In article an attempt of identification of the directions of improvement of the civil legislation on the limited real rights in the sphere of land use is made. Granting by the law of possibility of establishment of the right of building of the land plot without instruction that for transfer of such right to other person the owner himself has to have the allowed use of the land plot belonging to it under building, i.e. have such rights is represented to the extremely wrong. Building has to be allowed for the land plot concerning which the right of building is established. Possible restrictions with the federal law of the rights of possession, use and the order with property, freedoms of business activity and freedom of contracts have to meet the requirements of justice, to be adequate, proportional, proportional, to have the general and abstract character, not to have retroactive force and not to affect a being of the granted constitutional rights, i.e. not to limit limits and application of the relevant constitutional standards; possibility of restrictions and their character have to be caused by need of protection constitutionally of significant values.


In recent years, observers of American medical practice have noted a convergence of beliefs in many areas between osteopathic and allopathic schools of thought. This paper proposes an historical explanation for this convergence by examining the lives and teachings of the two physicians who had the greatest influence on their respective schools at the turn of the century. An extensive review is made of the biographical similarities and parallel therapeutic approaches between Sir William Osler and Andrew Taylor Still. The relevance of Hippocratic writings to their beliefs is then explored. The influence of Hippocrates on Osler is well-known, but this paper documents that the similarities between many of Still's concepts, including manipulation, and Hippocratic passages are much more extensive than previously described. It is theorized that AT Still may have been influenced by Hippocratic work during his development of osteopathic medicine. The existence of these extensive similarities, therefore, arguably provides evidence for a common origin of thought in many areas, and correspondingly for a continued, if belated, return to the Hippocratic tradition by both American schools of medicine.


Mobile agents are programs capable of migrating from one host machine to another. We propose that mobile agents purchase resource access rights from host machines thereby establishing a market for computational resources and giving agents a metric to evenly distribute themselves throughout the network. Market participation requires quantitative information about resource consumption to de ne demand and calculate utility. We create a formal utility model to derive user-demand functions, allowing agents to e ciently plan expenditure and deal with price uctuations. By quantifying demand and utility, resource owners can precisely set a value for a good. We simulate our model in a mobile agent scheduling environment and show how mobile agents may use server prices to distribute themselves evenly throughout a network.


OBJECTIVES
Most previous studies of the association between psychosocial stress and musculoskeletal illness among computer users have been cross-sectional and have yielded inconsistent results. The association between a measure of psychosocial stress, "job strain", and incident neck-shoulder and arm-hand musculoskeletal symptoms was investigated among recently hired computer users.

METHODS
The participants worked for one of several large employers and were followed prospectively for 6 months. The "job demands" and "decision latitude" subscales of the Job Content Questionnaire were used to estimate the job-strain quadrants and a ratio measure of job strain which was subsequently categorized. Incident musculoskeletal symptoms were obtained with weekly diaries. Proportional hazards models were used to estimate associations between job strain and incident musculoskeletal symptoms.

RESULTS
Those in the high-strain quadrant were at increased risk of neck-shoulder symptoms [hazard ratio (HR) 1.65, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.91-2.99] when compared with those in the low-strain quadrant. Those in the highest strain-ratio category were also at increased risk of neck-shoulder symptoms when compared with those in the lowest strain-ratio category (HR 1.52, 95% CI 0.88-2.62). Modification by previous years of computer use was observed, with an elevated risk observed for those in the highest job-strain ratio category who also had low previous computer use (HR 3.16, 95% CI 1.25-8.00). There did not appear to be an association between either measure of job strain and incident arm-hand symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS
In this cohort, workers who reported high job strain were more likely to develop neck-shoulder symptoms.


Abstract This article investigates how well South Africa's Child Support Grant (CSG) responds to the material and psychosocial needs of adolescents, and the resultant effects on schooling and risky behaviour. One driver of schooling decisions is shame related to poverty and the 'social cost' of school, where a premium must often be paid for fashionable clothes or accessories. The other driver relates to symbolic and consumptive capital gained through engaging in sexual exchange relationships. The anticipated impacts from the CSG are partial because of these non-material drivers of adolescent choices. Non-material transmission mechanisms must be better understood and addressed.


Many development challenges are complex, involving a lot of different agents and with unknown dimensions. Solutions to these challenges are often unknown, and contextually dependent. At the same time, there are political imperatives at play in many contexts which create pressure to 'find the solution now…and then scale it up.' Such pressure raises a question: how does a policy entrepreneur or reformer find a new solution and scale it up when dealing with complexity? This is the subject we address in the current paper, which is the fifth in a series on 'how to' do problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) (Andrews et al. 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). The paper focuses on building broad agency solutions in the process of identifying problems and finding and fitting contextually appropriate solutions. The broad agency is, in our opinion, a most effective mechanism to ensure scaling and dynamic sustainability in the change process. As with other working papers on this topic, the contents here do not offer all answers to those asking questions about how to do development effectively. It closes by reflecting on the importance of 'you' (the reader, and ostensibly part of a policy change or reform team somewhere) using this and the other ideas as heuristics to rethink and reorient how you work—but with your own signature on each idea.


Tuning forks mounted with sharp tips provide an alternate method to silicon microcantilevers for probing the tip-substrate interaction in scanning probe microscopy. The high quality factor and stable resonant frequency of the tuning fork allow accurate measurements of small shifts in the resonant frequency as the tip approaches the substrate. To permit an accurate measure of surface interaction forces, the electrical and piezomechanical properties of a tuning fork has been characterized using techniques derived from scanning probe microscopy. After proper calibration, representative interaction force data for a conventional Si tip and an HOPG substrate are obtained under ambient conditions.


The activity concentrations of some natural and artificial radionuclides have been measured in soil samples by gamma-ray spectroscopy using a high purity germanium detector. From the obtained gamma-ray spectra, the activity concentrations of 238U and 232Th natural decay series and the long-lived naturally occurring radionuclide 40K have been determined, in addition to the fission product 137Cs. A wide range of different gamma-ray lines ranging from -100 keV up to 2.6 MeV, associated with the decay products of238U and232Th series have been analyzed independently to obtain more statistically significant overall results. The data have been analyzed, when secular equilibrium of the radionuclides is achieved within the samples. The weighted activity concentrations of 238U and232Th series vary from 4.4 to 64.4 and 0.8 to 7.6 Bq/kg, respectively. The activity concentrations of 40K and 137Cs have been found in the range of13.6 to 179.5 and 0.3 to 3.7 Bq/kg, respectively. Based on the measured activity concentrations, dose rate, radium equivalent, radiation hazard index and annual effective dose rates have been estimated. The values obtained are within the recommended safety limits.


Medication nonadherence is widely recognized as a common and costly problem.1 Approximately 30% to 50% of US adults are not adherent to long-term medications leading to an estimated $100 billion in preventable costs annually.1 The barriers to medication adherence are similar to other complex health behaviors, such as weight loss, which have multiple contributing factors. Despite the widespread prevalence and cost of medication nonadherence, it is undetected and undertreated in a significant proportion of adults across care settings. According to the World Health Organization, �increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments.� How can adherence be improved? We propose that the first step is to view medication nonadherence as a diagnosable and treatable medical condition.


The manual for assessing safety hardware (MASH) defines crash tests to assess the impact performance of highway safety features in frontal and oblique impact events. Within MASH, the risk of injury to the occupant is assessed based on a "flail-space" model that estimates the average deceleration that an unrestrained occupant would experience when contacting the vehicle interior in a MASH crash test and uses the parameter as a surrogate for injury risk. MASH occupant risk criteria, however, are considered conservative in their nature, due to the fact that they are based on unrestrained occupant accelerations. Therefore, there is potential for increasing the maximum limits dictated in MASH for occupant risk evaluation. A frontal full-scale vehicle impact was performed with inclusion of an instrumented anthropomorphic test device (ATD). The scope of this study was to investigate the performance of the flail space model (FSM) in a full-scale crash test compared to the instrumented ATD recorded forces which can more accurately predict the occupant response during a collision event. Additionally, a finite element (FE) model was developed and calibrated against the full-scale crash test. The calibrated model can be used to perform parametric simulations with different testing conditions. Results obtained through this research will be considered for better correlation between vehicle accelerations and occupant injury. This becomes extremely important for designing and evaluating barrier systems that must fit within geometrical site constraints, which do not provide adequate length to redirect test vehicles according to MASH conservative evaluation criteria.


Objective To trial malnutrition screening in older adults presenting to an emergency department (ED) and compare two service delivery models of nutritional support on nutritional status, quality of life, falls and unplanned hospital admissions. Design Participants (>60 years) presenting to ED screened at malnutrition risk were randomly allocated to either the control group (receiving regular treatment from community hospital interface programme nursing staff) or intervention group (receiving dietetic assessment, nutrition intervention and follow-up in addition to regular community hospital interface programme support). Outcome measures including body weight, quality of life, depression, falls history and days of hospital admissions were collected at baseline and 12 weeks. Results Of 703 patients screened, 84 (12%) were identified at malnutrition risk. 24 consented to the intervention study, with 88% (21/24) confirmed to be malnourished. Clinically important but not statistically significant differences were found over the 12-week trial; the intervention group (n=9) gained 0.8 kg (±3.7) while the control group (n=10) lost −1.1 kg (±4.6). The intervention group also had better quality of life, less depression and shorter hospital admissions. Conclusions Malnutrition screening appears feasible in ED. This pilot suggests a model of care providing nutrition support to older adults identified at nutritional risk may lead to improved patient outcomes but further research in a larger sample is required to confirm these findings.


Since 2007–09, the Federal Reserve has pursued a very aggressive monetary policy strategy. This strategy has been associated with healthy labor market conditions, moderate economic growth, and inflation—netting out the effects of a major oil price shock—that is close to the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC's) 2 percent target. Thus, with the economy returning to normal, it is natural for the FOMC to begin the process of exiting its highly accommodative policy. The FOMC has laid out several well-defined steps for this process. This strategy may be called central bank orthodoxy, since it is a natural extension of the classical view. However, three challenges to this orthodoxy have developed. Although each challenge is interesting and potentially helpful, the orthodox view provides a better basis for devising near- and medium-term monetary policy decisions.


The brilliantly expressive clay models created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) as "sketches" for his works in marble offer extraordinary insights into his creative imagination. Although long admired, the terracotta models have never been the subject of detailed examination. This publication presents a wealth of new discoveries (including evidence of the artist's fingerprints imprinted on the clay), resolving lingering issues of attribution while giving readers a vivid sense of how the artist and his assistants fulfilled a steady stream of monumental commissions. Essays describe Bernini's education as a modeler; his approach to preparatory drawings; his use of assistants; and the response to his models by 17th-century collectors. Extensive research by conservators and art historians explores the different types of models created in Bernini's workshop. Richly illustrated, Bernini transforms our understanding of the sculptor and his distinctive and fascinating working methods.


The establishment of academic Jewish Studies positions and programs at a significant number of public and private North American institutions of higher education during the final third of the twentieth century is an interesting and complex phenomenon. In these remarks, the author provides a brief historical overview of academic Jewish Studies in North America and reflects on the present state of Jewish Studies programs in secular higher education settings and their ongoing challenges and future prospects. Her conclusions are neither comprehensive nor data-driven nor do they focus on the vibrant and excellent scholarship that characterizes Jewish Studies in 2013. Rather, the paper is based on the research of other scholars and the author's experiences as a professor and administrator in Jewish Studies programs and departments at three public universities and one private university over the past four decades and as President of the Association for Jewish Studies between 2004 and 2006. The author also draws on her larger administrative perspective as an academic dean, since 2009, for seventeen Humanities departments and programs at the University of Oregon. The essay focuses on undergraduate Jewish Studies; the topics discussed are: Jewish Studies in North America: An Overview; Women and Academic Jewish Studies; Jewish Studies Instruction; Connections with Jewish Students and Jewish Organizations; Links with Israel; Other International Relationships; Donors and Endowments; Present Realities and Future Challenges.


In this research, thermal comfort and moisture management characteristics of knitted casein fabric have been evaluated and compared with cotton fabric for the application of undergarment. The fabric is analyzed for wicking, air permeability, thermal conductivity and water vapour permeability using physical test methods. The moisture management tester (MMT) was used to evaluate the parameters like wetting time, spreading rate, absorption speed, wetting radius, one way transport capacity and overall moisture management capacity (OMMC). It is observed that overall performance of casein fabrics is slightly better than that of cotton fabric. The thermal conductivity, air permeability and wicking values of the casein fabric are prominent as compared to the cotton fabric having same structural parameters, whereas the water vapour permeability values remain roughly same in both the fabrics. The MMT test results reveal that the casein fabric has an absorption rate of 66.2707 % on top side of the fabric and 70.6461 % on bottom side. For cotton fabric, the absorption rate is 50.046 % on the top and 43.6618 % at the bottom. The spreading rate of casein is found 5.0169 mm on the top and 5.0335 mm at the bottom surface, and for cotton it is 3.7921 mm on the top and 4.3019 mm at the bottom. The overall OMMC index of casein fabric is noted as 0.75, and for cotton it is found 0.7. The cotton fabric is found to be better than the casein fabric, based on the other parameters like maximum wetting radius and one way transport capacity values.


Extracted from text ... REGISTRAR PRIZE
33
Physics of invasive blood pressure monitoring
sine wave and is equal to the pulse rate, thus the first harmonic. The
second harmonic is a sinusoidal waveform with a frequency twice
that of the fundamental harmonic. The waves are in phase, moving
in the same direction and passing through zero amplitude together.5
The ideal measurement system should deal with all the harmonics
of the input waveform in the same way. The amplitudes of the
output harmonics will bear a constant ratio to the corresponding
amplitudes of the input harmonics and there will be no phase difference
between ..


What is a metaphor for? We might first assume that these unassuming little devices are fixers against incomprehension. They are often translative, mnemonics tricks, linguistically metamorphosing the unknown of a murky, muddy idea into to the crystalline clarity of the familiar. Language itself functions analogously — "that is a chair" solidifies reference, subtended by tradition, culture and practice, from a concrete object to a gaseous concept, and sublimating back again. "No ideas but in things," wrote W.C. Williams. (Duffey, Litz, & MacGowan, 1987) Karan Barad inverts this relation with her own rejoinder: "Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter." (Micciche, 2014) It would seem the potential or power of these relational comparisons would hardly need further authorisation, but these kinds of reminders seem to remain necessary… and we only have to look to the great edifices (literally, and metaphorically) of communications and media that have forever surrounded us. The electrical signalling that extends, contains and tracks a large proportion of people and things on earth, operates principally by metaphoric reference, by analogy. From the analog to the digital, we rely on the potential for things to stand in for one another. I am, here and always, writing reference, aligning indexes, programming pointers, coding for all kinds of stuff. And yet, the clarity that metaphor and analogy give us, presupposes a limit. Paul DeMarinis describes these same metaphoric layerings as decoys, or entrapments: "what our mind does—when it tries to converge on the same mental state from seeing a picture of a duck, the written word duck, looking at ducks flying overhead, and playing with a rubber ducky—somewhat like what a duck does when it sees a decoy bobbing on the pond?" (Pritikin, n.d.)  Things remain, no matter how many ideas we put inside them. If you told me that the earth's circumference was 40,075 km, it would serve comprehension in no way better to tell me that 220 million pencils could wrap around it. Same goes for our understandings of the earth itself — whether a loosely spherical rock, a spaceship, an organism, or a mother in our minds, the formidable globe beneath our feet remains local and directly accessible to all. Jens Lee Jorgensen slowly preparing a reenactment of the original Pitch Drop experiment, 15 November, 2013 It is at the limit of the metaphors between media and the geological that an invitation was extended to a group of people enjoin an encounter in Copenhagen, Denmark in the Autumn of 2013. In attendance: Martin Howse, Rosemary Lee, Will Schrimshaw, Anders Kolle, and the custodians of a loose collective basement project space Sankt Hans Gade 26 known as "Science Friction" (Jens Jorgensen, Jacob Remin, Jakob Bak, David Gauthier, Christian Villum, Carl Emil Carlsen and myself). Inaugurated by a salts-laden degustation for involved artists and scholars, the autumn at Science Friction was a call to think about temporalities: of media and their materiality, of rocks and their minerality. A pre-programme discussion for the Pitch Drop exhibition between Anders Kolle and Jamie Allen, slowed down until unintelligible. Inspired and presupposed by Professor Thomas Parnell's 1927 "Pitch Drop" experiment [1] - showing off how certain substances which look quite solid are in fact not what they appear to be. "The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It's quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid." ( http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment ) Pitch rock is placed into a laboratory apparatus, has been continuously "dripping" out of a funnel for the past 80-odd years. What registers on one level as the Guinness World Records' longest continuously running laboratory experiment, calls up the geophysics of media, their material substrates and blinkered disposition toward us as human beings. Materials and the technologies that they compose show us new ways to know change, to know time. Digital technologies bring with them the assumption of speed, but is there a way to imagine slow electronics, slow material composites, a chopped-and-screwed version of progress that revisits the leisurely, plodding, derisive and contemplative modes of opposing the ever-new (ever-now?) of the technological? "Slow" here takes on many forms: the obtuse and incomprehensible, the insensitive and thick, the clunky, and the ignored. The reluctance of materials that underlie mediated existence, and their earthly roots, are unfolded and laid bare. Professor John Mainstone taken with the Pitch Drop experiment in 1990 at The University of Queensland, Australia. ( Image credit ) If this particular set of geological moments and movements served as inspiration and metaphor, they were also to be taken quite literally, and simply: If you slow down sound you notice immediately the mechanism of the speaker, if you reduce the speed of a film you see the plasticky petroleum of the images which compose it. Treated in a certain way, media reasserts its matter. Matter becomes media, in the phantasm sense, when it is sped up, oscillated or energized with particular frequencies. Considered a certain way, and as a failing of our perceptual bandwidth, seemingly static matter is likewise entirely mediatic, as in the Parnell experiment (Images of Professor John Maidstone, Professor Parnell's successor, watching the pitch drop are journalistically contrived and yet revealing — his is not the so-called objective gaze of science, but the fixed stare of someone watching television.). And what could a petroleum asphalt medium with a viscosity approximately 230 billion times that of water possibly communicate to us? Is it a signal from the earth? The meaning of any signal is to be found in its response, and responses to a Copenhagen invitation celebrated as well the strangely perhaps-coincident etymology of analysis and analogy (metaphysics and metaphor). Actions and expressions in the underground exhibition in the Autumn of 2014 seemed to align with Joseph Kosuth's idea of "art [as] an analytic proposition." (Kosuth, 1966) . Rosemary Lee's meditations on the continuum of durete/duree invokes Deleuze's proposition that "a body has a degree of hardness as well as a degree of fluidity."  She charts the analytical and analogous spectra available to material media precisely like this: Rosemary Lee's "Molten Media" poster, drawing comparison between frequency, density, and deep-time events. Martin Howse's walkshop connected to an earth computer, looking at Ballard's megaliths through the earth-smeared lens of Robert Smithson, and his "tombic communication", and of "the medium is the mummy." Anders Kolle helped out with the bachelardian notion of matter as the unconscious of form and as a kind of rough sketch for unbounded dreams. Will Schrimshaw's Ur-writings sound works produced a three hour tracing of a fossil surface, a cultural technique of media as a force of nature. To metaphorise the geological is to both empower us to think it anew, but also an opportunity to rekindle an old romance with the dirty soils, muddy waters, and conjoined medias of earthly substrates. From these we compose, from these are given the advantageous reading materials of art and thinking that clings tightly to its things. A photograph of an intervention from Martin Howse's walkshop, Tombic Communication ( 1010.co.uk/tombic.pdf ), 21 November, 2013. BILIOGRAPHY Duffey, B., Litz, A. W., & MacGowan, C. (1987). The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: Volume I, 1909-1939. American Literature , 59 (3), 459. doi:10.2307/2927140 Kosuth, J. (1966). Art After Philosophy (1969). Joseph Kosuth Art After Philosophy and After. Colkcted Wntings , 1990 , 13–32. Micciche, L. R. (2014). Writing Material. College English . Pritikin, R. (n.d.). Interview with Paul DeMarinis | Art Practical. Available here: artpractical.com/feature/interview_with_paul_demarinis/ REFERENCES [1]  Edgeworth, R., B. J. Dalton, and U. T. Parnell. "The pitch drop experiment." European Journal of Physics 5.4 (1984): 198.


The advantage of adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) for treating Stage III colon cancer patients is well established and widely accepted. However, many patients with Stage III colon cancer do not receive ACT. Moreover, there are controversies around the effectiveness of ACT for Stage II patients. We investigated the administration of ACT and its association with overall survival in resected Stage II (overall and stratified by low‐/high‐risk) and Stage III colon cancer patients in three European countries including The Netherlands (2009–2014), Belgium (2009–2013) and Sweden (2009–2014). Hazard ratios (HR) for death were obtained by Cox regression models adjusted for potential confounders. A total of 60244 resected colon cancer patients with pathological Stages II and III were analyzed. A small proportion (range 9–24%) of Stage II and over half (range 55–68%) of Stage III patients received ACT. Administration of ACT in Stages II and III tumors decreased with higher age of patients. Administration of ACT was significantly associated with higher overall survival in high‐risk Stage II patients (in The Netherlands (HR; 95%CI = 0.82 (0.67–0.99), Belgium (0.73; 0.59–0.90) and Sweden (0.58; 0.44–0.75)), and in Stage III patients (in The Netherlands (0.47; 0.43–0.50), Belgium (0.46; 0.41–0.50) and Sweden (0.48; 0.43–0.54)). In Stage III, results were consistent across subgroups including elderly patients. Our results show an association of ACT with higher survival among Stage III and high‐risk Stage II colon cancer patients. Further investigations are needed on the selection criteria of Stages II and III colon cancer patients for ACT.


Storing a new pattern in a palimpsest memory system comes at the cost of interfering with the memory traces of previously stored items. Knowing the age of a pattern thus becomes critical for recalling it faithfully. This implies that there should be a tight coupling between estimates of age, as a form of familiarity, and the neural dynamics of recollection, something which current theories omit. Using a normative model of autoassociative memory, we show that a dual memory system, consisting of two interacting modules for familiarity and recollection, has best performance for both recollection and recognition. This finding provides a new window onto actively contentious psychological and neural aspects of recognition memory.


Objectives Key strategies to control chlamydia include testing, treatment, partner management and re-testing. We developed a diagnosis and care cascade for chlamydia to highlight gaps in control strategies nationally and to inform efforts to optimise control programmes. Methods The Australian Chlamydia Cascade was organised into four steps: (1) annual number of new chlamydia infections (including re-infections); (2) annual number of chlamydia diagnoses; (3) annual number of diagnoses treated; (4) annual number of diagnoses followed by a re-test for chlamydia within 42–180 days of diagnosis. For 2016, we estimated the number of infections among young men and women aged 15–29 years in each of these steps using a combination of mathematical modelling, national notification data, sentinel surveillance data and previous research studies. Results Among young people in Australia, there were an estimated 248 580 (range, 240 690–256 470) new chlamydia infections in 2016 (96 470 in women; 152 100 in men) of which 70 164 were diagnosed (28.2% overall: women 43.4%, men 18.6%). Of the chlamydia infections diagnosed, 65 490 (range, 59 640–70 160) were treated (93.3% across all populations), but only 11 330 (range, 7660–16 285) diagnoses were followed by a re-test within 42–180 days (17.3% overall: women 20.6%, men 12.5%) of diagnosis. Conclusions The greatest gaps in the Australian Chlamydia Cascade for young people were in the diagnosis and re-testing steps, with 72% of infections undiagnosed and 83% of those diagnosed not re-tested: both were especially low among men. Treatment rates were also lower than recommended by guidelines. Our cascade highlights the need for enhanced strategies to improve treatment and re-testing coverage such as short message service reminders, point-of-care and postal test kits.


Transport of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) from the troposphere to the stratosphere contributes sulfur to the stratospheric aerosol layer, which reflects incoming short‐wave solar radiation, cooling the climate system. Previous analyses of OCS observations have shown no significant trend, suggesting that OCS is unlikely to be a major contributor to the reported increases in stratospheric aerosol loading and indicating a balanced OCS budget. Here we present analyses of ground‐based Fourier transform spectrometer measurements of OCS at three Southern Hemisphere sites spanning 34.45°S to 77.80°S. At all three sites statistically significant positive trends are seen from 2001 to 2014 with an observed overall trend in total column OCS at Wollongong of 0.73 ± 0.03%/yr, at Lauder of 0.43 ± 0.02%/yr, and at Arrival Heights of 0.45 ± 0.05%/yr. These observed trends in OCS imply that the OCS budget is not balanced and could contribute to constraints on current estimates of sources and sinks.


How food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) and their two dominant prey orders (Diptera and Lepidoptera). The resultant web shows a dense link structure and no compartmentalization or modularity across the three predator guilds. Thus, both individual predators and predator guilds tap heavily into the prey community of each other, offering versatile scope for indirect interactions across different parts of the web. The current description of a first but single arctic web may serve as a benchmark toward which to gauge future webs resolved by similar techniques. Targeting an unusual breadth of predator guilds, and relying on techniques with a high resolution, it suggests that species in this web are closely connected. Thus, our findings call for similar explorations of link structure across multiple guilds in both arctic and other webs. From an applied perspective, our description of an arctic web suggests new avenues for understanding how arctic food webs are built and function and of how they respond to current climate change. It suggests that to comprehend the community-level consequences of rapid arctic warming, we should turn from analyses of populations, population pairs, and isolated predator–prey interactions to considering the full set of interacting species.


In this thesis a system for analyzing moving objects behavior for surveillance applications is proposed: videos are processed in order to extract and analyze moving objects trajectories for identifying abnormal trajectories, associated to abnormal behaviors. Whereas the information extracted from the videos are not sufficient or not sufficiently reliable, the proposed system is enriched by a module in charge of recognizing audio events of interest such as shoots, screams or broken glasses. Finally, all the extracted information are suitably stored in order to allow an efficient retrieval from the human operator. Five different standard datasets have been used for testing the different modules proposed in this thesis; the obtained results, both in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, confirm the effectiveness and the real applicability of the proposed approach.


The number of Hispanic workers in the U.S. construction industry has been steadily increasing, and language and cultural barriers have sometimes arisen on the jobsite. Due in part to these barriers, the number of fatalities among Hispanics at construction sites in 2001 jumped 24%, while construction fatalities overall dropped 3%. This study, which constitutes Phase III of the Hispanic Workforce Research Project, addresses these language and cultural barriers by investigating the most effective way to deliver training material developed in Phases I and II to Hispanic workers, American supervisors, and department of transportation (DOT) inspectors. The research methodology consisted of assessing the needs and interests of potential and current course participants in terms of exploring innovative ways to deliver the training. The training courses were then adapted and delivered to fit the specific needs of each audience. During Phase III of this project, the research team delivered the courses described in the Phase I and II reports to eight highway construction companies and two DOT groups. The courses developed in Phases I and II consist of four construction-focused language training courses that can be part of an effective training program to facilitate integration among U.S. and Hispanic workers, increase productivity and motivation at the jobsite, and decrease the existing high mortality rate for Hispanic workers. Moreover, the research team developed a course for the construction season called Toolbox Integration Course for Hispanic workers and American supervisors (TICHA), which consists of nine 45-minute modules delivered to one construction company over 11 weeks in the summer of 2005.


Demand side management (DSM) has been discussed and investigated widely as a strategy to also influence residential energy consumption. Flexible energy tariffs are often proposed as a possible tool of DSM. However, real-life experience with this tool is rare. It was therefore the objective of this study to investigate under more realistic conditions how consumers are able and willing to adjust their residential energy consumption under the conditions of flexible energy tariffs with and without the support of intelligent smart appliances. Sixty-seven households in Germany within an experimental design with fictive tariff model (August 11 to July 12) driven by RWE Effizienz GmbH, as the energy utility, and Miele & Cie.KG, as the appliance manufacturer, were equipped with intelligent smart meters and 41 of them also with smart appliances (washing-machine and tumble-dryer). As a first part of the experiment, the energy tariff changed per hour and day by day, depending on the forecast of the availability of renewable energy in Germany between 10 €-Cent and 40 €-Cent per kWh. Consumers could respond to this change by adjusting the operation of their energyconsuming appliances either by themselves or—with the smart appliances—by a programmed start at low tariffs. The behaviour of the 41 consumers with smart appliances and their motivation are intensively investigated and analysed during this running two year project including several questionnaires. The consumers had to fill out daily a diary about the usage of their washing-machine, tumble-dryer, dishwasher and ironing devices. These data were matched with the actual tariff. This did allow identifying if and to which extend the consumers adjust their household activities depending on availability of solar and wind energy. These data were also used to calculate the cost savings by using the flexible tariff. In comparison to the costs of the fixed tariff of 25 €-Cent per kWh savings of 25% were realised on average. The results of a first phase already show that flexible tariffs are able to influence the operation of household appliances towards a flexible demand.


Despite market-based incentives and mandated production, the U.S. cellulosic biofuel industry has been slow to develop. This dissertation explores the economic factors that have limited industry development along with important economic tradeoffs that will be encountered with commercial-scale production. The first essay provides an overview of the policies, potential, and challenges of the biofuel industry, with a focus on cellulosic biofuel. The second essay considers the economics of cellulosic biofuel production. Breakeven models of the local feedstock supply system and biofuel refining process are constructed to develop the Biofuel Breakeven (BioBreak) program, a stochastic, Excel-based program that evaluates the feasibility of local biofuel and biomass markets under various policy and market scenarios. An application of the BioBreak program is presented using expected market conditions for 14 local cellulosic biofuel markets that vary by feedstock and location. The economic costs of biofuel production identified from the BioBreak application are higher than frequently anticipated and raise questions about the potential of cellulosic ethanol as a sustainable and economical substitute for conventional fuels. Program results also are extended using life-cycle analysis to evaluate the cost of reducing GHG emissions by substituting cellulosic ethanol for conventional fuel. The third essay takes a closer look at the economic trade-offs within the biorefinery industry and feedstock production processes. A long-run biomass production through bioenergy conversion cost model is developed that incorporates heterogeneity of biomass suppliers within and between local markets. The model builds on previous literature by treating biomass as a non-commoditized feedstock and relaxes the common assumption of fixed biomass density and price within local markets. An empirical application is provided for switchgrass-based ethanol production within U.S. crop reporting districts (CRDs). Incorporating location-specific biomass supply conditions creates unique and important economic tradeoffs within each CRD that have important impacts on the potential supply and distribution of U.S. cellulosic biofuel production.


Attempts to quantify the effects of ocean acidification and warming (OAW) on scleractinian corals provide a growing body of response measurements. However, placing empirical results into an ecological context is challenging, owing to variations that reflect both natural heterogeneity and scientific bias. This study addresses the heterogeneity of climate change induced changes in coral recruitment and calcification. To discern scientific bias and identify drivers of the remaining heterogeneity, 100 publications were analyzed using a combination of weighted mixed effects meta-regression and factorial effect size meta-analysis. A linear model was applied to quantify the variation caused by differing stress levels across studies. The least squares predictions were then used to standardize individual study outcomes and effect size meta-analysis was performed on original and standardized outcomes separately. On average, increased temperature significantly reduces larval survival, while ocean acidification impedes settlement and calcification. Coral resistance to OAW is likely governed by biological traits (genera and life cycle stage), environmental factors (abiotic variability) and experimental design (feeding regime, stressor magnitude, and exposure duration). Linear models suggest that calcification rates are driven by carbonate and bicarbonate concentrations, which interact additively with warming. Standardizing outcomes to linear model predictions proved useful in discerning strong sources of scientific bias. The approach used in this study can improve modelling projections and inform policy and management on changes in coral community structure associated with the expected future intensification of OAW. Additional


"Peder Victorious", the sequel to Rolvaag's massive "Giants in the Earth", continues the saga of the Norwegian settlers in the Dakotas. Here again, years later, are all the sturdy pioneers of the earlier novel, Rolvaag's "Vikings of The Prairie"- Per Hansa's wife, Beret and their children, Syvert Tonseten and Kjersti, and Sorine. The great struggle against the land itself has been won. Now there is to be a second struggle, a struggle to adapt, to become Americans. The development of the Spring Creek settlement in these years is manifested in the rebellious growing up of Peder Victorious. "Peder" is a beautiful and moving novel of youth and youth's self-discovery. It is the story, too, of Beret's pain and dismay at the Americanization of her children, what Rolvaag described as the true tragedy of the immigrants, who made their children part of a world to which they themselves could never belong. Out of the inevitable conflict between the first-generation American and his still Norwegian mother, Rolvaag built a powerful novel of personal growth, guilt, and victory.


Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs to incorporate the heterogeneity in factors affecting the revenue and costs of fuel treatments, and then prioritise treatments based on a cost-effectiveness ratio to maximise the averted loss of ecosystem services from fire. We compare treatment scenarios that employ cost-effectiveness with those that do not, and use common tools and models in a case study of the Sisters Ranger District on the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon, USA. Using cost-effectiveness not only increases the expected averted losses from fuel treatments, but it also allows a larger area to be treated for the same cost, simply by incorporating costs and cost-effectiveness into the prioritisation routine. These results have considerable implications for policymakers and land managers trying to minimise risk. Incorporating costs into the spatial planning of treatments could allow more effective outcomes without increasing fuel treatment budgets.


In this article, we examine the role of visuospatial cognition in chemistry learning. We review three related kinds of literature: correlational studies of spatial abilities and chemistry learning, students' conceptual errors and difficulties understanding visual representations, and visualization tools that have been designed to help overcome these limitations. On the basis of our review, we conclude that visuospatial abilities and more general reasoning skills are relevant to chemistry learning, some of students' conceptual errors in chemistry are due to difficulties in operating on the internal and external visuospatial representations, and some visualization tools have been effective in helping students overcome the kinds of conceptual errors that may arise through difficulties in using visuospatial representations. To help students understand chemistry concepts and develop representational skills through supporting their visuospatial thinking, we suggest five principles for designing chemistry visualization tools: (1) providing multiple representations and descriptions, (2) making linked referential connections visible, (3) presenting the dynamic and interactive nature of chemistry, (4) promoting the transformation between 2D and 3D, and (5) reducing cognitive load by making information explicit and integrating information for students. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed88:465–492, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/.sce10126


Objective: To investigate the fluctuations in intraocular pressure during the day and to see if these are associated with changes in corneal shape and in the patterns of ocular aberrations. Methods: Intraocular pressure, corneal curvature, refractive error, spherical equivalent and aberrations (defocus (sphere); cylinder (astigmatism); coma, trefoil and third order spherical aberration) were measured in 17 healthy subjects three times during the day. The first measurement was made between 9:00 and 9:30, the second at midday (12:30–13:00) and the third in the afternoon (17:00–17:30). Aberrations, corneal shape, refractive error and pupil size (for which correction was made) were measured with an Irx3 Dynamic Wavefront Aberrometer. Intraocular pressures were measured using a non-contact tonometer (Cambridge Instruments Inc.) and calibrated with the Goldmann applanation tonometer. Results: Variations in intraocular pressures were unrelated to age or refractive error. Statistically significant differences in intraocular pressure between morning and midday as well as between midday and afternoon were found. Intraocular pressure variations between midday and afternoon were associated with changes in spherical equivalent, corneal radius of curvature and aberrations (defocus, cylinder, coma, trefoil and spherical aberration) over the same time period. Aberration patterns varied between individuals, and no association was found between two eyes of the same subject. Conclusions: Changes in intraocular pressure have no noticeable effect on image quality. This could be because the eye has a compensating mechanism to correct for any effect of ocular dynamics on corneal shape and refractive status. Such a mechanism may also affect the pattern of aberrations or it may be that aberrations alter in a way that offsets any potentially detrimental effects of intraocular pressure change on the retinal image. Variations in patterns of aberrations and how they may be related to ocular dynamics need to be investigated further before attempts at correction are made.


Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) centrality was one of the biggest motivations for ASEAN's proposal of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2011. In order to gain both politically and economically, ASEAN should play proactive roles in the RCEP negotiation as the driver of substance. ASEAN has already started exercising its influence over the substances of ASEAN + 1 free trade agreements (FTAs). In order to further strengthen its leadership in the RCEP, ASEAN should utilise the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) as the model for RCEP. AEC has achieved a much deeper level of integration than the existing ASEAN + 1 FTAs by setting high ambitions with processes to induce reform initiatives of member states. By using familiar AEC measures, ASEAN can create a single and common position despite the large development gaps among its member states. If modelled after AEC, the RCEP will enforce ASEAN's reform efforts.


Health psychology theories remain strongly individualistic, despite a stated commitment to the biopsychosocial paradigm. We examine some general impediments to, and strategies for, establishing health- psychology theories which have a true social dimension. These impediments stem from two sources: a style of theorizing prevalent in health psychology which we label flowcharting; and the influence of root metaphors and concepts from adjacent health sciences. Two broad strategies for combining the psychological and social in health-psychology theories are identified: integrative and transcendent. In the integrative strategy psychological constructs, such as personality and emotions, are reconstructed in a more psychosocial form. The transcendent approach involves the creation of constructs which transcend the psychosocial distinction.


Marine research tourism is defined as marine ecotourism where marine research is an important part of the tourism attraction (adapted from Benson, 2005). Marine research tourism is also a form of volunteer tourism (Benson, 2005).
This paper reports on results from research that aimed to further understand the views of key stakeholders about potential opportunities for both marine research key stakeholders and tourists in Australia. (2009).

For this paper, key Australian marine research tourism (marine research tourism) stakeholders include marine researchers, marine managers, marine conservation groups, marine education groups, and marine tour operators from Australia and elsewhere (adapted from Coghlan, 2007, Cuthill, 2000, Musso and Inglis, 1998). Furthermore, a marine research tourism product must last for one or more days, be advertised publicly, take paying tourists or paying volunteers, and operate on a commercial basis (adapted from Ellis, 2003a).

An online survey and subsequent analysis of 49 key stakeholder views was undertaken. Stakeholders were asked their views about who are potential marine research tourists, what are likely activities and programs for marine research tourists, issues that affect the involvement of volunteers in marine research tourism, and stakeholder opportunities to provide services to marine research tourists.

Survey results indicate that survey respondents consider potential marine research tourists to include marine wildlife tourists, repeat marine research tourists, ecotourists, scientists, volunteers, adventure tourists and SCUBA divers. Additionally, potential marine research tourists in Australia are more likely to be from countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Germany and New Zealand. Such information provided a foundation for the assessment of the preferences of potential marine research tourists for different marine research tourism products as undertaken by Wood and Zeppel (2008).

With some exceptions, research outcomes suggests that opportunities for marine research tourism in Australia should focus mainly on 'popular' marine research topics whales, dolphin, turtle, seals, sharks, dugongs, penguin, coral reef, sea dragon, coral reef spawning and ship wreck research programs. The research programs that survey respondents appear to have some ambivalence (i.e. maybe or no) about are ship wreck, coral spawning and sea dragon research. Broader suggestions also included research related to climate change, and coastal clean ups. A survey respondent suggested that marine research program that provides a simple mechanism for tourists to get involved and actually participate in the research process is a potential marine research program for marine research tourism.

Simple marine research activities such as undertaking bleach watch, coral watch, fish counts, taking notes, plankton sampling, using cameras and video, temperature measurements, habitat restoration, and data input into a computer are also highlighted as suitable for inexperienced marine research tourists. Such results indicate that opportunities to involve inexperienced volunteer minded tourists in active volunteer tourism roles on marine research tourism ventures that need advanced marine research skills are limited. However, it is suggested that less active but still inexperienced tourists can be catered by quality interpretation, close observation of marine research, and closer interaction with marine researchers.

Survey respondents considered that there are many existing marine tourism ventures such as SCUBA diving, snorkelling, live aboards, aquariums, day cruises, fishing boats, intertidal walks, and coastal based research tours, that can be adapted to marine research tourism. Furthermore, much of the Australian coastline and marine areas have been identified as likely marine research tourism destinations. The main reasons for excluding parts of the Australian marine environment were considered to be relative closeness to population centres and tourism infrastructure, and have relatively comfortable coastal and ocean environments.

Special emphasis is placed on World Heritage and marine parks as suitable marine research tourism attractions. Much interest was placed on the increased role of Indigenous Australians in marine research tourism in Australia. In summary, this information indicates the potential range of marine research tourism attraction across Australia. However, to further ascertain the full potential of marine research tourism in Australia, there needs to be a study of the preferences of the potential marine research tourism market for different types of marine research tourism ventures as undertaken by Wood and Zeppel, (2008).

A likely hindrance to development of marine research tourism in Australia is acknowledged difficulty for marine researchers to supervise volunteer tourists. A marine research tourism guide role is suggested to interpret the marine research to tourists, and ensure that the needs of marine researchers, managers and tourists are met. While a majority of key stakeholders would likely consider this to be good idea, the research suggests that some marine researchers would be hesitant about this suggestion. Factors that would influence the supervision of volunteer tourists are said to include the role of the personalities of researchers and tourists, quality communication, research complexity, training protocols, and time available to the volunteer tourist. Many marine researchers may also be reticent to encourage the development of marine research programs that involve tour guides, operators and tourists.

Furthermore, many marine researchers and managers appear to have an ambivalent view towards the helpfulness of actively involving the tourist within the marine research activity. Most key stakeholders groups also appear to have warranted concerns about any training schemes for potential marine research tourists. Together these results indicate that that many marine researchers and managers are concerned about the involvement of tourism and tourists in marine research tourism. Such views and other stakeholder views are further assessed in Wood and Rumney, (2009).

Research outcomes can be used by entrepreneurial MRT stakeholders to identify and develop MRT. Results are also intended to be directly relevant to marine research tourism in Australia, marine research tourism stakeholders from other locations.


Many library digital text collections created from pre-digital era materials (books, journals, magazines, etc) and nearly all library digital historical newspaper collections use digital mages (TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, etc), OCR software (ABBYY FineReader, Nuance Omnipage), METS XML, ALTO XML, and various metadata standards (MODS, Dublin Core, PRISM, MIX, etc). Both METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) and ALTO (Analyzed Layout and Text Object) are XML standards developed by the international library community and administered (hosted) by the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ and http://www.loc.gov/standards/alto/ respectively.

The current editorial board has members from the National Library of Finland, the British Library, Singapore National Library Board, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Netherlands Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Library of Congress, the University of Kentucky, the University of California Riverside, and a software company, Content Conversion Specialists. All but two are IFLA members, and several serve on other standards boards in addition to the ALTO board. (You can see the list of current editorial board members at http://www.loc.gov/standards/alto/community/editorialboard.html.)

With members in cities that span 16 time zones, you can imagine collaboration, cooperation, and good communication are essential to achieving anything. Of course a willingness of the members in the outlying time zones to get up early or stay up late is indispensable too. Good telecommunications infrastructure is imperative, and, as we will see, free and easy (Skype) sometimes is not reliable.

This paper gives an account of the history of the ALTO XML standard, of the ALTO editorial board, and of the ways that the board organizes itself and conducts its business. The paper describes the collaborative process used by the board to receive, review, and adopt changes to the standard, and it gives especial attention to step-by-step process collaboratively developed to track and implement changes to ALTO. And last, but far from least, it informally examines members' motivations for participation in the board.


A new approach for parameterizing dissolved organic matter (DOM) ultraviolet‐visible absorption spectra is presented. Two distinct spectral slope regions (275‐295 nm and 350‐400 nm) within log‐transformed absorption spectra were used to compare DOM from contrasting water types, ranging from wetlands (Great Dismal Swamp and Suwannee River) to photobleached oceanic water (Atlantic Ocean). On the basis of DOM size‐fractionation studies (ultrafiltration and gel filtration chromatography), the slope of the 275‐295‐nm region and the ratio of these slopes (SR; 275‐295‐nm slope : 350‐400‐nm slope) were related to DOM molecular weight (MW) and to photochemically induced shifts in MW. Dark aerobic microbial alteration of chromophoric DOM (CDOM) resulted in spectral slope changes opposite of those caused by photochemistry. Along an axial transect in the Delaware Estuary, large variations in SR were measured, probably due to mixing, photodegradation, and microbial alteration of CDOM as terrestrially derived DOM transited through the estuary. Further, SR varied by over a factor of 13 between DOM‐rich wetland waters and Sargasso Sea surface waters. Currently, there is no consensus on a wavelength range for log‐transformed absorption spectra. We propose that the 275‐295‐nm slope be routinely reported in future DOM studies, as it can be measured with high precision, it facilitates comparison among dissimilar water types including CDOM‐rich wetland and CDOM‐poor marine waters, and it appears to be a good proxy for DOM MW.


A How-to Guide for Implementing Algorithms and ProtocolsAddressing real-world implementation issues, Understanding and Applying Cryptography and Data Security emphasizes cryptographic algorithm and protocol implementation in hardware, software, and embedded systems. Derived from the authors teaching notes and research publications, the text is designed for electrical engineering and computer science courses.Provides the Foundation for Constructing Cryptographic ProtocolsThe first several chapters present various types of symmetric-key cryptographic algorithms. These chapters examine basic substitution ciphers, cryptanalysis, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Subsequent chapters on public-key cryptographic algorithms cover the underlying mathematics behind the computation of inverses, the use of fast exponentiation techniques, tradeoffs between public- and symmetric-key algorithms, and the minimum key lengths necessary to maintain acceptable levels of security. The final chapters present the components needed for the creation of cryptographic protocols and investigate different security services and their impact on the construction of cryptographic protocols.Offers Implementation Comparisons By examining tradeoffs between code size, hardware logic resource requirements, memory usage, speed and throughput, power consumption, and more, this textbook provides students with a feel for what they may encounter in actual job situations.


Several aspects of the physiology of the fat mouse Steatomys pratensis natalensis were studied in the laboratory using standard techniques and custom-made data-logging equipment. The fat was studied both from a morphological and functional point of view. The measurement of metabolic rates showed that euthermic S.pratensis have very low basal metabolic rates of 36% of expected, with torpor saving up to 69% of expended energy. Body temperatures, oxygen consumption, and activity patterns monitored over 24 hour periods with a data-logging system showed that Sipratensis have very low body temperatures of 31.3 to 35.0°C which fluctuate on a circadian rhythm with activity and oxygen consumption, all being lower during the day and higher at night. Torpor started very early in the morning and lasted for 5.5 to 11.7 hours. Huddling with a mate could reduce energy expenditure by 18%. Torpid body temperatures lay just above ambient from 15 to 35°C, below which all animals tried to arouse. Forced arousal at 10 to 30°C was slow and depended on ambient temperature while no mouse could arouse at O°C. Thermal conductance was 97.4 % of expected but cooling rates of dead S.pratensis were slow due to the heavy fat layer. Non-shivering thermogensis (measured after noradrenaline injection) was normal at 369% of BMR but maximum metabolism was twice as much, indicating other means of thermogenesis used additively with NST. Dissection showed extremely heavy fat deposits in the normal mammalian positions and also three additional deposits. Histological studies revealed most deposits as white fat but there was brown fat in the interscapular region. Soxhlet analysis showed an extremely wide range of body fat content from normal mammalian levels to contents higher than in hibernating rodents. Deprivation of food and water, or food alone, was found to induce torpor and cause the mice to become non-reproductive. Deprivation of water but not food, and deprivation of a cage mate, triggered torpor in only 40 44% of the cases studied. The mice took 5 to 12 days to lose 30% of their mass, but theoretically could survive longer. Weekly measurements showed no annual mass fluctuations in the laboratory but the mice became reproductively active mid-summer to early winter while torpor was at a maximum around late winter. All animals showed torpor, young more than adults and females more than males. It is suggested that the low body temperature and metabolism of S.pratensis may have evolved to prevent overheating caused by their inability to lose heat through the heavy fat layer. The species could then disperse into areas where their low energetic demands would permit them to compete successfully with high metabolic rate rodents.


This article reviews the literature on public support for 'soft' versus 'hard' policy instruments for behaviour change, and the factors that drive such preferences. Soft policies typically include 'moral suasion' and educational campaigns, and more recently behavioural public policy approaches like nudges. Hard policy instruments, such as laws and taxes, restrict choices and alter financial incentives. In contrast to the public support evidenced for hard policy instruments during COVID-19, prior academic literature pointed to support for softer policy instruments. We investigate and synthesise the evidence on when people prefer one type of policy instrument over another. Drawing on multi-disciplinary evidence, we identify perceived effectiveness, trust, personal experience and self-interest as important determinants of policy instrument preferences, along with broader factors including the choice and country context. We further identify various gaps in our understanding that informs and organise a future research agenda around three themes. Specifically, we propose new directions for research on what drives public support for hard versus soft behavioural public policies, highlighting the value of investigating the role of individual versus contextual factors (especially the role of behavioural biases); how preferences evolve over time; and whether and how preferences spillovers across different policy domains.


Les Etats-Unis ont Bird et Peary. L'Angleterre posede Franklin et Shackleton. La Norvege chunk Amundsen et Nansen. Ici, au Canada, nous avons Bernier. (1) Joseph Elzear Bernier does not often rank in the annals of Arctic exploration in the company of Byrd. Shackleton, or Amundsen, but the opening lines of a French-Canadian novel for young people, Bernier: capitaine a 17 ans, made a place for him among the greats. In a profession in which being first was the public measure of success, his achievements were less noteworthy than those of the celebrated explorers he so admired. J. E. Bernier was, however, a highly accomplished Arctic mariner who safely guided his ship on eight Canadian government expeditions to the northernmost reaches of the Western Hemisphere. He captained or commanded official expeditions between 1904 and 1911 and between 1922 and 1925. From the perspective of the governments in Ottawa that dispatched them, the voyages were an essential element in the Canadian strategy to assure that the North American Arctic did not fall into foreign hands. The first decade of the twentieth century marked the climax of a nearly century-long frenzy of non-commercial but immensely costly international activity aimed primarily at achieving two essentially symbolic feats: navigating the Northwest Passage and standing at the North Pole. (2) Bernier's mission was to assert Canadian jurisdiction in waters continuously frequented by American and European whalers and foreign explorers in the feverish race to fill the empty spaces at the top of the globe. However, "playing a glorified civil servant," as historian Alan MacEachern has characterized Bernier's government service, was not the capstone that the ambitious sea captain had once envisioned for his long career. (3) At the turn of the century, his doggedly publicized plans for a Canadian polar expedition brought him to the attention of both the public and the Canadian government. Bernier had by then established an impressive record at sea. Upon his death in 1934, obituarists made long lists of his accomplishments: he captained his first ship at 17; he was the master of more than 100 vessels; he crossed the Atlantic at least 250 times; he traveled some 500,000 miles; he set a round-trip speed record sailing a ship between Canada and England; and twice he saved his crew from sinking vessels. (4) His undeniable skills as a mariner were matched by a lifelong drive to establish a personal legacy. At the age of 36, he spent a year and three thousand dollars constructing a lavish mausoleum in the Mont-Marie cemetery near his home in Levis, Quebec. Though the structure was built as a family tomb, "Capt. J. E. Bernier" adorned the Italian marble above its iron doors. (5) Bernier did not reach the North Pole, and despite coming tantalizingly close, he did not navigate the Northwest Passage. It was likely to his great chagrin that others claimed both achievements during the period of his government service. But Bernier's immense ambition, larger-than-life persona, and genuine accomplishments generated considerable publicity for the Canadian Arctic expeditions. The voyages would serve as a successful projection of Canadian sovereignty only insofar as they were visible to foreign powers with an interest in the Arctic Archipelago, and chief among these powers, at least from the standpoint of policy-makers in Ottawa, was the United States. The extensive American press coverage that Bernier and his government expeditions received was a testament to his contribution to Canadian sovereignty. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] That such efforts were thought necessary at all was a result of the complicated nature of sovereignty in the Arctic. The "rules" defining territorial sovereignty evolved over centuries from the so-called right of discovery to the principle of effective occupation, codified in international law by the colonial powers at the 1881 African Conference of Berlin. …


The colour-magnitude relation (CMR) of cluster elliptical galaxies has been widely used to constrain their star formation histories (SFHs) and to discriminate between the monolithic collapse and merger paradigms of elliptical galaxy formation. We use a �CDM hierarchical merger model of galaxy formation to investigate the existence and redshift evolution of the elliptical galaxy CMR in the merger paradigm. We show that the star formation history (SFH) of cluster ellipticals predicted by the model is quasimonolithic, with only � 10 percent of the total stellar mass forming after z � 1. The quasi-monolithic SFH results in a predicted CMR that agrees well with its observed counterpart in the redshift range 0 < z < 1.27. We use our analysis to argue that the elliptical-only CMR can be used to constrain the SFHs of present-day cluster ellipticals only if we believe a priori in the monolithic collapse model. It is not a meaningful tool for constraining the SFH in the merger paradigm, since a progressively larger fraction of the progenitor set of present-day cluster ellipticals is contained in late-type star forming systems at higher redshift, which cannot be ignored when deriving the SFHs. Hence, the elliptical-only CMR is not a useful discriminant between the two competing theories of elliptical galaxy evolution.


Lysosomal storage diseases (LSD) are metabolic disorders characterized by accumulation of undegraded material. The mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) are LSDs defined by the storage of glycosaminoglycans. Previously, we hypothesized that cells affected with LSD have increased energy expenditure for biosynthesis because of deficiencies of raw materials sequestered within the lysosome. Thus, LSDs can be characterized as diseases of deficiency as well as overabundance (lysosomal storage). In this study, metabolite analysis identified deficiencies in simple sugars, nucleotides, and lipids in the livers of MPSI mice. In contrast, most amino acids, amino acid derivatives, dipeptides, and urea were elevated. These data suggest that protein catabolism, perhaps because of increased autophagy, is at least partially fulfilling intermediary metabolism. Thus, maintaining glycosaminoglycan synthesis in the absence of recycled precursors results in major shifts in the energy utilization of the cells. A high fat diet increased simple sugars and some fats and lowered the apparent protein catabolism. Interestingly, autophagy, which is increased in several LSDs, is responsive to dietary intervention and is reduced in MPSVII and MPSI mice fed a high fat diet. Although long term dietary treatment improved body weight in MPSVII mice, it failed to improve life span or retinal function. In addition, the ventricular hypertrophy and proximal aorta dilation observed in MPSVII mice were unchanged by a high fat, simple sugar diet. As the mechanism of this energy imbalance is better understood, a more targeted nutrient approach may yet prove beneficial as an adjunct therapy to traditional approaches.


This study was undertaken at the breeding hall of the Department of Animal Production / College of Agriculture/ University of Basrah from 1/2/2018 to 1/7/2018, to investigate the effect of different levels of wheat germ oil (WGO) with or without Folic acid treatment on sex hormones such as Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), Luteinizing hormone (LH), estrogen and progesterone on female rabbits at different physiological stages. Eight males and 56 female rabbits, with an average weight of (810,650) grams for males and females, respectively, were randomly divided into four groups (14 females + 2 males/ group) and two replicates/ group. The groups were dosed with WGO orally for a period of five months. The first group was a control group (no WGO) and the 2 nd , 3 rd , and 4 th groups were given WGO by 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 ml/ kg body weight/ day respectively. After two months of giving WGO, treatments 2, 3 and 4 were divided into two secondary groups. The first group gives the same levels of (WGO) which was given at the beginning of the experiment and the second group gives folic acid (1 mg/ kg of body weight/ animal) orally. The results showed significant (P<0.05) increase in concentrations of FSH and LH hormones in female rabbits treated with WGO at dosage 0.75ml/ day/kg of body weight at 90 and 120 days old then the concentrations of hormones exceeded in the same treatment but with folic acid during sexual puberty and pregnancy stages in comparison with control groups. There was a significant increase (P<0.05) in estrogen concentration when female treated WGO at dosage 0.75ml/ day/kg of body weight with folic acid at puberty and in the last period of pregnancy (after 30 days of pregnancy) in comparison with control groups. Progesterone concentration was significant (P<0.05) increase in female treated at dose WGO 0.25 ml/day/ kg of body weight of at 90 and 120 days of age, Whereas,when female administrated WGO with folic acid doses 0.75 caused significantly (P<0.05) increase in the concentrations of progesterone in the last period of pregnancy in comparison with control groups


In spite of the significant roles European women played in the administration of colonial Nigeria, only a handful of them have been given adequate attention. Against this backdrop, the contributions of Miss Jane McCotter to the development of the Egba Healthcare delivery system, were examined. Relying and critically evaluating extant literature, newspapers, interviews and archival records, the authors demonstrate that she made her marks, not only on the quality work she put into the field of nursing and midwifery, but also, on how she commanded attention as the proprietress of a midwifery school and a proficient Structural Engineer, who supervised the construction of public and maternal health buildings in the colonial Egba Division. Furthermore, the study has established that despite her advanced age, she put her all to the services of the Egba people, education of the girl child, women's welfare, as well as the general development of Egba land in particular, and Nigeria, as a whole. This study, therefore, fulfills knowledge production in biographical studies, gender, colonial empires, and also, demonstrates the resilience, perseverance and dedication of this human enigma, despite the challenges she faced.


The advent of marine spatial planning in the United Kingdom (UK) is taking place on a foundation of extensive and long-standing management practice, largely sectorally based, in one of the most intensively used sea areas in the world. The spatial development context of planning offshore and at the coast is considered, followed by a discussion of the fundamental nature of human activities and associated marine space, followed by a discussion of the implications for current and future planning, with a primary focus on the use of spatial allocation in shipping and port activity, military uses, mineral and energy exploitation, fisheries and fish farming, waste disposal, leisure industries and conservation. Due account is taken of regional developments. Finally, there is an evaluation of the major management issues arising from recently enacted marine legislation in the UK and Scotland. Account is also taken of related European Union and devolved administrations' roles, and overall implications for the development and management of the coast.


To operate efficiently across a wide range of workloads with varying power requirements, a modern processor applies different current management mechanisms, which briefly throttle instruction execution while they adjust voltage and frequency to accommodate for power-hungry instructions (PHIs) in the instruction stream. Doing so 1) reduces the power consumption of non-PHI instructions in typical workloads and 2) optimizes system voltage regulators' cost and area for the common use case while limiting current consumption when executing PHIs.However, these mechanisms may compromise a system's confidentiality guarantees. In particular, we observe that multilevel side-effects of throttling mechanisms, due to PHI-related current management mechanisms, can be detected by two different software contexts (i.e., sender and receiver) running on 1) the same hardware thread, 2) co-located Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) threads, and 3) different physical cores.Based on these new observations on current management mechanisms, we develop a new set of covert channels, IChannels, and demonstrate them in real modern Intel processors (which span more than 70% of the entire client and server processor market). Our analysis shows that IChannels provides more than 24× the channel capacity of state-of-the-art power management covert channels. We propose practical and effective mitigations to each covert channel in IChannels by leveraging the insights we gain through a rigorous characterization of real systems.


World Englishes, like other topics covered in the Routledge Introduction to Applied Linguistics series (ELT, Classroom Discourse, Corpus Linguistics), is increasingly a feature of the curriculum of Applied Linguistics and TESOL programmes. Philip Seargeant's book is aimed at master's-level students who are teachers in training or language professionals returning to study, and final year undergraduates. The first part of the book is what you would expect: everything applied linguistics students need to know about WES (World English Studies). The second part is a meditation on WES as academic discipline which is likely to provide food for thought for researchers as well as students. Fortunately the long tradition of undergraduate textbooks which offer region-by-region descriptions of English is on the wane. More recent textbooks such as Jenkins (2003) and Schneider (2011), and the more advanced Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008), whilst individually reflecting the preoccupations of their authors, all address the twin strands of World Englishes. These are, on the one hand, variation which has emerged over time through the dynamics of language contact, and on the other, the global character of English, which now sets it apart from the study of other languages. This, for Seargeant, is a paradox at the heart of WES: English is celebrated around the world for the way it can express the identity of particular communities (authenticity) but also for its universality and neutrality (anonymity).


Critical infrastructure monitoring is one of the most important applications of a smart city. The objective is to monitor the integrity of the structures (e.g., buildings, bridges) and detect and pinpoint the locations of possible events (e.g., damages, cracks). Regarding today's complex structures, collecting data using wireless sensor data over extensive vertical lengths creates enormous challenges. With a direct BS deployment, a big amount of data will accumulate to be relayed to the BS. As a result, traditional models and schemes developed for health monitoring are largely challenged by low-cost, quality-guaranteed, and real-time event monitoring. In this article, we propose BigReduce, a cloud based health monitoring application with an IoT framework that could cover most of the key infrastructures of a smart city under an umbrella and provide event monitoring. To reduce the burden of big data processing at the BS and enhance the quality of event detection, we integrate real-time data processing and intelligent decision making capabilities with BigReduce. Particularly, we provide two innovative schemes for health event monitoring so that an IoT sensor can use them locally; one is a big data reduction scheme, and the other is a decision making scheme. We believe that BigReduce will result in a remarkable performance in terms of data reduction, energy cost reduction, and the quality of monitoring.


The role of lawyer is widely understood by law students and practitioners as the entry into a simplified ethical world, one in which ordinary moral principles are cleared away by the hegemony of doctrines unique to the practice of law. This understanding is supported by and may originate in a particular view of lawyers' professional responsibility, a view in which a lawyer's ethical obligations as a professional are defined largely (though not entirely) by specialized legal rules - principally the codes of ethics and other rules that regulate lawyer conduct - and the policies thought to underlie those rules. There is nothing natural or even intuitive about defining lawyers' ethical obligations primarily in terms of compliance with rules. Indeed, there has long been a debate about whether black letter codifications can possibly serve as an adequate platform for ethical deliberation. But to acknowledge this debate is not to argue that there is some alternative way of thinking about lawyers' professional responsibility that is truly or actually natural. All fields of law must be constructed somehow. What is worth consideration is how a field is constructed in one way rather than another, and the effects of any given construction. Our thesis embraces two claims. The first claim is that within the traditional law school curriculum, law is constructed as a relatively autonomous discipline distinguished from other disciplines, including philosophical ethics, and that the discipline of law is subdivided into relatively separate fields. Thus, notwithstanding more than a century of developments in legal education and claims of progress in our understanding of law - notwithstanding the academy's apparent absorption of influences ranging from legal realism to critical legal studies to feminist jurisprudence to critical race theory to a host of law and analyses - students continue to be educated into a relatively Langdellian world view. The second claim is that within the traditional law school curriculum, Professional Responsibility is constructed as its own field of law. As a consequence, law students learn to think of law generally, and Professional Responsibility specifically, as disengaged from moral considerations. Part One of the article takes up the questions how and why the Professional Responsibility field has been traditionally structured in the law school curriculum on a legalistic model, i.e., as but another field of law separated from ordinary moral concerns. In Part Two, we point out that there is nothing about the concept of law that requires its separation from ordinary moral reasoning. We suggest that when law is constructed so as to be saturated with moral considerations, then the professional work of lawyers, and hence their professional responsibilities, can be understood to be similarly saturated. In Part Three, we explore some of what is at stake in our decisions about how to construct Professional Responsibility. We consider both the powerful allure that the traditional construction has for law students and practitioners and the construction's remarkable resiliency in the face of repeated, multidimensional assaults on the legalistic model.


Genoa enjoyed an important and ever-changing role in the early modern Mediterranean world. In medieval times, the city transformed itself from a tumultuous maritime republic into a stable and prosperous one, making it one of the most important financial centers in Europe. When Spanish influence in the Mediterranean world began to decline, Genoa, its prosperity closely linked with Spain's, again had to reinvent itself and its economic stature. In Genoa and the Sea, historian Thomas Allison Kirk reconstructs the early modern Mediterranean world and closely studies Genoa's attempt to evolve in the ever-changing political and economic landscape. He focuses on efforts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to revive shipbuilding and maritime commerce as a counterbalance to the city's volatile financial sector. A key component to the plan was a free port policy that attracted merchants and stimulated trade. Through extensive research and close reading of primary documents, Kirk discusses the underpinnings of this complex early modern republic. Genoa's transformations offer insight into the significant and sweeping changes that were taking place all over Europe.


E-learning method provides the ease and smoothness of the teachinglearning process for both students and lecturers. With e-learning methods, teachers can increase the intensity of interactive communication with students outside of official class hours. E-learning methods provide flexibility to the faculty to provide access to students to gain scientific references related to the course that may not be obtained during the hours of lecture and lab activities. These references may be scientific papers, popular articles or electronic journals. This would be particularly useful for students, because in addition to strengthening the understanding of students for each subject of the course, a reference of the international journals will greatly help to expand the students'knowledge, as well as improve their English. So hopefully in the future, IPB Diploma graduates, especially those who earn Programming Language course, will have high competitiveness in the global competition which is increasingly filled by graduates of foreign universities. Keyword : e-learning, online, course, learning methods.


In order to clarify the significance of mutation of the p53 tumor suppressor gene in the genesis and development of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in an aflatoxin I!, Ion-exposure area, the spec trum, i.e.. incidence, type, and site, oipS3 gene mutations was examined in 169 tissue samples resected mainly from Japanese patients using single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis and direct sequenc ing. Forty-nine tumors (29%) showed a p53 mutation (39 point muta tions and 10 frameshifts). The point mutations comprised 18 transitions, only 4 of which occurred at CpG sites, and 21 transversions. Two evolutionarily conserved domains, IV and V, contained 65% of all muta tions and codon 249 was the most frequent mutation site (7/49). The spectrum of p53 mutation did not differ among HCCs in relation to the type of hepatitis virus infection, sex, age, and background liver disease of patients, tumor size, or presence of metastasis, but incidence and site were significantly associated with the degree of differentiation of cancer cells. In poorly differentiated HCC, p53 mutation was frequent (54%) and clustered on domains IV and V, whereas in well or moderately differentiated HCC, the mutation was less frequent (21%) and equally distributed on domains II to V. Restriction fragment length polymor phism analysis revealed loss of heterozygosity on chromosome 17p in 55 (69%) of 80 informative cases and in 34 (95%) of 36 cases with pS3 mutation. Therefore, p53 gene mutation is suggested to occur indepen dently of the type of viral infection or status of preexisting liver disease and to occur preferentially in moderately and poorly differentiated HCCs in association with or after loss of another p53 alÃ-eleas a late event of HCC progression.


The self-adaptive Network-on-Chip NoC is a promising communication architecture for massively parallel embedded systems. With constant technology scaling and the consequent stronger influence of process variations, the necessity of run-time monitoring and adaptive reconfiguration becomes widely acknowledged. This article presents a survey of existing techniques and methods, in particular for energy efficiency and dependability. The article firstly examines the motivation of self-adaptive computing in parallel embedded systems. A self-adaptive system model is abstracted, which is composed of goals, monitoring interface, and self-adaptation. Based on the model, the authors extensively survey previous works addressing adaptive NoCs with different monitoring techniques and reconfiguration methods, for power/energy optimization and dependability enhancement. Several design examples are elaborated which serve proper guiding purposes. The authors also identify important issues which are often overlooked or deserve more attention. The article provides review and insight for future design on this topic.


We present an $O(n^2)$-time algorithm for calculating the genus distribution of any 4-regular outerplanar graph. We characterize such graphs in terms of what we call split graphs and incidence trees . The algorithm uses post-order traversal of the incidence tree and productions that are adapted from a previous paper that analyzes double-root vertex-amalgamations and self-amalgamations .


SUMMARY Exposure of trout hepatocytes to hypertonicity induced a decrease in acridine orange (AO) fluorescence, indicating a corresponding decrease in pH inside the lumen of acidic compartments (pHL). Pre-exposure of cells to the specific V-ATPase inhibitor bafilomycin A1 (0.3 μmol l–1) increased AO fluorescence – unmasking H+ leaks under steady-state conditions – and partially removed the hypertonicity-induced pHL decrease. The sustainability of the luminal acidification, but not the acidification itself, appeared to depend on a low K+ and a high Cl– conductance under hypertonic conditions. Increasing K+ conductance using the specific ionophore valinomycin (10 μmol l–1) or removal of extracellular Cl– after an instant drop in AO fluorescence resulted in a reversal of luminal acidity. The alkalinization measured under hypertonic conditions in the absence of Cl– was largely attenuated when cells were bathed in HCO3–-free medium, signifying the possible presence of Cl–/HCO3– exchange. Under steady-state conditions, while a slight and brief pHL increase was measured upon exposure of cells to valinomycin, Cl– removal, unexpectedly, induced a decrease in pHL, indicating a role for extracellular Cl– in limiting luminal acidification. This was confirmed by the substantial pHL decrease measured upon exposure of cells to the anion exchanger inhibitor SITS (0.5 mmol l–1). Furthermore, hypertonicity-induced acidification was still noticeable in the presence of SITS. On the other hand, the hypertonicity-induced acidification was significantly reduced in the absence of extracellular Na+ or Ca2+. However, BAPTA-AM induced an increase in steady-state pHL that was independent of V-ATPase inhibition. Moreover, the BAPTA-induced alkalinization was still apparent after depletion of intracellular Ca2+ using the Ca2+ ionophore A23187 in Ca2+-free medium. We conclude that pHL of trout hepatocytes is sensitive to hypertonicity and ionic determinants of hypertonicity. Thus, changes in pHL should be considered when studying pH adaptations to hypertonic stress.


Interspecific competition can influence the distribution and abundance of species and the structure of ecological communities and entire ecosystems. Interactions between apex predators can have cascading effects through the entire natural community, which supports broadening the scope of conservation from single species to a much wider ecosystem perspective. However, competition between wild large carnivores can hardly be measured experimentally. In this study, we analyzed the expansion of the Scandinavian wolf (Canis lupus) population during its recovery from the early 1990s. We took into account wolf-, habitat-, human- and brown bear (Ursus arctos)-related factors, because wolf expansion occurred within an area partially sympatric with bears. Wolf pair establishment was positively related to previous wolf presence and was negatively related to road density, distance to other wolf territories, and bear density. These findings suggest that both human-related habitat modification and interspecific competition have been influential factors modulating the expansion of the wolf population. Interactions between large carnivores have the potential to affect overall biodiversity. Therefore, conservation-oriented management of such species should consider interspecific interactions, rather than focusing only on target populations of single species. Long-term monitoring data across large areas should also help quantify and predict the influence of biotic interactions on species assemblages and distributions elsewhere. This is important because interactive processes can be essential in the regulation, stability, and resilience of ecological communities.


The paper presents accurate numerical solutions of the full 2D governing equations for steady and unsteady laminar/laminar internal condensing flows of pure vapor (R-113 and FC-72) inside a vertical tube and a channel. The film condensation is on the inside wall of a tube or one of the walls of a channel (the lower wall in case of a downward sloping channel). The new geometry in this paper is the cylindrical in-tube geometry with axisymmetric flows (vertical 1g or 0g flows). The new results encompass both the cylindrical and the earlier studied channel geometry. Exit condition specifications are again found to be important. The computations are able to predict whether or not a steady flow exists under a natural exit condition (selected from a range of choices available at the exit). If natural steady/quasi-steady flows exist — as is shown to be the case for gravity dominated or strong shear dominated condensate flows — the computations are able to predict both the natural exit condition and the associated condensate flow's point of transition from stable to unstable behavior. Compared to gravity driven, shear driven cases (zero gravity or horizontal cases) tend to destabilize easier and generally have much larger pressure drops, much slower wave speeds, much larger role of surface tension, and much narrower flow regime boundaries within which the vapor flow can be modelled incompressible. It is found that only in gravity driven cases, be it vertical in-tube or inclined channel geometry, interfacial waves are able to cause a concurrent enhancement in heat transfer rates along with an enhancement in interfacial shear. Also it is found that this enhancement is significant if the condensing surface noise is in resonance with the intrinsic waves.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Abstract. The δ18O of seawater (δ18Ow), an indirect indicator of sea surface salinity (SSS), in the northern East China Sea (ECS) is reconstructed for the Holocene using paired analyses of Mg / Ca ratio and δ18O of planktic foraminiferal tests. According to modern observation, interannual variations in SSS during summer in the northern ECS are mainly controlled by the Changjiang (Yangtze River) discharge, which reflects summer rainfall in its drainage basin. Thus, changes in the summer SSS in the northern ECS are interpreted as reflecting variations in the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) precipitation in the Changjiang Basin. This interpretation is confirmed by a strong relationship between the SSS in the northern ECS and the Changjiang discharge during the wet season (May–October) based on instrumental salinity records from 1951 to 2000. However, it is difficult to estimate absolute salinity values in the past with high accuracy, because the past salinity–δ18Ow regression slope, end member salinity, and δ18Ow values are not well understood. Here, we conduct δ18Ow mass-balance calculation to estimate the freshwater contribution to the surface water of the northern ECS during the last 7 kyr by assuming a simple mixing between two end members – the seawater and the Changjiang freshwater. The result indicates that there has been no gradual decreasing secular trend in the Changjiang freshwater flux from the middle Holocene to the present day, suggesting that summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere does not regulate the EASM precipitation in the Changjiang Basin. Instead, internal feedback appears to have been more important during the Holocene. The absence of a decreasing trend in regional summer precipitation over the Changjiang Basin since the middle Holocene is contradictory to Chinese speleothems' δ18O records, suggesting that it is not possible to explain orbital changes in Chinese speleothems' δ18O during the Holocene by changes in summer precipitation, but that such changes are related to other factors such as changes in the moisture source.