Researchers have studied voice onset time (VOT) in a number of languages but there is a scarcity of research on the acquisition of VOT of English, particularly by adult Saudi learners, and on the VOT of Saudi Arabic. The current study aims to fill these gaps. At the same time, we aimed to assess whether key claims of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM) were supported by this kind of data.
31 adult advanced Saudi learners of English and 60 monolinguals (30 native English and 30 Arabic monolinguals) participated in this study. The VOTs of the voiced and voiceless stops were measured followed by three different vowels, in both isolated word and word in sentence contexts.
The results show that the learners produced English voiceless stops with aspiration closer to Arabic than to the higher native English VOT values, and voiced stops with pre-voicing, similar to Arabic, rather than with native English short-lag VOT values. Context had an effect in English but vowel did not, while the reverse was true for the learners and Arabic native speakers. Overall, learners' acquisition was modest despite their level and exposure, in that they overwhelmingly resembled Arabic rather than English native speakers.
Several hypotheses based on SLM expectations were not confirmed in an unqualified way. However, support was found for learners' phonetic categories being 'deflected' away from both L1 and L2 categories.
All three groups produced longer positive VOT for aspirated than unaspirated or voiced plosives. All exhibited VOT increasing across places of articulation, front to back for the voiceless stops, but only English native speakers showed this clearly for the voiced stops. Length of residence in UK and daily use of English did not seem to affect nativelikeness of learner VOT.


Research argues that digital educational games have the potential to make learning more interesting and more effective, creating unmatched learner engagement. However, creating captivating game-based learning experiences remains challenging. Designing and developing games to support learning is still a costly and time-consuming experience that require a multitude of skills. An easy-toplay game does not equate with an easy-to-create design and development process. Creating gamebased experiences is more complex than designing a linear lecture or a static online learning module. Moreover, game customization remains limited, making it difficult for teachers to adapt a game to specific learner needs and subjects. To address these challenges, the authors present the game authoring pipeline of the Beaconing Platform that enables the construction of location-based metagames by non-programmers. In the context of this work, a metagame is defined as the component that provides the overarching narrative experience for players. The paper describes the construction and implementation of two such metagames for two different cities Targoviste, Romania and Coventry, UK. The location of the device is used to enhance the user experience and to customize the content that is made available to the learners. The metagames integrate quizzes into location-based challenges to create more flexible and more engaging learning experiences that blend virtual and real worlds. In these metagames, participants have to find a real world Point of Interest (POI), defined through GPS coordinates, or a series of them, through indirect clues and complete an activity (e.g. Minigame) there to further the narrative (or unlock the next clue/POI).


The internet has been ascribed a prominent role in collective action, particularly with widespread use of social media. But most mobilisations fail. We investigate the characteristics of those few mobilisations that succeed and hypothesise that the presence of 'starters' with low thresholds for joining will determine whether a mobilisation achieves success, as suggested by threshold models. We use experimental data from public good games to identify personality types associated with willingness to start in collective action. We find a significant association between both extraversion and internal locus of control, and willingness to start, while agreeableness is associated with a tendency to follow. Rounds without at least a minimum level of extraversion among the participants are unlikely to be funded, providing some support for the hypothesis.


This discussion paper was produced as a background documentfor the 2016 FAO State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report. It was produced through desk research and analysis of existing agricultural and climate finance literature. Moreover, qualitative interviews with key experts representing different stakeholder groups in the agriculture, climate, and financial sectors were conducted to inform the potential opportunities and innovations that should be further explored to make climate finance work for agriculture. Finally, a collection of supporting case studies were provided by different stakeholders to showcase some of the most successful and innovative examples already being implemented in the climate finance community.It is important to note that this is a discussion paper that aims to explore the intersection between climate and agriculture finance by generating dialogue. Hence, the paper explores a relatively new field and proposes innovative interventions that either are being tested or could be tested to increase the leverage of private capital and strengthen the links between financial institutions on the one hand and smallholder farmers and SMEs on the other. The objective of the paper is to generate discussion around this topic and, therefore, no blanket recommendations or descriptive interventions are proposed. A growing population and changing diets are driving up the demand for food. Production is struggling to keep up as crop yields level off in many parts of the world, ocean health declines, and natural resources— including soils, water and biodiversity—are stretched dangerously thin. Climate change is critically interrelated with agriculture. On the one hand, agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. This paper proposes three different avenues to use climate finance to achieve this goal: a) Designing and adapting innovative mechanisms to leverage additional sources of capital, from both public and private sources, that can be directed towards climate smartinvestments in the agriculture sector. b) Identifying entry points for directing climate finance into agriculture and for linking FIs to smallholders and agricultural SMEs, including through capacity building and technical assistance. c) Providing technical assistance to increase investments in agriculture. Finally, this paper presents several suggestions to contribute to the achievement of the ideas presented in this paper, including the need for increased knowledge on innovative financial instruments and mechanisms, bridging information gaps, identifying opportunities, promoting dialogue and cooperation, and designing an action plan to move this agenda forward.


Design science research involves creating and evaluating innovative methods and approaches to be used in design practice. We present an approach to be used in the process of designing Management Support Systems (MSS). The nature of managerial work makes the design, development, and implementation of MSS a major challenge. The MSS literature suggests that determining MSS requirements and specification of MSS are the most critical phases in MSS design and development. We present an approach that can be used as a guide for MSS design, with a primary focus on MSS requirements determination and how requirements can be fulfilled using information and communication technologies (ICT). The approach builds on Quinn and associates' competing values model (CVM) of organizational effectiveness. The approach can guide MSS designers in designing MSS that support different managerial roles, i.e., the development of MSS that support managerial cognition, decision, and action.


Purpose Clinical research brings the potential of improved diagnostics, sight-saving treatments, and more accessible services to those suffering with severe sight impairment (SSI). This report investigates whether registered ophthalmology clinical studies address the leading causes of SSI in the general and working populations of the United Kingdom (UK). Methods The latest statistics on the leading causes of SSI in the UK general and working populations were identified by searching PubMed, Cochrane Library, and TRIP databases. Clinical study registries were searched to identify registered clinical studies (on or prior to 1st December 2022) on the leading causes of SSI. The relationship between the number of clinical studies on leading causes of SSI and the percentage of SSI certifications they account for was analyzed. Results In the UK general population, the number of registered clinical studies on the leading causes of SSI is statistically significantly correlated (Spearman's rho = 0.86, p < 0.01) with the percentage of SSI certifications they account for. However, there is no correlation between the two in the UK working population (aged 16–64) (Spearman's rho = 0.15, p = 0.70). Eye conditions accounting for the most SSI certifications in individuals of working age have significantly less clinical research activity than those that cause the most SSI certifications in the general population. Out of the leading causes of SSI certifications studied, disorders of the visual cortex and congenital anomalies of the eye have the least clinical research activity. Conclusion Clinical research into the leading causes of SSI in the general population is essential. However, it is important to consider eye conditions that cause the most severe visual impairment in individuals of working age due to the significant health and socioeconomic implications of sight loss in this population.


IntroductionThe Supreme Court's feverishly anticipated decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius1 ("the Health Care Decision" or "NFIB") regarding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (colloquially known as "Obamacare") produced three main holdings concerning two critical provisions of the Act.2 The first two holdings concerned the "individual mandate" that requires most Americans to maintain "minimum essential" health insurance. First, a 5.4 majority held that this provision exceeded Congress's power under the Commerce Clause.3 Second, a different 5.4 majority held that this same mandate, which requires those who fail to secure the minimum required health insurance to pay a tax penalty to the IRS, is a constitutional exercise of Congress's taxing authority.4 The third holding concerned "the Medicaid expansion," which expanded the class of persons to whom the states must provide Medicaid coverage as a condition for receiving federal funds under the Medicaid program.5 By the more lopsided margin of 7.2, the Court struck down this provision as an impermissible condition on the provision of federal funds to the states.6Of these three holdings, the third.concerning what is often called Congress's "conditional spending power".is apt to have the most farreaching consequences beyond health care. The Court's Commerce Clause ruling was predicated on the fact that, in a majority's estimation, Congress was here imposing an unprecedented affirmative obligation upon individuals to enter commerce rather than, as is customary, regulating behavior that was already commercial.7 Because Congress could not have been expected to impose many.or any.such affirmative obligations even had the dissenters prevailed on the Commerce Clause issue, this ruling will likely have little future impact. And Congress rarely needs to resort to its taxing power to achieve regulatory ends when it can regulate "directly" on the strength of its commerce power.8 So the Court's relatively expansive interpretation of Congress's taxing power is not of great moment going forward precisely because its relatively restrictive interpretation of Congress's commerce power is not. But Congress makes habitual (a critic might even say "profligate") use of its conditional spending power.9 Accordingly, if, as appears to many, the Court has tightened the restrictions on this power, the implications could be profound.Unfortunately, of the three holdings, the last is not only the most potentially significant, but also the one supported by the least clear rationale. At first blush, to be sure, the majority's reasoning seems straightforward. The key precedent on which the majority drew, South Dakota v. Dole,10 had announced a four-part test governing Congress's use of its spending power to induce state behavior that Congress could not mandate: the spending program must promote "the general welfare," the condition must be unambiguous, the condition must be related to the national interests that the spending would advance, and the condition may not require state recipients to violate the Constitution themselves.11 No Justices in NFIB expressed concern that the Medicaid expansion violated any of these limitations.In addition to these four restrictions, however, the Dole Court read the Spending Clause to impose limits on Congress's ability to "coerce" the states in ways that it could not directly mandate under its other Article I powers.12 "[I]n some circumstances," the Court observed, "the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which 'pressure turns into compulsion.'"13 It is this prohibition on coercion or compulsion that, a majority of the Court concluded, doomed the Medicaid expansion.14 While candidly acknowledging that they could provide no guidance regarding how the line between inducement and compulsion would be assessed going forward, seven Justices nonetheless deemed the conditional offer that the Medicaid expansion embodied impermissibly coercive because it gave states "no choice" but to accept. …


In this paper a general equilibrium intertemporal model with optimizing consumers and producers is developed to analyze how the temporary term's of trade disturbances affect the path of real exchange rates and the current account. Changes in the internal terms of trade (due to tariff changes) and to the external terms of trade are considered. The model is completely real, and considers a small open economy that produces and consumes three goods each period. It is shown that, without imposing rigidities or adjustment costs, interesting paths for the equilibrium real exchange rate can be generated. In particular "equilibrium overshooting" can be observed. Precise conditions under which a temporary import tariff will worsen the current account in period 1 are derived. The way in which temporary and permanent external terms of trade shocks will affect the current account are analyzed. Several ways in which the model can be extended are discussed The results obtained from this model have important implications for the design of balance of payments policy and for the analysis of real exchange rate misalignment and overvaluation.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Enhancing lesions on brain MR imaging can present a diagnostic quandary as both benign lesions such as brain capillary telangiectasia and pathologic lesions such as demyelination may appear similar. Stagnation of blood in low-flow venous channels of brain capillary telangiectasias results in susceptibility effect secondary to the increased local deoxyhemoglobin. Both T2* gradient-echo imaging and SWI were demonstrated as valuable in the diagnosis of brain capillary telangiectasia. Because SWI is more sensitive to susceptibility changes than gradient-echo, we aim to demonstrate increased diagnostic value of SWI compared with gradient-echo in making the diagnosis of brain capillary telangiectasia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the MR images of 17 patients with a presumed diagnosis of brain capillary telangiectasia and who were examined from June 2010 to September 2012. All patients underwent MR imaging at 1.5T with T1, T2, FLAIR, gradient-echo, SWI, and gadolinium-enhanced T1 sequences. Lesions were evaluated for the presence or absence of signal abnormality on each particular sequence. RESULTS: All 17 brain capillary telangiectasias demonstrated distinct signal-intensity loss on SWI compared with 7 of 17 (41%) who showed signal-intensity loss on gradient-echo. The increased frequency of detection using SWI versus gradient-echo is statistically significant (z = 2.85, P < .01; χ2 = 8.10, P < .01). Six of the lesions showed signal-intensity changes on T1 and/or T2 whereas the remaining lesions were isointense to normal brain. CONCLUSIONS: Brain capillary telangiectasias are more conspicuous on SWI than gradient-echo imaging and other precontrast MR imaging. SWI is a valuable tool in diagnosing these benign lesions and should serve to increase diagnostic confidence.


For more than half a century the heckler's veto has been a source of provocation. On the one hand, there now appears to be widespread consensus among courts and commentators that allowing police to shut down a provocative speaker in a public space over threats from hostile listeners is simply beyond the constitutional pale. Taking that constitutional intuition as their guide, the lower courts have generally approached the problem through a speaker-focused model, in which the government is seen siding with the majority's mob over the minority speaker, in violation of the principle requiring neutrality among speakers and views. But what happens when the usual roles reverse--when the provocative speaker is not representative of a minority opinion but is arguably representative of a larger majority? Relying on the important recent decision from the Sixth Circuit in Bible Believers v. Wayne County, this Article argues that this reversal of roles shows us not just the limits of the speaker-focused model in solving the heckler's veto problem, but also how it can and should be broadened to address the increasingly complex protests that have come to dominate our constitutional focus today. We should therefore take Bible Believers as the occasion to reconsider the familiar speaker-focused approach to the heckler's veto, by reframing it around the different problem that that case represents: not as the familiar drama of the soapbox orator faced with a hostile audience but as an example of a public forum faced with hostile takeover. In these increasingly common cases, the problem of the heckler's veto should accordingly take on a new conceptual and doctrinal form: as an attack on a public forum that the police must do everything in their power to prevent by defending the forum first.


This dissertation uses ethnographic and design-based research approaches to focus on spaces of environmental science and engineering education as potential sites of intentionally designed hybridity and coordination along a cultural learning. By examining how these spaces afford and constrain learning for culturally and linguistically diverse fifth-grade students as they take part in a coordinated set of learning experiences across multiple settings over a school year, this study addresses the kinds of learning and identification processes that occur as youth engage in science and engineering practices. This set of studies focuses on the social and material features of places, the available social positions, and the actions that are related to learning and identification in order to provide empirical evidence of the key features that facilitate access to new forms of participation and identification in relation to science in young peoples' communities. Chapter 2 focuses on the development and implementation of an ecologically-grounded survey and interview protocol used to examine the different meanings that young people have for science in relation to the social practices in which they engage. This analysis shows that while young people understand science as being primarily associated with school, they also recognize the ways in which a variety of activities across their lives have the potential to be science-related. The findings in this study are important for the design of equitable formal and informal STEM learning environments that draw on young people's everyday experiences and understandings of science. Chapter 3 describes a cross-setting approach for supporting and investigating student learning of environmental science in a fifth-grade classroom by focusing on the development of hybrid learning spaces in which youth gain access to new forms of participation and identification in relation to science in their community. Key design features of these environments—narratives of science as multi-voiced and an important tool for communities, youth-authored boundary objects that serve community interests, and access to authentic resources—supported new positionings and identities for youth in relation to science and engineering. In Chapter 4, I examined the implementation of a fifth-grade engineering design curriculum unit to understand how engineering design work has the potential to be an agentic context for engaging youth in scientific and engineering practices that position them as producers of knowledge and useful designs. This study shows that equitable engagement in engineering practices requires specific criteria for design proposals and scaffolded social norms that help students negotiate the relational space of small group work for their own goals. As a set of chapters, this dissertation provides deep and broad accounts of science and engineering learning pathways in and out of classrooms, This work informs the ways in which informal, formal, and hybridized learning spaces can create opportunities for new…


Research and development of 40-Gb/s-based technologies are very significant for not only increasing the total capacity of wavelength-division multiplexing transmission systems but also providing higher speed interfaces to routers and Ethernet devices in order to create new services in the twenty-first century. The technologies of digital and analog integrated circuits are progressing steadily, and the LiNbO/sub 3/ Mach-Zehnder external modulator has already reached the performance level required for practical use. Adaptive, intelligent compensation for problems such as chromatic dispersion and polarization-mode dispersion can make the design of optical transport networks more flexible. As an example, we achieved 3.5-Tb/s (43 Gb/s/spl times/88 ch) transmission over a 600-km nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber by using LiNbO/sub 3/ modulators and virtually imaged phased array variable-dispersion compensators.


The premier research library for the study of Numismatics in Oxford University is the Sackler Library, which incorporates the former library of the Heberden Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum.


DİZ OSTEOARTRİTDE DÜŞME RİSKİ VE İLİŞKİLİ FAKTÖRLER Introduction: The aim of this study was to determine the fall risk in patients with knee osteoarthritis with an objective computerized technique and to evaluate the potential risk factors for falls in these patients. Materials and Method: Patients with knee osteoarthritis and controls were included in this cross-sectional study. Gender, age, and body mass index were recorded. Pain was evaluated with a visual analog scale. The Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index was used to assess the patients and the Falls Efficacy Scale International was used for the evaluation of fall efficacy. Knee radiographs were recorded with the Kellgren–Lawrence grading scale. Fall risk analysis was performed by using the Tetrax Interactive Balance System. Results: One hundred patients with knee osteoarthritis and 30 controls were included. The age, gender, and body mass index scores were similar between the groups. Falls Efficacy Scale International scores were significantly higher in the cases than in the controls (p<0.000). Using a computerized system, significantly higher fall risk results (p<0.000) and significantly low, moderate, and high fall risk distribution were recorded in the cases than in the controls (p<0.000). Fall risk was significantly related to age, pain, and the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index scores of the patients. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated a higher fall risk in patients with knee osteoarthritis than in healthy individuals. This higher risk was shown even inå the early radiographic phases of the disease related to age, pain, and dysfunction. An understanding of factors on postural control seems to be critical in successful fall prevention in these patients.


The National Popular Vote plan (NPV), introduced in more than 40 states, and adopted by 4, proposes an interstate compact to bring about direct election of the president of the United States. The proposal eliminates states as electoral districts in presidential elections by creating a national electoral district for the presidential election, thereby advancing a national political identity for the United States. States with small populations and states that are competitive may benefit from the electoral college. Few states clearly benefit from direct election of the president. NPV brings about this change without amending the Constitution, thereby undermining the legitimacy of presidential elections. It also weakens federalism by eliminating the role of the states in presidential contests. NPV nationalizes disputed outcomes and cannot offer any certainty that states will not withdraw from the compact when the results of an election become known. NPV will encourage presidential campaigns to focus their efforts in dense media markets where costs per vote are lowest; many states now ignored by candidates will continue to be ignored under NPV. For these reasons, states should not join the National Popular Vote compact.


The transmission characteristics of an air-GaAs interface and the transient absorption and index spectra of the thin, photoexcited surface layer are investigated subsequent to excitation by a femtosecond laser pulse. We find that the total phase change and transmission of a terahertz (THz) probe pulse are dominated by interface effects. This observation has important implications in the interpretation of THz time-domain spectroscopy data of absorbing media. We also observe that the THz pulse apparently arrives at the detector as much as 60 fs earlier when it is transmitted through an optically excited GaAs wafer. This effect is fully explained in terms of a frequency-dependent transmission and phase shift at the air-GaAs interface and is not associated with superluminal propagation.


This document specifies a Diameter application that allows a Diameter
server to authenticate, authorize and collect accounting information
for Mobile IPv4 services rendered to a mobile node. Combined with the
Inter-Realm capability of the base protocol, this application allows
mobile nodes to receive service from foreign service providers.
Diameter Accounting messages will be used by the Foreign and Home
agents to transfer usage information to the Diameter servers.


To support the increasing demands for efficient deep neural network processing, accelerators based on analog in-memory computation of matrix multiplication have recently gained significant attention for reducing the energy of neural network inference. However, analog processing within memory arrays must contend with the issue of parasitic voltage drops across the metal interconnects, which distort the results of the computation and limit the array size. This work analyzes how parasitic resistance affects the end-to-end inference accuracy of state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks, and comprehensively studies how various design decisions at the device, circuit, architecture, and algorithm levels affect the system's sensitivity to parasitic resistance effects. A set of guidelines are provided for how to design analog accelerator hardware that is intrinsically robust to parasitic resistance, without any explicit compensation or re-training of the network parameters.


In this paper we study the positions that a group of teachers, from three Technical Elementary Schools from Tlaxcala, show towards the tutoring system implemented within the framework of the Comprehensive Reform of Elementary Education (RIEB) in Mexico, 2006. We take verbal speech produced along three focus group sessions as the object of analysis. The Qualitative Content Analysis technique is applied, on the basis of which we report findings on two issues that particularly concern to teachers who are working as-tutors: the attitude of the student before tutorship and the qualities that the tutors must show for an efficient and effective work. The dominant factor is the array of perceptions that the informants express overtly and covertly about the topic at issue, having their own experience, instead of the prescribed principles and concepts provided to them by the theory and taken from the assumption of a homogeneous state of affairs, which is the official discourse characteristic. It is made clear that there is an urgent need to revise the mechanisms that provide incentive to students so that that they get to look at mentoring as useful and necessary. Also, starting from the discussion held at each session, we emphasize the great responsibility that tutoring represents to the tutor, the same as the insufficient informative and formative resources on which he really counts to do his job. In short, we show the view of the protagonists as an element that has barely been taken into account when designing the educational policies. By doing this, we seek to contribute to the understanding and the comprehension of tutoring as a vital aspect of the everyday reality at the school. Palabras clave: RIEB; Tutoría; Actitud; Perfil Profesional; Análisis de Contenido; Percepción; Análisis Cualitativo de Contenido.


It is globally expected that universities will ensure that policies guiding researchers' conduct are in place and adhered to. This expectation is not waived in developing countries. Successful implementation of an ethics policy is facilitated by an appropriate national regulatory framework on which to base the argument for compliance. However, it is possible to implement such policies even when a regulatory framework is absent. The University of Botswana implemented a program to increase awareness of research ethics and to manage allegations of research misconduct through a needs assessment and seminars on the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). This paper describes this problem, and the success of the program initiated to address it. This program serves as a model for other research institutions in the developing world that may encounter similar challenges.


Bipedal animals exhibit a diverse range of gaits and gait transitions, which can robustly travel over terrains of varying grade, roughness, and compliance. Bipedal robots should be capable of the same. Despite these clear goals, stateof-the-art humanoid robots have not yet demonstrated locomotion behaviors that are as robust or varied as those of humans and animals. Current modelbased controllers for bipedal locomotion target individual gaits rather than realizing walking and running behaviors within a single framework. Recently, researchers have proposed using the spring mass model (SMM) as a compliant locomotion paradigm to create a unified controller for multiple gaits. Initial studies have revealed that policies exist for the SMM that exhibit diverse behaviors including walking, running, and transitions between them. However, many of these control laws are designed empirically and do not necessarily maximize robustness. Furthermore, the vast majority of these controllers have not yet been demonstrated on physical hardware, so their utility for real-world machines remains unclear. This thesis will investigate gait transition policies for the SMM that maximize an objective measure of robustness. We hypothesize that these control policies exist within the SMM framework and can be numerically calculated with guaranteed optimality and convergence. Specifically, we aim to investigate the following two claims. 1) All proposed SMM gait transition policies can be computed using reinforcement learning techniques with linear function approximators. 2) This method can generate new policies which maximize the basin of attraction between walking and running states. Initial results show that these reinforcement learning methods can indeed learn existing SMM policies previously found through Poincaré analysis. If these algorithms are successful in finding globally optimal policies, they may lead to bipedal locomotion controllers with both diverse behaviors and largely improved robustness. We will experimentally evaluate the utility of these control policies for human-scale bipedal robots. This thesis will extend our analysis of SMM policies on the ATRIAS robot platform to include multiple gaits and gait transitions. Our initial hardware implementation of SMM running has revealed two technical challenges we will address. 1) Modeling errors for both the simplified model and higher-order robot lead to performance degradation from simulation. We will investigate improving this with online methods of parameter estimation and learning. 2) Our experiments have only evaluated planar running and must be extended to include 3D locomotion. If these two challenges are overcome we will have experimentally evaluated SMM running, walking, and transitions between on a physical bipedal robot.


This thesis explores new approaches to the analysis of functions by combining tools from the fields of complex bases, number systems, iterated function systems (IFS) and wavelet multiresolution analyses (MRA). The foundation of this work is grounded in the identification of a link between twodimensional non-separable Haar wavelets and complex bases. The theory of complex bases and this link are generalized to higher dimensional number systems. Tilings generated by number systems are typically fractal in nature. This often yields asymmetry in the wavelet trees of functions during wavelet decomposition. To acknowledge this situation, a class of extensions of functions is developed. These are shown to be consistent with the Mallat algorithm. A formal definition of local IFS on wavelet trees (LIFSW) is constructed for MRA associated with number systems, along with an application to the inverse problem. From these investigations, a series of algorithms emerge, namely the Mallat algorithm using addressing in number systems, an algorithm for extending functions and a method for constructing LIFSW operators in higher dimensions. Applications to image coding are given and ideas for further study are also proposed. Background material is included to assist readers less familiar with the varied topics considered. In addition, an appendix provides a more detailed exposition of the fundamentals of IFS theory.


Human communities often discharge wastewaters into estuaries, influencing their organic and pollutant loading, benthic community and trophic structure. The implementation of the Water Framework Directive has encouraged the treatment of wastewater discharges across European estuaries, but the implications for invertebrate and waterbird communities are poorly understood. We explore the effects of untreated sewage discharges on the distribution and abundance of foraging black‐tailed godwits Limosa limosa and their main benthic prey (bivalves and polychaetes) on the Tejo estuary in Portugal, a major European Special Protection Area with ongoing wastewater improvements. Patches of mudflat in close proximity to sewage streams (<30 m) can support polychaete densities and biomass that are an order of magnitude higher than more distant sites (>70 m), and godwits foraging in these areas can attain the highest intake rates recorded for the estuary. However, high intake rates can also be attained on bivalve prey, and bivalve biomass and density increase slightly with distance from sewage streams. As the organic input from sewage outfalls influences invertebrate abundance and godwit foraging rates over relatively small areas, the ongoing implementation of a sewage treatment network on the Tejo estuary seems likely to have only a limited impact on the wintering godwit population. The localized effect of untreated sewage discharges on benthic communities suggests that the implications for predatory birds are relatively minor where alternative prey are available, but may be more severe in locations with more depauperate, polychaete‐dominated invertebrate communities.


Since the 1970s the application of narrative analysis to the Joseph Story has enriched
its reading. But those who apply this method to the narrative produce significantly different
results in terms of what its theme is. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the reasons for this
and to articulate as objectively as possible the theme of the Joseph Story.
Chapter One establishes the context of this investigation by evaluating the major
narrative readings of the Joseph Story. It reveals that those who apply narrative
methodologies to the story come to different conclusions about what its theme is. It notes that
the different results could be due to different narrative approaches, the literary context of the
narrative, and the complex nature of the text itself. We choose Humphreys, Longacre, and
Turner as our dialogue partners because they represent different narrative methods of reading
the Joseph Story. The reference terms `narrative criticism' and `theme' are then defined.
Chapter Two argues that the way to overcome the confusion concerning the theme (s)
of the Joseph Story is to use a methodology that addresses the limitations of the literary
approaches applied to the narrative and takes note of the wider literary context of Genesis and
the rich nature of the text. This chapter then proposes a narrative methodology of
`triangulation' that comprises plot analysis, text-linguistics and poetics.
Chapters three, four and five apply this methodology to the entire narrative in Genesis
37-50 via a detailed analysis of Genesis 37,44-45, and 49-50, the beginning, middle and end
of the narrative, respectively. The motifs that emerge from our analysis are family breakdown,
power, providence, blessing, and land. Chapter six concludes that each of these motifs is a key
concern of the Joseph Story but none by itself adequately articulates the story's theme. It is
the ecology of these motifs that enunciates the theme: God's providential work with and
through Jacob's dysfunctional family, preserving it and blessing others.


Free All Monsters! is a location based game where players turn their iPhone into a Magic Monstervision Machine and spot invisible monsters on the city streets. The game draws upon Lefebvre's agenda of 'the right to the city' by encouraging the appropriation of everyday space in which to play the game by presenting players with lusory goals anchored by environmental conditions relating to that particular space, and at that particular moment in time, rather than the desires of the designer or controller of that space. Further, these goals are not defined by us as 'the designers' of the game but by their fellow players who put into practice their own interplay between context and situation by setting a their own monster free. Within the game setting a monsters free involves players hand drawing or sculpting their own monsters and then taking a picture before uploading then to the game via the App. Therefore for us Monstrous' is not used in relation to being 'hideous or frightful' but rather relates to these fabulous imaginary creatures and as there is no limit to the number of monsters that can be set free we intend the game itself to become monstrous, meaning on a gigantic scale, self generating and beyond our control.


Biologically inspired design perhaps is one of the most important movements in engineering design. The paradigm espouses use of analogies to biology in generating conceptual designs for new technologies. In this paper, we briefly summarize some empirical findings about biologically inspired design, and then develop an information-processing theory of creative analogies in biologically inspired design. We also compare our theory with similar theories. In addition, we examine how biologically inspired design is fundamentally different from other design paradigms.


Integrative research has been the dominant theme in this Special Issue, demonstrated by contemporary examples of effective collaborations and solutions for the successful engagement of scientists in the policy and management arena. Evident in these papers is the increasing use of the term 'best available science' (BAS) as a basis for well-informed resource management decisions. The term is used to engender credibility and trust among stakeholders and promotes greater awareness, communication, involvement, transparency and understanding among research, policy and management communities. However, there remains no clear statement of the properties of BAS or guidance on its practical application in the decision-making process. We define the attributes that underpin BAS and examine the issues of uncertainty, risk and communication as key challenges to successful integrative management. We advocate an interdisciplinary process that facilitates understanding of discipline-based knowledge structures, articulates uncertainty and risk about the scientific information, and promotes engagement and trust among the generators and users of information. Ultimately, successful management of aquatic ecosystems will rely on scientists, managers and decision makers who have the skills and courage to apply the best science available and not wait for the best science possible.


The extent to which the eddy statistics of the Martian atmosphere can be inferred from the mean state and highly simplified assumptions about diabatic and frictional processes is investigated using an idealized general circulation model (GCM) with Newtonian relaxation thermal forcing. An iterative technique, adapted from previous terrestrial studies, is used to generate radiative equilibrium temperatures such that the three-dimensional time-mean temperature fields of the idealized model match means computed from the Mars Analysis Correction Data Assimilation (MACDA). Focusing on a period of strong Northern Hemisphere eddy activity prior to winter solstice, it is found that the idealized model reproduces some key features of the spatial patterns of the MACDA eddy temperature variance and kinetic energy fields. The idealized model can also simulate aspects of MACDA's seasonal cycle of spatial patterns of low-level eddy meridional wind and temperature variances. The most notable weakness of the model is its eddy amplitudes—both their absolute values and seasonal variations are quite unrealistic, for reasons unclear. The idealized model was also run with a mean flow based on output from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) full-physics Mars GCM. The idealized model captures the difference in mean flows between MACDA and the GFDL Mars GCM and reproduces a bias in the more complex model's eddy zonal wavenumber distribution. This implies that the mean flow is an important influence on transient eddy wavenumbers and that improving the GFDL Mars GCM's mean flow would make its eddy scales more realistic.


The research this article is inscribe on comes from the belief that the current characteristics of the communications ecosystem generate the conditions for the occurrence of disinformation ploys due to informational insufficiency and partial information, abuse of fidelity to the source, the absence of interpretive and investigative journalism and the incomprehensibility of the information. The main objective is to determine the relationship between the journalistic handling of information as the creator of socialized realities and dis-information, from the semantic analysis and interpretation of content based of the digital editions of 3 Spanish printed media of daily rotation (El Pais, ABC and El Mundo), in retrospective to the listing in the stock market of BFA-Bankia (6th to 20th July, 2011) and prospectively on the interval after 10 consecutive days of losses (3rd to 17th May, 2012). The main results show endogenous journalistic dis-information or poor handling of the financial information made public through the analyzed media existed, due to the creation of positive expectations of the re-evaluation of the financial holding on the stock market. Meanwhile, the lack of investigative journalism, fidelity to official sources and the language used in financial reporting in the media outlets mentioned above, also contributed to the favorable scenario for dis-information.


This paper proposes a use of multi-factor seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) in event study analysis to study mergers and acquisitions in Singapore's financial industry. We also study the cross-sector (banking and insurance) domestic acquisitions in Singapore's financial industry. In contrast to the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) method, it is found that OLS method seems to underestimate the value of the sample cumulative abnormal returns as compared to SUR. The study also found that firms post mergers and takeovers in the banking and insurance industries tend to have high a possibility of negative returns.


In this unprecedented survey of British cinema from the 1930s to the New Wave of the 1960s, Marcia Landy explores how cinematic representation and social history converge. Landy focuses on the genre film, a product of British mass culture often dismissed by critics as "unrealistic," showing that in England such cinema subtly dramatized unresolved cultural conflicts and was, in fact, more popular than critics have claimed. Her discussion covers hundreds of works--including historical films, films of empire, war films, melodrama, comedy, science-fiction, horror, and social problem films--and reveals their relation to changing attitudes toward class, race, national identity, sexuality, and gender. Landy begins by describing the status and value of genre theory, then provides a history of British film production that illuminates the politics and personalities connected with the major studios. In vivid accounts of the films within each genre, she analyzes styles, codes, and conventions to show how the films negotiate history, fantasy, and lived experience. Throughout Landy creates a dynamic sense of genre and of how the genres shape, not merely reflect, cultural conflicts.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


The incidence of skin cancer is increasing by epidemic proportions. Basal cell cancer remains the most common skin neoplasm, and simple excision is generally curative. Squamous cell cancers may be preceded by actinic keratoses-premalignant lesions that are treated with cryotherapy, excision, curettage or topical 5-fluorouracil. While squamous cell carcinoma is usually easily cured with local excision, it may invade deeper structures and metastasize. Aggressive local growth and metastasis are common features of malignant melanoma, which accounts for 75 percent of all deaths associated with skin cancer. Early detection greatly improves the prognosis of patients with malignant melanoma. The differential diagnosis of pigmented lesions is challenging, although the ABCD and seven-point checklists are helpful in determining which pigmented lesions require excision. Sun exposure remains the most important risk factor for all skin neoplasms. Thus, patients should be taught basic "safe sun" measures: sun avoidance during peak ultraviolet-B hours; proper use of sunscreen and protective clothing; and avoidance of suntanning.


Outsourced computations (where a client requests a server to perform some computation on its behalf) are becoming increasingly important due to the rise of Cloud Computing and the proliferation of mobile devices. Since cloud providers may not be trusted, a crucial problem is the verification of the integrity and correctness of such computation, possibly in a public way, i.e., the result of a computation can be verified by any third party, and requires no secret key -- akin to a digital signature on a message. We present new protocols for publicly verifiable secure outsourcing of Evaluation of High Degree Polynomials and Matrix Multiplication. Compared to previously proposed solutions, ours improve in efficiency and offer security in a stronger model. The paper also discusses several practical applications of our protocols.


The brain is organized around two complementary principles: modularity and connectivity. This PhD thesis introduces and evaluates novel methods to study both principles in the human brain in vivo. These methods are based on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which is sensitive to the activation of brain regions and on diffusion MRI, which is sensitive to the structure of the connections between brain regions. We have first evaluated the usefulness of diffusion MRI in the context of effective connectivity studies. Such studies require an explicit model of how the brain is anatomically connected. We show that tractography based on diffusion MRI provides support for a large number of the connections that were proposed in eight previously published effective connectivity studies and also suggest a number of connections that were not used in these studies. However, the methods used in this study are problematic in regions where multiple pathways are crossing. Moreover they do not quantify the probability of finding a connection between regions. We have therefore developed a probabilistic formulation of Q-Ball Imaging, a diffusion MRI method which can resolve up to three different fibre pathways in each voxel. We have recasted the Q-Ball Imaging method in a Bayesian framework and have developed a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to sample from the posterior distribution on the fibre directions. This algorithm shows good performance both in simulated data and in real diffusion MRI data. The last two studies in this thesis deal with the modularity of the brain, as defined by patterns of anatomical connectivity and functional connectivity during rest. A large number of studies have shown that the resting brain shows a remarkable degree of organization. More specifically, networks that co-activate during task performance show a high degree of co-activation during rest. The third experimental chapter investigates whether we cannot only define functional networks based on resting-state data, but also functionally-defined regions. This chapter is based on the parcellation of a region on the medial wall of the frontal cortex, the SMA region. This region has been consistently parcellated into two sub-regions in a large number of studies using different modalities. We have developed a clustering method for resting-state fMRI data based on the fuzzy clustering algorithm and the Discrete Wavelet Transform. Using this method, we show that the clustering pattern of the SMA region is highly consistent between diffusion MRI and resting-state fMRI data. The resting-state fMRI signal is dynamic in nature, which potentially leads to inconsistencies in clustering patterns within subjects, which would be highly undesirable. The fourth experimental chapter shows that this is indeed the case and proposes an optimization of the Normalized cuts clustering algorithm that significantly improves the within-subject consistency of clustering patterns. This chapter also introduces a heuristic to determine the appropriate number of clusters for resting-state fMRI data. This heuristic is based on the uniqueness of the functional connectivity pattern of each cluster and stops increasing the number of clusters when the functional connectivity pattern of any two clusters has become statistically identical.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The European Union's interest in exploiting the fishing resources of Western Sahara has ignited the debate over Morocco's right to a region that the United Nations has classified as a Non-Self-Governing Territory. This paper examines the genesis of the debate and briefly discuses its ethical implications for companies that opt to do business in Western Sahara. Keywords: International law, Self-determination, Exploitation, Human rights, Corporate responsibility INTRODUCTION There is hardly a mention of Western Sahara in international circles today without its linkage to the principle of self-determination. This is largely because of the struggle of the Western Saharans (the Saharawis) against the occupation of their territory by Morocco, an ongoing struggle that has left its imprint on the evolutionary process of the principle of self-determination. In order to understand how the struggle has been fuelled by the competitive business environment created by globalization it is helpful to consider the historical developments that have given rise to the Western Sahara problem. BACKGROUND HISTORY Western Sahara (formerly known as Spanish Sahara) was settled by a mix of thirteenth century Arab and sub-Saharan African immigrants who by the eighteenth century had blended into "a group of nomadic tribes called the Ahl Essahel" (Brazier, 1997:12). Although Spanish settlement in Western Sahara dates back to 1884 when Spain proclaimed the area a "protectorate," it was not until 1934 when the French overcame Western Saharans' (Saharawis') resistance that Spain established its colonial rule over the territory (Hodges, 1983; Brazier, 1997). Even then, the Saharawis carried on their pastoral economy and maintained their system of justice until their brief uprising in 1957-58 (Hodges, 1983). Thus Spain's interest in the territory remained minimal until it discovered that the territory had phosphates. The discovery heightened Spain's interest in Western Sahara. The heightened interest resulted in the introduction of political changes by the Spanish government in 1958, changes that began to transform Western Sahara into a colonial entity. Shortly after, the wind of political independence began to blow over the African continent. In the light of the wind of change, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 1960 resolution of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Under pressure from the UN General Assembly, Spain endorsed the 1966 UN doctrine of selfdetermination. But in 1967 when the Saharawis formed a liberation movement and demonstrated for their right to self-determination, Spain brutally repressed the demonstrations and banned the movement. In 1973 the Saharawis formed a new movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front). The new movement resorted to armed struggle against colonialism. Meanwhile, Morocco and Mauritania having gained their own independence from France, and motivated by their desire for the natural resources of Western Sahara and by their political ambitions, began to make sovereignty claims to the territory. But neither was actively involved in fostering the Saharawis anti-colonial struggle against Spain. Thus the Saharawis turned to Libya and Algeria for support (Hodges, 1983). As the United Nations and the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) now African Union (AU) increased pressure on Spain to grant independence to Western Sahara, Mauritania and Morocco intensified their claims to the territory. Morocco claimed that its sultans had historically exercised sovereignty over the territory. On its part, Mauritania based its claim on the ethnic and cultural ties it has had with Western Sahara (Mercer, 1976; Thompson, 1980). However, Spain claimed that before its occupation "the Western Sahara had been terra nullius" (Thompson, 1980:172). As Rezette (1975) notes, "this is historically and legally an open question and hence should, properly speaking be settled by the International Court at Hague" (Rezette, 1975: 149). …


In this work we present a hardware-accelerated direct volume rendering system for visualizing multivariate wave functions in semiconducting quantum dot (QD) simulations. The simulation data contains the probability density values of multiple electron orbitals for up to tens of millions of atoms, computed by the NEMO3-D quantum device simulator software run on large-scale cluster architectures. These atoms form two interpenetrating crystalline face centered cubic lattices (FCC), where each FCC cell comprises the eight corners of a cubic cell and six additional face centers. We have developed compact representation techniques for the FCC lattice within PC graphics hardware texture memory, hardware-accelerated linear and cubic reconstruction schemes, and new multi-field rendering techniques utilizing logarithmic scale transfer functions. Our system also enables the user to drill down through the simulation data and execute statistical queries using general-purpose computing on the GPU (GPGPU).


The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of the association of Alternaria alternata and A. dauci on the physiologic quality of parsley seeds inoculated by two methods: conidia suspension and water restriction. For the inoculation with suspension, a solution containing 105 conidia of A. alternata, A. dauci and both species (A. alternata + A. dauci), was prepared in which the seeds remained for 30 minutes. For inoculation by water restriction, a PDA medium was prepared, supplemented with 33.1 g/L of manitol, in which the A. alternata, A. dauci and A. alternata + A. dauci colonies grew. The seeds remain on the plates for 48 hours. After the inoculation, the quality of the seeds was evaluated by testing in the laboratory and greenhouse. The parsley seeds had their physiological quality damaged by association with A. alternata and A. dauci under laboratory conditions, especially in relation to germination, first count germination, abnormal seedlings, percentage of dead seeds and the cold test.


Abstract Evidence on whether nutritional supplementation affects physical activity (PA) during early childhood is limited. We examined the long-term effects of lipid-based nutrient supplements (LNS) on total PA, moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) of children at 4–6 years using an accelerometer for 1 week. Their mothers were enrolled in the International Lipid-based Nutrient Supplement-DYAD randomised controlled trial in Ghana, assigned to daily LNS or multiple micronutrients (MMN) during pregnancy through 6 months postpartum or Fe and folic acid (IFA) during pregnancy and placebo for 6 months postpartum. From 6 to 18 months, children in the LNS group received LNS; the other two groups received no supplements. Analysis was done with intention to treat comparing two groups: LNS v. non-LNS (MMN+ IFA). Of the sub-sample of 375 children fitted with accelerometers, 353 provided sufficient data. Median vector magnitude (VM) count was 1374 (interquartile range (IQR) 309), and percentages of time in MVPA and SB were 4·8 (IQR 2) and 31 (IQR 8) %, respectively. The LNS group (n 129) had lower VM (difference in mean −73 (95 % CI −20, −126), P = 0·007) and spent more time in SB (LNS v. non-LNS: 32·3 v. 30·5 %, P = 0·020) than the non-LNS group (n 224) but did not differ in MVPA (4·4 v. 4·7 %, P = 0·198). Contrary to expectations, provision of LNS in early life slightly reduced the total PA and increased the time in SB but did not affect time in MVPA. Given reduced social-emotional difficulties in the LNS group previously reported, including hyperactivity, one possible explanation is less restless movement in the LNS group.


Criticism of procurement activities in Mexico comes from people who were interested in selfish and improper schemes which Embassy and [Floyd D.] Ransom, who was in charge of procurement for Defense Supplies Corporation, had to stop; many uninformed people on Board of Economic Welfare and in other government agencies willing to believe reports; whole program of collaboration with Mexico could be wrecked if the schemers have their way; Foreign Services have responsibility of keeping U.S. Government informed of Axis activities, espionage, etc. in other American republics, but not the responsibility of eliminating them; that is responsibility of individual country, and most of them are doing so as effectively as U.S.; whenever Embassy brings to attention of Mexican authorities information regarding axis activities, action is taken at once; if protection against sabotage is requested for any American interest, that protection is given; has inquired of American owners and operators of hydroelectric plants and mines in Mexico if they were getting adequate protection by Mexican authorities and the answer was "yes"; they would say at once if they needed further protection; for U.S. Government to take steps in Mexico which Mexican Government is already adquately taking would be out of the question; if anyone criticizes Department for not meeting its obligation in these respects it is done out of ignorance or ill will; information gathered by diplomatic and consular officers on axis activities, espionage, probable sabotage, etc. more accurate than that gathered by Military and Naval Intelligence or FBI; such information is passed on to U.S. Government and to agencies concerned in U.S. and to Government of country to which Foreign Officers are accredited, but any action must be taken by the Government of that country.


Photoacoustic (PA) dyes, which absorb near-infrared (NIR) light to generate an ultrasonic signal, can be detected at centimeter depths in tissues with significantly higher resolution than dyes imaged with fluorescence-based methods. As such, PA agents show great promise as research tools for the study of live-animal disease models. However, the development of activatable PA probes has been hampered by the relative scarcity of appropriate PA-active molecular platforms with properties that can be manipulated in a rational manner. Herein we synthesized and evaluated six modifications to the aza-BODIPY dye platform with respect to their absorbance, fluorescence, and PA properties. We identified a promising conformationally restricted aza-BODIPY (CRaB) scaffold that prioritizes three criteria necessary for the design of stimulus-responsive dyes with optimal ratiometric PA response: absorbance at NIR wavelengths, strong PA intensity, and large Δλ upon interaction with the desired stimulus. Using this scaffold, we synthesized three chemically diverse stimulus-responsive PA probes and demonstrated between 2- and 8-fold improvements in theoretical ratiometric response in vitro. This suggests that improvements in PA parameters are generalizable. Finally, we validated the in vitro turnover of each CRaB PA probe and demonstrated the in vivo potential of the CRaB scaffold by direct comparison to an established hypoxia-responsive probe for the detection of tumor hypoxia.


The central role of iron in oxygen transport makes it a key element for sports performance. Since acid-based balance is among the most important functions conducted by iron and the dominant energy system in wrestling depends on acid lactic system, then the investigation of wrestlers' iron status would be an important issue. The present study was conducted to study the short term adaptation to some iron indices of elite wrestlers to two and three non-consecutive sessions of three types of aerobic, anaerobic, and wrestling exercises. A total of 24 elite volunteer wrestlers with the history of at least 5 years sport activity and three wrestling sessions per week were randomly categorized into three groups of eight people practicing aerobic, anaerobic, and routine wrestling exercises. The exercises were conducted during three non-consecutive sessions within a week. The aerobic exercises included 35 min of continuous running with 130 bits per minute (BPM) on a treadmill machine, the anaerobic exercises included 15 min circuit movements and 15 min rest with 160 BPM, and the wrestling training included routine wrestling exercises. Blood sampling was done 24 h before the first session, 24 h after the second session, and 24 h after the third session in order to investigate the short term adaptations. The study of short term adaptation to two non-consecutive exercise sessions showed that aerobic exercise as compared to wrestling exercise led to significant decline in serum iron (p=0.006). Wrestling exercise as compared to aerobic and anaerobic exercise led to significant decline of serum ferritin [respectively (p=0.014) and (p=0.004)]. Serum TIBC of three aerobic, anaerobic, and wrestling exercises groups had no significant difference (F=1.24, p=0.309). The study of short term adaptation to three sessions of non-consecutive exercises showed that none of the variables of serum iron, ferritin, and TIBC in the three aerobic, anaerobic, and wrestling exercises groups had no significant change [respectively (F=2.4, p=0.11), (F=3.04, p=0.07), and (F=1.33, p=0.29)]. In the study of short term adaptation to two non-consecutive stages, the wrestlers who practiced wrestling exercises confronted the first stage of iron deficiency in short term adaptation to two non-consecutive stages, because they showed lower level of iron stores (reduced level of serum ferritin). On the other hand, the wrestlers who practiced aerobic exercises had lower level of serum iron and so were settled in the second stage of iron deficiency. However, there was no difference observed between the practical methods in terms of iron indices in the study on short term adaptation to the three stages of non-consecutive stages.
Keywords: Iron, ferritin, total iron binding capacity, aerobic, anaerobic, wrestling


One of the most important hindrances that still impede many renewable energy projects is the perception of such projects by potential lenders and investors as low-profit and risky undertakings. This paper aims at delineating a more precise picture of these groups of energy projects explaining more in detail the risk characteristics that are shared by both groups of energy projects and the essential differences between them. Therefore, different types of green power generators are distinguished and the market position of green independent power (green IPPs) producers is discussed. Then, the risks of renewable energy projects are discussed following a structural approach of a risk classification into technical, commercial and other (mainly political) risks.


Assessment of students' programming submissions has been the focus of interest in many studies. Although the final submissions capture the whole program, they often tell very little about how it was developed. In this paper, we are able to look at intermediate programming steps using a unique dataset that captures a series of snapshots showing how students developed their program over time. We assessed each of these intermediate steps and performed a fine-grained concept-based analysis on each step to identify the most common programming paths. Analysis of results showed that most of the students tend to incrementally build the program and improve its correctness. This finding provides us with evidence that intermediate programming steps are important, and need to be taken into account for not only improving user modelling in educational programming systems, but also for providing better feedback to students.


With the devastation wrought by the 2008 'property market bubble' still fresh in the mind on one hand, and a spate of recent enthusiasm manifested in the 'rush to the property ladder' on the other, the newly enacted Directive 2014/17 seeks to strike a middle ground of reasonableness in the delicate and sensitive matter of the security granted by the buyer of a residential property.
 Against this background, the present contribution analyses, first and foremost, the norms of a regulatory nature introduced by the new EU piece of legislation and the attempt to shape a new category of consumer. Among these precepts, attention is particularly afforded to the principle, of a public nature, prescribing that the bank's assessment to grant a mortgage shall be prevailingly based on the ability of the mortgagor to repay the debt, rather than on the expected (but undemonstrated) burgeoning future value of the property.
Furthermore, the discussion focuses on the private law principles introduced by the Directive. Among these is the onus lying on the bank to provide adequate information about the terms and conditions of the mortgage. More interestingly, the directive at stake derogates from, and goes beyond, the notion of prohibition of 'agreement of forfeiture' existing in some civil law jurisdictions. This novelty, the ancillary legal provisions of art 28 of Directive 2014/17 as well as their impact on the system of civil proceedings and foreclosure existing in each country, provide fertile ground for a legal and comparative analysis.


A magnitude 8.6 strike-slip earthquake within an oceanic plate raises fundamental questions about earthquake physics. The magnitude (Mw) 8.6 earthquake of 11 April 2012 off the coast of Sumatra is one for the record books. It is far and away the largest strike-slip earthquake in the instrumental record. The Mw 8.2 aftershock that occurred just over 2 hours later is also among the largest such earthquakes. Furthermore, the 11 April mainshock may be the largest intraplate earthquake ever recorded, although the location (see the figure) is consistent with the notion of a wide, diffuse plate boundary that bisects the Indo-Australian Plate near the Ninetyeast Ridge (1). The earthquakes are the latest in a series of large (Mw 8) intraplate strike-slip earthquakes in oceanic lithosphere (2). What do these earthquakes reveal about earthquake physics, and how might they change earthquake hazard assessment?


Given two different brain-scan modalities, like fMRI and MEG, how can we combine them, to achieve better resolution in both space and time, than each? Given power grid measurements (voltage, current), how can we spot patterns, anomalies and do forecasts? We answer these types of questions in the two parts of the thesis. In the first part of the thesis, we discuss our work on signal reconstruction. We live in a world that is flooded by streaming signals that come from different sources in different resolutions which often account for the same information. One example is historical records on patient counts; one TV source may report the patient counts in weekly intervals, while a newspaper source may report in monthly intervals. Another example is the brain activity signals; while fMRI has high spatial resolution and low temporal resolution, it is vice versa for MEG/EEG. We are interested in constructing higher resolution signals that complement those signals from different sources or modes in different resolutions. We discuss our work on signal reconstruction in two applications: historical epidemiological data and brain data. 1) Historical epidemiological data: We introduce constraints such as smoothness and periodicity, utilizing the well-known epidemiological model 'susceptible-infectedsusceptible (SIS)'. Also we discuss how we can utilize techniques like annihilating filters and discrete cosine transforms to discover linear or multiple periodicities in the sequences. 2) Brain data: We discuss our proposed approaches that employ various assumptions such as sparsity, low rank, or smoothness and show that reconstructed brain signal displays richer information of fMRI and MEG, interpolating in time and space in a principled way. In the second part of the thesis, we discuss our work on signal mining. Raw signals can contain unnoticeable hidden information that is not observable in their raw forms. One example is power grid signals (voltages, currents); signals in its raw form do not lead to straightforward interpretation. Another example is aircraft sensor signals; sensor signals are result of complex physical models which do not provide straight-forward interpretation. If we want to understand the data, we should explore it deeper (if you mind it, mine it!), preferably with domain knowledge. We are interested in mining signals that can provide us with better interpretation of the data, and aid us with various data mining tasks such as forecasting, anomaly detection, etc. We discuss our signal mining work on two different application domains: power grid data and aircraft data. 1) Power grid data: We introduce our works that incorporate a physics model, the BIG model, to better interpret the data, and utilize tensor factorization and Holt-Winters to model the data for anomaly detection and forecasting. Experimental results on CMU and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) power grid dataset demonstrate 32% and 27% error reduction in forecasting compared to the latest algorithm. Also we show that proposed algorithm successfully detects anomalous events. 2) Aircraft data: We discuss our proposed method on analyzing aircraft sensor signals for detecting anomalous events using coupled tensor factorization.


This thesis examines the imperialistic literary imaginings in New Guinea and the indigenous literature that has emerged in the last two and a half decades. The experiences of colonialism and the invasive role colonialism played in the cultural, social and religious life of the people of Papua New Guinea are the centre of discussion in this thesis. Cultural invasion made possible the setting up of colonial institutions which could maintain their power, control and dominance by forcibly conditioning the indigenous mind with a negative knowledge, and demanded the indigenous people to accept without protest, dissent, or resistance the colonial control, power and knowledge. In the imperialistic colonial discourse there was nothing human about the New Guinean, except that the New Guinean was part of the literary landscape the colonial writers explored for their own self and cultural identity. It is against this literature that the emergence of indigenous self-expression is founded. The emergence of the indigenous Papua New Guinean author is entwined with the social, political, cultural, and economical transition from being a colonial territory to an independent nation. The Papua New Guinean authors studied are aware of these experiences; this forces them to draw from their own personal experiences as much as possible. It is this feature of drawing from personal experiences that characterizes the Papua New Guinea narrative tradition as autobiographical. However the emphasis of this thesis is to determine, qualify and expose the literature of Papua New Guinea as a post-colonial literature. Theories of post-colonial literature are used frequently in this thesis, but not with the intent to obstruct one of the aims of this thesis: to analyse from within the literature of Papua New Guinea, which when closely analysed reveals it has its own influences from the oral traditions as well as from the indigenous social, cultural and linguistic contexts.


This thesis is motivated by the need for noise control in aircraft engine with orifices and perforated liner. The presence of high-level acoustic excitation, different flow situations either bias flow, grazing flow or any combination in the aircraft engine, makes the acoustic behavior complex due to the interaction between sound and flow over the lined wall. Both systematic acoustic prediction of aircraft engines and liner optimization necessitate progress in impedance measurement methods by including the effect of the complex flow situations. The aim of the present thesis is to experimentally study the change in acoustic properties of orifices and perforated liners under bias or grazing flow.In order to study the effect of different combinations of bias flow and high-level acoustic excitation, an in-duct orifice has been investigated with finely controlled acoustic excitation levels and bias flow speeds. This provides a detailed study of the transition from cases when high-level acoustic excitation causes flow reversal in the orifice to cases when the bias flow maintains the flow direction. Nonlinear impedance is measured and compared, and a scattering matrix and its eigenvalues are investigated to study the potentiality of acoustic energy dissipation or production. A harmonic method is proposed for modelling the impedance, especially the resistance, which captures the change in impedance results at low frequencies compared with experimental results.The presence of grazing flow can increase the resistance of acoustic liners and shift their resonator frequency. So-called impedance eduction technology has been widely studied during the past decades, but with a limited confidence due to the interaction of grazing flow and acoustic waves. A comparison has been performed with different test rigs and methods from the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Numerical work has been performed to investigate the effect of shear flow and viscosity. Our study indicates that the impedance eduction process should be consistent with that of the code of wave propagation computation, for example with the same assumption regarding shear flow and viscosity. A systematic analysis for measurement uncertainties is proposed in order to understand the essentials for data quality assessment and model validation. The idea of using different Mach numbers for wave dispersion and in the Ingard-Myers boundary condition has been tested regarding their effect on impedance eduction. In conclusion, a local Mach number based on friction velocity is introduced and validated using both our own experimental results and those of previous studies.


A broad-spectrum semisynthetic, ampicillin-derived ureidopenicillin antibiotic. Piperacillin binds to penicillin binding proteins (PBP), the enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of peptidoglycan, a critical component of the bacterial cell wall. T his blockade leads to the interruption of cell wall synthesis, consequently, leading to bacterial cell growth inhibition and cell lysis. Qeios · Definition, February 7, 2020


Work–life programs (WLPs) have been widely adopted and implemented by public organizations as a means of providing employees with greater choices and flexibility in coordinating their work and personal lives. Although previous research has shown that these programs are positively related to various employee attitudes and behaviors, empirical evidence about whether and how such relationships vary by type of WLP is relatively scant. In this study, we categorize WLPs into two different types—work-oriented and life-oriented programs—and explore whether and how participating in distinct types of WLPs has varying impacts on employee work attitudes. A series of Mahalanobis distance matching is conducted using data from the 2011 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The results indicate that the use of life-oriented programs has a positive and substantive impact on employee satisfaction and commitment, while the effect of participating in work-oriented programs is not statistically significant.


Objective: Ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) is a complex multi-factorial disease process having both metabolic and biomechanical factors. The role of surgical intervention as well as the choice of approach weather anterior or posterior is ambiguous. The objective of this study was to assess the surgical out come and post operative functional improvement in patients with cervical OPLL at a tertiary care centre. Patients and Methods: This prospective study included 63 patients of cervical OPLL who underwent either anterior and/or posterior surgeries in Department of Neurosurgery, Nizam′s Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad between June 2009 to May 2011. Patient′s data including age, sex, pre and post operative functional status, radiographic findings and OPLL subtypes were recorded and analyzed over a follow up ranging up to minimum two years. Results: The mean age of the patients was 51.1 (range 30-80 years) involving 14 women and 49 men. Out of 63 patients, 14 patients underwent surgery by anterior approach (corpectomy and fusion) and all of them improved (P = 0.52). 49 patients underwent surgery by posterior approach where decompressive laminectomy was performed in 40, laminectomy with instrumentation was done in 5, laminoplasty was done in 3 and 1 patient underwent both anterior and posterior surgeries. Of those who underwent posterior surgery, 40 patients improved, 7 remained the same as their preoperative status (who were having signal intensity changes on T2W MRI) and 2 patients deteriorated in the immediate post operative period and then showed gradual improvement. All the patients were followed up for 24 months. The mean pre-operative Nurick grade was 2.82 which later on improved to 2.03 post surgery (P < 0.05). Minor complications included wound infections in two patients (1.26%). Conclusions: Anterior cervical decompression and reconstruction is a safe and appropriate treatment for cervical spondylitic myelopathy in the setting of single or two level OPLL. Laminectomy or laminoplasty is indicated in patients with preserved cervical lordosis having three or more levels of involvement. Younger patients with good pre operative functional status and less than 2 levels of involvement have better outcome following anterior surgery.


Many high-income countries have skill-selective immigration policies, favoring prospective immigrants who are highly skilled. I investigate whether it is permissible for high-income countries to adopt such policies. Adopting what Joseph Carens calls a "realistic approach" to the ethics of immigration, I argue first that it is in principle permissible for high-income countries to take skill as a consideration in favor of selecting one prospective immigrant rather than another. I argue second that high-income countries must ensure that their skill-selective immigration policies do not contribute to the nonfulfillment of their duty to aid residents of lowand middle-income countries.


Background and Objective: Becker Muscular Dystrophy (BMD) is a subtype of dystrophinopathies and designated as "mild form of dystrophinopathy". The frequency rate of the disease is 1:18000 to 1:30000 in different populations and the symptoms are presented at about 5-6 years of age. The diagnostic panel composed of Serum Ceratin Kinase (SCK) measurement, Electromyography (EMG), and as a major component, muscle biopsy and immunohistochemistry for dystrophines; finally the results should be confirmed by Western blot (WB) analysis, which is a sensitive method for protein detection. The aim of this study was using utrophin, an autosomal homologue for dystrophin, which is upregulated in dystrophinopathies, parallel to WB in order to evaluate its diagnostic value. Materials & Methods: In this case-control study, fifteen clinically suspected cases of BMD were examined from 2006 to 2008. After muscle biopsy and dystrophin IHC, the muscle samples were immunostained for utrophin and the tissue extract were analyzed for protein components. Results: In all of the cases, the results revealed partial staining for utrophin in the sarcolemma and pale or distorted band of dystrophin in WBA. Conclusion: Utrophin immunostain could be considered as an important component of BMD diagnostic panel and may be substituted for WBA, which is an expensive and time-consuming method.


Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) has become a powerful tool for social scientists due to its inexpensiveness, ease of use, and ability to attract large numbers of workers. While the subject pool is diverse, there are numerous questions regarding the composition of the workers as a function of when the "Human Intelligence Task" (HIT) is posted. Given the "queue" nature of HITs and the disparity in geography of participants, it is natural to wonder whether HIT posting time/day can have an impact on the population that is sampled. We address this question using a panel survey on AMT and show (surprisingly) that except for gender, there is no statistically significant difference in terms of demographics characteristics as a function of HIT posting time.


Digital desktop fabrication technologies such as 3D printing are currently being lauded in the popular press as a potentially socially transformative technology. We somewhat agree, arguing that 3D printing holds great socioeconomic implications, but also that more sustained attention should be paid to the ways in which 3D printing is entering into our creative environments. Our focus in this article is on the use of rapid prototyping by creatives such as architects, designers, and DIY advocates, since it is within these contexts where the popular themes of 3D printing are currently most concrete. To this end, in section one we provide some background for desktop digital fabrication, contextualizing 3D printing within industrial processes and Maker subcultures. In section two, we summarize our environmental scan of relevant popular and academic literature, using this to identify key trends in this area. We supplement this discussion in section three using our analysis of a 'critical making' session that took participants through a process of designing and printing simple objects as well as follow–up interviews with these participants. In the concluding section, we target four areas in need of future research.


PET Scans are most often used for detecting cancer and other malignant tumors because for most of them, glucose uptake is higher than in normal tissues. However, in mesothelioma, our study showed excessive deposits of Asbestos of 0.5 mg BDORT units, and markedly reduced Glucose uptake of less than 1/30 of normal tissue. As a consequence, the authors found that, in the location where there is a mesothelioma, distinctive dark black areas much darker than any normal tissue appear in the PET Scan. Therefore, a PET Scan taken parallel to the front & back of the chest wall often shows pitch-black areas on the chest wall of the patient, located on the ribs in the case of large black areas and between the ribs in the case of small black areas. If the amount of Asbestos in these areas is found to be very high in the same location where the glucose uptake is very low, one can suspect the presence of mesothelioma, which is often found at the inner wall of the chest cavity or the peritoneum in the abdomen with significantly increased Osteopontine (about 350-400 times that of normal tissue) and very significant increase in Gastrin Releasing Peptides (more than 1200 times that of normal tissue). In some patients, the only abnormal blood chemistry detected was abnormally increased Pro-Gastrin Releasing Peptide. This dark black area on the PET Scan image taken parallel to front and back of chest wall (with marked increase in asbestos, Gastrin-Releasing Peptide, & Osteopontine and marked decrease in glucose uptake in the pathological tissue) can be considered a characteristic finding for the diagnosis of mesothelioma.


Signal processing and pattern recognition algorithms make extensive use of convolution. In many cases, computational accuracy is not as important as computational speed. In feature extraction, for instance, the features of interest in a signal are usually quite distorted. This form of noise justifies some level of quantization in order to achieve faster feature extraction. Our approach consists of approximating regions of the signal with low degree polynomials, and then differentiating the resulting signals in order to obtain impulse functions (or derivatives of impulse functions). With this representation, convolution becomes extremely simple and can be implemented quite effectively. The true convolution can be recovered by integrating the result of the convolution. This method yields substantial speed up in feature extraction and is applicable to convolutional neural networks.


Motivated by the goal of building a device capable of detecting when a user takes a bite of food, we examine whether there is a correlation between linear wrist motion and bite detection. Such a device could be used to manage weight loss by tracking eating trends over time and providing real time feedback to the user regarding eating rate or total consumption. A comprehensive analysis of tracking linear motion using low cost inertial sensors is presented. Based on this theory, we discuss the design and tracking accuracy of a prototype bite counting device. We show that tracking position using low cost, off-the-shelf inertial sensors is impractical over any sustained period of time. However, by detecting peaks in acceleration data we are able to look for a characteristic motion during eating. We recorded data from subjects eating a meal while wearing the device. Their wrist motions were analyzed in an attempt to identify a characteristic linear motion of the wrist that corresponds to the taking of a bite of food. Our results show that there is too much variability in motion during eating to detect bites of food based on acceleration peaks alone.


Inundation maps are a fundamental tool for coastal risk management and in particular for designing evacuation maps and evacuation planning. These in turn are a necessary component of the tsunami warning systems' last-mile. In Italy inundation maps are informed by a probabilistic tsunami hazard model. Based on a given level of acceptable risk, Italian authorities in charge for this task recommended to consider, as design hazard intensity, the average return period of 2500 years and the 84th percentile of the hazard model uncertainty. An available, regional-scale tsunami hazard model was used that covers the entire Italian coastline. Safety factors based on analysis of run-up variability and an empirical coastal dissipation law on a digital terrain model (DTM) were applied to convert the regional hazard into the design run-up and the corresponding evacuation maps with a GIS-based approach. Since the regional hazard cannot fully capture the local-scale variability, this simplified and conservative approach is considered a viable and feasible practice to inform local coastal risk management in the absence of high-resolution hazard models. The present work is a first attempt to quantify the uncertainty stemming from such procedure. We compare the GIS-based inundation maps informed by a regional model with those obtained from a local high-resolution hazard model. Two locations on the coast of eastern Sicily were considered, and the local hazard was addressed with the same seismic model as the regional one, but using a higher-resolution DTM and massive numerical inundation calculations with the GPU-based Tsunami-HySEA nonlinear shallow water code. This study shows that the GIS-based inundation maps used for planning deal conservatively with potential hazard underestimation at the local scale, stemming from typically unmodeled uncertainties in the numerical source and tsunami evolution models. The GIS-based maps used for planning fall within the estimated "error-bar" due to such uncertainties. The analysis also demonstrates the need to develop local assessments to serve very specific risk mitigation actions to reduce the uncertainty. More in general, the presented case-studies highlight the importance to explore ways of dealing with uncertainty hidden within the high-resolution numerical inundation models, e.g., related to the crude parameterization of the bottom friction, or the inaccuracy of the DTM.


ABSTRACT Across disciplines, scholars extol the revolutionary potential of mobile technologies in developing nations. Mobile phones in particular may facilitate economic and social development. However, our understanding of mobile phone's interaction with a developing country's society is limited by two factors: first, development is often accompanied by social and political conflict; and second, scholars often provide a broad overview on the use of these technologies. We address these limitations through the use of data collected from ethnographic interviews conducted in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We highlight the everyday use of mobile technologies in developing nations that experience political conflict. We conclude that while mobile technologies have some potential of mitigating social inequality, political conflict, and safety concerns, these opportunities for meaningful use are hampered by limitations associated with daily life in developing countries such as irregular access to electricity and network coverage boundaries.


Studied the dissipation behavior of benalaxyl beneath direct sunlight by using Fe doped TiO2 nanoparticles (FeTiO2) as catalyst. FeTiO2 nanoparticles are synthesized and characterized by way of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) combined with Energy Dispersive X-ray evaluation (EDX) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR). The photo catalytic studies were conducted by the 1 l of Milli-Q water, pH 4.0, 7.0 and 9.0 buffer were spiked with 1 mL of 1000 mg/L stock solution of benalaxyl 35% WP to get 1 μg/ml concentration of pesticide active in water. Three sets of such samples in triplicates were prepared and sonicated for 10 min to get homogeneous concentration of pesticide active in water and labeled as S1, S2, and S3. Two sets of samples (S1 and S2) were added FeTiO2 nanoparticles to get 0.06 g/L content of photo catalyst. S1 and S3 sets of samples were exposed to sun light. S2 set of samples were kept in an oven at 40°C in dark. The Milli-Q water spiked with stock solution of pesticide and without addition of FeTiO2 nanoparticles (S3) were also exposed to sun light for the measurement of photolytic degradation of pesticide in water. The FeTiO2 added Milli-Q water without spiking of pesticides (S4) was also maintained as untreated control for the identification of absence of pesticide. The collected samples were quantified using a validated HPLC-UV method. Kinetic parameters such as rate constant (k), DT50 and DT90 were calculated using the dissipation data of benalaxyl.


In China over the recent years, wind power, solar energy and other renewable energy sources have been expected to become not only promising tools against climate change but also a key economic growth driver. Particularly, growth of Chinese photovoltaic cell makers has attracted global attention. However, the Chinese government has been unable to provide sufficient support for them because of huge fiscal costs. China's PV market is still inactive. As PV costs are expected to decline substantially due to a silicon price fall in 2008, however, the Chinese PV market is projected to achieve dramatic growth. In early 2009, the Chinese government came up with measures to subsidize and promote PV. In December, it became clear that the country will revise its PV generation target for 2020 upward to 20 gigawatts. While giving positive considerations to the exploration of the domestic PV market and the development of relevant industries, the Chinese government has recognized the domestic industries technological capacity shortages, overheated investment and other problems and indicated a cautious attitude. Part 1 of this paper outlines Chinas PV projects, focusing on the PV market and PV promotion measures.


Extracellular nucleotides, acting through the P2Y2 receptor and the associated phosphoinositide-Ca2+ signaling pathway, inhibit AVP-stimulated osmotic water permeability in rat inner medullary collecting duct (IMCD). Because a rise in intracellular Ca2+ is frequently associated with enhanced arachidonic acid metabolism, we examined the effect of activation of the P2Y2 receptor on release of PGE2 in freshly prepared rat IMCD suspensions. Unstimulated IMCD released moderate, but significant, amounts of PGE2, which were more sensitive to cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 than COX-1 inhibition. Agonist activation of P2Y2 receptor by adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) enhanced release of PGE2 from IMCD in a time- and concentration-dependent fashion. Purinergic-stimulated release of PGE2 was completely blocked by nonspecific COX inhibitors (flurbiprofen and 2-acetoxyphenylhept-2-ynyl sulfide). Differential COX inhibition studies revealed that purinergic-stimulated release of PGE2 was more sensitive to a COX-1-specific inhibitor (valeroyl salicylate) than a COX-2-specific inhibitor (NS-398). Thus purinergic stimulation resulted in significantly more release of PGE2 in the presence of COX-2 inhibitor than COX-1 inhibitor. If it is assumed that increased release of PGE2 is related to its increased production, our results suggest that purinergic stimulation of IMCD results in enhanced production and release of PGE2 in a COX-1-dependent fashion. Because PGE2 is known to affect transport of water, salt, and urea in IMCD, interaction of the purinergic system with the prostanoid system in IMCD can modulate handling of water, salt, and urea by IMCD and, thus, may constitute an AVP-independent regulatory mechanism.