Background and Objectives: As English is a stress-timed language, lexical stress plays an important role in the perception and processing of speech by native speakers. Incorrect stress placement can reduce the intelligibility of the speaker and their ability to communicate more effectively. The accurate identification of lexical stress patterns is thus a key assessment tool of the speaker's pronunciation in applications such as second language (L2) learning, language proficiency testing and speech therapy. With the increasing use of Computer-Aided Language Learning (CALL) and Computer-Aided Speech and Language Therapy (CASLT) tools, the automatic assessment of lexical stress has become an important component of measuring the quality of the speaker's pronunciation. In this work we proposed a Deep Neural Network (DNN) classifier to discriminate between the unequal lexical stress patterns in English words, strong-weak (SW) and weak-strong (WS). The features used in training the deep neural network are derived from the duration, pitch and intensity of each of the two consecutive syllables along with a set of energies of different frequency bands. The robustness of our proposed lexical stress detector has been validated by testing it on the standard TIMIT dataset collected from adult male and female speakers distributed over 8 different dialect regions. Method: Our lexical stress classifier is applied on the speech signal along with the prompted word. Figure 1 shows a block diagram of the overall system. The speech signal is first force aligned with the predetermined phoneme sequence of the word to obtain the time boundaries of each phoneme. The alignment is performed using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) Viterbi decoder along with set of HMM acoustic models trained from the same corpus to reduce the error caused by inaccurate phone level segmentation. A set of features is then extracted from each syllable and the features of each pair of consecutive syllables combined using the extracted features directly and concatenating them into one wide feature vector. Lexical stress is identified by the variation in the pitch, energy and duration produced between different syllables in a multi-syllabic word. The stressed syllable is characterized by increased energy and pitch as well as a longer duration compared to the other syllables within the same word. Therefore we extracted seven features f1–f7 related to these characteristics as listed in Table 1. The energy based features (f1, f2, f3) were extracted after applying the non-linear Teager energy operator (TEO) on the speech signal to obtain a better estimation of the speech signal energy and reduce the noise effect. These seven features are commonly used in the detection of the stressed syllable in a word. As the speech signal energy is distributed over different frequency bands, we also computed the energy in the Mel-scale frequency bands in each frame of the syllable nucleus. The speech signal was divided into 10 msec non-overlapped frames and the energy, pitch and the frequency bands energies calculated for each frame. As seen in Figure 1, to input the raw extracted features directly to the DNN, we concatenate the extracted features into one wide feature vector. Each syllable has 7 scalar values f1–f7 and 27*n Mel-coefficients where n is the number of frames in each syllable's vowel. To handle variable vowel lengths, we limit the number of input frames provided to the DNN to a maximum N frames for each syllable. This provides the DNN with a fixed length Mel-energy input vector and allows the DNN to use information about the distribution of the Mel-energy bands over the vowel. If the vowel length (n) is greater than N frames, only the middle N frames are used. If the length of the vowel (n) is smaller than N frames, inputs frames are padded to N frames. The final size of the input vector to the DNN is 2*(7+27*N) for a pair of consecutive syllables, with N tuned empirically. The DNN is trained using the mini-batch stochastic gradient decent method (MSGD) with adaptive learning rate. The learning rate starts with an initial value (typically 0.1) and after each epoch the loss in the error of the validation data set is computed. If the loss is greater than zero (i.e. the error increases) the training continues with the same learning rate. If the error continues increasing for 10 consecutive epochs, the learning rate is halved and the parameter of the classifier returned to the one that achieved minimum error. Training is terminated when the learning rate reaches its minimum value (typically 0.0001) or after 200 epochs, whichever is earlier. The performance of the DNN is then computed using a separate testing set. Experiments and Results: We extracted raw features from consecutive syllables belonging to the same word from the TIMIT speech corpus. With the TIMIT corpus, we achieved a minimum error rate of 12.6% using a DNN classifier with 6 hidden layers and 100 hidden units per layer. Due to the unavailability of sufficient male and female data, we were unable to build a separate model for each gender. In Fig. 2, we present the error rate for each gender using a model trained on both male and female data. The results show that the classification of the SW is better in male speakers compared to female speakers while the WS error rate is lower for female speakers. However, the overall misclassification rate for both male and female speakers is almost the same. To study the influence of the dialect on the algorithm, we compared the error rate when testing each dialect using a model trained with the training data of all dialects and when the model was trained with training data from all dialects except the tested one as shown in Fig. 3. As seen, the error rate of most of the dialects remains unchanged except for DR1 where the error rate increased significantly from 4.8 % to 8%. This can be explained by the small amount of test samples for this dialect (only 5% of the test samples). DR4 also shows a considerable increase in the error rate. Although the smallest amount of training samples was from the DR1 (New England) dialect, it produced the lowest error rate among the other dialects. Further work is needed to explain this behavior. Conclusion: In this work we present a DNN classifier to detect bisyllabic lexical stress patterns in multi-syllabic English words. The DNN classifier is trained using a set of features extracted from pairs of consecutive syllables related to pitch, intensity and duration along with energies in different frequency bands. The feature set of each pair of consecutive syllables is combined by concatenating the raw features into one wide vector. When applied on the standard TIMIT adult speech, the algorithm achieved a classification accuracy of 87.4%. The system performance show high stability over different dialects and gender.


COVID-19 substantially decreased employment, but the effects vary among demographic and socioeconomic groups. We document the employment losses in April 2020 across various groups using the U.S. Current Population Survey. The unemployment rate understates employment losses. We focus on the percentage of the civilian population that is employed and at work. Young persons experienced the largest employment losses. Individuals with less education and lower family income experienced much larger employment losses than their more educated and higher income counterparts. Hispanics and blacks were more adversely affected than whites.


The overall purpose of this dissertation was to compare various observed score approaches in detecting differential item functioning among multiple examinee groups simultaneously. Specifically, this study contributes to the literature base by investigating a lasso-constraint observed score method (i.e., logistic regression lasso; LR lasso) in the context of multiple groups as well as features of test design related to test information targets. Given that a lasso-constraint method has not been extended for multiple groups using observed scores, comparisons are made with other observed score techniques (i.e., generalized Mantel-Haenszel ?2 and generalized logistic regression) while using item response theory to generate data (thus avoiding model-data congruity complications in the study design). Multiple variables were manipulated in a simulation study at the test-level (e.g., the location of the test information target relative to the central tendency of the examinee population, and the shape of the test information function), item-level (e.g., the location of DIF items relative to the test information target, and the percentage of DIF items), and for simulees (e.g., the amount of impact and sample size balance). The relative lack of literature which explores DIF as it relates to target test information functions provided the exigency for exploring it within this study, along with its typical absence in literature using IRT generation models. Practitioners may find the results useful in judging the merit of adopting the newer lasso method for detecting DIF within multiple groups as opposed to pre-existing methods. Furthermore, the test design features of this study allow for the interpretation to be less theoretical in nature and better aligned with standard operational practices, such as building exams to be optimized at test information targets, for example. The results provide consilience that the LR lasso method has inflated type I error overall with no additional benefit in power. In fact, even when type I error rates are comparable across methods, LR lasso has a lower hit rate in many instances (i.e., higher type II error rate). The sensitivity of LR lasso to detecting DIF items seems to be substantially influenced by having an increased number of DIF items on a form. Recommendations for practitioners, as well as limitations and directions for future research, are provided as well. Taken collectively, the results of the simulation study can be interpreted to support the claim that LR lasso fails to perform comparably with more established methods for multiple groups DIF detection across numerous instances but could potentially have merit in practical application in situations that have yet to be explored. While some limitations of LR lasso were noted within this study, there are a variety of other conditions which need to be explored before practitioners discard the method altogether (a few such studies are suggested). It may well be the case that the added complexity afforded by the regularization in estimating the group-specific model parameters through lasso constraints may confound the detection of the DIF items.


Sport management programs often partner with intercollegiate athletic departments or community sport organizations to provide student volunteers. Motivating, satisfying, and retaining the student population may constitute a challenge for academic program stakeholders. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between motivation, satisfaction, and retention of volunteers at undergraduate sport management programs. Three hundred and twenty-two undergraduate students from five Midwestern institutions completed a 46-item questionnaire assessing their volunteer motivation, satisfaction, and retention. Results indicated students were predominantly motivated to volunteer by Love of Sport and Career motivation factors. Career, Social, Understanding, and Enhancement motivations significantly aided in predicting satisfaction, while Career, Social, and satisfaction significantly predicted retention. Implications for sport management academic programs and directions for future research are discussed.


Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to become the next performance measure in coaching by enhancing players' perceptual ability. This paper aims to analyze elite coaches' and performance analysts' perceptions of barriers to and opportunities for the adaptation of VR technology in football coaching. Following a pilot study, interviews were conducted with six elite coaches and performance analysts. Perceptions of the key barriers to VR's widespread adoption were the following: lack of conclusive evidence, practicality, quality of software, and cognitive overload. VR needs to overcome these barriers to be successfully integrated into contemporary coaching. Key opportunities included virtual models of play, for example, a virtual environment created by VR technology that exposes players to situations experienced in real environments. In addition, VR may be used to enhance player development by facilitating an environment in which players can develop their visual exploratory behavior and can acquire task-relevant information, resulting in faster decision making. Opportunities regarding player rehabilitation and solving isolated incidents were also identified. The authors conclude that VR technology has a developing role in coaching and has the potential to become a valuable supplement to current coaching methods for those actively seeking competitive advantage through technological advancement.


Abstract In Paracerceis sculpta, a Gulf of California isopod, α-males usually defend aggregations of breeding females within the spongocoels of intertidal sponges. Breeding isopods are also found in habitats other than sponges, but interactions among individuals in these locations are poorly known. To investigate plasticity in male-male interactions associated with mate acquisition in breeding habitats other than sponges, we examined the behavior of pairs of α-males in two distinct environments; those in which breeding sites were absent, but females were present, and those in which both breeding sites and females were absent. We established males as residents in the presence and in the absence of females by allowing them to occupy arenas for 1 h before intruders were introduced. Residents and intruders engaged in significantly more total acts and grappled more in the presence of females than when females were absent. In the presence of females, residents became active first in most cases, and gripped females more than intruders. Latency to activity was significantly longer when receptive females were present than when they were absent. However, residents seldom interacted with intruders when females were lacking. Our results suggest that in locations other than sponges, α-males compete for females and can recognize their status as residents and as intruders. These results also suggest that, as in many vertebrate and invertebrate species, P. sculpta α-males attempt to mate opportunistically, and that contests for mates in atypical breeding habitats may be common in nature. We discuss the importance of distinguishing rare and highly contingent behaviors from those likely to represent adaptive behavioral plasticity, and we propose a simple criterion of commonality for their identification in behavioral analyses.


Usually complete linear descriptions of polytopes consist of
an enormous number of facet-defining inequalities already
for very small problem sizes. In this paper, we describe a method
for dividing the inequalities into equivalence classes without resorting to a normal form. Within each
class, facets are related by certain symmetries and it is sufficient
to list one representative of each class to give a complete
picture of the structural properties of a polytope. We propose an algorithm
for the classification and illustrate its efficiency on a broad range of combinatorial optimization problems including the Traveling Salesman and the Linear Ordering Problem.


Background: Vaginal cancer presenting concurrently with stage 4 uterovaginal prolapse is a rare occurrence, representing less than 1% of all gynecologic malignancies. Case: We review the case of an 82-year-old woman who presented for care of prolapse. Examination demonstrated complete uterovaginal prolapse and a vaginal ulcer, later confirmed to be vaginal cancer. Conclusion: The management of these complicated patients is limited by a lack of data available to guide treatment. This case and the literature review highlight the need for a multidisciplinary approach to treatment and a high level of clinical suspicion for diagnosis of these very challenging cases.


Teaching is a complex business and becoming a teacher can be as complicated as the work itself. Pre service teachers bring to their education programs a variety of experiences, coping mechanisms and knowledge of what teachers do and what teaching is. The developing understandings of teaching and teachers' work and how the pre service teacher might experience this learning is a focus of this presentation. The journey of one pre service is outlined as he develops over the twelve months of the Graduate Diploma of Education Primary Program. What he brings to the program; his understandings of teaching and teachers, his personal dispositions, his learning and experiences of schools are described in terms of a framework based on the work of Peter Freebody and Alan Luke (1990, 1999). The four practices of the pre service teacher are described in order to understand how these interact and can be used to articulate the experience of the pre service teacher.


Dr. Class Beckord traced the origin of the Ruhr region in Germany and how the "regional planning approach" helped the region to become a model for peri-urban development for Europe and other parts of the world. This was possible because the Ruhr regional planning authority interacted closely with state, regional and local planning forums who were guided by experts in different sectors on a continuous basis. The focus then shifted to Sriperumbudur, with Prof.
Christoph Woiwode(Bath Spa University)and Mr.Tobias Kuttler
(TU Berlin) discussing its industrialisation and politics. They revealed that SIPCOT (State Industries and Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu) has steered the development process in the region by developing a system of parallel
governance leading to spatial fragmentation and uncoordinated decision making. Spatial fragmentation and societal disconnects were the essence of Prof. Karen Coelho's presentation on Ambur town. She explained that there is a huge "disconnect between the dynamism of Ambur's leather industry and the quality of life of its residents".
Despite problems such as drinking water scarcity, non-
existence of economic mobility and limited employment opportunities, Ambur is perceived as a 'high-growth potential' industrial cluster yet is unregulated and haphazard in its development. On a different note, Prof.
Peter Struss spoke about integrated modelling of water management and governance. He stressed on the concept of sustainable peri-urban development and the need to develop biological,chemical, hydrological and economic models of the peri-urban region to understand the effect of one process on the other.


There is currently a wave of enthusiasm for "building resilience" in the international humanitarian and development sectors. This has coincided with a number of attempts to both define what resilience is and devise ways of measuring it.  However, rather than comprehensively reviewing these attempts, this paper presents Oxfam GB's own approach for both understanding and measuring resilience. It begins by interrogating the essence of resilience and substantiating its multidimensional nature.  This is followed by describing the conceptual framework underlying the approach and how it applies the Alkire-Foster method used in the measurement of multidimensional constructs, such as poverty and women's empowerment. Thereafter, the approach's utility in informing situational analyses, outcome tracking, and impact evaluations is described, using primary data collected from Ethiopia's Somali Region. A critical review of its strengths and limitations is presented.


External optical coupling into and out of semi-infinite chains of noncontacting noble-metal nanoparticles is found to be highly directional. While strong coupling of external radiation into and out of low-attenuation surface plasmon polaritons (PPs) in semi-infinite nanoparticle chains is predicted, the radiation patterns are quite complex indicating possible challenges in mode matching. We show that a treatment that neglects end effects provides an entirely inadequate description of both the PPs on the chain and of the scattered electromagnetic radiation.


Abstract. This study proposes a new method for identifying temporally stable spatial patterns in soil moisture. Soil moisture patterns during rainfall-driven wetting conditions and during radiation-driven drying essentially reflect different processes with specific underlying controls. Consequently we expect that these patterns exhibit different covariance structures, and their spatial analysis should be separated accordingly. More specifically we hypothesize that: (H1): An ensemble of distributed soil moisture observations will converge to a rank-stable configuration during long-term drying periods and re-organize to stable ranks after disturbances; (H2): Variograms of these soil moisture ranks converge towards a stable configuration during drying periods, reflecting the covariance of the underlying time-invariant controls. These hypotheses were tested using soil moisture measurements which were recorded within the CAOS research unit in Luxembourg. We found evidence of stable rank configurations for time spans of several weeks. During rainfall events, these stable ranks were disturbed but later reorganized into the same pre-event configuration. Coupling time-shifting variograms with a density-based clustering algorithm enabled us to identify a convergence towards stable spatial variogram configurations. Moreover, the spatial organization of soil moisture showed preferred states with distinct patterns, depending on their respective drivers. This corroborates that the proposed method can be used to disentangle spatial structure originating from rainfall patterns from those controlled by the internal terrestrial system properties. Furthermore, we conclude that during stable states variogram aggregates originating from the density-based clustering could in principle be used for interpolation purposes, as they represent a temporally stable covariance. In contrast, an interpolation can be problematic while covariance is not stable in time. While the method has been developed and tested based on spatially distributed soil moisture data, it is also suitable for analyzing other state variables.


Issues related to the development of acoustic models of machines are important factors both in the design of low-noise machines and in the prediction of machines noise. The acoustic modelling of machines may be carried out using a set of omni-directional substitute sound sources, located in points related to the functional elements of machines. The optimal parameters of these sources may be determined using an inversion method. To calculate these parameters by using the inversion method one must know the real distribution of sound pressure around the machine. This requires the determination, on the surface of hemisphere, of both the distribution of the amplitude of sound pressures, as well as the distribution of phase shift angles between acoustic signals. Computer simulations yield optimal parameters (sound power) for the individual omni-directional sound sources. Using the calculated parameters of the substitute sources it is possible to determine the radiation characteristics and to carry the acoustic assessment of the machine.


Recent work has seen the development of general purpose neural architectures that can be trained to perform tasks across diverse data modalities. General purpose models typically make few assumptions about the underlying data-structure and are known to perform well in the large-data regime. At the same time, there has been growing interest in modular neural architectures that represent the data using sparsely interacting modules. These models can be more robust out-of-distribution, computationally efficient, and capable of sample-efficient adaptation to new data. However, they tend to make domain-specific assumptions about the data, and present challenges in how module behavior (i.e., parameterization) and connectivity (i.e., their layout) can be jointly learned. In this work, we introduce a general purpose, yet modular neural architecture called Neural Attentive Circuits (NACs) that jointly learns the parameterization and a sparse connectivity of neural modules without using domain knowledge. NACs are best understood as the combination of two systems that are jointly trained end-to-end: one that determines the module configuration and the other that executes it on an input. We demonstrate qualitatively that NACs learn diverse and meaningful module configurations on the NLVR2 dataset without additional supervision. Quantitatively, we show that by incorporating modularity in this way, NACs improve upon a strong non-modular baseline in terms of low-shot adaptation on CIFAR and CUBs dataset by about 10%, and OOD robustness on Tiny ImageNet-R by about 2.5%. Further, we find that NACs can achieve an 8x speedup at inference time while losing less than 3% performance. Finally, we find NACs to yield competitive results on diverse data modalities spanning point-cloud classification, symbolic processing and text-classification from ASCII bytes, thereby confirming its general purpose nature.


A flash flood on 19th June 2005 caused more than one hundred landslides in the North-western North York Moors uplands, UK. This project aims to 1) assess digital elevation models (DEMs) in terms of statistical terrain analysis and 2) explore the sensitivity of a 2D FLOWMAP model response to DEMs input data. A variety of topographic data were acquired, generated and processed. These included high-resolution aerial photographs, Ordnance Survey (OS) DEMs, topographic maps, InSAR DEMs, LiDAR data and ground survey data. These DEMs of different horizontal and vertical resolutions were analysed through key topographic parameters calculated using three different software packages. Key topographic attributes such as slope, aspect, profile curvature and the Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) were studied. Results demonstrate that DEMs from different sources or at different resolutions provide different representations of topographic parameters especially in areas where large topographic changes take place. Algorithms used in different packages also had an effect. Degradation in the representation of topographic information is larger between 10 m and 50 m DEMs than between 5 m and 10 m DEMs. Finer resolution and smaller filter size have the same type of impact on slope and aspect. In addition, DEMs at finer horizontal resolutions have smaller minimum profile curvatures and larger maximum values and standard deviations in profile curvature. The TWI is more sensitive to the horizontal resolution than DEM data source and finer DEMs calculate smaller minimum and mean TWI and larger maximum TWI and standard deviations. Modelled hydrological responses are sensitive to both DEM resolution and its data source. Model showed different results when using 5 m LIDAR DEM and 5 m InSAR DEM of the same area, which meant DEM source had impacts on modelling These differences reduced with a larger magnitude flooding. Producing a better representative surface model from the LIDAR data has much larger impact on model response than adjusting a constant roughness coefficient.


FeAl–TiB2 composites have been produced from mixtures of Fe, Al, Ti and B powders using the Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis (SHS or combustion synthesis) method. When the powder mixture was heated in vacuum to approximately 900 K, an abrupt increase in temperature was observed, indicating that the SHS reaction occurred in the powder mixture. The treating time from the start of heating to the end of the exothermic reaction was only approximately two minutes. X-ray diffraction analyses revealed that the SHS sample consisted of only FeAl and TiB2 without any elemental metals and any other compounds. Metallographic investigations using a scanning electron microscope and an electron probe microanalysis revealed that fine TiB2 particles were dispersed in FeAl matrix phase. As the volume fraction of the TiB2 particles was increased from 0.3 to 0.8 by controlling the powder mixture composition, the average TiB2 particle size increased from 1 to 7 μm and the average Vickers hardness of the composites increased from 800 to 1 600.


Underwater acoustic communications experiments often involve custom implementations of schemes and protocols for the physical and data link layers. However, most commercial modems focus on providing reliable or optimized communication links, rather than on allowing low-level reconfiguration or reprogramming of modulation and coding schemes. As a result, the physical layer is typically provided as a closed, non-reprogrammable black box, accessible by the user only through a specific interface. While software-defined modems would be the ultimate solution to overcome this issue, having access to the symbols transmitted by the modems using a proprietary modulation format already opens up a number of research opportunities, e.g., aimed at the cross-layer design and optimization of channel coding schemes and communication protocols. In this paper, we take the latter approach. We consider the commercial EvoLogics modem, driven by a custom firmware version that bypasses the channel coding methods applied by the modem, and allows the user to set the transmit bit rate to any desired value within a given set. This makes it possible to evaluate different coding schemes in the presence of different bit rates. Our results show that the custom firmware offers sufficient flexibility to test different configurations of the coding schemes and bit rates, by providing direct access both to correctly decoded and to corrupted symbols, which can be separated at the receiver for further processing. In addition, we show that the DESERT Underwater framework can also leverage the same flexibility by employing low-level physical layer access in more complex networking experiments.


This paper discusses and compares three alternatives to reduce electrical energy consumption (kWh) and peak demand (kW) in buildings, namely deployment of rooftop solar PV, battery energy storage and HVAC set point adjustments. The building model of a warehouse located in Alexandria, VA, was developed in eQUEST, and its electrical consumption was validated with metered data. To perform the overall analysis, adjustment of HVAC set points was conducted in eQUEST, while Solar PV and battery models were developed and deployed on top of the developed eQUEST building model. Overall, the method presented here can serve as a guideline for building owners to analyze energy savings/peak demand reduction alternatives, of which benefits are varied from buildings to buildings based on building sizes, electricity tariffs, climate zones and building operation.


STUDY DESIGN
Quasi-experimental clinical trial.

OBJECTIVES
This study compared outcomes from graded exercise and graded exposure activity prescriptions for patients participating in a multidisciplinary rehabilitation program for chronic low back pain. Our primary purpose was to investigate whether pain and disability outcomes differed based on treatment received (graded exercise or graded exposure). Our secondary purpose was to investigate if changes in selected psychological factors were associated with pain and disability outcomes.

BACKGROUND
Behavioral interventions have been advocated for decreasing pain and disability from low back pain, yet relatively few comparative studies have been reported in the literature.

METHODS
Consecutive sample with chronic low back pain recruited over a 16-month period from an outpatient chronic pain clinic. Patients received physical therapy supplemented with either graded exercise (n=15) or graded exposure (n=18) principles. Graded exercise included general therapeutic activities and was progressed with a quota-based system. Graded exposure included specific activities that were feared due to back pain and was progressed with a hierarchical exposure paradigm. Psychological measures were pain-related fear (Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire, Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, Fear of Pain Questionnaire), pain catastrophizing (Coping Strategies Questionnaire), and depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory). Primary outcome measures were pain intensity (visual analog scale) and self-report of disability (modified Oswestry Disability Questionnaire).

RESULTS
Statistically significant improvements (P<.01) were observed for pain intensity and disability at discharge. The rate of improvement did not differ based on behavioral intervention received (P>.05 for these comparisons). Overall, 50% of patients met criterion for minimally important change for pain intensity, while 30% met this criterion for disability. Change in depressive symptoms was associated with change in pain intensity, while change in pain catastrophizing was associated with change in disability.

CONCLUSIONS
Physical therapy supplemented with graded exercise or graded exposure resulted in equivalent clinical outcomes for pain intensity and disability. The overall treatment effects were modest in this setting. Instead of being associated with a specific behavioral intervention, reductions in pain and disability were associated with reductions in depressive symptoms and pain catastrophizing, respectively.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Therapy, level 2b–.


In this study, mixed coniferous forest crown closure (CC) and leaf area index (LAI) were measured at the Blodgett Forest Research Station, University of California at Berkeley, USA. Data from EO‐1 Hyperspectral Imager (Hyperion) and Advanced Land Imager (ALI) acquired on 9 October 2001, and from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) on 25 October 2001 were used for estimation of CC and LAI. A total of 38 forest CC and LAI measurements were used in this correlation analysis. The analysis procedure consists of (1) atmospheric correction to retrieve surface reflectance from Hyperion, ALI and ETM+ data, (2) a total of 38 patches, corresponding to ground CC and LAI measurement plots, extracted from data from the three sensors, and (3) calculating univariate/multivariate correlation coefficient (R 2) and root mean square error (RMSE) using CC and LAI measurements and retrieved surface reflectance data of the three sensors. The experimental results indicate: (1) higher individual band correlations with CC and LAI appear in visible and short wave infrared (SWIR) regions due to spectral absorption features (pigments in visible and water and other biochemicals in SWIR); (2) based on ALI individual band wavelengths, the R 2/RMSE produced with Hyperion bands are all better than those with ALI, except ALI band 1, due to atmospheric scattering of Hyperion bands in the visible region; (3) based on ETM+ individual band wavelengths, Hyperion is better than ALI, which is better than ETM+, especially for the NIR band group of Hyperion; (4) based on spectral region, Hyperion, again, is better than ALI which is better than ETM+, and optimal results appear in the visible region for ALI and in SWIR for Hyperion; and (5) if considering just six bands or six features (six principal components) in estimating CC and LAI, optimal results are obtained with six bands selected from the 167 Hyperion bands. In general, for estimation of forest CC and LAI in this study, the Hyperion sensor has outperformed the ALI and ETM+ sensors, whereas ALI is better than ETM+. The best spectral region for Hyperion is SWIR, but for ALI and ETM+, the visible region should be considered instead.


Diminished water quality in the mid-southern United States is often resultant from improper poultry litter management in pastures. Grassland best management practices (BMPs) need to be identified that increase soil-water infiltration. Therefore, the objective of this research was to evaluate infiltration rates based on pasture BMPs (aeration timing, subsurface banded litter, and gypsum) in hay and grazed systems from 2018 to 2019. Twenty minute falling-head infiltration measurements were conducted at zero, one, and three months following management implementation in hay (Experiment 1) and grazed (Experiment 2) systems. Management effects on forage quality and yield were also measured in the hay system. In Experiment 1, infiltration differed across treatments and by month following BMP implementation. Averaged across months (Experiment 1), the greatest infiltration rate occurred for June aeration, which was the only month when aeration increased infiltration compared to the control under hay conditions. In Experiment 1, averaged across treatments, greatest infiltration occurred three months following treatment implementation. Gypsum had no effect (P > 0.05) on infiltration rates. Under grazed conditions (Experiment 2), infiltration rates differed by treatment and month and were greatest one- and three-months following June aeration, three months following April aeration, and three months following subsurface banded litter treatment. February aeration and subsurface litter applications resulted in lower (P < 0.05) infiltration rates than the control in grazed systems. Across months for the grazed experiment, June aeration had the greatest (P > 0.05) infiltration rates. Among all BMPs temporally, June aeration improved soil-water infiltration under both hay and grazed systems. Therefore, pasture aeration implemented in June following broiler litter applications can likely reduce nutrients in surface runoff in grassland systems, regardless of management (hay or grazing) compared to traditional surface-broadcast only practices.


In September 2011, the Belfast Conflict Resolution Consortium (BCRC) commissioned research to examine the development of community safety policy since the publication of the Patten report in 1999. The research was also tasked with considering the range of dynamics which impact upon participation in, and delivery of, community safety programmes within interface communities; while exploring challenges facing the new Policing and Community Safety Partnerships. Over a two month period between October and November in 2011, an extensive audit and analysis of policy documents, academic literature and research reports related to the development and implementation of community safety was conducted. Alongside this, thirty semi-structured interviews were carried out with representatives from the community, voluntary and statutory sector.The initial review of academic literature and policy highlighted a number of political developments which have positively influenced the community safety agenda – including the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007; and the devolution of policing and justice powers in April 2010. In this regard, several observations can be made in relation to the design and development of a community safety approach suited to the unique landscape of a society in transition:• The political, policing and security landscape over the past decade has had a direct impact and influence upon the delivery of a community safety model as originally envisaged by the Independent Commission for Policing in Northern Ireland;• Local communities have embraced the concept of community safety. However, levels of community participation in local initiatives have been inconsistent across the country;• There has been a degree of scepticism at the community level as to how much impact the community sector have historical had in relation to community safety and policing issues, especially when set against the influence of elected representatives and service providers;• Because of the ever-changing policing and security environment, it has been challenging for statutory bodies to deliver what might be considered 'normal' policing and community safety services;• The past decade has been predicated upon cultivating a more inclusive environment in which service and community providers can work together in delivering a community safety model suited to the needs of all stakeholders;• The next decade of community safety and policing is about building upon existing practice and partnerships, and aligning those with the DoJ's new vision for safer, shared and confident communities.Aside from the literature review, four case studies were also selected to illustrate the range of community-based programmes and activities that have been established in both urban and rural settings to address the diversity of community safety issues across the country. This analysis revealed the importance of community participation in the successful delivery and implementation of community safety strategies, programmes and initiatives; the need for statutory agencies to be flexible in regards to the holistic nature of community responses to local issues beyond their own policy lens; and the significant role that the 'community safety' framework has in relation to facilitating and encouraging closer partnerships and positive engagements between communities and formal criminal justice providers. Building upon the case study findings and policy analysis, it became apparent that local community groups were involved in responding to, and providing a diverse range services to deal with community safety and policing issues. Indeed, a range of volunteers, community activists and (generally) under-resourced community-based organisations played a major role in bridging the gap between statutory service providers and communities through facilitating meetings, promoting advocacy and acting as facilitators for the implementation of the community safety agendas at a local level. A closer examination of their roles revealed a typology of community safety work and activity in which they were regularly engaged. These approaches have been categorised as follows:• Community advocacy• Education and intervention• Emergency response• Partnerships• Prevention• Mediation• Restorative justice The research concluded with a series of thirty interviews with representatives from the community, voluntary and statutory sectors. Discussions explored themes surrounding the implementation of community safety strategies within interface communities; participants' experiences of DPPs and CSPs; and views on the new PCSPs and their potential. The findings revealed that interface communities had suffered disproportionately in terms of the legacy of the conflict in comparison to other urban and rural parts of Northern Ireland. Therefore, the implementation of a community safety agenda not only had to contend with high rates of social and economic deprivation, but also had to incorporate within it, manifestations of the conflict, such as sectarian violence, peace walls and insecurities around policing. The findings which related to DPPs and CSPs revealed a deep sense of frustration in terms of their general inability to address many of the community safety and policing issues prevalent at a community level. Respondents maintained that both sets of partnerships were not representative of the communities in which they served; often operated in isolation from community organising; and beyond pockets of good practice, had failed to meet the local communities needs or expectations around policing and community safety. There was an acknowledgement that the past decade had been difficult for statutory agencies tasked with implementing and delivering a policing and community safety agendas because of the fluid dynamics underpinning the country's transition from conflict to peace. However, there was renewed optimism that the devolution of policing and justice powers, along with the political stability at Stormont would facilitate the successful delivery of an effective, new community safety model in line with the DoJ's goal of creating safer, shared and confident communities.Finally, the research also captured views and opinions in relation to the forthcoming PCSPs. There was a general consensus that the new structures provided an opportunity to shape the future of community safety in Northern Ireland and build upon that which had been established though the DPPs and CSPs. As part of the 'streamlining' opportunity provided through the PCSPs, a number of challenges were evident from the research. These concerns primarily focused upon the management of the PCSPs structures; along with issues as to whether PCSPs could facilitate improved input and delivery from statutory and community stakeholders. Aside from immediate challenges, the research also highlighted the need to define more fully, the roles and responsibilities of community stakeholders. Indeed, a key concern was that the community safety strategy, as delivered through the vehicle of the PCSPs, would become a conduit for a wide range of governmental programmes of action without adequately considering the potential limitations of stakeholder input. But in general, there was a great sense of optimism about the amalgamation of DPPs and CSPs, with an acceptance that the first year of the PCSPs would be a period of transition and learning. In general, respondents acknowledged the complexities which underpinned the streamlining of the community safety and policing agendas in Northern Ireland which for a decade had been split between the DPPs and CSPs. And where the lessons from the last decade could be learned, it was felt that the PCSPs would provide an excellent vehicle through which a new era of community safety could be delivered into the next decade. In view of the research findings, a number of recommendations emerged which have been documented below:1. That greater consideration should be given to incentives for community involvement in community safety programmes. The research highlighted the difficulties with encouraging local participation in community safety processes. Therefore, training, internships, accredited courses, child care provision and accommodation of other family needs should be considered;2. Steps should be taken to more formally recognise and quantify the contributions of community-based community safety programmes – outside traditional police centric measure of crime;3. That sufficient acknowledgement and attention is paid to the continuing fragility surrounding the lives and experiences of those living in interface communities. It is imperative that future community safety agendas are tailored to meet those specific needs and not become subsumed under a broad community safety agenda;4. That innovative, less bureaucratic means of both providing funding and assessing the impact of community safety programmes must be developed outside the current parameters of statutory frameworks; 5. The inherent frustrations and difficulties associated with the DPPs and CSPs should be taken into account and the necessary adjustments as part of the functioning of the new PCSP structures;6. The DoJ's community safety agenda should not overburden the PCSPs with too many programmes related to the social, economic and political development of commununities.


The creation of a school museum offers an opportunity for a school and its broader community to celebrate the institution's no doubt unique history and heritage, and to offer an "open book to the world" of its history, contribution to society and its character. Whilst professional museum planners might be employed to take on the task of managing the overall project and tackling the rather daunting list of "To Do's", their services are expensive, and might cause a school's Governing Body to balk at the anticipated costs. In this article, Pietermaritzburg teacher, Matthew Marwick, summarises the journey undertaken by the members of the Museum Planning Committee at Maritzburg College, as they upgrade the school's existing museum, which currently is primarily made up of ad hoc displays of photos and memorabilia, in the build-up to the school's 150th celebrations in 2013. In the article, he points out some of the difficulties already experienced during this venture (which is ongoing), and offers practical advice to educators who might be considering a similar undertaking.


Biological communities face multiple global changes simultaneously, and predicting how they will respond remains a key challenge. Co-tolerance theory offers a framework for understanding how species-level responses to multiple stressors affect community properties. Co-tolerance theory predicts that positive correlations in species responses (i.e. species that are susceptible to one stressor are more likely to be highly susceptible to a second) lessen total species loss, essentially because species cannot be eliminated from a community twice. However, it is unclear whether several of the tenets of cotolerance theory describe real-world communities, and what consequences result from such deviations. Here, we use an empirical dataset of bird community response to landuse change over a climate gradient to examine co-tolerance theory's tenet that environmental changes only harm species (not benefit them). We show that this tenet is not met, and then use simulations to examine how predictions of total species richness and community intactness vary when multiple environmental changes both harm and benefit particular species in the community. Finally, we conduct a sensitivity analysis, examining how the average species response to environmental change, as well as the variance among species, can further alter predictions. Overall, we find that predictions of co-tolerance theory can break down when communities contain species that benefit from some environmental changes. As a result, the presence of multiple environmental changes can either compound or mitigate species loss when species' responses are positively correlated, preventing a one-size-fits-all statement regarding the effects of correlated responses. This finding highlights the need to carefully consider the underlying mechanisms of community change when making policy assessments regarding the consequences of correlations of species responses to environmental impacts.


In this insightful and incisive essay, Eugene Ferguson demonstrates that good engineering is as much a matter of intuition and nonverbal thinking as of equations and computation. He argues that a system of engineering education that ignores nonverbal thinking will produce engineers who are dangerously ignorant of the many ways in which the real world differs from the mathematical models constructed in academic minds.


The present study provides an extensive treatment of the topic of enargeia on the basis of the classical and humanist sources of its theoretical foundation. These serve as the basis for detailed analyses of verbal and pictorial works of the Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age.


SUMMARY The estimation of the forest and vegetation cover in the Valdivian Rainforest Eco-region (35o − 43o30´ S) of Chile in the PreEuropean period emerges as a relevant scientific question due to its implications for forest conservation and for the improvement of the understanding of the patterns and dynamics of human settlement. This study uses a transdisciplinary approach integrating information from historical documents, archaeological evidence and the relationship of present vegetation with environmental variables. From this analysis we developed the first reconstruction of the forest and vegetation in the Valdivian Rainforest Eco-region circa 1550 (1:500.000 scale map). Our results indicate that native forests covered 11.3 million ha ca. 1550 at the Spanish conqueror arrival, decreasing to 5.7 million ha in 2007 (50.4 % of the original area). This reduction is due to the conversion of native forests to pasturelands, shrublands and agriculture land and, since 1974, forest plantations of exotic species. This study shows the need to continue developing transdisciplinary research, which integrates historical, archaeological and biophysical (potential vegetation, pollen analysis and dendrochronology) data to improve the understanding of changing forest and vegetation cover under climatic fluctuations and human influences during the last 450 years.


Sonic hedgehog (SHH) and its signaling have been identified in several human cancers, and increased levels of its expression appear to correlate with disease progression and metastasis. However, the role of SHH in bone destruction associated with oral squamous cell carcinomas is still unclear. In this study we analyzed SHH expression and the role played by SHH signaling in gingival carcinoma-induced jawbone destruction. From an analysis of surgically resected lower gingival squamous cell carcinoma mandible samples, we found that SHH was highly expressed in tumor cells that had invaded the bone matrix. On the other hand, the hedgehog receptor Patched and the signaling molecule Gli-2 were highly expressed in the osteoclasts and the progenitor cells. SHH stimulated osteoclast formation and pit formation in the presence of the receptor activator for nuclear factor-κB ligand (RANKL) in CD11b+ mouse bone marrow cells. SHH upregulated phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and p38 MAPK, NFATc1, tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP), and Cathepsin K expression in RAW264.7 cells. Our results suggest that tumor-derived SHH stimulated the osteoclast formation and bone resorption in the tumor jawbone microenvironment.


Numerous small sedentary herbivores (mesograzers such as amphipods, small crabs, and gastropods) are resistant to seaweed secondary metabolites that deter larger, more mobile herbivorous fishes. In addition, specialist mesograzers experience reduced predation from fishes when living on seaweeds that produce these compounds. In this study we tested the hypothesis that generalist, as opposed to specialist, mesograzers can also benefit from reduced predation when they occupy chemically defended plants. Secondly, we assessed the hypothesis that low herbivore mobility, unconfounded by herbivore size or specialized feeding, selects for tolerance of seaweed chemical defenses, by comparing responses to the chemically defended brown seaweed Dictyota menstrualis of three sym- patric, generalist amphipods that differ in mobility (A mpithoe longimana, Ampithoe valida, and Gammarus mucronatus). Responses to Dictyota's chemical defenses varied as much among these three amphipods as among the phylogenetically distant fishes and mesograzers studied previously and sup- ported the hypothesis that less mobile herbivores should be most tolerant of plant chemical defenses. In laboratory experiments, A. longimana moved little, preferentially consumed Dictyota over other seaweeds, and was unaffected by all Dictyota secondary metabolites tested. In contrast, G. mucronatus was active, it did not feed on Dictyota, and two of three Dictyota secondary metabolites deterred its grazing. Distribution of amphipods in the field suggested that these feeding patterns affected amphipod risk of predation. A. longimana reached its highest abundance on Dictyota, which is unpalatable to omnivorous fish pred- ators, during the season when fish are most abundant. At the same time, the highly active G. mucronatus decreased to near extinction. Like G. mucronatus, A. valida was deterred by two Dictyota secondary metabolites, did not eat Dictyota, and disappeared when fishes were abundant. Experiments confirmed that A. longimana was less vulnerable to fish predation when occupying a chemically defended seaweed than when occupying a palatable seaweed. This decreased predation resulted primarily from a decreased frequency of encounter with pred- ators when amphipods were on chemically defended plants. When we experimentally equalized encounter rates between omnivorous pinfish (Lagodon rhomboides) and the seaweeds Dictyota menstrualis and Ulva curvata (unpalatable and palatable, respectively, to pinfish) in the laboratory, amphipods occupying these two plants were eaten at similar rates. In contrast, when live amphipods were affixed to Ulva and Dictyota and deployed in the field, amphipods survived only on Dictyota. Heavy fish grazing on Ulva in the latter experiment suggests that poor survival of amphipods on U/va may have resulted from greater detection and/or incidental ingestion of amphipods on this plant, due to frequent visitation by fishes. Infrequent visitation of Dictyota by foraging fish also may explain A. /ongimana's persistence through the summer on this chemically defended seaweed while the two Ulva-associated amphipods declined precipitously. These results (1) confirm that association with chemically defended plants can reduce predation on generalist, as well as specialist, herbivores and (2) suggest that preferential feeding on chemically defended plants is most likely for sedentary mesograzers because low mobility enhances the ability to exploit chemically defended seaweeds as refuges from fish predation.


ABSTRACT Diplomacy often finds itself reduced to actions centred on states. However, after the Cold War, international relations and diplomacy have expanded with different actors growing into significant roles, particularly in the increase of diplomatic relations in the context of sport. The classification and significance of other actors remains under-researched in relation to sport, with literature focusing more on the growth of new and varying practices of diplomacy. This analysis contends that there is a need to interrogate fundamental components of modern diplomacy—with the actor being the focus—more specifically the classification of sports organisations in diplomacy. It is relevant as a more accurate understanding of sports organisations will contribute to how diplomatic studies can analyse and evaluate modern diplomacy within the context of sport. The International Olympic Committee is the actor used to illustrate how problematic classifications currently in the academic literature translate into weak and reduced analysis and evaluation of its role and significance in diplomacy. As counterpoint, this analysis proposes an analytical framework of socio-legal theory that harnesses legal regulation as a benchmark to classify an actor's capacity within a society. In consequence, the IOC is as an active and significant contributor to the ever expanding and complex diplomatic environment and wider society.


The prolonged juvenile period between infancy and reproductive maturity is the life history trait that best separates primates from other mammals. Juvenile primates are also the most neglected subjects of primatological research. The principal aim of my study was to examine the behaviour of juveniles and how they compare to older individuals, and in doing so, site this behaviour within the context of a social group of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus).
I collected data on a group of baboons in the Soutpansberg Mountains of South Africa over a 19-month period. I took a multi-faceted approach, using data collected though scan samples, focal animal samples, and GPS data to examine age and sex differences in behaviour. I analysed these data using several methods, including methods novel to primatological studies.
My results indicate that activity budgets and use of vertical space differ by age and sex. As a consequence of this variation in the time spent engaged in activities, I found that chacma groups exhibit low levels of behavioural synchrony as measured by the Kappa coefficient of agreement. My results also indicate that, despite being part of cohesive group, individuals also differ in their movements through the landscape. Individuals that received more agonism from other group members were found to be more constrained in their movements, travelling shorter, but more tortuous routes. My findings also show that young juveniles position themselves spatially in order to have more neighbours in proximity than older individuals, while social interactions amongst group members exhibit phenotypic assortativity, particularly amongst individuals of similar ages.
The behavioural differences found in juveniles relative to older conspecifics arise as a consequence of juveniles' priorities in not only surviving to adulthood, but also in ensuring future success as adults, with obligate group-living an important factor in the emergence of such differences.


Both artificial intelligence (AI) and database (DB) communities have advantages in incorporating features from each other's areas. From a DB view, handling of complexity in today's information systems can be aided by incorporating AI features, and database environments could gain in flexibility by entrusting some of their functionality to agent systems. Contemplated from the AI view, agent systems could gain in robustness by being based on DB-systems. By applying the semantics of database-transaction to interactions between agents in a multiagent-system, and analysing the consequences, this project endeavours to cross borders of the two research areas. In the project, states where drop-out of some agent is severe to the task fulfilment, of the system, have been identified, and examined after applying transaction semantics to the agent interactions. An existing system for multiagent applications, JADE, has been examined in order to investigate how problem situations are handled in practice. The result from this work shows the feasibility to contemplate both type of systems as very similar, but modelled and viewed in different ways.


This book presents an inspirational and holistic approach to teaching by a renowned Latina scholar. It defines seven steps to unlocking the potential of teachers and their students. It is deeply informed by the author's educational journey as a minority woman from a background of rural poverty. Laura Rendon is a scholar of national stature, known for her research on students of color and first-generation college students, and on the factors that promote and impede student success. The motivation for the quest that Laura Rendon shares in this book was the realization that she, along with many educators, had lost sight of the deeper, relationship-centered essence of education, and lost touch with the fine balance between educating for academics and educating for life. Her purpose is to reconnect readers with the original impulse that led them to become educators; and to help them rediscover, with her, their passion for teaching and learning in the service to others and for the well being of our society. She offers a transformative vision of education that emphasizes the harmonic, complementary relationship between the sentir of intuition and the inner life, and the pensar of intellectualism and the pursuit of scholarship; between teaching and learning; formal knowledge and wisdom; and between Western and non-Western ways of knowing. In the process she develops a pedagogy that encompasses wholeness, multiculturalism, and contemplative practice, that helps students transcend limiting views about themselves, fosters high expectations, and helps students to become social change agents. She invites the reader to share her journey in developing sentipensante pedagogy, and to challenge seven entrenched agreements about education that act against wholeness and the appreciation of truth in all forms. She offers examples of her own teaching and of the classroom practices of faculty she encountered along the way; as well as guidance on the challenges, rewards and responsibilities that anyone embarking on creating a new vision of teaching and learning should attend to. Though based on the author's life work in higher education, her insights and approach apply equally to all teaching and learning contexts.


Early repolarization, which is characterized by an elevation of the J-point on 12-lead electrocardiography, is a common finding that has been considered as benign for decades. However, in the last years, it has been related with vulnerability to idiopathic ventricular fibrillation and with cardiac mortality in the general population. Recently, 4 potential ECG predictors that could differentiate the benign from the malignant form of early repolarization have been suggested. Any previous study about early repolarization has been done in Spain. Aim. To ascertain whether the presence of early repolarization pattern in a resting electrocardiogram is associated with a major risk of cardiac death in a Spanish general population and to determine whether the presence of potential predictors of malignancy in a resting electrocardiogram increases the risk of cardiac mortality in patients with early repolarization pattern. Methods. We will analyse the presence of early repolarization and the occurrence of cardiac mortality in a retrospective cohort study of 4,279 participants aged 25 to 74 years in the province of Girona. This cohort has been followed during a mean of 9.8 years. Early repolarization will be stratified according to the degree of J-point elevation (≥0.1 mV or ≥0.2 mV), the morphology of the J-wave (slurring, notching or any of these two), the ST-segment pattern (ascending or descending) and the localization (inferior leads, lateral leads, or both). Association of early repolarization with cardiac death will be assessed by adjusted Cox-proportional hazards models


The combined effects of hyperfine structure and Zeeman splitting have been calculated for the a6D1/2–z6D1/2 line of Mn i at wavelength 4070.28 A, which is observed as a broad line in sunspot spectra. An effective Z factor is defined to represent the mean position of the strong components of the line for fields above 500 G. This Z factor might provide a method of monitoring sunspot magnetic fields.


In this paper we discuss several forms of spatiotemporal convolutions for video analysis and study their effects on action recognition. Our motivation stems from the observation that 2D CNNs applied to individual frames of the video have remained solid performers in action recognition. In this work we empirically demonstrate the accuracy advantages of 3D CNNs over 2D CNNs within the framework of residual learning. Furthermore, we show that factorizing the 3D convolutional filters into separate spatial and temporal components yields significantly gains in accuracy. Our empirical study leads to the design of a new spatiotemporal convolutional block "R(2+1)D" which produces CNNs that achieve results comparable or superior to the state-of-the-art on Sports-1M, Kinetics, UCF101, and HMDB51.


We report an amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO)-based toxic gas detection system. The microsystem contains an IGZO thin-film transistor (TFT) as a sensing element and exhibits remarkable selectivity and sensitivity to low concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). In contrast to existing metal oxide-based gas sensors, which are active either at high temperature or with light activation, the developed IGZO TFT sensor is operable at room temperature and requires only visible light activation to revive the sensor after exposure to NO2. Furthermore, we demonstrate air-stable sensors with an experimental limit of detection of 100 ppb. This is the first report on metal oxide TFT gas sensors without heating or continuous light activation. Unlike most existing gas sensing systems that take care of identifying the analytes alone, the developed IGZO microsystem not only quantifies NO2 gas concentration but also yields a 5-bit digital output. The compact microsystem, incorporating readout and analog-to-digital conversion modules developed using only two TFTs, paves the way for inexpensive toxic gas monitoring systems.


Abstract The study examines the determinants of households' residential district preferences within the metropolitan city of Ibadan. Variables considered as determinants, based on households' survey and used for appraisal in this study include quality of the environment in terms of good layout, availability of infrastructural facilities like good roads, water supply, quietness, peace and adequate security etc; socio-cultural activities; accessibility to place of work; mere chance-like occupying the only vacant place/plot; security of land ownership; and affinity to place of birth / need to live close to relatives. The analysis is based on statistical estimation and conclusions are based on the results obtained from these estimations. Our findings indicate that different category of residential density district of the city has distinct set of households' residential districts preferences peculiar to it, hence broad generalizations for the whole city could be erroneous.


Using data from 132 acid-sensitive streams in Wales and Scotland from two available data sets, we tested a recently proposed indicator system that uses aquatic invertebrates to detect acidification in British rivers, the Acid Water Indicator Community (AWIC). Although many sites held less than a quarter of AWIC scoring taxa, index values at sites in both data sets correlated significantly with acid-base variables including pH, calcium concentration, alkalinity and dissolved aluminium. Relationships with acid-base status during acid episodes were particularly strong in the more comprehensive test set. Strong correlations between the AWIC index and pH in a subset of sites from Scotland indicated potential for some extrapolation beyond the initial calibration regions of England and Wales. Despite considerable pH variability within AWIC classes, measured base-flow pH was within 0.5 pH units of values expected from invertebrates at over 55-70 % of test sites, and within 1 pH unit at 87-100 %. This compares favourably with direct pH measurement, where samples at fortnightly-monthly intervals are typically required to confidently estimate mean pH within 0.7-1.2 pH units. These data, drawn from a realistic application, illustrate the potential accuracy and integrating value of invertebrate bioassessment in acid-sensitive waters. Further developments should involve more specific identification and targeted calibration to i) improve discrimination between sensitive streams of contrasting acidity; ii) further improve the accuracy of pH determination based on invertebrates; iii) avoid the apparent over-estimation of pH in the lower AWIC classes; iv) clearly differentiate between acid-sensitive and acidified streams.


Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has an important impact on critical infrastructure operation. However, the current use of risk analysis techniques has reached its limits when analysing these systems at least in practical terms. The application of extended event process chains (EPC) bypasses some of the difficulties, as they model business processes within an information system instead of much more complex hardware architectures and software interactions. The methodology described in this paper integrates ARIS (Architecture Integrated Information Systems) and FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis), i.e., a business modelling method based on EPCs and a risk assessment technique which are well established in their areas of application and branches of competence. A novel risk representation is discussed. The practicability of the methodology is demonstrated by a feasibility study.


Thermochemical (TC) biomass conversion processes such as pyrolysis and liquefaction generate considerable amounts of wastewater, which often contains highly toxic compounds that are incredibly challenging to convert via standard wastewater treatment approaches such as anaerobic digestion. These streams represent a cost for TC biorefineries, and a potential valorization opportunity, if effective conversion methods are developed. The primary challenge hindering microbial conversion of TC wastewater is toxicity. In this study, we employ a robust bacterium, Pseudomonas putida, with TC wastewater streams to demonstrate that aldehydes are the most inhibitory compounds in these streams. Proteomics, transcriptomics, and fluorescence-based immunoassays of P. putida grown in a representative wastewater stream indicate that stress results from protein damage, which we hypothesize is a primary toxicity mechanism. Constitutive overexpression of the chaperone genes, groEL, groES, and clpB, in a genome-reduced P. putida strain improves the tolerance towards multiple TC wastewater samples up to 200-fold. Moreover, the concentration ranges of TC wastewater are industrially relevant for further bioprocess development for all wastewater streams examined here, representing different TC process configurations. Furthermore, we demonstrate proof-of-concept polyhydroxyalkanoate production from the usable carbon in an exemplary TC wastewater stream. Overall, this study demonstrates that protein quality control machinery and repair mechanisms can enable substantial gains in microbial tolerance to highly toxic substrates, including heterogeneous waste streams. When coupled to other metabolic engineering advances such as expanded substrate utilization and enhanced product accumulation, this study generally enables new strategies for biological conversion of highly-toxic, organic-rich wastewater via engineered aerobic monocultures or designer consortia.


This article focuses on Cambodian Internet users' perceptions of online freedom of expression as well as their perceptions of online political participation. This exploratory research focuses on the data from 895 Cambodians gathered through an electronic survey delivered to a simple random sample of 35,000 Cambodian smartphone users. The study concludes with a discussion on policy, practice, and future research about online expression and online political participation both in Cambodia and in the greater field of international development.


The dynamics of the growth of linear disturbances to a chaotic basic state is analyzed in an asymptotic model of weakly nonlinear, baroclinic wave-mean interaction. In this model, an ordinary differential equation for the wave amplitude is coupled to a partial differential equation for the zonal flow correction. The leading Lyapunov vector is nearly parallel to the leading Floquet vector φ 1 of the lowest-order unstable periodic orbit over most of the attractor. Departures of the Lyapunov vector from this orientation are primarily rotations of the vector in an approximate tangent plane to the large-scale attractor structure. Exponential growth and decay rates of the Lyapunov vector during individual Poincaré section returns are an order of magnitude larger than the Lya-punov exponent λ ≈ 0.016. Relatively large deviations of the Lyapunov vector from parallel to φ 1 are generally associated with relatively large transient decays. The transient growth and decay of the Lyapunov vector is well described by the transient growth and decay of the leading Floquet vectors of the set of unstable periodic orbits associated with the attrac-tor. Each of these vectors is also nearly parallel to φ 1. The dynamical splitting of the complete sets of Floquet vectors for the higher-order cycles follows the previous results on the lowest-order cycle, with the vectors divided into wave-dynamical and decaying zonal flow modes. Singular vectors and singular values also generally follow this split. The primary difference between the leading Lyapunov and singular vectors is the contribution of decaying, inviscidly-damped wave-dynamical structures to the singular vectors.


Partnerships and alliances are both tools to increase integration in supply chains and effects of increased integration. As a result of alliance, integration in supply chain networks effectiveness and efficiency increase. To develop highly integrated supply chain networks involves investing time, resources and much effort. Therefore, firms often continue and grow within the existing supply chain network rather than choose other alternatives. On the other hand, this also means that the establishment of new alliances is hindered. The gradual changes normally also apply to the dissolution of alliances. Even though the firm seems to leave a specific individual alliance, it might stay on in the same supply chain or still be a part of the firm network in another supply chain. Few radical changes take place. If they do, acquisitions, technological change or strategic alliances between networks are mostly the triggers causing effects on several individual alliances. Over time, as integration increases, supply chain networks become leaner and more tightly connected, and complexity, risk and conflicts rise in the formation and dissolution of alliances. This spiral effect is enhanced by the tendency to imitate the successful supply chains' increasing homogeneity of chains and stronger competition. Thereby the total industry network will be increasingly integrated, which means fewer opportunities to switch and lower flexibility. Most firms are already tied up and the effects more difficult to foresee. To change alliances will be increasingly problematic and costly when both the supply chain and the total industry network are highly integrated. Acquisitions would rise since this might be the only way to break into these integrated supply chains. As a result the number of alternatives decreases and the dynamics of alliances reduced, which in the end forces new waves of radical changes due to "domino" effects.


The Cadomian orogen of NW Iran includes a series of metamorphic rocks with zircon U-Pb ages between ca 562 and 505 Ma (Ediacaran to middle Cambrian). The Ediacaran-Cambrian basement is intruded by a series of Late Eocene-Late Oligocene I-type granitic rocks. U-Pb geochronology, integrated with geochemical and isotopic data for the basement rocks in NW Iran, provides further evidence of a Cadomian (562-505 Ma) arc-related magmatic event lasting 60 Myr. Cadomian magmatism in Iran was a part of a 100 Myr long episode of subduction-related arc magmatism at the northern margin of Gondwana. Zircon Hf-isotope compositions show that during Cadomian magmatic arc activity, juvenile arc magmas interacted with reworked Archean crust to generate the Ediacaran-Cambrian igneous rocks. Our results document both inheritance of old zircons and the presence of zircons with juvenile signatures in NW Iran, suggesting that the geotectonic setting for the Cadomian rocks was an Ediacaran continental magmatic arc and probably a neighboring back-arc basin. The occurrence of Ediacaran ophiolitic slices in NW Iran may provide evidence of back-arc basin opening at that time. Cenozoic plutonism in NW Iran is part of an Eocene-Oligocene magmatic 'flare-up' along the Urumieh-Dokhtar Magmatic Belt in central Iran, which lasted for ca 30 Myr. The melts responsible for the formation of these rocks had an essentially juvenile signature with minor contamination by Archean to Cadomian middle-lower continental crust. Continuous convergence between Arabia and Iran was accompanied by the transition of SW Eurasia from a compressional to an extensional convergent plate margin in Eocene-Oligocene times, leading to orogenic collapse, core-complex formation, exhumation of Cadomian crust and a major increase in arc magmatism.


Welcome to the New RefWorks! This update to RefWorks is a new way to collect, manage and organize research papers and documents. You can read annotate, organize, and cite your research as well as collaborate with friends and colleagues.


Annona muricata L (Annonaceae), commonly known as soursop has a long, rich history in herbal medicine with a lengthy recorded indigenous use. It had also been found to be a promising new anti-tumor agent in numerous in vitro studies. The present investigation concerns chemopreventive effects in a two-stage model of skin papillomagenesis. Chemopreventive effects of an ethanolic extract of A. muricata leaves (AMLE) was evaluated in 6-7 week old ICR mice given a single topical application of 7,12-dimethylbenza(α)anthracene (DMBA 100 μg/100 μl acetone) and promotion by repeated application of croton oil (1% in acetone/ twice a week) for 10 weeks. Morphological tumor incidence, burden and volume were measured, with histological evaluation of skin tissue. Topical application of AMLE at 30, 100 and 300 mg/kg significantly reduced DMBA/croton oil induced mice skin papillomagenesis in (i) peri-initiation protocol (AMLE from 7 days prior to 7 days after DMBA), (ii) promotion protocol (AMLE 30 minutes after croton oil), or (iii) both peri-initiation and promotion protocol (AMLE 7 days prior to 7 day after DMBA and AMLE 30 minutes after croton oil throughout the experimental period), in a dose dependent manner (p<0.05) as compared to carcinogen-treated control. Furthermore, the average latent period was significantly increased in the AMLE-treated group. Interestingly, At 100 and 300 mg/ kg, AMLE completely inhibited the tumor development in all stages. Histopathological study revealed that tumor growth from the AMLE-treated groups showed only slight hyperplasia and absence of keratin pearls and rete ridges. The results, thus suggest that the A.muricata leaves extract was able to suppress tumor initiation as well as tumor promotion even at lower dosage.


Through greater use of information technology (IT), the Government of Malaysia hopes to create an efficient administration providing better and faster service to the people, thus bringing a distinctive change from the traditional practice.Electronic Government will improve both on how government operates internally as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia.Thus, to realize this vision, it requires a comprehensive development and implementative programmes, which cover all aspects of government activities. Five pilot applications for electronic
government have been prioritized, and one of them is the Electronic Procurement. E-procurement aims to reengineer, automate and transform the current procurement system by delivering cost savings and a faster turnaround time by enabling the government to become a "Smart Buyer".


The book deals with the impact of EU law on private relations. While EU law has principally developed through vertical relations of the Union and its Member States with private persons, its foundations, principles and enforcement mechanisms are increasingly affecting the growing body of EU law governing horizontal relations between individuals and undertakings. The results are sometimes unexpected and sometimes inappropriate.


Abstract : This report is one in a series of Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute case studies of organizations that have adopted a software product line approach for developing a family of software-intensive systems. The U.S. Army's Technical Applications Program Office (TAPO) has adopted a product line approach for the avionics software used for the Army's special operations helicopters. That software is based on Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS). The product line has evolved beyond its original scope and is now being adopted to include other Army aviation platforms such as cargo and utility helicopters. This case study describes the acquisition context and organizations involved in the product line, the history behind the development and evolution of the product line, its application to the mission of the Army's special operations helicopters, the Army's motivation for adopting a product line, specifics of the product line approach, and the underlying CAAS system and software architecture. The case study also highlights the software product line accomplishments, examines the results and lessons learned from TAPO's and Rockwell Collins perspective, and discusses future considerations.


Increasingly, hotel industry has witnessed rapid growth in the 21stcentury and as a result competition within the industry has also intensified. This competition has been fueled by the preoccupation of service quality to add value and strengthen the complete guest experience. However, a major challenge facing the sector is the aspect of service quality particularly in budget hotels which target price sensitive customers. These hotels provide the customers with satisfactory core product at a reasonable price but tend to focus more on profits than on customer satisfaction. The services offered are not standardized and service quality variability is a challenge. The study used an integrated SERVQUAL and Gap model to evaluate customer satisfaction in budget hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the effect of service design on customer satisfaction, establish the effect of service delivery on customer satisfaction and determine the moderating effect of management perception of service quality on customer satisfaction in budget hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design and was conducted in 50 budget hotels. A sample size of 334 drawn from the hotel managers, customers and employees were involved in this study. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select the study sample for customers and employees. Data were collected through use of questionnaires and interviews. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was used in data analysis. The study hypotheses were tested was tested using multiple regression (ANOVA) and qualitative data from management perception was analyzed using qualitative data analysis (QCA). The regression analysis indicated that all five dimensions of service quality in service design were significant (0.000) when tested at 95% confidence level. The model was found to be significant. Correlation analysis indicated that the service design factors that had significant impact were realization of assured service in reliability (p = .044 < .05), responsiveness in informing the customers about the time of service delivery (p = .000< .05) and empathy in that operating hours are convenient to customers (p = .030 < .05). The other variables did not have significant values. The results indicate that there are gaps in the budget hotels under study between service design and customer satisfaction. Relationship between service delivery and customer satisfaction was found to be positive but not all the variables were significant. The study findings indicated that four variables; good location (p = .115 > .05), closeness to main city facilities (p = .527 > .05), someone recommended hotel (p = .665 > .05), and good experiences from the hotel (p = .458 > .05) did not have no significant values. This implied that these variables did not have an effect on customer satisfaction resulting in a gap between service delivery and customer satisfaction. This indicated that the service delivery did fully not meet customer expectations. Management perception was found to have a moderating effect between service quality and customer satisfaction. The study concluded that although managers seemed to have a reasonably good understanding of the customer and developed service designs for quality service delivery, the services delivered still fell short of customer expectations. The study therefore recommends that to enhance customer satisfaction, management needs to focus on the changing needs of their customers and develop service designs that twill offer service delivery that satisfies the customer. The study makes some contribution to the body of knowledge as an integrated model in evaluating customer satisfaction.
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The hydrogeology of the unsaturated zone plays a critical role in determining the suitability of a site for artificial recharge. Optimally, a suitable site has highly permeable soils, a capacity for horizontal flow at the aquifer boundary, a lack of impeding layers, and a thick unsaturated zone. The suitability of a site is often determined by field and laboratory measurements of soil properties, field experiments, and numerical modeling. An artificial recharge site in the San Gorgonio Pass area in southern California, USA was studied to better understand the role of the unsaturated zone in artificial recharge by surface spreading. Field measurements and observations were used to characterize the site and to develop a conceptual model of the unsaturated zone. A numerical model was developed based on the conceptual model and calibrated using data from a 50‐d artificial recharge experiment conducted in 1991 and borehole data collected between 1997 and 2002. Results indicate that an impeding layer exists 70 m below land surface that will cause lateral diversion of artificially recharged water, which would spread out and delay recharge to the water table 185 m below land surface.


Colonoscopy is a rewarding new technique with a potential for early and more accurate diagnosis. One hundred and seventy colonoscopies carried out over the past three years showed or confirmed colonic cancer in 14 patients, and solitary or multiple colonic polyps were found in 28 cases, of which 18 were excised endoscopically. A large villous adenoma was diagnosed in one patient, and the absence of a suspected sinister lesion was shown by direct examination and biopsy in 110 cases. There were 17 examination failures, including two perforations of the bowel. Colonoscopy complements rather than supplants barium enema examination and will make diagnostic laparotomy for colonic lesions unnecessary. The use of the diathermy snare allows endoscopic removal of colonic polyps and should greatly reduce the need for formal surgery in these cases. The financial saving to the Health Service will greatly outweigh the expense of the procedure, but it should be undertaken only in well organised centres as a specialist service for selected patients. In skilled hands it is safe, but potential hazards exist for the inexperienced endoscopist.


The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) operates a central traffic management system (TMS) for both day-to-day surveillance and traveler information. Past efforts developed the ability to create real-time traffic speed information by using virtual sensors that are based on transit vehicle tracking data. This project developed a way to provide real-time congestion information from Seattle area arterials and freeways to the WSDOT TMS by using the Intelligent Transportation System Backbone. This system harvests existing automatic vehicle location (AVL) data from within King County Metro Transit and transports the raw data to the University of Washington, where a series of operations converts the data into roadway speed information. This roadway speed information is color coded on the basis of specific, localized conditions for the arterials and freeways to reflect traffic congestion. The resulting traffic data product is then provided to WSDOT as a virtual sensor data source for roadways where presently there are no inductance loops. The project also created several user interfaces for traveler information, including a Java application that displays the spatial and temporal average speeds of transit vehicles on a map of the major arterials and freeways and a type of traveler information map. This report also includes a quantitative evaluation of transit vehicles as traffic probes. A comparison of statistics between virtual sensors based on transit vehicles as probes and those from speed traps presently used by WSDOT suggested this virtual sensor technology can be used to identify both recurring and non-recurring congestion with the accuracy associated with speed traps. This means that additional roadways that do not presently have speed traps can be instrumented without installing equipment in the roadway.


Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is a resilient, wide spread species. This paper reports on the xylem and phloem cell formation process, before and after, the species was put under artificial stress by stem girdling. Microcore method was applied to a healthy control group and a standing group of girdled trees within an 80-year-old pine forest for two consecutive growing seasons (2013 and 2014). The stem girdling was applied in the middle of the first growing season (July 2013). Cambial activity timings (onset and cessation of cell division), cell formation intensity, cell differentiation, and the dynamics of the annual radial increment in the stem were analyzed. Cambial activity was inhibited and eventually ceased below the stem girdling immediately after the removal of the strip. Therefore, no latewood tracheids were formed. However, above the stem girdling and in the control trees, cell formation and tissue differentiation continued until the end of the growing season, with the girdled trees moving at a less intensive pace but for a longer period of time. During the following growing season (2014), the cambial zone was reactivated only above the stem girdling, not below, and eventually the girdled trees died. In 2014, the onset of the cambial activity was delayed and the division rate of the cells was slower in the girdled trees. Furthermore, the girdled trees formed less phloem cells than the control trees.


"Back to the Pre-Socratics" was the title of a lecture that Karl Popper gave in London to the members of the Aristotelian Society on Octo-ber 13, 1958.' On that particular occasion, al-though he declared that he would speak only "as an amateur, as a lover of the beautiful story of the Pre-Socratics,"2 he put forth a few inter-pretations to which Geoffrey Stephen Kirk and Geoffrey Lloyd, Cambridge University ex-perts on Greek classical culture, reacted quite strongly.It was especially the concept of "science" applied by the Austrian author to the Pre-Socratics that led to a powerful and lasting controversy. Paying special attention to the nu-ances involved in Popper's interpretation, Donald Wiebe has underlined the fact that in Popper's view, the Pre-Socratics "are therefore not the founders of modern science but rather the founders of modern scientific rationality."3 Consequently, as we shall see, what Popper maintained in his discussion of Pre-Socratic philosophy was a type of rationality that in fact lay at the origin of the occidental world, "the only civilization which is based upon sci-ence."4As Claudiu Mesaro§ has observed, Karl Popper sees in the Ionian school of thought a source of all questions and acquisitions of modern contemporary science.5 Indeed, in The Myth of the Framework (the source of Claudiu Mesaro§'s statement), 6 Popper's vision of the history of European science was based on the so-called "Greek miracle,"7 an event suppos-edly generated by the Pre-Socratics' rational reflections: "But what of the original Greek miracle-the rise of Greek poetry, art, philoso-phy, and science; the real origin of Western ra-tionalism?"8 Making use of similar rhetorical questions, Karl Popper concluded without any hesitation whatsoever that "our ideas of free-dom, of democracy, of toleration, and also the ideas of knowledge, of science, of rationality, can all be traced back to these beginnings."9 Obviously, in accordance with his personal perspective of critical rationalism, the idea of rationality seemed to him "the most funda-mental" idea. 10 However, he was not referring to a particular type of rationality, but to the "critical rationality" which contributed to the advancement of knowledge by means of a movement that would ensure checking previ-ous theories constantly-since only theories that can be "falsified" are truly scientific theo-ries.The essay "Back to the Pre-Socratics" should thus be placed next to essays verifying the Greek origins of occidental rationalism. Popper's hermeneutical approach proves that the statement attributed to Henri Poincare, i.e., "the scale creates the phenomenon,'"1 is actu-ally correct (in a flash of inspiration, Professor Christopher Buck called it the "Scalar bias"); 12 to be sure, since it is a premise that cannot be avoided by any critical interpretation, it can be verified in Popper's article too. In his endeavor to elucidate the significance of certain Pre-So-cratic fragments, he starts out by postulating that they were the representatives of a "simple straightforward rationality.'"* Its decisive ele-ment "is the critical attitude which, as I shall try to show, was first developed in the Ionian School.'"4 In Popper's opinion, this critical at-titude is common to almost all of Thales's suc-cessors.For example, Anaximander, his brilliant follower, reached the conclusion that the shape of the earth is spherical rather than cylindrical precisely because he had taken over his prede-cessor's opinions in a critical manner, rejecting them and arguing in favor of a superior hypothesis:Thus it was a speculative and critical argument, the abstract critical discussion of Thales's theory, which almost led him to the true theory of the shape of the earth; and it was observational experi-ence which led him astray. 15Following the same path, that is, taking over critically their predecessors' working hypoth-eses, most thinkers of ancient Greece contrib-uted to the perpetuity of certain remarkable hy-potheses, a fact that may account for the emergence of many theories of the modern pe-riod. …


Over the past decade, Indonesia has developed into an important regional and global economy, as well as an active participant in the G20. The chapters in this book document the substantial improvements in the quality of macroeconomics policy that Indonesia has achieved, while also clearly laying out an agenda of measures that should be taken to safeguard these gains and further lower vulnerabilities going forward. Rather than just demonstrating progress in key macroeconomic indicators, the contributors have delved into the ways that global volatility, especially since 2008, has affected Indonesia and how that country has adjusted its policies to meet the new challenges.


A kernel method for realizing Bayes' rule is proposed, based on representations of probabilities in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Probabilities are uniquely characterized by the mean of the canonical map to the RKHS. The prior and conditional probabilities are expressed in terms of RKHS functions of an empirical sample: no explicit parametric model is needed for these quantities. The posterior is likewise an RKHS mean of a weighted sample. The estimator for the expectation of a function of the posterior is derived, and rates of consistency are shown. Some representative applications of the kernel Bayes' rule are presented, including Bayesian computation without likelihood and filtering with a nonparametric state-space model.