Pliny's "Natural History" is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses' milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the "Natural History" - a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described 'as full of variety as nature itself'.


The emergence of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professionals (i.e., staff with DEI-specific responsibilities) is a fairly recent phenomenon, and research to date has rarely examined the experiences of these DEI administrators despite the fact they are often solely charged with driving DEI within and beyond their department. Utilizing Ahmed's diversity work framework, this study draws from semistructured interviews with 23 athletic administrators to identify barriers to efforts for driving DEI action in the context of intercollegiate athletics. Five higher-order themes were identified in the data, representing barriers to effective DEI work: (a) structural barriers, (b) cultural barriers, (c) conceptual barriers, (d) emotional barriers, and (e) social/relational barriers. Findings indicate that DEI athletics professionals perceive barriers on multiple levels, from personal levels (emotional and social/relational barriers) to those of a systemic nature (structural, cultural, and conceptual barriers). Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for praxis are discussed.


This work is two pronged, discussing 1) the morphology of contrails and their transition to cirrus uncinus, and 2) their microphysical and radiative properties. It is based upon the fortuitous occurrence of an unusual set of essentially parallel contrails and the unanticipated availability of nearly simultaneous observations by photography, satellite, automated ground-based lidar, and a newly available database of aircraft flight tracks. The contrails, oriented from the northeast to southwest, are carried to the southeast with a component of the wind so that they are spread from the northwest to southeast. Convective turrets form along each contrail to form the cirrus uncinus with fallstreaks of ice crystals that are oriented essentially normal to the contrail length. Each contrail is observed sequentially by the lidar and tracked backward to the time and position of the originating aircraft track with the appropriate component of the wind. The correlation coefficient between predicted and actual time of arrival at the lidar is 0.99, so that one may identify both visually and satellite-observed contrails exactly. Contrails generated earlier in the westernmost flight corridor occasionally arrive simultaneously with those formed later closer to the lidar to produce broader cirrus fallstreaks and overlapping contrails on the satellite image. The minimum age of a contrail is 2 h and corresponds to the longest time of travel to the lidar. The lag between the initial formation of the contrail and its first detectability by Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is 33 min, thus accounting for the distance between the aircraft track and the first detectable contrail by satellite. The lidar also provides particle fall speeds and estimated sizes, optical extinction coefficients, optical thickness ( 0.35), and ice water path (IWP 8.1 gm 2 ). These values correspond to the lower range of those found for midlatitude cirrus by Heymsfield et al. The ice water per meter of length along the cloud lines is 10 3 –10 4 times that released by typical jet aircraft. The synthesis of these findings with those of prior investigators provides confidence in the present results. Various authors find that contrail-generated cirrus such as reported here contribute to net regional warming.


Abstract. Actually complex underground structures and facilities occupy a wide space in our cities, most of them are often unsurveyed; cable duct, drainage system are not exception. Furthermore, several inspection operations are performed in critical air condition, that do not allow or make more difficult a conventional survey. In this scenario a prompt methodology to survey and georeferencing such facilities is often indispensable. A visual based approach was proposed in this paper; such methodology provides a 3D model of the environment and the path followed by the camera using the conventional photogrammetric/Structure from motion software tools. The key-role is played by the lens camera; indeed, a fisheye system was employed to obtain a very wide field of view (FOV) and therefore high overlapping among the frames. The camera geometry is in according to a forward motion along the axis camera. Consequently, to avoid instability of bundle adjustment algorithm a preliminary calibration of camera was carried out. A specific case study was reported and the accuracy achieved.


This chapter provides a discussion of communication problems that arise in a multilingual legal context. We analyse witness interview reports and interviews from both the UK and the US in order to assess the difficulties that non-English speakers can face in an English-speaking justice system. The problems encountered indicate the need for the provision of adequate language support and improved professional training that will focus on particularly problematic lexical and grammatical contrasts for translation. We argue that people's language rights can be endangered as a result of the difficulties we discoverd, even for speakers of a major language (such as Spanish). We conclude that for the purpose of equality in access to justice these problems need to be addressed by both scientific and professional communities involved.


We study numerically all-optical slow-light delays in room-temperature single-mode optical fibers induced by stimulated Brillouin scattering. We consider the propagation of a pulse through a cw-pumped Brillouin fiber amplifier, where the carrier frequency of the pulse is tuned near the Stokes resonance. Pulse delay and broadening of the Stokes pulse are studied in the small-signal and gain-saturation regimes. Pulse delay is shown to be limited by saturation of the Brillouin amplifier. In the small-signal regime, both time delay and pulse broadening increase with increasing gain. In the gain-saturation regime, both time delay and broadening decrease with increasing gain, and the pulse even achieves advancement. Time delay of more than one pulse-width is observed with modest pulse distortion, and over one pulse-width advancement can be obtained with larger pulse distortion in the gain-saturation regime.


Topic models like latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) provide a framework for analyzing large datasets where observations are collected into groups. Although topic modeling has been fruitfully applied to problems social science, biology, and computer vision, it has been most widely used to model datasets where documents are modeled as exchangeable groups of words. In this context, topic models discover topics, distributions over words that express a coherent theme like "business" or "politics." While one of the strengths of topic models is that they make few assumptions about the underlying data, such a general approach sometimes limits the type of problems topic models can solve.
When we restrict our focus to natural language datasets, we can use insights from linguistics to create models that understand and discover richer language patterns. In this thesis, we extend LDA in three different ways: adding knowledge of word meaning, modeling multiple languages, and incorporating local syntactic context. These extensions apply topic models to new problems, such as discovering the meaning of ambiguous words, extend topic models for new datasets, such as unaligned multilingual corpora, and combine topic models with other sources of information about documents' context.
In Chapter 2, we present latent Dirichlet allocation with WordNet (LDAWN), an unsupervised probabilistic topic model that includes word sense as a hidden variable. LDAWN replaces the multinomial topics of LDA with Abney and Light's distribution over meanings. Thus, posterior inference in this model discovers not only the topical domains of each token, as in LDA, but also the meaning associated with each token. We show that considering more topics improves the problem of word sense disambiguation.
LDAWN allows us to separate the representation of meaning from how that meaning is expressed as word forms. In Chapter 3, we extend LDAWN to allow meanings to be expressed using different word forms in different languages. In addition to the disambiguation provided by LDAWN, this offers a new method of using topic models on corpora with multiple languages.
In Chapter 4, we relax the assumptions of multilingual LDAWN. We present the multilingual topic model for unaligned text (MuTo). Like multilingual LDAWN, it is a probabilistic model of text that is designed to analyze corpora composed of documents in multiple languages. Unlike multilingual LDAWN, which requires the correspondence between languages to be painstakingly annotated, MuTo also uses stochastic EM to simultaneously discover both a matching between the languages while it simultaneously learns multilingual topics. We demonstrate that MuTo allows the meaning of similar documents to be recovered across languages.
In Chapter 5, we address a recurring problem that hindered the performance of the models presented in the previous chapters: the lack of a local context. We develop the syntactic topic model (STM), a non-parametric Bayesian model of parsed documents. The STM generates words that are both thematically and syntactically constrained, which combines the semantic insights of topic models with the syntactic information available from parse trees. Each word of a sentence is generated by a distribution that combines document-specific topic weights and parse-tree-specific syntactic transitions. Words are assumed to be generated in an order that respects the parse tree. We derive an approximate posterior inference method based on variational methods for hierarchical Dirichlet processes, and we report qualitative and quantitative results on both synthetic data and hand-parsed documents.
In Chapter 6, we conclude with a discussion of how the models presented in this thesis can be applied in real world applications such as sentiment analysis and how the models can be extended to capture even richer linguistic information from text.


National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) were first established in the United States to protect public health and welfare, and the concept has been adopted in China and many other countries. For particulate matter (PM), the NAAQS indicator evolved from total particle mass concentration, to PM10 and PM2.5 mass concentrations as defined by the PM size-selective properties of the monitoring instrument and human inhalation characteristics. Particle measurements started with optical microscopy in the early 18 th century, and scientific research over the past 300 years has related particles to adverse environmental and health effects. Several options for PM2.5 measurement and assessment are available to China and other developing countries as they implement new PM2.5 ambient air quality standards. Although much can be learned from the experience of North America and Europe, China can leapfrog ahead in terms of PM2.5 monitoring and emission reduction technology. China-specific guidance documents should be created for network design, equipment selection and operation, quality control and quality assurance, database management, and interpretation. Future air quality management and standards will need to consider multiple pollutants and their effects on visibility, climate, materials, and ecosystems in addition to the primary concerns about public health.


This paper discusses a new neutron detection system that allows local volumetric identification of fast neutron thermalization in the context of forming a solid state Bonner-like neutron spectrometer. The resulting departure and subsequent improvement from the classical Bonner spectrometer is that the entire moderating volume is sampled locally for thermal neutrons. Such volumetric resolution is possible through the layering of weakly perturbing and pixilated high thermal efficiency solid state neutron detectors into a cylindrically symmetric neutron moderator. The overall system exhibits >10% total detection efficiency over the neutron energy range from thermal to 20 MeV and the data can be acquired simultaneously from all detector elements in a single measurement. These measurements can be used to infer information on incident neutron energy spectra and direction, which provides capabilities not available in current systems. The end result is a highly efficient, man-portable device with significantly improved methods for determination of pervading neutron energy spectra and the corresponding dose equivalent.


In recent years there has been a growing interest toward the development of pervasive and context-aware services, and RFID technology played a relevant role in the context sensing task. We propose the use of RFID technology together with a conversational agent in order to implement a multimodal information retrieval service we call SensorMesh. The information acquired from RFID tags about the nearest point of interest is processed by the conversational agent that carries a more natural interaction with the user, also exploiting a common sense ontology. The service is accessible using a multimodal browser on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs); the browser allows the user to interact with the conversational agent by means of spoken language instead of the traditional, keyboard- (or stylus-) based input systems. The resulting system offers a more natural interaction with respect to traditional pre-recorded, audio-visual services, and it is particularly suitable for non technology-skilled users.


In many applications of wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes are manually deployed in hostile environments where an attacker can disrupt the localization service and tamper with legitimate in-network communication. In this paper, we introduce Secure Walking GPS, a secure localization and key distribution solution for manual deployments of WSNs. Using the location information provided by the GPS and inertial guidance modules on a special master node, Secure Walking GPS achieves accurate node localization and location-based key distribution at the same time. Our analysis and simulation results indicate that the Secure Walking GPS scheme makes a deployed WSN resistant to the Dolev-Yao, the wormhole, and the GPS-denial attacks, has good localization and key distribution performance, and is practical for large-scale WSN deployments.


Abstract The article assesses the post-authoritarian situation in Indonesia in the light of experiences of Thailand and the Philippines, two societies in which the unraveling of authoritarianism has been followed by the rise of formal electoral politics. The authors suggest that the demise of authoritarian regimes in all three cases, born of the cold war, has more fundamentally seen the reconfiguration of politics in which dispersed, predatory, and frequently antidemocratic forces have appropriated the institutions and discourses of democracy. They also suggest that the Indonesian case has been less conducive to the emergence of effective pro-democracy, civil society-based movements in the wake of authoritarianism. This, they explain, is largely the consequence of the 1965 anticommunist massacres in Indonesia, which has no equivalence in the other two countries, and the resultant highly centralized authoritarianism that was more successful in disorganizing social and political opposition for three decades.


Many of the extreme rainfall events led to flash-flooding and consequent loss of life and substantial property damage. Therefore there is an urgent need to be able to forecast this event accurately Gumbel distribution is among the common probabilistic models used in hydrological extremes especially in the case of modelling rainfall extremes. This has been especially the case in modeling rainfall extremes. It is a well known that an estimation of extreme rainfall is very important for major hydraulic structure designs. In this study peak over threshold extreme rainfall series have been proposed as an alternative to annual maximum rainfall series in extreme rainfall analysis. A peak over threshold series consists of all the peaks above a certain threshold, whereas an annual maximum rainfall series contains only the maximum rainfall of each year. It has been argued that peak over threshold method uses more information about extreme rainfall because it works with more elements than the annual maxima series method. In this project, the data used were obtained from Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia. The area used as a case study covered a selected area of Malaysia's highland such as Bukit Peninjau at Pahang, Ladang Boh at Cameron Highland, Gunung Brinchang at Cameron Highland, Genting Sempah at Wilayah Persekutuan and Bukit larut at Perak. The data were extracted using annual maxima and peak over threshold methods and then fitted with Gumbel and Pareto distributions. The return periods were calculated and compared. The obvious advantage of such models over an annual maxima approach is that, by making more of the data in any given time and furthermore, the precision of estimates and return levels can be greatly improved. From the analysis most of the data shows that the return period becomes smaller as the level of threshold becomes larger, i.e. reducing the number of exceedances. Besides, the parameters estimated also shows decreasing with the increasing of number of threshold Furthermore, the quantile plot obtained for each station shows a good fit for both Gumbel distribution and Pareto distribution except for Genting Sempah and Gunung Brinchang which shows a poor fit for both distributions. It can be conclude that data series for both stations are not suitable to be fitted in Gumbel and Pareto distribution.


Distribution has become a key factor in today's logistics system due to companies' desires to achieve considerable economies of scale in production, achieved by focused factories, as well as customers' demands for shorter lead-times and customer adapted products. The purpose of this research is to investigate if the in-transit distribution strategy may offer companies a competitive advantage and may be used as a complement to the centralised distribution strategy and/or the decentralised distribution strategy. This study shows that the in-transit distribution strategy can give major competitive advantages by offering rather short lead-times for customers without having to store products locally in warehouses. This, in turn, gives lower warehousing costs, lower tied-up capital, a less interrupted manufacturing, and steady and continuous production volumes. In order to be successful with this strategy, it takes good planning, working closely with customers, good market knowledge, and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that is able to support the strategy sufficiently. Among these factors, low variation in demand as well as manufacturing output is required, and furthermore distribution lead time needs to be predictable.


Body segment parameters (BSPs) are pivotal to a number of key analyses within sports and healthcare. Accuracy is paramount, as investigations have shown small errors in BSPs to have significant impact upon subsequent analyses, particularly when analysing the dynamics of high acceleration movements. There are many techniques with which to estimate BSPs, however, the majority are complex, time consuming, and make large assumptions about the underlying structure of the human body, leading to considerable errors. Interest is increasingly turning towards obtaining person-specific BSPs from 3D scans, however, the majority of current scanning systems are expensive, complex, require skilled operators, and require lengthy post processing of the captured data. The purpose of this study was to develop a low cost 3D scanning system capable of estimating accurate and reliable person-specific segmental volume, forming a fundamental first step towards calculation of the full range of BSPs.A low cost 3D scanning system was developed, comprising four Microsoft Kinect RGB-D sensors, and capable of estimating person-specific segmental volume in a scanning operation taking less than one second. Individual sensors were calibrated prior to first use, overcoming inherent distortion of the 3D data. Scans from each of the sensors were aligned with one another via an initial extrinsic calibration process, producing 360° colour rendered 3D scans. A scanning protocol was developed, designed to limit movement due to postural sway and breathing throughout the scanning operation. Scans were post processed to remove discontinuities at edges, and parameters of interest calculated using a combination of manual digitisation and automated algorithms.The scanning system was validated using a series of geometric objects representative of human body segments, showing high reliability and systematic over estimation of scan-derived measurements. Scan-derived volumes of living human participants were also compared to those calculated using a typical geometric BSP model. Results showed close agreement, however, absolute differences could not be quantified owing to the lack of gold standard data. The study suggests the scanning system would be well received by practitioners, offering many advantages over current techniques. However, future work is required to further characterise the scanning system's absolute accuracy.


Objective To undertake Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in maternal and perinatal medicine for tests and treatment in the areas of pre eclampsia, preterm labour, epilepsy and congenital heart disease (CHD) in newborn. Methods The work undertaken in the thesis is divided into 4 sections: Delphi survey of practice; Systematic review of reviews; Systematic reviews of therapeutic effectiveness; Systematic reviews of test accuracy Results The Delphi survey identified blood pressure to be the best predictor of complications. A significant benefit of progestational agents was observed in reducing preterm delivery before 37 weeks (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.31 to 0.57). The combined rate of seizure deterioration was 0.40 (95% CI 0.26 to 0.55) in pregnant women with epilepsy on lamotrigine dosage based on serum levels compared to 0.73 (95% CI 0.56 to 0.86) in those managed by clinical features only. The abstracts of 19,500 citations were reviewed to identify the studies of accuracy of tests in pre eclampsia including proteinuria, uric acid, liver function tests, symptoms and blood pressure. The sensitivity and specificity were 0.63 (95% CI 0.39, 83) and 0.998% (95% CI, 0.99, 100) respectively for detecting CHD in the newborn by pulse oximetry. Conclusion Through the HTA of tests and treatment in priority areas of maternal and perinatal medicine, the thesis has led to the generation of clinical recommendation where there was clear evidence of benefit and for further research where there were gaps in evidence.


OBJECTIVE
To define clinically an unusual acute paralytic syndrome with features distinctive from those of the Guillain-Barré syndrome and similar to those described in Chinese children and young adults.

DESIGN
Case series.

SETTING
University medical centers.

PATIENTS
Three North American men (mean age, 29 years) who presented with acute symmetric weakness and muscle cramps after a preceding gastrointestinal tract illness. These patients had no sensory symptoms, developed no respiratory insufficiency or facial weakness, and had normal to brisk muscle stretch reflexes.

RESULTS
Results of serial nerve conduction studies were normal except for low-amplitude motor potentials. Needle electromyography revealed diffuse denervation potentials. Cerebrospinal fluid showed an elevated protein level and, in one case, a mild pleocytosis. A sural nerve biopsy specimen in one patient was normal; muscle biopsy specimens showed denervation atrophy.

CONCLUSION
These cases resemble those described in Chinese children and young adults and may represent a postviral monophasic process affecting the anterior horn cell or distal motor nerve terminal. Further pathologic correlation will be required to identify the exact site of the lesion. Differentiation is important when considering modes of treatment.


Gravitational lens flux-ratio anomalies provide a powerful technique for measuring dark matter substructure in distant galaxies. However, before using these flux-ratio anomalies to test galaxy formation models, it is imperative to ascertain that the given anomalies are indeed due to the presence of dark matter substructure and not due to some other component of the lensing galaxy halo or to propagation effects. Here we present the case of CLASS~B1555+375, which has a strong radio-wavelength flux-ratio anomaly. Our high-resolution near-infrared Keck~II adaptive optics imaging and archival Hubble Space Telescope data reveal the lensing galaxy in this system to have a clear edge-on disc component that crosses directly over the pair of images that exhibit the flux-ratio anomaly. We find simple models that include the disc can reproduce the cm-wavelength flux-ratio anomaly without requiring additional dark matter substructure. Although further studies are required, our results suggest the assumption that all flux-ratio anomalies are due to a population of dark matter sub-haloes may be incorrect, and analyses that do not account for the full complexity of the lens macro-model may overestimate the substructure mass fraction in massive lensing galaxies


This article builds on earlier articles by McWilliams and Pease in suggesting that the probation service requires a transcendent justification for its activities. The author supports the need for greater links between prison and probation services in promoting effective practice and public protection but asserts that probation' authority also derives from its understanding of crime in a community context. In developing a community justice framework for the probation service the author discusses three principles: justice, penance, and community, particularly as they might impact on the most marginalised and vulnerable in our inner cities. The case for a community justice dimension to effective practice is further endorsed by a recent Home Office study of the social factors most associated with reconviction. Best outcomes in relation to crime reduction are most likely to be achieved by a bridge-building effort between criminal justice professionals and the involvement of communities most at risk.


Abstract A quarter of the global population meets diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome (MetS). MetS prevalence stratifies by socioeconomic status (SES), such that low SES is associated with higher MetS risk starting in childhood. Despite this trend, some low-SES children maintain good metabolic health across the life span, but the factors responsible for their resilience are not well understood. This study examined the role of threat vigilance as either a moderator or a mediator of the effects of low early life SES on adult metabolic risk. Three hundred twenty-five Canadians aged 15–55 participated (M = 36.4 years, SD = 10.7; 55.4% female). We coded parental occupational status between the ages of 0 and 5 to index early life SES. We used the International Diabetes Federation case definition for MetS based on waist circumference, blood pressure, triglyceride levels, HDL cholesterol, and glycosylated hemoglobin measures. Threat vigilance was assessed using the Weapons Identification Procedure, a visual discrimination paradigm that captures implicit perceptions of threat. Analyses supported the moderator hypothesis: low early life SES was associated with MetS diagnosis exclusively among those with high levels of threat vigilance. This suggests that low early life SES environments that heighten vigilance to threat might be particularly detrimental for metabolic health. Conversely, low threat vigilance may buffer against the metabolic risks associated with socioeconomic disadvantage.


This thesis explores two approaches for converting rotating mechanical power from diesel engines into electrical power of fixed frequency and voltage. Advances in high energy permanent magnets and power electronics are enabling technologies that provide opportunities for electrical machines with increased efficiency and compact size. Two approaches are explored, Variable Speed and Fixed Speed power generation. For variable speed, the concept of Variable Speed Integrated Generating Sets (VSIGs) are discussed and suitable electrical machine types reviewed. Axial and Radial permanent magnet machines are compared in detail. An axial flux machine often referred to as the TORUS is researched, and a 50 kW unit designed to integrate within the flywheel housing of a diesel engine. Manufacturing aspects are considered, and two prototype machines are built and tested, the second machine demonstrates a rating of 60kW at 3000rpm. A machine model based upon a combination of Finite Element Analysis and polynomial curve fitting is developed to provide an insight into the design of such machines. During the course of this research a new form of axial electrical machine known as the Haydock Brown Machine was invented. The fundamental problem of regulating the output voltage for permanent machines has been over come by the addition of an excitation coil. Saturation, significant leakage fields and three excitation sources make the electromagnetic design process for the Haydock Brown Machine complex. The intuitive application of an equivalent circuit model provides satisfactory results and a 10kW prototype machine operating at fixed speed is built and tested. Using the model new observations are made and a new improved version is proposed called the Haydock Brown Hybrid Machine.


Various computer visions tasks require a summary of visually important regions in an image. Thus, developing simple yet accurate salient region detection algorithms has become an important research topic. The currently best performing state-of-the-art saliency detection algorithms incorporate image segmentation for abstraction. However, errors introduced in this step of the algorithms are transferred to the final saliency map estimation. In order to avoid this problem, we propose a simple low-level salient region detection algorithm that uses multi-scale filters. We consider each possible combination of filtered image pairs as weak saliency maps and combine them according to their adaptively computed compactness and center prior. Our filterbased method successfully eliminates the texture in the background and gives relatively uniform salient regions for multi-colored objects. In addition, the combination of several multi-scale filters produces a full-resolution saliency output, which preserves object boundaries. We show that our algorithm outperforms the most recent state-of-the-art methods on a database of 1000 images with pixel-precision ground truths.


Urgent and radical transition to lower‐carbon forms of society is imperative to limit current and future climate change impacts. Behavioral spillover theory offers a way to catalyze broad lifestyle change from one behavior to another in ways that generate greater impacts than piecemeal interventions. Despite growing policy and research attention, the evidence for behavioral spillover and the processes driving the phenomenon are unclear. The literature is split between studies that provide evidence for positive spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally conscious behavior leads to an increase in another functionally related behavior) and negative spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally conscious behavior leads to a decrease in another functionally related behavior). In summarizing findings, particular attention is given to the implications for climate‐relevant behaviors. While few examples of climate‐relevant behavioral spillover exist, studies do report positive and negative spillovers to other actions, as well as spillovers from behavior to support for climate change policy. There is also some evidence that easier behaviors can lead to more committed actions. The potential contribution of social practice theory to understanding spillover is discussed, identifying three novel pathways to behavioral spillover: via carriers of practices, materiality, and through relationships between practices within wider systems of practice. In considering future research directions, the relatively neglected role of social norms is discussed as a means to generate the momentum required for substantial lifestyle change and as a way of circumventing obstructive and intransigent climate change beliefs. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e481. doi: 10.1002/wcc.481


We document that start-ups with more access to long-term bank loans and those with more available credit in their credit lines survive longer. These findings do not appear to be driven by bank selection. Start-ups (including those founded by entrepreneurs without a business track record) that access these funding sources, in particular long-term loans, right at the beginning of their lives - when it is arguably more dicult for banks to identify winners - survive longer. Further, our findings continue to hold when we control for unobserved heterogeneity in start-ups, and when we instrument for banks' lending decisions. In addition, our findings do not seem to be entirely driven by bank monitoring because we do not find that accessing short-term bank loans yields similar results. Our results suggest that reducing uncertainty about future access to bank funding helps start-ups survive longer, possibly because it offers them insurance against future shocks and/or affords them the opportunity to make investments that they would not consider otherwise.


The MACRO underground detector at Gran Sasso Laboratory recorded 60 million secondary cosmic ray muons from February 1989 until December 2000. Different techniques were used to analyze this sample in search for density excesses from astrophysical point-like sources. No evidence for DC excesses for any source in an all-sky survey is reported. In addition, searches for muon excess correlated with the known binary periods of Cygnus X-3 and Hercules X-1, and searches for statistically significant bursting episodes from known gamma ray sources are also proved negative.


Abstract. Peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) may constitute a significant fraction of reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere. Current knowledge about the biosphere–atmosphere exchange of PAN is limited, and only few studies have investigated the deposition of PAN to terrestrial ecosystems. We developed a flux measurement system for the determination of biosphere–atmosphere exchange fluxes of PAN using both the hyperbolic relaxed eddy accumulation (HREA) method and the modified Bowen ratio (MBR) method. The system consists of a modified, commercially available gas chromatograph with electron capture detection (GC-ECD, Meteorologie Consult GmbH, Germany). Sampling was performed by trapping PAN onto two pre-concentration columns; during HREA operation one was used for updraft and one for downdraft events, and during MBR operation the two columns allowed simultaneous sampling at two measurement heights. The performance of the PAN flux measurement system was tested at a natural grassland site, using fast-response ozone (O3) measurements as a proxy for both methods. The measured PAN fluxes were comparatively small (daytime PAN deposition was on average −0.07 nmol m−2 s−1) and, thus, prone to significant uncertainties. A major challenge in the design of the system was the resolution of the small PAN mixing ratio differences. Consequently, the study focuses on the performance of the analytical unit and a detailed analysis of errors contributing to the overall uncertainty. The error of the PAN mixing ratio differences ranged from 4 to 15 ppt during the MBR and between 18 and 26 ppt during the HREA operation, while during daytime measured PAN mixing ratios were of similar magnitude. Choosing optimal settings for both the MBR and HREA method, the study shows that the HREA method did not have a significant advantage towards the MBR method under well-mixed conditions as was expected.


This master thesis is based on a field work conducted in Thailand with migrant and refugee children from Burma belonging to the ethnic minority of the Karen people. One urban school for migrant children and one rural refugee camp school served as research sites. The study explores the daily life experiences of children aged 8 – 13, with main focus on their school life. Various methods such as observation, essay writing, drawing and photography were used in order to search for the children's own perspectives on their life worlds. Through these methods, the children were able to express their ideas about their present and future lives.Within 'the social studies of childhood', children are viewed as social agents and competent human beings. The thesis highlights the meaning of school from the children's perspectives, as well as issues of social relationship, place identity and national identity. The study found that the children's everyday lives consisted of school, work and play. The migrant children and the refugee children lived different lives, and consequently perceived their lives differently. School was meaningful for both the migrant children and the refugee children in the present. The children living in the refugee camp also emphasized that education was important for the future. The thesis therefore argues that if we are to acknowledge children's perspectives of themselves and their life worlds, both present time and the future is of importance. Children are both human beings and adult becomings.The research also found that the refugee camp children appeared to be more engaged with ideas about the 'Karen nation'. However, their understanding of the Karen nation seemed to be more connected to local place than to their 'homeland', Karen state in Burma. Furthermore, the refugee children showed a great commitment to their 'Karen people', meaning the refugees in the camp. The meaning of school was also connected to the responsibility they felt towards the other camp residents: They wanted education to be able to help 'their people' and to 'give back'.


Whenever gasoline prices are substantially above historic norms – which they are today, as we don't need to tell you – energy policy takes center stage in American politics. And whenever pollsters in presidential campaigns find swing states in energy country, you can bet that the stage will be lit like never before.We all know what President Obama's selling on this policy stage; spend a ton of federal dollars on "clean energy," leave no lobbyist left behind (the meaning behind the omnipresent call for an "all of the above energy strategy"), and hope against experience that subsidy can turn ugly economic ducks into beautiful, commercially viable swans. But what of Mitt Romney's energy sales pitch? It's better … but not by much.


The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. In Low Power to the People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users. Dunbar-Hester focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the "old" medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that "microradio" broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group's methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work with radio hardware, although the activists' hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered by persistent issues of race, class, and gender. Dunbar-Hester's study of activism around an "old" medium offers broader lessons about how political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies. It also offers insight into contemporary issues in media policy that is particularly timely as the FCC issues a new round of LPFM licenses.


Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.


Introduction In the early days of atomic physics, it was realized that discoveries regarding nuclear fission and the chain reaction might be used for both beneficial and harmful purposes. The scientists involved recognized that, on the one hand, such discoveries could have important applications for medicine and energy production but that, on the other hand, they might also lead to the production of unprecedented weapons of mass destruction. (1) Foreseeing the potential weapons implications of experimental results regarding the chain reaction, Leo Szilard engaged colleagues in debate about the virtues of self-censorship. If dangerous discoveries were kept secret, he argued, then the development and use of such weapons might be avoided. However, similar discoveries were made and published by other physicists and atomic bombs were subsequently developed and used by the United States of America (USA) during the Second World War. Governmental regulation and censorship of nuclear science has since been common. (2) Life science researchers find themselves in a similar situation today. The biological sciences are progressing rapidly and recent developments in biotechnology may have tremendous medical (and other) benefits for humankind. In many cases, however, the same discoveries that promote advancement of medicine could also facilitate production of biological weapons of mass destruction. An unclassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document entitled The darker bioweapons future claims that: "advances in biotechnology ... have the potential to create a much more dangerous biological warfare threat ... engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man." (3) Though the dangerous implications of contemporary biology had been recognized earlier, (4) heightened concern followed the anthrax attacks in the USA in 2001. There are numerous reasons to take the threat of biological weapons seriously. In comparison with nuclear weapons, the production of biological weapons is relatively easy and inexpensive; and information about how to produce biological weapons is readily available in published scientific literature. In comparison with nuclear science, where discoveries with weapons implications are usually classified, information sharing in the life sciences has traditionally been completely open. (2) The anthrax attacks in the USA and other recent episodes, finally, have revealed that the threat of bioterrorism is real. The dual-use dilemma Scenarios where the results of well-intentioned scientific research can be used for both good and harmful purposes give rise to what is now widely known as the "dual-use dilemma" and there has been growing debate about the dual-use nature of life science research in particular. Four recent cases involving the publication of dual-use discoveries have been particularly controversial. In Australia, researchers inserted the mouse IL-4 gene into the mousepox virus hoping that the altered virus would sterilize mice and thus provide a means for pest control. To their surprise they discovered that they had produced a superstrain of mousepox that killed mice that were naturally resistant to, and mice that had been vaccinated against, ordinary mousepox. (5) This discovery implies that the same technique might enable production of vaccine-resistant smallpox. Because there is no known treatment for smallpox, vaccination is our only defence. This study was published in the Journal of Virology in 2001. In a second study, researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook artificially synthesized a "live" polio virus from scratch. (6) Following the map of the polio virus RNA genome, which is published on the Internet, they stitched together corresponding strands of DNA, which they purchased via mail-order. The addition of protein resulted in the creation of a virus that paralysed and killed mice. …


Abstract Many modern paleobiological analyses are conducted at the generic level, a practice predicated on the validity of genera as meaningful proxies for species. Uncritical application of genera in such analyses, however, has led—perhaps inadvertently—to the unjustified reification of genera in an evolutionary context. While the utility of genera as proxies for species in evolutionary studies should be evaluated as an empirical issue, in practice it is increasingly assumed (rather than demonstrated) that genera are suitable proxies for species. This is problematic on both ontological and epistemological grounds. Genera are arbitrarily circumscribed, non-equivalent, often paraphyletic, and sometimes polyphyletic collections of species. They are useful tools for communication but have no theoretical or biological reality of their own and, whether monophyletic or not, cannot themselves operate in the evolutionary process. Attributes considered important for understanding macroevolution—e.g., geographic ranges, niche breadths, and taxon durations—are frequently variable among species within genera and will be inflated at the generic level, especially in species-rich genera. Consequently, the meaning(s) of results attained at the generic level may not "trickle down" in any obvious way that elucidates our understanding of evolution at the species level. Ideally, then, evolutionary studies that are actually about species should be pursued using species-level data rather than proxy data tabulated using genera. Where genera are used, greater critical attention should be focused on the degree to which attributes tabulated at the generic level reflect biological properties and processes at the species level.


Abstract The K/Ar characteristics of 53 clay assemblages (Triassic-Cretaceous), representing the detrital, volcanogenic and arid-facies clay mineral associations, are interpreted in relation to their mineralogy, chronostratic age and geological origins. The K-bearing mineral components of the 1-2 μm, 0.2-1 μm and <0.2 μm fractions of each clay assemblage together display one of two characteristic patterns of K2O and 40Ar values (the K/Ar signature of the assemblage) on a 40Ar/K2O correlation diagram. Interpretation of the K/Ar signatures indicates that: (1) all of these clay assemblages are apparently unaffected by burial diagenetic illitization; (2) the Jurassic and Cretaceous detrital clay assemblages are derived from the reworking of weathered Caledonian metasediments (420-500 Ma) and weathered kaolin-bearing sediments of Upper Devonian/ Carboniferous age; and (3) the role played by palaeoclimate in developing the pattern of clay minerals in the Mesozoic sediments of England is much less significant than previously believed.


Solely protecting research subjects undermines ethical business anthropology practice. In this paper, we argue that a negative definition of ethics, manifest in the primary focus of "doing no harm" to research subjects, undermines a concern for the potential of business anthropology to do good in a broader sense. Alain Badiou's concept of truth procedure gives, we argue, an actively responsible and necessary direction to ethical business anthropology in its complicity with constructing new subjectivities within contemporary society.


Population-based metaheuristics, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been employed to solve many real-world optimization problems. Although it is often sufficient to find a single solution to these problems, there does exist those cases where identifying multiple, diverse solutions can be beneficial or even required. Some of these problems are further complicated by a change in their objective function over time. This type of optimization is referred to as dynamic, multi-modal optimization. Algorithms which exploit multiple optima in a search space are identified as niching algorithms. Although numerous dynamic, niching algorithms have been developed, their performance is often measured solely on their ability to find a single, global optimum. Furthermore, the comparisons often use synthetic benchmarks whose landscape characteristics are generally limited and unknown. This thesis provides a landscape analysis of the dynamic benchmark functions commonly developed for multi-modal optimization. The benchmark analysis results reveal that the mechanisms responsible for dynamism in the current dynamic benchmarks do not significantly affect landscape features, thus suggesting a lack of representation for problems whose landscape features vary over time. This analysis is used in a comparison of current niching algorithms to identify the effects that specific landscape features have on niching performance. Two performance metrics are proposed to measure both the scalability and accuracy of the niching algorithms. The algorithm comparison results demonstrate the algorithms best suited for a variety of dynamic environments. This comparison also examines each of the algorithms in terms of their niching behaviours and analysing the range and trade-off between scalability and accuracy when tuning the algorithms respective parameters. These results contribute to the understanding of current niching techniques as well as the problem features that ultimately dictate their success.


The formation of embryoid bodies has long been utilized to initiate differentiation of embryonic stem cells in vitro. The embryoid body provides an effective means of recapitulating early stages during embryogenesis and formation of the three germ layers. Current methodology for embryoid formation is extensive but exhibits a lack of standardisation and coherence. Here is shown a 3D culure system for controlled embryonic stem cell aggregation via a non-cytotoxic cell surface modification and cell-cell cross-linking. Embryoid body formation was found to be a complex relationship between embryonic stem cell aggregation, proliferation, death, cluster agglomeration, extracellular matrix deposition and structural reorganisation. Engineered embryoid bodies formed more rapidly and were significantly larger than those in control samples. Embryoid body characterisation revealed a layered internal structure resulting from poor nutrient and gaseous diffusion and consequent core necrosis after ≥ 5 days in suspension culture. Immuno-labelling and PCR amplification analysis of Brachyury, Nestin, Gata-4 and Oct-4 showed differentiation of mesoderm, ectoderm and endoderm on the embryoid body surface and internal undifferentiated cells, respectively. Engineering appeared to enhance mesoderm differentiation, a progenitor of the osteogenic lineage. Embryoid bodies in settled culture spread outwards to form a plateau of collagen matrix which was later mineralized through differentiated osteoblast function. Quantification through Alizarin Red stained bone nodules and alkaline phosphatase activity demonstrated osteogenic differentiation enhancement within engineered samples. Dex-loaded poly-(lactic co-glycolic) acid polymer microparticles were found to be an effective method for delivery of osteo-inductive factors to internal undifferentiated embryonic stem cells within the embryoid bodies. These findings show that the proposed 3D culture system provides reliable and repeatable methodology for the controlled formation of embryoid bodies which exhibit enhanced osteogenic differentiation. It is hoped that these engineered embryoid bodies could be used to efficiently generate homogeneous bone tissue for clinical application.


Student motivation in high school is a long-standing topic of interest considering the widespread problem of low academic engagement and relatively high dropout rates, which are predicted by low attendance. This prevailing problem is indicative that previous interventions have not been sufficient. One hypothesis is that interventions may be too targeted towards outcomes and neglect what motivation researchers in psychology have learned over decades. Motivation researchers, specifically self-determination theorists, have identified three underlying psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) that are critical to fostering intrinsic motivation. This study hypothesizes that these needs are not being met in the school setting even when academic interventions are present. This study will explore how a new intervention, The Future Project, that is not directly academic in nature but as a Positive Youth Development program may proactively foster these psychological needs and could be more effective in enhancing high school student academic motivation. The programming includes four facets: building one-on-one relationships between a student and mentor, exposing students to skill building courses, supporting students individually to design projects that they are passionate about and that have an impact on the world in some way, and it develops an intimate team of students who serve as collaborative leaders in their schools to support each other and their peers in selfreflection or personal project development. This is a mixed methods phenomenological study using secondary data analysis of student and alumni interviews, principal and teacher surveys, and teacher interviews. All data was collected by The Future Project in Spring 2016 to explore the student experience when participating in The Future Project programming and to gather feedback from students, teachers, and administrators. This study will use this data to explore how participating in The Future Project may contribute to fulfilling students' needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness; and how that influences student academic motivation and engagement, which have previously been determined as precursors to academic achievement; and to illustrate the mechanisms that connect autonomy, competence, and relatedness with academic motivation and engagement. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Susan Yoon


Over the past ten years various residential property markets throughout Australia in general and NSW in particular have been subject to substantial natural disasters. These occurrences have included floods, bushfires and hailstorms. In extreme cases the actual rectification costs have been up to AUD$1.5 billion, which occurred with the severe hailstorm in Sydney in April 1999 and cyclone Tracey in Darwin in 1974. Natural disasters such as severe storms and hailstorms have tended to be very indiscriminate in relation to frequency and the actual location of damage, whereas the nature of bushfire and flooding tends to be more defined. Although these extreme natural disasters tend to be infrequent, occurrences of floods and bushfires in residential property areas are more frequent, particularly as urban sprawl encroaches closer to national Parks, State recreation Parks and State forests. Considerable work has been carried out on flood effects on property markets by Bell (1999), Donnelly (1988), McClusky and Rausser (2001), Skrantz and Strickland (1987) in the US, and Chou and Shih (2001) in Taiwan. Fibbens (1994), Lambley and Cordery (1991) and Eves (1999, 2001, 2002) have carried out studies in relation to the effect of flooding on residential property values in the Sydney region, including the tracking of flood prone property values over time. However, no similar rigorous research has been carried out in relation to the impact of bushfires on residential property markets in the Sydney region. Residential property in Sydney is confined to the Sydney basin, which is bounded by National Parks to the north, west and south and encompasses the Georges, Parramatta and Hawkesbury river systems. Over the past ten years there have been a number of severe bushfires in the Sydney region that have resulted in substantial loss of property and in extreme cases human life. In all these cases the bushfires have commenced and or travelled through National Parks and bushland reserves, with houses adjoining or in close proximity to these parks being at the most risk of fire destruction or damage. This research project will identify those streets in Sydney that have been subject to significant full as well as partial home loss from bushfires over the period 1988 to 2002. The transactions and value of property in these locations will be tracked both before and after the fire event to quantify if the bushfires have had any significant impact on buyer behaviour and if the values of these properties in these particular streets have been affected, compared to other properties in the same location.


: FRANK, Robert: Exiting World War II. In his study the author deals with the exiting World War II from several viewpoints. First he ana-lyses the heritage from the exiting World War I, that is those efforts which did not succeed after 1918, but became an inspiration for the post-1945 period, such as the international influence of the United States, the international justice system, the foundation of the UN and European integration. In the second part he focuses on the specifics of the exiting World War II such as the occupation, brutality and the global dimension. To conclude, he puts the exiting World War II into the context of the whole of the duration of the Cold War. Both of the conflicts which prece-ded and succeeded World War II thus significantly affected its complicated exiting.


Autophagy is a catabolic process involved in the turnover of organelles and macromolecules which, depending on conditions, may lead to cell death or preserve cell survival. We found that some lung cancer cell lines and tumor samples are characterized by increased levels of lipidated LC3. Inhibition of autophagy sensitized non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) cells to cisplatin-induced apoptosis; however, such response was attenuated in cells treated with etoposide. Inhibition of autophagy stimulated ROS formation and treatment with cisplatin had a synergistic effect on ROS accumulation. Using genetically encoded hydrogen peroxide probes directed to intracellular compartments we found that autophagy inhibition facilitated formation of hydrogen peroxide in the cytosol and mitochondria of cisplatin-treated cells. The enhancement of cell death under conditions of inhibited autophagy was partially dependent on caspases, however, antioxidant NAC or hydroxyl radical scavengers, but not the scavengers of superoxide or a MnSOD mimetic, reduced the release of cytochrome c and abolished the sensitization of the cells to cisplatin-induced apoptosis. Such inhibition of ROS prevented the processing and release of AIF (apoptosis-inducing factor) and HTRA2 from mitochondria. Furthermore, suppression of autophagy in NSCLC cells with active basal autophagy reduced their proliferation without significant effect on the cell-cycle distribution. Inhibition of cell proliferation delayed accumulation of cells in the S phase upon treatment with etoposide that could attenuate the execution stage of etoposide-induced apoptosis. These findings suggest that autophagy suppression leads to inhibition of NSCLC cell proliferation and sensitizes them to cisplatin-induced caspase-dependent and -independent apoptosis by stimulation of ROS formation.


This article explores the relationship between precarity, waste, and the ragpicker in contemporary Chinese visual culture. It asks first why precarity has come so little and so late to the theoretical scene in China, a society in which precarious experience is so rife as to be almost endemic. The essay then goes on to show how some of China's leading artists now work profusely with refuse—as a core theme of the precarious present—while noting the strange anomaly that their works offer up scant if any space for the figure of the waste picker. The artist, instead, has taken over her mantle as the sifter and sorter of garbage. This missing human figure matters, in part because waste is always about people—and their absence from aesthetic space suggests that art is responding to a felt sense that personhood is coming under assault as basic life sureties fray. But this essay also argues that the garbage takeover is part of a sustained practice of appropriation, effacement, even cruelty in the artistic representation of precarity in China. China's wasteworks are art forms born at the tense interface between different class actors, and they disclose fraught fears over where brittle life experience begins and ends in a society that has tried to eliminate class as a category of political action and analysis.


A pilot MBR was fed with two different influent loading conditions, namely dry weather flow (DWF) and DWF with an additional discharge of wastewater from a local cheese factory. For both situations sludge was sampled from different tanks of the pilot (predenitrification, denitrification, nitrification and membrane tank). All sludge samples and the supernatant of sludge from the membrane tank were filtered under exactly the same conditions with a filtration characterisation unit. Besides this all samples were subdivided in different fractions (supernatant, 0.45 and 0.03 μm, 500, 100, 10 and 1 kDa) and analysed for their EPS concentrations (proteins and polysaccharides). The results show that the filterability of the sludge changes with the sampling point and differs between the two influent loading conditions. Contrary to DWF conditions, for cheesy influent conditions sludge from the membrane tank has better filterability than its supernatant. This suggests that the sludge forms a cake layer that protects the membrane against fouling by particles in the free water. No clear relation between filterability and EPS concentrations of the different fractions was found.


Background and objectives Adequate diet is of crucial importance for healthy child development. In food insecure areas of the world, the provision of adequate child diet is threatened in the many households that sometimes experience having no food at all to eat (household food insecurity). In the context of food insecure northern Ghana, this study investigated the relationship between level of household food security and achievement of recommended child diet as measured by WHO Infant and Young Child Feeding Indicators. Methods Using data from households and 6–23 month old children in the 2012 Feed the Future baseline survey (n = 871), descriptive analyses assessed the prevalence of minimum meal frequency; minimum dietary diversity, and minimum acceptable diet. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association of minimum acceptable diet with household food security, while accounting for the effects of child sex and age, maternal -age, -dietary diversity, -literacy and -education, household size, region, and urban-rural setting. Household food security was assessed with the Household Hunger Scale developed by USAID's Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project. Results Forty-nine percent of children received minimum recommended meal frequency, 31% received minimum dietary diversity, and 17% of the children received minimum acceptable diet. Sixty-four percent of the children lived in food secure households, and they were significantly more likely than children in food insecure households to receive recommended minimum acceptable diet [O.R = 0.53; 95% CI: 0.35, 0.82]. However, in 80% of food secure households, children did not receive a minimal acceptable diet by WHO standards. Conclusions Children living in food secure households were more likely than others to receive a minimum acceptable diet. Yet living in a food secure household was no guarantee of child dietary adequacy, since eight of 10 children in food secure households received less than a minimum acceptable diet. The results call for research into factors besides household food security in the search for determinants of child diet adequacy. In this study at least, household food security was a very weak marker of child diet adequacy. This finding is of significance to public health practice, since it calls into question any assumption that having enough food in a household necessarily results in adequately fed children.


Sinead Moriarty's breathtaking eighth novel, "This Child of Mine", is the story of two daughters, two mothers and the extraordinary bond of motherly love. It's a unique blend of the storytelling genius of Jodi Picoult and the compassion and humour of Marian Keyes, in a complex and deeply involving story that will have readers arguing about the nature of motherhood and the rights and wrongs of the characters' actions. Sophie is a happy 18-year-old living in London with Anna, her Irish mother. Anna has devoted her life to Sophie. It may be just the two of them but Anna has more than enough love to give. Sophie has everything she could ever need. Laura is a not-so-happy artist. She too has a daughter, Mandy. But Laura is haunted by the loss of her first child, Jody. Happy-go-lucky as she is, Mandy lives in Jody's shadow and wonders why her mother can never let go. Both mothers carry secrets and cannot forget the day their paths crossed. But a chance discovery is about to bring everything into the open and mothers and daughters, love and lies, past and future, will spectacularly collide. Sinead Moriarty's novels have sold over half a million copies in Ireland and the UK and she is a four times nominee for the popular fiction Irish Book Award. She has won over readers and critics telling stories that are funny, humane, moving and relevant to modern women. "This Child of Mine" is Sinead at her very best. Sinead Moriarty lives with her family in Dublin. Her previous titles are: "The Baby Trail"; "A Perfect Match"; "From Here to Maternity"; "In My Sister's Shoes"; "Keeping It In the Family" (also titled "Whose Life is it Anyway?"); "Pieces of My Heart", and, "Me and My Sisters".


Modern society undergoes such rapid transformations, leading to social norms and institutions being faced with difficulties relating to adaptation. The question arises of whether psychoanalysis can be useful for the settlement of ethical and legal dilemmas related to the transformations of modern society. Even if the psychoanalytical process and social norms do not share the same goals, they meet in the Oedipal phase, because it is there, in the context of the prohibition of incest, that we find the first requirement that supposes the existence of moral law. Can data obtained in the process of psychoanalysis and examining a person's mental well-being be used as an argument to substantiate the cited transformations? Aren't certain value-based, institutional and legal transformations of modern society the result of the at least partial influence of data obtained during the process of psychoanalysis? However, unconscious meanings received as data in the psychoanalytic process and social norms are two completely different spaces: the moralist's power is always in the norms, but the outcome of a psychoanalytical process does not anticipate making patient moral. The process of psychoanalysis accomplishes the function of liberating the morality of guilt and changing the relation with social norms.


How many times have you run a Google search that resulted in thousands of results? With over 8 billion pages online and more posted every day, the Web more than likely contains the information you're looking for - if only you could find it. In Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web, Internet-search-engine expert Tara Calishain makes researching more efficient and rewarding for anyone for whom the Web is an indispensable tool - academics, journalists, scientists, and professionals, as well as bloggers, genealogists, and hobbyists. She does so by teaching the latest techniques for building automated information-gathering systems. As an alternative to the typical one-time search for information, Tara demonstrates how readers can use RSS feeds, page monitoring tools, and other software to set up information streams of many different data types - from text to multimedia to conversations - for capture and review.


Using a similar analytical approach to a study in China, this paper analyzes the impact of agricultural research on urban poverty reduction in India. State level data from 1970 to 1995 were used in the empirical analysis. It is found that in addition to its large impact on rural poverty reduction, agricultural research investments have also played a major role in the reduction of urban poverty. Agricultural research investments increase agricultural production, and increased production in turn lowers food prices. The urban poor often benefit proportionately more than the non-poor since they spend 50-80% of their income on food. Among all the rural investments considered in this study, agricultural research has the largest impact on urban poverty reduction per additional unit of investment. The results from this study are similar to earlier findings for China. Today, urban poverty still accounts for one quarter of total poverty in India, and this share is expected to rise in the future. Policymakers cannot afford to be complacent about this trend and continued investments are still needed to keep food prices low. Among all government policy instruments, increased agricultural research is still the most effective way to achieve this objective.


Step into a living room lovingly created within the GloNet venue, sit on a comfortable armchair, and see someone on the other side of the globe magically transported into the chair next to you.

Artist Paul Sermon uses virtual-studio technology to bring remote festival participants into a simulated domestic 'living-room' setting, by augmenting participants into the comfort of an 'armchair seminar', bringing geographically remote audiences together in a shared telepresent interactive and performative setting.

GloNet Front Room will run between Manchester and Sao Paulo and will involve both programmed and ad hoc interaction. A World Premiere and is created specifically for FutureEverything 2010.

This installation follows the development of a series of telecommunication art works Paul Sermon has produced since the early 1990s, using customised videoconferencing technology as a means of bringing geographically remote audiences together in a shared telepresent interactive and performative setting.

World Premiere. GloNet Front Room is created specially for FutureEverything 2010 and is supported by the University of Salford, British Council and Northern Net.


Global climate models (GCMs) have become increasingly important for climate change science and provide the basis for most impact studies. Since impact models are highly sensitive to input climate data, GCM skill is crucial for getting better short-, medium- and long-term outlooks for agricultural production and food security. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 ensemble is likely to underpin the majority of climate impact assessments over the next few years. We assess 24 CMIP3 and 26 CMIP5 simulations of present climate against climate observations for five tropical regions, as well as regional improvements in model skill and, through literature review, the sensitivities of impact estimates to model error. Climatological means of seasonal mean temperatures depict mean errors between 1 and 18 ° C (2–130% with respect to mean), whereas seasonal precipitation and wet-day frequency depict larger errors, often offsetting observed means and variability beyond 100%. Simulated interannual climate variability in GCMs warrants particular attention, given that no single GCM matches observations in more than 30% of the areas for monthly precipitation and wet-day frequency, 50% for diurnal range and 70% for mean temperatures. We report improvements in mean climate skill of 5–15% for climatological mean temperatures, 3–5% for diurnal range and 1–2% in precipitation. At these improvement rates, we estimate that at least 5–30 years of CMIP work is required to improve regional temperature simulations and at least 30–50 years for precipitation simulations, for these to be directly input into impact models. We conclude with some recommendations for the use of CMIP5 in agricultural impact studies.


I, Gregory, the priest over the enfeebled people of the Armenians, at the time of our persecutions by the nation of the Ishmaelites who had appeared from eastern lands [wrote this colophon on the Gospels]. We came from Mount Ararat, from the village, which is called Arkuri, following our God-loving king Sennacherim, to dwell in this city of Sebasteia where the Forty Martyrs shed their blood in the battle with bitter-blowing wind and ice-cold water. And there, after five years my many talented and greatly honoured father, the priest Anania passed away, in the royal city of Constantinople … And [so] we remained [in Sebasteia], two brothers, George and Gregory …' This colophon, written in 1066, offers us insight into an Armenian monastery on Byzantine territory. Gregory, the copyist of the Gospel Book, moved to Sebasteia after 1021, when Basil II (976–1025) granted the city to Sennacherim-John Artsruni, in exchange for his native kingdom of Vaspurakan (see above, p. 360). Gregory's colophon is his testament, bequeathing his most valuable possession, the Gospels, to his spiritual son. The colophon was written at a difficult period for Byzantine Asia Minor. Although primarily concerned with spiritual themes, Gregory mentions 'our persecutions by the nation of the Ishmaelites'. The question arises: who were these 'Ishmaelites'?


Metal carbenes, generated from the decomposition of diazo compounds by transition-metals, have a broad range of applications in organic synthesis. The progress of organic transformation via transition metal (such as Rh, Cu, Fe, Ag) carbenes has been well summarized in a few excellent reviews. This review will summarize gold-catalyzed transformations of α-diazocarbonyl compounds by highlighting the specificity and applicability of these diverse transformations such as X-H insertion, C-H functionalization, cyclopropanation, cycloaddition, and coupling reactions. In order to understand these reactions, the mechanistic rationale for selected examples is also provided.


Understanding hydrological and hydrochemical processes has become increasingly more challenging with high rates of population growth and subsequent alteration of the environment. In addition to maintaining monitoring networks to assess the general state of water quality, detecting trends, and computing pollutant transport, process-level information is needed to evaluate factors that affect the transport and transformation of solutes in aquatic environments. In this study, conducted in the Balabandere Creek catchment, a monitoring program was performed in order to assess pollution sources along the creek longitudinal profile. Balabandere Creek is a typical suburban creek, located near Istanbul. Four sampling points were selected along the creek longitudinal profile, and physical, chemical and bacteriological analyses were made on grab water samples taken at 15-day intervals for seven months. This monitoring process was designed to provide basic inventory information suitable for catchment scale water quality management, and, in addition, to help to support the formulation of legal regulations for policy planning and practice. The land use in the catchment and possible nutrient sources were taken into account when considering the sampling points. The nutrient load of the first sampling point, draining the managed mixed broadleaved forest, was significantly lower than the other points (total nitrogen ?1 = 0.04, ?2 = 0.18, ?3 = 0.09, ?4 = 0.66 ppm) despite the dilution effect. Evaluation of the water quality parameters are discussed and the cumulative effects of various land use types are proposed. With the aid of this monitoring process, the catchment as a system was delineated and possible pollution sources were identified. The measures required to decrease the pollution of the creek are discussed. The situation and legislation for these kinds of problems in Turkey are also assessed.


It is still poorly understood how animal behaviour shapes bacterial communities and their evolution. We use burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, to investigate how animal behaviour impacts the assembly of bacterial communities. Burying beetles use small vertebrate carcasses as breeding resources, which they roll into a ball, smear with antimicrobial exudates and bury. Using high-throughput sequencing we characterize bacterial communities on fresh mouse carcasses, aged carcasses prepared by beetles, and aged carcasses that were manually buried. The long-standing hypothesis that burying beetles 'clean' the carcass from bacteria is refuted, as we found higher loads of bacterial DNA in beetle-prepared carcasses. Beetle-prepared carcasses were similar to fresh carcasses in terms of species richness and diversity. Beetle-prepared carcasses distinguish themselves from manually buried carcasses by the reduction of groups such as Proteobacteria and increase of groups such as Flavobacteriales and Clostridiales. Network analysis suggests that, despite differences in membership, network topology is similar between fresh and beetle-prepared carcasses. We then examined the bacterial communities in guts and exudates of breeding and non-breeding beetles. Breeding was associated with higher diversity and species richness. Breeding beetles exhibited several bacterial groups in common with their breeding resource, but that association is likely to disappear after breeding.


Significance Classic theories of emotion hold that emotion categories (e.g., Anger and Sadness) each have corresponding facial expressions that can be universally recognized. Alternative approaches emphasize that a perceiver's unique conceptual knowledge (e.g., memories, associations, and expectations) about emotions can substantially interact with processing of facial cues, leading to interindividual variability—rather than universality—in facial-emotion perception. We find that each individual's conceptual structure significantly predicts the brain's representational structure, over and above the influence of facial features. Conceptual structure also predicts multiple behavioral patterns of emotion perception, including cross-cultural differences in patterns of emotion categorizations. These findings suggest that emotion perception, and the brain's representations of face categories, can be flexibly influenced by conceptual understanding of emotions. Humans reliably categorize configurations of facial actions into specific emotion categories, leading some to argue that this process is invariant between individuals and cultures. However, growing behavioral evidence suggests that factors such as emotion-concept knowledge may shape the way emotions are visually perceived, leading to variability—rather than universality—in facial-emotion perception. Understanding variability in emotion perception is only emerging, and the neural basis of any impact from the structure of emotion-concept knowledge remains unknown. In a neuroimaging study, we used a representational similarity analysis (RSA) approach to measure the correspondence between the conceptual, perceptual, and neural representational structures of the six emotion categories Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise. We found that subjects exhibited individual differences in their conceptual structure of emotions, which predicted their own unique perceptual structure. When viewing faces, the representational structure of multivoxel patterns in the right fusiform gyrus was significantly predicted by a subject's unique conceptual structure, even when controlling for potential physical similarity in the faces themselves. Finally, cross-cultural differences in emotion perception were also observed, which could be explained by individual differences in conceptual structure. Our results suggest that the representational structure of emotion expressions in visual face-processing regions may be shaped by idiosyncratic conceptual understanding of emotion categories.


As a prelude to a silicon implementation of a live locomotory network, the phenomena of tonic excitation in single cells, reciprocal inhibition in pairs of cells, and recurrent cyclic inhibition in rings of five cells were recreated and subjected to parametric tests of oscillatory range and stability. Various networks were constructed from comprehensive very large scale integration (VLSI)-based artificial neurons and their parametric stability with respect to cellular threshold, refraction, and synaptic weight observed. Circuit tests demonstrated that all three oscillator topologies operated over a broad range of cellular and network frequencies. It was also noted, that cells of reciprocal oscillators must possess some measure of short-term synaptic plasticity while those in the cyclically inhibited networks did not. This suggests that the two oscillator types utilize different temporal mechanisms. In parametric tests, tonic cells were sensitive to threshold, refraction, and synaptic weight. Cyclic networks were found to be sensitive to cell threshold, yet less so to refraction. Conversely, the reciprocal circuits were found to be sensitive to refraction, yet less so to cell threshold. This complementary relationship suggests a stability advantage for biological oscillatory networks that incorporate both types.


This study focuses on the credit risk of Australian financial institutions relative to that of the US. These two countries are chosen because the study is undertaken in Australia, and because Australia is widely considered to have fared far better than the US during the Global Financial (GFC) in terms of both share market volatility and credit defaults, our comparison involves two countries experiencing very different circumstances. The key questions addressed by the paper are firstly, the extent to which the credit risk of Australian financial institutions compares favourably (or otherwise) to the US, and secondly whether credit risk of financial institutions increases (decreases) in a similar fashion over varying time periods. As part of the analysis we will look at a number of aspects. Firstly we will examine the relative financial institution capital levels of the two countries. Although bank capital covers a number of different risks, credit risk is an extremely important component of capital adequacy, and higher credit risk should be reflected in higher capital levels. Secondly we will examine relative levels of credit risk for these countries using non- performing loans and fluctuating asset values, applying various metrics, including Value at Risk (VaR), Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and quantile regression. Following the Global Financial Crisis, there has been much criticism leveled at risk management techniques which measure volatility below a specified threshold. One such technique is Value at Risk (VaR). A major criticism is VaR says nothing of the risk beyond that threshold. Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), on the other hand, measures extreme risk, those risks beyond VaR. Quantile regression divides a dataset into parts, allowing the extreme quantiles to be isolated and measured. Using these techniques, we compare the credit risk of two data sets (US and Australia) over an eleven year time period from 2004 to 2014. This period includes a range of economic circumstances, spanning pre-GFC, GFC and post-GFC. For credit risk we use non-performing loans, as well as a Merton type model which measures volatility in the market asset values of borrowers. We derive a beta which measures credit risk relative to a benchmark. We then compare relative beta changes over time for the two countries. There are a number of important elements and findings highlighted by the paper. Firstly, on an absolute capital basis (equity to assets), as measured by the World Bank, Australian financial institutions have low capital in comparison to their global peers, with a capital ratio that is about half that of US banks. However, the ratio improves substantially on a risk-weighted basis (per the Basel approach), to one that is much closer to US Banks. Australian Banks have a very high home loan component, with home loans attracting a low risk weighting for capital adequacy requirements. Thus there is a much bigger differential between absolute capital ratios and risk weighted capital ratios for Australia than for the US. Secondly the credit risk of Australian financial institutions as measured by the World Bank for non-performing loans is very low in relation to global banks, and is about half that of the US. Thirdly, when we apply measurements such as VaR, CVaR and quantlile regression to non-performing assets and conduct a Beta analysis to measure fluctuations in credit risk, we find that risk for Australian financial institutions moves in line with that of the US. During the GFC, the risk for Australia increased by very similar levels to that of the US, although off a much smaller base. The findings can be important to banks and regulators in understanding credit risk in these countries as well as choosing modelling techniques which are able to measure extreme risk and respond to changing economic circumstances, and thus provide early warning signs of changes in credit risk.


Aims: The purpose of this study was to isolate and identify aerobic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) degrading bacteria. Materials and Methods: This study was performed in lab scale aerobic sequencing batch biofilm reactor. Polyurethane foams were used as bio-carrier and synthetic wastewater was prepared with PCBs in transformer oil as the main substrate (20-700 μg/l) and acetone as a solvent for PCBs as well as microelements. After achieving to adequate microbial population and acclimation of microorganisms to PCB compounds with high efficiency of PCB removal, identification of degrading microbial species was performed by 16s rRNA gene sequencing of isolated bacteria. Results: Gene sequencing results of the isolated bacteria showed that Rhodococcus spp., Pseudomonas spp., Pseudoxanthomonas spp., Agromyces spp., and Brevibacillus spp. were dominant PCB-degrading bacteria. Conclusion: PCB compounds can be degraded by some microorganisms under aerobic or anaerobic conditions or at least be reduced to low chlorinated congeners, despite their chemical stability and toxicity. Based on the results of the study, five bacterial species capable of degrading PCBs in transformer oil have been identified.


PURPOSE
Inclusion of highly non-coplanar treatment angles increases radiations dose conformality and critical organ sparing. However, implementation of this treatment strategy has been hampered by inaccurate solution space modeling, limited automated beam selection methods, the lack of efficient beam sequencing program and integrated collision prevention. The aim is to develop a 4pi radiotherapy paradigm that takes full advantage of modern computer-controlled robotic C-arm linear accelerators.

METHODS
The beam geometry solution space was modeled by 3D surface scanning of the couch, gantry and patient. In order to utilize the entire solution space and optimize MLC resolution, variable source-to-tumor distances were introduced. Conformai radiation doses were computed using convolution/superposition from uniformly distributed solid angles. Beam orientation optimization was performed using a column generation and pricing approach, which was also used to optimize beam fluence intensity modulation. A level set method was then employed to automatically sequence beams so the treatment time and couch motion can be minimized while avoiding collision on the path.

RESULTS
The machine and patient surface was accurately measured and a cocoon shaped solution space was created with an integrated gap buffer of 4 cm. 14 conformai beams were typically selected to maximize target dose coverage and minimize critical organ doses. Compared with manual non-coplanar and coplanar volumetric modulated arc therapy plans, an average 20% improvement was observed in high dose spillage, defined as the 50% isodose volume divided by the target volume, in a wide range of clinical cases including brain, lung, liver and partial breast cancer.

CONCLUSIONS
We have established a framework that overcomes major technical difficulties associated with automated planning and delivery of highly non-coplanar treatment on the widely available C-arm linacs. Compared with coplanar volumetric modulated arc therapy plans, 4pi plans improve nearly all aspects of the dosimetry while remain highly deliverable.


Ober S. V. & Staniczek A. H. 2009. — A new genus and species of coenagrionid damselflies (Insecta, Odonata, Zygoptera, Coenagrionidae) from Vanuatu. Zoosystema 31 (3): 485-497. ABSTRACT A new genus, Vanuatubasis n. gen., is described and illustrated based on specimens from the islands of Aneityum, Espiritu Santo, and Malekula, Vanuatu. Males of the new genus differ from males of the similar Nesobasis Selys, 1891 in having short and broad superior anal appendages and long, forcipate inferior anal appendages. The already described species, Nesobasis malekulana Kimmins, 1936 and N. bidens Kimmins, 1958, are transferred to the new genus. Both species, only known from males, are redescribed. Additionally, a new species, Vanuatubasis santoensis n. gen., n. sp., is described from Espiritu Santo. Males of V. santoensis n. gen., n. sp. differ from males of the closely related V. malekulana n. comb, by their larger size, a more raised hind ridge of the pronotum, the less prominent medio-posterior protuberance of the mesostigmal laminae, and the paisley-shaped superior anal appendages. A key to the males of Vanuatubasis n. gen. is provided.


Store-carry-and-forward is extensively used in vehicular environments for many and varied purposes, including routing, disseminating, downloading, uploading, or offloading delay-tolerant content. The performance gain of store-carry-and-forward over traditional connected forwarding is primarily determined by the fact that it grants a much improved network connectivity. Indeed, by letting vehicles physically carry data, store-carry-and-forward adds a temporal dimension to the (typically fragmented) instantaneous network topology that is employed by connected forwarding. Temporal connectivity has thus a important role in the operation of a wide range of vehicular network protocols. Still, our understanding of the dynamics of the temporal connectivity of vehicular networks is extremely limited. In this paper, we shed light on this underrated aspect of vehicular networking, by exploring a vast space of scenarios through an evolving graph-theoretical approach. Our results show that using store-carry-and-forward greatly increases connectivity, especially in very sparse networks. Moreover, using store-carry-and-forward mechanisms to share content within a geographically-bounded area can be very efficient, i.e., new entering vehicles can be reached rapidly.


"A major contribution. . . . Enriquez's knowledge of the region . . . is unparalleled among U.S. academics."--Rose Spalding, DePaul University In Nicaragua, agrarian reform was central to the Sandinista government's development model. As the 1990 (and the 1996) election results show, however, other factors were at work in influencing the vote of the Nicaraguan peasantry. In this groundbreaking study, Laura Enriquez analyzes the political impact of agrarian reform by comparing the effects of several different reform strategies employed in Nicaragua between 1987 and 1994. She shows that the impact is often paradoxical: socioeconomic reforms which clearly benefit the peasantry do not necessarily result in political support for the regime that brought it about. Case studies are based on extensive fieldwork in Nicaragua, both before and after the demise of the Sandinista government. Enriquez analyzes voting patterns and explores the tendency of the poorest sector of the peasantry to become involved in revolutionary movements. She also assesses the relevance of various positions within the theoretical literature on development and peasant politics. Finally, Enriquez compares the political impact of agrarian reforms in Nicaragua with those in Cuba, Chile, Vietnam, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kerala. A thorough and fascinating study of an issue that is particularly timely given the 1996 Nicaraguan elections, this book will be of interest to Central American, international development, and political science scholars. Laura J. Enriquez is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Harvesting Change: Labor and Agrarian Reform in Nicaragua, 1979-1990 "(1991).


The study involved six weeks of classroom observations and in-depth interviews with two teachers, kindergarten and first grade, who are currently engaging in an on-going process of implementing constructivist education in a public school in Missouri and whose teaching practices are considered to be exemplary. The purpose o f the study was twofold: (a) to describe and analyze the teachers' practical approaches in promoting children's conflict resolution in the classrooms and (b) to examine how the teachers' beliefs and practices related to conflict resolution reflect the theoretical framework o f the constructivist program. The results of the data collection were analyzed and presented according to the following four aspects: (a) characteristics o f teacher-initiated and solicited interventions in children's conflict situations, (b) characteristics o f teachers' mediations, (c) teachers' beliefs about promoting children's conflict resolution in the classroom, and (d) teachers' approaches to creating a classroom environment for promoting children's conflict resolution. The study found that the teachers initiated interventions only under certain conditions. In their responses to children's solicitations for intervention, the teachers effectively promoted the children's abilities to solve their conflicts by themselves. The study also identified the constructivist teachers' characteristics that were guided by underlying aims of mediating children's conflicts: to teach children practical strategies to manage conflicts, to foster positive attitudes toward solving interpersonal conflicts in children, and to promote the development of children's interpersonal understanding. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The teachers' beliefs about promoting children's conflict resolution were consistent with the theoretical approach of constructivist education and were reflected in their classroom practices: The teachers integrated conflict resolution as an essential part of the curriculum and fostered the children's abilities to manage conflicts through various experiences in the classroom. The study also identified and analyzed the teachers' efforts to create a classroom environment that were closely tied to promoting children's conflict resolution according to three features: (a) providing and using the peace chairs, (b) involving children in making classroom decisions and rules, and (c) establishing a community in which the children and the teacher build close connections by sharing experiences and, at the same time, freely exchange their points o f view and respect different ideas. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.


The objective of the conceptual paper for analysing the opportunities and challenges of HR Analytics for reducing the attrition rate in the organization. The paper highlighted the important reasons of high attrition in different type of organizations and the effective approaches by the respective organizations for reducing attrition rate. Employee attrition is one of serious issues in the current corporate scenario as it impacts on the organizational image, values, culture, reputation, and job satisfaction. Moreover, high attrition is related to high cost for any organization. This research intended to explore employee attrition and finding out gaps in work and improve in those areas for reducing attrition accordingly. The sources of data used are both primary & secondary. HR Managers of select organizations were requested to share the recent trends with the usage & applications of HR Analytical tools. The data was collected by conducting personal interactions over telephones as primary source. Journals & research articles in the domain of HR analytics were used to get better insights. Effective recruitment structure, working environment and Employee Engagement is created. Though the prediction by HR Analytics is a challenging job but there are many methodologies which can change the look of the organization and HR team can measure and predict the gap for attrition. This research paper explains the analytical process for reducing attrition and importance of utilization of HR Analytics. Key Words– HR Analytics, Employee Attrition, Retention, Value-Culture-Job SatisfactionReputation, Recruitment, Job Structure.