of concrete. This research therefore proposes a solution for effective solid waste management, which will also prove to be cost effective.


By reading, you can know the knowledge and things more, not only about what you get from people to people. Book will be more trusted. As this complications in the management of breast disease, it will really give you the good idea to be successful. It is not only for you to be success in certain life you can be successful in everything. The success can be started by knowing the basic knowledge and do actions.


Like Michelangelo, Galileo is another Renaissance great known just by his first name. A name that is synonymous with scientific achievement. Born in Pisa, Italy, in the sixteenth century, Galileo contributed to the era's great rebirth of knowledge. He invented a telescope with which he was able to observe the heavens. From there, not even the sky was the limit! He turned long held notions about the universe topsy turvy with his support of a sun-centric solar system. Patricia Brennan Demuth offers a sympathetic portrait of a brilliant man who lived in a time when speaking scientific truth to those in power was still a dangerous preposition.


The goal of this research was to explain the presence and absence of sexual orientation provisions in hate crime legislation beyond the rhetoric of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. I applied Paul Luebke's theory of traditionalist and modernizer ideologies to the legislative process of expanding bias crime legislation to include sexual orientation in Kansas and North Carolina. In an effort to uncover the relationship between legislators' voting records and political ideologies, I conducted a document analysis examining local newspaper coverage of the proposed legislation.
I concluded traditionalism was responsible for the failure of legislation proposed to include sexual orientation in North Carolina hate crime legislation during the 1999-2000 legislative session. I was unable to determine if either traditionalists or modernizers accounted for the initial inclusion of sexual orientation in Kansas bias crime legislation. Kansas modernizers were eventually successful in their efforts to expand the victims protected by and offenders punished by hate crime legislation during the 2001-2002 legislative session after similar attempts were repeatedly blocked by traditionalist legislators. Both states exhibited a pattern of legislative failures as a consequence of the presence and strength of traditionalist legislators who campaigned against modernizers' efforts to address crimes motivated by prejudice including a sexual orientation bias.


We present observations of zooplankton diel vertical migration (DVM) over a period of 2 yr in an ice‐free and a seasonally ice‐covered Arctic fjord. The contrasting environments permitted assessment of the influences of physical and biological factors on temporal variability in DVM patterns and a test of the hypothesis that a reduction in summer sea ice extent and thickness following climatic warming will lead to changes in DVM via the loss of a shading effect on the pelagic marine environment. Acoustic backscatter and vertical velocity data from moored 300‐kHz acoustic Doppler current profilers were used to derive DVM patterns, while measurements of sea ice and snow thickness enabled assessment of the underwater light environment and consideration of its potential to influence DVM. Pronounced differences in DVM between the sites emerged during summertime when intermittent synchronized DVM was observed at the ice‐free site, whereas the ice‐covered site was characterized by asynchronous behavior, thereby highlighting the influence of sea ice. Notably, the 0.8‐m‐thick sea ice cover was deemed important for its influence on water column properties such as food, turbidity, and zooplankton species composition, as indicated by biological samples from moored sediment traps, rather than a simple shading of the ocean and direct modification of zooplankton DVM. Loss of Arctic sea ice is likely to have an indirect but substantial effect on zooplankton DVM via modification of hydrography and composition of the pelagic community.


We demonstrate an imaging technique implementing vertical cavity lasers with extremely low transient times for a greatly simplified realization of a multiexposure laser speckle contrast imaging system. Data from multiexposure laser speckle imaging was observed to more closely agree with absolute velocity measurements using time of flight technique, when compared to long-exposure laser speckle imaging. Furthermore, additional depth information of the vasculature morphology was inferred by accounting for the change in the static scattering from tissue above vessels with respect to the total scattering from blood flow and tissue.


Situation | Currently, there is a big lack of qualified labour in Germany. The recruitment of foreign workers and employees with a migratory background, which are still not employed, was identified as a solution for this problem. However, several companies still have a problem with this solution and they still see a lot of challenges. In Germany the word "welcome culture" already exist, which describes minimization of barriers for immigrants and support for their integration. Now, they also like to use this strategy for companies. That's why they like to develop different strategies to support, structure and simplify the integration process. Aim | The aim is to develop a recommended course of actions for the BruderhausDiakonie, based on interviews with people with migratory background, the analysis of the Greek culture and on several best practice examples as well as existing theories. This should be realized by taking care of the resources and request of the company. Concept | The main part of the welcome culture concept is made of practices which can be used individually to support recruiting processes for employees from abroad and employees with migratory background as well as for on-boarding-process of new employees. This concept considers internal and external conditions. Result | The result was an establishment of actions and the identifications of significant internal and external conditions, which companies have to face when they set the concept into practice. The concept has to be tested first by considering the identified metrics. Additionally it is recommended to implement the metrics into the Balanced Scorecard of the company. The shown practices should be set into practice in each department. The process of establishing a welcome culture should be seen as a long lasting learning-process and organizational development for which some responsible should be named.


China s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao "narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976 an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.Mao s China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao s greatest achievements victory in the civil war, the creation of China s first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.Misdiagnosing China s problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided."


Travel beyond the traditional limits of boundweave with this comprehensive guide to weft-faced pattern weaves. Beginning and experienced weavers alike will learn how to plan, predict and weave colourful, rhythmical patterns, charming folk figures, and geometric designs in fabrics that are decorative and durable. Fifty-three projects range from simple to complex weaves. Directions, patterns, and tips are provided for the plain weave, twill, point twill, rosepath, overshot, taquete, and samitum. It also features Coptic taquete and samitum re-creations and patterns from the Tunic of Tutankhamun. Engaging and informative text accompanies diagrams, illustrated samplers, and drafts with threading, tie-up, treadling, and drawdowns. This is the definitive work on weft-faced pattern weaves and is a must-have reference and resource guide for weavers and crafters alike.


Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this practical analysis of the law of business formations in Italy provides quick and easy guidance on a variety of corporate and partnership considerations such as mergers, rights and duties of interested parties, stock exchange rules, labour laws, and takeovers. Lawyers who handle transnational business will appreciate the explanation of local variations in terminology and the distinctive concepts that determine practice and procedure. A general introduction covering historical background, definitions, sources of law, and the effect of international private law is followed by a discussion of such aspects as types of formation, capital, shares, management, control, liquidation, mergers, takeovers, holding companies, subsidiaries, and taxation. Big companies, various types of smaller entities, and partnerships are all covered in turn. These details are presented in such a way that readers who are unfamiliar with specific terms and concepts in varying contexts will fully grasp their meaning and significance. Thorough yet practical, this convenient volume puts the information necessary for corporations to compete effectively at the user's fingertips. An important and practical tool for business executives and their legal counsel interested in engaging in an international partnership or embarking on corporate expansion, this book will prove a valuable time-saving tool for business and legal professionals alike. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Italy will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative business law.


Abstract. The geographic and temporal variations in tropospheric and stratospheric ozone columns from individual swath measurements of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), on the NASA Aura spacecraft, are reasonably well simulated by the University of California, Irvine (UCI) chemistry transport model (CTM) using 1°×1°×40-layer meteorological fields for the year 2005. From the CTM we find that high-frequency spatial variations in tropospheric column ozone (TCO), including around the jet streams, are not generally correlated with variations in stratospheric ozone column, but instead are collocated with folding events involving stratospheric-origin, high-ozone layers below the tropopause. The CTM fold events are verified in many cases with available ozone sondes. Using the OMI Level 2 profiles, and defining tropopause height from our CTM using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) fields, we find that most of the variations in TCO near CTM folding events are also not correlated with those in stratospheric ozone column. A large fraction of the OMI TCO variance is accurately simulated by the CTM where the variance is significant, especially along the subtropical jets. The absolute tropospheric columns from OMI and CTM agree swath-by-swath, pixel-by-pixel within ±5 Dobson Units (DU) for most cases. Notable exceptions are in the tropics where neither the high ozone from biomass burning nor the low ozone in the convergence zones over the Pacific is found in the OMI observations, because of OMI's insensitivity to the lower troposphere. Another difference is identified with the OMI profiles near the southern subtropical jet. The CTM has a high bias in stratospheric column outside the tropics, due to problems previously identified with the stratospheric circulation in the 40-layer meteorological fields. Overall, we identify ozone folds with short-lived features in TCO that have scales of a few hundred kilometres as observed by OMI.


This paper examines the role and impact of taxation on sustainable forest management. It is shown that fiscal instruments neither reinforce nor substitute for traditional regulatory approaches and can actually undermine sustainability. The paper uses the reasoning at the root of the Faustmann solution to draw conclusions on the incentives for sustainable tropical forest exploitation. It proposes a bond mechanism as an alternative market-based instrument to encourage sustainable forest logging while reducing monitoring costs.


While a Blackstonian view of property envisaged a "despotic dominion" of an owner over a thing, property has never been so absolute. In fact, as I argue in this paper, the nature of property has been culturally constructed and property means different thinks across cultures and even over time within the same culture. The question of the nature of property was highlighted for me when a student questioned whether equity limitations placed on homes purchased by low income buyers using subsidized public financing created a "second class" form of homeownership.In attempting to answer this question, I examined the ideas of property and ownership over various cultures and then concentrated on those ideas in the American cultural, legal and political history. After examining the various views of property in America, I examine the reality of property ownership and the restrictions on such ownership in today's legal and political milieu. I conclude by suggesting that the equity restrictions associated with some publicly financed mortgages are not different in kind from other restrictions on property generally that are widely accepted in society. Finally, I suggest that a concept of property might be broadened to include the reasonable expectations of future potential users. Thus, a recognized principle such as stewardship might give property like entitlements to generations of low income persons who will be seeking decent affordable housing in the future.


Cognitive research suggests that there is a difference in the spatial  abilities of males and females. Results of studies that examine wayfinding skills indicate that the differences found may be linked to a variation in the types of strategies used in completing spatial tasks. The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of gender on different strategies for encoding spatial information in a map context. An experiment was conducted in which subjects studied a map presented to them using one of three encoding strategies: (1) a control strategy in which they viewed the map as a static representation, (2) a landmark-based strategy in which they viewed a dynamic sequencing of the map that began with landmark locations and built over time to include all map components, and (3) a path-based strategy in which they viewed a dynamic sequencing of the map that began with path locations and built over time to include all map components. Following this study phase, subjects completed a series of map recognition tasks where they indicated whether a presented map was the same as or different from the map they had originally studied. Test maps that differed from the memorized map were modified by either replacing, displacing, or reversing the perspective of a map object. Results indicated that while encoding strategy played a significant role in determining how accurately subjects could perform the recognition task, gender did not significantly influence how well any particular strategy worked for encoding map-based spatial information.


This paper presents a poverty profile for Brazil, based on three different sources of household data for 1996. We use PPV consumption data to estimate poverty and indigence lines. ''Contagem'' data is used to allow for an unprecedented refinement of the country's poverty map. Poverty measures and shares are also presented for a wide range of population subgroups, based on the PNAD 1996, with new adjustments for imputed rents and spatial differences in cost of living. Robustness of the profile is verified with respect to different poverty lines, spatial price deflators, and equivalence scales. Overall poverty incidence ranges from 23% with respect to an indigence line to 45% with respect to a more generous poverty line. More importantly, however, poverty is found to vary significantly across regions and city sizes, with rural areas, small and medium towns and the metropolitan peripheries of the North and Northeast regions being poorest.


Assertions that our legislative process is gridlocked — perhaps even "hopelessly" so — are endemic. So many more of our problems would be fixed, the thinking goes, if only our political institutions were functioning properly. The hunt for the causes of gridlock is therefore afoot.This brief Essay, written for the Notre Dame Law Review's 2012 "The American Congress: Legal Implications of Gridlock" Symposium, argues that this hunt is fundamentally misguided, because gridlock is not a phenomenon. Rather, gridlock is the absence of phenomena; it is the absence, that is, of legislative action. Rather than asking why we experience gridlock, we should be asking why and how legislative action occurs. We should expect to see legislative action, the Essay argues, when there is sufficient public consensus for a specific course of action. "Sufficient," in this context, is determined with reference to our specific constitutional structure. And "public consensus" should be understood dialogically, as a function of political actors' engagements in the public sphere. In short, before we declare legislative inaction to be evidence of dysfunction, we should first be sure that the conditions sufficient to trigger legislative action in our constitutional regime have been satisfied. Part I spells out these conditions in greater detail.Once we understand what is constitutionally necessary to motivate congressional action, we are then better able to identify true dysfunctionalities. Part II gives an example of a procedural mechanism that does, in fact, prevent legislative action even when the constitutional conditions for action are met: the Senate filibuster. Attentiveness to the ways in which the filibuster plays out in the public sphere — specifically, the high degree of public support for efforts to circumvent the filibuster — demonstrate its democratic dysfunctionality. The conclusion tentatively suggests a few reasons that observers may be perceiving unusually high levels of gridlock today and considers which of these explanations, if correct, would indicate actual institutional dysfunction.


Uncertainty is both "irreducible"1 and inescapable in health care: no intervention ever leads with complete certainty to a given clinical outcome, no diagnosis is ever completely established, and no prognosis is ever completely accurate. A nurse will never have all of the reliable and valid clinical information needed to make choices with 100% certainty. Because of this uncertainty, nurses know that when we make judgement calls and decisions, we can only think in terms of the balance of probabilities.

Despite recognising the probabilistic nature of judgement and decision making in health care, most nurses (as well as doctors and patients) prefer to discuss chance events using words rather than numbers. For example, if you listen to surgical nurses talking with patients about their chances of passing flatus in the 24 hours after abdominal surgery, you will hear expressions such as, "It is rare that patients will start to pass wind in the first 24 hours after major abdominal surgery; it is more likely you will begin passing wind again 24–48 hours after surgery." Likewise, most community nurses are unlikely to be heard telling their patients that "There is a 45–50% chance of your venous leg ulcer healing in 6 months with this compression bandage." These qualitative expressions of uncertainty, although relatively easy to use, are prone to misunderstanding. When asked to quantify their uncertainty in response to hearing words such as "rare" or "likely," patients and professionals—even when given access to the same information—often give widely variable estimates of what the phrase means to them.2

Fortunately, for patients and professionals alike, there is an alternative: the language of probability. As well as being the language of uncertainty, it is also the language used in evidence-based decision making. Determining the statistical significance of a research result means knowing what …


Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism. Larzer Ziff's introduction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson's most significant writings provides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his formative years.