The culture in which people work and dwell is instrumental in shaping their sense of self. The decision to migrate from the country of one's heritage culture may result in the modification of self-identity in order to accommodate new experiences within the host culture. For working professionals, such modifications may be manifested in a number of different domains, including attitudes, behaviors, values, and sense of culture. When considering America's diverse workforce and the pressures placed upon people to be competitive, educated, and reasonably assimilated, the process of acculturation must also be addressed. This process is best understood when heritage and mainstream cultures are viewed independently. Formally educated foreignborn African women were the focus of this research. The purpose was to increase understanding of the employment status of African women with respect to identity style and acculturation strategies. Two hundred thirty-eight (238) women in the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Area were surveyed with respect to acculturation, identity style and employment status. The Vancouver Index of Acculturation was used to measure the heritage and mainstream dimensions of acculturation. The Identity Style Inventory was used to measure aspects of individual identity. Differences were found for the acculturation dimension of mainstream acculturation, which was observed to be higher for employed subjects for three of the four analyses used for employment status. No statistically significant differences were found for any of the identity style measures due to employment status, with one exception. The underemployed group of women may have been characterized by an identity orientation based on family and friends. If these women appear to experience problems associated with acculturation and identity, they may require more time to learn about the U.S. culture. These women represent a heterogeneous group with an amazing diversity in terms of language, culture, religion, and national backgrounds. This research suggests that their goal of securing or maintaining a professional career in the United States while residing in a major metropolitan area does not require assimilating into the U.S. culture at the expense of their own culture. Although, given that the majority of these women plan to remain in the United States as permanent residents, learning as much as possible about their host culture could perhaps benefit them with respect to employment.


The transformation of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) into a more generous, inclusive monthly payment marks a historic (temporary) shift in U.S. treatment of low-income families. To investigate the initial impact of these payments, we apply a series of difference-in-difference estimates using Census Household Pulse Survey microdata collected from April 14 through August 16, 2021. Our findings offer three primary conclusions regarding the initial effects of the monthly CTC. First, payments strongly reduced food insufficiency: the initial payments led to a 7.5 percentage point (25 percent) decline in food insufficiency among low-income households with children. Second, the effects on food insufficiency are concentrated among families with 2019 pre-tax incomes below $35,000, and the CTC strongly reduces food insufficiency among low-income Black, Latino, and White families alike. Third, increasing the CTC coverage rate would be required in order for material hardship to be reduced further. Self-reports suggest the lowest-income households were less likely than higher-income families to receive the first CTC payments. As more children receive the benefit in future months, material hardship may decline further. Even with imperfect coverage, however, our findings suggest that the first CTC payments were largely effective at reducing food insufficiency among low-income families with children.


This article discusses the intellectual sources of the presidential candidates' foreign policies. In the case of Barack Obama, the article examines the formation of his worldview, his intellectual inspirations, his most significant foreign policy appointments and the diplomatic course he has pursued as president. Mitt Romney's foreign policy views are harder to identify with certainty, but his business and political career-as well as the identity and dispositions of his advisory team-all provide important clues as to the policies he will pursue if elected in November 2012. The article finds much common ground between the two candidates; both are results-driven pragmatists, attuned to nuance and complexity, who nonetheless believe-in agreement with Robert Kagan-that US geostrategic primacy will continue through the span of the twenty-first century. The gulf between the candidates on domestic policy is vast, but on foreign policy-Romney's bellicose statements through the Republican primaries served a purpose that has passed-there is little between them


The simulation of major midwinter stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) in six stratosphere-resolving general circulation models (GCMs) is examined. The GCMs are compared to a new climatology of SSWs, based on the dynamical characteristics of the events. First, the number, type, and temporal distribution of SSW events are evaluated. Most of the models show a lower frequency of SSW events than the climatology, which has a mean frequency of 6.0 SSWs per decade. Statistical tests show that three of the six models produce significantly fewer SSWs than the climatology, between 1.0 and 2.6 SSWs per decade. Second, four process-based diagnostics are calculated for all of the SSW events in each model. It is found that SSWs in the GCMs compare favorably with dynamical benchmarks for SSW established in the first part of the study. These results indicate that GCMs are capable of quite accurately simulating the dynamics required to produce SSWs, but with lower frequency than the climatology. Further dynamical diagnostics hint that, in at least one case, this is due to a lack of meridional heat flux in the lower stratosphere. Even though the SSWs simulated by most GCMs are dynamically realistic when compared to the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis, the reasons for the relative paucity of SSWs in GCMs remains an important and open question.


Despite the growing glamorisation of the chef profession in recent years through various television documentaries, there is a shortage of chefs in Ireland. The profession while attracting new entrants to train in the area is failing to retain them (Irish Examiner 2012). Gibbons and Gibbons (2007) completed research in Northern Ireland which examined the causes and consequences of occupational stress for chefs. The research findings noted that chefs working in Northern Ireland were experiencing high levels of occupational stress and the causes included role overload, bullying, and poor relationship with manager and poor working conditions e.g. cramped working environment. This research seeks to expand on the research conducted by Gibbons and Gibbons (2007) to examine occupational stress amongst chefs in the Republic of Ireland. The research will look at both the causes and consequences of stress for this group and seek to provide recommendations on foot of its findings.

The research sample consists of three in-depth interviews, with experienced chef managers who have worked in this area for fifteen years on average. The interviews were conducted over a period of three weeks and were recorded and transcribed for the purposes of analysis. A thematic approach was taken to identification of causes and consequences of occupational stress.

The findings suggest that poor relationship with manager, physically working environment and lack of training are some of the causes while not being able to switch off after work, not enough time for other activities and not sufficient time for significant others and friends were included in the findings for consequences.

The dissertation concludes with a number of practical recommendations for both individuals and employers. These include regular discussions between subordinates and managers, reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees and introduction of wellbeing classes. These measures should help reduce occupational stress.

The author suggests that future research may include researching occupational stress for junior chefs and from the perspective of the employer to ascertain their level of awareness of the stress levels experienced by staff and the measures in place to assist them.


In the Spring of 2007, Professor Barry Feld delivered the inaugural Distinguished Lecture of the new Utah Criminal Justice Center at the University of Utah (S.J. Quinney) Law School. In that lecture he suggested (in criticizing LWOP sentences for juveniles), inter alia, that perceptions of juvenile delinquency and of the reasonable of responses to it may be attributed in some part to other factors than the delinquent behavior of youths, and he focused specifically upon racism.This article is one of the invited responses to that lecture. After some preliminary comments about Professor Feld's excellent paper, and noting that the aging of the baby-boom generation may influence social perception of the threat of juvenile crime, this article picks up one part of Professor Feld's theme and develops it in a new direction. It suggests that we may be punishing children for the failings and mistakes of their parents. It notes that fragile family structure and marital family instability are strongly associated with juvenile delinquency. It observes that most family law casebooks and juvenile justice casebooks entirely ignore (at least in their tables of contents and indices) the very powerful connection between juvenile delinquency and fragile family structure and marital disintegration. It presents some of the evidence of such connections, and reviews some of reasons for such connections and for the academic neglect of such connections, including the myth of the founding of the juvenile courts in America. It concludes with a suggestion that programs to promote and strengthen marriages might be a rational response to the problem of juvenile crime, and might be effective to reduce the incidence of juvenile delinquency.


Abstract There are many methods that can be used to test questionnaires, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The best approaches to questionnaire testing combine different methods to both broaden and strengthen the results. The US Census of Agriculture (COA) is conducted every five years and collects detailed information on agricultural production, inventories, practices, and operator demographics from agricultural establishments. Preceding each COA, evaluation and testing is done to test new items in the questionnaire and improve data quality for the subsequent COA. This article will describe how a multi-method approach, which we call Bento Box Testing, was applied to establishment questionnaire testing leading up to the 2017 COA. Testing included solicitation of expert opinion, historical data review, cognitive testing, a large scale field test, and qualitative follow-up interviews. The benefits of these testing methods, considerations for establishment survey testing, and how their results in combination provide a stronger evaluation are discussed.


Abstract First of all, I define the concept of epistemic freedom in the light of the changing nature of educational practice that prioritise over-prescriptive conceptions of learning. I defend the 'reality' of this freedom against possible determinist-related criticisms. I do this by stressing the concept of agency as characterised by 'becoming'. I also discuss briefly some of the technical literature on the subject. I then move on to discuss Gramsci's concept of hegemony and Foucault's idea of 'productive power': I argue for the need of a counter-narrative of freedom that takes the form of a genealogy. Finally I discuss in more detail the nature of epistemic freedom and briefly discuss the ethical implications of the concept.


Aim: The aim of this review is to emphasise the global significance of Hepatitis B (HBV) and its vertical transmission, and to summarise the current status of preventative strategies.

Methods: A literature review was carried out. PubMed, The Cochrane Collaboration and Medline were searched for both primary studies and reviews pertaining to vertical HBV transmission, its prevention and barriers to prevention. Key words used included "HBV," "Hepatitis B," "vertical transmission," "mother to child transmission," "prevention" and "epidemiology."

Results: HBV is a major cause of death from liver cancer and liver failure. HBV is the ninth leading cause of death internationally and accounts for up to 80% of the world's primary liver cancers. In highly endemic areas, 75% of chronic HBV is acquired by vertical transmission (mother to child transmission at birth), or by horizontal transmission in early childhood. The earlier in life the disease is acquired, the greater the adverse consequences. Available therapies for preventing mother to child transmission are very effective and include multiple doses of HBV vaccine and usually, HBV immunoglobulin. However, up to 10% of infants acquire HBV despite this standard prophylaxis. Whether anti-viral agents should be given to mothers with a high viral load to prevent transmission remains controversial.

Conclusion: HBV is an extremely important global public health issue. Prevention of vertical transmission is the most important preventative strategy and current prophylactic therapies are highly effective. Emerging approaches for mothers with a high viral load require further investigation to determine whether they are effective and safe. Developing countries face the issues of cost, access and education to apply prevention strategies, while developed countries need processes to ensure adherence to established recommendations.


ABSTRACT In Southeast Asia the Philippines holds the distinction of reporting the highest number of murdered journalists between 1992 and 2012. This record makes the Philippines closer to countries in other parts of the world characterized as "transitional" democracies. These countries enjoy near full press freedom, but their institutional setting allows the perpetrators of crimes to evade accountability. The authors of this article argue that explaining these murders as due to state repression of progressive journalists in the Philippines ignores the complexity of these killings. This article shows that journalists murdered for their occupation (classified as "motive confirmed") did not threaten the interests of the state as state but rather the interests of local power-holders. Thus, the killings of mass media practitioners need to be understood in the context of local-level contestations over positions and resources sanctioned by the state framework, particularly following the decentralization since 1991. Preliminary data analysis of journalist deaths from 1998 to 2012 and selected case studies suggest that these killings are primarily local events, mostly in provincial towns and cities.


Robotic Operations Automation: Mechanisms, Imaging, Navigation report Generation (ROAMING) is a set of computer programs that facilitates and accelerates both tactical and strategic analysis of time-sampled data especially the disparate and often incomplete streams of Mars Explorer Rover (MER) telemetry data described in the immediately preceding article. As used here, tactical refers to the activities over a relatively short time (one Martian day in the original MER application) and strategic refers to a longer time (the entire multi-year MER missions in the original application). Prior to installation, ROAMING must be configured with the types of data of interest, and parsers must be modified to understand the format of the input data (many example parsers are provided, including for general CSV files). Thereafter, new data from multiple disparate sources are automatically resampled into a single common annotated spreadsheet stored in a readable space-separated format, and these data can be processed or plotted at any time scale. Such processing or plotting makes it possible to study not only the details of a particular activity spanning only a few seconds, but also longer-term trends. ROAMING makes it possible to generate mission-wide plots of multiple engineering quantities [e.g., vehicle tilt as in Figure 1(a), motor current, numbers of images] that, heretofore could be found only in thousands of separate files. ROAMING also supports automatic annotation of both images and graphs. In the MER application, labels given to terrain features by rover scientists and engineers are automatically plotted in all received images based on their associated camera models (see Figure 2), times measured in seconds are mapped to Mars local time, and command names or arbitrary time-labeled events can be used to label engineering plots, as in Figure 1(b).


This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal relation; the logic of counterfactual conditionals; and the differences between divine and human knowing states. An appendix introduces a new foreknowledge dilemma that purports to show that omniscient foreknowledge conflicts with deep intuitions about temporal asymmetry, quite apart from considerations of free will. Zagzebski shows that only a narrow range of solutions can handle this new dilemma. A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy of religion.


Inception of damage quantification during fatigue loading has been a challenge in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). Interaction between intrinsic damage state and ultrasonic wave signals of composite material is not fully understood. Fiber reinforced composite materials unveils damage precursor in the form of micro crack in matrix and fiber fracture which leads to catastrophic failure of the structure. Here, in this paper tensile-tensile fatigue tests were performed on two different types of ASTM standard composite specimen. For carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRP) specimens at a regular interval of 10,000 cycles and for glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRP) interrogation of material state during fatigue tests were performed at the interval of 1,000 cycles, until micro cracks are developed. Quantitative Ultrasonic Microscopy is performed during the same intervals. For the Carbon-Carbon composites, the non-local material properties degraded continuously during fatigue loading due to onset of matrix cracking and fiber breakage while for glass fiber reinforced composite specimen material degradation was not detected conclusively. Here an attempt has been made to measure material properties degradation in the form of damage entropy at each pixel point of the selected area by using the scanning acoustic microscopy. The average damage entropy material properties are calculated, after each 10,000 cycles for CFRP and at 1,000 cycles for GFRP. "Damage Entropy" is used as a measure of damage accumulation over number of cycles and are plotted until damage incubates or incepts. Tensile test specimens were instrumented with high frequency-piezoelectric sensors. Interaction of guided lamb wave with local stiffness reduction has also been studied to extract information of damage initiation by intermittently collecting sensor data and analyzing them by using advance signal processing techniques. Optical microscopy was also performed to validate our results of damage inception. Based on the above study, possibility of correlating off-board ultrasonic technique and on-board Lamb wave technique are demonstrated for the detection of precursor to damage in composites.


Despite the considerable quantity of research directed towards multitouch technologies, a set of standardized UI components have not been developed. Menu systems provide a particular challenge, as traditional GUI menus require a level of pointing precision inappropriate for direct finger input. Marking menus are a promising alternative, but have yet to be investigated or adapted for use within multitouch systems. In this paper, we first investigate the human capabilities for performing directional chording gestures, to assess the feasibility of multitouch marking menus. Based on the positive results collected from this study, and in particular, high angular accuracy, we discuss our new multitouch marking menu design, which can increase the number of items in a menu, and eliminate a level of depth. A second experiment showed that multitouch marking menus perform significantly faster than traditional hierarchal marking menus, reducing acquisition times in both novice and expert usage modalities.


The seminar entitled "Modernising the global drug control system – Can Europe lead?" was organised in the European Parliament by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), and the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and co-hosted by the Member of European Parliament (MEP) Nikos Chrysogelos.The event aimed to present the recommendations of the Global Commission and discuss the role that the European Union (EU) could play in current drug policy reform debates taking place within Europe and around the world. The seminar also comes at a time when the EU is working on drafting a new Drug Strategy to replace the one that will expire at the end of 2012.Two Global Commissioners participated in the panel discussion - Michel Kazatchkine, physician and former Executive Director of the Global Fund, and Pavel Bem, psychiatrist, who has played a leading role in designing Czech Drug policy and is the former mayor of Prague. To continue reading, please find the report below.On the same afternoon, IDPC and the Global Commission collaborated again to hold a civil society seminar on a similar issue. Please click here to learn more about the event.


Background Changes in health insurance policies have increased coverage opportunities, but enrollees are required to annually reapply for benefits, which if not managed appropriately can lead to insurance gaps. Electronic health records (EHRs) can automate processes for assisting patients with health insurance enrollment and re-enrollment. Objective We describe Community Health Centres' (CHCs') workflow, documentation, and tracking needs for assisting families with insurance application processes and the health information technology tool components that were developed to meet those needs. Method We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and observation of clinic operations and insurance application assistance processes. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. We diagramed workflows and shared information with a team of developers who built the EHR-based tools. Results Four steps to the insurance assistance workflow were common among CHCs: 1) identifying patients for public health insurance application assistance; 2) completing and submitting the public health insurance application when clinic staff met with patients to collect requisite information and helped them apply for benefits; 3) tracking public health insurance approval to monitor for decisions and 4) assisting with annual health insurance reapplication. We developed EHR-based tools to support clinical staff with each of these steps. Conclusion CHCs are uniquely positioned to help patients and families with public health insurance applications. CHCs have invested in staff to assist patients with insurance applications and help prevent coverage gaps. To best assist patients and to foster efficiency, EHR-based insurance tools need comprehensive, timely, and accurate health insurance information.


It is generally accepted that Attention‐Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) results from a dysfunction of the central nervous system, which has led to a commonly held belief that environmental factors play little role in the behavioural problems of children identified as having ADHD. Therefore, the two studies reported in this article investigated the relationship between parental divorce and the psychological well‐being of children with ADHD. Subjects, aged 6 to 18 years, were diagnosed with either the inattentive or combined subtype of the disorder. Firstly, differences in children's behaviour between divorced and non‐divorced families were examined, and subtype, age, and gender differences were evaluated in terms of symptom severity and comorbid conditions. Secondly, parents' perceptions of the impact of their children's behaviour on marital status and family/parental functioning were examined. Parental divorce was associated with greater symptom severity, more externalizing/internalizing behaviours, and poorer social functioning, but less with academic underachievement. Further, parental divorce was related to adjustment differences in ADHD subtypes, age, and gender. However, the correlation between behaviour problems of children with ADHD and marital/family dysfunction was weak. It may be concluded that parental divorce was associated with the psychological well‐being in children with ADHD, and there is some suggestion that ADHD should be viewed as a bio‐psychosocial disorder.


Evaluation of the secondary structure of caldesmon from c.d. spectra revealed that it contains 51% helix, 9% beta-strand and 40% of remainder structures. These values agree well with the predicted ones from amino acid sequence, assuming an extended chain structure for caldesmon. The estimates of the secondary-structure elements in C-terminal 34 kDa and 19 kDa fragments are: 11 and 12% helix, 22 and 20% beta-strand, 13 and 17% beta-turns and loops, and 54 and 50% of remainder structure respectively. The best fit of experimental data was obtained assuming the globular state of the fragments. On the basis of structural analysis and fragmentation by proteolytic and chemical cleavages the six-domain model of caldesmon is proposed.


Social accountability has become a favoured approach among most major multilateral and bilateral donors to develop grass roots mechanisms for democratic governance. In a successful scenario, citizen participation can promote more responsive governments and better provision of basic services by linking users' feedback to the policy design, implementation and monitoring activities typically undertaken by the state.
However, there is a lack of agreement about which specific types of social accountability interventions yield the best results and what are the causal pathways that are critical to generate positive changes. This paper presents an analytical framework that identifies the key components that are required to exercise effective direct accountability and provides a blueprint to assess social accountability initiatives.
This paper appeared in eucrim, the European Criminal Law Associations' Forum, 2013/2, published by Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, c/o Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg i. B., Germany.


This paper presents a novel nonlinear autopilot design based on a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) approach that is compared against a linear quadratic Gaussian control scheme. The autopilot systems are used to control the nonlinear yaw dynamics of an uninhabited surface vehicle named Springer. The yaw dynamics of the vehicle being modelled using a multi-layer perceptron neural network. Simulation results are presented and the performances of the autopilots are evaluated and compared using standard system performance criteria and indices. The autopilot based on the NMPC method is deemed the more apt of the two types examined for Springer in terms of control activity expenditure, power consumption and mission duration length.


In the standard New Keynesian sticky price model the central bank faces no contradiction between the stabilization of inflation and the stabilization of the welfare relevant output gap after a productivity shock hits the economy. When the standard model is enhanced by real wage rigidities or labor turnover costs, an endogenous short-run inflation-output tradeoff arises. This paper compares the implications of the two labor market rigidities. It argues that economists and policymakers alike should pay more attention to labor turnover costs for the following reasons. First, a model with labor turnover costs generates impulse response functions that are more in line with the empirical evidence than those of a model with real wage rigidities. Second, labor turnover costs are the dominant source for the inflation-output tradeoff when both rigidities are present in the model. And finally, there is stronger empirical evidence for the existence of labor turnover costs than for real wage rigidities.


Abstract Since the early descriptions published by Callaway in 1884, the gently dipping mylonites exposed along the Moine Thrust at the Stack of Glencoul have drawn generations of geologists to the northern part of the Assynt district. These mylonites, derived from Cambrian quartzites (footwall) and Moine pelites and psammites (hanging wall), have figured prominently in: a) early research into the influence of crystal plastic deformation and recrystallization on microstructural and crystal fabric evolution; b) debates on the kinematic interpretation of macro- and micro-structures and crystal fabrics; and c) debates on the tectonic significance of such kinematic data. In this paper first we briefly review the historical aspects of this research and then, using both previously published and unpublished data, document the finite strain and quartz fabric development at this classic mylonite locality. A tectonic interpretation of these data, together with quantitative estimates of flow vorticities associated with mylonite formation at the Stack of Glencoul, are presented in a companion paper by Law (2010).


Although several corporations proclaim their employees as being thecorporation's most valuable resource, only a few corporations have utilised models and concepts of measuring human resources in their corporate annualreports. In the ongoing academic debate, human resource disclosures are often described and thought of as problematic due to the limited understanding of such information. The debate about insufficient understanding and the resulting information gap between users and providers is taken by this dissertation as a starting point. The overall research purpose in this study is to describe the practice of voluntary information on human resources in corporate annual reports by the comparison of the findings on justification, disclosure and utilisation. In the current academic debate, proposals have been made to study the information content on human resources, providers or users of information together in order to obtain deeper understanding. Accordingly, this dissertation introduces a tripartite model of human resource disclosure practice to study information, providers and users. A subset of three research questions examines the amount of voluntary disclosures in corporate annual reports, why human resource disclosures are provided and how users utilise voluntary information on human resources. To answer the research questions a combination of methods is used to obtain the empirical data. The amount of voluntary disclosure in corporate annual reports is found through the application of a disclosure scoreboard. The users, being represented by analysts, and the providers, who are representatives from two corporations, were interviewed. A comparative case study approach was chosen to obtain a deeper understanding of the research questions. Two case corporations have been chosen. One corporation is regarded as being experienced and the second corporation as being inexperienced with the measurement, evaluation and reporting of intangible assets. The findings from this dissertation indicate that both corporations provide a considerable amount of voluntary disclosure in corporate annual reports.During the five-year period of analysis, the experienced corporation's leading position in voluntary disclosure disappears. Both corporations provide human resource disclosures, as they regard them as being an important aspect in illustrating their corporations. Furthermore, it is shown that the inexperienced corporation provides more disclosures about their employees than the experienced corporation. The users regard human resource disclosures as important information as they contribute to the overall impression of a corporation. Still, the comparative analyses indicate that the human resource disclosures of both corporations do not fully meet users expectations. The users find it difficult to analyse the human resource disclosures for a single corporation over a longer time-span as well as to compare the information provided by both corporations.


This paper provides an analysis of the morphological and lexical conditionings determining the triggering or the blocking of the rhotacism pattern observed in Algherese Catalan. In this dialect, laterals and dental stops rhotacise in intervocalic position; the process, however, exhibits some variation mainly conditioned by the area of the word in which the intervocalic segment occurs (the left edge of the root, the root or the suffix) and the type of word in which is contained (an inherited word or a loan). Our proposal is to account for these facts by means of lexically indexed constraints targeting exceptional behaviors in the lexicon. The article also analyses the functional interpretation of this pattern of rhotacism, and finally reflects on the changes in the lexicon as a reflect of the process of language substitution in Algherese Catalan.


Background Tobacco consumption in India varies based on the place of residence (urban/rural). Minimal, exclusive information exists regarding the same for 'urban slum' dwellers. The current study determines the tobacco use pattern among such individuals in Noida, Uttar Pradesh (India). Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among the urban slum residents visiting the institutional clinic between December 2016 and June 2019. Apart from tobacco history, routine recording of the basic demographic details and oral visual examination was carried out for the participants. For categorical data, the percentage of different parameters was calculated and for quantitative data, descriptive statistics were calculated. Chi-square or Fisher's exact tests were employed to determine the association between the two categorical variables. To find the strength of association between tobacco use and the socio-demographic factors, univariate and multivariable binary logistic regression was used. Results Among 2,043 urban slum respondents (602 male, 1441 female), 15.0% (n = 308) currently consumed tobacco. The majority were smokeless tobacco (SLT) users (among both males and females). Among males, khaini (42.1%) and gutkha (32.5%) and among females gul (36.1%) were the most widely used tobacco products. Conclusion The majority of the Noida urban slum population attending the screening clinic consumed SLT. Gender variation in the tobacco form and product-specific consumption patterns indicates that the undertaking of urban slums-specific surveys is essential. Tobacco control programmes must incorporate appropriate strategies addressing such subgroups of tobacco users.


Saccharomyces cerevisiae Hal3 and Vhs3 are moonlighting proteins, forming an atypical heterotrimeric decarboxylase (PPCDC) required for CoA biosynthesis, and regulating cation homeostasis by inhibition of the Ppz1 phosphatase. The Schizosaccharomyces pombe ORF SPAC15E1.04 (renamed as Sp hal3) encodes a protein whose amino‐terminal half is similar to Sc Hal3 whereas its carboxyl‐terminal half is related to thymidylate synthase (TS). We show that Sp Hal3 and/or its N‐terminal domain retain the ability to bind to and modestly inhibit in vitro S. cerevisiae Ppz1 as well as its S. pombe homolog Pzh1, and also exhibit PPCDC activity in vitro and provide PPCDC function in vivo, indicating that Sp Hal3 is a monogenic PPCDC in fission yeast. Whereas the Sp Hal3 N‐terminal domain partially mimics Sc Hal3 functions, the entire protein and its carboxyl‐terminal domain rescue the S. cerevisiae cdc21 mutant, thus proving TS function. Additionally, we show that the 70 kDa Sp Hal3 protein is not proteolytically processed under diverse forms of stress and that, as predicted, Sp hal3 is an essential gene. Therefore, Sp hal3 represents a fusion event that joined three different functional activities in the same gene. The possible advantage derived from this surprising combination of essential proteins is discussed.


Background Recent data suggest that hypertension is a significant public health problem in India. The success strategies for hypertension management depend upon clients' awareness on hypertension and its self-management practices. Objective To determine awareness, self-management practices and compliance with treatment among hypertensive patients. Method This cross-sectional study was done in January 2012 at four health centres in Mangalore. All confirmed cases of hypertension attending the outpatient department were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Result Majority (58.7%) of the 315 participants were of the age group 41 to 60 years and majority (53.6%) were males. Most patients (69.5%) were educated up to high school level. The awareness level about hypertension was average or good in majority (52.4%) of the participants. Self-management practices were found to be average or good among 60.6% cases. Good compliance with treatment was seen in 78.7% cases and blood pressure was in control in 72.4% cases. Quality of self-management practices was found to influence control of blood pressure (p=0.021). Awareness, self-management practices and compliance were found to be significantly poor among aged (above 50 years), males, less educated, unemployed, unskilled or retired patients. Conclusion Awareness on hypertension and self-management practices were average or above among majority of the studied population. However this study identified groups who need to be better educated and further monitored to achieve universal blood pressure control among hypertensive population during the routine health care services in this settings.


As the complexity of model transformation (MT) grows, the need to rely on formal semantics of MT languages becomes a critical issue. Formal semantics provide precise specications of the expected behavior of transformations, allowing users to understand them and to use them properly, and MT tool builders to develop correct MT engines, compilers, etc. In addition, formal semantics allow modelers to reason about the MTs and to prove their correctness, something specially important in case of large and complex MTs (with, e.g., hundreds or thousands of rules) for which manual debugging is no longer possible. In this paper we give a formal semantics of the ATL 3.0 model transformation language using rewriting logic and Maude, which allows addressing these issues. Such formalization provides additional benets, such as enabling the simulation of the specications or giving access to the Maude toolkit to reason about them.


When individuals act in open innovation networks, their attributes are specifically crucial in respect of their success or failure to profit from the network. The empirical background of this research was a 16-month investigation of EURADOS, the successful European network for research on radiation dosimetry. EURADOS presently consists of almost 200 members from 52 European institutions in 31 countries. Not all EURADOS members profit equally from its open innovation network. Structural equation modelling provided an answer regarding the personal and organisational attributes that are required to profit from the network in terms of an increase in innovativeness, a reduction in costs and a better fulfilment of tasks in the home organisation. The attributes openness and the possibility to contribute influence the value that individuals derive from open innovation networks equally.


Abstract After composer and organist Ákos Rózmann (1939–2005) moved from his native Hungary to Sweden in 1971, it became his conviction that instrumental composition had no future, and he committed himself completely to the electroacoustic studio. An important part of Rózmann's self-characterization and the early reception of his music was the statement that his electroacoustic compositions were the results of working as a spiritual medium. While the author demonstrates the relevance of this statement, he also challenges it by presenting an exception, Black Illusions (2003), Rózmann's only work admittedly created as a sounding autobiography. He also presents Rózmann's last finished composition, Organ Piece No. III/a—a "dizygotic twin brother" of Black Illusions—and the differing ways in which the two pieces are related to St. Eric's Cathedral of Stockholm. One of them thematizes the church as a place of personal earthly suffering, while the other presents it as a symbolic stage of otherworldly processes.


This paper provides a quantitative perspective on Gene Fama's influence on the scholarly community. He has more than 140,000 Google cites while the median number of citations for the Fellows of the American Finance Association is 32,792. Gene Fama has published highly-cited papers in six decades. His most impactful theoretical work took place earlier than his most impactful empirical work. While Gene Fama's most impactful empirical asset pricing work was published in the Journal of Financial Economics, his most impactful theoretical/conceptual work was published in the Journal of Finance and in the Journal of Law and Economics. An important dimension of the impact of Gene Fama on the finance profession is through his Ph.D. students. These students include one Nobel prize winner, six AFA presidents, and four editors of top finance journals.


This article is a personal reflection of how the current COVID‐19 pandemic affects our working lives and wellbeing, as single female academics who live alone in the UK. We offer a dialogue of our daily lives of being confined at home with lockdown measures extended. In particular, we focus on the experience of, and coping with, isolation and loneliness. Is isolation making us more socially connected? Through 'virtual' working and changing learning environments for us as teachers and learners, we explore changes in our working life and subsequent changes in the domestic environment. By capturing our lived experiences, we create an intellectual and safe space to voice our emotional struggles — as 'invisible' isolated individuals containing and consuming loneliness on our own. We foster alternative conversations as to how we might engender new perspectives from single female academics to combat social isolation in the workplace.


Paid search has become an increasingly common form of advertising, comprising about half of all online advertising expenditures. To shed light on the effectiveness of paid search, we design and analyze a large-scale field experiment on the review platform Yelp.com. The experiment consists of roughly 18,000 restaurants and 24 million advertising exposures - randomly assigning paid search advertising packages to more than 7,000 restaurants for a three-month period, with randomization done at the restaurant level to assess the overall impact of advertisements. We find that advertising increases a restaurant's Yelp page views by 25% on average. Advertising also increases the number of purchase intentions - including getting directions, browsing the restaurant's website, and calling the restaurant - by 18%, 9%, and 13% respectively, and raises the number of reviews by 5%, suggesting that advertising also affects the number of restaurant-goers. All advertising effects drop to zero immediately after the advertising period. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that advertising would produce a positive return on average for restaurants in our sample.


I was sitting in a small town Greyhound bus station when I first saw images from Katrina. Happenstance, in retrospect, was so apropos. Bus terminal stations throughout America (so often) being lachrymose warehouses for the poor, the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the psychologically worn down and the just plain penniless –hostels of the many with vagabond destinations. The station held any number of "the kinds of people" who knew what it was to go elsewhere, oftentimes meaning anyplace but the places they're at. I sat among America's disenfranchised classes.


Plasma polymers of perfluorobenzene (PFB), perfluorotoluene (PFT), perfluorocyclohexane, perfluorocyclohexene, benzene, naphthalene and N-vinyl pyrrolidinone (NVP) were prepared and analysed by XPS and SIMS. The analysis suggested that polymers derived from perfluoroaromatic monomers consisted of aromatic and other cyclic structures linked by very short alkyl chains, while those derived from perfluorocyclohexane and perfluorocyclohexene were much more aliphatic in nature and contained fewer aromatic and other ring structures. PFB, PFT and NVP were found to produce surface photopolymers, similar to their plasma polymers, suggesting that the polymerisation proceeds via an excited state mechanism. The photopolymerisat ion of NVP was found to be either a one or two photon process depending on the conditions used, and an approximate lifetime was found for a polymerising gas phase species. Plasma mass spectroscopy also suggested that neutral species were largely responsible for the plasma polymerisation of PFB, but that ionic species were important in the plasma polymerisation of benzene. Considerable gas phase interaction was observed in a mixed benzene/PFB plasma. Plasma polymers containing a high concentration of -COOH were formed from a variety of carboxylic acids, by using low power and high flow rate conditions, but methyl methacrylate and acetic acid did not retain their carboxylate groups under similar conditions. Iodine was incorporated into a plasma polymer by copolymerising benzene and iodobenzene, but not at a sufficiently high concentration to prevent oxygen plasma etching. Plasma polymerisation of allyl iodide produced a polymer containing I(_3)(^-) ions.


Very thin films deposited using atomic layer deposition (ALD) on aluminum mirrors showed extraordinary resistance toward concentrated alkali solutions, various chemical etchants, and solvents. Aluminum mirrors with no surface protection dissolved immediately in 24% aqueous KOH. Mirrors protected with 30 nm electron-beam deposited silica film were fully removed in 30 min. Mirrors with 10, 30, and 120 nm films grown by ALD required, respectively, 10, 15, and 60 h of exposure to the alkali for the mirror to be fully removed. Likewise, large-scale hydrogen bubbling was observed immediately upon immersing mirrors coated with electron-beam deposited silica in aqueous KOH, whereas no visible hydrogen bubbling was detected for the mirror protected by ALD silica. For mirrors protected by 120 nm ALD silica, a 2 h soak in various acid and solvent media produced no discernible change.


For a plane wave (having wavelength ?) incident on a circular aperture (radius a), the transverse distribution of light intensity beyond the aperture is expressed in terms of a dimensionless parameter, p1=a/?, for various distances close to the aperture, using the vector Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction theory.


In this thesis, a new classification for a large set of interconnection networks, referred to as "Vertex Product Networks" (VPN), is provided and a number of related issues are discussed including the design and evaluation of efficient structural outlooks for algorithm development on this class of networks. The importance of studying the VPN can be attributed to the following two main reasons: first an unlimited number of new networks can be defined under the umbrella of the VPN, and second some known networks can be studied and analysed more deeply. Examples of the VPN include the newly proposed arrangement-star and the existing Optical Transpose Interconnection Systems (OTIS-networks). Over the past two decades many interconnection networks have been proposed in the literature, including the star, hyperstar, hypercube, arrangement, and OTIS-networks. Most existing research on these networks has focused on analysing their topological properties. Consequently, there has been relatively little work devoted to designing efficient parallel algorithms for important parallel applications. In an attempt to fill this gap, this research aims to propose efficient structural outlooks for algorithm development. These structural outlooks are based on grid and pipeline views as popular structures that support a vast body of applications that are encountered in many areas of science and engineering, including matrix computation, divide-and- conquer type of algorithms, sorting, and Fourier transforms. The proposed structural outlooks are applied to the VPN, notably the arrangement-star and OTIS-networks. In this research, we argue that the proposed arrangement-star is a viable candidate as an underlying topology for future high-speed parallel computers. Not only does the arrangement-star bring a solution to the scalability limitations from which the Abstract existing star graph suffers, but it also enables the development of parallel algorithms based on the proposed structural outlooks, such as matrix computation, linear algebra, divide-and-conquer algorithms, sorting, and Fourier transforms. Results from a performance study conducted in this thesis reveal that the proposed arrangement-star supports efficiently applications based on the grid or pipeline structural outlooks. OTIS-networks are another example of the VPN. This type of networks has the important advantage of combining both optical and electronic interconnect technology. A number of studies have recently explored the topological properties of OTIS-networks. Although there has been some work on designing parallel algorithms for image processing and sorting, hardly any work has considered the suitability of these networks for an important class of scientific problems such as matrix computation, sorting, and Fourier transforms. In this study, we present and evaluate two structural outlooks for algorithm development on OTIS-networks. The proposed structural outlooks are general in the sense that no specific factor network or problem domain is assumed. Timing models for measuring the performance of the proposed structural outlooks are provided. Through these models, the performance of various algorithms on OTIS-networks are evaluated and compared with their counterparts on conventional electronic interconnection systems. The obtained results reveal that OTIS-networks are an attractive candidate for future parallel computers due to their superior performance characteristics over networks using traditional electronic interconnects.


We identify and illustrate five important kinds of Dialectical Examples, standard configurations of cases which enable an arguer to justify rhetorical assertions effectively by example. Our computer program generates Argument Contexts, collections of cases that instantiate Dialectical Examples from an on-line database of cases according to a user's general specifications. The Argument Context generation program provides a human or automated tutor a stock of Dialectical Examples to teach novice advocates (first year law students) how to recognize, carry out and respond to the associated rhetorical moves. Although generating such examples is very hard for humans even when dealing with small numbers of cases, our program generates and organizes such examples quickly and effectively. In a preliminary experiment, we employed program-generated Argument Contexts manually to teach basic argument skills to first year law students with good results. Our ability to define such complex examples declaratively in terms of logical expressions of Loom concepts and relations affords a number of advantages over previous work.


The kinesin superfamily of mechanochemical proteins has been implicated in a wide variety of cellular processes. We have begun studies of kinesins in the unicellular biflagellate alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. A full-length cDNA, KLP1, has been cloned and sequenced, and found to encode a new member of the kinesin superfamily. An antibody was raised against the nonconserved tail region of the Klp1 protein, and it was used to probe for Klp1 in extracts of isolated flagella and in situ. Immunofluorescence of whole cells indicated that Klp1 was present in both the flagella and cell bodies. In wild-type flagella, Klp1 was found tightly to the axoneme; immunogold labeling of wild-type axonemal whole mounts showed that Klp1 was restricted to one of the two central pair microtubules at the core of the axoneme. Klp1 was absent from the flagella of mutants lacking the central pair microtubules, but was present in mutant flagella from pf16 cells, which contain an unstable C1 microtubule, indicating that Klp1 was bound to the C2 central pair microtubule. Localization of Klp1 to the C2 microtubule was confirmed by immunogold labeling of negatively stained and thin-sectioned axonemes. These findings suggest that Klp1 may play a role in rotation or twisting of the central pair microtubules.


Background: Nurses in very remote areas of Australia (RANs), work in complex and isolated settings for which they are often inadequately prepared, and stress levels are high. This paper, based on the 'Back from the edge' project, evaluates the development and implementation of an intervention to reduce and prevent the impact of occupational stress in the RAN workforce in the Northern territory. Methods: The methods involved a combined participatory action research/organisational development model, involving seven steps, to develop and implement system changes within the (then) Northern Territory Department of Health and Families (NTDH&F). The development, implementation and evaluation was informed via information from participants collected during workshops and interviews. Pre and post surveys were undertaken to evaluate the study. Results: Occupational stress interventions developed by the workgroups were categorised into four main groups: (1) remote context, (2) workload and scope of practice, (3) poor management, and (4) violence and safety concerns. The main interventions centred on promoting a well educated, stable workforce. There were very few measurable changes as a result of the interventions as many were not able to be implemented in the time period of the study, but implementation is continuing. Conclusion: While the outcome evaluations showed few effects, the study through consensus approaches, provides a blueprint for reducing stress among remote area nurses and evidence which should inform policy and practice with respect to service delivery in remote areas. Colle he CC © 2017 Australian under t


In many cases, technological advances are based on artificial low-dimensional structures of heterogeneous constituents, thus called hybrids, that when come together they provide stand-alone entities that exhibit entirely different properties. Such hybrids are nowadays intensively studied since they are attractive for both basic research and oncoming practical applications. Here, we studied hybrids constituted of piezoelectric (PE) and ferromagnetic (FM) components in the form FM/PE/FM, ultimately aiming to provide means for the controlled modulation of the properties of the FM electrodes, originating from the strain imposed to them by the PE mediator when an electric field is applied. The PE component is in single crystal form, 0.71Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.29PbTiO3 (PMN-PT), while the FM outer layers are Cobalt (Co) in thin film form. Detailed magnetization measurements performed under variation of the electric field applied to PMN-PT demonstrated the efficient modulation of the properties of the Co electrodes at low temperature (coercive field modulation up to 27% and saturation magnetization absolute modulation up to 4% at T = 10 K for electric field not exceeding 6 kV/cm). The modulation degree faints upon increase of the temperature, evidencing that the thermal energy eventually dominates all other relevant energy scales. Candidate mechanisms are discussed for the explanation of these experimental observations. The results presented here demonstrate that commercially available materials can result in quantitatively noticeable effects. Thus, such elemental Co/PMN-PT/Co units can be used as a solid basis for the development of devices.


As a growing number of social media platforms now include location information from their users, researchers are confronted with new online representations of individuals, social networks, and the places they inhabit. To better understand these representations and their implications, we introduce the concept of the "spatial self": a theoretical framework encapsulating the process of online self-presentation based on the display of offline physical activities. Building on previous studies in social science, humanities, and computer and information science, we analyze the ways offline experiences are harnessed and performed online. We first provide an encompassing interdisciplinary survey of research that investigates the relationships between location, information technology, and identity performance. Then, we identify and characterize the spatial self as well as examine its occurrences through three case studies of popular social media sites: Instagram, Facebook, and Foursquare. Finally, we offer possible research directions and methodological considerations for the analysis of geocoded social media data.


Saponins are a highly diverse group of glycosides of plant origin containing either a steroidal or triterpenoid aglycone to which one or more sugar chains are attached. They have been variously described as enhancing the cytotoxic activity of ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) and ligand-directing conjugates constructed with these for eukaryotic cells. Saponins are thought to facilitate the entry of RIPs into the cytosol across the membranes of intracellular vesicular structures. This characteristic of saponins therefore makes them of interest as molecules that could be useful in improving the therapeutic index of immunotoxins (IT) in a clinical setting. In the current study we used a protein synthesis inhibition assay based on leucine incorporation together with cell proliferation studies in culture to demonstrate that saponins from Gypsophila paniculata L. potentiate the cytotoxicity of the anti-CD19 and CD38 saporin-based immunotoxins (BU12-SAPORIN and OKT10-SAPORIN, respectively) by several thousand-fold for the human lymphoma cell line Daudi. Various experiments revealed that the enhancing effect of saponins on immunotoxin activity did not appear to be dependent on extra cellular pH in the assay system we used. Kinetic studies further revealed that saponin at a predetermined optimal concentration of 2 μg/ml reduced the t 10 (time taken to reduce protein synthesis to 10% of the level seen in control Daudi cells) for OKT10-SAPORIN at 0.1μg/ml from 50 hours without saponin to 12.5 hours with saponin. In blocking experiments using OKT10-SAPORIN IT at the IC 50 concentration in combination with saponin together with a gross excess of native OKT10 antibody we established that the immunospecific cytotoxic activity of OKT10-SAPORIN was fully retained when leucine incorporation was used as the surrogate measure of cytotoxicity but only partially so when thymidine incorporation was used. This observation of a partial uncoupling of protein and DNA synthesis as a measure of cytotoxicity was further supported by cell proliferation experiments in culture which were undertaken in parallel. If saponins are to be of any clinical value as candidate molecules for improving the therapeutic index of immunotoxins it is imperative that the immunospecificity of IT activity is fully retained. Whilst this study clearly demonstrates that saponins from G. paniculata L. do indeed significantly potentiate IT activity it seems that this effect may only be partially immunospecific. Nevertheless, the dramatic improvements that saponins confer on IT activity argue in favor of in vivo experiments in transgenic animal models of human lymphoma combined with additional studies to explore other strategies that might be employed to improve the immunospecific effect achievable. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5624.


This study, conducted on the Crow Indian reservation in Southwest Montana, examined the incorporation of written Crow in teaching Crow language through a series of semi-structured interviews with Crow language teachers and others in the Crow language maintenance movement. The grounded theory qualitative approach yielded recommendations regarding the need for teacher training, for material development, for curriculum planning, and for expanded visibility of written language in the community. The study presents evidence to support an eclectic approach to Crow language teaching.


During 1994-2004, fisheries observers documented interactions between bottom otter trawl gear and loggerhead (Caretta caretta), Kemp's ridley (Lepidochelys kempi) and leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) turtles in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region (i.e. south of 41°30'N/66°W to approximately 35o00'N/75°30'W). Most of these interactions were with loggerhead turtles, although Kemp's ridley and leatherback turtles were also observed in small numbers. Due to the low number of Kemp's ridley and leatherback interactions, bycatch rates and total mortality were only estimated for loggerhead turtles. Vessel Trip Reports (VTR) from fishermen operating bottom otter trawl gear in the Mid-Atlantic were used to expand predicted bycatch rates to total estimated bycatch. Due to reduced quality of VTR data in 1994 and 1995, bycatch is reported from 1996-2004 only. Significant factors affecting sea turtle bycatch were latitude zone, depth, sea surface temperature, and the use of a working Turtle Excluder Device (TED). A working TED is defined as one which is not clogged (e.g., with fish or debris). Predicted bycatch rates were stratified by the combination of significant variables. Estimated average annual bycatch of loggerhead turtles in Mid-Atlantic bottom otter trawl gear during 1996-2004 was 616 animals (C.V.=0.23, 95% C.I. over the 9 year period: 367-890).


In this paper, we propose a strategy for fusing clustering maps obtained with different remote sensing sources. Dempster-Shafer (DS) Theory is a powerful fusion method that allows to combine classifications from different sources and handles ignorance, imprecision and conflict between them. To do so, it attributes evidences (weights) to different hypothesis representing single or unions of classes. We introduce a fully unsupervised evidence assignment strategy exploiting the entropy among cluster memberships. Ambiguous pixels get stronger evidences for union of classes to better represent the uncertainty among them. On two multisource experiments, the proposed Entropy-based Dempster-Shafer (EDS) performs best along the different fusion methods with VHR images, when the single class accuracies from each source are complementary and one of the sources shows low overall accuracy.


According to the quality of response they mediate, autoreactive T cells recognizing islet beta cell peptides could represent both disease effectors in the development of type 1 diabetes (T1DM) and directors of tolerance in nondiabetic individuals or those undergoing preventative immunotherapy. A combination of the rarity of these cells, inadequate technology, and poorly defined epitopes, however, has hampered examination of this paradigm. We have identified a panel of naturally processed islet epitopes by direct elution from APCs bearing HLA-DR4. Employing these epitopes in a sensitive, novel cytokine enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assay, we show that the quality of autoreactive T cells in patients with T1DM exhibits extreme polarization toward a proinflammatory Th1 phenotype. Furthermore, we demonstrate that rather than being unresponsive, the majority of nondiabetic, HLA-matched control subjects also manifest a response against islet peptides, but one that shows extreme T regulatory cell (Treg, IL-10-secreting) bias. We conclude that development of T1DM depends on the balance of autoreactive Th1 and Treg cells, which may be open to favorable manipulation by immune intervention.


Studies have shown stormwater runoff is a contributor to elevated indicator bacteria concentrations in surface waters. These elevated concentrations may indicate a heightened human health risk and lead to water quality violations as concentrations exceed regulatory standards. Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) are commonly established for indicator bacteria, requiring modeling and watershed planning to reduce indicator bacteria loadings. However, factors correlated to indicator bacteria build-up and transport in urban watersheds have not been fully explored. Thus, efforts to manage indicator bacteria in urban watersheds are hampered. A watershed monitoring study in Raleigh, North Carolina, used flow weighted samples to provide detailed mass loadings of fecal coliform, E. coli, and enterococcus from a 12-acre residential watershed. Loads were compared to multiple antecedent and in-storm hydrologic and meteorological parameters. The objective of this study is to determine which, if any, parameters can be linked to changes in indicator bacteria export from urban watersheds. This study will lead to a further understanding of how indicator bacteria can be modeled and managed in urban watersheds.


Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics as the theory of preaching. In this article the development of homiletics in the Low Countries is explored as a case-study within the dynamics of international homiletical thought. The material for this case-study consists of the doctoral theses that have been published since the turn of the century. The amount of doctoral work in homiletics, the variety of methodological approaches and theological perspectives, provide a viable entrance to homiletics as academic discipline. It will be concluded that homiletics has developed into an international, empirically oriented, culturally sensitive, and theological diverse field. Preaching is in transition, so is homiletics. The transition, as seen through the lens of recent Dutch contributions to scholarly discourse in preaching, has three focal points: pneumatology, language, and empirical research.


Purpose of reviewThe article provides an overview of efforts to identify and validate biomarkers in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and a discussion of the challenges confronting researchers in this area. Recent findingsAlthough various putative biomarkers have been investigated in ARDS, the data have been largely disappointing and the 'troponin' of ARDS remains elusive. Establishing a relationship between measurable biological processes and clinical outcomes is vital to advancing clinical trials in ARDS and expanding our arsenal of treatments for this complex syndrome. SummaryThis article summarizes the current status of ARDS biomarker research and provides a framework for future investigation.


Abstract. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a major atmospheric pollutant with a strong anthropogenic component mostly produced by the combustion of fossil fuel and other industrial activities. As a precursor of sulfate aerosols that affect climate, air quality, and human health, this gas needs to be monitored on a global scale. Global climate and chemistry models including aerosol processes along with their radiative effects are important tools for climate and air quality research. Validation of these models against in-situ and satellite measurements is essential to ascertain the credibility of these models and to guide model improvements. In this study, the Goddard Chemistry, Aerosol, Radiation, and Transport (GOCART) module running on-line inside the Goddard Earth Observing System version 5 (GEOS-5) model is used to simulate aerosol and SO2 concentrations. Data taken in November 2010 over Frostburg, Maryland during an SO2 field campaign involving ground instrumentation and aircraft are used to evaluate GEOS-5 simulated SO2 concentrations. Preliminary data analysis indicated the model overestimated surface SO2 concentration, which motivated the examination of the specification of SO2 anthropogenic emission rates. As a result of this analysis, a revision of anthropogenic emission inventories in GEOS-5 was implemented, and the vertical placement of SO2 sources was updated. Results show that these revisions improve the model agreement with observations locally and in regions outside the area of this field campaign. In particular, we use the ground-based measurements collected by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) for the year 2010 to evaluate the revised model simulations over North America.


Smart cities are associated almost exclusively with modern technology and infrastructure. However, smart cities have the possibility to enhance the involvement and contribution of citizens to urban development. This work explores the role of governance as one of the factors influencing the participation of citizens in smart cities projects. Governance characteristics play a major role in explaining different typologies of citizen participation. Through a focus on Amsterdam Smart City program as a specific case study, this research examines the characteristics of governance that are present in the overall program and within a selected sample of projects, and how they relate to different typologies of citizen participation. The analysis and comprehension of governance characteristics plays a crucial role both for a better understanding and management of citizen participation, especially in complex settings where multiple actors are interacting.


This synthetic review aims to unite a seemingly disjoint collection of studies over the past 3 decades around their shared examination of sexism in an often overlooked U.S. population, namely girls attending private Christian schools. This undertaking reveals substantial harms that I categorize as those of immediacy and potentiality, which are occurring behind the protective wall separating church and state. Contra the majority of philosophers of education and researchers in this area, these studies lead me to argue that the state has the obligation and legal ability to intervene in this private domain. Notably, this study begins to flesh out a notion of educational harm that may be robust enough for state policy making and legal action in private schools. Based on a legalized understanding of sexist harm, I conclude with a detailed analysis of Constitutional provisions and court decisions relative to state intervention and freedom of religious practice.


How do bilingual Turkish children develop their mother tongue knowledge in German kindergartens and what are some of the difficulties they face? These are the questions which this paper tries to answer. For this purpose, a study with Turkish kindergarten children from Berlin, Germany was conducted. A total of 40 children were divided into two groups between 3 and 6 years old and tested twice in a year with the TEDIL Test . The test consists of pictures and measures the knowledge of Turkish nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and syntax. All of the children were tested individually by a native Turkish speaker and by the researcher. The testing was done in the kindergarten setting. The results showed that the knowledge of both age groups on different grammatical categories in Turkish was equal on the first test and there were no statistical differences. However, during the second test the group of older children showed a decrease in their knowledge of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue. This paper discusses the factors that influenced the regression in the knowledge of Turkish. This study is one of only a few on bilingual Turkish children and it presents new information about mother tongue loss among kindergarten children, discusses the reasons, and suggests that kindergartens and families should cooperate and work together in order to prevent mother tongue loss from a very early age as well as its effect on the cognitive development of bilingual children.


Abstract. A hazard assessment has been performed on rock slopes impending over a segment of the Taorminese Road, which connects two popular tourist destinations in northeastern Sicily: the urban centers of Taormina and Castelmola. The road crosses steep rock slopes with a complex geological and tectonic history. The section of the road close to Castelmola is often affected by rockfall phenomena, causing injury to people and serious damage to buildings and traffic. The study analyzes the geostructural setting of the unstable rock masses, by evaluating their mechanical properties and the kinematics of potential failures. Rockfall simulations confirm that falling rocks would involve the Taorminese Road with different kinetic energy rates and prove useful for suggesting the most suitable mitigation technologies for future remedial works. The modified Rockfall Hazard Rating System has been applied to highlight the different levels of hazard along the road. The compiled hazard map shows that portions of the slopes need urgent remedial works, especially because Taorminese is the only access road to Castelmola and its interruption would lead to the isolation of the village.


Vitamin A deficiency has been reported on repeatedly in recent years from the Sahel region in West Africa. Nomadism, pastoralism and agro‐pastoralism are the common systems for food production in the area. Milk was a major food item prior to the repeated droughts of the past few decades. This investigation has looked at the retinol content in milk from various domestic animals at the end of the dry season, which is critical from vitamin A supply point of view. Milk from cows fed on hay from the previous year was devoid of retinol, while milk from goats contained good levels regardless of whether the source of fodder was browse or fresh grass after the onset of rains. Acacia tortilis, a common and preferred fodder tree, is rich in β‐carotene. Establishing small‐scale cultivation of other β‐carotene rich, indigenous, woody, non‐spiny fodder‐species such as Maerua crassifolia, is therefore proposed to increase the vitamin A content, and therefore the value of cow's milk. This could be integrated into the ong...


Chicken eggshells can be used as raw material in the manufacture of CaO catalysts. Increased CaO catalyst activity can be done by the impregnation method. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of %K on the wet impregnation of CaO catalyst using KOH and to find out the impregnation catalyst (CaO / K2O) on the biodiesel yield. Prepared chicken egg shells were calcined at 900oC for 3 hours. Then the CaO obtained was impregnated using KOH with a variation of % K (5%, 7%, 9% and 12% (w / w)) while heated at 85oC. The impregnation product was calcined at 600oC for 5 hours. The impregnation catalyst (CaO K2O) was applied to the biodiesel synthesis through a transesterification reaction with a mole ratio of 1:12 waste cooking oil: methanol, the amount of catalyst was 1.5% at a reaction temperature of 70°C for 2.5 hours. Based on the results of SEM-EDS analysis, the highest K2O at 7% K was 21.99%), while the highest CaO content was at 9% K by 81.53%. For the highest surface area analysis at 7% K with a surface area of 71.22 m2 / g, alkalinity was 2.59 mmol / g. The best biodiesel was obtained with a yield of 87.17%, kinematic viscosity of 2.89 cSt, water content of 0.032%, density of 0.819 g/ml, methyl ester level of 99.39%.


The in vitro toxicology field seeks for reliable human relevant hepatic models for predicting xenobiotics metabolism and for the safety assessment of chemicals and developing drugs. The low availability and rapid loss of the phenotype or low biotransformation activity of primary hepatocytes urged the stem cell differentiation into hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs). Umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSC), in particular, offer a highly available cell source, with few ethical issues and higher genetic stability. However, the dynamic and complex microenvironment of liver development, including the cell-ECM and cell–cell interactions, pressure gradients (oxygen and nutrients) and growth factor signaling that are critical for the differentiation and maturation of hepatocytes, challenges the progress of in vitro hepatic models. Promising strategies like (i) cytokine and growth factor supplementation mimicking the liver development; (ii) epigenetic modification; and (iii) bioengineering techniques to recreate the liver microphysiological environment are gaining increasing importance for the development of relevant in vitro liver models to address the need for higher predictivity and cost efficiency. In this context, this chapter reviews the existing knowledge and recent advances on the approaches for deriving HLCs from UC-MSC and their application for in vitro toxicology.


While Lonergan's work has been developed and applied to a range of cultures and ideas, few scholars have addressed the question of whether it is subject to feminist critique. And few feminists have employed the transcendental method of Lonergan to aid the feminist scholarly agenda. This collection of ten essays initiates dialogue among scholars interested in Lonergan and concerned with feminism, and engages several fields of enquiry: philosophy, natural science, human science, ethics, and theology. Frederick E. Crowe deals with the challenges involved when one applies the work of a generalist, such as Lonergan, to a particular set of concerns, such as those of feminists. Three articles by philosophers - Paulette Kidder, Michael Vertin, and Elizabeth Morelli - treat questions of epistemology and gender. Cynthia Crysdale discusses women's ways of knowing from a social scientific perspective. Articles by Tad Dunne and Denise Carmody deal with the question of authenticity and the criteria by which feminist truths are delineated. Michael Shute examines Lonergan's work on 'emergent probability' in light of eco-feminist critiques of the 'great chain of being.' Mary Frohlich addresses the question of the theological significance of sexuality. Charles Hefling examines Lonergan's Christology in reference to the feminist question of whether a male saviour can save women. Lonergan invites his readers to engage in an experiment in cognitive self-appropriation - Lonergan and Feminism encourages this experiment.


The design and development of a smart monitoring and controlling system for household electrical appliances in real time has been reported in this paper. The system principally monitors electrical parameters of household appliances such as voltage and current and subsequently calculates the power consumed. The novelty of this system is the implementation of the controlling mechanism of appliances in different ways. The developed system is a low-cost and flexible in operation and thus can save electricity expense of the consumers. The prototype has been extensively tested in real-life situations and experimental results are very


Threshold devices present information gathered from the home's surroundings to give new views on the domestic situation. We built two prototypes of different threshold devices and studied them in field trials with participant households. The Local Barometer displays online text and images related to the home's locality depending on the local wind conditions to give an impression of the sociocultural surroundings. The Plane Tracker tracks aircraft passing overhead and imagines their flights onscreen to resource an understanding of the home's global links. Our studies indicated that the experiences they provided were compelling, that participants could and did interpret the devices in various ways, that their form designs were appropriate for domestic environments, that using ready-made information contributed to the richness of the experiences, and that situating the information they provided with respect to the home and its locality was important for the ways people engaged with them.


In 1938 Action Comics #1 introduced the world to Superman. In a matter of years, the skies of our imaginations were filled with mutants, aliens and vigilantes. Batman, Wonder Woman and the X-Men - in less than a century they've gone from not existing at all to being everywhere we look. But why? For Grant Morrison, possibly the greatest of contemporary superhero storytellers, these heroes are not simply characters but powerful archetypes whose ongoing story arcs reflect and predict the lives we live. In this exhilarating book, Morrison draws on history, art, mythology, and his own astonishing journey to provide the first true chronicle of the superhero.


Steep mountain rivers have hydraulic and morphodynamic characteristics that hinder velocity measurements. The high spatial variability of hydraulic parameters, such as water depth (WD), river width and flow velocity, makes the choice of a representative cross-section to measure the velocity in detail challenging. Additionally, sediment transport and rapidly changing bed morphology exclude the utilization of standard and often intrusive velocity measurement techniques. The limited technical choices are further reduced in the presence of macro-roughness elements, such as large, relatively immobile boulders. Tracer tracking techniques are among the few reliable methods that can be used under these conditions to evaluate the mean flow velocity. However, most tracer tracking techniques calculate bulk flow velocities between two or more fixed cross-sections. In the presence of intense sediment transport resulting in an important temporal variability of the bed morphology, dead water zones may appear in the few selected measurement sections. Thus a technique based on the analysis of an entire channel reach is needed in this study. A dye tracer measurement technique in which a single camcorder visualizes a long flume reach is described and developed. This allows us to overcome the problem of the presence of dead water zones. To validate this video analysis technique, velocity measurements were carried out on a laboratory flume simulating a torrent, with a relatively gentle slope of 1.97% and without sediment transport, using several commonly used velocity measurement instruments. In the absence of boulders, salt injections, WD and ultrasonic velocity profiler measurements were carried out, along with dye injection technique. When boulders were present, dye tracer technique was validated only by comparison with salt tracer. Several video analysis techniques used to infer velocities were developed and compared, showing that dye tracking is a valid technique for bulk velocity measurements. RGB Euclidean distance was identified as being the best measure of the average flow velocity.


The Chalk Back movement that started in March 2016 is a rapidly growing collective of over 150 young activists from around the world. As part of a university class project, Sophie decided to collect experiences of street harassment, write them out verbatim with chalk on the streets where they occurred alongside the hashtag #stopstreetharassment, and post them on the Instagram account @catcallsofnyc. Two years later, the account gained popularity. Other catcallsof accounts opened in London, Amsterdam, Ottawa, Dhaka, Nairobi, Cairo, and Sydney. These accounts, discussed below, are just a few of those spanning 150 cities in 49 countries in 6 continents. We are two Chalk Back members—Natasha from Ottawa and Sophie from New York City—highlighting the risk, empowerment, and power dynamics of what we call chalking back by amplifying the voices of those doing this work around the world.


Testing the fractionally integrated order of seasonal and nonseasonal unit roots is quite important for the economic and financial time series modeling. In this article, the widely used Robinson's (1994) test is applied to various well-known long memory models. Via Monte Carlo experiments, we study and compare the performances of this test using several sample sizes.


The complex relationship between ethics and aesthetics shapes the historical analyses offered in the poetry of David Jones and Geoffrey Hill. This essay examines the symbolic, historical, and formal significance of Gothic architecture in their poetry, showing how it illustrates their very different explorations of aesthetic value. In The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which introduced French Symbolism to English readers, Arthur Symons writes: "Every age has its own symbols; but a symbol once perfectly expressed, that symbol remains, as Gothic architecture remains the very soul of the Middle Ages" (80). As a symbol, the Gothic has been invested with a variety of meanings since the earliest days of the mediaeval revival, but in the twentieth century it has also been a focus for exploring the significance and value of aesthetic form itself. In the poetry of David Jones and Geoffrey Hill, Gothic architecture is symbolic of an earlier culture whose spiritual aspirations are given communal expression, a view shared by such nineteenth-century precursors as A.W. Pugin and John Ruskin. Jones and Hill nonetheless offer radically different versions of the Gothic in their poetry. Whereas Jones develops the traditional associations of Gothic form into an exemplum within his larger theory of culture, Hill meditates on its ethical meaning. This le ads, in Jones, to a celebration of aesthetic form as an end in itself, but in Hill to a radical questioning of aesthetic value, with important implications for their interpretations of culture. The differences between Hill and Jones exemplify the fraught relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical in twentieth-century culture. Hill takes as his starting point Wittgenstein's claim that "'Ethics and Aesthetics are one'" (qtd. in "Dreams" 96). Poetry is an ethical discipline for Hill, and he approvingly cites Kenneth Burke's definition of "'workmanship' as 'a trait in which the ethical and the esthetic are one'" (qtd. in Lords 150). Jones, in contrast, maintains the Aristotelian and scholastic distinction between ars and prudentia, succinctly expressed by Brian Davies: "'Art' is correct reason about things to be made. 'Prudence' is correct reason about things to be done and aims at the good of the agent" (240-41). Jones observes that "in so far as art has an end[,] that end is a 'fitting together' and the word art means a fitting together." Art aims at achieving aesthetic form. Thus, "the much misinterpreted tag that art is for art's sake is, in that sense, true" (Epoch 151), a position Hill wou ld view as "aesthetic hermeticism" (Lords 6). Conversely, Jones would regard the position held by Wittgenstein and Hill as a case of confusing ars with prudentia, which he poetically defines as "the tutelary genius who presides over the whole realm of faith, moral, religion, ethic" (Epoch 145). What is at stake in this categorical debate is the basis for making and judging poetry or any other art. By exploring the role of Gothic architecture in the work of both poets, the terms of the debate can be clarified, and the practical results of their theoretical positions demonstrated, with an aim to understanding more fully the very different ends sought by two poets whose work is often linked together. The poetry of Jones alludes to Gothic architecture as part of a wider engagement with what he calls "Celto-Latin-Germanic-Western Christian culture" (Anathemata 92 n.4). While retaining a Ruskinian sense of Gothic architecture as a symbol for vital culture, Jones recognizes that cultural vitality cannot be achieved through restoration, which seeks to recover an irrecoverable past, or through imitation, which merely parodies an earlier period style. He views the modern West as suffering a severe imbalance in which utilitarian values outweigh gratuitous ones; in such a situation, art becomes separated from daily life and work, which are more than ever determined by exclusively pragmatic ends. …


In this paper, a new particle tracer for surface hydrology is proposed. The approach leverages the complementary advantages offered by particle‐tracking velocimetry and traditional tracing technologies, such as dyes and chemicals, toward a practically feasible and low‐cost measurement system. Specifically, the proposed methodology is based on the detection and tracking of buoyant fluorescent microspheres through an experimental system that incorporates ultraviolet lamps to elicit the fluorescence response and a digital camera to record the particle transit. This low‐cost measurement system can be used in a variety of natural settings ranging from small‐scale streams to rills with scales on the order of a few centimeters in hillslopes. The use of insoluble buoyant particles reduces the amount of tracing material for experimental measurements. Further, particles' enhanced fluorescence allows for noninvasive flow characterization, that is, for nonintrusively detecting the tracer without deploying probes and samplers in the water. A proof of concept experiment for the proposed methodology is conducted on the Rio Cordon, a natural mountainous stream in the Italian Alps. Flow measurements at selected stream cross sections and travel time experiments on varying stream reaches are performed to ascertain the feasibility of fluorescent particle tracers. Such experimental findings demonstrate that the particles are visible in complex natural streams and are effective in estimating flow velocities and travel times.


Abstract The rich record of vertebrate, hominin and archaeological remains recovered from Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania stands in stark contrast to the largely unexplored macroinvertebrate record from the region. Here we examine fossil malacofauna from Olduvai Gorge, inclusive of new discoveries and previous reports, and survey their potential as paleoecologic indicators. Recorded for the first time from Olduvai, an assemblage of fossil bivalve shells is attributed by character comparison to modern Chambardia wahlbergi, a freshwater unionid species widespread across Africa. The fossilized shells were localized in Bed III conglomerate channel deposits, with channel geometry exhibiting scour bases and superimposed fill structures with fining upward sequences. The ecology of recent C. wahlbergi combined with sedimentological data indicate the aquatic environment in this region during Olduvai Bed III times can be reconstructed as a periodically desiccated floodplain bordering a river channel or channels with permanent running water and marked seasonal fluctuations. This paleo-environmental setting presents drastic change compared with that of the lower Bed I and Bed II deposits, when an alkaline/saline lake extended over the site and fresh water was restricted to standing groundwater-fed pools with snail species known today to be intermediate hosts for the trematode genera Schistosoma (schistosomiasis) and Fasciola (fascioliasis). This research enhances details of landscape evolution at Olduvai basin and furthers paleoenvironmental interpretations during the time of Bed III deposition.


Crop and livestock production are essential to maintain food security. In China, crop and livestock production were integrated in the past. Today, small backyard systems are still integrated but the larger livestock farms are landless and largely geographically separated from crop production systems. As a result, there is less recycling of animal manures and there are lower nutrient use efficiencies in the Chinese food production systems. This, in turn, results in considerable losses of nutrients, causing water pollution and harmful algal blooms in Chinese lakes, rivers and seas. To turn the tide, there is a need for agricultural "green" development for food production through reintegrating crop and livestock production. An additional wish is to turn the Chinese water systems "blue" to secure clean water for current and future generations. In this paper, current knowledge is summarized to identify promising interventions for reintegrating crop and livestock production toward clean water. Technical, social, economic, policy and environmental interventions are addressed and examples are given. The paper highlights recommended next steps to achieve "green" agriculture and "blue" water in China.


As the amount of content grows on theWeb, there is an increasing need to provide greater search capabilities that produce relevant results. Users should be given the capability to execute complex queries in order to provide greater accuracy in their searching endeavours over theWeb. The semantic Web promises to provide such a feature by making the concepts within data explicit.

We survey currently proposed semantic enhancements for Wikipedia, which is one of the largest repositories of knowledge at present. Furthermore, we analyze the benefit and feasibility of the different technologies, and we identify certain gaps in current proposals. We then propose a new platform in order to cater for semantic user interface development as separate modules. Finally, we create several semantic user interface modules to test the effectiveness of such an implementation.

The results from this project is that a platform to allow access to semantic data over existing content is not only possible, but an effective way to encourage development of semantic technologies. We were also able to create a new way to leverage semantic data allowing users to perform a query based on a range of values, with the guidance of a graph to visualize the distribution of the results.


Background: Currently COVID-19 infection is a global challenge to the medical community Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and respiratory failure require mechanical ventilation Tracheostomy is needed for prolonged ventilation as COVID-19 infections often escalates, so staying of the patient can be extended in ICU with ventilator Objective: To evaluate the details of tracheostomy including patients profile, surgical steps, complications and precautions by health care workers at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the specially assigned hospital for COVID-19 patients Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective study in which 22 COVID-19 patients underwent bedside surgical tracheostomy at the ICU Clinical patient's profiles such as age, sex, co-morbidities, complication of the tracheostomy, ventilator withdrawal after tracheostomy and nosocomial infections of the health care workers related to tracheostomy were analyzed Result: Out of the 22 patients with COVID-19 infections those underwent tracheostomy, 16(72 72(%) were male and 6 (27 27%) were female with age ranged from 42 years to 75 years and a mean age of 64 years The median duration from the day of the orotracheal intubation to the day of tracheostomy was 13 days Conclusion: Surgical tracheostomy on COVID-19 patients is a high risk aerosol generating procedure for health care workers It should be performed with close association with otolaryngologists, anesthesiologists and intensive care physicians along with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for smooth management of the general anesthesia and airway


Over-complete transforms have recently become the focus of a wide wealth of research in signal processing, machine learning, statistics and related fields. Their great modelling flexibility allows to find sparse representations and approximations of data that in turn prove to be very efficient in a wide range of applications. Sparse models express signals as linear combinations of a few basis functions called atoms taken from a so-called dictionary. Finding the optimal dictionary from a set of training signals of a given class is the objective of dictionary learning and the main focus of this thesis. The experimental evidence presented here focuses on the processing of audio signals, and the role of sparse algorithms in audio applications is accordingly highlighted. The first main contribution of this thesis is the development of a pitch-synchronous transform where the frame-by-frame analysis of audio data is adapted so that each frame analysing periodic signals contains an integer number of periods. This algorithm presents a technique for adapting transform parameters to the audio signal to be analysed, it is shown to improve the sparsity of the representation if compared to a non pitchsynchronous approach and further evaluated in the context of source separation by binary masking. A second main contribution is the development of a novel model and relative algorithm for dictionary learning of convolved signals, where the observed variables are sparsely approximated by the atoms contained in a convolved dictionary. An algorithm is devised to learn the impulse response applied to the dictionary and experimental results on synthetic data show the superior approximation performance of the proposed method compared to a state-of-the-art dictionary learning algorithm. Finally, a third main contribution is the development of methods for learning dictionaries that are both well adapted to a training set of data and mutually incoherent. Two novel algorithms namely the incoherent k-svd and the iterative projections and rotations (ipr) algorithm are introduced and compared to different techniques published in the literature in a sparse approximation context. The ipr algorithm in particular is shown to outperform the benchmark techniques in learning very incoherent dictionaries while maintaining a good signal-to-noise ratio of the representation. Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary, University of London 2013