Electrochemical disinfection of surface water using mixed metal oxide anodes was evaluated in a pilot-scale demonstration. Disinfection rates, chlorine generation, energy demand, and generation of disinfection by-products were monitored over the 190-day study. Particular attention was given to the generation of trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) during the electrochemical treatment cycle. In addition, the potential for generation of THMs and HAAs during post-treatment storage of the water was assessed. The electrochemical treatment system resulted in a 2- to 3-log removal of total heterotrophic bacteria, with values below detection (<1 CFU/mL) often observed. Disinfection occurred with only very low levels of observed chlorine generation (<0.1 mg/L), suggesting that alternate disinfection mechanisms likely played a significant role in the observed removal of bacteria. THM and HAA concentrations after treatment were consistently well-below regulatory levels. Results also showed that electrochemical treatment significantly reduced the formation of bromoform when the water received subsequent exposure to hypochlorite. Removal of naturally occurring bromide in the water by the electrochemical system may have been the cause (in part) for this observed mitigation of bromoform formation. The formation of calcium scale on the cathode surface over time was the primary operational challenge.


Over the last three decades, NIAS has evolved as one of India's leading multidisciplinary research and training institutions. It has, during this period, built on its mandate to carry out multidisciplinary research and to use the results of that research to help build a new leadership in India. A major step in this direction was taken by focusing on specific initiatives, drawing on inputs from multiple disciplines. The practice of multidisciplinary research has, over time, thrown up not just answers to questions that have been asked about diverse aspects of the country, but also raised new questions. Some of these questions have been recurring, arising again and again in the course of multidisciplinary research in very different directions. Among the more frequent of these recurring questions are those that relate, directly or indirectly, to issues of sustainability. A strategy for national security would self-destruct if it used resources in a manner that was not sustainable; the protection of our heritage can be seen as a response to the need to sustain memories of our past; the need to study inequality comes from an understanding that grossly unequal societies are not sustainable; and so on. As individual programmes have responded to these challenges, an institute-wide approach to sustainability has evolved from below. This note seeks to make this approach explicit by placing it in the context of the larger debate on sustainability. It then goes on to develop this approach into a strategy to enhance the contribution of NIAS to the larger cause of sustainability, in the realms of theory, empirical evaluation, and policy.


This chapter sheds light on the workings of impoliteness as a source of disaffiliative humour in fictional interactions in films, series and serials designed for their viewers (dubbed "recipients"). A number of postulates are proposed against the backdrop of humour theory, as well as the research done on impoliteness. Based on a detailed survey of the relevant literature, it is argued that the incongruity theory of humour gives the best insight into the workings of humorous impoliteness from a linguistic perspective, while the disposition account, subscribing to superiority theory, indicates how the disaffiliative potential of humour contributes to mirthful pleasure on the viewer's part.


Reservoir compartmentalization can seriously compromise a project's economics if left undetected during appraisal. Its early identification is made more likely if maximum use is made of available fluid appraisal data. This involves making a critical comparison of time-scales for various fluid properties to equilibrate compared with the actual time since those properties were initially disturbed. Spatially varying fluid properties indicate compartmentalization if they have existed for longer than the time needed for them to equilibrate. Here we use data from appraisal wells and reservoir mixing time-scales to investigate vertical and horizontal compartmentalization in the Horn Mountain Field (Gulf of Mexico) and to quantify the properties of the baffles/barriers identified. We compare our results with earlier work using time-lapse geochemistry and mud gas isotope logging. Present fluid compositional variations in the field are shown not to be diagnostic of horizontal compartmentalization as the mixing time-scales by molecular diffusion are longer than the time since the reservoir filled. In contrast, pressure shifts and density differences are diagnostic. They indicate that faults within the Horn Mountain Field are relatively impermeable and would act as barriers during oil production. They also confirm that a shale-filled channel acts as a barrier to vertical flow.


Vegetable oils are increasingly being used as long-term carbon donors to stimulate reductive dechlorination of trichloroethylene (TCE). Besides potential enhancement of biodegradation, the addition of vegetables oils may impact TCE fate and distribution within the aquifer by acting as non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPL). Distribution coefficients for TCE between groundwater and four vegetable oils were determined using a slow-stir technique. Log vegetable oil/water distribution coefficients (log Kvw) were found to range from 1.0 to 2.56. TCE/vegetable oil distribution coefficients statistically increased with an increase in oil weathering while the concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the water did not change over time.


The development of information systems and software applications increasingly needs to deliver culturally rich and affective experiences for user groups. In this paper, we explore how the collaborative practices across different expert groups can enable this experiential dimension of use to be integrated into the development of a software product. In an empirical study of computer games development---an arena in which the novelty and richness of the user experience is central to competitive success---we identify the challenges of conceptualizing and realizing a desired user experience when it cannot be readily specified in an initial design template, nor represented within the expertise of existing groups. Our study develops a theoretical framework to address these challenges. Through this framework, we are able to show how achieving a desired user experience requires developer groups to not only work across the boundaries that arise from specialized expertise, but also across wider fields centred on cultural production and software development, respectively. We find that their ability to do this is supported by distinctive "envisioning practices" that sustain an emerging shared "vision" for each game. The key research contributions that we then make are a grounding envisioning practices as a means of theorizing the collaborative practices centred on conceptualizing the user experience; b identifying how these practices are interwoven with the "producing practices" of software development, thus enabling collaboration to span expert groups and disparate fields; and c theorizing the role of vision as an emerging conceptual boundary object in these practices.


PURPOSE
To define the molecular signature of limbal SP cells and identify signaling pathways associated with the phenotype of these putative stem cells.

METHODS
Primary cultures of pig limbal epithelial cells stained with Hoechst 33342 were sorted by flow cytometry into SP and non-SP cells, and purified RNA was processed for microarray analysis with an oligonucleotide spotted array. Expressed transcripts for which SP and non-SP expressions differed by more that 1.5-fold in each paired set and by twofold overall were considered to be differentially expressed. Differential expression was validated by quantitative PCR and immunostaining. Data-mining methods were used to identify cellular processes that are either salient or depressed in the SP cells.

RESULTS
The microarray identified approximately 9000 distinct, expressed, and identifiable genes. Of those, 382 and 296 were either over- or underexpressed in the SP cells, respectively. Overrepresentation analysis indicated that SP cells are in a low metabolic and biosynthetic state. In addition, a pattern of elevated MXD1, MAXI2, DUSP5, p27/KIP1, and p57/KIP2 and decreased Cyclin D and CDK genes can be expected to slow intrinsic and mitogen-induced G(1)-to-S cell cycle transition. SP cells were also rich in genes associated with stem cell phenotype and genes providing protection against oxidative and/or xenobiotic damage.

CONCLUSIONS
Microarray analysis of pig limbal SP cells yielded a molecular signature underscoring a phenotype characterized by slow cycling and low metabolic activity. The results provide valuable insights for the preservation and/or replication of epithelial stem cells.


The interview was recorded at the Washington D.C., on April 20, 1990. The Interviewer was Jean Krasno.
Mr. G. McMurtrie Godley was an American diplomat who was appointed United States Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire) in 1964. During his time as ambassador, a second coup was staged in the Congo and Mobutu Sese Seko seized control of the country. Mr. Godley remained at that post until 1966 when he was deployed to Laos at the height of the Vietnam War and in the midst of the Laotian Civil War. In 1974, he was appointed United States Ambassador to Lebanon. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1976. Throughout his career, Mr. Godley also completed postings in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Cambodia.

Retired from Foreign Service at the time of the interview, conducted on 20 April 1990, Mr. Godley discussed the political climate of the Congo when he first arrived there in 1961 and the role the American Embassy played in the Congo Crisis.


This article focuses on the question of whether the latest results achieved in sciences such as evolution studies and brain research can help us understand the nature of aesthetic judgments. It suggests that such approaches may offer interesting insights for understanding many problems in aesthetics, but for clarifying aesthetic judgments one needs a philosophical point of view. Aesthetic judgments cannot be proven right or wrong by scientific methods, and beauty or other aesthetic qualities cannot be directly measured. The "method" of both making and analyzing aesthetic judgments is discussion, and the article clarifies why this is still the case, even if empirical, non-philosophical scientific methods are more accurate than ever before.


Conflicts over human rights in relations between East Asia and the West have increased since the end of the Cold War. Western governments express concern about human rights standards in East Asian countries. In the East, these expressions have been perceived as interference in internal affairs. Due to dramatic economic development, East Asian nations recently have gained in pride and self-confidence as global actors. Such development is observed with suspicion in the West. Concerned about the decline of global U.S. influence, some American scholars have re-invented the notion of "culture" to point at an alleged East Asian threat. Also East Asian statesmen use the cultural argument by claiming the existence of so-called 'Asian values', which they allege are the key to Eastern economic success. This thesis argues that issues of human rights in East-West relations are not only a consequence of well-intended concern by Western governments regarding the human rights and welfare of the citizens of East Asian nations, but are in fact dominated by and used as a pawn in interplay with more complicated questions of global power and economic relations between East and West. The thesis reviews the relevance of culture in East-West relations. In the West, particularly Samuel P. Huntington with his prediction of the Clash of Civilizations stands out. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has been very vocal on the Eastern side. Whereas the West tries to cope with its decrease of global influence, after hundreds of years under Western hegemonism, the East believes in an Asian way of development without interference form the West. Most of this dispute revolves around the issue of human rights. The West claims the universality of rights which in fact emphasizes political and civil rights. Western countries critizise poor human rights standards in East Asia. The East, in return, accuses the West of hypocritical policies that seek global dominance. East Asian governments assert that due to a different stage of development they have to stress first their rights to development in order to assure stability. In particular, China argues this way. The country's leadership, however, shows concern about human rights and has already improved its human rights record over the past years. This thesis analyses the dispute over human rights in a case study on Germany and China. Both countries have a mutual interest in trade relations which has conflicted with Germany's criticism of China's problematic human rights record. In 1996, the two countries clashed after the German parliament passed a resolution condemning China's treatment of Tibet. This caused a lot of damage to the Chinese-German relationship which in the course of the year went back to normality. In the light of these frictions a German human rights policy that focuses on unspectacular grass-roots support of China, for example in strengthening China's legal system, would be preferable. Such co-operation must be based on


Suspicionless DNA collection from pre-conviction arrestees should be treated as a violation of the Fourth Amendment when it is conducted without a valid search warrant. The predominant policy justifications for that DNA collection (1) as a crime-fighting tool and/or (2) a modern identification tool, like high-tech versions of fingerprints, are not compelling enough to justify treating the process as comporting with the Fourth Amendment. Arrestees do not have the same low expectation of privacy as prisoners or convicts, and treating them as if they do violates their legal presumption of innocence. The public interest in fighting crime and identifying arrestees also fits within the ordinary role of law enforcement, meaning that those activities do not qualify for the "special needs" exception to the individualized suspicion required for most Fourth Amendment searches and seizures. However, since the Supreme Court upheld suspicionless arrestee DNA collection, analysis, and aggregation in a nationwide DNA database (in Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958 (2013)), participating states should adopt measures requiring automatic expunction of the DNA records of any arrestees who are not convicted within a reasonable amount of time from when they were arrested for the crime that led to the collection of their DNA.


Background:

Patients with psychiatric disorders have high cigarette smoking-related morbidity and mortality. Varenicline, a α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) partial agonist, has been approved for smoking cessation, but few studies compared the efficacy between the smokers with and without different psychiatric disorders.

Methods:

Smokers aged more than 20 years with a daily cigarette consumption of more than 10 cigarettes/ or a Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence Scale (FTND) score of more than 4 were enrolled. The efficacy of smoking cessation and adverse effects were compared between the smokers with and without psychiatric disorders after 12-week varenicline treatment.

Results:

In total, 140 smokers were recruited, of whom 94 (67.1%) had psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia (n=19), bipolar disorder (n= 29), depressive disorder (n=31), or other psychiatric disorders (n =15). Compared with the smokers without psychiatric disorders, those with psychiatric disorders were significantly more likely to be women, younger, have a shorter smoking history and a higher FTND score (all p<0.05). After 3 months of varenicline treatment, the smokers with psychiatric disorders had a significantly lower point smoking cessation rate (12.4% vs. 27.3%, p=0.012) and a lower percentage of daily reduced cigarette consumption (54% vs. 68%, p=0.02). The most commonly reported adverse events were nausea, without any group difference.

Conclusion:

The smokers with psychiatric disorders had a lower point smoking cessation rate than the smokers without psychiatric disorder after 12-week varenicline treatment. The development of novel tobacco treatments program integrated with psychiatric management for these patients is required.


The research tests Oliver Williamson's proposition that transaction cost economics can explain the limits of firm size. Williamson suggests that diseconomies of scale are manifested through four interrelated factors: atmospheric consequences due to specialisation, bureaucratic insularity, incentive limits of the employment relation and communication distortion due to bounded rationality. Furthermore, Williamson argues that diseconomies of scale are counteracted by economies of scale and can be moderated by adoption of the multidivisional organisation form and by high internal asset specificity. Combined, these influences tend to cancel out and thus there is not a strong, directly observable, relationship between a large firm's size and performance. A review of the relevant literature, including transaction cost economics, sociological studies of bureaucracy, information-processing perspectives on the firm, agency theory, and studies of incentives and motivation within firms, as well as empirical studies of trends in firm size and industry concentration, corroborates Williamson's theoretical framework and translates it into five hypotheses: (1) Bureaucratic failure, in the form of atmospheric consequences, bureaucratic insularity, incentive limits and communication distortion, increases with firm size; (2) Large firms exhibit economies of scale; (3) Diseconomies of scale from bureaucratic failure have a negative impact on firm performance; (4) Economies of scale increase the relative profitability of large firms over smaller firms; and (5) Diseconomies of scale are moderated by two transaction cost-related factors: organisation form and asset specificity. The hypotheses are tested by applying structural equation models to primary and secondary cross-sectional data from 784 large U.S. manufacturing firms. The statistical analyses confirm the hypotheses. Thus, diseconomies of scale influence the growth and profitability of firms negatively, while economies of scale and the moderating factors have positive influences. This implies that executives and directors of large firms should pay attention to bureaucratic failure.


Occupational Health Service in Terengganu Health Department started in 1996. It initially started with occupational health clinic activities in Kemaman. On 17th Jun 1997 Occupational Health Unit was formed in the State Health Department. The aim was to develop the state occupational health activities in districts and hospitals as a whole. It was headed by a State Health Officer (Occupational Medicine Doctor) and assisted by Health Inspectors. In spite of insufficient staff and heavy work load, we managed to develop two occupational health clinic in the health districts of Kemaman and Kuala Terengganu. Beside the clinic, all Hospitals and District Health Offices in Terengganu had formed safety committee as required by OSHA 1994. Training of the staffs was done to enhance the knowledge and skill in occupational health and safety. Beside medical surveillance on the health worker, epidemiology surveillance were done on occupational disease/accident and pesticide chemical poisoning were. Since then, two posts of occupational health officer in The Health District of Kemaman and Kuala Terengganu and one post of occupational staff nurse in Kemaman Health Office were approved in 1998. Application of information technology in occupational health activities in the state are also being considered.


The decentralized supply chain management scheme of Lee and Whang (1999) can be viewed as operationalizing the decentralized management scheme implicit in Clark and Scarf (1960). This paper proposes the use of what are called responsibility tokens (RTs) to further facilitate that operationalization. The proposal assumes that a management information system, presumably electronic, is established to monitor inventories and shipment quantities, and to carry out transfer payments between players. As in Lee and Whang(1999), the incentives of the system are aligned, so if each player is brilliantly self-serving, the system optimal solution will result. While the system administrator need not know how the system should be managed, the most upstream player must know how to manage the system optimally for the system optimal solution to be achieved. RTs endow the system with an attractive self-correcting property: An example illustrates that upstream players are given a mechanism and the incentive to correct for downstream overordering. The downstream players who over-order are penalized, but system performance is not degraded much. Extensions and further research are also discussed.


Methane sulphonic acid (MSA) in an ice core from Dolleman Island (70°35′S, 60°56′W) shows significantly high concentrations (typically 1-2 µm, but up to 5 µm) compared to values recorded in ice cores and in snowfall from elsewhere in Antarctica. MSA data from two other higher altitude Antarctic Peninsula ice cores, Dyer Plateau (70°31′S, 65°01′W) and Gomez Nunatak (74°01′S, 70°38′W), show that the high concentrations measured at Dolleman Island are not representative of the Peninsula region as a whole. However the mean molar MSA/nss-SO 4 2- ratios at the three sites are similar (Dolleman Is, 0.46; Gomez, 0.37; Dyer, 0.32). Exceptionally high concentrations observed at Dolleman Island may be related to its proximity to the biologically productive Weddell Sea, an important source of dimethyl sulphide (DMS), the precursor of MSA. The MSA data from this site are further unusual in that in deeper sections of this core they demonstrate a well defined seasonal maximum in winter rather than in summer and are out of phase with non sea-salt sulphate, another product of the decomposition of DMS. In contrast, in a near-surface section, MSA variations are in phase with non sea-salt sulphate, with a maximum concentration in the summer layer. A change in the season of deposition of MSA from winter to summer in the recent past is not considered likely. An alternative explanation is that there has been a relocation of the MSA from summer to winter layers during burial. DOI: 10.1034/j.1600-0889.1992.t01-2-00007.x


We report petrologic, petrographic and chemical data for a newly discovered meteorite specimen from South Africa. The 7.04 kg specimen was found in ca. 1977 on the farm Waterval 64, about 30 km from the town of Merweville (−375 km northeast of Cape Town). Our research group confirmed the identity of the stone as a meteorite in 1997, and obtained a ~1.5 kg portion for study and classification. Externally, the specimen shows a few regmaglypts and a reddish-brown, weathered fusion crust. The sawn internal surfaces show that terrestrial weathering effects, which render a dark brownish colour to the specimen, have penetrated up to 4 to 5 cm into the meteorite. The relatively unweathered interior is light orange-brown in colour. Petrographically, the specimen shows a dominantly recrystallised texture, with a few recognisable chondrules or chondrule fragments. Shock stage is estimated at S2, and weathering grade is W2. Microprobe analyses yield: olivine (Fa23.32 ±0.612, PMD = 0.52, n = 13), orthopyroxene (Fs20.59 ±0.54, n 15), kamacite (Ni = 6.48 ± 0.24 wt.%, Co = 0.94 ± 0.14 wt.%, n = 15), taenite (Ni = 28.9 ± 2.3 wt.%, Co = 0.29 ± 0.08 wt.%, n = 3), troilite (Ni = 0.10 ±0.11 wt.%, n = 17) and chromite (Cr/(Cr+Al) = 0.860 ± 0.003, n = 4). No recognisable feldspar or glass is present in our thin sections of Merweville The dominantly recrystallised but partial preservation of chondrules, apparent absence of glass, and the relative uniformity of olivine and pyroxene compositions are all consistent with classification of Merweville as petrologic type 5. Chemical and mineralogical data for the "unweathered" portion of the meteorite fall best within the L group. We conclude that Merweville is an L5 chondrite. This new specimen increases the inventory of known South African meteorites to a total of 48.


This article deals with three-dimensional collisions of rigid, kinematic chains with an external surface while in contact with other surfaces. We concentrate on a special class of kinematic chain problems where there are multiple contact points during the impact process. A differential formulation based algorithm is used to obtain solutions that utilize the kinematic, kinetic, and the energetic definitions of the coefficient of restitution. Planar and spatial collisions of three-link chain with two contact points are numerically studied to compare the outcomes predicted by each approach. Particular emphasis is placed on the relation between the post and pre-impact energies, slippage and rebounds at the contact points, and differences among planar and nearly planar three-dimensional solutions.


This guide is intended to help patrons find resources to support their study and research in Korean studies and the Korean language. It includes tips on searching; links to databases, e-journals, and e-books; and information on the Korean collection.


Technological change has transformed the ways knowledge is developed and shared internationally. Accordingly, in the quarter-century since the WTO was established, and since its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights came into force, both the knowledge dimension of trade and the functioning of the IP system have been radically transformed. The need to understand and respond to this change has placed knowledge at the centre of policy debates about economic and social development. Recognizing the need for modern analytical tools to support policymakers and analysts, this publication draws together contributions from a diverse range of scholars and analysts. Together, they offer a fresh understanding of what it means to trade in knowledge in today's technological and commercial environment. The publication offers insights into the prospects for knowledge-based development and ideas for updated systems of governance that promote the creation and sharing of the benefits of knowledge.


Background/Study Context: Much has been written regarding age-related changes in sensory and motor functions, general slowing of the nervous system, and deficiencies in inhibition. Few studies, however, have attempted to define how each of these factors may contribute to poorer accuracy of motor performance with aging. The purpose of this study was to examine whether these changes were best explained by speed of task or stimulus-response compatibility. Methods: Twenty-four younger (M = 19.5; 18–22 years) and older (M = 72.5; 65–82 years) adults used knee movement to track a computer-generated disc along a computer-generated sinusoidal wave that either moved at 50 or 70 cm/s. Stimulus-response compatibility consisted of leg and disc movement in the same direction and stimulus-response incompatibility consisted of leg and disc movement in the opposite direction. Performance was analyzed using a mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: Younger adults performed better than older adults in all conditions. Magnitudes of error between the stimulus-compatible and stimulus-incompatible conditions were greater for the old group compared to the young group. Both of these findings were consistent with the hypotheses. Inconsistent with the hypothesis, speed of task did not contribute to age-related differences in accuracy of motor performance in either cognitive load conditions. Conclusion: Differences in performance could be attributed to age-related changes in selective inhibition. Future research should focus on examining the potential consequences of decreased inhibition among older adults when completing various activities of daily living and what interventions might mitigate these consequences.


The urban sprawl that characterizes most European cities relies highly on the use of private motor vehicle. As a result, there is a prominent increase in the energy consumption of the built environment. Therefore, the densification of existing urban areas located near public transportation is an interesting alternative to dispersed urbanization, provided that such process goes together with an offer of local services and facilities to promote the use of soft mobility. Analysis at neighborhood scale allows studying the influence of infrastructures, facilities and services on daily mobility choices. This analysis should create direct insights into how the combination of global and local parameters related to mobility infrastructures and urban developments affect mobility energy consumption. The latter can be calculated by two main different methods: the macro-scale methods, which are based on parameters defining the city, and the micro-scale methods, which use accurate data from individuals and infrastructures. The present paper shows an application of a novel intermediate method at neighborhood level developed by the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) to estimate the energy consumption related to mobility and attributed to buildings. The analysis of induced mobility by different urban renewal scenarios of an existing neighborhood in Lausanne, Switzerland, shows the importance of the number of car parks and of the human density (residents or jobs per square meter) as key factors related to mobility energy planning. Results also highlight the significant impact of changes in behavior, in terms of chosen mean of transportation and covered distances, on the potential for energy savings.


This practice-based project investigates modalities of performing eco-aesthetic assemblages across the modern nature―culture divide. Assemblages are here understood as non-hierarchical associations between bodies that are different amongst themselves. I argue that eco-aesthetic practices that work towards naturalcultural assemblages contribute to the wider field of ecological thought and cultural understanding of the nonhuman environment or nature.

The research uses a transversal practico-theoretical approach that, following posthumanist and neomaterialist elaborations of ontology and epistemology, creates a 'material-discursive entanglement' (Barad, 2007) of bodies and concepts. In this posthuman continuum of practice, I argue that eco-aesthetics is an ethico-political disposition of fostering relations of accountability and responsibility with the bodies implicated in performance, especially the nonhumans understood to be minorities in the current politico-economic organisation.

The research is situated within the landscape of modern biopolitics, which is understood as a set of conceptual and material strategies of appropriation of life through the 'logic of colonisation' (Plumwood, 1993). Situated naturalcultural performances enact a different modality of 'intra-action' (Barad, 2007) with the world, by creating and maintaining fields in which life is seen as a force of generative difference.

The dissertation is divided in three parts which correspond to three entangled modes of performing research. The first part is a critical ontology which individuates operative modalities of modern boundary-making techniques. This part also outlines an alternative landscape of art and philosophy which go beyond binary thinking. The second part, through a posthumanist reconfiguration of the concept of assemblage from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and apparatus, in the work of Michel Foucault and Karen Barad, shapes an analytics for locating possibilities of material-discursive reconfiguration of the existing power relations. The third part follows the narrative of my artistic projects that sought to create naturalcultural performances with plants, trees, molecules of carbon-dioxide, sheep, and earth. This material-discursive entanglement of critique, analytics and performance as artistic practice together shapes a posthuman ecological praxis that is oriented
towards naturalcultural justice.


A new precoding-based intersession network coding (NC) scheme has recently been proposed, which applies the interference alignment technique, originally devised for wireless interference channels, to the 3-unicast problem of directed acyclic networks. The main result of this work is a graph-theoretic characterization of the feasibility of the 3-unicast interference alignment scheme. To that end, we first investigate several key relationships between the point-to-point network channel gains and the underlying graph structure. Such relationships turn out to be critical when characterizing graph-theoretically the feasibility of precoding-based solutions.


In this policy evaluation report, the results of the first 2 years of the Interreg funded ABCitiEs project are presented. In total 16 entrepreneurship collectives have been studied in 5 partner regions, i.e. Athens, Vilnius, Varazdin-Cakovec, Manchester and Amsterdam. The report contains an analysis of the cases and gives an overview of the most important opportunities and challenges faced by these cases. On the basis of these result, 4 policy directions have been selected in which improvement are considered most successful, i.e. access to funding, intermediaries, monitoring and experimental learning environments. Also, the report presents the action plans that have been formulated on the basis of these policy directions for the cities involved in this project. In the last 2 years of the project, project partners will implement these action plans in their respective cities.


A quadratic Partial Least Squares algorithm based on nonlinear constrained programming is proposed. Sequential Unconstrained Minimization Technique is employed to calculate the outer input weights and the parameters of inner relationship. It was found that the arithmetic can not only explain more of the underlying variability of the data, but also has improved modelling and predictive ability. An inferential control system is implemented on the Distribute Control System (DCS) of a fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) main fractionator. A soft sensor QPLS--based was developed to estimate solidifying point of diesel oil on line. The controller was established via constrained Dynamic Matrix Control algorithm. Real time application results demonstrated the performance that the inferential control system based on QPLS was much better than the original tray temperature control system. This resulted in a 1.0% increase in production rate, and a significant increase in profit.


The bed of an alluvial river is highly susceptible to changes during the course of its existence. Besides variations of the large scale topography and plan form of the river, smaller scale dune forms can be observed. These recurring dune forms migrate on top of the large scale topography and can yield local yet important variations in the flow field. In order to study the effect of migrating dune forms on the flow characteristics and consequently the erosive capacity of an alluvial river, an experiment with mobile bed has been carried out in a laboratory flume representing a sharp meander bend. In this experiment, changes to an initially flat, slightly sloped river bed under a steady flow and sediment discharge were observed until a recurring pattern of migrating dune forms could be seen on top of the characteristic pool-bar topography of meander bends. Once the dune forms were established, an Acoustic Doppler Velocity Profiler (ADVP) was placed in several positions alongside the river bend and used to measure the flow depth and flow characteristics under the influence of the passing dunes. Several times during the experiment, the topography was mapped using laser altimetry on a grid of large spatial resolution in order to isolate the dune forms from the large scale topography and determine the dune characteristics and the dune celerity. In this paper the large scale topography and dune characteristics will be shown and the effect of the migrating dune forms on the flow field and the erosive capacity will be discussed in detail.


Players are unlikely to immediately play equilibrium strategies in complicated games or in games in which they do not have much experience playing. In these cases, players will need to learn to play equilibrium strategies. In laboratory experiments, subjects show systematic patterns of learning during a game. In psychological and economic models of learning, players tend to play a strategy more if it has been successful in the past (reinforcement learning) or that would have given higher payoffs given the strategies of other players (belief learning). This paper uses experimental data from the four sessions of a pilot experiment of a three-stage emission game to estimate parameters of experience-weighted-attraction (EWA) learning, which is a hybrid of reinforcement and belief learning models. In this estimation, we transform the strategy space for the three-stage game extensive form game to a normal form game. This paper also considers asymmetric information across players in estimating EWA parameters. In three of the four sessions, estimated parameters are consistent with reinforcement learning, which means that players tend to choose to strategies looking at past strategies that are more successful than the others. In the other session, estimated parameters are consistent with belief learning, which means that players consider forgone payoffs to update their beliefs that determine the probability of strategy choice.


Endeavours of politicians, representatives of law enforcement institutions and courts to create simplified, accelerated and less human and time resources requiring legal procedures in criminal cases prompted the authors of this article to assess the possibilities to develop the written form of procedure in Lithuania. The goal of the authors of this article is to assess the origin and goals of the written form of procedure, as well as to define the main rules and points for discussions on the possibilities to develop the written form of procedure in the Lithuanian criminal procedural law. The conclusion is drawn in this article to the effect that written form of procedure is seen as a condition for simplifying and accelerating the legal process, and choosing this form of procedure is not considered as denying or restraining the expectations of participants of criminal procedure towards a fair trial. The analysis provides the basis for the authors to make a conclusion on the appropriate limits of applying written or oral procedures for hearing criminal cases: Oral procedure must be guaranteed in cases where questions of criminal liability and personal guilt are solved at the first instance court hearings; Oral procedure usually has to be guaranteed in cases where during the procedure at the first instance court hearing the questions of criminal liability and personal guilt are solved, although oral procedure may be limited and the procedure may be conducted in written form if new evidence are not investigated and there is no doubt for deciding whether oral procedure is better for understanding the case; Oral procedure need not be guaranteed only in cases where questions of application of the law are solved and if oral procedure was guaranteed during the procedure at the court of first instance; Written procedure may guarantee the right to a fair trial, where the participants of the procedure are allowed to provide various explanations and written documents or a person is allowed to ask for an oral court hearing.


Time series prediction is one of the major applications of neural networks. After a short introduction into the basic theoretical foundations we argue that the iterated prediction of a dynamical system may be interpreted as a model of the system dynamics. By means of RBF neural networks we describe a modeling approach and extend it to be able to model instationary systems. As a practical test for the capabilities of the method we investigate the modeling of musical and speech signals and demonstrate that the model may be used for synthesis of musical and speech signals.


The desertification tendency of the Qubqi Desert in China for 10 years was investigated using vegetation and soil change indices extracted from seven LANDSAT TM images. To identify the desertification tendency, two methods were applied. In the first, the desertification extent and tendency were determined by classifying the land cover into the following four categories using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI): floating desert area, half-fixed sand area, fixed sand area, and grassland. In the second, the degree of desertification was classified using the Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI): primitive state, latent state, slight desertification, medium desertification, and high-degree desertification. The study results demonstrated that expansion of desertification was mostly clear in the eastern Qubqi and the neighboring farming land area.


Data augmentation is an effective technique to improve the generalization of deep neural networks. However, previous data augmentation methods usually treat the augmented samples equally without considering their individual impacts on the model. To address this, for the augmented samples from the same training example, we propose to assign different weights to them. We construct the maximal expected loss which is the supremum over any reweighted loss on augmented samples. Inspired by adversarial training, we minimize this maximal expected loss (MMEL) and obtain a simple and interpretable closed-form solution: more attention should be paid to augmented samples with large loss values (i.e., harder examples). Minimizing this maximal expected loss enables the model to perform well under any reweighting strategy. The proposed method can generally be applied on top of any data augmentation methods. Experiments are conducted on both natural language understanding tasks with token-level data augmentation, and image classification tasks with commonly-used image augmentation techniques like random crop and horizontal flip. Empirical results show that the proposed method improves the generalization performance of the model.


Online courses have become an important part of the academic offerings of many institutions of higher education in the United States. However, the homeland security laws and regulations enacted since September 2001, including the USA PATRIOT Act, have created serious limitations on the ability of international students studying in the United States to participate in online educational opportunities. Placing online education within the context of the mutually beneficial relationships between international students and the United States, this article examines the assumptions and the impacts of these regulations on the students and the institutions of higher education. This article explores the enrollment limitations in online courses for international students in terms of information policy and concepts of presence and identity in online environments, offering an examination of the implications of this issue for education and information in United States.


This study is concerned with the choices parents of second language learners make with regard to the schooling of their children in respect of medium of instruction, and explores the reasons why parents choose to disregard education in their mother tongue in favour of English as a medium of instruction. This is contrary to the Language in Education Policy, as the Department of Education instils in principals, educators and parents the need for children at primary school level to be taught in their mother tongue. The theoretical framework used to address the problem was the Critical Language Approach, this being an appropriate position from which to investigate language and power. A combination of questionnaires, interviews and observation was used to acquire data from parents and management in a large primary school in KwaZulu-Natal. After analysis of the data, which confirmed the hegemonic position of English as influencing choice of medium of instruction by parents of English second language learners, a model was developed to assist them to see the possible consequences of various choices. The model comprised a tenpoint questionnaire to identify needs, a flow chart diagram resulting from the needs analysis, a pictograph to assist stakeholders to understand the relevant choices available, and workshops to support the choice of medium of instruction. The value of the research, it is thought, lies in clarifying the various influences at play, in particular, the hegemonic position of English, and offering stakeholders a rational, rather than political or emotional basis for the choice of medium of instruction for second language learners, as well as pointing out the possible consequences of such choices.


Primary cilia are important organizing centers that control diverse cellular processes. Apicomplexan parasites like Toxoplasma gondii have a specialized cilium-like structure called the conoid that organizes the secretory and invasion machinery critical for the parasites' lifestyle. The proteins that initiate the biogenesis of this structure are largely unknown. We identified the Toxoplasma ortholog of the conserved kinase ERK7 as essential to conoid assembly. Parasites in which ERK7 has been depleted lose their conoids late during maturation and are immotile and thus unable to invade new host cells. This is the most severe phenotype to conoid biogenesis yet reported, and is made more striking by the fact that ERK7 is not a conoid protein, as it localizes just basal to the structure. ERK7 has been recently implicated in ciliogenesis in metazoan cells, and our data suggest that this kinase has an ancient and central role in regulating ciliogenesis throughout Eukaryota.


(1) Background: While the prevalence of tobacco smoking in the general population has declined, it remains exceptionally high for smokers with severe mental illness (SMI), despite significant public health measures. This project aims to adapt, pilot test and evaluate a novel e-health smoking cessation intervention to assist relapse prevention and encourage sustained smoking cessation for young adults (aged 18–29 years) with SMI. (2) Methods: Using co-design principles, the researchers will adapt the Kick.it smartphone App in collaboration with a small sample of current and ex-smokers with SMI. In-depth interviews with smokers with SMI who have attempted to quit in the past 12 months and ex-smokers (i.e., those having not smoked in the past seven days) will explore their perceptions of smoking cessation support options that have been of value to them. Focus group participants will then give their feedback on the existing Kick.it App and any adaptations needed. The adapted App will then be pilot-tested with a small sample of young adult smokers with SMI interested in attempting to cut down or quit smoking, measuring utility, feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes in supporting their quit efforts. (3) Conclusions: This pilot work will inform a larger definitive trial. Dependent on recruitment success, the project may extend to also include smokers with SMI who are aged 30 years or more.


Covering the ethical dimensions of international-level adaptation funding, a subject of growing interest in the climate change debate, this book provides a theoretical analysis of the ethical foundations of the UNFCCC regime on adaptation funding, one that culminates in the definition of a framework of justice. The text features an interpretative analysis of the ethical contents of the UNFCCC funding architecture by applying the framework of justice proposed to different areas of empirical investigation.

The book offers scholars working on climate change, international relations, and environmental politics an analysis characterized by both theoretical soundness and empirical richness. The comprehensiveness of the book's approach should make it possible to plan and implement international adaptation funding more effectively, and eventually to define more just funding policies and practices.


Cognitive processes such as attention and awareness associated with language learning are also closely related to working memory (WM) functions and thus WM is said to be influential in language learning. The aims of the study reported in this presentation were to investigate how attention paid to target items (causative 'had') in written L2 input is related to the functioning of WM including both phonological loop and central executive and how WM is related to the change of knowledge of the target grammatical construction. These questions have been investigated in a study with the participation of 100 undergraduate L2 learners of English at a Sri Lankan university. The capacity of phonological loop was measured through a forward digit-span test and three functions of the central executive were measured through a keep-track (updating), a plus-minus (switching) and a stroop (inhibition) task. A comparison of post-test and pre-test scores on a sentence reconstruction (SR) and a grammaticality judgment (GJ) tasks was performed to measure the improvement of knowledge of the target construction. Data on the amount of attention paid were collected through eye-tracking and total fixation duration (TFD) and the difference between observed and expected total fixation duration (DOE) were considered as measures of the attention paid to target items. Medium significant correlations were observed between digit span, keep-track and stroop tasks and TFD and DOE values. Large significant correlations were observed between digit-span and keep-track tasks and both SR and GJ gain scores. A medium significant correlation between SR and GJ gain scores and stroop task was also observed. The findings indicate that the attention paid to L2 input by learners depends on their WM capacity and consequently their language development is influenced by the functions of phonological loop and updating and inhibition functions of the central executive.


The Salamanca Statement (1994) advocated the practice of schooling for people with disabilities in the regular classroom and into mainstream schools, stressing the need to optimize the planning tool into pedagogic practices in order to meet the special educational needs of some students within heterogeneous classrooms. In several European and North American countries, the oficialization of the individual education practice plan is one of the intervention tools used to improve the students with disabilities education. Although the names used for this practice vary between countries and terms such as plan/planning/project, educational/scholastic/ enrollment, and personalized/individual are largely employed, these proposals focus on the existence of legal provisions to ensure to all students in situation of disability the right to an individual educational plan (IEP) tailored to meet their individual needs. There is no legal requirement for this issue in Brazil. This lack explains some of the current problems outlined by the inclusive policy and practice in our education system. This paper aimed to describe, analyze and compare the IEP proposals adopted by Italy, France, U.S., and Spain, seeking to comprehend the IEP regulation in these countries and to identify parameters to elaborate proposals enlightening the paths to follow to implement this practice in Brazil. It was a documentary study based on available data from the official websites of the Ministry of Education in those countries between 1994 and 2008. The applied methodology envolved the following stages: 1) preliminary feasibility study for a research proposal; 2) search, identification, and selection of official documents; 3) content analysis of documents related to the practice of IEP; 4) data organization; and, 5) data description and analysis. The results showed diversity between countries including the concept of school inclusion, the radical and/or total inclusion and the inclusion that presumes the existence of the continuum of support services. They also presented the variety in models of IEP from those who relate solely to the schooling to those who contemplate a more widespread attention beyond the realm of school life. The conclusions highlight the importance of legal provisions on the implementation of the IEP for students with disabilities to ensure the right of school education.


Mandibular condyle aplasia is an incongruity usually manifests in association with a variety of syndromes. It is considered as an extremely exceptional stipulation, if it is not usually seen in union with any other developmental anomalies. The incidence is expected 1 in 5600. It occurs due to growth instability in the development of condyle in utero late in the first trimester. The case here reported with malaligned teeth and wants to get it corrected. He had anterior teeth proclined with anterior deep bite. On radiographic examination we noticed absence of right side condyle. The etiology of this condition was unknown, on clinical and radiographic examination we revealed complete absence of condyle on right side. Proper diagnosis along with differentiation from the syndromic cases is important. The aim of this article is to present a peculiar type of mandibular asymmetry with non syndromic condylar aplasia.


Chapin, F. S. Ill and Wardlaw, I. F. 1988. Effect of phosphorus deficiency on source-sink interactions between the flag leaf and developing grain in barley. —J. exp. Bot. 39: 165-177. Photosynthetic rate and stomatal conductance of P-deficient barley plants were increased by manipulations that increased plant demand for carbohydrates (shading of the ear or removal of other leaves). This was associated with retarded senescence of the flag leaf. Similarly, small flag leaves (i.e. those having large sinks relative to their own size) had high rates of photosynthesis. These relationships were most pronounced under conditions of P deficiency. Distribution of 32P and 14C from the flag leaf was determined by the carbohydrate demand of a plant part and was unaffected by altering the sink strength for P. Thus, ear shading increased accumulation by developing grains of 32P and 14C applied to the flag leaf, grain removal reduced accumulation by grain of both radioisotopes, and removal of lower leaves increased movement of both radioisotopes to vegetative plant parts; in contrast, P addition to the ear had no effect upon 32P or 14C distribution. P deficiency reduced the amount of tillering and, therefore, the movement of 32P and 14C to developing tillers and increased retention of 14C and 32P in the sheath of the flag leaf but otherwise had no major effect on patterns of carbon and phosphorus distribution. We conclude that the major effects of P deficiency upon source-sink interactions are (1) to reduce the number or activity of sinks in the shoot (grains and daughter tillers) and (2) to increase the sensitivity with which photosynthesis responds to demand for carbohydrate. The strengthened source-sink interaction under conditions of P deficiency provides a regulatory mechanism for reducing carbohydrate accumulation under conditions where carbohydrates do not strongly limit growth.


Although surfactant-facilitated crystallization has been widely used in pharmaceuticals, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), chalcogenides and colloidal nanocrystals, using surfactants as additives to control the crystal growth of metal halides in the macroscale is unexplored. In this contribution, we used N-methylate 4,4′-bipyridine bromoplumbates as a model system to prove that surfactants as additives could make the structures of organic–inorganic hybrid bromoplumbates diverse. By only changing different surfactants, four new hybrid bromoplumbates including the first novel 3D open framework hybrid bromoplumbate [(C12N2H14)2Pb7Br18] (except perovskites) and a pair of 1D polymorphs were obtained. The related physical properties including optical band gaps, FT-IR and TGA-DSC for the as-obtained compounds have been carefully investigated. In addition, an interesting mother-liquor-facilitated single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SCSC) phase transition is also revealed. Our strategy to employ surfactants to control the crystal growth of metal halides could offer exciting opportunities for discovering novel organic–inorganic hybrid crystals with diverse structures and distinctive properties.


Haloferax volcanii uses extracellular DNA as a source for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous. However, it can also grow to a limited extend in the absence of added phosphorous, indicating that it contains an intracellular phosphate storage molecule. As Hfx. volcanii is polyploid, it was investigated whether DNA might be used as storage polymer, in addition to its role as genetic material. It could be verified that during phosphate starvation cells multiply by distributing as well as by degrading their chromosomes. In contrast, the number of ribosomes stayed constant, revealing that ribosomes are distributed to descendant cells, but not degraded. These results suggest that the phosphate of phosphate-containing biomolecules (other than DNA and RNA) originates from that stored in DNA, not in rRNA. Adding phosphate to chromosome depleted cells rapidly restores polyploidy. Quantification of desiccation survival of cells with different ploidy levels showed that under phosphate starvation Hfx. volcanii diminishes genetic advantages of polyploidy in favor of cell multiplication. The consequences of the usage of genomic DNA as phosphate storage polymer are discussed as well as the hypothesis that DNA might have initially evolved in evolution as a storage polymer, and the various genetic benefits evolved later.


Bloodstains on clothing or its absence is important evidence in any forensic investigation. The patterns can provide valuable information to a bloodstain pattern analyst. Once blood is located it needs to be documented utilizing notes and photography. Documentation can be difficult when bloodstains have been deposited on dark or multicolored fabric. Additional problems exist with fabrics that have been stained by liquids other than blood. The use of Photoshop® to create composites is an excellent way to assist with note taking and documentation of bloodstains on clothing or any other object. Exhibits can also be created to assist with trial testimony. This documentation process can be achieved by the use of luminol photography and then creating a composite photograph in Photoshop®. The steps outlined are aimed at an analyst with previous Photoshop® skills. Photoshop® CS4 was the version used for the examples presented in this paper.


This paper presents a new method for personal identification based on iris patterns. The method composed of iris image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction and finally decision stages. Normalized iris images are vertically log-sampled and filtered by circular symmetric Gabor filters. The output of filters are windowed and mean absolute deviation of pixels in the window are calculated as the feature vectors. The proposed method has the desired properties of an iris recognition system such as scale and rotation invariance. The system is finally realized in Windows platform using Delphi compiler.


Existing research on tournament-style contests suggests that mechanisms to sort contestants by ability level are unnecessary in the case of linear relative-performance contracts. This paper suggests that this result stems from uniform treatment of workers' marginal returns from effort, marginal disutilities of effort, and reservation wages. Here, we investigate relative-performance contracts with a model that allows these three factors to vary by growers' unobservable ability. Given this framework, we find that it is possible for processors to improve expected profits and total expected welfare by replacing a single contract offering meant to pool all growers with an offering of two contracts meant to separate growers by ability. Under some circumstances, a "cream-skimming" contract offering designed to attract only workers above a minimum ability level can also improve expected profits.


Elementary schooling in North America in the early 20th century underwent major changes with the spread of graded schools with multiple classrooms and teachers to semi-urban and rural areas. Detailed schooling records from British Columbia indicate that pupil attendance responded strongly to the introduction of additional teachers in one-room schools. The attendance impact of grading a school dominated alternatives such as employing more highly qualified teachers, or building additional schools to reduce catchment areas. Changes in the provision of schooling can account for about a quarter of the 30 percentage point increase in attendance rates between 1900 and 1930.


This paper explores the 3D structure of an unswept fin generated shock wave-turbulent boundary layer interaction (SBLI). A Mach 2 flow encounters an unswept fin at an angle of attack of 15◦ which causes an inviscid, oblique shock wave with a wave angle of approximately 45◦. The oblique shock wave introduced by the fin interacts with the turbulent boundary layer along the bottom surface. This interaction causes flow separation, and forms a λ-shaped shock structure. This structure has been studied extensively in quasi-2D representations, but the fully 3D structure has not been studied previously. A plenoptic camera is a unique diagnostic tool that captures 3D information using a single camera. This novel imaging system can be combined with particle image velocimetry to obtain 3D velocity data about a flow field. This work is the first application of a plenoptic camera for volumetric studies of SBLI, and it has proven the unique capabilities of the plenoptic camera to obtain 3D velocity information in areas of limited optical access and in supersonic flows. Comparison with stereo PIV data and inviscid shock theory show a good agreement.


Mid- to Upper Devonian strata of the lower Witteberg Group in the Cape Fold Belt of South Africa comprise three principal facies deposited in the shoreface and contiguous inner shelfalong a storm-dominated coastal zone. Weakly burrowed mudrock with variable minor proportions of wave-rippled sandstone (linsen, flasers, hummocky cross stratification [HCSJ) (facies 1) accumulated in the inner shelf below, near, and just above storm wave base. Very fine- and fine-grained sandstone that displays flat and wavy lamination and HCS, as well as compound wave-ripple lamination (facies 2), was deposited in the lower shoreface above fair-weather wave base. Fine- to coarse-grained sandstone containing cross-lamination, anisotropic HCS, and compound wave-ripple lamination (facies 3) formed in the mid to upper shoreface. Regionally, lower Witteberg strata change from proportionally more facies 2 and 3 at proximal (northern) sites to mostly facies 1 at distal (southern) sites. The lower Witteberg Group consists of approximately 40 shallowing-upward facies sequences (parasequences) whose average thickness is approximately 12 m. These are grouped into progradational parasequence sets of up to 10 parasequences each for a total of approximately 3.5 parasequence sets in the lower Witteberg. The lowest parasequence set extends from the base of the Karoopoort Formation (top of underlying Bokkeveld Group) and culminates at the top of the Blinkberg Formation in the Witteberg Group, and approximately 2.5 parasequence sets make up the overlying Swartruggens Formation. The characteristics and stratigraphic architecture of the lower Witteberg Group are consequences of the interaction oftwo different orders of global sea-level fluctuation. The lower Witteberg parasequences had a periodicity between 250 and 300 ka, within the Milankovitch range, and their character and mean thickness are very similar to cyclic patterns recorded in contemporaneous Givetian—Frasnian siliciclastic and carbonate strata on four other continents. The progradational parasequence sets had a mean recurrence interval in the order of 3.0 Ma and can be correlated with specific third-order fluctuations of global sea-level proposed for contemporaneous Upper Devonian strata in Euramerica. This reinforces assignment of the age of the lower Witteberg as extending from the mid-Givetian Stage to the end of the Frasnian Stage.


As the funding environment of voluntary organisations becomes increasingly competitive (Reichardt et al 2008) developing the capacity of voluntary organisations to be come self-sustaining and less reliant on short-term funding assumes a greater importance. NCVO has hosted a Sustainable funding project since 2000 and in 2006 the Wales Council of Voluntary Action launched its own outreach project to develop the capacity of organisations in Wales. However, the funding situation is different in Wales. There are very few large organisations and only one UK national organisation has its headquarters in Wales (Collis, 2007). Many organisations are very small and isolated from each other by the geography of the country. Is developing the capacity of organisations in this context more challenging?

The authors have been working with WCVA to evaluate this project since it started. We have developed case studies, evaluated their website, undertaken a qualitative evaluation of their training delivery and are currently undertaking a longitudinal evaluation of their work with sustainable funding champions. This paper draws on that work and reports on our findings to date. The paper will explore some of the assumptions about sustainability and the challenges this poses particularly in more rural and isolated areas based on the evidence we have gathered.

Initial findings indicate that organisations approach funding sustainability in very different ways. For some, it is a matter of diversifying funding; for others, it is setting up income-generating plans as part of an overall scheme to move toward a social enterprise model.

The structure of the organisations and how sustainability is approached by different members of the organisations will affect the success of new sustainable approaches. In many cases, organisations need both a 'champion' both to promote changes in and secure the buy-in of their board members.

These and other challenges have implications for how a model of sustainable funding can be disseminated throughout the Welsh voluntary sector.


Objective: The aim was to investigate the overall amount of time spent on physical or mental activity training units (i.e., adherence) as a predictor of episodic memory performance in older healthy women. Methods: Women (N = 171, aged 70 - 93 years) took part in a 6-month randomized controlled trial (physical activity or computer training, 3 times weekly). Pre- and post-intervention episodic memory and adherence were assessed. Adherence covers the objectively measured frequency of training participation including travel time to and from course sites. Results: Within the physical exercise group, adherence (β = .19, p = .03) had positive effects on cognitive performance. In the computer group, an interaction between adherence and pre-intervention episodic memory (β = −.17, p = .056) indicated improvement for low-ability women. Conclusions: Adhering to a stimulating mental or physical activity intervention is a prerequisite for healthy older women to maintain or slightly improve their episodic memory performance. Travel activity should be taken into account to cover an overall stimulation. Adherence to mental activity training indicates a moderating effect of mental activity training on episodic memory. Predominantly low-ability women improve their episodic memory performance. In contrast, adherence to physical activity training is positively associated with cognitive performance, regardless of pre-intervention episodic memory performance.


Topic models have great potential for helping users understand document corpora. This potential is stymied by their purely unsupervised nature, which often leads to topics that are neither entirely meaningful nor effective in extrinsic tasks (Chang et al., 2009). We propose a simple and effective way to guide topic models to learn topics of specific interest to a user. We achieve this by providing sets of seed words that a user believes are representative of the underlying topics in a corpus. Our model uses these seeds to improve both topic-word distributions (by biasing topics to produce appropriate seed words) and to improve document-topic distributions (by biasing documents to select topics related to the seed words they contain). Extrinsic evaluation on a document clustering task reveals a significant improvement when using seed information, even over other models that use seed information naively.


Belowground biodiversity is one of the key indicators of the sustainability of a land use. This study sought to document the occurrence and diversity of nematode destroying fungi in an area characterized by small scale agriculture in Embu County, Kenya. The study area was divided into six main land use types namely; coffee, fallow, forest, maize/bean intercrop, napier and tea. Nematode destroying fungi were extracted from five soil samples from each of the land uses. A total of 161 isolates of nematode destroying fungi belonging to nine genera and 19 species were isolated and identified. The genera represented were Arthrobotrys, Dactyllela, Dactylaria, Harposporium, Monacrosporium, Myzocytium, Nematoctonous, Paecilomyces and Stylophage . The occurrence of nematode destroying fungi was significantly (P=0.02519) affected by the land use types in the study area. With the exception of Arthrobotrys superb, Dactyllela haptospora, Dactyllela reticulate, Harposporium anguillulae and Monacrosporium ellipsoporum all the other 19 isolated species were not affected by land use types. The highest total mean occurrence of nematode destroying fungi was recorded in maize/bean, followed by nappier, coffee, forest, fallow and tea , in that order. The respective frequency of detection of the fungal species was 7.6, 7.2, 5.0, 4.0 and 3.6. The Shannon index of diversity was highest and lowest at 1.971and 1.177 in the land under maize/bean intercrop and tea, respectively. The species richness was higher in napier, followed by maize bean, coffee, forest and least in tea. Out of the fungi that were isolated, the highest proportion of 23% was from the maize/bean intercrop, while the least 11% was from land under ea. Arthrobotrys oligospora was the most frequently isolated species with a frequency of 24% while Nematoctonus pachysporus had the least frequency of occurrence of 1%. It can be concluded that land use influences the diversity of nematode destroying fungi and nematodes in the soil. More work is needed to determine the efficacy of these indigenous isolates on plant parasitic nematodes.


INTRODUCTION 1. UN Charter Art II (1945),59 Star 1031, Treaty Set No 993 (1945). The 1999 U.S.-led, NATO-assisted air strike against Yugoslavia has been extolled by some as leading to the creation of a new rule of international law permitting nations to undertake forceful humanitarian intervention where the Security Council cannot act. This view posits the United States as a benevolent hegemon militarily intervening in certain circumstances in defense of such universal values as the protection of human rights. This article challenges that view. NATO's Kosovo intervention does not represent a benign hegemon introducing a new rule of international law. Rather, the United States, freed from Cold War competition with a rival superpower, is both less restrained by the Charter's norms and more compelled to rely on different rationales to justify military action. Particularly in light of the Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq military interventions, the Kosovo operation does not portend a new rule of international law. Rather, it poses a serious threat to the rule of law. Post-World War II international relations can be roughly divided into three periods. The first, stretching throughout the Cold War, was one in which the competing superpowers maintained a formal deference towards the Charter's prohibitions on non-defensive uses of force, but attempted to stretch the concept of self-defense to justify what in reality were violations of the Charter. The second was a brief unipolar yet multilateral moment between the Cold War's end and the late 1990s. During this time a United States-led U.N. authorized various military actions by the United States and other nations. The third and current era is characterized by the recent United States use of force outside of the U.N. framework against Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. This era presents the grave danger that U.S. hegemony will further undermine the post-World War II quest to place the use of force under the control of a truly international organization.1 I. THE U.N. CHARTER IN A BIPOLAR WORLD The drafters of the U.N. Charter attempted to create a bright-line rule limiting the use of force. The use of force by individual states was prohibited, except in selfdefense, to respond to an armed attack by one country against another. The Charter required that the Security Council authorize all other uses of force. The clear rules of the Charter were premised on a set of assumptions that proved faulty. The Charter's framers sought to prevent a recurrence of the traumatic World War II experience from which they had just emerged. They assumed that interstate violence would dominate the second half of the twentieth century as it had the first. In fact, however, intrastate conflict constituted the predominant form of warfare during the next five decades. Moreover, the framers assumed that the Security Council would intervene to stop warfare, at least where one of the five permanent members was not directly involved. This assumption also proved inaccurate, as the Security Council remained deadlocked for almost half a century during the Cold War. Nonetheless, the bipolar Cold War struggle between the two superpowers strained, but did not break Article 2(4)'s restrictions on the use of force. While both the Soviet Union and the United States violated the Charter's prohibitions where their perceived national interest required-the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, and the U.S. military incursions against Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Grenada, Libya, and Panama-both superpowers maintained a formal fealty to the principle that force not be used except in selfdefense. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States and its allies chose to openly challenge the Charter's norms for several reasons. First, both had an interest in the stability of the formal rules stemming from World War II; neither desired the destabilizing effects that openly challenging the recently adopted Charter's scheme would bring. …


Marine Remote Sensing is different from Land Remote Sensing in someways, one of which is that ocean is a 3-d fluid with large changes in time and space. So the field sampling in sea-water, which are used to demarcate remote sensed data, must keep strictly in the time of a satellite passing by, otherwise, the field sample will loss meaning. For a broad sea area, a large number of field samples is not only very expensive but also difficult. 1. The models can be well used to estimate some factors in seawater only by using TM bands' remotely measured data which are acquired at sea surface. 2. As the action of water-inter-exchange, the factors in seawater are well-distributed in a small area except at the border, of water-mass. So the models can be easily transformed from using remotely measured data to using satellite remotely sensed data. 3. Because remote measure can be carried out at sea surface at very high special resolution and much faster than conventional biochemical method, so it will be a potential powerful tool to monitor bay's environment even in cloudy weather.


Any deficiency in trace element content of commercial poultry diets will decrease their performance. To prevent this situation it is necessary to supplement trace minerals in poultry diets to allow the modern birds to reach their genetic potential. The NRC publication as the most famous reference for livestock and poultry nutrients requirement has no recommendation for some less needed trace mineral such as arsenic, vanadium, cobalt and strontium. This deficiency is seen in commercial mineral supplements too which in some situations could result in a reduction in animals productivity. This review has summarized the new finding on the important role of arsenic, vanadium and cobalt in poultry.


Michael C. Loui is the Dale and Suzi Gallagher Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He was previously Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests include computational complexity theory, professional ethics, and engineering education research. He served as the editor of the Journal of Engineering Education from 2012 to 2017. He currently serves as a member of the editorial boards of College Teaching and Accountability in Research. He is a Carnegie Scholar and an IEEE Fellow. Professor Loui was Associate Dean of the Graduate College at Illinois from 1996 to 2000. He directed the theory of computing program at the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1991. He earned the Ph.D. at M.I.T. in 1980.


A frequent criticism of GDP states that events that obviously reduce welfare of people can nevertheless increase GDP per capita. We use data of natural disasters as quasi experiments to examine whether alternatives to GDP (Human Development Index, Progress Index, Index of Economic Well-Being and a Happiness Index) lead to more plausible responses to disasters. Applying a Differences-in-Differences approach and estimates from various panels of countries we find no noteworthy differences between the response of real GDP per capita and the responses of suggested alternative welfare measures to a natural disaster except for the Human Development Index.


The Late Wisconsinan submarine moraine in St George's Bay, Newfoundland, was exposed to erosional processes during and after an early Holocene −25 m lowstand of relative sea level. Primary morphology has been largely removed, resulting in a gently sloping platform veneered with mobile sand and gravel, terminating on the landward side in progradational 'spillover' lobes. Erosion of coastal Quaternary deposits has produced systems of gravel-dominated spits and barriers constructed upon subaqueous platforms that have buried glacimarine deposits and a lowstand delta. Paraglacial processes have therefore created a complex submarine terrain with few parallels in Atlantic Canada.

A gently sloping platform-like shoal (average depth 20 m) extends across inner St George's Bay (Fig. 1a), enclosing several basins to the east (maximum depth 100 m). The platform surface comprises sand waves, areas of gravel ripples and patches of immobile, bouldery gravel with relief of 2–3 m (e.g. A in Fig. 1a). This mosaic of terrains is reflected in a backscatter image (Fig. 1b). As a result of wave action, sand and gravel have migrated to the NE, spilling into the adjacent basins to form lobate, prograding sediment wedges (e.g. B in …


Species of Mycosphaerella and their anamorphs are commonly found on the leaves of Myrtaceae, many of which are defoliated by these pathogens. The taxonomy of these fungi has been based on minute morphological dierences, and virtually nothing is known regarding their relatedness to each other. In this study, we present a phylogeny of 30 species of Mycosphaerella or their anamorphs from myrtaceous hosts, based on sequence data from the ITS regions of the ribosomal RNA operon. Fifteen of the species were also analysed for the 5« end of the large subunit (28S), which produced a phylogeny similar to that obtained for the ITS data set. The Mycosphaerella species included in this analysis are all regarded as representatives of section Plaga, and appear to represent a monophyletic assemblage. Mycosphaerella lateralis was the only species shown to have a wide host range. In general, species clustered together based on their anamorph genera. Species with Colletogloeopsis and Stenella anamorphs always grouped in two respective clusters. However, species with Mycovellosiella, Phaeophleospora, Pseudocercospora and Uwebraunia anamorphs occurred separately, suggesting that they have evolved more than once within Mycosphaerella. Based on the ITS data set, all morphospecies were also shown to be phylogenetic species, although too few isolates were available to address questions relating to intraspecies variation. Nevertheless, ITS sequence data proved sucient to distinguish morphologically similar taxa that have hitherto only been distinguished based on ascospore germination patterns and anamorph characteristics. Sequence data presented in this study should facilitate the identification of Mycosphaerella species occurring on Myrtaceae in the future.


Encouraged by the recent demand for eco-friendly combustion systems, advancements in the predictive capability of turbulent premixed combustion are considered to be essential. The explosion and deflagrating flame are modelled with the numerical method by applying the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) technique. It has evolved itself as a powerful tool for the prediction of turbulent premixed flames. In the LES, Sub-Grid Scale (SGS) modelling plays a pivotal role in accounting for various SGS effects. The chemical reaction rate in LES turbulent premixed flames is a SGS phenomenon and must be accounted for accurately. The Dynamical Flame Surface Density (DFSD) model which is based on the classical laminar flamelet theory is a prominent and well accepted choice in predicting turbulent premixed flames in RANS modelling.
The work presented in this thesis is mainly focused upon the implementation of a dynamic flame surface density (DFSD) model for the calculation of transient, turbulent premixed propagating flames using the LES technique. The concept of the dynamism is achieved by the application of a test filter in combination with Germano identity, which provides unresolved SGS flame surface density information. The DFSD model is coupled with the fractal theory in order to evaluate the instantaneous fractal dimension of the propagating turbulent flame front.
LES simulations are carried out to simulate stoichiometric propane/air flame propagating past solid obstacles in order to validate the model developed in this work with the experiments conducted by the combustion group at The University of Sydney. Various numerical tests were carried out to establish the confidence of LES. A detailed analysis has been carried out to determine the regimes of combustion at different stages of flame propagation inside the chamber. LES predictions using the DFSD model are evaluated and validated against experimental measurements for various flow configurations. The LES predictions were identified to be in strong agreement with experimental measurements. The impact of the number and position of the baffles with respect to ignition origin has also been studied. LES results were found to be in very good agreement with experimental measurements in all these cases.


Every Higher Education Institution needs to develop faculty researchers from its faculty line up who can share their time and expertise to produce research outputs while performing their responsibilities as classroom teachers and sometimes as school managers. This study aims to compare the result of faculty performance evaluation from students and the faculty profile when they are categorized based on their research involvement. Descriptive type of research method with inferential statistics using Chi-square test and Guttman's Coefficient of predictability as statistical tools was utilized to describe the result of the study. Results showed that there are more female master's degree holders with hourly rate from Php 251 to 350 who have active research involvement than males and bachelor's degree and doctorate degree holders. Faculty researchers have significantly higher performance evaluation rating from the students compared to non-researchers. Those with higher Instructional and Diagnostic expertise among faculty members showed higher possibility of becoming faculty researcher. Faculty members may also be required to write books or instructional manuals as a form of research output. If they will be written their own material to be utilized in their own respective classes, mastery or the subject expertise may be fully achieved. They were encouraged to conduct more funded researches from the government and private agencies during the transition period of the Philippine Education in the K-12 implementation.


The capacity to recognize perceptually similar complex visual stimuli such as human faces has classically been thought to require a large primate, and/or mammalian brain with neurobiological adaptations. However, recent work suggests that the relatively small brain of a paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, possesses specialized face processing capabilities. In parallel, the honeybee, Apis mellifera, has been shown to be able to rely on configural learning for extensive visual learning, thus converging with primate visual processing. Therefore, the honeybee may be able to recognize human faces, and show sophisticated learning performance due to its foraging lifestyle involving visiting and memorizing many flowers. We investigated the visual capacities of the widespread invasive wasp Vespula vulgaris, which is unlikely to have any specialization for face processing. Freely flying individual wasps were trained in an appetitive-aversive differential conditioning procedure to discriminate between perceptually similar human face images from a standard face recognition test. The wasps could then recognize the target face from novel dissimilar or similar human faces, but showed a significant drop in performance when the stimuli were rotated by 180°, thus paralleling results acquired on a similar protocol with honeybees. This result confirms that a general visual system can likely solve complex recognition tasks, the first stage to evolve a visual expertise system to face recognition, even in the absence of neurobiological or behavioral specialization.


Planning feasible paths in fully three-dimensional environments is a challenging problem. Application of existing algorithms typically requires the use of limited 3D representations that discard potentially useful information. This article proposes a novel approach to path planning that utilizes a full 3D representation directly: the Three-Dimensional Normal Distributions Transform (3D-NDT). The well known wavefront planner is modified to use 3D-NDT as a basis for map representation and evaluated using both indoor and outdoor data sets. The use of 3D-NDT for path planning is thus demonstrated to be a viable choice with good expressive capabilities.


Background
The aim of this study was to, using the inertial sensor found in the iPhone4®, locate in the ten meter Extended Timed Get Up and Go test the series of kinematic variables deriving from accelerometry and from angular velocity and displacement which show the greatest level of precision in order to discriminate between two groups of elderly persons (frail and physically active) compared to the traditionally used variable, namely time.
Methods
This study used the transversal analytical approach in an attempt to locate the series of kinematic variables which showed the highest degree of precision in order to discriminate between two groups. Firstly, the differences between the two groups (frail elderly persons and healthy elderly persons) were analyzed using variance analysis. The statistical significance level was established at p<0.05. Secondly, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn up in order to evaluate the level of precision in the predictive capability of the kinematic variables compared to the traditionally used variable, namely time.
Results
In phases Si-St and T-St-Si, the results indicate that the variables for acceleration showed greater sensitivity in terms of discriminating between the population groups in the study than the angular velocity and displacement data; specifically, they were the minimum acceleration variables in motion axes x, z and y. In sub-phases GG and GC, accelerations in the x axis showed greater discrimination sensitivity between the frail and the controls. For the turning phase, the minimum acceleration variables which obtained area values below the curve greater than for time were the accelerations in the z and y axes.
Conclusions
The readings deriving from acceleration and angular velocity and displacement during the ETGUG test present a higher degree of precision in discrimination capability between a group of frail and a group of physically active elderly persons, in a more sensitive manner than the variable traditionally used in this test, namely time. []


This guide provides assistance to ESL students who are working on a persuasive paper for ESL 099/100. Pick a topic, brainstorm, find inspiration, and search for sources.


American exercise presents difficulties for option valuation. For an in-the-money option, it becomes necessary at each point in time to consider whether to exercise or to hold on, based on expectations about the stock price at option expiration and also about the optionality value of potential exercise on every date when exercise will be possible in the future. An "Asian" option payoff presents its own valuation problems because the payoff is based on the arithmetic average of correlated lognormal prices, which is not lognormal. Adding stochastic volatility makes both of these problems much harder. But in this article, Russo and Staino are able to develop a lattice technique that deals with all three of these difficulties. The stochastic variable that the tree is built around is the variance, while both the current asset price and the running average of past prices to be included in calculating the payoff at expiration are carried along as auxiliary variables, in the form of sets of values at each node that span the range of possible values along all of the paths that lead to that node. Although there are several approximations in the procedure, accuracy is excellent, and execution is relatively fast.


This work presents a simple compensation method for widening the viewing angle of transflective liquid-crystal displays (TR-LCDs). For an off-axis light, the slow axis of a biaxial film shifts linearly as the Nz factor is varied. By using this optical characteristic of a biaxial film, the broadband condition of broadband circular polarizers exactly holds over a full 80 degrees viewing cone, thus eliminating the off-axis light leakage to widen the viewing angle of TR-LCDs. Based on the proposed compensation method, the TR-LCDs theoretically have a wide spectral bandwidth and a viewing angle of 80 degrees for contrast-ratio (CR) >100:1 and >30:1 in transmissive and reflective modes, respectively. Experiments also show that the proposed TR-LCD has a viewing angle of over the entire 80 degrees and 65 degrees viewing cone in T-mode and R-mode, respectively, for CR>10:1. The proposed TR-LCD is highly promising for mobile display applications.


In this paper, we investigate patterns of team formation amongst barristers who appeared before the UK Supreme Court between October 2009 and August 2015. We show that there is evidence of considerable gender homophily in the formation of teams of barristers appearing before the UK Supreme Court. Same-sex teams of barristers are over-represented compared to the number we would expect if barristers paired up randomly. We also show that this gender homophily remains when we allow for the possibility that barristers pair up randomly within their chambers, or within their area of law. As such, the formation of teams of barristers in the Supreme Court is governed by practices and preferences which make same-sex legal teams more likely than they would be if team formation simply involved a gender-blind draw from a pool of lawyers. Barristers appearing before the Supreme Court prefer, for whatever reason, to work with other barristers of the same sex. We set out reasons why homophily in team formation is undesirable and discuss the routes through which different remedies might operate.


Historically, giraffes ( Giraffa spp.) in zoos are known to have a high prevalence of deaths associated with serous fat atrophy, which has been linked to the impression that as browsers, they are more difficult to feed appropriately compared to grazing ruminants. Therefore, one could expect zoo-housed giraffes to be peculiar in that they might have, on average, a lower body condition than their free-ranging conspecifics. We collected photographs of free-ranging and zoo-housed individuals and used information on sex, age, body mass, and height for a subset of the zoo animals to develop and validate a body condition score (BCS). We developed an overview BCS for the shoulder area (4 levels) and hip area (7 levels), and validated and applied the score to 532 free-ranging and 232 zoo-housed giraffes. The rib area was not useful for BCS; skin folds in the rib area occurred across all BCS hip levels but were particularly prominent at higher BCS hip. The BCS hip was positively correlated with body mass index for adult female giraffes, suggesting it reflects body condition. The BCS hip differentiated better between age, gender, season in free-ranging animals, and habitat (zoo vs. free-ranging). The BCS shoulder was less precise, most likely because the visibility of the shoulder does not only reflect subcutaneous adipose tissue, but also muscle tissue and skin thickness, especially in males as an adaptation to the giraffe's typical mode of intraspecific combat. Using the shoulder score or the presence of skin folds on the side of the thorax/abdomen for routine BCS application is therefore not recommended. Juvenile animals had the highest BCS hip (6.04±0.69 for free-ranging, 6.00±1.07 for zoo), which decreased with age in both populations. Adult males in the wild generally had higher BCS hip (3.52±1.35) scores than the females in the wild (3.31±1.31), indicating the increased energetic strain on females due to reproduction. This was not the case in zoo animals. In contrast to our prediction, zoo- housed animals had higher scores than the free-ranging population (4.53±1.54; 3.74±1.55; P<0.001), especially compared to the free-ranging population scores from the end of the dry season (3.46±1.56; P<0.001). This indicates that on average, zoo-housed giraffe are less constrained by dietary resources than their free-ranging counterparts, and corresponds to reports of an improvement of zoo diets in European zoos and the subjective impression of a reduced incidence of serous fat atrophy in recent years. Nevertheless, the highest score, often equated with obesity in other BCS systems, was observed in both zoos and in the wild, possibly excluding obesity as a pathological condition in this zoo-housed giraffe population. While low scores should be avoided in zoo-housed giraffes, there are no indications so far that high scores in our BCS are detrimental. The hip-based BCS is easily applicable to free-ranging animals by direct observation or based on photographs, and allows for reproducible data collection to monitor giraffes at a population level.


Bioconversion of lignocellulose into renewable energy and commodity products faces a major obstacle of inefficient saccharification due to its recalcitrant structure. In nature, lignocellulose is efficiently degraded by some insects, including termites and beetles, potentially due to the contribution from symbiotic gut bacteria. To this end, the presented investigation reports the isolation and characterization of cellulolytic bacteria from the gut system of red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. Out of the 15 isolated bacteria, strain RSP75 showed the highest cellulolytic activities by forming a clearance zone of 28 mm in diameter with a hydrolytic capacity of ~4.7. The MALDI-TOF biotyping and 16S rRNA gene sequencing revealed that the strain RSP75 belongs to Bacillus altitudinis. Among the tested enzymes, B. altitudinis RSP75 showed maximum activity of 63.2 IU/mL extract for xylanase followed by β-glucosidase (47.1 ± 3 IU/mL extract) which were manifold higher than previously reported activities. The highest substrate degradation was achieved with wheat husk and corn cob powder which accounted for 69.2% and 54.5%, respectively. The scanning electron microscopy showed adhesion of the bacterial cells with the substrate which was further substantiated by FTIR analysis that depicted the absence of the characteristic cellulose bands at wave numbers 1247, 1375, and 1735 cm−1 due to hydrolysis by the bacterium. Furthermore, B. altitudinis RSP75 showed co-culturing competence with Saccharomyces cerevisiae for bioethanol production from lignocellulose as revealed by GC-MS analysis. The overall observations signify the gut of T. castaneum as a unique and impressive reservoir to prospect for lignocellulose-degrading bacteria that can have many biotechnological applications, including biofuels and biorefinery.