In situ observations of H2O and HDO in the midlatitude stratosphere are used to evaluate the role of convection in determining the stratospheric water budget. The observations show that water vapor in the overworld stratosphere (potential temperature > 380 K) is isotopically heavier than expected. Measurements in an airmass with anomalously high concentrations of water vapor show isotopic water signatures that are characteristic of evaporated ice lofted from the troposphere during convective storms. Observed H2O and HDO concentrations in the plume of enhanced water and in the background stratosphere suggest that extratropical convection can account for a significant fraction of the observed water vapor in the summertime overworld stratosphere above the mid‐North American continent.


The scientific transfer of key technology features to developing countries, together with adequate competence, localisation and adaptation, is the primary purpose of the proposed investigation. It is evident that introducing high-level CAD design and detailing will improve the planning process in developing countries. Successful utilization of applied information technology for the planning process, however, depends on the user-interface of individual software. Therefore, to open the great opportunity embedded in CAD software for clients globally, the language and character-set barrier of traditional user-interfaces must be overcome. A proposal for a research program is given here to address such issue in favour of global civil engineering.


With the explosive growth in mobile phone usage and rapid rise in search engine technologies over the last decade, augmented reality (AR) is poised to be one of this decade's most disruptive technologies, as the information that is constantly flowing around us is brought into view, in real-time, through augmented reality. In this cutting-edge book, the authors outline and discuss never-before-published information about augmented reality and its capabilities. With coverage of mobile, desktop, developers, security, challenges, and gaming,this book gives you a comprehensive understanding of what augmented reality is, what it can do, what is in store for the future and most importantly: how to benefit from using AR in our lives and careers. Educatesreadershow best to use augmented reality regarless of industry Provides an in-depth understanding of AR and ideas ranging from new business applications to new crime fighting methods Includes actual examples and case studies from both private and government applications


In "For Public Sociology" and other essays, Michael Burawoy acknowledges that the national sociologies of countries other than the US (e.g. Brazil, Norway, South Africa) differ substantially from the US case. The balance and dynamics among the four types of sociology, the timing and phases of the historical development of the discipline and the challenges that face the discipline, are some of the many ways sociology differs from country to country (2005a: 20-22; 2005c: 382-4, 2005d: 423-4). Canada is a particularly interesting case because of its geographic proximity and close economic and cultural ties to the United States. Canadian sociology has been deeply influenced by American sociology, but has always stood in an uneasy intellectual and political relationship to the US version of the discipline (Hiller 1982; Brym with Fox 1989; Cormier 2004; McLaughlin 2005). A serious discussion of the possibilities and challenges for a public sociology in Canada requires an analysis of the historical and sociological specificity of the Canadian version of the discipline, something we hope to offer here in this introduction as well as in the papers to follow.


Every criminal procedure student learns on the first day of class that Fourth Amendment policy represents a zero-sum game: a constant struggle between the individual privacy of citizens and the needs of law enforcement. In reality, however, the "competition" between law enforcement and criminals does not have to be zero-sum. In order to see why, we need to see the criminal justice system not as a competition, but instead as an industry. This article applies economic principles to try to find ways to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system — that is, to maximize output while minimizing costs. The costs to the system are both the intangible loss of privacy that is associated with surveillance, as well as the tangible, actual monetary cost incurred by law enforcement organizations to undertake the surveillance. The output that we are seeking is crime control, or more specifically in the Fourth Amendment context, the identification of those who are guilty of a crime and collection of evidence which can be used to demonstrate their guilt. Roughly speaking, the more money we spend, and/or the more willing we are to infringe on our own freedoms, the more output we receive in terms of identifying the guilty and recovering incriminating evidence. However, there are two ways that this industry could in fact be a positive-sum game. First, advances in technologies can increase the effectiveness of surveillance in catching criminals without reducing the privacy rights of ordinary citizens — that is, it is possible to increase the output without increasing the cost. And second, changing norms and attitudes may decrease the value of certain kinds of privacy to individuals, causing the cost of certain types of surveillance to decrease. This can work in the other direction as well: when criminals, rather than police, take advantage of technological advances, the output of the system will decrease even if costs are held constant. Likewise, societal norms could change to make certain types of privacy more valuable, thus increasing the cost to the system. In these situations, the criminal justice system becomes a negative sum game. Once we have identified the productivity of different forms of surveillance, we can take steps to encourage more productive types of surveillance and discourage the less productive ones. The Article first sketches out a basic formula for analyzing the productivity of different surveillance methods by measuring the cost of the inputs and the benefits of the outputs. It then applies this formula to different methods of surveillance to see how certain methods of surveillance are more productive than others, searches for ways to increase the productivity of surveillance generally. Finally, the Article offers some suggestions for changing the way we regulate surveillance techniques in order to maximize the efficiency of the process.


The main purpose of this research is to determine the levels of using strategic management tools (SMT) and satisfaction with them in five star hotels in Turkey. In addition, the relationships between the characteristics of managers and organizations in terms of using the SMT and satisfaction with term are investigated. The sample includes 53 five-star hotels in Turkey. Results show that the levels of using SMT are high, but satisfactions with them are low. While the tool with the highest usage is customer relationship management, the tool with the lowest usage is Hoshin Kanri. On the other hand, while the SMT of Swot Analysis has highest satisfaction scores, the Search conference has lowest. Thus, a matrix of the levels of using SMT and satisfaction with term is presented. In this study, significant differences among organizations' operation years and their decision making levels in terms of using SMT are determined. No significant differences are determined among all demographic characteristics in terms of satisfaction with the SMT.


There is a growing concern within worksite health promotion related to low participation rates in health promotion programs targeted for at-risk employees.1-4 This concern is warranted because the success of these worksite programs, to a large degree, depends on the level of risk reduction and behavior change among at-risk employees.1 Perhaps one of the main reasons for low participation rates among at-risk groups can be found within the actual program planning phase. The designs of the many traditional worksite health promotion needs assessment surveys fail to adequately assess the needs and interests of at-risk employees.
Needs assessment is recognized as the essential first step for cost-effective health promotion planning5 and often is conducted in the form of a survey administered to the target population or a representative sample. Herein lies the design flaw. The traditional needs assessment survey is designed only to provide summary needs and interest information for the total sample and not to provide a method by which the program planner can identify at-risk employees. Thus, the program planner has no accurate in-formation on the specific health-related needs and participation intentions of at-risk employees who are critical to long-term program success. Without this information the program planner may be developing health promotion programs that provide little incentive for the at-risk employee to participate.
This deficiency can be ameliorated with minor modifications to the typical needs assessment survey. Such modifications that involve the addition of questions that allow employees to be classified according to risk levels and permit the expression of individual interest in participating within specific health promotion programs. This information gives the health promotion planner the ability to assess the prevalence of at-risk employees and, their specific problems and concerns, as well as the ability to predict the likelihood of their participation in desired health promotion programs.
The purpose of this research paper is to illustrate a risk-rated needs assessment technique that can be used to improve participation in worksite health promotion programs by at-risk populations. A discussion of the design of a risk-rated survey and a case study will be presented in order to describe the advantages over a more traditional survey design.


As a social critic Breyten Breytenbach published two books of political commentary and political analysis during the mid-1980s without the opportunity of engaging with commentators at home. While True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist is part autobiography and part searing comment on prison life, End Papers is a more detached dissection of the major political and cultural issues confronting South Africa. Breytenbach was now one of the respected international voices on the political crisis in South Africa. The violent break-up of apartheid had changed Breytenbach's social criticism. In the place of the earlier rejection and denunciation had come a willingness to engage and reason with his audience. The Dakar conference of 1987, which Breytenbach co-organised, offered an ideal opportunity for this. The conference was given wide publicity and was seen by some as the catalyst that broke the ice for the negotiations between the government and the ANC two and a half years later.


Photographer and digital imaging expert Martin Evening's guiding philosophy when editing images is to ask, What is the point? Does what I am doing enhance the picture, or is it just artifice for artifices sake? InLightroom Transformations, Martin applies this approach to a broad collection of images, showing you how to turn ordinary-looking photos into hero shotswithout using fancy montage techniques or wacky effects. Bygiving each image his own interpretation andexplaining the rationale behind the choices he makes, he shows how you can do the same when processing your photos. Focusing primarily on techniques using Lightroom and Camera Rawbut also with PhotoshopMartin demonstrates how to manipulate the tones and composition of images to create photographs that correspond to your personal photographic vision. Filled with before-and-after shots with detailed explanations of how to go from an ordinary image to an extraordinary one, the book illustrates what you can achieve using Lightroom or Photoshop as a creative tool to enhance the natural beauty that lies within your images. Helps you pre-visualize the end result you would like for your photos, and provides easy-to-follow steps for simple edits to polish almost any image Includes tips on shooting technique to improve your images in-camera Demonstrates how to recompose existing shots to illustrate how a photograph could have been shot and composed better Includes short videos that demonstrate some of the techniques discussed in the book


Whether it is chosen or thrust upon you, change brings both opportunities and turmoil. Since first published 25 years ago, Transitions has helped hundreds of thousands of readers cope with these issues by providing an elegantly simple yet profoundly insightful roadmap of the transition process. With the understanding born of both personal and professional experience, William Bridges takes readers step by step through the three stages of any transition: The Ending, The Neutral Zone, and, in time, The New Beginning. Bridges explains how each stage can be understood and embraced, leading to meaningful and productive movement into a hopeful future. With a new introduction highlighting how the advice in the book continues to apply and is perhaps even more relevant today, and a new chapter devoted to change in the workplace, Transitions will remain the essential guide for coping with the one constant in life: change.


The purpose of this study is providing a scale for measuring attitudes toward science among Persian secondary school students. A total of 300 (150 girls and 150 boys) of second grade students from all disciplines including science and mathematics in secondary education, participated in the study. Research instrument was, translated Persian version of Simpson – Troost Attitude Questionnaire (STAQ). After performing the scale among the sample, the data was analyzed by SPSS software. The reliability of questionnaire was found to be .84. Factor analysis indicated that more than 35.8% of the total variance was explained with the scale scores. After factor rotation, five factors of attractiveness of science, the class / teacher, self-directed efforts, anxiety toward science and the family pattern were identified. Thus it was shown that the scale is multidimensional and the dimensions have appropriate reliability and validity to measure attitudes toward science, so this instrument could be used in the next Persian research in measuring attitudes toward science. Multivariate Analysis (MANOVA) of data showed that there is no significant difference between sex and students' attitudes toward science. But in the third factor (self-directed efforts) was a significant difference between sex and students' attitudes toward science and the average of female students were higher than male students. Test results also showed that there is significant different between discipline of students and their attitudes to science and attitudes of empirical science students have the better attitudes than themselves, while science students in first factors (attractiveness of science) and in second factor (class / Teacher), had mean higher average than mathematical physics students.


Seniors who are new to computers can learn Office applications quickly and easily If you're over 50 and new to computers, everything about them can seem intimidating. The most common applications you'll want to use are part of the Microsoft Office suite - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft Office 2007 For Seniors For Dummies shows you how to use each one in a straightforward, fun manner that takes all the apprehension away. This plain-English guide shows you just what you need to know to write letters with Word, keep a budget with an Excel spreadsheet, create fun slideshows with PowerPoint, and set up an e-mail account using Outlook. Microsoft Office 2007 For Seniors For Dummies doesn't assume you were born knowing how to use a computer; it starts at the beginning and makes learning easy and quick. Each chapter lists the tasks covered, with page references to help you locate what you need Shows how to start each application and navigate the elements on the screen Covers how to create documents in Word and provides templates for letters and faxes Explains how to create spreadsheets and includes a grid for budgeting Guides you through creating a PowerPoint presentation Demonstrates how to set up an e-mail account with Outlook and communicate with others Microsoft Office 2007 For Seniors For Dummies will have you using basic Office applications in no time, and boost your confidence too.


This paper takes a financial market perspective in examining the relationship between oil prices, the US dollar and asset prices, and it exploits the heteroskedasticity for the identification of causality in a multifactor model. It finds a bidirectional causality between the US dollar and oil prices since the early 2000s. Moreover, both oil prices and the US dollar are significantly affected by changes in equity market returns and risk. By contrast, oil prices did not react to changes in these financial assets before 2001. The paper provides evidence that this may be explained by the increased use of oil as a financial asset over the past decade, which intensified the link between oil and other assets. The model can account well for the strong and rising negative correlation between oil prices and the US dollar since the early 2000s, with risk shocks and the financialisation process of oil prices explaining most of the strengthening of this correlation. JEL code: F30; G15.


Neurodegeneration is the main cause for permanent disability in multiple sclerosis. The effect of current immunomodulatory treatments on neurodegeneration is insufficient. Therefore, direct neuroprotection and myeloprotection remain an important therapeutic goal. Targeting acid-sensing ion channel 1 (encoded by the ASIC1 gene), which contributes to the excessive intracellular accumulation of injurious Na(+) and Ca(2+) and is over-expressed in acute multiple sclerosis lesions, appears to be a viable strategy to limit cellular injury that is the substrate of neurodegeneration. While blockade of ASIC1 through amiloride, a potassium sparing diuretic that is currently licensed for hypertension and congestive cardiac failure, showed neuroprotective and myeloprotective effects in experimental models of multiple sclerosis, this strategy remains untested in patients with multiple sclerosis. In this translational study, we tested the neuroprotective effects of amiloride in patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. First, we assessed ASIC1 expression in chronic brain lesions from post-mortem of patients with progressive multiple sclerosis to identify the target process for neuroprotection. Second, we tested the neuroprotective effect of amiloride in a cohort of 14 patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis using magnetic resonance imaging markers of neurodegeneration as outcome measures of neuroprotection. Patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis underwent serial magnetic resonance imaging scans before (pretreatment phase) and during (treatment phase) amiloride treatment for a period of 3 years. Whole-brain volume and tissue integrity were measured with high-resolution T(1)-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging. In chronic brain lesions of patients with progressive multiple sclerosis, we demonstrate an increased expression of ASIC1 in axons and an association with injury markers within chronic inactive lesions. In patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, we observed a significant reduction in normalized annual rate of whole-brain volume during the treatment phase, compared with the pretreatment phase (P = 0.018, corrected). Consistent with this reduction, we showed that changes in diffusion indices of tissue damage within major clinically relevant white matter (corpus callosum and corticospinal tract) and deep grey matter (thalamus) structures were significantly reduced during the treatment phase (P = 0.02, corrected). Our results extend evidence of the contribution of ASIC1 to neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis and suggest that amiloride may exert neuroprotective effects in patients with progressive multiple sclerosis. This pilot study is the first translational study on neuroprotection targeting ASIC1 and supports future randomized controlled trials measuring neuroprotection with amiloride in patients with multiple sclerosis.


A large output gap accompanied by stable inflation close to its target calls for further monetary accommodation, but the zero lower bound on interest rates has robbed the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the usual tool for its provision. We examine how public statements of FOMC intentions—forward guidance—can substitute for lower rates at the zero bound. We distinguish between Odyssean forward guidance, which publicly commits the FOMC to a future action, and Delphic forward guidance, which merely forecasts macroeconomic performance and likely monetary policy actions. Others have shown how forward guidance that commits the central bank to keeping rates at zero for longer than conditions would otherwise warrant can provide monetary easing, if the public trusts it. We empirically characterize the responses of asset prices and private macroeconomic forecasts to FOMC forward guidance, both before and since the recent financial crisis. Our results show that the FOMC has extensive experience successfully telegraphing its intended adjustments to evolving conditions, so communication difficulties do not present an insurmountable barrier to Odyssean forward guidance. Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we investigate how pairing such guidance with bright-line rules for launching rate increases can mitigate risks to the Federal Reserve's price stability mandate.


For several decades, the prosecution and its witnesses have maintained that despite little research and virtually no standards, they can match a fingerprint, handwriting, bullet and bullet cartridge, hair, dental imprint, footprint, tire track, or even a lip print to its unique source (collectively, "individualization evidence"). Not only can they match it, they claim, they can do so often without any error rate.In the last few decades, with the help of lawyers and academics, litigants have challenged the underlying reliability of individualization evidence. Scholars in various disciplines have written about the startling state of individualization evidence, including its lack of standards, research, and established error rates, and its failure to rely upon statistical probabilities to estimate the likelihood of a match. Since its inception, the Innocence Project has exonerated more than 250 people, a majority of whose convictions have involved inaccurate or even fraudulent forensic science testimony, including individualization evidence.Despite the lack of proof that such evidence is scientifically reliable (and continued exculpations), courts have rejected most challenges to individualization evidence and continue to admit such testimony. With every exoneration, proof mounts that forensic science cannot do what it claims to be able to do with the precision alleged. By not requiring minimal standards for the reliability of individualization evidence, courts have allowed the forensic science system to operate without any checks and balances and to convict innocent people in numbers we can only estimate.In February 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued its long-awaited and groundbreaking report on the status of forensic science, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward ("the NAS Report"). The NAS Report is a scathing indictment of both the state of the forensic science system and judicial rulings on such individualization evidence.This Article discusses the findings of the NAS Report, relevant cases that predate the report, and some cases decided since the report. It posits that the judiciary, which has created a standard of reliability, has failed to hold prosecutorial expert evidence to that standard. Using examples from history and modern cognitive science explanations, the Article tries to explain why the judiciary has been so unwilling to rigorously examine forensic science evidence and urges the judiciary to rethink its perspective going forward.While the NAS Report suggests an overhaul of the current system, that overhaul is a contentious idea that may well not occur in the near (or even longer) future. Thus, a current crisis exists that the judiciary must address in its day-to-day decision making. The Article suggests how the judiciary can become a more effective crucible for testing the strength and limitations of forensic science.


Introduction. Part I: Shaping Up to Be a Personal Trainer. Chapter 1: Personal Training 101: Do You Have What It Takes? Chapter 2: Getting Certified. Chapter 3: Practicing Your Art. Chapter 4: Planning Your Start. Part II: Being a Successful Personal Trainer. Chapter 5: Creating Your Business Plan. Chapter 6: Setting Up Shop. Chapter 7: Developing Sound Business Practices. Chapter 8: Flexing Your Marketing Muscles. Chapter 9: Retaining Your Clientele. Part III: Putting the Personal into Personal Training. Chapter 10: Getting to Know You: Performing Initial Consultations. Chapter 11: The First Session: Performing the Fitness Assessment. Chapter 12: Before We Meet Again: Planning the Program. Chapter 13: The Second Session: Taking Your Client through the First Workout. Chapter 14: Teaching Your Beginning Client Beginning Exercises. Chapter 15: Taking Your Client to the Next Level. Part IV: Growing Your Personal Training Business. Chapter 16: Preparing for Growth: Automating and Documenting Your Workflow. Chapter 17: Hiring Additional Staff. Chapter 18: Building Your Business Culture. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Expand Your Services. Chapter 20: Ten Essential Pieces of Equipment. Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Be the Best Personal Trainer You Can Be. Appendix: Resources. Index.


This commentary employs a fictional debate to explore the issues raised by the Supreme Court's decision in Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010), which dramatically cut back on "honest services" prosecutions under the mail and wire fraud statutes. In response to an earlier decision by the Supreme Court reading these statutes narrowly, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 1346, which extends mail and wire fraud to schemes to deprive another of "the intangible right of honest services." In 2009 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in three cases presenting questions concerning the "honest services" provision. One of the cases involved the indictment of state legislator who failed to disclose he was seeking employment from a large corporation while voting on legislation affecting the company. The other cases involved honest services convictions for deception and self dealing in the private sector by news magnate Conrad Black and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, whose false statements about the Enron's financial situation propped up its stock price as it careened towards collapse. The Court issued only one opinion on the merits, in Skilling. In an opinion written by Justice Ginsburg, six members of the Court rejected the claim that § 1346 is void for vagueness but construed the statute to be limited to bribes and kickbacks, which it found had comprised the "lion's share" of the honest services prosecutions. The Court did not resolve – or even discuss – the other questions on which it had granted certiorari: whether a state law violation or economic harm or private gain were necessary elements (though bribery and kickbacks by their nature involve gain to the defendant). Justice Scalia (writing for himself and two other justices) wrote separately to argue that § 1346 is unconstitutionally vague. I use the debate form to critique the Skilling opinion and explore a variety of issues raised by honest services prosecutions: (1) the federalism issues raised by the prosecution of state and local government officials, (2) the potential for overlap and conflict between broad conceptions of mail fraud and other federal and state regulatory systems, (3) the proper boundaries of criminal law and the problem of overcriminalization, and (4) the largely unregulated prosecutorial discretion that results from broadly drafted criminal statutes. Remarkably, the Court failed to engage or even acknowledge those issues, except to the extent they were necessarily part of its assumption that absent a limiting interpretation § 1346 would have been unconstitutionally vague. Precisely because the Court did not engage these concerns, the Skilling opinion prompted me to explore other issues that are less often the focus of criminal law scholarship: the doctrine of constitutional avoidance, the standards governing facial versus as-applied challenges, the proper methodology for interpreting statutes, and institutional concerns regarding the federal judiciary and its relationship to the other branches of government. Although these issues have generally been seen as the province of scholars specializing in constitutional law, federal courts, legislation, and public choice theory, the debate concludes that they should be a more important role in criminal law scholarship.


Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom--and once he realized that knowledge was power, he secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage. After escaping to the North in 1838, as a free man he gave powerful speeches about his experience as a slave. He was so impressive that he became a friend of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as one of the most famous abolitionists of the nineteenth century.


Several studies report that the plasma antioxidant capacity (PAC) increases after a single ingestion of red wine. However, data on the different behaviour of PAC after food intake in subjects of the same sex are still lacking. On the basis of these observations some investigations were undertaken in order to evaluate the effects of red wine intake on PAC in a homogeneous groups of healthy female volunteers (n=18). Additionally, the possible correlation between increase of PAC values and increase in uric acid levels was also assessed. PAC and uric acid concentrations were determined before wine intake and 50, 120 and 240 minutes thereafter. The results obtained following these studied highlighted two different patterns of variation of plasma AC values after red wine intake in women. Group "A" exhibits a significant increase in PAC at 120 minutes after wine consumption while group "B" showed a peak level of AC 50 minutes after wine intake. However, no significant correlation was highlighted between increased levels of uric acid and PAC. These results provide a strong argument for the hypothesis that sampling procedures may be one of the confounding factor in studies on the plasma antioxidant status after food or beverage consumption. These preliminary observations indicate that sex-based selection of volunteers should be considered in further investigations.


This imaginative board book features beautiful paintings by a renowned artist paired with playful, rhyming text. In "A Picnic with Monet," Claude Monet's light-filled paintings take children on an enchanted picnic in the countryside. This board book is a fun introduction ot art and an imaginative adventure all rolled into one!


Felony disenfranchisement – the exclusion of individuals convicted of felonies from the voting rolls – is a practice that is commonplace in the United States. In 2010, approximately 5.3 million Americans were ineligible to vote because of a prior felony conviction. Despite the fact that the justifications for disenfranchisement in a democratic society could be characterized as dubious, disenfranchisement has withstood various legal challenges and remains a widespread practice in almost every state. One argument which has never been examined empirically is the notion that disenfranchisement hampers efforts to rehabilitate offenders, which is what this article does. First, this article explores the history and philosophy that underlies disenfranchisement along with theoretical mechanisms by which disenfranchisement can be thought to have an impact on recidivism. Second, the legal challenges that have been made against disenfranchisement are discussed with a particular focus on challenges under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Voting Rights Act. A novel constitutional argument under principles of congruence and proportionality is also examined. Third, this article uses re-arrest data collected by the United States Department of Justice to examine the impact of felony disenfranchisement on recidivism. These results are discussed along with implications for future inquiries.


Emotional support and behavior guidance in early childhood classrooms have important influences on the social and emotional competence of the children within them. Accumulating evidence suggests that a higher percentage of children than ever before are entering early childhood programs prior to kindergarten and are doing so at a younger age. At the same time, research in the field has demonstrated associations between teacher emotional support and behavior guidance and outcomes for children. Many professional characteristics of teachers have been studied as predictors of emotional support and behavior guidance in early childhood classrooms but to date, little attention has been focused on teacher personal characteristics. The current study examined teacher personal characteristics in relation to the emotional support and behavior guidance in toddler and preschool classrooms. Data from the Comparison of Quality Assessment Tools (CQAT) study in North Carolina was used to address this aim with a sample of 135 teachers. Teachers completed questionnaires on personality, negative feelings, education, and professional development activities. A linear relationship between teacher personality characteristics and emotional support and behavior guidance was not evident in the study. However, results indicated relationships among several of the other study variables and found several examples of moderation of relationships by toddler or preschool class type. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research and practice in early childhood education.


Whereas African ways of knowing have previously been 'misunderstood, misinterpreted, ridiculed and ignored' in colonial discourses, this paper situates debate on their relevance in defining the African personhood and pedagogy of liberation and progress in Africa. The paper is designed to inform educators of African students on the nature of the African paradigm of knowing to understand the African psyche. Although modern people (especially the African elite) tend to invest little faith in developing indigenous knowledges, this paper amply demonstrates that traditional ways of knowing (spirituality centered wisdom) continue to be relevant in modern life even beyond the African boundaries. The insights informing the paper were gleaned from several studies conducted by this researcher (and others) exploring the African paradigm from Shona and Ndebele cultures' conceptions of giftedness. The paper recommends revisiting African traditional ways of knowing to harmonize the past with the present and establish the true basis for pedagogy of liberation and progress in Africa.


"Rather than looking at the association between poverty and various household and individual characteristics on a one-to-one basis (bivariate analysis), which often oversimplifies complex relationships and can lead to erroneous conclusions, this report uses multiple regression to analyze poverty and living standards econometrically. As methodological choices can have a strong influence on the results,much of the report is given over to a detailed discussion of the methodology used to conduct the analysis and sensitivity analysis to assess the robustness of the findings to alternative methodological choices. These include the construction of region-specific poverty linesand the empirical model of poverty determinants used. Estimates of poverty levels and the results of the model are presented, followed by simulations that indicate the impact on poverty of specific policy interventions." from Text of Abstract


In a single volume that will be of service to philosophy students of all levels and to their teachers, this reader provides modern, accurate translations of the texts necessary for a careful study of most aspects of Aristotle's philosophy. In selecting the texts Professor J. L. Ackrill has drawn on his broad experience of teaching graduate classes, and his choice reflects issues of current philosophical interest as well as the perennial themes. Only recent translations which achieve a high level of accuracy have been chosen; the aim is to place the Greekless reader, as nearly as possible, in the position of a reader of Greek. As an aid to study, Professor Ackrill supplies a valuable guide to the key topics covered. The guide gives references to the works or passages contained in the reader, and indication of their interrelations, and current bibliography.


We present a case-based approach to multilabel ranking, a recent extension of the well-known problem of multilabel classification. Roughly speaking, a multilabel ranking refines a multilabel classification in the sense that, while the latter only splits a predefined label set into relevant and irrelevant labels, the former furthermore puts the labels within both parts of this bipartition in a total order. We introduce a conceptually novel framework, essentially viewing multilabel ranking as a special case of aggregating rankings which are supplemented with an additional virtual label and in which ties are permitted. Even though this framework is amenable to a variety of aggregation procedures, we focus on a particular technique which is computationally efficient and prove that it computes optimal aggregations with respect to the (generalized) Spearman rank correlation as an underlying loss (utility) function. Moreover, we propose an elegant generalization of this loss function and empirically show that it increases accuracy for the subtask of multilabel classification.


Heavy hitters are data items that occur at high frequency in a data set. Heavy hitters are among the most important items for an organization to summarize and understand during analytical processing. In data sets with sufficient skew, the number of heavy hitters can be relatively small. We take advantage of this small footprint to compute aggregate functions for the heavy hitters in fast cache memory. We design cache-resident, shared-nothing structures that hold only the most frequent elements from the table. Our approach works in three phases. It first samples and picks heavy hitter candidates. It then builds a hash table and computes the exact aggregates of these candidates. Finally, if necessary, a validation step identifies the true heavy hitters from among the candidates based on the query specification. We identify trade-offs between the hash table capacity and performance. Capacity determines how many candidates can be aggregated. We optimize performance by the use of perfect hashing and SIMD instructions. SIMD instructions are utilized in novel ways to minimize cache accesses, beyond simple vectorized operations. We use bucketized and cuckoo hash tables to increase capacity, to adapt to different datasets and query constraints. The performance of our method is an order of magnitude faster than in-memory aggregation over a complete set of items if those items cannot be cache resident. Even for item sets that are cache resident, our SIMD techniques enable significant performance improvements over previous work.


Determining the Role of Trib3 in Neuronal Apoptosis Neela Zareen Naturally occurring apoptosis in the developing nervous system is an important event for the proper shaping of the system, for eliminating precursor cells with mutations and for curbing the population of post-mitotic neurons so that appropriate target innervation can take place. In the latter case, neurons are usually subjected to a competition for a limited supply of target-derived growth factor. A classic example includes neurons of the superior cervical ganglia that compete for nerve growth factor (NGF). Cell death arising from lack of NGF stimulation is a topic of intense research and remains enigmatic. Pro-apoptotic molecules that have been characterized so far are partially responsible for inducing death and furthermore, it is not fully understood how the homeostatic balance of the neuron is disrupted by NGF deprivation. In this thesis, a novel neuronal pro-apoptotic protein Trib3 is defined. It is shown to be required for developmental neuron death and to employ a cellular mechanism involving Akt and its substrates, the FoxO transcription factors. It is also shown that Trib3 is transcriptionally regulated by the FoxO, JNK and apoptotic cell-cycle pathways. The data further demonstrate that Trib3 functions in a feedforward loop with the FoxOs and deactivates Akt in a self-propelled pathway that amplifies the apoptotic cascade resulting from NGF deprivation. Moreover, Trib3 is found to be induced and necessary for neuron death in cellular models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The latter preliminary findings have encouraged other researchers to begin exploring Trib3's mechanism and regulation in neurodegenerative disease models; this will advance our knowledge and understanding of the cellular processes of neuron death and may lead to development of novel therapeutic targets.


"Changes and continuity that occurs in individuals' lives over time can positively or negatively impact their personal relationships. This paper introduces a new concept referred to as friendship temporality. Friendship temporality refers to the length of time children have maintained their friendships. The purpose of this study was to identify specific factors that impacted the temporality of children's friendships. Participants in this study were 346 fifth grade students and their mothers from either Black or White ethnic backgrounds. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was used to determine if both friendship-level (companionship, friendship context, and the number of contexts in which friendships were maintained) and child-level (ethnicity) variables were predictive of friendship temporality. Further, friendship context, number of contexts, and child ethnicity were examined as potential moderators of the association between friendship companionship and friendship temporality. Both White children and Black children reported friendships from 8 different contexts (school, neighborhood, church, child care, relative-as-friend, parent network, extracurricular activities, and other effort). Friendship companionship and more contexts of friendships increased the likelihood that friendships would be long-term. Friendships maintained within contexts that included parents (neighborhood, family-friend, same-age relative, other efforts) increased the odds that friendships would be long-term rather than short-term. Friendship context, number of contexts, and child ethnicity did not moderate the relation between friendship companionship and friendship temporality."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


Edwin H. Sutherland's theory of Differential Association may be categorized as a learning theory. The basic premise is that criminal behavior is acquired through the learning process, just as is lawful behavior. The socialization process is essentially the same, regardless of whether the messages being transmitted are conformist or deviant. Through interaction with others, people learn attitudes both favorable and unfavorable to law violation. Sutherland claims that a person turns to criminal behavior when there is an excess of attitudes and values favoring law violation.
 In theory, Differential Association is one of the most logical explanations of criminal behavior. However, practical application often lessens the significance of seemingly good theories. Hence, I am interested in researching Sutherland's theory to see if it is as thoroughly explanatory as it seems to be. This paper will focus on a subjective test of Differential Association as a theory of criminal involvement.


Living people in Europe and Asia still carry traces of long-ago unions between Neandertals and modern humans. Two studies pinpoint genes we have inherited from our extinct cousins, including some that leave their mark on hair and skin and others that are implicated in disease. But the studies also show that those ancient mixed couples were not fully compatible genetically. The descendants of their unions—especially the males—became less fertile over time, purging many Neandertal genes from modern genomes.


Destination prediction is an essential task for many emerging location based applications such as recommending sightseeing places and targeted advertising based on destination. A common approach to destination prediction is to derive the probability of a location being the destination based on historical trajectories. However, existing techniques using this approach suffer from the "data sparsity problem", i.e., the available historical trajectories is far from being able to cover all possible trajectories. This problem considerably limits the number of query trajectories that can obtain predicted destinations. We propose a novel method named Sub-Trajectory Synthesis (SubSyn) algorithm to address the data sparsity problem. SubSyn algorithm first decomposes historical trajectories into sub-trajectories comprising two neighbouring locations, and then connects the sub-trajectories into "synthesised" trajectories. The number of query trajectories that can have predicted destinations is exponentially increased by this means. Experiments based on real datasets show that SubSyn algorithm can predict destinations for up to ten times more query trajectories than a baseline algorithm while the SubSyn prediction algorithm runs over two orders of magnitude faster than the baseline algorithm. In this paper, we also consider the privacy protection issue in case an adversary uses SubSyn algorithm to derive sensitive location information of users. We propose an efficient algorithm to select a minimum number of locations a user has to hide on her trajectory in order to avoid privacy leak. Experiments also validate the high efficiency of the privacy protection algorithm.


New buildings have to satisfy ever-tightening standards regarding energy efficiency and consumption. This results in higher insulation levels and lower air leakages that reduce heating demands. However, even at moderate outdoor temperatures these buildings are easily warmed up to such a degree that in order to ensure acceptable indoor environment quality, removal of excess heat becomes unavoidable. Use of electric energy related to mechanical cooling is considered incompatible with achieving zero energy buildings (ZEB). The use of ventilative cooling (VC) in combination with mechanical cooling means energy consumption reduction due to lower use of mechanical ventilation and cooling system. This paper examines the application of ventilative cooling solutions in cold climates through simulations of an existing detached single family house in Norway, the ZEB Living Lab at NTNU/SINTEF. The house has computer controlled motorized windows. This will enable natural ventilation in some part of the year and could then reduce the energy use of fan power. The openable window are placed at the north and south facades and this enables considerably cross ventilation and also stack ventilation as some windows are placed four meters high. IDA ICE program will be used to calculate the energy consumption of the baseline simulation: demand controlled ventilation with variable air volume and mechanical cooling. By means of using controlled window opening angles in IDA ICE it is possible to calculate the energy consumption while using hybrid mode ventilation. Results show significant energy savings when using ventilative cooling. Due to the low outdoor temperatures in Norway the use of ventilative cooling remove mechanical cooling demands almost completely. The reference for comparison has been the European standard EN15251 (class II). Ventilative cooling is proven to be relevant in combination with mechanical ventilation and will be crucial to achieving energy targets for new zero energy buildings while the indoor climate is maintained.


The core is the unique homorphically minimal subgraph of a graph. A triangle-free graph with minimum degree $\delta > n/3$ is called dense. It was observed by many authors that dense triangle-free graphs share strong structural properties and that the natural way to describe the structure of these graphs is in terms of graph homomorphisms. One infinite sequence of cores of dense maximal triangle-free graphs was known. All graphs in this sequence are 3-colourable. Only two additional cores with chromatic number 4 were known. We show that the additional graphs are the initial terms of a second infinite sequence of cores.


The Hamiltonian cycle problem (HCP) is an important combinatorial problem with applications in many areas. It is among the first problems used for studying intrinsic properties, including phase transitions, of combinatorial problems. While thorough theoretical and experimental analyses have been made on the HCP in undirected graphs, a limited amount of work has been done for the HCP in directed graphs (DHCP). The main contribution of this work is an effective algorithm for the DHCP. Our algorithm explores and exploits the close relationship between the DHCP and the Assignment Problem (AP) and utilizes a technique based on Boolean satisfiability (SAT). By combining effective algorithms for the AP and SAT, our algorithm significantly outperforms previous exact DHCP algorithms, including an algorithm based on the award-winning Concorde TSP algorithm. The second result of the current study is an experimental analysis of phase transitions of the DHCP, verifying and refining a known phase transition of the DHCP.


Summary Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD), one type of systemic non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis, has been rarely seen and is characterized by the accumulation of foamy CD68+CD1a- histiocytes. We reported a case of ECD and reviewed the clinical features of 13 cases of ECD reported so far in China. A 53-year-old male was diagnosed with central diabetes insipidus in March 2014, followed by fever, splenomegaly and anemia in July 2014. His initial pituitary magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed the absence of high signal at T1-weighted image in posterior pituitary without any lesion. A further positron emission tomography/computer tomography (PET/CT) images showed elevated metabolic activity of 18F-2-fluro-D-deoxy-glucose (FDG) and low 13N-NH3 uptake in the posterior pituitary, and multi-organ involvement. Biopsy at right femur lesion revealed that granulomatous infiltration of foamy histiocytes and Touton giant cells surrounded by fibrosis tissues. Immunohistochemistry stain was positive for CD68, negative for CD207/Langerin and S-100. The diagnosis of ECD was confirmed and the treatment with pegylated interferon was effective. ECD was a possible immune-related disorder concluding from the IgG4 immunohistochemistry results. We summarized the pathological manifestations for ECD and its differential diagnosis from Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) and Rosai-Dorfman disease (RDD). ECD should be considered by both pathologists and clinicians in the differential diagnosis when central diabetes insipidus is accompanied with multi-organ involvement, especially skeletal system involvement, or recurrent fever. Learning points ECD should be considered when central diabetes insipidus is accompanied with multisystem involvement, especially symmetric/asymmetric bone lesions, or recurrent fever. PET/CT scanning was helpful for locating pituitary lesion, discovering multiple system involvement and indicating the biopsy sites. Conducting proper immunohistochemistry stains was important for diagnosing ECD. ECD might be correlated with immune disorder.


*Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit *Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department *Focus on company culture as the no.1 priority *Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business *Help employees grow-both personally and professionally *Seek to change the world *Oh, and make money too ...Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In DELIVERING HAPPINESS, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, DELIVERING HAPPINESS shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.


The paper describes how image sequences taken by a moving video camera may be processed to detect and track moving objects against a moving background in real-time. The motion segmentation and shape tracking system as known as ASSET-2-A Scene Segmenter Establishing Tracking, Version 2. Motion is found by tracking image features, and segmentation is based on first-order (i.e., six parameter) flow fields. Shape tracking is performed using two dimensional radial map representation. The system runs in real-time, and is accurate and reliable. It requires no camera calibration and no knowledge of the camera's motion.<<ETX>>


This report documents results of a project to design and develop a real-time, advanced traveler information system (now called "Traffic Reporter") for the Puget Sound area. In previous work, we had identified four types of commuters: (1) Pre-trip Changers, (2) Route Changers, (3) Route & Time Changers, and (4) Non-changers. Each type of commuter showed distinct preferences and needs for design and delivery of traveler information. In this project, we confirmed that the commuter types identified earlier, as well as their preferences for design and delivery of traveler information, were consistent across geographical areas in the Puget Sound area. Based on this knowledge of commuter behavior and information needs, we designed and began implementing "Traffic Reporter", a PC-based, graphical, interactive, advanced traveler information system. The "Traffic Reporter" prototype receives traffic data from freeway detectors and converts those data into information that can be explored both for general freeway conditions and specific trip information. Information is designed for use by commuters, traffic reporters, and traffic engineers. We conducted usability tests on the "Traffic Reporter" prototype to ensure its effectiveness and ease of use. Overall, these tests showed that the prototype is easy to use and will be accepted by commuters. Future development of "Traffic Reporter" will be guided by the results of these tests. Furthermore, we will continue usability testing on future versions of "Traffic Reporter".


This paper argues in favour of distance education in social sciences at the masters level for Canadian Forces officers. First, it demonstrates how distance learning has played a substantial role from the very beginning of university teaching (with Plato's Academy). It then tries to demonstrate how technology will be central to the pedagogy of educational institutions in the future. Finally, it explains why Canadian Forces officers need to pursue higher education in social sciences even after they have undergraduate degrees, and how the nature of "3D" missions (for Defence, Diplomacy and Development) requires a more thorough understanding of social sciences. The author then suggests a meaningful way to realize this objective. The BOLD (Blended Online Learning Design) initiative demonstrates many of the characteristics required for this type of training: the possibility of studying entirely at a distance, a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous learning, recognition of the teaching corps needs, transnational and international careers.


Despite its grounding in a specific and peculiar set of facts, the strict scrutiny mandate of Wisconsin v. Yoder (decided in 1972) has changed the constitutional landscape of custody cases - and it has done so in a way that is unsound both as a matter of law and policy. Following Yoder, most courts require a showing of harm to the child, or a substantial threat of harm to the child, before placing any restrictions on exposure to a parent's religious beliefs and practices. This harm standard leaves children in an untenable position when parents compete for "spiritual custody," for the law can protect them only when the risk of harm is already substantial. Indeed, the bar is set so high that few courts have found circumstances that satisfy the harm standard. In this essay, I argue that a strict scrutiny standard has no place in spiritual custody cases. It is hardly consistent with the basic principle that the custody court's paramount consideration is the best interests of the child. In fact, such a standard actually leaves the child unprotected from the very injuries deemed sufficient to justify judicial intervention in cases not involving religious matters. Religious parenting rights enjoy immunity from customary family law considerations because such rights are not subject to the rule, stated most clearly and emphatically in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, that application of a neutral, generally applicable law to religiously motivated conduct is not barred by the Free Exercise Clause. Spiritual custody cases implicate fundamental rights under both the Free Exercise Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; that is, they present a "hybrid situation," a kind of case where, peculiarly, the whole is greater than the sum of its constitutional parts, and for which strict scrutiny is somehow warranted. (In other hybrid situations, the free exercise right is joined to a fundamental protection already subject to strict scrutiny. In religious parenting cases, the parenting right is not necessarily a fundamental one.) In Smith, the Court discussed the hybrid rights situation as an exception to general constitutional principles. But in the universe of religious parenting cases, the exception easily swallows the rule. Because such cases are hybrid by definition, strict scrutiny becomes the norm, and the result is the creation of a separate sphere of the law where the government's ability to enforce generally applicable law (in spiritual custody cases, to consider the best interests of the child) is subject to an individual's religious beliefs. In that sphere, the law grants the religiously motivated parent a special constitutional privilege greater than those awarded separately under the Free Exercise Clause or the Due Process Clause, a privilege that generally trumps any countervailing interests of the state or rights of the child. In Part I, I examine how custody courts employ the hybrid rights doctrine, tracing how the idiosyncratic facts of Yoder encouraged the Supreme Court to abandon well established law governing the right of religious parenting and to formulate a strict scrutiny standard ill-adapted to the existential intricacies of family disputes. In Part II, I argue that the Yoder standard fails to protect the child from harms routinely addressed in cases involving only secular matters. More specifically, I am concerned with the issue of parental alienation, the (sometimes subtle, often not) ways in which one parent may seek to turn a child against the other parent. Sensitive to the need to nurture a child's relationship with both parents, and averse to any behavior that causes alienation, custody courts commonly prohibit each parent from making disparaging remarks about the other, and they do so without subjecting such measures to the heightened scrutiny demanded by a showing of harm. Penalties for subverting this judicially mandated obligation of tolerance can be severe, including modification of custody arrangements. But toleration gives way to individual rights where disparagement is religiously motivated. The harms to the child do not change. Indeed, the kind of disparagement that bears the imprimatur of religious doctrine may be far more terrifying than a parent's personal verbal rampages. What changes is the deference courts show to the parent's claim of constitutional rights. Under the harm standard, most courts treat religious disparagement as though it were mere abstract advocacy, ignoring the coercive nature of religious beliefs (children are caught between competing moral commands) and the coercive familial context in which such speech occurs (children are caught between competing parental commands). Judicial non-intervention amounts to little more than a way of not dealing with such cases - or, at least, of not dealing with such cases until it is too late for the child. To honor its fiduciary obligation to the child, the court must be able to consider any practice that could affect the general welfare of the child and to insist upon an appropriate form of civil discourse when religious views diverge. Where exposure to intolerance is not in the best interests of the child, the welfare of the child requires that those responsible for their upbringing observe, or be made to observe, the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior. The duty to respect those with whom one disagrees is a civic obligation for which parents must prepare their children. It is the necessary concomitant of the parenting right. Religious belief should not absolve parents of this obligation, and disparagement born of religious conviction should not get a constitutional pass from judicial scrutiny.


Conventional wisdom suggests that energy efficiency (EE) policies are beneficial because they induce investments that pay for themselves and lead to emissions reductions. However, this belief is primarily based on projections from engineering models. This paper reports on the results of an experimental evaluation of the nation's largest residential EE program conducted on a sample of more than 30,000 households. The findings suggest that the upfront investment costs are about twice the actual energy savings. Further, the model-projected savings are roughly 2.5 times the actual savings. While this might be attributed to the "rebound" effect – when demand for energy end uses increases as a result of greater efficiency – the paper fails to find evidence of significantly higher indoor temperatures at weatherized homes. Even when accounting for the broader societal benefits of energy efficiency investments, the costs still substantially outweigh the benefits; the average rate of return is approximately -9.5% annually.


The study set out to understand and demonstrate the role the ICT sector could play as a critical enabler in the transition and progress towards an energy– efficient, low carbon economy. More specifically, the study of sustaining ICT for sustainability has twofold intent: (2) to investigate the direct footprint of ICT sector and explore how it can be tackled through adopting sustainable design–based solutions; and (2) to highlight the enabling potential of ICT sector to mitigate climate change and massively improve energy efficiency across the economy, identifying and quantifying the global ICT impacts and opportunities in the context of energy and carbon emissions savings. To achieve the aim of this study, a pertinent and extensive literature review covering theoretical, empirical, and critical scholarship was performed to investigate the phenomenon. The study draws on a variety of sources to survey the unsustainability of ICT sector pertaining to energy–intensive consumption and explore potential solutions through espousing environmental design practice, and also to examine the role of ICT in delivering energy–efficient solutions through its products and services. Validity was ensured through using quality academic and industry literature as well as relevant studies carried out by a range of eminent researchers, experts, and stakeholders (i.e. NGOs, research centers). Findings highlight the unsustainability of ICT sector regarding energy– intensive consumption and concomitant GHG emissions associated with its products and services. Of the whole lifecycle, the use phase of ICT is the most critical. Data centers and telecom networks devour energy. Planned obsolescence entrenched in software design shorten upgrade cycle, which makes software utilities a planet killer as to energy consumption. Alternative sustainable design–based solutions entail using renewable energy and most efficient energy required over ICT's life cycle – de–carbonization strategy. Also, digitization is an effective strategy for ICT sector to slash energy use per unit. To reduce the footprint of data centers and telecom networks, design solutions vary from hardware and software to technological improvements. Designing out built–in obsolescence in software technology is a key factor in the energy equation. As for the enabling role of ICT, the findings are highly illuminating. The ICT sector must step up its efforts in reducing its direct footprint in order to claim a leadership role in an energy–efficient, low carbon economy. Although the ICT sector's own emissions will increase because of global growing demand for its products and services, the real gains will come from its enabling potential to yield substantial energy efficiency improvements and emissions reductions across the economy. The sheer scale of the climate change challenge presents smart development mitigation opportunities for ICT sector to deliver environmentally sustainable solutions. The largest identified opportunities are: dematerialization; intelligent transport and logistics; intelligent buildings; smart power supply; and efficient industrial processes and systems. This study provides a novel approach into sustainable design in ICT, underlining unsustainable design practices in ICT sector. Review of the literature makes an advance on extant reviews by highlighting the synergic relationship between ICT design, sustainability, and the economy.


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Summary: The results of this paper are concerned with the multi-covering radius, a generalization of covering radius, of Rank Distance (RD) codes. This leads to greater understanding of RD codes and their distance properties. Results on multi-covering radii of RD codes under various constructions are given by varying the parameters. Some bounds are established. A relationship between multi-covering radii of an RD code and that of its ambient space is also found. The classical sphere bound is generalized.


It is now recognized that many G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) contain allosteric binding sites for endogenous and/or synthetic ligands, which are topographically distinct from the agonist-binding site, which is known as the orthosteric site. In contrast to the direct effects on receptor function that are mediated by orthosteric ligands, allosteric drugs act by modulating receptor activity through conformational changes in the receptor that are transmitted from the allosteric to the orthosteric site and/or to effector coupling sites. 3â-(4-methylphenyl)-2â-[3-(4-chlorophenyl)isoxazol-5-yl]tropane (RTI-371) has been shown to be a positive allosteric modulator of human cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1). RTI-371 increases the affinity of traditional cannabinoid agonist, CP55,940 and boosts its efficacy. These effects suggest that this compound may cause a structural change in the CB1 receptor, such that the intrinsic activity of CP55,940 is enhanced, perhaps by stabilizing the active conformation of the receptor. RTI-371 has also been reported to be devoid of activity in the absence of agonist, making RTI-371 neither an agonist nor an antagonist at CB1 when applied alone. The goal of this thesis project was to understand the action of RTI - 371 at the molecular level. To this end, five specific aims were pursued. First, a complete Jaguar conformational analysis of RTI-371 was accomplished, establishing both the minimum energy conformations and the global minimum energy conformation of RTI-371. Second, to identify the binding site of RTI-371 at CB1, the forced-biased Metropolis Monte Carlo simulated annealing program (MMC) was employed. Third, because an increase in CP55,940 affinity could be achieved by receptor exit route blockade, the program CAVER was used to identify all exit routes and the most likely exit route for CP55,940 from CB1. Fourth, the results of MMC and CAVER were used to identify the most likely binding site region for RTI-371 at CB1. Fifth, binding sites for RTI-371 in this region of the receptor were explored using an automated docking program Glide. The most favorable binding site identified for RTI-371 at CB1 is consistent with the reported pharmacology of RTI-371, i.e., its ability to boost CP55,940 affinity and efficacy through stabilizing the active state of CB1 receptor.


An energy based damage index based on a new nonlinear Finite element (FE) approach applicable to RC structures subjected to cyclic, earthquake or monotonic loading is proposed. The proposed method is based on the evaluation of nonlinear local degradation of materials and taking into account of the pseudo-plastic hinge produced in the critical sections of the structure. A computer program is developed, considering local behavior of confined and unconfined concretes and steel elements and also global behavior and damage of reinforced concrete structures under cyclic loading. The segments located between the pseudoplastic hinges at critical sections and the inflection points are selected as base-models through simulation by the proposed FE method. The proposed damage index is based on an energy analysis method considering the primary half-cycles energy absorbed by the structure during loading. The total primary half-cycles absorbed energy to failure is used as normalizing factor. By using the proposed nonlinear analytical approach, the structure's force-displacement data are determined. The damage index is then calculated and is compared with the allowable value. This damage index is an efficient means for deciding whether to repair or demolish structures after an earthquake. It is also useful in the design of new structures as a design parameter for an acceptable limit of damage defined by building codes. The proposed approach and damage index are validated by results of tests carried out on reinforced concrete columns subjected to cyclic biaxial bending with axial force.


A growing body of empirical research explores the use of arbitration to resolve employment disputes, typically by comparing arbitration to litigation using relatively traditional outcome measures: who wins, how much, and how quickly. On the whole, this research suggests that employees fare reasonably well in arbitration. Yet there remain sizeable gaps in our knowledge. This Essay explores these gaps with two goals in mind.The first and narrower goal is to explain why it remains exceedingly difficult to assess the relative fairness of arbitration and litigation. The outcome research does not account for a variety of "filtering" mechanisms that influence the relative merits of the cases adjudicated in each system. This Essay explores these filters, focusing on one in particular: most employee grievances are resolved within the workplace through relatively informal procedures. Workplace structures thus filter out most employee grievances before they reach arbitration. This fact has significant implications for efforts to interpret the arbitration outcome research. It also highlights the significance of the workplace as a locus of dispute resolution activity. Indeed, a growing body of research focuses directly on workplace compliance and grievance procedures.Recognizing the significance of workplace dispute resolution leads to this Essay's broader goal. That goal is to expose, and hopefully bridge, an artificial conceptual divide that separates the arbitration research from research into workplace dispute resolution. Many researchers view internal compliance and grievance procedures as a means of harnessing the employer's own regulatory capacity. This conception drives a research agenda that explores the role of workplace structures in generating private norms and in implementing (or subverting) public norms like anti-discrimination. By contrast, the arbitration outcome research conceives of arbitration narrowly as a court surrogate, one that should ideally yield equivalent outcomes at lower cost. Although legitimate to a degree, this conception artificially separates arbitration from other employer-structured disputing procedures and yields an empirical agenda that leaves fundamental questions unanswered. This Essay closes by discussing two of these questions: First, do arbitrators play a meaningful regulatory role, either by shaping other arbitrators' practices or by shaping the terms of arbitration contracts? Second, under what circumstances do arbitrators effectively generate and enforce norms?


Undoubtedly, in today's new business information has donated the most competitive advantage for the organizations. Although just collecting, processing and retrieving of data were significant in the past, the subject of information security is turned into a serious challenge in micro and macro levels of organizational management. Indeed, observance of the information security principals is counted as a critical infrastructure in today's knowledge based organizations. In order to realize this purpose, we need to make a strategic plan for IT security. However, we cannot expect to design a comprehensive plan, if we don't have accurate statistics about the level of the information security maturity in current organizations. The goal of this paper is ranking organizations about the level of the information security maturity by presenting a model based on the knowledge of multi criteria decision making. So, first of all, in the literature review, the models and different standards presented in the information security maturity were studied. After determining information security criteria in technical and managerial forms, considering the triple criteria of security, safety and stability, weight devoting was performed by using the expert's views in the IT departments of three chosen organizations A, B and C. Ultimately, ranking of these organizations based on the level of information security maturity was done by applying the algorithm of PROMETHEE II. In the final step there was a comparison between the result of this model and two other security maturity models. The same results show reliability and validity of proposed ranking model.


Computational and theoretical linguists and computer scientists interested in the computer processing of natural language have converged on a class of grammar formalisms for describing the well-formedness conditions of natural languages. This class is distinguished by its reliance on systems of declarative constraints to explicate natural-language syntax axiomatically, rather than generatively or procedurally. Intuition suggests that these various efforts from a broad range of disciplines form a natural methodological class; still, there is no general foundation on which to ground this impression. We provide a method for abstractly and uniformly characterizing a class of formalisms based on logical constraints, and use the uniformity to define and prove correct a parsing algorithm that applies to any formalism in the class. We discuss the applicability of these techniques to computer languages as well, specifically to type inference. In so doing, extensions of the simple formalism instances typically considered in natural-language analysis are motivated.
This dissertation thus provides a mathematical and computational foundation for, and extensions of, current practices in theoretical and computational linguistics, as well as initiating a rapprochement between the techniques for describing well-formedness of natural and computer languages.


AIM
Several organizations consider mother's milk the optimal nutrition source for newborns [AAP, 1998; Gartner et al., 1997; Mohrbacher and Stock, 2002; WHO, 1989]. However, there is little scientific evidence supporting the idea that breastfeeding has a positive influence on the development of the orofacial structures.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study of cases and controls (observational, analytical and retrospective) and lateral teleradiographs of the cranium of 197 patients (106 breast-fed and 91 bottle-fed) were compared. Ricketts, Steiner and McNamara values were used for the cephalometric analysis. Differences between the two groups were analysed by applying the T-test and ANOVA. Statistical significance levels were set at p<0.05. Non-nutritive infantile sucking habits have been compared; differences between the two groups were analysed by applying the Chi-square test.

RESULTS
First, the upper incisors were found to be protruded in the bottle-fed group. Second, subjects belonging to the breast-fed group displayed a brachycephalic mandible arch, while those fed with bottle had a dolichocephalic Steiner mandibular plane. Third, both facial depth and distance of the pogonion to the perpendicular nasion presented a certain tendency to a retruded mandibular bone in the bottle-fed group. And fourth, the frequency of use of dummy and thumb suction were greater in the bottle feed group, without statistical significance.

CONCLUSION
In addition to the multiple advantages that mother's milk offers to newborns, breastfeeding also helps correct orofacial development (not only for the incisors position, but also for the vertical and sagittal relations of the mandible with upper maxillary and cranial basis).


The Mica Shipwreck: Deepwater Nautical Archaeology in the Gulf of Mexico. (May 2004) Toby Nephi Jones, B.A., Oregon State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Kevin J. Crisman The purpose of this study was to describe the investigation of the Mica shipwreck. The objectives of the investigation, as identified by nautical archaeologists from the United States Minerals Management Service and the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University, include determining the extent and limits of the wreck site, acquisition of diagnostic artifacts to identify the temporal period of the shipwreck and its mission at the time of loss, to identify the type of ship and its country of origin, and quantify the relationship between the vessel's construction and function. The manuscript contains a thorough analysis of the equipment and approach used by archaeologists during the excavation. The manuscript also briefly explores the use of metallic ship sheathing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing specifically on the pure copper sheathing found on the Mica wreck. Sheathing from numerous contemporary vessels will be analyzed and compared to the Mica shipwreck sheathing.


At the first nuclear security summit in April 2010, the assembled leaders agreed on the goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material worldwide within four years, including consolidating plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fewer locations and minimizing the use of HEU "where technically and economically feasible.†Reducing the number of buildings and sites where nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material exist is a key element of preventing nuclear theft and nuclear terrorism, as the only way to completely eliminate the risk that nuclear material will be stolen from a particular location is to remove the material itself. States can achieve more effective nuclear security at lower cost if they have fewer places with nuclear weapons or weapons-usable nuclear material to protect. The fundamental goal must be to reduce the number of sites and transports as far and as quickly as possible, and provide highly effective security for those that remain. Over time, the civil use of HEU should be phased out, and HEU should be eliminated from all civil sites. This paper outlines the efforts the international community is already making to meet these objectives, and recommends a range of next steps. Today, nuclear weapons or their essential ingredients exist in hundreds of buildings and bunkers in dozens of countries, with widely varying levels of security. Fortunately, an array of national and international efforts to move nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material to fewer locations have been underway for years, and have made major progress. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons have been removed from many countries and scores of nuclear weapon sites have been eliminated. Twenty countries have eliminated all the weapons-usable nuclear material on their soil – six of them since President Obama called for a four-year effort to secure nuclear materials in April 2009. All weapons-usable nuclear material has been removed from dozens of other sites around the world. Some 180 research reactors that once used HEU fuel have either shut down or converted to using low-enriched uranium that cannot be used in a nuclear bomb. The world is more secure as a result. But there is much more to be done. There are stocks of material and types of facilities that are not yet targeted for consolidation, and a range of political, bureaucratic, technical, and financial barriers to be overcome. There are potentially effective policy tools that have not yet been fully utilized. This paper (a) discusses how to set priorities among different stocks to be consolidated; (b) describes the scope and progress of existing consolidation efforts; and (c) suggests steps to complement and extend the existing programs. Our discussion of the next steps for consolidation will fall into two categories: covering additional stocks and facilities that are not yet effectively addressed, and using additional policy approaches to strengthen the effort.


AbstractFor some decades radiation therapy - external beam radiation therapy as well as brachytherapy - has been proved successful in cancer treatment. It is the major task of clinical radiation treatment planning to realise on the one hand a high level dose of radiation in the cancer tissue in order to obtain maximum tumour control. On the other hand it is obvious that it is absolutely necessary to keep in the tissue outside the tumour, particularly in organs at risk, the unavoidable radiation as low as possible. No doubt, these two objectives of treatment planning – high level dose in the tumour, low radiation outside the tumour – have a basically contradictory nature. Therefore, it is no surprise that inverse mathematical models with prescribed dose distributions tend to be infeasible in most cases. Thus, there is need for approximations compromising between overdosing the organs at risk and underdosing the target volume. Differing from the currently used time consuming iterative approach, which measures deviation from an ideal (non-achievable) treatment plan using recursively trial-and-error weights for the organs of interest, we go a new way trying to avoid a priori weight choices and consider the treatment planning problem as a multiple objective linear programming problem: with each organ of interest, target tissue as well as organs at risk, we associate an objective function measuring the maximal deviation from the prescribed doses. We build up a data base of relatively few efficient solutions representing and approximating the variety of Pareto solutions of the multiple objective linear programming problem. This data base can be easily scanned by physicians looking for an adequate treatment plan with the aid of an appropriate online tool.


In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court held that laws requiring dual public school systems, separated solely on the basis of race, violated the rights afforded to African American children under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. Brown v. Board of Education marked the beginning of a judicial assault on what the Court in Loving v. Virginia called statutory schemes and state court decisions that served as "an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy." Both Chief Justice Earl Warren and Dr. King recognized that the practice of White Supremacy did more than keep people separated. In Brown, Warren's opinion also validated the relevance of the psychic injury caused by what Dr. King often referred to as "the iron feet of oppression." Warren wrote that the segregation of children solely based on race "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." While Warren's conclusion remains hotly debated, Brown introduced personal stigmatic injury into school desegregation discourse. Dr. King embraced the centrality of the heart and mind in the struggle for social justice. Part II juxtaposes Dr. King's thoughts on the evils of segregation and the necessity of integration with the development of desegregation jurisprudence after Brown. Part III traces the short-lived efforts of the federal judiciary to integrate public schools following Dr. King's death up to Parents Involved. Part IV summarizes the Parents Involved decision and compares the plurality's legal and social visions to that of Brown and Plessy. Part V hypothesizes about Dr. King's reaction to Parents Involved and takes a closer look at the importance of the heart and mind in the Brown opinion and Dr. King's thinking. In conclusion, I attempt to answer the prophetic question posed by Dr. King near the end of his life: "Where do we go from here?" in achieving and sustaining racial diversity in public education.


On November 19, 2008, Iceland and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finalized an agreement on a $6 billion economic stabilization program supported by a $2.1 billion loan from the IMF. Iceland's banking system had collapsed as a culmination of a series of decisions the banks made that left them highly exposed to disruptions in financial markets. The collapse of the banks also raises questions for U.S. leaders and others about supervising banks that operate across national borders, especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the limits of domestic financial markets.


On the basis of in-depth case studies of four Russian regions, Kirov and Voronezh oblasts and Krasnoyarsk and Perm' krais, the trade-offs among social and economic policy at the regional level in Russia are examined. All four regional governments seek to develop entrepreneurship while preserving social welfare obligations and improving compensation in the public sector. Richer regions have a greater ability to reconcile social commitments with the promotion of business. Regions differ in their development strategies, some placing greater emphasis on indigenous business development and others seeking to attract federal or foreign investment. Governors have considerable discretion in choosing their strategy so long as they meet basic performance demands set by the federal government such as ensuring good results for the United Russia party. In all four regions, governments consult actively with local business associations whereas organized labor is weak. However, the absence of effective institutions to enforce commitments undertaken by government and its social partners undermines regional capacity to use social policy as a basis for long-term economic development.


This thesis is devoted to two main topics (accordingly, there are two chapters): In the first chapter, we establish a tropical intersection theory with analogue notions and tools as its algebro-geometric counterpart. This includes tropical cycles, rational functions, intersection products of Cartier divisors and cycles, morphisms, their functors and the projection formula, rational equivalence. The most important features of this theory are the following: - It unifies and simplifies many of the existing results of tropical enumerative geometry, which often contained involved ad-hoc computations. - It is indispensable to formulate and solve further tropical enumerative problems. - It shows deep relations to the intersection theory of toric varieties and connected fields. - The relationship between tropical and classical Gromov-Witten invariants found by Mikhalkin is made plausible from inside tropical geometry. - It is interesting on its own as a subfield of convex geometry. In the second chapter, we study tropical gravitational descendants (i.e. Gromov-Witten invariants with incidence and "Psi-class" factors) and show that many concepts of the classical Gromov-Witten theory such as the famous WDVV equations can be carried over to the tropical world. We use this to extend Mikhalkin's results to a certain class of gravitational descendants, i.e. we show that many of the classical gravitational descendants of P^2 and P^1 x P^1 can be computed by counting tropical curves satisfying certain incidence conditions and with prescribed valences of their vertices. Moreover, the presented theory is not restricted to plane curves and therefore provides an important tool to derive similar results in higher dimensions. A more detailed chapter synopsis can be found at the beginning of each individual chapter.


As a result of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, in 2020 forensic institutions
 in Mexico began using extreme measures in the treatment of bodies of confirmed
 or suspected cases, due to possible infection. A series of national protocols on
 how to deal with the virus were announced, yet forensic personnel have struggled
 to apply these, demonstrating the country's forensics crisis. This
 article aims to reflect on two points: (1) the impact that COVID-19 protocols
 have had on how bodies confirmed as or suspected of being infected with the
 virus are handled in the forensic medical system; and (2) the particular
 treatment in cases where the body of the victim is unidentified, and the
 different effects the pandemic has had in terms of the relationship between the
 institutional environment and the family members of those who have died as a
 result of infection, or suspected infection, from COVID-19.


Information about urban air quality, e.g., the concentration of PM2.5, is of great importance to protect human health and control air pollution. While there are limited air-quality-monitor-stations in a city, air quality varies in urban spaces non-linearly and depends on multiple factors, such as meteorology, traffic volume, and land uses. In this paper, we infer the real-time and finegrained air quality information throughout a city, based on the (historical and real-time) air quality data reported by existing monitor stations and a variety of data sources we observed in the city, such as meteorology, traffic flow, human mobility, structure of road networks, and point of interests (POIs). We propose a semi-supervised learning approach based on a co-training framework that consists of two separated classifiers. One is a spatial classifier based on an artificial neural network (ANN), which takes spatially-related features (e.g., the density of POIs and length of highways) as input to model the spatial correlation between air qualities of different locations. The other is a temporal classifier based on a linear-chain conditional random field (CRF), involving temporally-related features (e.g., traffic and meteorology) to model the temporal dependency of air quality in a location. We evaluated our approach with extensive experiments based on five real data sources obtained in Beijing and Shanghai. The results show the advantages of our method over four categories of baselines, including linear/Gaussian interpolations, classical dispersion models, well-known classification models like decision tree and CRF, and ANN.


We review the evidence of how organisms and populations are currently responding to climate change through phe-notypic plasticity, genotypic evolution, changes in distribution and, in some cases, local extinction. Organisms alter their gene expression and metabolism to increase the concentrations of several antistress compounds and to change their physiology, phenology, growth and reproduction in response to climate change. Rapid adaptation and micro-evolution occur at the population level. Together with these phenotypic and genotypic adaptations, the movement of organisms and the turnover of populations can lead to migration toward habitats with better conditions unless hindered by barriers. Both migration and local extinction of populations have occurred. However, many unknowns for all these processes remain. The roles of phenotypic plasticity and genotypic evolution and their possible trade-offs and links with population structure warrant further research. The application of omic techniques to ecological studies will greatly favor this research. It remains poorly understood how climate change will result in asymmetrical responses of species and how it will interact with other increasing global impacts, such as N eutrophication, changes in environmental N : P ratios and species invasion, among many others. The biogeochemical and biophysical feed-backs on climate of all these changes in vegetation are also poorly understood. We here review the evidence of responses to climate change and discuss the perspectives for increasing our knowledge of the interactions between climate change and life.


"Aggressive behavior typically peaks in toddlerhood and decreases by school entry. However, an estimated ten percent of children do not show this normative decline. In addition, persistent aggression in toddlerhood, preschool, and early childhood may develop into disruptive, problem behavior in adolescence and adulthood. The current study examined 318 boys and girls from a sample selected in toddlerhood for externalizing behavior problems. At 2, 4, and 5 years of age mother's reported on children's aggressive behavior. In addition, observed and physiological measures of child temperamental reactivity and emotion regulation and maternal behavior were assessed in toddlerhood. A sub model of SEMM (structural equation mixture modeling), latent profile analysis (LPA; Gibson, 1959), was performed, resulting in 4 longitudinal profiles of aggression: a high profile, a sub-threshold profile, a normative profile, and a low profile. Composites of observed emotion regulation, physiological emotion regulation, and maternal controlling behavior significantly predicted the probability of membership in the profiles. Furthermore, physiological emotion regulation moderated the effects of maternal control and observed emotion regulation on the probability of membership in the profiles. The results reinforce theory that suggests emotion regulation and maternal behavior display moderational relations to aggressive behavior problems. In addition, the findings suggest specific mechanisms operating among multiple indices of emotion regulation and between emotion regulation and maternal behavior in relation to aggressive behavior in early childhood that should be examined in the future."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


industry are often about the degree to which market relationships should replace transactions that formerly took place within regulated, vertically integrated utilities. Markets for the purchase of energy by vertically unintegrated distribution utilities are clearly feasible, but vertical deintegration of existing systems may eliminate some operational and reliability benefits that are important in light of the unique characteristics of electricity. Politicians and policy analysts have almost totally disregarded a large body of academic literature regarding the efficiencies that are gained through vertical integration in the electricity sector. At the same time, those parties have enthusiastically embraced other studies that purport to estimate the benefits of switching to a so-called restructured regime consisting of independent generation and integrated transmission and distribution. The result has been the passage of electricity utility restructuring laws that may create production inefficiencies that shrink the net benefits of any move toward market provision of power supplies. A review of the debate surrounding electric utility restructuring in California—the first state to embrace restructuring—reveals that legislators and regulators regarded vertical integration primarily as a tool that incumbent utilities could use to perpetuate their market power. They thus disregarded the benefits that might accrue from vertical integration and used the force of regulation to encourage the sale of generating plants to independent power producers. The idea was to create a competitive market structure in the electricity generation sector. Unfortunately, the costs associated with this experiment in California and elsewhere have yet to be compared with benefits in any economically meaningful way. A proper comparison of the two suggests that restructuring is presently off course.