Abstract. The mechanism of ice nucleation to form Type 2 PSCs is important for controlling the ice particle size and hence the possible dehydration in the polar winter stratosphere. This paper probes heterogeneous ice nucleation on sulfuric acid tetrahydrate (SAT). Laboratory experiments were performed using a thin-film, high-vacuum apparatus in which the condensed phase is monitored via Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and water pressure is monitored with the combination of an MKS baratron and an ionization gauge. Results show that SAT is an efficient ice nucleus with a critical ice saturation ratio of S* ice = 1.3 to 1.02 over the temperature range 169.8-194.5 K. This corresponds to a necessary supercooling of 0.1-1.3 K below the ice frost point. The laboratory data is used as input for a microphysical/photochemical model to probe the effect that this heterogeneous nucleation mechanism could have on Type 2 PSC formation and stratospheric dehydration. In the model simulations, even a very small number of SAT particles (e.g., 10 -3 cm -3 ) result in ice nucleation on SAT as the dominant mechanism for Type 2 PSC formation. As a result, Type 2 PSC formation is more widespread, leading to larger-scale dehydration. The characteristics of the clouds are controlled by the assumed number of SAT particles present, demonstrating that a proper treatment of SAT is critical for correctly modeling Type 2 PSC formation and stratospheric dehydration.


Purpose The core aim of this research is to explore those ways through which employees at Zarai Tarqiati Bank Limited Pakistan (ZTBL) are being paid financially or non-financially for the work they perform or are asked to perform in tough routine. Therefore, those factors are under consideration which put immense influence over employees' behavior & attitude besides the level of satisfaction of the workers. In order to go ahead in line of the purpose of this study, a number of recommendations are to be given to the management of Zarai Tarqiati Bank Limited Pakistan (ZTBL) so that the employees under different cadres and scales get satisfied with the practices and policies relating to the compensation rigorously followed by the bank under different circumstances which can prove to be a milestone in achieving success not only for the employees at the bank but also for the bank itself in the present arena of stiff competition in the banking industry of Pakistan. Methodology For the sake of achieving results survey methodology is carried out and a questionnaire as an instrument has been used. The questionnaire form is an opted one and taken from Malik's work, 2005 on compensation policies and practices being followed in foreign bank here in Pakistan. However, in order to have clear picture as what employees deliberate so as far compensation practices are concerned; percentage analysis technique has been used to have the clear understanding as what the respondents say about a particular phenomenon. Findings The results suggest that pay incentives in different forms are very meager in amount and so is the case with benefits given to the employees. Mixed results have been extracted as those who points out that employee earnings largely depends on organizational performance and those who don't think so. Seniority has been observed as powerful criteria upon which employees get handsome compensation package & this is what employees aspire for as well. However, most of the employees highlighted that they need to be paid for the better performance they show up against their work assigned. Results also show that most of the employees think that ZTBL pay practices are well designed to have top performer at work along with the phenomenon that pay practices are smart enough to bring effectiveness even for the bank itself while at the same time most of them think this is not happening at all. Recommendations It is suggested to the bank policy makers that individual performance has to be taken into consideration and be rewarded accordingly. For better results for the bank; seniority should not be focused altogether but pay for performance is duly prescribed. The bank has to reshape its existing benefits package along with those non-financial aspects to be used as part of total compensation package. Pay practices need to be tailored in line of employees needs and lastly the alignment has to be there between organizational philosophy/objective & compensation strategy out there in ZTBL, Pakistan.


The explosion in the production of scientific data in recent years is placing strains upon conventional systems supporting integration, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data and thus constraining the whole scientific process. Support for handling large quantities of diverse information can be provided by e-Science methodologies and the cyber-infrastructure that enables collaborative handling of such data. Regard needs to be taken of the whole process involved in scientific discovery. This includes the consideration of the requirements of the users and consumers further down the information chain and what they might ideally prefer to impose on the generators of those data. As the degree of digital capture in the laboratory increases, it is possible to improve the automatic acquisition of the 'context of the data' as well as the data themselves. This process provides an opportunity for the data creators to ensure that many of the problems they often encounter in later stages are avoided. We wish to elevate curation to an operation to be considered by the laboratory scientist as part of good laboratory practice, not a procedure of concern merely to the few specialising in archival processes. Designing curation into experiments is an effective solution to the provision of high-quality metadata that leads to better, more re-usable data and to better science.


Through interviews with the two leaders, site visits, and analysis of documentation, this dissertation presents both the benefits and potential negative consequences of book aid, as well as issues relating to the viability of creating sustainable international library programs in Africa. This research addresses the following two research questions: How do the leaders of international library development programs balance the benefits of ILD programs with the possible negative effects of supplying foreign aid; and, is sustainability an achievable goal in international library development?


Markov decision processes capture sequential decision making under uncertainty, where an agent must choose actions so as to optimize long term reward. The paper studies efficient reasoning mechanisms for Relational Markov Decision Processes (RMDP) where world states have an internal relational structure that can be naturally described in terms of objects and relations among them. Two contributions are presented. First, the paper develops First Order Decision Diagrams (FODD), a new compact representation for functions over relational structures, together with a set of operators to combine FODDs, and novel reduction techniques to keep the representation small. Second, the paper shows how FODDs can be used to develop solutions for RMDPs, where reasoning is performed at the abstract level and the resulting optimal policy is independent of domain size (number of objects) or instantiation. In particular, a variant of the value iteration algorithm is developed by using special operations over FODDs, and the algorithm is shown to converge to the optimal policy.


Well, someone can decide by themselves what they want to do and need to do but sometimes, that kind of person will need some nuclear disaster in the urals references. People with open minded will always try to seek for the new things and information from many sources. On the contrary, people with closed mind will always think that they can do it by their principals. So, what kind of person are you?


Ted Kaczynski and Bernie Madoff share much in common. Both are well-educated, extremely intelligent, charismatic figures. Both rose to the height of their chosen professions — mathematics and finance. And both will die in federal prison, Kaczynski for committing a twenty-year mail-bombing spree that killed three people and seriously injured dozens more, and Madoff for committing the largest Ponzi scheme in history, bilking thousands of people out of almost $65 billion. But that last similarity — Kaczynski's and Madoff's plight at sentencing — may not have had to be. While Kaczynski's attorneys tirelessly investigated and argued every aspect of their client's personal history, mental state, motivations, and sentencing options, Madoff's attorneys offered almost nothing to mitigate his conduct, simply accepting his fate at sentencing. In the end, Kaczynski's attorneys were able to convince the government, the court, and their client that a life sentence was appropriate despite that he committed one of the most heinous and well-publicized death penalty-eligible crimes in recent history. Madoff, on the other hand, with almost unlimited resources at his disposal, received effectively the same sentence — 150 years in prison — for a nonviolent economic offense. Why were these two ultimately given the same sentence? And what can Madoff, the financier with unimaginable wealth, learn from Kaczynski, the reclusive and remorseless killer, when it comes to federal sentencing? The answer lies in how attorneys use sentencing mitigation strategies. This Article contends that federal white collar defendants have failed to effectively use mitigation strategies to lessen their sentences, resulting in unnecessarily long prison terms for nonviolent offenders committing financial crimes. The white collar defense bar has inexplicably ignored the mitigation techniques perfected by capital defense attorneys, and in the process has failed to effectively represent its clients. After discussing the development of the mitigation function in capital cases and paralleling it with the evolution of white collar sentencing jurisprudence, particularly post-Booker, this article will present seven key mitigation strategies currently used by capital defense teams and discuss how these strategies might be employed in federal white collar cases. The goal throughout this Article will be to highlight new strategies and techniques available in defending white collar clients and to enhance sentencing advocacy in federal criminal cases.


With the increasing pressure created by HIV/AIDS and chronic illness, home-based healthcare (HBHC) has become a vital counter-service in developing countries. Yet, initial observations in several HBHC setups in the Western Cape of South Africa have indicated that caregivers lacked proper support structures. This was either in the form of patient data administration, finances, emotional counseling, or informal educational opportunities. These challenges in turn may inspire a range of probable 'solutions', ICT and otherwise. These circumstances are the rationale, then, behind a full ethnographic undertaking. Indeed, an in-depth understanding of HBHC in its variety of contexts must precede any (abstract) solutions, be it in ICT, social development, or health provision. This paper sets out to elucidate some of the social and cultural factors that are pertinent in this environment, to explore the needs and desires of caregivers – particularly informational and educational – and to lay the early foundation for possible communication technology-based solutions (or counter-actions).


Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows -- ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity -- for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel--driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts -- from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.


We investigate the effects of both trust and sociability for stock market participation, the role of which has been examined separately by existing finance literature. We use internationally comparable household data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe supplemented with regional information on generalized trust from the World Value Survey and on specific trust to financial institutions from Eurobarometer. We show that trust and sociability have distinct and sizeable positive effects on stock market participation and that sociability is likely to partly balance the discouragement effect on stockholding induced by low generalized trust in the region of residence. We also show that specific trust in advice given by financial institutions represents a prominent factor for stock investing, compared to other tangible features of the banking environment. Probing further into various groups of households, we find that sociability can induce stockholding among the less well off in Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland where stock market participation is widespread. On the other hand, the effect of generalized trust is strong in countries with limited participation and low average trust like Austria, Spain, and Italy, offering an explanation for the remarkably low participation rates of the wealthy living therein.


An important development in corporate law is the recent explicit recognition, in a series of Delaware cases, that corporate managers owe a fiduciary duty of good faith in addition to their traditional duties of care and loyalty. The duty of good faith was not created by those cases. On the contrary, the duty has long been explicit under the statutes - for example, in statutory provisions that require directors to act in good faith, and in provisions concerning indemnification. The duty of good faith has also long existed implicitly in the case law - for example, in the formulation of the business judgment rule and in fiduciary obligations that can only be explained by that duty, such as the duty not to knowingly cause the corporation to violate the law. Nevertheless, the explicit recognition of the duty of good faith in recent Delaware cases shines a spotlight on that duty and therefore makes it especially important to develop the contours of the duty and to examine the duty from a normative perspective. Briefly, the duty of good faith in corporate law is comprised of a general baseline conception and specific obligations that instantiate that conception. The baseline conception consists of four elements: subjective honesty, or sincerity; nonviolation of generally accepted standards of decency applicable to the conduct of business; nonviolation of generally accepted basic corporate norms; and fidelity to office. Among the specific obligations that instantiate the baseline conception are the obligation not to knowingly cause the corporation to disobey the law and the obligation of candor even in non-self-interested contexts. Turning to the normative issue, there are several basic reasons why the duty of good faith is desirable. To begin with, the duties of care and loyalty do not cover all types of improper conduct by managers, because certain kinds of managerial misconduct fall outside the spheres of those duties, and most of these types of misconduct fall within the duty of good faith. Furthermore, various rules limit a manager's accountability under the duties of care and loyalty, and these limiting rules should be and are inapplicable to conduct that violates the duty of good faith. Moreover, the duties of care and loyalty characteristically (although not invariably) function as platforms for liability rules, while the duty of good faith characteristically (although not invariably) functions as a condition to the application of rules that do not in themselves impose liability. This difference in characteristic function makes it desirable to treat good faith separately from care and loyalty. Finally, the duty of good faith provides a principled basis for the courts to articulate new specific fiduciary obligations that come to be seen as appropriate in response to changes in social and business norms, and in the general understanding of efficiency and other policy considerations, but that cannot be easily accommodated within the duties of care or loyalty.


Important Note about PRINT ON DEMAND Editions: You are purchasing a print on demand edition of this book. This book is printed individually on uncoated (non-glossy) paper with the best quality printers available. The printing quality of this copy will vary from the original offset printing edition and may look more saturated. The information presented in this version is the same as the latest edition. Any pattern pullouts have been separated and presented as single pages. If the pullout patterns are missing, please contact c&t publishing.


Idioms, forms of figurative language, are used pervasively in both spoken and written discourse. However, mainly due to their figurative nature, they are often considered difficult to learn. The present study tried to first of all briefly investigate the language learners' attitudes toward learning L2 idioms. It then compared the effect of written vs. video-graphic contexts on the language learners' long-term and short-term retention of idioms. To know about the language learners' attitudes to learning English idioms and their relevant experiences, a questionnaire was administered to a group of Iranian EFL learners. The results of the questionnaire proved their highly positive view toward learning idioms and their need for helpful and facilitating learning strategies. At the second stage of the study, two similar groups of intermediate EFL learners were exposed to unfamiliar idioms through a story in written and video-graphic contexts. The subjects were also given the definitions on a separate sheet to check. The subjects' long-term and short-term retention were then tested and compared. The results of the study showed no significant difference between the performances of the two groups regarding their short term retention, while with respect to long-term retention; the animation group i.e. the one exposed to the video-graphic context significantly outperformed the text group. The results of the study also support the dual coding theory which emphasizes the role of mental imagery in retention.


This new high profile report provides details of taxes paid on wages in twenty economies in Latin America and the Caribbean.  It covers: personal income taxes and social security contributions paid by employees; social security contributions and payroll taxes paid by employers; cash benefits received by in-work families.
It illustrates how these taxes and benefits are calculated in each member country and examines how they impact on household incomes. The results also enable quantitative cross-country comparisons of labour cost levels and the overall tax and benefit position of single persons and families on different levels of earnings.
The publication shows the amounts of taxes and social security contributions levied and cash benefits received for eight different family types which vary by a combination of household composition and household type.  It also presents the resulting average and marginal tax rates (i.e. the tax burden). Average tax rates show that part of gross wage earnings or total labour costs which is taken in tax and social security contributions (both before and after cash benefits). Marginal tax rates show the part of a small increase of gross earnings or total labour costs that is paid in these levies.
The data presented can be used in academic research and to analyse tax, social and economic policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.


Background Semen quality appears to have declined over the past decades but reasons for this decline are unresolved. The concurrent increase in sedentary behaviour may be a contributing factor. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship of physical activity and television (TV) watching with sperm parameters in a population of young, healthy men. Methods Men aged 18–22 years (n=189) from the Rochester Young Men's Study (2009–2010) participated in this analysis. Physical activity (h/week of moderate and vigorous exercise) and TV watching (h/week of TV, video or DVD watching) over the past 3 months were assessed via questionnaire. Semen quality was assessed by sperm concentration, motility, morphology and total sperm count. Results Sperm concentration and total sperm count were directly related to physical activity after multivariable adjustment (p-trend=0.01 and 0.04); men in the highest quartile of moderate-to-vigorous activity (≥15 h/week) had 73% (95% CI 15% to 160%) higher sperm concentration than men in the lowest quartile (<5 h/week). TV watching was inversely associated with sperm concentration and total sperm count in multivariable analyses (p-trend=0.05 and 0.06); men in the highest quartile of TV watching (>20 h/week) had 44% (95% CI 15 to 63%) lower sperm concentration than men in the lowest quartile (0 h/week). These measures of physical and leisure time activities were not significantly associated with sperm motility or morphology. Conclusions In this population of healthy men, higher moderate-to-vigorous activity and less TV watching were significantly associated with higher total sperm count and sperm concentration.


This thesis provides an alternative method to for mapping soil erosion. The method is conducted in a small study area of 40 km2 in the Sorbas Basin, Almeria province, Southeast Spain.
Soil erosion is one of the most destructive land degradation processes and can often lead to serious environmental problems. It is important to implement appropriate management strategies to meet these challenges at a range of scales. However, prior knowledge of erosion processes and the extent to which they operate spatially is often limited and, traditional methods of soil erosion mapping are often time and labour intensive. This thesis explores the use of two Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for soil erosion mapping; Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Decision Tree Classifiers (DTCs). The opportunities for employing such methods relate in part to their non-linear capabilities, their ability to learn in an inductive manner and incorporate multi¬source data sets.
AI training and test data were collected from 520 individually sampled locations within the study area. At each site the dependent variable erosion was estimated, as were a range of independent variables through field study. Two Digital Elevation Models were developed. Laboratory analysis was also undertaken to explore the physico-chemical processes relating to soil dispersion and to determine the applicability of a soil sodicity meter developed by the Co-operative Research Centre for Soil and Land Management in Adelaide, Australia.
Results demonstrate that classification accuracy.and overall performance is strongly dependent on the independent and dependent variables used, with the more expensive field collected data providing improved variables to those extracted from the Digital Elevation Models. Discriminant Analysis (DA) classifications were also employed to provide a linear comparison to the AI techniques, and performed comparably well. In the Artificial Neural Network classifications the composition of the training set was seen to exert significant bias, leading to poor performance and often misleading results. Laboratory analysis highlights the complex physico-chemical relationships associated with soil dispersion. The findings also indicate that no discernible relationship exists between the sodicity meter and standard laboratory procedures employed to measure the sodic properties of a soil.
The thesis demonstrates the potential for employing these methods for erosion risk analysis and the ability of inductive approaches to formulate rules that may enhance current levels of understanding associated with soil erosion processes. Mapped outputs produced by these methods may prove valuable in the management of landscapes susceptible to soil erosion.


A close look at literature and language shows that the two are closely related. This close relationship is obvious because from all indications, literature presupposes language. It is inconceivable to discuss literature without reference to language. But going by the traditional practice at the secondary school level in Nigerian context, there are indications that Literature and English Language are treated as two separate school subjects. At the senior secondary school level, the subjects are taught in different classroom settings by teachers that are either designated Literature teachers or English teachers. By this dichotomy, the Literature teachers, to a large extent, pre-occupy their teaching period with the teaching of the stories, the contents and the socio-cultural, economic and religious implications of the prescribed literary texts without placing much emphasis on the language components of the texts. In the end, some students have been found to have done very well in the Literature exams but perform poorly in English Language. Against this background, this paper posited that the relationship between literature and language is symbiotic. It was, therefore, suggested that the relationship should be explored and exploited in order to enhance effective teaching and learning of Literature and English Language at the secondary school level so that the learners would possess high level of proficiency in the use of English Language, which would ultimately contribute immensely in addressing the seeming poor academic performance at the secondary and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria. Some suggestions for effective teaching and learning of Literature and English Language were made.


If we take conceptual art seriously, that is, if we consider that art does not have clear-cut boundaries and that it is not limited to the production of aesthetic objects, then a whole spectrum of possible artworks is open to us. Not only can random objects be conceived as artistic, but cognitive states (ideas, concepts, representations) and behaviors can also be meaningfully conceived as pieces of art by their producer and by any sensitive observer. If one is to take one?s life as a piece of conceptual art, one then faces the question of what kind of life would count as a worthwhile piece of art, i.e., what kind of life can have any artistic worth. In this paper, I discuss the possibility that the pursuit of a worthwhile life in the Aristotelian sense, more particularly the meticulous design of a character as a set of good emotional, conative, and behavioral dispositions, can count as an artistic endeavor. My aim is to show how this can be the case, and to show that this bears on major issues in contemporary philosophy of art concerning the relation between ethics and aesthetics.


We present a tractable model of the effects of nonfinancial risk on intertemporal choice. Our purpose is to provide a simple framework that can be adopted in fields like representative-agent macroeconomics, corporate finance, or political economy, where most modelers have chosen not to incorporate serious nonfinancial risk because available methods were too complex to yield transparent insights. Our model produces an intuitive analytical formula for target assets, and we show how to analyze transition dynamics using a familiar Ramsey-style phase diagram. Despite its starkness, our model captures most of the key implications of nonfinancial risk for intertemporal choice.


An innovative, new multi-level course for the university and in-company sector. Business Advantage is the course for tomorrow's business leaders. Based on a unique syllabus that combines current business theory, business in practice and business skills - all presented using authentic, expert input - the course contains specific business-related outcomes that make the material highly relevant and engaging. The Business Advantage Upper-intermediate level books include input from the following leading institutions and organisations: the Cambridge Judge Business School, the Boston Consulting Group, Nokia, Dell, and Havaianas - to name but a few. The Student's Book comes with a free DVD of video case studies.


This paper presents a novel approach for representing and maintaining a shared 3D world model for robotic applications. This approach is based on the scene graph concept which has been adapted to the requirements of the robotic domain. A key feature is the temporal and centralized sharing of all available 3D data in the leaves of the graph structure. The approach enables tracking of dynamic objects, incorporates uncertainty and allows for annotations by semantic tags. A demonstration is given for a perception application that exploits the temporal sharing of 3D data. A Region of Interest (ROI) is extracted from the stored scene data in order to accelerate processing cycle times.


This article was presented at a symposium entitled "Public and Private: Are the Boundaries in Transition?" sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute on June 24, 2010. It proposes a different paradigm, which more precisely describes regulation and competition in the insurance sector. This relationship is the shifting boundary between state and federal regulation instead of a boundary between the public and private sectors. The McCarran-Ferguson Act was adopted to protect firms acting in the business of insurance from federal antitrust scrutiny, but its language and impact goes far beyond federal competition law. So broad is the exemption that the modern effect of the Act only incidentally concerns antitrust. Fundamentally, the Act reifies the boundaries between federal and state power; it is, at base, an allocation of power and an affirmation of the federalism paradigm. In this sector, the distinction is between different manifestations of public power rather than the distinction between public and private power. Moreover, the defense of the antitrust boundaries is a skirmish, not the subject of the main purpose of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which is, as ever, federalism. My provisional conclusions are as follows: the antitrust exemption is unnecessary, but even if it were eliminated, it would have protected little. Reverse preemption, which could be viewed as mere mischief, an unintended consequence, is, in fact, at the heart of this model and exposes the points of the Act: preservation of the boundaries, allocation of power, and deference among the states and federal government. This Article discusses, first, the antitrust immunity aspect of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, including the asserted justification for the exemption and whether it is required in the era of modern antitrust interpretation. Next, it discusses proposed legislative repealers and reasons for their failure, and offers comparative examples of competition and exemption in the insurance sector from the European Union. Finally, it concludes by returning to first principles, which reach more broadly than antitrust and implicate the structure of federal and state authority.


Transcriptional induction of the gene encoding cytochrome P450 3A oxygenase (CYP3A) causes a prominent class of dangerous drug-drug interactions wherein one drug accelerates the metabolism of another. In our 1998 JCI paper, we reported the cloning of the human nuclear receptor PXR and demonstrated that it mediates CYP3A induction. We determined that PXR is expressed in liver, acts through a DNA response element located in the CYP3A promoter, and is activated by a structurally diverse collection of drugs that induce CYP3A. Our findings revealed the molecular basis for the CYP3A induction class of drug-drug interactions and provided a high-throughput means for screening out drug candidates with this activity.


Educators, who come to the academy in which I
serve, are searching for answers. These individuals struggle with how to implement local,
state, and federal legislation, seek efficient and effective ways to provide optimal learning experiences for all members of the learning community, and strive to make sense of the dynamic cultures in which they work professionally. During this era of market competition, globalization, and educational accountability, the challenge of the academy is transforming those aspiring educational leaders who are concerned more with "the bottom line" into critically conscious democratic leaders who seek to develop free thinking members of our
society. Given the call for "principal executives," democratic education and freedom have been reduced to the ability to achieve academic standards and acquire material goods, wealth, and power without critiquing the
consequences of inequity, greed, and inequality.


A native sulfur mineralization was quarried out intensively for a period of almost 30 years in Călimani Mountains, the Eastern Carpathians. The waste resulted from this exploitation activity was stored in four waste dumps, while the residues resulted from the processing were disposed in a settlement pond. Although mining operations closed in 1997, the remains of the former sulfur mining are listed among the major pollutants in Romania. The present paper intends to present a preliminary analysis and the current state of the impact of pollution of the former mining exploitation on different environmental factors, by assessing some quality indicators of surface waters and soils. Water and soil samples from different areas situated in the proximity of the former mine were collected and analyzed, performing pH, conductometric, turbidity, chemical and microbiological determinations. The results of this study demonstrate that the pollutant potential of the former sulfur mining from the Călimani Mountains is still very high, a fact proved by the acidic pH of the surface waters and soil, high turbidity and conductivity of the water respectively by the high number of impurities detectable through a simple preliminary chemical analysis.


Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this book provides a systematic approach to legislation and legal practice concerning energy resources and production in Malaysia. The book describes the administrative organization, regulatory framework, and relevant case law pertaining to the development, application, and use of such forms of energy as electricity, gas, petroleum, and coal, with attention as needed to the pervasive legal effects of competition law, environmental law, and tax law. A general introduction covers the geography of energy resources, sources and basic principles of energy law, and the relevant governmental institutions. Then follows a detailed description of specific legislation and regulation affecting such factors as documentation, undertakings, facilities, storage, pricing, procurement and sales, transportation, transmission, distribution, and supply of each form of energy. Case law, intergovernmental cooperation agreements, and interactions with environmental, tax, and competition law are explained. Its succinct yet scholarly nature, as well as the practical quality of the information it provides, make this book a valuable resource for energy sector policymakers and energy firm counsel handling cases affecting Malaysia. It will also be welcomed by researchers and academics for its contribution to the study of a complex field that today stands at the foreground of comparative law.


Landmark, groundbreaking, classic-these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name": the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th-anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.


We present an approach to systematically describing case-based reasoning systems bydifferent kinds of criteria. One main requirement was the practical relevance of these criteria and their usability for real-life applications. We report on the results we achieved from a case study carried out in the INRECA1 Esprit project.


In Canada, the trend is towards greater use of distance learning technologies in the provision of continuing professional education in the health professions. Lack of access to professional development is a common deterrent to practice in rural and remote areas. Distance learning technologies have an important role to play in addressing the professional isolation challenges experienced by rural and remote health care providers. This article examines the state of distance learning provision among Canadian providers of continuing health professional education. The survey population included academic institutions, national/provincial health professional associations and non-profit health advocacy organizations, the pharmaceutical industry, and hospital/health care authority organizations. The results provide a greater understanding of the state of distance learning provision among providers of continuing health professional education in Canada and suggest a number of means to foster distance learning opportunities for rural health care provider.


Purpose Paediatric forearm fractures are commonly seen and treated by closed reduction and plaster cast application in theatre. Historically cast application has been subjectively evaluated for its adequacy in maintaining fracture reduction. More recently emphasis has been placed on objectively evaluating the adequacy of cast application using indicators such as the Canterbury index (CI). The CI has been used in predicting post-reduction, re-displacement risk of patients by expressing the cast and padding indexes as a ratio. The CI has been criticised for not including cast three-point pres sure, fracture personality, lack of standardisation of X-ray views as well as practical requirement of physical meas urement using rulers. The aim of this study was to determine whether subjective evaluation of these indices, before and after a tutorial on the CI, was accurate in predicting a patient's ultimate risk of re-displacement, following reduction and casting. In addition, we aimed to determine whether objective evaluation of these indices by measurement on the hospital's digital X-ray system correlated with the final fracture outcome post-reduction. Materials and methods A retrospective study was done on a sample of 11 patients during the period May 2010 to July 2011 at Steve Biko Academic Hospital. In total, 44 X-rays/fluoroscopy views were subjectively evaluated by 20 registrars and eight con sultants for possible fracture re-displacement, before and after a tutorial on the CI. Five consultants and 10 registrars each measured 22 cast, padding and CIs on the digital X-ray system. Results A formal tutorial did not produce an increase in subjective predictive accuracy. Pre- and post-tutorial observed agree ment was seldom better than agreement by chance alone. Poor strength of agreement ( κ <0.20 ) was found in all groups, irrespective of level of displacement, imaging modality, level of orthopaedic training and tutorial attendance. Objective measurement of the indexes all had insignificant p-values for comparing groups, indicating that there was no correla tion between the measured indexes and the final outcome irrespective of the level of fracture, imaging modality and level of orthopaedic training. Shortcomings were variable co-operation from participants and non-standardisation of X-rays. Conclusion In our hospital setting, no clinical value for the subjective and/or objective use of the CI could be found. Subjective agreement was almost the same as expected agreement and objective measurement indicated no correlation with the fracture outcome. It is suggested that patients following closed reduction of forearm fractures be followed up within the first three days, and regularly thereafter, as there is currently no ideal system to predict re-displacement. Further studies are needed to validate the CI by standardisation of X-rays.


Functional data analysis is a branch of statistics that deals with observations \(X_1,..., X_n\) which are curves. We are interested in particular in time series of dependent curves and, specifically, consider the functional autoregressive process of order one (FAR(1)), which is defined as \(X_{n+1}=\Psi(X_{n})+\epsilon_{n+1}\) with independent innovations \(\epsilon_t\). Estimates \(\hat{\Psi}\) for the autoregressive operator \(\Psi\) have been investigated a lot during the last two decades, and their asymptotic properties are well understood. Particularly difficult and different from scalar- or vector-valued autoregressions are the weak convergence properties which also form the basis of the bootstrap theory.

Although the asymptotics for \(\hat{\Psi}{(X_{n})}\) are still tractable, they are only useful for large enough samples. In applications, however, frequently only small samples of data are available such that an alternative method for approximating the distribution of \(\hat{\Psi}{(X_{n})}\) is welcome. As a motivation, we discuss a real-data example where we investigate a changepoint detection problem for a stimulus response dataset obtained from the animal physiology group at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.

To get an alternative for asymptotic approximations, we employ the naive or residual-based bootstrap procedure. In this thesis, we prove theoretically and show via simulations that the bootstrap provides asymptotically valid and practically useful approximations of the distributions of certain functions of the data. Such results may be used to calculate approximate confidence bands or critical bounds for tests.


Months after the accident unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the nuclear crisis continues. Though the worst, it seems, has passed, many technical, social, legal, and economic hurdles must be overcome. Major short-term challenges include stabilizing the reactors and managing more than 100,000 tons of contaminated water, as well as cleaning up the site, which still contains a large amount of contaminated debris from the accident. Long-term challenges include dealing with spent fuel in the storage pools and damaged fuel in the reactors, as well as decommissioning the reactors. In a 670-page report to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Japanese government explored its next steps in managing the crisis. In this article, the author revisits the tragedy at the nuclear station and highlights a few of the most pressing—and most challenging—of the government's plans. The author writes that Fukushima should contain lessons not just for Japan but for all 31 countries with nuclear power.


The motion field of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, was analyzed, based on Landsat data from 1986 to 1989, ERS-SAR data from1992 to 1997, and comparative field measurements along three transects. During this period the northern sections of the ice shelf showed steadyretreat, which culminated in the disintegration of the two ice shelf sections north of the Seal Nunataks in January 1995. Velocities of these two sectionswere derived by cross-correlation, using SAR images of one-year time intervals and Landsat images of one- to three-year intervals. A slight increaseof velocity was observed, as crevasses and rifts opened before the final disintegration. In addition, an interferometric motion analysis was carried outfor the ice shelf around and south of Seal Nunataks based on an image pair from the ERS-1/ERS-2 Tandem Mission in 1995. This analysis reveals acomplex pattern of tidal flexure in the grounding zones, as well as rifting and shear zones on the ice shelf. In addition, the motion of the main inputglaciers was derived.


We report on investigations of the crystallographic structure and the magnetic anisotropies of epitaxial iron films deposited onto periodically stepped Ag(001) surfaces using low energy electron diffraction, x-ray diffraction, second harmonic generation (SHG), as well as the Brillouin light scattering (BLS) technique. The focus of the present study lies on the interrelation between the surface morphology of the buffer layers and the magnetic properties of the Fe films, epitaxially grown onto them. Especially the symmetry breaking at the atomic steps is found to create an uniaxial magnetic anisotropy measured by BLS and a very strong anisotropic signal in magnetic SHG.


A blueprint for the investigation of neurodevelopmental disorders, this book presents the work of a team of scientists using a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to link genes with human behavior. Using Williams syndrome as a model, leading researchers in neuroanatomy, neurocognition, neurophysiology, and molecular genetics have built bridges between disciplines to link higher cognitive functions, their underlying neurobiological bases, and their molecular genetic underpinnings. One of the book's many strengths is that the scientists from each discipline studied the same individuals with Williams syndrome. As the book shows, Williams syndrome is a fascinating disorder because of the "peaks and valleys" among cognitive domains: severe intellectual deficits but remarkably spared and effusive language; specific impairment in spatial construction but great strength in face processing and sociability. By capitalizing on these dissociations in higher cognitive functioning, the book provides a model for the study of brain-behavior relationships as well as for the mapping of brain and behavior phenotypes to the genome and beyond. Contributors: Ralph Adolphs, Twyla Alvarez, Lawrence Appelbaum, Ursula Bellugi, Dennis Burian, Xiao-Ning Chen, Michael Chiles, Stephan Eliez, Albert Galaburda, Hanao Hirota, Wendy Jones, Julie Korenberg, Zona Lai, Liz Lichtenberger, Alan Lincoln, Rumiko Matsuoka, Debra Mills, Helen Neville, Judy Reilly, Allan Reiss, Bruce Roe, Marie St. George, J. Eric Schmidtt, Erica Straus.


Millions of us are locked into an unwinnable weight game, as our self-worth is shredded with every diet failure. Combine the utter inefficacy of dieting with the lack of spiritual nourishment and we have generations of mad, ravenous self-loathing women. So says Geneen Roth, in her life-changing new book, Women, Food and God. Since her 1991 bestseller, When Food Is Love, was published, Roth has taken the sum total of her experience and combined it with spirituality and psychology to explain women's true hunger. Roth's approach to eating is that it is the same as any addiction - an activity to avoid feeling emotions. From the first page, readers will be struck by the author's intelligence, humour and sensitivity, as she traces the path of overeating from its subtle beginnings through to its logical end. Whether the drug is booze or brownies, the problem is the same: opting out of life. She powerfully urges readers to pay attention to what they truly need - which cannot be found in a supermarket. She provides seven basic guidelines for eating (the most important is to never diet) and shares reassuring, practical advice that has helped thousands of women who have attended her highly successful seminars. Truly a thinking woman's guide to eating - and an anti-diet book - women everywhere will find insights and revelations on every page.


The growing use of digital processing in analog environments underlines the importance of Analog Digital Converter (ADC) occurrence in circuitry. The quality and reliability of the conversion are closely linked to the Sample and Hold (SH) performance. Actually SH is a key component in the Analog/Digital chain. The Operational Amplifier being at the heart of the SH influences its output and subsequently impacts the reliability and quality of the conversion. In this paper we present the impact of both Operational Amplifier intrinsic characteristics and external factors such as injected charges, and clock noise on the SH overall performance. We limit our consideration to the offset and parasite capacities as the only relevant Operational Amplifier intrinsic characteristics. We'll introduce the Operational Amplifier and SH functional characteristics then address the impact of each of these parameters on the SH output which the ADC works on. A behavioral description of the Operational Amplifier based on the Verilog-A language under Cadence approach is used. Furthermore a behavioral/analog mixed description is considered for the SH: the Operational Amplifier described behaviorally in Verilog-A is associated to analog components in Cadence libraries and CMOS switches act as SH. However this simplistic approach doesn't reflect all the challenges involved, because it is not enough to connect a SH to ADC to flawlessly digitalize an analog signal. The SH architecture and the Operational Amplifier characteristics play also a role for a reliable sampling and therefore a good quality conversion prospect.In this study the SH performance is evaluated through its non-linearity which in turn determines the sampling accuracy a key factor for a conversion. This study is as shown that small amplitude signals are more sensible to sampling errors related to Operational Amplifier offset. Furthermore the stray capacities attenuate the SH signal output. The injected charges and the clocknoise as strongly interrelated contribute to the non-linearity of the conversion chain.


At Home Ensemble consisting of two pieces:

A) Bodysuit of bright green knitted silk jersey with over-length sleeves and legs. Center back lapped zipper closure from neckline to lower back, with one hook-and-eye closure at top of zipper.

Designer's label at inside left back, just beside zipper: "Rudi Gernreich".

B) Tunic/tabard formed of two long rectangular panels of black silk with white printed polka dots all over. Boat neckline with thin "straps" simulated at shoulders where panels meet. The panels are sewn at left side for 17 cm. below arm and open the rest of the length. On right side are three snaps and one hook-and-eye closure. Left shoulder sewn shut, right with one hook-and-eye closure. The panels are lined in shocking pink silk.

Designer's label at front inside, just below neckline: "Rudi Gernreich"
Retailer's label at back inside, just below neckline: "Neiman-Marcus / Trophy Room"


The Advanced Laser Fluorometer (ALF) provides spectral deconvolution (SDC) analysis of the laser‐stimulated emission (LSE) excited at 405 or 532 nm for assessment of chlorophyll a, phycoerythrin, and chromophoric dissolved organic matter. Three spectral types of phycoerythrin are discriminated for characterization of cyanobacteria and cryptophytes in mixed phototrophic populations. The SDC analysis is integrated with measurements of variable fluorescence, Fv/Fm, corrected for the SDC‐retrieved background fluorescence, BNC, for improved photophysiological assessments of phytoplankton. The ALF deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and Chesapeake, Delaware, and Monterey Bays revealed significant spectral complexity of LSE. Considerable variability in chlorophyll a fluorescence peak, 673‐685 nm, was detected. High correlation (R2 = 0.93) was observed in diverse water types between chlorophyll a concentration and fluorescence normalized to water Raman scattering. Three unidentified red bands, peaking at 625, 644, and 662 nm, were detected in the LSE excited at 405 nm. Significant variability in the BNC/chlorophyll a ratio was observed in diverse waters. Examples of the ALF spectral correction of Fv/Fm, underway shipboard measurements of horizontal variability, and vertical distributions compiled from the discrete samples analyses are presented. The field deployments have demonstrated the utility of the ALF technique as an integrated tool for research and observations.


Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California-born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks: What do you do when someone you love wants to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife on an afternoon chilled by the Baltic wind while both are painting in their studio. Her portrait model has canceled, and would he mind slipping into a pair of women's shoes and stockings for a few moments so she can finish the painting on time. "Of course," he answers. "Anything at all." With that, one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the twentieth century begins.


Get the most out of the new Canon EOS 7D with this fun and friendly guide The new Canon EOS 7D comes equipped with a huge 18.0 megapixel sensor, many beginner-friendly features to aid in getting great pictures, and a video mode that allows you to shoot video as well as stills. If you're looking to get the most from the features and functions that come with this dSLR, then this is the book for you! Written by a veteran author and experience photographer, this easy-to-understand guide shows you how to properly use all the capabilities of this new camera. Filled with page after page of full-color images, this book walks you through the features of the Canon EOS 7D and the software that accompanies it. Introduces you to the main features and functions of the new Canon EOS 7D Explains the on-board controls, shooting in auto mode, using live view and playback modes, and dialing in exposure and lighting controls Walks you through manipulating focus and color controls and handling situational shooting Addresses getting photos onto a PC for editing Prepare to take aim at maximizing all the features and functions that the Canon EOS 7D has to offer with this helpful book by your side!


A review of:

Herring, James E. "A Critical Investigation of Students' and Teachers' View of the Use of Information Literacy Skills in School Assignments." School Library Media Research, 9 (2006). 14 May 2007 http://ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/slmrb/slmrcontents/volume9/informationliteracy.htm .

Abstract

Objective – To examine student and teacher views of information literacy skills in school assignments in order to determine: 1) To what extent did students value the use of a research model booklet (PLUS)? 2) How confident were the students about doing a good assignment and did the PLUS booklet affect their confidence? 3)What benefits and limitations did students identify from individual brainstorming and concept mapping in relation to learning more about their topic and producing a good assignment? 4) To what extent did students see value in doing preliminary reading to revise their initial keywords and concept maps? 5) What reading and note-taking strategies did students adopt when using print and electronic resources? 6) To what extent (and why) did students prefer to use electronic rather than print resources? 7) What are the implications for teachers and school library media specialists (SLMS)?

Design – Qualitative, action research; collaborative inquiry.

Setting – Ripon Grammar School, Yorkshire, United Kingdom (high school/co-educational).

Subjects – Fifty-two students in the second year of high school (year 8) enrolled in a science class studying sound technology; the school library media specialist (SLMS); science teachers.
Methods – Students in this study had previously been taught a variety of information skills and had been introduced to a research model called PLUS (Purpose, Location, Use, Self-Evaluation). Students were given a PLUS model booklet, were required to select a topic in the area of sound technology, and were expected to do brainstorming and concept mapping and to produce a 600-word essay. After the assignment was completed, three methods of data collection were employed to determine students' and teachers' views:
1) post-assignment questionnaire 2) group interviews with students and teachers 3) semi-structured interview with the school librarian.

Main results – Responses indicated that students were "mostly" satisfied with the use of the PLUS model, although there were 18 students who did not respond to questions regarding the use of the booklet. It was also clear from the questionnaire that the majority of the students did not feel confident in their abilities to produce a satisfactory assignment prior to beginning the research; however, 48% of the students indicated that the PLUS booklet made them more confident. A comparable number of students said the booklet had no effect on their confidence and one student said it made them less confident.
Students responded very positively about the use of individual brainstorming and concept mapping as a way to organize and focus on their topic. (There was a split between those who felt a written concept map was useful and those who felt a mental concept map was just as helpful.) The majority of students felt that group brainstorming was helpful, while a few indicated the behavior of other students during group brainstorming was a hindrance.
Questions about preliminary reading were not open-ended but were multiple choice. There was no response to indicate whether the preliminary reading was helpful or not, but rather how it was helpful. Most students indicated it had helped to identify the right keywords for further research and it helped them in finding the right resources.
Students were questioned on the format of their note-taking. Sixty-five per cent preferred to hand write their notes in a notebook; fifteen per cent preferred to take notes electronically in some type of word processing program; twelve per cent preferred to cut and paste into a word processor; and eight per cent preferred "other methods." Note-taking styles ranged from bulleted lists to spider diagrams, to using headings with categorized notes.
When asked to indicate the percentage of information derived from Web sites versus information from books and journals, responses showed that over 65.5 % of the information came from web sites while only 35.5 % came from print material. When asked why, students responded that Web sites were easier to read, more useful, easier to use, more interesting, faster to use, had more pictures, and could be accessed from home. Students who indicated a preference for print material identified reasons such as not trusting Web sites and slow access.

Interviews with the teachers and the school librarian indicated agreement that the benefits of using the PLUS model were: it kept students from rushing into the assignment; it allowed for better thinking and analytical skills; it helped students improve their note-taking skills; and students were transferring skills.

In the interviews, teachers were very positive concerning the collaborative efforts of the school librarian. Responses from the SLMS's focused on how to improve student use of resources, and concern that teachers and librarians should engage students in activities that foster critical thinking.

Conclusion – The study suggested that students are capable of reflecting on their use of information literacy skills. It also indicated that students saw the value in brainstorming, concept mapping, and the use of a research model such as the PLUS booklet, even though these strategies did not necessarily suit the learning styles of all students. There was overwhelming evidence that students prefer electronic resources over print resources and reasons why they prefer electronic resources were articulated. Implications for teachers and school library media specialists include: collaboration, the importance of seeking and analyzing student feedback, examining transfer of information literacy skills across subjects, and exploring student use of print and electronic resources.


The protection and management of large mammals in Africa's national parks is not a matter to be left solely for the attention of natural science and scientists. The way in which the natural world is conceptualised by the humanities and social sciences is also significant, because nature is cultural as well as scientific. This article is an interdisciplinary appraisal of the manner in which the writing (e.g. discourse, vocabulary) about elephants in various literary and scientific texts has altered over time. It aims to provide an analysis of some of the literature about elephants in order to examine literate society's changing responses to the hunting and management of elephants in southern Africa over the past two centuries. The review suggests that new research questions regarding animal cognition and empathy have been generated by these changing attitudes, in conjunction with fresh directions in ecological understanding.
Conservation implications: Biodiversity conservation is an inexact science, and even the distinction between conservation research and conservation management is not clear-cut. Moreover, a degree of emotion is evident in scientific and popular discussions around what should be 'saved' and how best this might be achieved. Nature is cultural as well as scientific and interdisciplinary insights from the humanities and social sciences may beneficially inform protected area management.


Studies on gender and telephony tend to be quantitative and depict the purposes for which women and men use mobile telephones and landlines. Qualitative studies on the topic predominantly rely on face-to-face interviews to examine how telephone use genders space. We suggest these traditional methods of data collection leave unexamined the emotional and social relationships that emerge and are enabled by telephone use, which at times reconfigure and gender social spaces. In this article we present a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry based on our own telephone lives. We introduce a reflexive visual and textual methodological design, specifically diary notes, memory work, and photography, developed from our lives as researcher and researched. We examine an important theme in our findings, the physical placement of the telephone and the phone holder's awareness of the physicality of the telephone, which illustrates the importance of our methodological choices. We show how the placement of the phone by the users both genders space and creates emotional spaces.


The authors find that firms that face higher upfront commitment fees, risk premium spreads or usage fees have smaller credit lines, while those with higher overdraft fees have larger ones. Firms with greater profit growth in the past have larger credit lines, while those with more internal funds or higher volatility in profit growth have smaller credit lines. The results for line utilization are quite similar.


The chemical and molecular mechanisms of bacterial chemotaxis have been extensively
characterized through structural studies of mutant chemotaxis proteins. CheY~P (the active,
signaling form of CheY) binds the switch protein FliM at the intracellular base of the flagellar
motor, switching the direction of flagellar rotation from clockwise to counterclockwise and
punctuating periods of smooth-swimming with tumbling and random reorientation. The
conformational changes accompanying phosphorylation and activation of the response regulator
CheY have been identified; however, transfer of the "active" signal from CheY~P to the flagellar
switch complex is unknown. Crystallization of FliM alone and in complex with CheY~P would
allow detailed analysis of the interactions between CheY~P and FliM that force a change in the
directional rotation of the flagella. These structures are difficult to crystallize since FliM is a
membrane-bound protein and is not soluble in the conditions necessary for crystallization. The
a-proteobacteria, Bacillus subtilis and Thermotoga maritima contain protein phosphatases that
share homology with the central domain of FliM. If these phosphatases bind CheY~P in a
similar manner as FliM, a crystal structure of CheY~P in complex with one of these
phosphatases may shed light on the interactions that occur at the base of the flagellar motor.
Since CheY~P has a short half life, an analogue known as phosphono-CheY was synthesized and
purified under various conditions. Thermotoga maritima D54C/C81S CheY was purified from
the soluble fraction of a cell lysate using immobilized metal affinity chromatography (Ni2+-NTA)
and size-exclusion chromatography. Purified CheY was reacted with phosphonomethyltriflate
under alkaline conditions in the presence of a divalent (or trivalent) metal yielding roughly 50%
phosphono-CheY by RP-HPLC and reaction with Ellman's reagent. Phosphono-CheY was
separated from un-reacted CheY by first labeling the unmodified protein with biotin and then isolating the two species by avidin affinity chromatography or by hydrophobic interaction
chromatography. The presence of phosphono-CheY was confirmed by electrospray ionization
mass spectrometry of the intact protein. Mass spectrometry also suggested the presence of
multiply-phosphonomethylated protein and oxidized protein within a phosphonomethylation
reaction mixture and experiments to disprove this hypothesis are on-going.


This report presents findings from a study of sexual and reproductive health status of inschool and out-of-school adolescents in Dodowa Ghana carried out in 2001. The research aim was to help design a program to address adolescents' unmet needs and promote safer behaviours. The research design used both qualitative and quantitative methods including focus group discussions PLA techniques and surveys. Students of Junior and Senior Secondary Schools out-of-school adolescents teachers parents and community opinion leaders were included in the study. (excerpt)


The September 2008 issue of Econ Journal Watch carried an essay about building an identity for "our†economics. It attempted to motivate a questionnaire on the matter, a questionnaire that was then sent out to 408 individuals, mostly economists. Responses were received from 42 individuals, including Bryan Caplan, Peter Boettke, David Henderson, Steven Horwitz, Deirdre McCloskey, Thomas Mayer, Robert Nelson, Edward Prescott, Colin Robinson, Richard Timberlake, Robert Tollison, and Leland Yeager. This piece is a brief introduction to the compendium of responses that is provided as an appendix.


Throughout the 20th and early 21st century, music and culture have had tremendous influence on fashion. One style in particular, known as "hip-hop" has become synonymous with sound, subculture, and style. Hip-hop music, also referred to as rap or rap music, is a style of popular music which came into existence in the United States during the late 1970s, only to become a large part of modern popular culture by the 1980s. Today hip-hop has become mainstreamed, and embraced the consumption of luxury goods and status symbols as emblems of success. Materialism is now a fundamental message within hip-hop, but this factor has received little attention in extant research. The purpose of this study is to explore its influence on hip-hop style and the significance of the messages it conveys for those involved with it. Two qualitative methods, the in-depth interview and photo-elicitation, were the primary techniques used to collect data. Combined, these two methods provided the means to reveal and explore the experiences of 12 African-American males relative to hip-hop culture. A thematic interpretation of the responses revealed a spectrum of perceptions and opinions about the significance of dress and other material objects within hip-hop, along with different degrees of internalization of hip-hop influence. Responses point to a general consensus that hip-hop has become mainstreamed today and that consequently, the messages it communicates through lyrics, videos, and other media are significantly different than those of "old school" hip-hop during its early days. While all participants indicated a long-time presence of the use of dress and other material objects to communicate status and identity within hip-hop, many felt that this presence has become amplified over the years to the point where the music is now more about image than substance. According to the participants, conspicuous consumption in the form of excessive amounts of jewelry, luxury brand apparel, and expensive cars have replaced a focus on community togetherness, action, and social justice. Results of this study highlight the experiences of an understudied population--African-American males--and provides an understanding of the personal and social impact of hip-hop from their point of view. Much more research is needed to illuminate the experiences of African-American males in general, and particularly as consumers of dress.


Your all-in-one guide to Adobe's new Creative CloudPacked with more than a thousand pages of content, Adobe Creative Cloud All-in-One For Dummies is exactly what you need to get your head in the Creative Cloud. Written by designers for designers, this book is filled with useful information and expert instruction that spans eight minibooks to help you get started with Adobe Creative Cloud, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Photoshop CC, Acrobat XI, Dreamweaver CC, Flash Professional CC, and Fireworks CC. You'll learn the latest graphic design and web developmenttools, tricks, and techniques; watch your productivity explode; and unleash your creative genius with this valuable resource.Helps print, web, and mobile media professionals get the very most out of the latest features and techniques available in Adobe Creative CloudProvides beginners with design basics while providing the depth of coverage sought by more experienced design professionalsCovers the key features and tools inseven of Adobe's most popular Creative Cloud applications (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, and Fireworks) plus a minibook dedicated to Creative Cloud basicsFrom 3D images and vivid illustrations to dynamic web pages and interactive effects, this comprehensive guide shows you how to do it all!


When mobile devices at the network edge want to communicate with each other, they too often depend on the availability of faraway resources. For direct communication, feasible user-friendly service discovery is essential. DNS Service Discovery over Multicast DNS (DNS-SD/mDNS) is widely used for configurationless service discovery in local networks, due inno small part to the fact that it is based on the well establishedDNS, and efficient in small networks. In our research, we enhance DNS-SD/mDNS providing versatility, user control, efficiency, and privacy, while maintaining the deployment simplicity and backward compatibility. These enhancements are necessary to make it a solid, flexible foundationfor device communication in the edge of the Internet. In this paper, we focus on providing multi-link capabilities and scalable scopes for DNS-SD while being mindful of both user-friendliness and efficiency. We propose DNS-SD over StatelessDNS (DNS-SD/sDNS), a solution that allows configurationless service discovery in arbitrary self-named scopes - largely independentof the physical network layout - by leveraging ourStateless DNS technique and the Raft consensus algorithm.


William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of colour photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of colour photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with colour photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average person's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of colour as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the Guide contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually superrefined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's home town of Memphis - an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up in flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle; the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, grey-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of William Eggleston's Guide, The Museum of Modern Art has made new colour separations from the original 35mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the colour will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions.


We now know the full genomes of more than 60 organisms. The experimental characterization of the newly sequenced proteins is deemed to lack behind this explosion of naked sequences (sequencefunction gap). The rate at which expert annotators add the experimental information into more or less controlled vocabularies of databases snails along at an even slower pace. Most methods that annotate protein function exploit sequence similarity by transferring experimental information for homologues. A crucial development aiding such transfer is large-scale, work- and management-intensive projects aimed at developing a comprehensive ontology for gene-protein function, such as the Gene Ontology project. In parallel, fully automatic or semiautomatic methods have successfully begun to mine the existing data through lexical analysis. Some of these tools target parsing controlled vocabulary from databases; others venture at mining free texts from MEDLINE abstracts or full scientific papers. Automated text analysis has become a rapidly expanding discipline in bioinformatics. A few of these tools have already been embedded in research projects.


This article gives an overview of Australia's national military strategy for cyber space and the implied demands for a radical approach to development of our civil skills base. It then looks at developments in countries and groups of military interest to us in cyberspace. On this basis, the piece concludes with some recommendations for Australian policy.


Urban food systems undergo a huge transformation. Many cities worldwide are involved; they start to reconsider their current food supply system. This study will describe some developments in the Cologne-Bonn area, Germany, which have the potential to introduce new pathways for more sustainable food futures. Recent developments in urban food systems in the Cologne-Bonn region are very much "bottom-up", driven by lively and committed actors (gardeners, farmers, civil society). In this paper potential synergies and conflicts in the emerging urban agriculture activities, focusing on producer-consumer relations and evolving co-productive approaches are discussed. We further try to understand motivations, aims and visions of the diverse participants of such models. By using qualitative methods of empirical social research such as narratives and semi-structured interviews primary data were collected in the case region. Until now there is no consensus in the literature about the optimal institutional set-ups for the permanent adoption of the various forms of urban agriculture. Preliminary governance analysis showed that especially institutionalized forms seem to be robust and sustainable. The further exploration of the cases will also contribute to understand the dynamics coming from the involvement of citizens in the agricultural production. Co-productive or participatory agriculture, which includes the consumer into the production process, has the potential to change the way of urban food supply. It is hypothesized that shared motivations and visions between producers and consumers in favor of a sustainable food system will help to stabilize alternative food systems whereas conflicts need to be anticipated to deepen the understanding of problems in the producer-consumer co-productive process. Our first results demonstrate that co-productive models of today are primarily based on idealism from both sides and also bear the potential of conflicts. It will be up to further research and innovation to address these issues and also check the new approaches on economic viability.


The growing practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has led to increasing research attention in the literature to the role of CSR strategy. CSR strategy is a concept for maximizing profits or benefits for both society and the company. Studies of CSR strategy during the 1990's and the early 2000's were mainly limited to examining the concept of CSR, and merely discussed the needs and importance of the strategic development of CSR. Recently, strategy researchers have proposed more specific CSR strategies by applying their knowledge of strategic management. This paper first summarizes these CSR strategy studies and then proposes an approach to CSR strategy from a new perspective. This paper also identifies issues that a company may face when implementing CSR and suggests approaches to CSR strategy to overcome these issues. To overcome the CSR issues, the paper discusses (1) a framework for recognizing the contribution that CSR activity makes to corporate performance, and (2) approaches to CSR strategy for resolving tradeoffs inherent to the CSR activity. This paper proposes that a company design its CSR activity so that it expands the company's stakeholders, resources and capabilities. Secondly, because the impact of CSR activity occurs both through external factors, such as legitimacy and reputation, and through internal factors, such as implementation and learning, efforts to stimulate the processes are discussed. Lastly, based on the above considerations, the outcome of CSR, corporate performance and the resolution of tradeoffs inherent to CSR are further examined. This paper concludes by pointing out that, from the perspective of CSR strategy, it is most important for a company to implement CSR activity regarding it as a social business, based on a careful review of its core business.


Diese Dissertation wurde selbstständig, ohne unerlaubte Hilfe erarbeitet. v Meinen Eltern Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


[Figure 2] Ranking of key Supply Chain Executive Insight E-Newsletter Each month the Supply Chain Executive Insight enewsletter will include brief articles about developments that are often overlooked by other supply chain publications. We will present you with summaries of the latest research as well as new ideas on how to make your supply chain operations more effective. And we'll offer commentary that sheds light on what's happening in supply chains today. Sign up now!


The present work investigated three important constructs in the field of psychology: creativity, intelligence and giftedness. The major objective was to clarify some aspects about each one of these three constructs, as well as some possible correlations between them. Of special interest were: (1) the relationship between creativity and intelligence - particularly the validity of the threshold theory; (2) the development of these constructs within average and above-average intelligent children and throughout grade levels; and (3) the comparison between the development of intelligence and creativity in above-average intelligent primary school children that participated in a special program for children classified as "gifted", called Entdeckertag (ET), against an age-class- and-IQ matched control group. The ET is a pilot program which was implemented in 2004 by the Ministry for Education, Science, Youth and Culture of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The central goals of this program are the early recognition of gifted children and intervention, based on the areas of German language, general science and mathematics, and also to foster the development of a child's creativity, social ability, and more. Five hypotheses were proposed and analyzed, and reported separately within five chapters. To analyze these hypotheses, a sample of 217 children recruited from first to fourth grade, and between the ages of six and ten years, was tested for intelligence and creativity. Children performed three tests: Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) for the assessment of classical intelligence, Test of Creative Thinking – Drawing Production (TCT-DP) for the measurement of classical creativity, and Creative Reasoning Task (CRT) for the evaluation of convergent and divergent thinking, both in open problem spaces. Participants were divided according to two general cohorts: Intervention group (N = 43), composed of children participating in the Entdeckertag program, and a non-intervention group (N = 174), composed of children from the regular primary school. For the testing of the hypotheses, children were placed into more specific groups according to the particular hypothesis that was being tested. It could be concluded that creativity and intelligence were not significantly related and the threshold theory was not confirmed. Additionally, intelligence accounted for less than 1% of the variance within creativity; moreover, scores on intelligence were unable to predict later creativity scores. The development of classical intelligence and classical creativity throughout grade levels also presented a different pattern; intelligence grew increasingly and continually, whereas creativity stagnated after the third grade. Finally, the ET program proved to be beneficial for classical intelligence after two years of attendance, but no effect was found for creativity. Overall, results indicate that organizations and institutions such as schools should not look solely to intelligence performance, especially when aiming to identify and foster gifted or creative individuals.


We adapt the concept of the 'consumption ensemble' to capture the nuanced collaborations between actors in the provision and receipt of home care. Data were from a ten-year study of home care clients, family carers and workers in selected Canadian provinces. Using the lens of the 'ensemble', we analysed interviews with 24 dyads (carers and clients) and reviewed findings of our previously published research. Evidence of agency as collective endeavour supporting client autonomy and of improvisation in the ensemble informed a revision of our previous interactive model of care, emphasising the bidirectional nature of care relationships.


This is a letter from the Charles B. Moore Collection. It is written by Adelitia "Dinkie" McGee and Matilda Dodd. In Dinkie's letter, she updates the Moore family and Alice on the goings-on in Sumner county. The news includes: updates on William Dodd's health and Willie McGee's trip to Nashville, a discussion about Lizzie's baby, details about a visit from dressmaker Mat Blackmore, community news of health and happenings, a discussion about the hat fashion for the summer, additional community updates, news about the strawberry crop, an details concerning a visit from family. She closes the letter by stating that the Moore family and Alice should write soon.

In Matilda's letter, she informs the Moore family of the happenings in Gallatin, Tennessee, and the news includes: details about the health of family members, an update on the cool and rainy weather, news on the condition of crops and the planting season, a discussion about Birdie's duck and goose business, a dialogue about chores, details about Matilda's rheumatism, and additional community news. She closes the letter by sending her love to all.


Ultramarathon doesn't leave much room for mistakes. Don't learn the hard way get a jump on training for an ultramarathon with "Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning," a comprehensive handbook to running 30 to 100 miles and beyond, written by one of the most experienced and recognized athletes in the sport. Hal Koerner is among America s best ultrarunners with podium results in more than 90 ultramarathons. In his smart, down-to-earth handbook, Koerner shares hard-earned wisdom, field-tested habits, and insider tips to help you prepare for your ultra. You'll find guidance on exactly what you need to know to prepare for ultramarathon, including: best gear for ultrarunning; fueling and hydration guidelines; choosing an ultra; trail-running technique; first-aid advice; beating altitude, storms, and heat; race-day game plans; crew and pacer tips; and mental strategies to get you to the finish line. The guide offers three detailed training plans to prepare for 50K, 50-mile to 100K, and 100-mile ultramarathons. Start your ultra with confidence and finish it strong with "Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning!"


Essential Java Programming Skills--Made Easy! Fully updated for Java Platform, Standard Edition 8 (Java SE 8), Java: A Beginner's Guide, Sixth Edition gets you started programming in Java right away. Bestselling programming author Herb Schildt begins with the basics, such as how to create, compile, and run a Java program. He then moves on to the keywords, syntax, and constructs that form the core of the Java language. This Oracle Press resource also covers some of Java's more advanced features, including multithreaded programming, generics, and Swing. Of course, new Java SE 8 features such as lambda expressions and default interface methods are described. An introduction to JavaFX, Java's newest GUI, concludes this step-by-step tutorial. Designed for Easy Learning: Key Skills & Concepts -- Chapter-opening lists of specific skills covered in the chapter Ask the Expert -- Q&A sections filled with bonus information and helpful tips Try This -- Hands-on exercises that show you how to apply your skills Self Tests -- End-of-chapter quizzes to reinforce your skills Annotated Syntax -- Example code with commentary that describes the programming techniques being illustrated The book's code examples are available FREE for download.


In this paper, we analyze how stand-up comedians protect their jokes using a system of social norms. Intellectual property law has never protected comedians effectively against theft. Initially, jokes were virtually in the public domain, and comedians invested little in creating new ones. In the last half century, however, comedians have developed a system of IP norms. This system serves as a stand-in for formal law. It regulates issues such as authorship, ownership, transfer of rights, exceptions to informal ownership claims and the imposition of sanctions on norms violators. Under the norms system, the level of investment in original material has increased substantially. We detail these norms, which often diverge from copyright law's defaults. Our description is based on interviews with comedians, snippets of which we include throughout the paper. Our study has implications for intellectual property theory and policy. First, its suggests that the lack of legal protection for intellectual labor does not entail a market failure by necessity, as social norms may induce creativity. Second, it suggests that the rules governing a particular creative practice affect not only how much material is created, but also its kind. Third, we suggest that comedians' IP norms system emerged over the past half century as technological change increased the benefit of having property rights in jokes and concomitantly reduced the costs of enforcing those rights. Fourth, we note that standup's norms system recognizes only a limited set of forms of ownership and transfer. We suggest that the system's crude rights structure is driven by the fact that effective enforcement requires that ownership be clear to the community. Lastly, social norms offer a way to regulate creative practices that do not sit well within IP law's one-size-fits-all mold. They do so, moreover, without imposing on society the costs of disuniformity in the formal law, including legal complexity and industry-driven lobbying. Stand-up's norms system has both benefits and costs, which we detail in the paper. However, normsbased IP systems offer an alternative (or supplementary) cost/benefit bundle which in some cases may be superior to that of formal law alone. In stand-up's case, norms economize on enforcement costs and appear to maintain a healthy level of incentives to create alongside a greater diversity in the kinds of humor produced. A final assessment of stand-up's social norms system awaits further work. With what we currently know, we are cautiously optimistic.


I explore the role and value of African music in education, by drawing from a study of Grade 5 learners at a school in the Eastern Cape, which was designed to answer the question: Could Xhosa children in South Africa sing Xhosa indigenous songs significantly better than European folk songs? The experimental group received instruction in Xhosa indigenous songs accompanied by indigenous instruments. Instruction included traditional dancing, antiphonal singing technique and improvisation. The control group received instruction in European folk song singing accompanied by Orff instruments. The results of the study suggest that the Xhosa children sang the Xhosa repertoire expressively and significantly better than the European songs. Based on the findings, I argue for the inclusion of African music in education. The purpose of the research was to determine whether there is any significant development in the cognitive, psychomotor and affective skills of learners when taught African music as opposed to western European music. The aim was also to assist educators with meaningful pedagogical approaches and alternative methodologies to enhance an inclusive learning and cultural experience in music education. Keywords: culture; education; eurocentrism; ethnocentrism; indigenous African music


Optimal heuristic searches such as A* search are widely used for planning but can rarely scale to large complex problems. The suboptimal versions of heuristic searches such as weighted A* search can often scale to much larger planning problems by trading off the quality of the solution for efficiency. They do so by relying more on the ability of the heuristic function to guide them well towards the goal. For complex planning problems, however, the heuristic function may often guide the search into a large local minimum and make the search examine most of the states in the minimum before proceeding. In this paper, we propose a novel heuristic search, called R* search, which depends much less on the quality of the heuristic function. The search avoids local minima by solving the whole planning problem with a series of short-range and easy-to-solve searches, each guided by the heuristic function towards a randomly chosen goal. In addition, R* scales much better in terms of memory because it can discard a search state-space after each of its searches. On the theoretical side, we derive probabilistic guarantees on the sub-optimality of the solution returned by R*. On the experimental side, we show that R* can scale to large complex problems.


There has been significant research into the development of visual feature detectors and descriptors that are robust to a number of image deformations. Some of these methods have emphasized the need to improve on computational speed and compact representations so that they can enable a range of real-time applications with reduced computational requirements. In this paper we present modified detectors and descriptors based on the recently introduced CenSurE [1], and show experimental results that aim to highlight the computational savings that can be made with limited reductionin performance. The developedmethods are based on exploiting the concept of sparse sampling which may be of interest to a range of other existing approaches.


OBJECTIVE--To examine the psychological impact of surgical accidents and assess the adequacy of explanations given to the patients involved. DESIGN--Postal questionnaire survey. SETTING--Subjects were selected from files held Action for Victims of Medical Accidents. PATIENTS--154 surgical patients who had been injured by their treatment, who considered that their treatment had fallen below acceptable standards. MAIN MEASURES--Adequacy of explanations given to patients and responses to standard questionnaires assessing pain, distress, psychiatric morbidity, and psychosocial adjustment (general health questionnaire, impact of events scale, McGill pain questionnaire, and psychosocial adjustment to illness scale). RESULTS--101 patients completed the questionnaires (69 women, 32 men; mean age 44 (median 41.5) years. Mean scores on the questionnaires indicated that these injured patients were more distressed than people who had suffered serious accidents or bereavements; their levels of pain were comparable, over a year after surgery, to untreated postoperative pain; and their psychosocial adjustment was considerably worse than in patients with serious illnesses. They were extremely unsatisfied with the explanations given about their accident, which they perceived as lacking in information, unclear, inaccurate, and given unsympathetically. Poor explanations were associated with higher levels of disturbing memories and poorer adjustment. CONCLUSIONS--Surgical accidents have a major adverse psychological impact on patients, and poor communication after the accident may increase patients' distress. IMPLICATIONS--Communication skills in dealing with such patients should be improved to ensure the clear and comprehensive explanations that they need. Many patients will also require psychological treatment to help their recovery.


Harmful lies are nothing new. But the ability to distort reality has taken an exponential leap forward with "deep fake" technology. This capability makes it possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. Machine learning techniques are escalating the technology's sophistication, making deep fakes ever more realistic and increasingly resistant to detection. Deep-fake technology has characteristics that enable rapid and widespread diffusion, putting it into the hands of both sophisticated and unsophisticated actors. While deep-fake technology will bring with it certain benefits, it also will introduce many harms. The marketplace of ideas already suffers from truth decay as our networked information environment interacts in toxic ways with our cognitive biases. Deep fakes will exacerbate this problem significantly. Individuals and businesses will face novel forms of exploitation, intimidation, and personal sabotage. The risks to our democracy and to national security are profound as well. Our aim is to provide the first in-depth assessment of the causes and consequences of this disruptive technological change, and to explore the existing and potential tools for responding to it. We survey a broad array of responses, including: the role of technological solutions; criminal penalties, civil liability, and regulatory action; military and covert-action responses; economic sanctions; and market developments. We cover the waterfront from immunities to immutable authentication trails, offering recommendations to improve law and policy and anticipating the pitfalls embedded in various solutions.


What does the law mean to the common person? To better understand the operation of the law at the individual level of analysis this paper draws on psychological theories of values and on advances in rationality research to deploy a theory of expanded rationality. In this theory, values, defined as conceptions of the desirable, operate as arguments in individuals' personal utility functions; they underlie the construction of preferences; and they provide reasons for reason-based choice. The link between values, expanded rationality, and the law is demonstrated through a number of central issues concerning the interaction between the law and individual persons - specifically, the content of law, law abidingness, value diversity in society, and value conflict.