Still pictures, animations and videos are used by artists to tell stories visually. Computer graphics algorithms create visual stories too, either automatically, or, by assisting artists. Why is it so hard to create algorithms that perform like a trained visual artist? The reason is that artists think about where a viewer will look at and how their attention will flow across the scene, but algorithms do not have a similarly sophisticated understanding of the viewer.
Our key insight is that computer graphics algorithms should be designed to take into account how viewer attention is allocated. We first show that designing optimization terms based on viewers' attentional priorities allows the algorithm to handle artistic license in the input data, such as geometric inconsistencies in hand-drawn shapes. We then show that measurements of viewer attention enables algorithms to infer high-level information about a scene, for example, the object of storytelling interest in every frame of a video.
All the presented algorithms retarget or augment the traditional form of a visual art. Traditional art includes artwork such as printed comics, i.e., pictures that were created before computers became mainstream. It also refers to artwork that can be created in the way it was done before computers, for example, hand-drawn animation and live action films. Connecting traditional art with computational algorithms allows us to leverage the unique strengths on either side. We demonstrate these ideas on three applications:
Retargeting and augmenting animations: Two widely practiced forms of animation are two-dimensional (2D) hand-drawn animation and three-dimensional (3D) computer animation. To apply the techniques of the 3D medium to 2D animation, researchers have attempted to compute 3D reconstructions of the shape and motion of the hand-drawn character, which are meant to act as their 'proxy' in the 3D environment. We argue that a perfect reconstruction is excessive because it does not leverage the characteristics of viewer attention. We present algorithms to generate a 3D proxy with different levels of detail, such that at each level the error terms account for quantities that will attract viewer attention. These algorithms allow a hand-drawn animation to be retargeted to a 3D skeleton and be augmented with physically simulated secondary effects.
Augmenting stills: Moves-on-stills is a technique to engage the viewer while presenting still pictures on television or in movies. This effect is widely used to augment comics to create 'motion comics'. Though state of the art software, like iMovie, allows a user to specify the parameters of the camera move, it does not solve the problem of how the parameters are chosen. We believe that a good camera move respects the visual route designed by the artist who crafted the still picture; if we record the gaze of viewers looking at composed still pictures, we can reconstruct the artist's intention. We show, through a perceptual study, that the artist succeeds in directing viewer attention in comic book pictures, and we present an algorithm to predict the parameters of camera moves-on-stills from statistics derived from eyetracking data.
Retargeting video: Video retargeting is the process of altering the original video to fit the new display size, while best preserving content and minimizing artifacts. Recent techniques define content as color, edges, faces and other image-based saliency features. We suggest that content is, in fact, what people look at. We introduce a novel operator that extends the classic "pan-and-scan" to introduce cuts in addition to automatic pans based on viewer eyetracking data. We also present a gaze-based evaluation criterion to quantify the performance of our operator.


This document presents information on the impacts of adopting Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) into infrastructure control systems. The investigation was performed by members of Sandia National Laboratories and funded by the Department of Energy's (DOE) National SCADA Test Bed (NSTB) Program. Specifically, the document presents a brief background and description of the features of IPv6, details on how IPv6 may be implemented in a control system, and potential issues that may surface related to reliability and security. IPv6 networking is being adopted and brings additional functionality when compared to IPv4 that will be useful to control system applications. Thus, control system operators should begin their planning by developing an IPv6 transition strategy that will enable the planned introduction of IPv6 compatible components into their control system infrastructures. In the near term the adoption process should proceed with education and control system architecture planning for the introduction of IPv6. Impacts of IPv6 on Infrastructure Control Systems


Context Quality problems and spiraling costs have resulted in widespread interest in solutions that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the health care system. Care coordination has been identified by the Institute of Medicine as one of the key strategies for potentially accomplishing these improvements. Objectives The objectives of this project were to develop a working definition of care coordination, apply it to a review of systematic reviews, and identify theoretical frameworks that might predict or explain how care coordination mechanisms are influenced by factors in the health care setting and how they relate to patient outcomes and health care costs. Data Sources and Review Methods We used literature databases, Internet searches, and personal contacts to assemble background information on ongoing care coordination programs; potential definitions; conceptual frameworks and related empirical evidence; and care coordination measures. We also conducted literature searches through September 30, 2006 of MEDLINE®, and November 15, 2006 for CINAHL®, Cochrane database of systematic reviews, American College of Physicians Journal Club, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, PsychInfo, Sociological Abstracts, and Social Services Abstracts to identify systematic reviews of care coordination interventions. We excluded systematic reviews with a narrow focus, namely those conducted solely in the inpatient setting, or where the only two participants involved in care were the patient and a health care provider. Results We identified numerous ongoing programs in the private and public sector, most of which have not yet been evaluated. We identified over 40 definitions of care coordination and related terminology, and developed a working definition drawing together common elements: Care coordination is the deliberate organization of patient care activities between two or more participants (including the patient) involved in a patient's care to facilitate the appropriate delivery of health care services. Organizing care involves the marshalling of personnel and other resources needed to carry out all required patient care activities, and is often managed by the exchange of information among participants responsible for different aspects of care. We used this definition to develop our inclusion/exclusion criteria for selecting potentially relevant systematic reviews. Our literature search yielded 4,730 publications, of which 75 systematic reviews evaluating care coordination interventions, either fully or as a part of the review, met inclusion criteria. From these, we identified 20 different coordination interventions (e.g., multidisciplinary teams, case management, disease management) covering 12 clinical populations (e.g., mental health, heart disease, diabetes) and conducted in multiple settings (e.g., outpatient, community, home). Finally, we identified four conceptual frameworks (Andersen's behavioral framework, Donabedian's structure-process-outcome framework, Nadler/Tushman and others' Organizational design framework with Wagner's Chronic Care Model provided as an example of such design, and Gittell's Relational coordination framework) with potential applicability to studying care coordination by assessing baseline characteristics of the environment, specific coordination mechanism alternatives, and outcomes. The strongest evidence shows benefit of care coordination interventions for patients who have congestive heart failure, diabetes mellitus, severe mental illness, a recent stroke, or depression, though evidence about key intervention components is lacking. Conclusions Care coordination interventions represent a wide range of approaches at the service delivery and systems level. Their effectiveness is most likely dependent upon appropriate matching between intervention and care coordination problem, though more conceptual, empirical and experimental research is required to explore this hypothesis.


Canada. HTIS responses are based on a limited literature search and are not comprehensive, systematic reviews. The intent is to provide a list of sources and a summary of the best evidence on the topic that CADTH could identify using all reasonable efforts within the time allowed. HTIS responses should be considered along with other types of information and health care considerations. The information included in this response is not intended to replace professional medical advice, nor should it be construed as a recommendation for or against the use of a particular health technology. Readers are also cautioned that a lack of good quality evidence does not necessarily mean a lack of effectiveness particularly in the case of new and emerging health technologies, for which little information can be found, but which may in future prove to be effective. While CADTH has taken care in the preparation of the report to ensure that its contents are accurate, complete and up to date, CADTH does not make any guarantee to that effect. CADTH is not liable for any loss or damages resulting from use of the information in the report.


We study the collective flow of open charm mesons and charmonia in Au+Au collisions at √ s = 200 GeV within the hadron-string-dynamics (HSD) transport approach. The detailed studies show that the coupling of D, ¯ D mesons to the light hadrons leads to comparable directed and elliptic flow as for the light mesons. This also holds approximately for J/ Ψ mesons since more than 50% of the final charmonia for central and mid-central collisions stem from D + ¯ D induced reactions in the transport calculations. The transverse momentum spectra of D, ¯ D mesons and J/ Ψ's are only very moderately changed by the (pre-)hadronic interactions in HSD which can be traced back to the collective flow generated by elastic interactions with the light hadrons.


Across the country, from Aberdeen, North Carolina to Modesto, California, city growth has bypassed hundreds of low-income neighborhoods founded under conditions of racial segregation in the early to mid-twentieth century. Denied annexation to neighboring municipalities, these urban pockets remain unincorporated, covered only by county governance and, in some cases, rural service standards. This article represents the first comprehensive academic treatment of such communities, which I call unincorporated urban areas. Challenging popular assumptions regarding an inner-city of racialized poverty in contrast to a white, suburban privatopia, unincorporated urban areas turn our attention to suburbs where the gravitational pull of the urban economy, affordability constraints, and the desire for homeownership have led to the settlement of low-income communities of color at the unregulated fringe, just beyond city limits. The article analyzes the adequacy of local government structures serving unincorporated urban areas and the flexibility for reform within those structures. It asks, for the first time, whether two tiers of general purpose local government - a city and a county - offer urbanized areas greater participatory voice, stronger protection from undesirable land uses, improved collective services, and greater household mobility than county rule alone. In so doing, it raises the question of what adequacy in the context of local government might mean, revealing unquestioned assumptions about the allocation of power among cities, counties, and states. New legal issues concerning municipal services, extraterritorial eminent domain, and the risk of land loss come into focus in this investigation of cities inside out - urban life placed outside the reach of municipal government.


This study analyzed the ways in which homeowners in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Greensboro, NC responded to changing domestic culture through the adaption of their post-World War II homes. I utilized interviews with long-term residents, field notes, and interior documentation to address and analyze the adaptability of post-war houses for contemporary uses. The interviews provided specific data regarding a timeline of alterations made to each house, major remodeling projects or additions that each homeowner undertook, and historical information regarding the house and community. The interior documentation served as a record of interior changes and additions made to the houses that were not expressed specifically in the interviewing process. This study generated an understanding of the patterns in interior design in the sample of post-war houses studied and the cultural implications of those patterns for the homeowners who participated.


Testing hidden data is a necessary and important part of the Software Verification and Validation process. The quality of an application must not only be proven through the visible data in the User Interface, but must include the data as it travels through the system. With a few database skills and using the 4-step method described in this report, these tests can be accomplished by the Quality Assurance team.


Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses Part of the Biochemistry Commons, Chemical Actions and Uses Commons, and the Pharmaceutical Preparations Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author.


The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression ofany opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and theCentre of the World Food Studies, Amsterdam, concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or areaof its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. FAO, 2000All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of thecopyright owner. Application for such permission, with a statement of the purpose and extent of thereproduction, should be addressed to the Director, Information Division, Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations, Viali delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy


In contrast with the gas-phase reactions of atmospheric trace gases, there is incomplete or even controversial experimental information on the adsorption and surface state of molecules on ice surfaces due to the difficulties in experimental measurements. The heterogeneous reactions of atmospheric SO2, O3 and H2O2 are of special interest due to their impact on atmospheric pollution and climate. Here, quantum chemical modeling can provide valuable information which is not accessible from the direct measurements and can complement the perceptions obtained by experimental techniques. In the current work, we present the recent results of quantum chemical studies of the structure of adsorption complexes of SO2 molecule on the ice surface and various mechanisms of the further surface reactions of this molecule resulting in the formation of sulfurous acid and ionic dissociation. The comprehensive models of the ice surface, simple and composite models for the quantum chemical treatment of crystalline effects, and the methods suitable for the modeling of the surface reactions are discussed in detail. The results on the original quantum chemical studies of ozone photolysis on the ice surface and the adsorption parameters of possible products of this process (H2O2, HO*, HO-, HOO*, O(1D)) are also discussed. The main goal of these studies was to elucidate the detailed mechanisms of adsorption of two kinds of typical adsorbates (weak acids and non-dissociating species) using the molecular cluster approximation and DFT theory supplemented by the modeling of possible products and intermediates of reactions occurring on the ice surface. Various coordination modes for all these species on the surface or inside the ice Ih crystal were considered: adsorption on the basal and side planes; inclusion into the interstitial space of the ice crystal structure; incorporation into the crystalline network. On this basis, the structures of adsorption complexes, their infrared spectra, and the estimates for the molecular adsorption energies and corresponding thermodynamic parameters were obtained. The comparison between the obtained adsorption energies and the experimental data available from different sources are discussed. In order to describe the kinetic features of adsorption processes at the ice surface, the transition states corresponding to both molecular and ionic pathways of SO2 hydration by water molecules on ice surfaces were located and the corresponding thermodynamic parameters of activation and kinetic rate constants were estimated. Relying on these data, the conclusions about the probability of three different mechanisms of adsorption (molecular hydrolysis to H2SO3, direct addition of OH- to give HSO3-, and relay reaction between remote OH- and adsorbed SO2) are discussed.


There can be different approaches to the management of resources within the context of multiproject scheduling problems. In general, approaches to multi-project scheduling problems consider the resources as a pool shared by all projects. On the other hand, when projects are distributed geographically or sharing resources between projects is not preferred, then this resource sharing policy may not be feasible. In such cases, the resources must be dedicated to individual projects throughout the project durations. This multi-project problem environment is defined here as the Resource Dedication Problem (RDP). RDP is defined as the optimal dedication of resource capacities to different projects within the overall limits of the resources and with the objective of minimizing a predetermined objective function. The projects involved are multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problems (MRCPSP) with finish to start zero time lag and non-preemptive activities and limited renewable and nonrenewable resources. Here, the characterization of RDP, its mathematical formulation and two different solution methodologies are presented. The first solution approach is a genetic algorithm employing a new improvement move called combinatorial auction for RDP, which is based on preferences of projects for resources. Two different methods for calculating the projects' preferences based on linear and Lagrangian relaxation are proposed. The second solution approach is a Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic employing subgradient optimization. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed approaches are powerful methods for solving this problem.


Summary.  Background: Transcription factors are essential for blood cell formation. Mice expressing low levels of c‐Myb (c‐Myblow) have an increased number of bone marrow megakaryocytes (MKs) and corresponding thrombocytosis. In contrast, mice engineered to express low levels of GATA‐1 (GATA‐1low) in the megakaryocytic lineage exhibit aberrant megakaryocytopoiesis with hyperproliferation of progenitors and defective terminal differentiation leading to thrombocytopenia. These seemingly opposite roles may affect platelet turnover and thus be of clinical relevance. Objective: To determine how these two transcription factors act together to control megakaryocytopoiesis and platelet formation. Methods: We used a combination of cellular and molecular in vitro assays to examine the ability of bone marrow cells from mice expressing low levels of both c‐Myb and GATA‐1 (referred to as doublelow) to produce MKs and platelets. Results: Doublelow cells, or those with low GATA‐1 levels in which c‐Myb is conditionally deleted, lack the hyperproliferative capacity of GATA‐1low cells, allowing the cells to proceed towards more committed MKs that are, however, impaired in their capacity to produce fully differentiated cells, as confirmed by the abundance of morphologically aberrant cells that lack the ability to form proplatelets. Conclusion: c‐Myb and GATA‐1 act in concert to achieve correct megakaryocytic differentiation. GATA‐1 regulates both the proliferation of megakaryocytic progenitors and their terminal maturation. c‐Myb also acts at the level of the progenitor by influencing its commitment to differentiation, but in contrast to GATA‐1 it does not have any effect on the process of terminal differentiation.


This paper estimates the effects of immigration on wages of native workers at the national U.S. level. Following Borjas (2003) we focus on national labor markets for workers of different skills and we enrich his methodology and refine previous estimates. We emphasize that a production function framework is needed to combine workers of different skills in order to evaluate the competition as well as cross-skill complementary effects of immigrants on wages. We also emphasize the importance (and estimate the value) of the elasticity of substitution between workers with at most a high school degree and those without one. Since the two groups turn out to be close substitutes, this strongly dilutes the effects of competition between immigrants and workers with no degree. We then estimate the substitutability between natives and immigrants and we find a small but significant degree of imperfect substitution which further decreases the competitive effect of immigrants. Finally, we account for the short run and long run adjustment of capital in response to immigration. Using our estimates and Census data we find that immigration (1990-2006) had small negative effects in the short run on native workers with no high school degree (-0.7%) and on average wages (-0.4%) while it had small positive effects on native workers with no high school degree (+0.3%) and on average native wages (+0.6%) in the long run. These results are perfectly in line with the estimated aggregate elasticities in the labor literature since Katz and Murphy (1992). We also find a wage effect of new immigrants on previous immigrants in the order of negative 6%.


As President Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn't driven by reelection calculations," he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump's Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy-and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton's telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. "The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning," writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal-about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton's account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria's chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, "If you don't like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk-all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work-and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else." The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there-from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea's Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.


Poster advertisement of a baseball grand tournament to be played beginning August 25, 1940 at the Cleveland Diamond field, Houston, Texas. The tournament is offered by the "Aces Fours Recreational Club" called the Latin American Baseball tournament. The first team to play is Aztecas vs. Sugarland, starting at 10 a.m. ; the second team is Port Arthur vs. Southern Select playing at 1:45 p.m.; the third team is Galveston 'Blue Moon' vs. New Gulf Tigers, playing at 4:00 p.m. The entrance fee is 33 cents.


The persistence and dynamics of populations largely depends on the way they are configured and integrated into space and the ensuing eco-evolutionary dynamics. We manipulated spatial and temporal variation in patch size in replicated experimental metapopulations of the herbivore mite Tetranychus urticae. Evolution over approximately 30 generations in the spatially and spatiotemporally variable metapopulations induced a significant divergence in life history traits, physiological endpoints and gene expression, but also a remarkable convergence relative to the stable reference patchy metapopulation in traits related to size and fecundity and in its transcriptional regulation. The observed evolutionary dynamics are tightly linked to demographic changes, more specifically frequent episodes of resource shortage, and increased the reproductive performance of mites on tomato, a challenging host plant. This points towards a general, adaptive stress response in stable spatial variable and spatiotemporal variable metapopulations that pre-adapts a herbivore arthropod to novel environmental stressors.


Whether youre designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, todays digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology. Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.


Art fairs play today a central role in the art market, particularly in the trade of contemporary art. In the wake of the art fair boom since the turn of the millennium, they have grown to become one of the most important sales and marketing channels for art dealers. Through this distribution channel the gallery owners are able to gain access to new markets and reach new collectors. In 2012 for example, 36 per cent of sales by dealers were made through local or international fairs.
Our research field is the Art Basel, which, as the "Art Olympics" (New York Times), represents the wealthiest sector of the art world in terms of symbolic and economic capital, and is generally considered as the most important art fair. The Art Basel represents a temporal and spatial concentration of the global art market; for a period of a week the field of art is located in the halls of the Basel Exhibition Centre. It is therefore an ideal field of investigation to examine the structures and dynamics at the top of the global art field.
In reference to the sociological work and perspective of Pierre Bourdieu, the world of art is conceived as a field of competition for the monopoly of the legitimate definition of art. As a market of symbolic goods, the field of art is today more than ever confronted with immanent contradictions and paradoxes: since the 1990s new capital-intensive buyers have emerged, recruiting mainly from the world of financial capital; considerable financial resources flow directly from emergent economies in Eastern Europe and, above all, Asia into the market; prices are exploding and power relations between the different groups of actors in the art field are changing rapidly.
The focus of interest of the ca. 80 qualitative interviews we made with market actors like art dealers or collectors is on their attitudes and practices in this newly reconfigured art field. In particular the question arises how the relationship between art and commerce, charisma and money, which is increasingly critical and contradictory through current changes in the art field, is addressed, problematized, scandalized, banalized or simply suppressed by the art market participants.


The present paper reports an experimental test of a prototype graphic and textual search interface for a university database on art-resource works. Novice and expert searchers were tested on both interfaces with performance assessed in terms of search speed and accuracy. Verbal protocols and navigation strategies were also examined. Experts performed significantly faster than novices though both user groups performed slightly (but not significantly) faster with the graphical interface. Furthermore, the graphical interface significantly reduced navigation effort. While there were no significant task accuracy differences, novices failed to complete more searches with the textual interface. Implications of these results for search interfaces to digital resources are briefly discussed.


This article explores the influence of the pension system on corporate governance, which has so far received little attention in the corporate law literature. While the shareholder-centric view of corporate governance is strong today, this is a relatively recent development. "Managerial capitalism" began to give way to shareholder capitalism over the past three decades. I argue that changes in the pension system, specifically the shift from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans that began in the 1970s, have been a major force pushing the corporate governance system toward shareholder primacy. While in traditional pension plans, workers depended primarily on their employer's ability to fund pensions, in today's system retirement benefits strongly depend on capital markets. Shareholder wealth thus became more important for larger segments of society, and pro-shareholder policies became more important relative to pro-labor policies strengthening employees' position vis-a-vis their employer. Consequently, shareholder primacy became the dominant factor in corporate governance debates. Managers today claim to focus on this objective and are less well positioned to take the interests of their firm's employees or other groups into account. The political economy of corporate governance underwent a seismic shift. While it is not clear whether shareholders truly benefit from most reforms, these have been largely supported by the center-left given their apparent beneficial effects for shareholders and consequently the middle class. For the same reason, unions have been among the most eager proponents of shareholder activism.


The concept of thresholds of potential concern (TPCs) as implemented for the last decade in strategic adaptive management in South African National Parks (SANParks), has proved workable in practice in a number of instances, but in others appears beset by conceptual and practical limitations or barriers. Three common challenges relate to (1) situations where there is uncertainty about whether and where real thresholds exist, (2) whether and how preferences and other social constructs, as opposed to what were seen as objective biophysical variables only, can be used for TPCs and (3) whether it is admissible to adjust TPCs to allow for variations in societal behaviour, in particular rate of management response. All three challenges arise in the face of TPC objectivity implied by the original definition, and in the light of the original view that TPCs be set some distance prior to a presumed ecological threshold. This paper suggests that the three challenges can be partly or largely dealt with by the use of a wider socio-ecological view, rather than seeing TPCs in isolation or as being only biophysical. Also, while detection of abrupt changes is helpful, it makes little practical difference if some TPCs happen to describe linear processes. The very decision to intervene can induce an abrupt change. Once a wider socio-ecological approach is employed, it becomes necessary for the user to specify the particular usage envisaged for the TPC, for instance, whether it is considered a preference and whether that preference is believed in any way to be related to an ecological threshold. In all cases, it is recommended that some form of explicit representation of the socio- ecological view is constructed – we suggest a cause-and-effect diagram (and give an example generated through a thought experiment) which describes presumed relationships in the subsystem of interest. This provides a broader systemic context and a shared understanding, and has implications for considering scenarios and management alternatives. For practical reasons, from the several states and processes in such a subsystem, only a few links can be chosen on which to base particular TPCs. If we have understood the subsystem well enough, these few links, at each of which a TPC is developed, will act as diagnostic points at which we can monitor the performance of the subsystem adequately. A broadened definition of a TPC is presented, supporting this approach. Conservation implications: The concept of thresholds (initially ecological thresholds) has started influencing conservation management practice, a commonly-used formulation for management decision-making being the threshold of potential concern (TPC). Practical TPC usage can often be improved by moving away from its initially pure ecological outlook, rather framing understanding through an interlinked socio-ecological view.


Objectives To quantify sex ratios at births (SRBs) in hospital deliveries in Nepal, and understand the socio-demographic correlates of skewed SRB. Skewed SRBs in hospitals could be explained by sex selective abortion, and/or by decision to have a son delivered in a hospital—increased in -utero investments for male fetus. We use data on ultrasound use to quantify links between prenatal knowledge of sex, parity and skewed SRBs. Design Secondary analysis of: (1) de-identified data from a randomised controlled trial, and (2) 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Setting Nepal. Participants (1) 75 428 women who gave birth in study hospitals, (2) NDHS: 12 674 women aged 15–49 years. Outcome measures SRB, and conditional SRB of a second child given first born male or female were calculated. Results Using data from 75 428 women who gave birth in six tertiary hospitals in Nepal between September 2015 and March 2017, we report skewed SRBs in these hospitals, with some hospitals registering deliveries of 121 male births per 100 female births. We find that a nationally representative survey (2011 NDHS) reveals no difference in the number of hospital delivery of male and female babies. Additionally, we find that: (1) estimated SRB of second-order births conditional on the first being a girl is significantly higher than the biological SRB in our study and (2) multiparous women are more likely to have prenatal knowledge of the sex of their fetus and to have male births than primiparous women with the differences increasing with increasing levels of education. Conclusions Our analysis supports sex-selective abortion as the dominant cause of skewed SRBs in study hospitals. Comprehensive national policies that not only plan and enforce regulations against gender-biased abortions and, but also ameliorate the marginalised status of women in Nepal are urgently required to change this alarming manifestation of son preference. Trial registration number NCT02718222.


Computers understand very little of the meaning of human language. This profoundly limits our ability to give instructions to computers, the ability of computers to explain their actions to us, and the ability of computers to analyse and process text. Vector space models (VSMs) of semantics are beginning to address these limits. This paper surveys the use of VSMs for semantic processing of text. We organize the literature on VSMs according to the structure of the matrix in a VSM. There are currently three broad classes of VSMs, based on term-document, word-context, and pair-pattern matrices, yielding three classes of applications. We survey a broad range of applications in these three categories and we take a detailed look at a specific open source project in each category. Our goal in this survey is to show the breadth of applications of VSMs for semantics, to provide a new perspective on VSMs for those who are already familiar with the area, and to provide pointers into the literature for those who are less familiar with the field.


This Review Essay explores the new politics of judicial appointments by addressing the important question whether Senate-specific reforms to the judicial appointments process are likely to succeed. In his recent book, The Next Justice, Chris Eisgruber proposes a two-part plan to repair the Supreme Court appointments process. Like many other scholars that have written in the area, Eisgruber's reforms focus primarily on the Senate. First, he proposes that the Senate get smart by asking penetrating questions about the judicial philosophy of Supreme Court nominees in an effort to ensure that the future Justices are moderates, rather than extremists. Second, he proposes that the Senate get tough by standing up to the President and rejecting any nominee who does not prove to be moderate, or who fails to give satisfactory answers at the confirmation hearings. In this Review Essay, the authors note several flaws in Eisgruber's proposals, many of which are applicable to other, similar reform proposals advanced by other scholars. First, Eisguber offers an incomplete diagnosis of the reasons behind the growing politicization of the appointments process, underestimating in particular the prominent role played by interest groups and the media in shaping the process. The political pressures on Senators make it unlikely that they can become tougher and more assertive in the process, either by adopting a more probing set of questions at confirmation hearings or by rejecting nominees in favor of judicial moderates. Second, drawing on a rich political science literature, the authors demonstrate why a get tough strategy by the Senate in the judicial appointments process is likely to provoke a strong response from the President. Like many other scholars in the area, Eisgruber fails to address the myriad tools available to Presidents to deal with Senate resistance. The basic and most powerful tool for Presidents is the strategic selection of Supreme Court nominees, especially those with excellent qualifications, which can make it difficult for Senators to delay or reject those nominees. In the face of an obstructionist Senate, Presidents can also draw upon their substantial institutional strength by going public and touting the qualifications and attributes of the nominee, by making or threatening a recess appointment, and by employing ordinary legislative techniques like logrolling strategies and credible veto threats. Strategic employment of these tools makes it more difficult for Senators of all parties to obstruct Supreme Court nominees and helps to explain why the vast majority of such nominees during the past century have been confirmed by the Senate.


Introduce your students to the latest that Microsoft Office has to offer with the new generation of Shelly Cashman Series books! For the past three decades, the Shelly Cashman Series has effectively introduced computer skills to millions of students. With Microsoft Office 2013, we're continuing our history of innovation by enhancing our proven pedagogy to reflect the learning styles of today's students. In MICROSOFT OFFICE 2013: POST ADVANCED you'll find features that are specifically designed to engage students, improve retention, and prepare them for future success. Our trademark step-by-step, screen-by-screen approach now encourages students to expand their understanding of Microsoft Office 2013 software through experimentation, critical thought, and personalization. With these enhancements and more, the Shelly Cashman Series continues to deliver the most effective educational materials for you and your students.


This document is in support of my thesis work, a series of illustrative images. By allowing readers a closer look into my creative as well as technical processes, I hope to provide a guide to my visual artwork. I will describe the process of how I created the series of images and the environment in which they existed. My thesis exhibition consists of a visual interpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Rappaccini's Daughter" dated 1894. The two modes of visual expression I have employed are digital illustration and installation. Digital illustration is a broad term that references the use of one or more digital tools to create images. Installation is a way of creating a focus on objects and their placement within a specific space. The intent of my thesis exhibition was to marry the final illustrations with an installation of my studio source materials as well as objects of inspiration for the final illustrations.


From 1962 to 1971, the United States Air Force (USAF) sprayed various herbicide mixtures (chemicals that kill plants) in South Vietnam. The purpose of the spraying was to defoliate jungle growth to deprive the Communist forces of ground cover, and to destroy enemy crops to restrict food supplies. The most extensively used of these herbicide mixtures was known as Agent Orange, a 50:50 mix of two common herbicides called 1,4,5-T and 2,4-D (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid). The third chemical present in the mixture in small amounts was TCDD, an inevitable by-product of the manufacture of 2,4,5-T. This chemical, called tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin or simply "dioxin," is highly toxic to laboratory animals when administered in its pure form. CRS has been unable to locate any report of a human death from exposure to pure TCDD. This report discusses the human health effects that have occurred from exposure to TCDD, as well as related Congressional concerns.


Abstract The management of contemporary health systems is a problem of many countries, which consists not only of issues related to the establishment of the roles of institutions involved in their functioning, the allocation of funds, asymmetry of information, or access to health services. Problems of the all system often result from faulty management of particular health institutions, and more specifically from the lack of agreement between the management staff, medical staff and patients. The proposed study is an attempt to systematize the roles assigned recently to physicians and patients on the one hand, on the other – a presentation of non-standard solutions in this area, which are the existing cooperatives in health care in the world. The issue of jointly implemented by both groups of objectives and adaptation of the idea of cooperatives to the management process was justified by the theory of common pool resources and the game theory.


Multi-frequency acoustic data (18, 38 and 120 kHz) were collected in conjunction with pelagic trawl sampling for gelatinous macrozooplankton during a cruise to the Namibian Benguela in September 1999. Sampling focused specifically on the scyphozoan Chrysaora hysoscella and the hydrozoan Aequorea aequorea, both of which occur in large numbers, are probably of major ecolog- ical importance, and physically hamper pelagic fishing and diamond extraction activities. C. hyso- scella was detected predominantly at an inshore station and A. aequorea was found in greatest abun- dance further offshore in deeper water. Echo-sounder observations were linked directly to net catches, and relationships between catch density (number of individuals m -3 ) and nautical area scat- tering coefficients (sA) at each frequency were determined for both species in order to estimate target strength (TS) using the comparison method. TS for C. hysoscella (mean umbrella diameter 26.8 cm) was -51.5 dB at 18 kHz, -46.6 dB at 38 kHz and -50.1 dB at 120 kHz; for A. aequorea (mean central umbrella diameter 7.4 cm) TS was -68.1 dB at 18 kHz, -66.3 dB at 38 kHz and -68.5 dB at 120 kHz. These TS values compared favourably with previously published estimates for related species. Jelly- fish were caught at high numerical densities (maxima 3 C. hysoscella per 100 m 3 , 168 A. aequorea per 100 m 3 ). These high densities, combined with the not unsubstantial TS at frequencies used for fish- eries surveys, imply that jellyfish could potentially bias acoustic estimates of fish abundance. We sug- gest a simple multifrequency approach that could be used to discriminate between echoes from jelly- fish and some commercially important pelagic fish in the northern Benguela ecosystem.


Common law and civil law property appear to be quite different, with the former emphasizing pieces of ownership called estates and the latter focusing on holistic ownership. And yet the two systems are remarkably similar in their broad outlines, for functional reasons. This paper offers a transaction cost explanation for the practical similarity and the differing styles of delineating property and ownership in the two systems. As opposed to the "complete" property system that could obtain in the world of zero transaction costs, actual property systems employ structures characterized by shortcuts in order to achieve property's substantive goals of protecting interests in use. Overlooking this structure leads to the bundle of rights picture of property, even though property is a structured bundle of relationships. The architecture of property consists in part of four basic relationships, and a number of characteristic features of property automatically arise out this architecture, including exclusion rights, in rem status, and running to successors. Where civil law and common law differ is in their style of delineation, which reflects the path dependence of initial investment in feudal fragmentation in the common law and Roman-inspired holistic dominion in civil law. This transaction cost explanation for the functional similarities but different delineation process in the two systems promises to put the comparative law of property on a sounder descriptive footing.


The ATM technology for high speed serial transmission provides a new quality of communication by introducing novel features in a LAN environment, especially support of real time communication, of both LAN and WAN communication and of multimedia streams. In order to evaluate ATM for future DAQ systems and remote control systems as well as for a high speed picture archiving and communications system for medical images, Forschungszentrum Julich has build up a pilot system for the evaluation of ATM and standard low cost multimedia systems. It is a heterogeneous multivendor system containing a variety of switches and desktop solutions, employing different protocol options of ATM. The tests conducted in the pilot system revealed major difficulties regarding stability, interoperability and performance. The paper presents motivations, layout and results of the pilot system. Discussion of results concentrates on performance issues relevant for realistic applications, e.g., connection to a RAID system via NFS over ATM.


Molecular modelling and simulation are powerful methods in providing important information on different biological systems to elucidate their structural and functional properties, which cannot be determined in experiment. These methods are applied to analyse versatile biological systems: lipid membrane bilayers stabilized by an intercalated single wall carbon nanotube and retroviral proteins such as HIV protease and integrase. HIV-1 integrase has nuclear localization signals (NLS) which play a crucial role in nuclear import of viral preintegration complex (PIC). However, the detailed mechanisms of PIC formation and its nuclear transport are not known. Previously it was shown that NLSs bind to the cell transport machinery e.g. proteins of nuclear pore complex such as transportins. I investigated the interaction of this viral protein HIV-1 integrase with proteins of the nuclear pore complex such as transportin-SR2 (Shityakov et al., 2010). I showed that the transportin-SR2 in nuclear import is required due to its interaction with the HIV-1 integrase. I analyzed key domain interaction, and hydrogen bond formation in transportin-SR2. These results were discussed in comparison to other retroviral species such as foamy viruses to better understand this specific and efficient retroviral trafficking route.
The retroviral nuclear import was next analyzed in experiments regarding the retroviral ability to infect nondividing cells. To accomplish the gene transfer task successfully, retroviruses must efficiently transduce different cell cultures at different phases of cell cycle. However, promising and safe foamy viral vectors used for gene transfer are unable to efficiently infect quiescent cells. This drawback was due to their inability to create a preintegration complex (PIC) for nuclear import of retroviral DNA. On the contrary, the lentiviral vectors are not dependant on cell cycle. In the course of reverse transcription the polypurine tract (PPT) is believed to be crucial for PIC formation.

In this thesis, I compared the transduction frequencies of PPT modified FV vectors with lentiviral vectors in nondividing and dividing alveolar basal epithelial cells from human adenocarcinoma (A549) by using molecular cloning, transfection and transduction techniques and several other methods. In contrast to lentiviral vectors, FV vectors were not able to efficiently transduce nondividing cell (Shityakov and Rethwilm, unpublished data). Despite the findings, which support the use of FV vectors as a safe and efficient alternative to lentiviral vectors, major limitation in terms of foamy-based retroviral vector gene transfer in quiescent cells still remains.

Many attempts have been made recently to search for the potential molecules as possible drug candidates to treat HIV infection for over decades now. These molecules can be retrieved from chemical libraries or can be designed on a computer screen and then synthesized in a laboratory. Most notably, one could use the computerized structure as a reference to determine the types of molecules that might block the enzyme. Such structure-based drug design strategies have the potential to save off years and millions of dollars compared to a more traditional trial-and-error drug development process.

After the crystal structure of the HIV-encoded protease enzyme had been elucidated, computer-aided drug design played a pivotal role in the development of new compounds that inhibit this enzyme which is responsible for HIV maturation and infectivity. Promising representatives of these compounds have recently found their way to patients. Protease inhibitors show a powerful sustained suppression of HIV-1 replication, especially when used in combination therapy regimens. However, these drugs are becoming less effective to more resistant HIV strains due to multiple mutations in the retroviral proteases.
In computational drug design I used molecular modelling methods such as lead expansion algorithm (Tripos®) to create a virtual library of compounds with different binding affinities to protease binding site. In addition, I heavily applied computer assisted combinatorial chemistry approaches to design and optimize virtual libraries of protease inhibitors and performed in silico screening and pharmacophore-similarity scoring of these drug candidates. Further computational analyses revealed one unique compound with different protease binding ability from the initial hit and its role for possible new class of protease inhibitors is discussed (Shityakov and Dandekar, 2009).

A number of atomistic models were developed to elucidate the nanotube behaviour in lipid bilayers. However, none of them provided useful information for CNT effect upon the lipid membrane bilayer for implementing all-atom models that will allow us to calculate the deviations of lipid molecules from CNT with atomistic precision. Unfortunately, the direct experimental investigation of nanotube behaviour in lipid bilayer remains quite a tricky problem opening the door before the molecular simulation techniques. In this regard, more detailed multi-scale simulations are needed to clearly understand the stabilization characteristics of CNTs in hydrophobic environment.
The phenomenon of an intercalated single-wall carbon nanotube in the center of lipid membrane was extensively studied and analyzed. The root mean square deviation and root mean square fluctuation functions were calculated in order to measure stability of lipid membranes.
The results indicated that an intercalated carbon nanotube restrains the conformational freedom of adjacent lipids and hence has an impact on the membrane stabilization dynamics (Shityakov and Dandekar, 2011). On the other hand, different lipid membranes may have dissimilarities due to the differing abilities to create a bridge formation between the adherent lipid molecules. The results derived from this thesis will help to develop stable nanobiocomposites for construction of novel biomaterials and delivery of various biomolecules for medicine and biology.


This inspiring book becomes one that is very booming. After published, this book can steal the market and book lovers to always run out of this book. And now, we will not let you run out any more to get this book. Why should be state of shock? As a book lover, you must know that enjoying the book to read should be relevant to how you exactly need now. If they are not too much relevance, you can take the way of the inspirations to create for new inspirations.


Abstract. The budgets of seven halogenated gases (CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, CFC-114, CFC-115, CCl4 and SF6) are studied by comparing measurements in polar firn air from two Arctic and three Antarctic sites, and simulation results of two numerical models: a 2-D atmospheric chemistry model and a 1-D firn diffusion model. The first one is used to calculate atmospheric concentrations from emission trends based on industrial inventories; the calculated concentration trends are used by the second one to produce depth concentration profiles in the firn. The 2-D atmospheric model is validated in the boundary layer by comparison with atmospheric station measurements, and vertically for CFC-12 by comparison with balloon and FTIR measurements. Firn air measurements provide constraints on historical atmospheric concentrations over the last century. Age distributions in the firn are discussed using a Green function approach. Finally, our results are used as input to a radiative model in order to evaluate the radiative forcing of our target gases. Multi-species and multi-site firn air studies allow to better constrain atmospheric trends. The low concentrations of all studied gases at the bottom of the firn, and their consistency with our model results confirm that their natural sources are small. Our results indicate that the emissions, sinks and trends of CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, CFC-115 and SF6 are well constrained, whereas it is not the case for CFC-114 and CCl4. Significant emission-dependent changes in the lifetimes of halocarbons destroyed in the stratosphere were obtained. Those result from the time needed for their transport from the surface where they are emitted to the stratosphere where they are destroyed. Efforts should be made to update and reduce the large uncertainties on CFC lifetimes.


Keep your small business finances in tip-top formManage your business accounting and financial management tasks-quickly and accuratelyIf you're like most small-business people, accounting is the last thing you want to spend lots of time on. That's where this handy guide comes in. Written by a CPA, it quickly walks you through bookkeeping basics -- and shows how QuickBooks can put your accounts in order so you can spend less time with the books and more time on business.Discover how to Build the perfect budget Prepare customer invoices and record sales Produce common financial statements Manage inventory Simplify tax return preparation Balance accounts


Atmospheric composition affects the radiative balance of the Earth through the creation of greenhouse gases and the formation of aerosols. The latter interact with incoming solar radiation, both directly and indirectly through their effects on cloud formation and lifetime. The tropics have a major influence on incoming sunlight however the tropical atmosphere is poorly characterised, especially outside Amazonia. The origins of air masses influencing a measurement site in a protected rainforest in Borneo, South East Asia, were assessed and the likely sources of a range of trace gases and particles were determined. This was conducted by interpreting in situ measurements made at the site in the context of ECMWF backwards air mass trajectories. Two different but complementary methods were employed to interpret the data: comparison of periods classified by cluster analysis of trajectories, and inspection of the dependence of mean measured values on geographical history of trajectories. Sources of aerosol particles, carbon monoxide and halocarbons were assessed. The likely source influences include: terrestrial organic biogenic emissions; long range transport of anthropogenic emissions; biomass burning; sulphurous emissions from marine phytoplankton, with a possible contribution from volcanoes; marine production of inorganic mineral aerosol; and marine production of halocarbons. Aerosol sub- and super-saturated water affinity was found to be dependent on source (and therefore composition), with more hygroscopic aerosol and higher numbers of cloud condensation nuclei measured in air masses of marine origin. The prevailing sector during the majority of measurements was south-easterly, which is from the direction of the coast closest to the site, with a significant influence inland from the south-west. This analysis shows that marine and terrestrial air masses have different dominant chemical sources. Comparison with the AMAZE-08 project in the Amazon basin shows Bornean composition to arise from a different, more complex mixture of sources. In particular sulphate loadings are much greater than in Amazonia which is likely to mainly be the result of the marine influence on the site. This suggests that the significant region of the tropics made up of island networks is not well represented by extrapolation from measurements made in the Amazon. In addition, it is likely that there were no periods where the site was influenced only by the rainforest, with even the most pristine inland periods showing some evidence of non-rainforest aerosol. This is in contrast to Amazonia which experienced periods dominated by rainforest emissions.


In Bosnia, 20 years aft er a war of ethnic cleansing, mixed-ethnicity families swim against the stream of nationalist separatism that insists all Bosnians should be neatly sorted into ethnic categories. When asked about their experiences, however, mixed families in Sarajevo during fieldwork from 2011 to 2012 repeatedly insisted that they were just "ordinary," "normal" families. In this article, I look closely at an ordinary evening in the life of one such family, examining how they achieve this atmosphere of everydayness within which ordinary kin relationships are sustained despite the volatility of differences in ethnic and religious affiliation. Using a conversation analytic approach and building on the work of ordinary ethics theorists, I argue that the sense of being an ordinary family is an accomplishment constituted through active intersubjective work.


This report articulates nine mechanisms by which the smart grid can reduce energy use and carbon impacts associated with electricity generation and delivery. The quantitative estimates of potential reductions in electricity sector energy and associated CO2 emissions presented are based on a survey of published results and simple analyses. This report does not attempt to justify the cost effectiveness of the smart grid, which to date has been based primarily upon the twin pillars of cost-effective operation and improved reliability. Rather, it attempts to quantify the additional energy and CO2 emission benefits inherent in the smart grid's potential contribution to the nation's goal of mitigating climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of the electric power system.


Ultra Wideband (UWB) radio is one of the emerging technologies which have promising characteristics such as high data rate transmission, material penetration, multiple access capability and reduced fading. It has the potential to evolve as the future solution to high data rate short range wireless communication, and other applications including imaging and radar. This research aims to establish a comprehensive database, performance verification of the existing channel models, and a proposal of new channel models. This research contributes further to the channel characterization of the UWB channels and proposes a new model with enhanced statistical description using a large database of indoor and outdoor UWB measurements. The existing channel models are inadequate to study the delay characteristics of the UWB channel. The proposed model has new information regarding statistical descriptions of channel delay characteristics, including mean excess delay and root mean square (RMS) delay spread.


In this paper, we focus on a "local property" of permutations: value-peak. A permutation $\sigma$ has a value-peak $\sigma(i)$ if $\sigma(i-1) \sigma(i+1)$ for some $i\in[2,n-1]$. Define $VP(\sigma)$ as the set of value-peaks of the permutation $\sigma$. For any $S\subseteq [3,n]$, define $VP_n(S)$ such that $VP(\sigma)=S$. Let ${\cal P}_n=\{S\mid VP_n(S)\neq\emptyset\}$. we make the set ${\cal P}_n$ into a poset $\mathfrak{ P}$$_n$ by defining $S\preceq T$ if $S\subseteq T$ as sets. We prove that the poset $\mathfrak{ P}$$_n$ is a simplicial complex on the set $[3,n]$ and study some of its properties. We give enumerative formulae of permutations in the set $VP_n(S)$.


Most of the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide result from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy production. Photosynthesis has long been recognized as a means, at least in theory, to sequester anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Aquatic microalgae have been identified as fast growing species whose carbon fixing rates are higher than those of land-based plants by one order of magnitude. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), Aquasearch, and the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii are jointly developing technologies for recovery and sequestration of CO{sub 2} from stationary combustion systems by photosynthesis of microalgae. The research is aimed primarily at demonstrating the ability of selected species of microalgae to effectively fix carbon from typical power plant exhaust gases. This report covers the reporting period 1 January to 31 March 2004 in which PSI, Aquasearch and University of Hawaii conducted their tasks. Based on the work during the previous reporting period, Aquasearch run first pilot scale production run with coal combustion gas to microalgae. Aquasearch started the second full scale carbon sequestration tests with propane combustion gases. Aquasearch also conducted modeling work to study the change in alkalinity in the medium resulting form microalgal photosynthesis and growth. University of Hawaii continued effort on system optimization of the CO{sub 2} sequestration system.


The essentials of pastoral care involve the pastor's distinctive task of caring for those who are estranged--the lost sheep. Taken from the biblical image of the shepherd, the pastor by virtue of his or her professional calling cultivates wise judgment in order to hear the hurting and offer guidance, reconciliation, healing, sustaining presence, and empowerment to those in need. This book will outline the quintessential elements pastors need to wisely minister in today's context by discussing four major kinds of lostness: grief, illness, abuse, and family challenges. The purpose of the Abingdon Essential Guides is to fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to the core disciples in biblical, theological, and religious studies. Drawing on the best in current scholarship, written with the need of students foremost in mind, addressed to learners in a number of contexts, Essential Guides will be the first choice of those who wish to acquaint themselves or their students with the broad scope of issues, perspectives, and subject matters within biblical and religious studies. "


Athletes experience unique stressors that have been indicated to compromise their mental wellness and sport performance, yet they underutilize mental health services. Indeed, very few mental health interventions for athletes have been developed to fit sport culture, and well-controlled mental health outcome research in athlete populations is warranted. In this randomized controlled trial, a sport specific optimization approach to concurrent mental health and sport performance (The Optimum Performance Program in Sports; TOPPS) was examined. Seventy-four collegiate athletes (NCAA = 42; club = 11; intramural = 21) formally assessed for mental health diagnostic severity were randomly assigned to TOPPS or campus counseling/psychological services as usual (SAU) after baseline. Dependent measures assessed general mental health, mood, mental health factors affecting sport performance in training, competition and life outside of sports, days using substances, sexual risk behaviors, happiness in relationships, relationships affecting sport performance, and contributions of relationship to sport performance. Intent to treat repeated measures analyses indicated that participants in TOPPS consistently demonstrated better outcomes than SAU up to 8-months post-randomization and for mental health/substance use measures, particularly when diagnostic criteria were most severe. Recommendations are provided in light of the results to assist sport-specific mental health intervention development and implementation within athlete populations.


Let $\mathcal{Q}$ be a monotone decreasing property of graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices. Erdős, Suen and Winkler [5] introduced the following natural way of choosing a random maximal graph in $\mathcal{Q}$: start with $G$ the empty graph on $n$ vertices. Add edges to $G$ one at a time, each time choosing uniformly from all $e\in G^c$ such that $G+e\in \mathcal{Q}$. Stop when there are no such edges, so the graph $G_\infty$ reached is maximal in $\mathcal{Q}$. Erdős, Suen and Winkler asked how many edges the resulting graph typically has, giving good bounds for $\mathcal{Q}=\{$bipartite graphs$\}$ and $\mathcal{Q}=\{$triangle free graphs$\}$. We answer this question for $C_4$-free graphs and for $K_4$-free graphs, by considering a related question about standard random graphs $G_p\in \mathcal{G}(n,p)$. The main technique we use is the 'step by step' approach of [3]. We wish to show that $G_p$ has a certain property with high probability. For example, for $K_4$ free graphs the property is that every 'large' set $V$ of vertices contains a triangle not sharing an edge with any $K_4$ in $G_p$. We would like to apply a standard Martingale inequality, but the complicated dependence involved is not of the right form. Instead we examine $G_p$ one step at a time in such a way that the dependence on what has gone before can be split into 'positive' and 'negative' parts, using the notions of up-sets and down-sets. The relatively simple positive part is then estimated directly. The much more complicated negative part can simply be ignored, as shown in [3].


In this issue, in lieu of the Comments section, the journal features the symposium: Trailblazers Too Lighty Mentioned? The symposium consists of three articles, but others might extend the symposium in an upcoming issue. The articles speak of eminent economists advancing lines of thinking without due recognition of classical-liberal trailblazers. The pattern suggests a syndrome, which would raise the question, Why such a syndrome? The three articles criticize a number of authors for neglecting the trailblazers. As is the policy at this journal, the commented-on authors have been invited to reply. They have declined as yet, but the invitation remains open.


Africa suffers from the following serious problems: (i) the distribution of desertification vulnerability suggests that every country is prone to environmental desertification, and desertification processes currently affect about 46% of the total land area; (ii) the Basel Convention is an international agreement that regulates cross-border shipments of toxic waste, but this tight regulation for prohibiting export of end-of-life electronic devices (so-called e-waste) to the third world has resulted in an increase in illegal transport to Africa. The present research is intended to conduct a technical pre-feasibility study in order to tackle the above-mentioned problems. About 80% of e-waste comes from television sets and computers, and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) correspond to about 2/3 of the total weight ? the neck and funnel parts of CRTs contain toxic materials. The manufacture of foam glasses is considered as safe CRT treatment. The control of soil water is significant to cultivate plants the desert, and the waste-based foam particles can improve water retention in arid soils; i.e. a key proposal is the production of soil amendment from CRT glass. The water-use efficiencies of this amendment's layer are higher than those of the control. Furthermore, leaching fractions of heavy metals from the produced foam glass amendment are lower than the statutory limits.


The aim of this study was to identify and describe skills, characteristics and support networks needed by keystone Life Orientation (LO) teachers in six Gauteng schools. In this study "keystone" refers to LO teachers who make a positive impact in their schools. A qualitative research design was used to collect data through interviews, class observations, and questionnaires. Data were analysed through content analysis. The results indicate that keystone LO teachers must be skilled counselors, career guides and diverse role players. They should also be open, approachable, have integrity, be trustworthy, resolve conflict and make good use of internal and external support within the context of schools. More importantly, it was found that keystone LO teachers are determined by their ability to deal with challenges, such as child abuse, substance abuse, poverty, and HIV/AIDS within their school communities. Based on the findings, the implications for keystone LO teachers in the educational, social and cultural contexts are discussed.


In this research, multi-perspective image registration using LiDAR and visual images was considered. 2D-3D image registration is a difficult task because it requires the extraction of different semantic features from each modality. This problem is solved in three parts. The first step involves detection and extraction of common features from each of the data sets. The second step consists of associating the common features between two different modalities. Traditional methods use lines or orthogonal corners as common features. The third step consists of building the projection matrix. Many existing methods use global positing system (GPS) or inertial navigation system (INS) for an initial estimate of the camera pose. However, the approach discussed herein does not use GPS, INS, or any such devices for initial estimate; hence the model can be used in places like the lunar surface or Mars where GPS or INS are not available. A variation of the method is also described, which does not require strong features from both images but rather uses intensity gradients in the image. This can be useful when one image does not have strong features (such as lines) or there are too many extraneous features.


Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards--and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view. This subterfuge was necessary, Gretchen Heefner argues, in order for Americans to accept a costly nuclear buildup and the resulting threat of Armageddon. As for the ranchers, farmers, and other civilians in the Plains states who were first seduced by the economics of war and then forced to live in the Soviet crosshairs, their sense of citizenship was forever changed. Some were stirred to dissent. Others consented but found their proud Plains individualism giving way to a growing dependence on the military-industrial complex. Even today, some communities express reluctance to let the Minutemen go, though the Air Force no longer wants them buried in the heartland. Complicating a red state/blue state reading of American politics, Heefner's account helps to explain the deep distrust of government found in many western regions, and also an addiction to defense spending which, for many local economies, seems inescapable.


This paper explores the use of collaboration theory and the consensus building framework to develop institutional strategic alliances at two North American postsecondary institutions. Collaboration between institutional and/or external partners offers rich opportunities to develop creative programming that provides students with opportunities for service learning situated in a well-planned curriculum. The collaboration development capitalizes on mutually beneficial outcomes for all partners and affords more informed decision making and impact than if partners were working individually. This paper highlights two successful partnerships and outlines the future direction of those collaborative alliances.


Bitcoin is a decentralized payment system that is based on Proof-of-Work. Bitcoin is currently gaining popularity as a digital currency; several businesses are starting to accept Bitcoin transactions. An example case of the growing use of Bitcoin was recently reported in the media; here, Bitcoins were used as a form of fast payment in a local fast-food restaurant. In this paper, we analyze the security of using Bitcoin for fast payments, where the time between the exchange of currency and goods is short (i.e., in the order of few seconds). We focus on doublespending attacks on fast payments and demonstrate that these attacks can be mounted at low cost on currently deployed versions of Bitcoin. We further show that the measures recommended by Bitcoin developers for the use of Bitcoin in fast transactions are not always effective in resisting double-spending; we show that if those recommendations are integrated in future Bitcoin implementations, double-spending attacks on Bitcoin will still be possible. Finally, we leverage on our findings and propose a lightweight countermeasure that enables the detection of doublespending attacks in fast transactions.


For 150 million years, the skies didn't belong to birds--they belonged to the pterosaurs. These flying reptiles, which include the pterodactyls, shared the world with the nonavian dinosaurs until their extinction 65 million years ago. Some pterosaurs, such as the giant azhdarchids, were the largest flying animals of all time, with wingspans exceeding thirty feet and standing heights comparable to modern giraffes. This richly illustrated book takes an unprecedented look at these astonishing creatures, presenting the latest findings on their anatomy, ecology, and extinction. Pterosaurs features some 200 stunning illustrations, including original paintings by Mark Witton and photos of rarely seen fossils. After decades of mystery, paleontologists have finally begun to understand how pterosaurs are related to other reptiles, how they functioned as living animals, and, despite dwarfing all other flying animals, how they managed to become airborne. Here you can explore the fossil evidence of pterosaur behavior and ecology, learn about the skeletal and soft-tissue anatomy of pterosaurs, and consider the newest theories about their cryptic origins. This one-of-a-kind book covers the discovery history, paleobiogeography, anatomy, and behaviors of more than 130 species of pterosaur, and also discusses their demise at the end of the Mesozoic. The most comprehensive book on pterosaurs ever published Features some 200 illustrations, including original paintings by the author Covers every known species and major group of pterosaurs Describes pterosaur anatomy, ecology, behaviors, diversity, and more Encourages further study with 500 references to primary pterosaur literature Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.


If $\mathcal{C}$ is a clutter with $n$ vertices and $q$ edges whose clutter matrix has column vectors ${\mathcal A} = \{v_1, \ldots, v_q\}$, we call $\mathcal{C}$ an Ehrhart clutter if $\{(v_1,1),\ldots,(v_q,1)\} \subset \{ 0,1 \}^{n+1}$ is a Hilbert basis. Letting $A(P)$ be the Ehrhart ring of $P={\rm conv}(\mathcal{A})$, we are able to show that if $\mathcal{C}$ is a uniform unmixed MFMC clutter, then $\mathcal{C}$ is an Ehrhart clutter and in this case we provide sharp upper bounds on the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and the $a$-invariant of $A(P)$. Motivated by the Conforti-Cornuejols conjecture on packing problems, we conjecture that if $\mathcal{C}$ is both ideal and the clique clutter of a perfect graph, then $\mathcal{C}$ has the MFMC property. We prove this conjecture for Meyniel graphs by showing that the clique clutters of Meyniel graphs are Ehrhart clutters. In much the same spirit, we provide a simple proof of our conjecture when $\mathcal{C}$ is a uniform clique clutter of a perfect graph. We close with a generalization of Ehrhart clutters as it relates to total dual integrality.


Today's society is facing challenges of an unprecedented global scale. Economic shifts, ageing population, migration flows and climate change – to name only a few – will provide both new problems and new opportunities. Analyses, instruments and methods that were used in the past to prepare for the future no longer work. How can decision and policy-makers cope with all this? This book offers insight into a new approach. 'Future(s) thinking or strategic foresight thinking' is a powerful and research-based method of interpreting an unpredictable, changing and complex environment. It can be applied in a range of domains, from political policy and business strategy to innovation and entrepreneurship. In all of these domains, the disciplined application of future thinking can offer a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage. "Thinking Futures" is a valuable guide to anyone concerned for our future: from politicians to CEOs, from policymakers to youngsters and from diplomats to intelligence service directors.


This Article argues that recent developments in economic theory provide a new rationale for the dichotomous approach of land use arrangements in the law of servitudes that is almost universal in the modern Western legal tradition. The treatment of certain land-related promises as enforceable contracts between parties, rather than real rights that run with the land in perpetuity, can be explained as an attempt to minimize the transaction and strategic costs resulting from dysfunctional property arrangements. As demonstrated by the Authors, benchmark doctrines such as 'touch and concern,' and the civil law principles of 'prediality' and numerus clausus, have served as instruments to limit excessive or dysfunctional fragmentation of property rights. Section I of this Article describes the dichotomous approach of land use arrangements in the law of servitudes in Common Law and Civil Law systems. Section II provides a functional explanation of the legal rules in this area. Section III documents and explains the changing approach to land use law in both Common Law and Civil Law jurisdictions. Section IV discusses the role of property law in a changing economy. Section V reflects on the appropriate scope of freedom of contract in the law of servitudes. Section VI concludes.


Sharing is an indispensable part of American property law, often mediating the harsh implications of ownership rights. Yet sharing is also a hidden component of this legal structure. In both theory and doctrinal manifestations, sharing is overshadowed by the iconic property right of exclusion. This Article argues that property law suffers a critical loss from its under-recognition of sharing because it fails to use sharing to correct distributional failures in a world of increasingly scarce resources. Sharing could be the basis for developing a rich range of outcomes in common property disputes. Instead, as described by Calabresi and Melamed in their famed article on remedies, outcomes are tagged to exclusion in the form of blanket property rules and "keep out�? signs. As a result, sharing currently functions merely to create very narrow exceptions to broad rights of ownership. To correct this failure, this Article presents a model for sharing as a preferred outcome in property disputes. Sharing as an outcome is a powerful means of addressing property inequalities, limiting harmful externalities, preserving efficiency, and harnessing the extraordinary potential of outcomes in property law.


This paper compares measurements of gaseous and particulate emissions from a wide range of biomass-burning plumes intercepted by the NASA DC-8 research aircraft during the three phases of the ARCTAS-2008 experiment: ARCTAS-A, based out of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA (3 April to 19 April 2008); ARCTAS-B based out of Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada (29 June to 13 July 2008); and ARCTAS-CARB, based out of Palmdale, California, USA (18 June to 24 June 2008). Approximately 500 smoke plumes from biomass burning emissions that varied in age from minutes to days were segregated by fire source region and urban emission influences. The normalized excess mixing ratios (NEMR) of gaseous (carbon dioxide, acetonitrile, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, benzene, methane, oxides of nitrogen and ozone) and fine aerosol particulate components (nitrate, sulfate, ammonium, chloride, organic aerosols and water soluble organic carbon) of these plumes were compared. A detailed statistical analysis of the different plume categories for different gaseous and aerosol species is presented in this paper.
The comparison of NEMR values showed that CH4 concentrations were higher in air-masses that were influenced by urban emissions. Fresh biomass burning plumes mixed with urban emissions showed a higher degree of oxidative processing in comparison with fresh biomass burning only plumes. This was evident in higher concentrations of inorganic aerosol components such as sulfate, nitrate and ammonium, but not reflected in the organic components. Lower NOx NEMRs combined with high sulfate, nitrate and ammonium NEMRs in aerosols of plumes subject to long-range transport, when comparing all plume categories, provided evidence of advanced processing of these plumes.


How should banks be regulated? Must governments tightly regulate banks to prevent financial panics, or is little or no regulation best? Can private banks be trusted to issue paper money or must this activity be a government monopoly? Theory can help answer these questions, but increasingly in recent years economists have turned to the natural experiments of history to find out how well free banking systems, or more accurately lightly regulated banking systems, have worked in practice. We now have numerous studies of lightly regulated banking in Scotland, the United States, Canada, and many other countries. As usual, research has produced new questions and heated controversies. The resulting ruckus tends to obscure the areas in which research has produced a consensus. Here we try to separate the areas where there is a consensus from areas where research is still in its early stages.


Miranda – at least the core rule that statements made by suspects in response to custodial interrogation are admissible in the prosecution's case-in-chief only following a knowing and voluntary waiver of the Miranda rights – has survived decades of attacks. While the "stormy seas" the decision navigated produced a wake of academic study of the wisdom of the decision, little attention has been focused on an equally logical question: did Miranda go far enough? If, as the Miranda Court emphasized, the purpose of Miranda's warnings was to ensure criminal suspects were provided a meaningful opportunity to exercise their privilege against self-incrimination, why has Miranda never debilitated law enforcement in the ways predicted when the decision was handed down? Three apparent answers emerge. First (as Justice Scalia periodically asserts), perhaps waiver and confession by a criminal suspect is a natural, logical, and laudable action motivated by contrition and the desire to accept responsibility for criminal wrongdoing – a natural product of human catharsis. This conclusion is suspect. If true, the interrogation techniques on which police routinely rely to obtain confessions (albeit after a valid Miranda waiver) would generally be unnecessary; suspects would be inclined to confess of their own immediate volition. Second, perhaps the whittling away of the breadth of the Miranda decision by subsequent jurisprudence has rendered Miranda a practical nullity? This explanation is equally unlikely considering most confessions are obtained in the traditional custodial interrogation environment where compliance with Miranda remains a requirement for admissibility of these confessions. Third, perhaps the Miranda warnings never truly achieved their intended objective: to restore confidence that a suspect's decision to cooperate during a police interrogation is the product of his own decision and not governmental coercion. If the purpose of the warnings was to educate a criminal suspect of his inconsequential right to refuse to assist the government in establishing his guilt, perhaps suspects do not clearly and completely understand that right? This article will assert that, contrary to the criticism that Miranda was overly protective of the rights of criminal suspects, the warnings required by that decision are in fact not protective enough. This accounts for the reality that most criminal suspects waive their rights and facilitate their own convictions. More specifically, this article will assert that, from the outset of the warning and waiver requirement established by the Miranda decision, what is perhaps the most important warning has never been required: that silence in the face of an allegation is never incriminating. This "missing" Miranda warning is, in the opinion of the author, perhaps the most important warning a suspect confronted with custodial interrogation requires to meaningfully exercise the privilege against self-incrimination, and yet it is the one warning that has never been required. Without this warning, the suspect is left to fear the instinctual expectation that silence in the face of accusation will be inferred by the accuser as guilt. Without being informed of the constitutional prohibition against such inferential guilt, the suspect is left to choose between standing on the right to silence and "looking guilty," or attempting to explain to the accuser why the accusation is erroneous. When considered from this perspective, it becomes easily understandable why a suspect would choose to enter into a dialogue with the interrogator, even knowing full well "anything said or done can be used against you in a court of law." In short, unless the suspect understands that saying nothing cannot be used against him, the risk that what he does say may be used against him seems far less significant.This underinclusiveness is a necessary consequence of any rule of presumption, and does not in the abstract justify abandoning Miranda and reverting back to the case-by-case voluntariness test it effectively replaced. Acceptance of this consequence has been a central theme of all post-Miranda jurisprudence. However, tolerance is not synonymous with the conclusion that underinclusiveness is unavoidable. Instead, the recognition of underinclusiveness warrants consideration of whether it is genuinely inevitable and unavoidable, or whether it is the result of a defect in the method used to strike the balance Miranda sought to achieve? If the answer is the latter, then considering how Miranda should be adjusted is both logical and appropriate. Perhaps because Miranda has been under attack since its inception, this question has received virtually no consideration. What calibrations could Miranda's presumptive rule undergo to mitigate some of its natural underinclusiveness?This article will address this question. First, it will review the purpose for the Miranda warning and waiver requirement. Second, it will consider how the established warnings left criminal suspects vulnerable to the influence of an adverse inferential perception of guilt, resulting from silence in the face of allegation. Third, it will discuss the proclivity of criminal suspects to waive their Miranda rights. Fourth, it will discuss incongruity between the absence of a no adverse inference warning and the prohibitions of exploiting a suspect's silence at trial. The article will then propose how adding this missing Miranda warning would more effectively align the original purposes of Miranda with the prophylactic actually used to protect the free exercise of the privilege against self-incrimination and, in so doing, create symmetry between the investigatory and trial phases of criminal prosecution.


Two bulky amino acids within the core of phage T4 lysozyme have each been replaced in turn with a series of hydrophobic amino acids. In one set of experiments, Leu99 was replaced with Phe, Met, Ile, Val and Ala. In the second series, Phe153 was replaced with Leu, Met, Ile, Val and Ala. The double mutant in which both Leu99 and Phe153 were replaced with alanine was also constructed. The change in stability of the protein associated with each substitution and the crystal structure of each variant have been determined. In the case of replacements at position 99 the protein behaves in a relatively rigid manner, and changes very little in response to substitutions. In contrast, the protein is more flexible and adjusts much more in response to substitutions of Phe153. In both cases there is a roughly linear dependence between the stability of the mutant protein relative to wild-type (delta delta G) and the difference in the hydrophobic strength of the amino acids involved in the substitution based on solvent transfer measurements (delta delta Gtr). The change in delta delta G is, however, much greater than delta delta Gtr. For the Phe153 replacements the discrepancy is about 1.9-fold, while for the Leu99 series it is about 2.6-fold. Mutants such as Leu99-->Ala, for which the protein remains essentially rigid, tend to create larger cavities and so incur a larger energy of destabilization. Mutants such as Phe153-->Ala, for which the protein structure tends to relax, result in smaller cavities and so are less destabilized. Mutants L99I and L99V are less stable than expected from considerations of transfer free energy and cavity formation due to introduced strain caused by the replacement of Leu99 with a residue of different shape. Mutant F153L is more stable than the reference wild-type, even though the transfer free energy of Leu is less than that of Phe. The increase in stability is apparently due to torsional strain in the side-chain of Phe153 that is present in wild-type lysozyme, but is relieved in the mutant structure.


Most of today's dynamic analysis approaches are based on method traces. However, in the case of object-orientation understanding program execution by analyzing method traces is complicated because the behavior of a program depends on the sharing and the transfer of object references (aliasing). We argue that trace-based dynamic analysis is at a too low level of abstraction for object-oriented systems. We propose a new approach that captures the life cycle of objects by explicitly taking into account object aliasing and how aliases propagate during the execution of the program. In this paper, we present in detail our new meta-model and discuss future tracks opened by it.


[1] In this paper we present validation results of the total ozone column data products of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) by using airborne observations by the CCD Actinic Flux Spectrometer (CAFS) instrument. CAFS was flown during Aura Validation Experiment (AVE) campaigns organized by NASA in support of the validation of EOS-Aura satellite data products. The accuracy of individual CAFS total ozone column estimates of 2.0% on average is sufficient to meet the OMI validation requirements of 3.0%. A climatology was used to estimate the ozone column below the aircraft altitude. AVE validation results show that the OMI-TOMS total ozone column data product is of overall high quality as CAFS and OMI-TOMS agree to within less than 1% with a standard deviation of 8 DU (2–3%) with no significant dependence on total ozone column, latitude, cloud fraction, or solar zenith angle. The primary shortcoming in OMI-DOAS collection 2 total ozone column data is the air mass factor reflected in the dependence on solar zenith angle of the CAFS and OMI-DOAS total ozone column difference. Fortunately, the CAFS aircraft data collected during AVE provided useful insights that could not be obtained in any other way into where OMI satellite data retrieval improvements were needed. For OMI-DOAS collection 3 the air mass factor issue has been solved by calibration optimization and retrieval algorithm improvements, bringing airborne CAFS and OMI-DOAS satellite data to agreement within less than 1.5% with a standard deviation of 9 DU (2–3%), in compliance with the OMI validation requirements.


My essay examines patterns of meaning in the nomenclature chosen to designate street names of Budapest, Hungary's present-day capital city, over a period of about three hundred years. I attend to the magyarization of Budapest and how street signage reflected the change of Budapest from a German to a Hungarian city. After the changeover to Magyar I continue to address how Budapest street toponymy was consistently utilized to express national identity. As consensus over national identity changed over time, so did its metaphorical expression in Budapest street nomenclature. Examples of these changes include the creation of cults of collective remembrance and personality in the nineteenth century and irredentism in the twentieth century. I also argue that Budapest street naming during the socialist period served the purpose of legitimizing the purported domestic origin of the ruling political philosophy. Currently, the erasure and retention of street names from previous regimes is a deliberate policy of symbolic reconciliation of Hungary's past with its present.