Construction projects all over the world involve many challenges, particularly for large public projects. The emerging complex nature of construction activities has brought with it characteristic features, such as, cost increases, delay in the delivery of project, to which rework (carrying out an activity more than one time) has a high contributing factor, stemming from imperfection. This study identified the sources of rework on construction projects in Nigeria from three perspectives: the client, contractor, and consultant. The study was concentrated on the South West part of Nigeria. The quantitative research method was adopted. Random sampling technique was employed in the selection of sample size. A total of one hundred and twenty (120) questionnaires were analysed using inferential statistics.
The following are the findings of this study: the contributions of the client leading to rework are in the form of poor communication, inadequate construction planning and poor management practices. From the consultant, they are: lack of understanding and correct interpretation of customer requirements, constraints in carrying out activities and inexperience of personnel and on the part of the contractor they are: wrongly laying of forming course, poor quality concrete, and poor plastering. Based on the conclusions reached, the following recommendations were drawn. They are: the development of a standard information gathering format relative to clients 'by designers and clients' writing down their intentions before visiting designers; formal technical training should be given to foremen on permanent appointments with organisations, attention should be given for adequate supervision, and construction methods should be analysed before selection and their use.


The objectives for the thesis were to generate tough ceramics utiising the toughening
mechanisms inherent to zirconia materials. The aims have been realised with the
successful fabrication of hot pressed silicon nitride / zirconia composite ceramics.
The zirconia was prestabilised with two different types of dopant additives, yttria
and ceria, with the intention of understanding the chemical compatibility with the
silicon nitride matrix and the overall effect on the subsequent mechanical properties.
The volume fraction of added zirconia was also varied. The increased toughness over
silicon nitride materials alone was attributed to the toughening agents inherent to
zirconia which existed either in the form of the tetragonal polymorph or the monoclinic
variant. The toughening modes were dependent on initial chemistry of the
composite system. When the zirconia was prestabilised with yttria the tetragonal
polymorph was retained within the composite. The enhanced toughness was attributed
to a transformation toughening mechanism. However, when the zirconia
was prestabiised with ceria the depletion of Ce from solid solution with the zirconia
during processing resulted in the formation of the unstabiised monoclinic variant.
The enhanced toughness was attributed, in this case, to a microcrack type energy
absorption mechanism, similar to several ZTA composite ceramics.
Additionally, an experiment using ultrasound non-destructive testing, indicated
that Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystals (TZP) is ferroelastic and, as such, can provide
a significant contribution to enhanced levels of fracture toughness in these materials
or composites containing the same. Further work has been conducted to actually
observe, as a function of applied unia.xial stress, the crystallographic changes occurring
within the bulk of a 3Y-TZP ceramic via neutron elastic scattering at the ILL,
Grenoble, France. This experiment has provided clear direct proof of the ferroelastic
nature of zirconia. A similar experiment will be carried out at the Rutherford
Laboratory, though with significantly improved statistics.
An approach to improve the high temperature properties of TZP via the chemical
alteration of the grain boundary phase was also considered. As a preliminary step
the grain boundary volume was increased through controlled additions of the grain
boundary composition in the form of both a premilled and a premelted glass. Poor
fired densities were attained, however, due to the solute additive partitioning from
the generation of an enhanced grain boundary phase to overstabilisation of the
zirconia resulting in the formation of cubic stabilised zirconia. Furthermore, the
incorporation of nitrogen within the grain boundary phase, via sintering TZP with
sole additions of A1N, resulted in the attainment of poor fired densities and hence
was not considered a suitable method for grain boundary modification.


Are teachers enabling students to be poor readers of science text by not routinely making reading assignments because students usually do not complete them? If students become more effective readers of science text will their attitudes and values towards reading change? In this study reading strategies were implemented with the purpose of helping students read more effectively. Students were instructed in the use of six different strategies. As students used the strategies, their reading skills, values and attitudes were measured using standardized tests, surveys and formative assessments. The results indicated that students improved their reading skills and would complete reading assignments. It was also found that when students are aware of effective reading strategies, they would be likely to use them independently in the future.


Despite an ever growing number of word representation models introduced for a large number of languages, there is a lack of a standardized technique to provide insights into what is captured by these models. Such insights would help the community to get an estimate of the downstream task performance, as well as to design more informed neural architectures, while avoiding extensive experimentation which requires substantial computational resources not all researchers have access to. A recent development in NLP is to use simple classification tasks, also called probing tasks, that test for a single linguistic feature such as part-of-speech. Existing studies mostly focus on exploring the linguistic information encoded by the continuous representations of English text. However, from a typological perspective the morphologically poor English is rather an outlier: the information encoded by the word order and function words in English is often stored on a subword, morphological level in other languages. To address this, we introduce 15 type-level probing tasks such as case marking, possession, word length, morphological tag count and pseudoword identification for 24 languages. We present a reusable methodology for creation and evaluation of such tests in a multilingual setting, which is challenging due to lack of resources, lower quality of tools and differences among languages. We then present experiments on several diverse multilingual word embedding models, in which we relate the probing task performance for a diverse set of languages to a range of five classic NLP tasks: POS-tagging, dependency parsing, semantic role labeling, named entity recognition and natural language inference. We find that a number of probing tests have significantly high positive correlation to the downstream tasks, especially for morphologically rich languages. We show that our tests can be used to explore word embeddings or black-box neural models for linguistic cues in a multilingual setting. We release the probing datasets and the evaluation suite LINSPECTOR with https://github.com/UKPLab/linspector.


In this thesis the electrical properties, magnetic states and spin wave resonances of individual magnetically hollow ferromagnetic nanotubes have been studied. They were prepared from the different materials Nickel (Ni), Permalloy (Py) and Cobalt-Iron-Boron (CoFeB), deposited as shells onto non-magnetic Gallium-Arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor nanowires via Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), thermal evaporation and magnetron sputtering, respectively. The resulting nanotubes had lengths between 10 to 20 μm, diameters of 150 to 400 nm and tube walls (shells) which were 20 to 40nm thick. Structural analysis of the tubes by Transmission Electron Microscopy revealed a poly(nano)crystalline (Ni, Py) and amorphous (CoFeB) structure. Electrical transport experiments as a function of temperature revealed different transport mechanisms for each of the materials. Electron-phonon scattering dominated the temperature dependence of the resistivity in Ni, while a clear evidence for electron magnon scattering was observed in Py. Electron-electron interaction in granular and amorphous media was identified as the major contribution to the temperature dependence in CoFeB. The Anisotropic Magnetoresistance (AMR) ratios have been determined for all tubes and different temperatures. Ni nanotubes exhibited a large relative AMR effect of 1.4% at room temperature. The AMR measurements provided information about the magnetic configurations as well as the magnetization reversal mechanism. Indications for the formation of vortex segments in Ni tubes were found for the magnetization reversal when the magnetic field was perpendicular to the nanotube axis. In cooperation with the Poggio group in Basel, cantilever magnetometry has been used for the further characterization of the nanotube magnetization. The magnetization curves were compared to the AMR measurements and finite element method (FEM) micromagnetic simulations. The comparison between the experimental results and the simulations suggested that the roughness of Ni tubes gave rise to segmented magnetic switching. An almost perfect axial alignment of the remanent magnetization has been observed in Py and CoFeB nanotubes. The influence of the inhomogeneous internal field in transverse magnetic fields was investigated by simulation. The segment-wise alignment of spins with the field direction is argued to provoke characteristic kinks in the hysteresis curve and measured AMR effect. Magnetothermal spatial mapping experiments using the anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) complemented the magnetotransport experiments in cooperation with the group of Prof. Grundler in Munich. Here, first evidence of end-vortices entering the nanotube before reversal could be found. Electrically detected spin wave resonance experiments have been performed in cooperation with the group of Prof. Grundler on individual nanotubes. The detected voltage, generated by the spin rectification effect, revealed multiple resonances in the GHz frequency. The experimentally observed resonances were compared to calculated ones extracted from dynamic simulations. With this comparison, the signatures could be attributed to azimuthally confined spin-wave modes. The deduced dispersion relation suggested the quantization of exchange dominated spin waves in that resonance frequencies follow roughly a quadratic dependence on the wave vector.


The public finance literature tells us that user fees will introduce market-like efficiency to public good provision. Meanwhile, criminal justice scholars note that criminal justice fees have run amok, causing crippling debt, undermining reentry efforts, and raising civil rights and constitutional concerns. This Article reconciles these seemingly opposed perspectives, arguing that criminal justice fees have become harmful precisely because they deviate from the traditional market-like environment that the public finance literature envisions. This nonmarket structure occurs for two reasons. First, criminal justice agencies are monopolistic providers of mandatory services, and second, criminal defendants cannot or do not consider the fee amount when deciding how to behave. As a result, criminal justice fees operate without meaningful restraint, and instead face upward pressure from monopolistic agencies seeking increased revenue. Adjudicating courts, meanwhile, have diluted judicial fee requirements to accommodate increasingly creative user fee structures. These unbounded, nonmarket fees incentivize misallocation of public resources, heighten the risk of exploitation of powerless groups, cause significant human suffering, and deny payors meaningful protection from exploitative government exactions.

In addition to offering a public-finance based critique of criminal justice fees, the Article harnesses such reasoning to offer a framework for evaluating other potentially exploitative nonmarket fees. Policymakers and advocates can use this framework to prevent unbounded nonmarket fees before they become entrenched revenue streams. The Article also offers reforms for criminal justice fees, with the goal of meaningfully restraining the fees and correcting perverse agency incentives. Suggested reforms include increasing judicial scrutiny, prohibiting local agencies from keeping the fee revenue they collect, and placing a low per-person cap on total fees.


Tor1p and Tor2p kinases, targets of the immune-suppressive antibiotic rapamycin, are components of a highly conserved signaling network that couples nutrient availability and cell growth. To gain insight into the molecular basis underlying Tor-dependent signaling, we used cell fractionation and immunoaffinity chromatography to examine the physical environment of Tor2p. We found that the majority of Tor2p associates with a membrane-bound compartment along with at least four other proteins, Avo1p-Avo3p and Lst8p. Using immunogold electron microscopy, we observed that Tor2p, as well as Tor1p, localizes in punctate clusters to regions adjacent to the plasma membrane and within the cell interior, often in association with characteristic membranous tracks. Cell fractionation, coimmunoprecipitation, and immunogold electron microscopy experiments confirmed that Lst8 associates with both Tor2p as well as Tor1p at these membranous sites. In contrast, we find that Kog1, the yeast homologue of the mammalian Tor regulatory protein Raptor, interacts preferentially with Tor1p. These findings provide evidence for the existence of Tor signaling complexes that contain distinct as well as overlapping components. That these complexes colocalize to a membrane-bound compartment suggests an intimate relationship between membrane-mediated signaling and Tor activity.


Interference makes reasoning about imperative programs difficult but it can be controlled syntactically by a language's type system, such as Syntactic Control of Interference (sci). haskell is a purely-functional, statically-typed language with a rich type system including algebraic datatypes and type classes. It is popular as a defining language for definitional interpreters of domain-specific languages, making it an ideal candidate for implementation of definitional interpreters for sci and Syntactic Control of Interference Revisited (scir), a variant that improves on sci. Inference rules and denotational semantics functions are presented for pcf, Idealized algol, sci, and scir. An extension to haskell98 is used to define haskell functions for those languages' semantics and to define type constructions to statically check their syntax. The results in applied programming language theory demonstrate the suitability and techniques of haskell for definitional interpretation of languages with rich type systems.


Case Description- A two-year-old female goat with a dark mass on the left hoof was referred to veterinary clinic of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman.
Clinical Findings- A large black and hemorrhagic tumor-like tissue was observed on the left hoof. The epidermis was intact and hairless.
Treatment and Outcome- Considering the good body condition of the patient, the mass was removed surgically. Cefazoline (20 mg/kg/IM, Jaberebne Hayyan laboratory, Iran) was administered every 12 hours for 5 days. Histopathologic examination showed small spindle cells with intracytoplasmic melanin granules in dermis and dermal melanocytoma was confirmed.
Clinical Relevance- Melanocytomas are common in dogs, horses, and certain breeds of swine, less common in cats and cattle, and rare in sheep and goats. In such cases, surgical treatment is the treatment of choice. This is the first report of dermal melanocytoma in goat.


Hemoglobinopathies prevalence and distribution among ethnic groups inhabiting the Red Sea State in Sudan were not reported till date. Accordingly, this study has been conducted to address this problem in that area. The study was a cross-sectional descriptive one conducted in Port Sudan city to screen for hemoglobinopathy in anaemic patients referred to three major centers. The study population included 209 patients, 54% males and 46% females with age between 1 and 98 years. Five milliliters of blood were drawn from each subject for CBC (Sysmex KX21), peripheral blood films and hemoglobin electrophoresis using capillary electrophoresis. The results showed that hemoglobinopathy was detected in 59 (28.22%) subjects of whom 26 (44.06%) showed electrophoretic patterns of sickle cell anaemia, 29 (49.15%) Beta thalassaemia trait, 2 (3.38%) hemoglobin D trait, 1 (1.69%) hemoglobin E trait and 1 (1.69%) showed Beta thalassaemia major. The study concluded that occurrence of these frequencies in this population indicated that the target group have hemoglobinopathy and recommended that patients with hemoglobin below lower limits of normal, MCV and MCH lower than 78fl and 27 pg, respectively should be screened for hemoglobinopathy, besides the establishment of a center for diagnosis and control of hemoglobinopathy in that area.

 Key words: Hemoglobinopathy, Beja tribe, red sea variants, thalassaemia.


Over the last decade, the research in the field of technology and innovation has progressed towards the development of the notion of an 'ecosystem' that lays within the idea that innovation and technological advances stem from collective research efforts and social interactions. The paper delivers new insights on successful university-based innovation ecosystems, by exploring the role of proximities in university-driven social networks. Two research problems are discussed: 1/ the structure and dynamics of university-driven social networks, and 2/ the role of proximities as pre-conditions for stronger social ties and more frequent interactions. The author applies a qualitative interview and direct observation methods on the example of several selected life-science university-based ecosystems in the EU and the US. The study identifies several fundamental relationships: (1) the presence of high physical, cognitive and organizational proximities within university-based ecosystems contributes to social networking and the interchange of knowledge; (2) cognitive and organizational proximities are the primary motives for social collaborations within university-based ecosystems; (3) physical proximity matters most when strong social networks already exist; (4) physical proximity allows ecosystem players to have more informal interactions; (5) cultural and social proximities increase more effective communication, trust and knowledge sharing; (6) social networking within university-based ecosystems may be partially engineered by the brokerage function of intermediary organizations and managers, aiming to narrow organizational, technological and cognitive proximities between ecosystem players. Bridging organizational, cognitive and social distances must be one of the regional innovation policies priorities. Further research must consider increasing technological convergence, shortening technological cycles and globalization processes within the life-science sector.


Mean transit times as well as variances of the transit times through the individual phases of the cell cycle have been determined for the crypt epithelial cells of the jejunum of the mouse. To achieve this the fraction of labelled mitoses (FLM) technique has been modified by double labelling with [3H] and [14C]thymidine. Mice were given a first injection of [3H]thymidine, and 2 hr later a second injection of [14C]thymidine. This produces a narrow subpopulation of purely 3H‐labelled cells at the beginning of G2‐phase and a corresponding subpopulation of purely 14C‐labelled cells at the beginning of the S‐phase. When these two subpopulations progress through the cell cycle, one obtains FLM waves of purely 3H‐ and purely 14C‐labelled mitoses. These waves have considerably better resolution than the conventional FLM‐curves. From the temporal positions of the observed maxima the mean transit times of the cells through the individual phases of the cycle can be determined. Moreover one obtains from the width of the individual waves the variances of the transit times through the individual phases. It has been found, that the variances of the transit times through successive phases are additive. This indicates that the transit times of cells through successive phases are independently distributed. This statistical independence is an implicit assumption in most of the models applied to the analysis of FLM curves, however there had previously been no experimental support of this assumption. A further result is, that the variance of the transit time through any phase of the cycle is proportional to the mean transit time. This implies that the progress of the crypt epithelial cells is subject to an equal degree of randomness in the various phases of the cycle.


Clinical translation of engineered tissues into regenerative medicine applications, and the effort to reduce the use of animals for the screening of drugs and other compounds, result in an increasing demand for human tissues engineered in vitro for implantation, in vitro screening systems and basic research. Further development and optimization of in vitro models for quantitative studies of biophysical stimulation and mass transport in engineered tissues is seen as one of the high research priorities. A recent international symposium held in The Netherlands discussed the state of the art and key challenges in the development of bioreactor platforms and microscale technologies. Here we summarize the current status and future development of in vitro tissue models, based on the findings presented at this symposium. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Sparse coding represents a signal by a linear combination of only a few atoms of a learned over-complete dictionary. While sparse coding exhibits compelling performance for various machine learning tasks, the process of obtaining sparse code with fixed dictionary is independent for each data point without considering the geometric information and manifold structure of the entire data. We propose Support Regularized Sparse Coding (SRSC) which produces sparse codes that account for the manifold structure of the data by encouraging nearby data in the manifold to choose similar dictionary atoms. In this way, the obtained support regularized sparse codes capture the locally linear structure of the data manifold and enjoy robustness to data noise. We present the optimization algorithm of SRSC with theoretical guarantee for the optimization over the sparse codes. We also propose a feed-forward neural network termed Deep Support Regularized Sparse Coding (Deep-SRSC) as a fast encoder to approximate the sparse codes generated by SRSC. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of SRSC and Deep-SRSC.


Abstract Alice Coleman's Utopia on Trial explains the incidence of social problems in council housing in terms of the design of the estates. This paper offers an alternative explanation. Many issues which appear to be problems of planning, design, maintenance or administration are directly attributable to the lack of resources of the tenants. Poor people are concentrated in specific locations through the process of urban development, the effect of social choices, and their own lack of power to find alternatives. Many problems with their housing, like inadequate heating or lack of maintenance, depend directly on what the tenants can afford. The incidence of poverty, and the problems which arise from it, add in turn to the undesirability of the estates. Coleman's dismissal of the influence of poverty is based on an unsound method and an inadequate theoretical analysis. Her recommendations for policy are in consequence a diversion from the real needs and issues.


How genres emerge and evolve on the Internet has become one of the central questions in studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC). This book addresses the issue of genrefication by giving an in-depth analysis of email hoaxes as a candidate for digital genre status. Email hoaxes are deceptive messages that spread in digital social networks; they are a fascinating object for discourse linguistics as they exemplify a major pragmatic tendency in CMC, namely deceptivity and a lowering of sincerity standards. This study examines formal and functional aspects of email hoaxes and provides ample evidence both from a systematized corpus and in situ data collected online. Besides a structural and microlinguistic analysis, it identifies key issues such as pragmatic duality, narrativity and textual variation and change in email hoaxes. In conclusion, a digital genre model is outlined that bridges both the old/new and the formal/functional gaps and may be applied to many other digital genre ecologies.


"The purpose of this report is to document updates to this earlier model. We updated the model by adding the Lower Trinity Aquifer as another layer to the model, revising the spatial distribution of parameters, such as recharge and pumping, and calibrating the steady-state water level and river discharge conditions for 1980 and historical transient water level and discharge conditions for 1987 through 1997. The calibrated model can be used to predict future water level changes that may result from various projected pumping rates and/or changes in climatic conditions."


The 1H-pyrazole-3-carboxylic acid 2 was converted in good yield (69%) into the corresponding 1H-pyrazole-3-carboxamide 5 via reaction of the acid chloride 3 with 2,3-diaminopyridine (4). A different product, the 3H-imidazo[4,5-b] pyridine derivative 6, was formed from the reaction of 3 with 4 and base in benzene for 5 hours. The structures of the synthesized compounds were determined spectroscopically. The mechanism of the reaction between 3 and 4 was examined theoretically.


We propose a novel method for training neural networks to predict the future prices of stock indexes. Unlike previous works, we do not use target stock index data for training neural networks for index prediction. Instead, we use only the data of individual companies to obtain sufficient amount of data for training neural networks for stock index prediction. As a result, our method can avoid various problems due to training complex machine learning models on a small amount of data. We performed numerous types of experiments to test methods designed for predicting the future price of the S&P 500 which is one of the most commonly traded stock indexes. Our experiments show that neural networks trained using our method outperform neural networks trained on stock index data. Compared with other state-of-the-art methods, our method is conceptually simpler and easier to apply, and achieves better results. We obtained approximately a 5-16% annual return before transaction costs during the test period (2006-2018).


Rudist bivalves are described from two Upper Aptian–Albian sections in northern Sinai, Egypt. Independent stratigraphical evidence is provided by orbitolinid foraminifera and sequence stratigraphic correlation with other, ammonite–bearing sections of the region. With the exception of Eoradiolites liratus (Conrad) and Sellaea, this is the first record of Lower Cretaceous rudists from Egypt. A rather continuous occurrence of rudists is recorded in the more open marine deposit at Rizan Aneiza, but they occur only in the Middle–Upper Albian at Gebel Raghawi to the south–west. In the uppermost Aptian to basal Middle Albian at Rizan Aneiza, the succession of Eoradiolites plicatus–E. murgensis–E. liratus is interpreted as a lineage of chronospecies. Of particular interest is the presence of canaliculate rudists in the Upper Albian of both sections, as there exists a large gap, spanning the Upper Aptian and most parts of the Albian, in the fossil record of the Caprininae d'Orbigny. Neocaprina raghawiensis sp. nov. and Neocaprina? sp. are recognized as ancestors of Cenomanian species of Neocaprina Pleničar and Caprinula d'Orbigny. The inclusion of these genera in the Caprininae d'Orbigny is questioned and the phylogenetic descent from an unidentified Albian taxon with well–developed myophoral cavities is suggested.


We prove in the multimode scenario a fundamental relation between the Wehrl and the von Neumann entropy, stating that the minimum Wehrl entropy among all the quantum states with a given von Neumann entropy is achieved by thermal Gaussian states. We also prove that thermal Gaussian input states minimize the output von Neumann entropy of multimode quantum Gaussian attenuators, amplifiers and phase-contravariant channels among all the input states diagonal in some product basis and with a given entropy. This result constitutes a major step towards the proof of the same property for generic input states, which is still an open conjecture. This conjecture is necessary to determine the maximum communication rates for the triple trade-off coding and broadcast communication with the Gaussian quantum-limited attenuator. Finally, we prove that the tensor product of n identical geometric input probability distributions minimizes the output Shannon entropy of the n-mode thinning among all the input probability distributions with a given entropy.


Adoption of new cattle management practices by Indonesian smallholders occurs less as a 'technology transfer' in the classical sense but rather as a series of conscious decisions by farming households weighing risks and resources as well as matching innovations to livelihood strategies. This paper uncovers the context of decisions and communication of innovations by way of social networks. The research looks at two geographically distinct cases where new cattle management practices have been introduced. We apply the lens of a common sense framework initially introduced by Clifford Geertz. Smallholder decisions are analysed within a socio-cultural context and a particular set of resources, risks and livelihood objectives. We show that the respective value placed on land, cattle and food security is central to adoption of new cattle management techniques. Far from accepting everything novel, smallholders are selective and willing to make changes to their farming system if they do not conflict with livelihood strategies. Innovations are communicated through a range of existing social networks and are either matched to existing livelihood strategies or perceived as stepping-stones out of agriculture.


Purpose The radiocephalic arteriovenous fistula (RC-AVF) has significant failure rates due to occlusions and failure to mature. The size and quality of the veins are considerable limiting factors for the procedure. The aim of this pilot study was to describe the No-Touch technique (NTT) to create RC-AVF and present the results up to 1 year of follow-up. Methods Thirty-one consecutive patients who were referred for surgery for a RC-AVF were included (17 men, mean age 63 years, range 35-84) and operated by NTT where the vein and artery were dissected with a tissue cushion around it. Twenty-two patients had small veins or arteries (≤2 mm), 12 patients had a small cephalic vein (≤2 mm), and the mean distal cephalic vein diameter was 2.4 mm (range 1.0-4.1 mm). Results Technical surgical success and immediate patency were obtained in all patients. Clinical success was achieved in 23 of the 27 (85%) patients who required hemodialysis. The proportion of primary patency at 30 days and 6 months was 84% and 64%, respectively. Secondary patency at 30 days and 6 months was 97% and 83%, respectively. At 1-year follow-up, primary patency was 54% and secondary patency was 80%. There was no major difference in patency due to preoperative vein diameter. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that NTT can be used for primary radio-cephalic fistula surgery with very good results. This method offers the potential to create a RC-AVF in patients who are not usually considered appropriate for a distal arm fistula due to a small cephalic vein.


The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic represented the largest outbreak in the history of the disease and it took a tremendous toll on the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone who were impacted by a disease that had never been seen in their part of the world. While the epidemic significantly impacted those three nations, reported cases also spread to African countries such as Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal, as well as countries in the western world, such as Spain and the U.S. prior to the West African epidemic. Ebola was perceived in the U.S. as a distant threat dramatized by the media and entertainment industries. However, the introduction of Ebola into the U.S. triggered intense national media attention and widespread public alarm. When the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in a man in Dallas, Texas, the public's resulting fear was disproportionate to the actual risk of transmission. As fear of exposure increased, stigma affected both returning aid workers and persons from Africa living in or visiting the U.S. The purpose of the present study was to qualitatively explore the experiences of Sierra Leonean immigrants living in the U.S., in order to describe their experiences with Ebola-related stigma and perceived risk for Ebola as part of their ongoing acculturation experiences. The sample comprised of 15 individuals who originally emigrated from Sierra Leone. Individual interviews were used and descriptive content and thematic analysis was utilized in order to guide data analysis. Results revealed that while Sierra Leoneans in the U.S. did experience Ebola-related stigma and heightened perceived risk for contracting the Ebola virus during the epidemic of 2014-2016, it did not impact the participants' sense of belonging and ongoing adjustment in the U.S.


The hair follicle mites Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis and their role in the pathogenesis of rosacea have been the subject of much debate in the past. We studied the prevalence of Demodex mites in facial skin biopsies obtained from 80 patients with rosacea, 40 with facial eczematous eruption and 40 with lupus erythematosus discoides. The mite prevalence in the rosacea group (51%) was significantly higher than in the rest of the study population (eczema 28% and lupus discoides 31%). Demodex mites were found on all facial sites. The most infested areas in the whole study group were the forehead (49%) and the cheeks (44%). Males were more frequently infested (59%) than females (30%). We did not find any significant difference in mite counts of infested follicles between rosacea and the control group. A lympho‐histiocytic cell infiltration was seen around the infested hair follicles. Our results suggest that Demodex mites may play a role in the inflammatory reaction in acne rosacea.


We consider a model where a judgment-proof firm needs finance to realize a project. This project might cause an environmental hazard with a probability that is the private knowledge of the firm. Thus there is asymmetric information with respect to the environmental riskiness of the project. We consider the implications of a simple joint and strict liability rule on the lender and the firm where, in case of a damage, the lender is responsible for that part of the liability which the judgment-proof firm cannot pay. We use a weighted version of the neutral bargaining solution (Myerson 1983 / 1984) to determine the financial contract between the lender and the firm. In the given model we show that either full or a punitive liability is optimal.


Macroinvertebrates associated with the aquatic plant, water stargrass (Heteranthera dubia), were sampled from 12 waterbodies in four regions of the United States from June to August 2005. Taxa richness, evenness, and diversity were lowest in the Lower Midwest (LMW) region, and higher in Northern sites, especially the Upper Midwest (UMW), and Northeast (NE). While relative abundance varied from site to site and region to region, utilization of the plant by functional groups remained fairly constant. Collector-gatherers consistently comprised the largest portion of invertebrates sampled. The shredder/ herbivore functional group comprised an average of 17 % of total groups. Through an exhaustive literature review, it was found that shredder/ herbivores of water stargrass have not been reported in the literature. Because of this, the herbivore group was analyzed separately and consisted of 2,383 specimens representing 23 species. The most common groups were Rhopalosiphum sp., Nectopsyche spp. and chironomids. No differences were found in herbivore diversity or evenness between sampling regions, but species richness was significantly different.


With the development of robot technology and the arrival of industry 4.0 era, society pays more attention to collaboration and interaction between human and robots. However, safety is still main concern in the development of human-robot collaboration. In this paper, a novel real-time collision avoidance approach for manipulator is proposed by considering the motion status of the human, which includes the relative minimum distance and velocity (both magnitude and direction) between the robot and the human. The distance and velocity of the human hand are first estimated online using a vision sensor, and then defined as danger factors in the potential function of the potential field. The novel potential function proposed in this paper considers not only the safety problem, but also the efficient problem, i.e., the manipulator can make smart control decision to avoid the collision according to the relative velocity in case of the cross over. To overcome the local minimum problem and choose a best motion direction, we propose a motion sampling mechanism for motion planning. For each sample, the robot calculates the potential function to evaluate the safety and efficiency, and chooses a direction which is best for avoidance. We finally demonstrate our idea on a real manipulator platform in a human co-existance environment.


Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) populations have been restored and enhanced through introductions and reintroductions in 49 of the 50 states to huntable populations within the last 30 years. Populations are presently estimated to exceed 4 million birds within the United States. In many states, wild turkey habitat includes woodlots interspersed with agricultural lands, and some of the highest known population densities of wild turkeys are found in such areas. This paper will report on existing research, examining perceived versus actual damage caused by wild turkeys. It will also provide information based on a recent survey of biologists from the State Fish and Wildlife Agencies, State Cooperative Extension Service wildlife specialists, and United States Department of Agriculture Animal, Plant, Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services' personnel across the United States who receive reports of both perceived and actual damage by wild turkeys to a diversity of agricultural crops. It will attempt to examine the human dimensions aspect of landowners and managers toward thresholds of tolerance; the economic and recreational user benefits of maintaining high populations of wild turkeys which utilize a diversity of habitats including agricultural lands; and the values placed on recreational use and enjoyment of the wild turkey resource. It is expected that future interactions between wild turkeys and agricultural crops will continue as will efforts and alternatives to prevent damage, explore the tradeoffs, and resolve potential conflicts for the benefit of agricultural producers and the wild turkey resource.


Natural hybridization is reproduction (without artificial influence) between two or more species/populations which are distinguishable from each other by heritable characters. Natural hybridizations among marine fishes were highly underappreciated due to limited research effort; it seems that this phenomenon occurs more often than is commonly recognized. As hybridization plays an important role in biodiversity processes in the marine environment, detecting hybridization events and investigating hybridization is important to understand and protect biodiversity. The first chapter sets the framework for this disseration study. The Cohesion Species Concept was selected as the working definition of a species for this study as it can handle marine fish hybridization events. The concept does not require restrictive species boundaries. A general history and background of natural hybridization in marine fishes is reviewed during in chapter as well. Four marine fish hybridization cases were examed and documented in Chapters 2 to 5. In each case study, at least one diagnostic nuclear marker, screened from among ~14 candidate markers, was found to discriminate the putative hybridizing parent species. To further investigate genetic evidence to support the hybrid status for each hybrid offspring in each case, haploweb analysis on diagnostic markers (nuclear and/or mitochondrial) and the DAPC/PCA analysis on microsatellite data were used. By combining the genetic evidences, morphological traits, and ecological observations together, the potential reasons that triggered each hybridization events and the potential genetic/ecology effects could be discussed. In the last chapter, sequences from 82 pairs of hybridizing parents species (for which COI barcoding sequences were available either on GenBank or in our lab) were collected. By comparing the COI fragment p-distance between each hybridizing parent species, some general questions about marine fish hybridization were discussed: Is there any correlation between genetic similarity and the potential for hybridization in marine fishes? In some particular geographic locations that have the existence of several different hybridization reports, are the species involved in hybridization among those reports all closely related or distantly related? Can any associations between parent species' similarities and hybrid spots be found?


Now updated with a new introduction and afterword, this award-winning examination of the nation s largest juvenile criminal justice system in Los Angeles by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is an important book with a message of great urgency, especially to all concerned with the future of America s children ("Booklist"). In an age when violence and crime by young people is again on the rise, "No Matter How Loud I Shout" offers a rare look inside the juvenile court system that deals with these children and the impact decisions made in the courts had on the rest of their lives. Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. Weaving together a poignant, compelling narrative with razor-sharp investigative reporting, "No Matter How Loud I Shout" is a convincingly reported, profoundly disturbing discussion of the Los Angeles juvenile court s failings, providing terrifying evidence of the system s inability to slow juvenile crime or to make even a reasonable stab at rehabilitating troubled young offenders. Humes draws an alarming portrait of a judicial system in disarray."


Certain superposition states of the 1-D infinite square well have transient zeros at locations other than the nodes of the eigenstates that comprise them. It is shown that if an infinite potential barrier is suddenly raised at some or all of these zeros, the well can be split into multiple adjacent infinite square wells without affecting the wavefunction. This effects a change of the energy eigenbasis of the state to a basis that does not commute with the original, and a subsequent measurement of the energy now reveals a completely different spectrum, which we call the interference energy spectrum of the state. This name is appropriate because the same splitting procedure applied at the stationary nodes of any eigenstate does not change the measurable energy of the state. Of particular interest, this procedure can result in measurable energies that are greater than the energy of the highest mode in the original superposition, raising questions about the conservation of energy akin to those that have been raised in the study of superoscillations. An analytic derivation is given for the interference spectrum of a given wavefunction Ψ ( x , t ) with N known zeros located at points s i = ( x i , t i ) . Numerical simulations were used to verify that a barrier can be rapidly raised at a zero of the wavefunction without significantly affecting it. The interpretation of this result with respect to the conservation of energy and the energy-time uncertainty relation is discussed, and the idea of alternate energy eigenbases is fleshed out. The question of whether or not a preferred discrete energy spectrum is an inherent feature of a particle's quantum state is examined.


Grailog embodies a systematics to visualize knowledge sources by graphical elements. Its main benefit is that the resulting visual presentations are easier to read for humans than the original symbolic source code. In this paper we introduce a methodology to handle the mapping from Datalog RuleML, serialized in XML, to an SVG representation of Grailog, also serialized in XML, via eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 2.0/XML; the SVG is then rendered visually by modern Web browsers. This initial mapping is realized to target Grailog's "fully node copied" normal form. Elements can thus be translated one at a time, separating the fundamental Datalog-to-SVG translation concern from the concern of merging node copies for optimal (hyper)graph layout and avoiding its high computational complexity in this online tool. The resulting open source Grailog Knowledge-Source Visualizer (Grailog KS Viz) supports Datalog RuleML with positional relations of arity n>1. The on-the-fly transformation was shown to run on all recent major Web browsers and should be easy to understand, use, and extend.


Wetlands compensation banking is an emerging tool for coordinating wetland compensatory requirements of the section 404 program of the Clean Water Act, as well as requirements of some state and local regulatory programs. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Wetland Compensation Bank Program (WCBP) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), signed on September 15, 1994, by five federal agencies and three state agencies, coordinates state and federal actions when a compensation bank is implemented in connection with a highway development project. Local county, city, and tribal governments are included as participants in the MOA process. The goal of this report was to identify important issues WSDOT must consider when it implements the WCBP within county and tribal government jurisdictions. Thirteen county governments and four tribal governments were asked to answer questions about their government structure and policy framework, as well as a series of questions specific to the MOA process. Both county and tribal governments are generally impressed with the quality of the MOA and are very interested in participating in the process. A majority of governments would like to see an increased role for county and tribal governments, including a voting membership on the program's Oversight Committee, early participation in site selection, and possible joint ventures in developing and/or managing banks. The responses reflect an awareness by the counties and tribes that, although the MOA is an agreement between state and federal agencies, the implementation of the agreement on the ground and in the landscape will mainly impact local jurisdictions and their inhabitants.


This paper presents seal coat performance evaluations of various emulsion and aggregate application rates using three different evaluation methods: International Roughness Index (IRI), friction test, and visual evaluation. Then, considering the seal coat failure criteria, correction factors for seal coat application equipment are introduced. This study confirms the lack of relevance between seal coat application and IRI values because of the thickness of a seal coat. In addition, friction improvements caused by seal coat applications were confirmed within the range of seal coat rates applied. Overall, IRI, friction, and visual inspection did not reveal distinct differences in seal coat performance in terms of application rates in the testing range. Accordingly, seal coats with rates based on the McLeod method showed acceptable performance. The aggregate application rate should be high enough to protect the seal coat from immediate failure during construction but low enough to avoid unacceptable levels of accumulated fines content. Furthermore, immediate failure occurring locally during construction because of incorrect application rate (e.g., insufficient aggregate rate) can cause total failure of a seal coat road because of a chain reaction. However, discrepancies between designed rates and applied rates were observed in the study even after the seal coat equipment was calibrated prior to operation. The equipment factor for aggregate can compensate for rate discrepancies between the target and actual application rates. It was found that the designed emulsion application rate does not need to be corrected for the emulsion distributor because the emulsion rate discrepancy has an insignificant impact on a seal coat's performance.


We evaluate the labor market and distributional effects of an increase in the early retirement age (ERA) from 60 to 63 for women. We use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the immediate increase in the ERA between women born in 1951 and 1952. The analysis is based on the German micro census which includes about 370,000 households per year. We focus on heterogeneous labor market effects on the individual and on the household level and we study the distributional implications using net household income. In this respect we extend the previous literature which mainly studied employment effects on the individual level. Our results show sizable labor market effects which strongly differ by subgroups. We document larger employment effects for women who cannot rely on other income on the household level, e.g. women with a low income partner. The distributional analysis shows on average no significant effects on female or household income. This result holds as well for heterogeneous groups: Even for the most vulnerable groups, such as single women, women without higher education, or low partner income, we do not find significant reductions in income. One reason for this result is program substitution.


PKCS #12 v1.1 describes a transfer syntax for personal identity
information, including private keys, certificates, miscellaneous
secrets, and extensions. Machines, applications, browsers, Internet
kiosks, and so on, that support this standard will allow a user to
import, export, and exercise a single set of personal identity
information. This standard supports direct transfer of personal
information under several privacy and integrity modes. This document
represents a republication of PKCS #12 v1.1 from RSA Laboratories'
Public Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS) series. By publishing this
RFC, change control is transferred to the IETF.


This study examined the validity and reliability of the Extended Version of the Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientation Scale (EMSOS; Stornes & Bru, 2002; Vallerand, Briere, Blanchard, & Provencher, 1997) for use among college athletes. The problem addressed by this study was the need for a well substantiated tool which demonstrates reliable and valid assessments of sportspersonship attitudes among U.S. collegiate athletes. Measuring tendencies towards good sporting behavior is valuable and necessary for the on-going study of the phenomenon of sportspersonship. There was a gap in the literature, however, as no instrument specific to the measurement of sportspersonship tendencies among U.S. college athletes had been validated for use among that population. This was a case study involving a Catholic, liberal arts, residential, NCAA Division II college in New England, with an enrollment of approximately 2,000 students and a student-athlete population of 352. The survey was administered at team meetings by a research assistant not affiliated with the athletics program. The participants were assured of the anonymity and confidentiality of their responses and their ability to terminate participation at any time and for any reason without repercussion. Results indicated that the EMSOS demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability among most subscales and as an overall instrument. The exception included one subscale, that of the "negative approach". This subscale relates to participating in sport for extrinsic reasons, making excuses for poor performance, and being a poor sport. The negative approach subscale had unacceptable reliability and very weak correlation to the corresponding subscale, indicating weak construct validity. In addition, it appears that the addition of the sixth subscale (instrumental aggression) to the original version of the tool (the MSOS), improved the psychometrics of the instrument. Sportspersonship factors that emerged from the principal component analysis included "social convention & respect for rules/officials", "instrumental aggression", and "respect for opponents". Relationships between demographic variables and the global sportspersonship index were examined both with the EMSOS intact as well as with the "negative approach" subscale removed. These results, both with and without the "negative approach" subscale, suggested that male athletes, contact sport athletes, team athletes, and athletes with 15 or more years of involvement in competitive sports are more likely to have a negative sportspersonship orientation. The data also indicated that class year, age, and scholarship status did not necessarily result in different sportspersonship orientations. This current study supports a modification of the EMSOS to exclude the "negative approach" subscale. This recommendation is made based on the problematic reliability and validity findings of that subscale. This study should provide researchers and practitioners with the knowledge that the revised EMOS appears to be a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess the sportspersonship orientations of U.S. collegiate athletes. The complexities and paradoxes surrounding the evaluation of sportspersonship are discussed in detail. Suggestions for future research to further explore sportspersonship in the collegiate setting are also provided.


A recent line of research has highlighted the existence of a 'double descent' phenomenon in deep learning, whereby increasing the number of training examples N causes the generalization error of neural networks (NNs) to peak when N is of the same order as the number of parameters P. In earlier works, a similar phenomenon was shown to exist in simpler models such as linear regression, where the peak instead occurs when N is equal to the input dimension D. Since both peaks coincide with the interpolation threshold, they are often conflated in the literature. In this paper, we show that despite their apparent similarity, these two scenarios are inherently different. In fact, both peaks can co-exist when NNs are applied to noisy regression tasks. The relative size of the peaks is then governed by the degree of nonlinearity of the activation function. Building on recent developments in the analysis of random feature models, we provide a theoretical ground for this sample-wise triple descent. As shown previously, the nonlinear peak at N = P is a true divergence caused by the extreme sensitivity of the output function to both the noise corrupting the labels and the initialization of the random features (or the weights in NNs). This peak survives in the absence of noise, but can be suppressed by regularization. In contrast, the linear peak at N = D is solely due to overfitting the noise in the labels, and forms earlier during training. We show that this peak is implicitly regularized by the nonlinearity, which is why it only becomes salient at high noise and is weakly affected by explicit regularization. Throughout the paper, we compare analytical results obtained in the random feature model with the outcomes of numerical experiments involving deep NNs.


Abstract Devils Hole, in southern Nevada, is a surface collapse into a deep, planar, steeply dipping fault-controlled fissure in Cambrian limestone and dolostone. The collapse intersects the water table about 15 m below land surface and the fissure extends at least 130 m deeper. Below water, most of the fissure is lined with a >30-cm-thick layer of dense maxillary calcite that precipitated continuously from groundwater for >500,000 yr. The thick mammillary calcite coat implies a long history of calcite-supersaturated groundwaters, which, combined with the absence of dissolutional morphologies, suggests that Devils Hole was not formed by karst processes. Devils Hole is located in a region of active extension; its tectonic origin is shown by evidence of spreading of its planar opening along a fault and by the orientation of its opening and others nearby, perpendicular to the northwest-southeast minimum principal stress direction of the region. Most Quaternary tectonic activity in the area, including seismicity and Quaternary faults and fractures, occurs on or parallel to northeast-striking structures. The hydrogeologic implications of this primarily structural origin are that fracture networks and caves opened by extensional tectonism can act as groundwater flowpaths functionally similar to those developed by karst processes and that, during active extension, transmissivity can be maintained despite infilling by mineral precipitation. Such extensional environments can provide conditions favorable for accumulation of deposits preserving long, continuous paleoenvironmental records. The precipitates in Devils Hole store chronologies of flow system water-level fluctuations, hydrochemistry, a half-million-yr proxy paleoclimate record, evidence of Devils Hole's tectonic origin, and probably atmospheric circulation.


There is long-standing evidence of the anomalous treatment of black people, particularly African Caribbean men in psychiatric settings, including high security hospitals. This study was conceived and undertaken by a social work
practitioner working in Ashworth high secure hospital on Merseyside. The aims of the study were to gather rich accounts of the experiences of African Caribbean men in high secure care and to identify their specific needs. A representative from the black voluntary sector was recruited to assist in the data collection phase, a decision which ensured effectiveness and cultural sensitivity.
Twenty-five African Caribbean men located within different settings within the hospital were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. The data were collected and analysed using grounded theory tools and techniques,
influenced by a transcultural perspective. The analysis identified seven themes: racism and discrimination, institutional life, social networks, care and treatment, cultural expression, fear and change. An important feature of the data was a form of cultural expression that drew on Rastafarian beliefs, customs and patios. These expressions of patient individuality speak of complexity of identity shaped by a historical legacy of colonialism, migration and racism that interact with personal experiences of contemporary society and institutional life.
Practical recommendations articulated by the patients are presented as a means of improving the situation short term. Conclusions are presented, however, arguing that these recommendations alone will not improve the experiences of black men detained in conditions of high security without a more transformational shift in the clinical, organisational and relational models that currently pertain. Effectively, large isolated institutions such as Ashworth are unable to comprehensively meet the needs of patients, irrespective of ethnicity, and these failings are exaggerated when faced with cultural diversity.


In the treatment of hormone-dependent breast cancer, extensive research has been undertaken to produce compounds, which are both potent and selective inhibitors of the cytochrome P-450 enzyme aromatase. However, the use of aromatase inhibitors does not result in the inhibition of all of the biosynthetic processes, which lead to estrogen formation. That is, the enzyme estrone sulfatase converts the stored (sulfated) form of the estrogens to the active (non-sulfated) forms, thereby allowing the stimulation of tumours via a non-aromatase pathway and which, in general, is not blocked by aromatase inhibitors.
In an effort to investigate further the structural requirements for estrone sulfatase (and thereby determine the probable mechanism of this enzyme), we designed a range of sulfonated compounds. Here, we report the synthesis and biochemical evaluation of the designed compounds.
In general, the results of the study show that the sulfamated compounds are potent inhibitors, possessing greater inhibitory activity than COUMATE, but are weaker than EMATE and the recently reported derivatives of COUMATE, namely 667-COUMATE. However, a small range of compounds (124, 127, 130 and 133) based upon benzoic acid were found to be more potent than the latter compound, in particular, cyclooctyl 4-aminosulfonyl benzoate (133) (IC[sub]50 = 0.17[mu]M) was found to be 1.4 and 2.9 times more potent than 667- COUMATE (IC[sub]50 = 0.23[mu]M) and EMATE (IC[sub]50 = 0.5[mu]M) respectively.
The non-sulfamated (for example, 4-nitrophenyl sulfonate based) compounds (52, 58, 61, 103, 131, 146, 170, 173 and 177) were either found to be non-inhibitors or possessed poor inhibitory activity against estrone sulfatase.
Consideration of the structure activity relationship of the potent compounds within this study suggests a correlation between two major physicochemical factors [namely, hydrophobicity (logP) and the acid dissociation constant (pK[sub]a) of the parent phenol compound] and the biological activity possessed by sulfamated compounds. However, the present study also suggests another factor, which is presumed to play an important role in stabilising the enzyme-inhibitor complex, namely steric hindrance. That is, consideration of the cyclic ester based compounds against the corresponding straight chain compounds shows that the cyclic ester containing compounds possessed a much greater inhibitory activity. As such, these factors may be combined in an effort to design more potent inhibitors of estrone sulfatase.


This paper introduces versatile filters to construct efficient convolutional neural network. Considering the demands of efficient deep learning techniques running on cost-effective hardware, a number of methods have been developed to learn compact neural networks. Most of these works aim to slim down filters in different ways, e.g., investigating small, sparse or binarized filters. In contrast, we treat filters from an additive perspective. A series of secondary filters can be derived from a primary filter. These secondary filters all inherit in the primary filter without occupying more storage, but once been unfolded in computation they could significantly enhance the capability of the filter by integrating information extracted from different receptive fields. Besides spatial versatile filters, we additionally investigate versatile filters from the channel perspective. The new techniques are general to upgrade filters in existing CNNs. Experimental results on benchmark datasets and neural networks demonstrate that CNNs constructed with our versatile filters are able to achieve comparable accuracy as that of original filters, but require less memory and FLOPs.


Private equity funds are important actors in the economy, yet there is little analysis explaining their financial structure. In our model the financial structure minimizes agency conflicts between fund managers and investors. Relative to financing each deal separately, raising a fund where the manager receives a fraction of aggregate excess returns reduces incentives to make bad investments. Efficiency is further improved by requiring funds to also use deal-by-deal debt financing, which becomes unavailable in states where internal discipline fails. Private equity investment becomes highly sensitive to economy-wide availability of credit and investments in bad states outperform investments in good states.


The analysis that is offered in this Article has two dimensions. The first focuses upon the context in which the battle for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships has taken place. Using two key reported decisions from the U.K.'s final domestic court of appeal, Fitzpatrick v Sterling Housing and Ghaidan v Mendoza, the objective here is to explore the shifting terrain against which legal activism relating to the recognition of same-sex domestic relationships has achieved some success in the U.K. These two cases represent key developments in the judicial recognition of the rights of parties in same-sex domestic relationships. These cases have particular importance. In Fitzpatrick, the House of Lords decided that a same-sex couple's relationship fell within the meaning of "family." In Ghaidan the court decided that the term "spouse" was to be applied to same-sex couples. Some of the key legal effects


Factor X deficiency is a rare autosomal disease with an estimated prevalence 1: 1,000,000. It is characterized by a reduction in factor X, an essential component of the prothrombinase complex responsible for converting prothrombin to thrombin. The aim of the study was to identify the molecular defects in the factor X gene in Palestinian factor X deficient patients. Nine unrelated Palestinian patients were identified by thrombin time [PT], activated partial thromboplastin time [APTT] and plasma factor X levels. All exons including exon/ intron border and promoter regions were PCR amplified, purified, sequenced and compared to the normal factor X gene. A novel splicing junction mutation IVS1+1G?T was identified in two patients resulting in a major distortion of the protein structure and function. A second novel missense mutation Asp413Asn G>T that apparently distorts the protein structure and affects its catalytic activity was identified in the family of one patient. Six patients proved to be homozygous of the previously identified c358 delG deletion mutation leading to a severely truncated protein that seems specific to our population. A putatively mild heterozygous mutation Ser105thr G>C was detected in two patients who suffer from the severe c358 delG deletion mutation.


The much-talked about issues such as the rising of heavy crime cases, problems in solid waste management, air and water pollution as well as traffic congestion detering the quality of life among urban community members. Urgent and proactive measure is highly desireable in order to preserve and maintain the integral parts of urban's higher quality of life. All parties should take part in ongoing efforts to achieve sustainable development through various means. Local Agenda 21 (LA21) serves as one of the efforts in achieveing the ultimate goal of sustainable development through better collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders including local government, non-governmental organisations and the community at large. The core principle of the LA21 program lies in the spirit of cooperation among community members, local authorities and the private sectors. This could be achieved through various activities including from the beginning such as through a comprehensive planning for the local area to achieve the sustainable development. Community members should be involved in brainstorming of the ideas and expressing their views so that authorities would be able to identify the real and arising issues in the community. Through this way a sustainable town and municipal planning could be developed and initiated. This paper discusses the importance of urbancommunity participation in achieving sustainable development as practicedthrough LA21 in Seberang Perai Municipal Council, Penang.


Recent shifts in the media landscape, brought about by political, economic and technological innovations, pose vital questions for media policy. This study sets out to locate these questions within the context of an examination of media developments in South Korea during a decade of intense change (1998-2008) when a neo-liberal government took office. The central concern is to document and shed light on the workings of the media system during a period that saw the introduction of several pay TV platforms by a government that questioned core elements of established media practices.

Media development and its politics context have drawn much academic interest in recent years. However, little attention has been given to media development within the neoliberal government of Korea. Drawing on historical context, the thesis examines the politics of stakeholders in the media market and challenges of media policy within the shifting media ecology. To this end, the thesis employed political economy and media policy study disciplines. These disciplines incorporate an extensive study of literature, observational experience and semi-structured interviews. The thesis perceives the media market in a social context, composing of the government, market and civil organisations, while rejecting technology determinism.

Three key findings are identified throughout this thesis. Firstly, with respect to media structure, the thesis has identified that the introduction of the pay TV platform has driven market competition, but social values such as pluralism are not guaranteed. Secondly, referring to media policy, this work has demonstrated that the government still maintains strong authority over the evolution of the media system. Despite proponents of the decline in government due to socio-political shifts as well as the globalisation trend, this work has proven that the government is a decisive agent not only in determining the media structure but also in the expansion of platforms. Meanwhile, the thesis also identified that the incumbent regulatory regime is under attack because of a widening gap between existing regulatory regimes and new services initiated by new technology. Finally, in terms of relationships between stakeholders in the media market, the work has demonstrated that public broadcasters have remained an influential player in the commercialised media market. It has been argued that the public broadcaster is in decline or demise because of shrinking funding sources, downsizing pressures and criticism of declining quality programming. However, the thesis has shown that the public broadcaster still retains its power in the commercial ecology. The thesis concludes that a healthy media market in a democratic society is constructed and sustained by a consistent media policy that balances public intervention and market principles.


Abstract. Landslide is perhaps one of the most complex natural phenomena and is quite common throughout the World. Before the human appearance on the World, it was only an earth surface process, whereas it became one of the most destructive natural hazards with the anthropogenic activities and the increase in human population. Landslides cause serious harmful and destructive effects on roads, railways, buildings, infrastructures, lifelines, quality of surface waters, etc. To reduce the losses caused by landslides, high quality landslide susceptibility and hazard maps are crucial. With the recent technological developments, the quality of regional landslide susceptibility and hazard assessments has been increased. Preparation of a complete landslide inventory map with accurate temporal dimension can be extremely difficult, or even impossible. Inaccurate and incomplete temporal landslide inventory maps result in serious uncertainties on the assessment results of regional landslide hazard. Therefore, lack of timely accurate data is the main source of problem affecting quality of the regional landslide assessments. With the emerging developments in geospatial technologies, as well as the transforming power of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the society, it became possible to use the citizen science methods in scientific processes, which has enormous potential in landslide data collection and thus reduce the losses. The main aim of this review is to discuss the uncertainties lead by missing data and affecting quality of regional landslide assessments, and to describe the potential of citizen science to reduce the uncertainties. For this purpose, a brief review on the landslide susceptibility and hazard studies have been performed and the sources of uncertainties have been described. Finally, the role of citizen science is discussed with specific examples. As a final conclusion drawn from the present study, it is possible to say that citizen science may provide substantial contribution on the quality of regional landslide assessments.


Population growth poses threats to biodiversity, specifically to sensitive species. Therefore, an understanding of the conflict between biodiversity and human population is needed to enable long-term planning of development and conservation policies by state and federal governments and society based on limitations and potentials of environments. We used a geopolitical approach to analyze data on human demography, economic activities, natural vegetation, avian diversity, and protected areas of the 32 states of Mexico and the 30 districts of the state of Oaxaca. Using factor analysis, we identified the biodiversity-rich geopolitical units that have a large human population and are developing intense economic activities. We then carried out a series of linear regressions between the resulting factors to test whether they were related, suggesting areas where conservation conflicts may exist, and found that relations between human activities and natural resources vary from region to region. These results help us identify geopolitical units that require detailed studies of the interactions between population and natural resources, and also highlight the importance of using geopolitical scales as study units, where most conservation and development policies are determined, to inform local stakeholders and decision makers.


OF THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biology in the Graduate School of Arts and Science of Northeastern University, March 2012


BACKGROUND
Patients who have acute coronary syndromes with or without ST-segment elevation have high rates of major vascular events. We evaluated the efficacy of early clopidogrel administration (300 mg) (<24 hours) when given with aspirin in such patients.

METHODS
We included 30,243 patients who had an acute coronary syndrome with or without ST segment elevation. Data on early clopidogrel administration were available for 24,463 (81%). Some 15,525 (51%) of the total cohort were administrated clopidogrel within 24h of admission.

RESULTS
In-hospital death occurred in 2.9% of the patients in the early clopidogrel group treated with primary PCI and in 11.4% of the patients in the other group without primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and no early clopidogrel. The unadjusted clopidogrel odds ratio (OR) for mortality was 0.31 (95% confidence interval 0.27-0.34; p <0.001). Incidence of major adverse cardiac death (MACE) was 4.1% in the early clopidogrel group treated with 1°PCI and 13.5% in the other group without primary PCI and no early clopidogrel (OR 0.35, confidence interval 0.32-0.39, p <0.001). Early clopidogrel administration and PCI were the only treatment lowering mortality as shown by mutlivariate analysis.

CONCLUSIONS
The early administration of the anti-platelet agent clopidogrel in patients with acute coronary syndromes with or without ST-segment elevation has a beneficial effect on mortality and major adverse cardiac events. The lower mortality rate and incidence of MACE emerged with a combination of primary PCI and early clopidogrel administration.


Abstract Objective The present study aimed to evaluate the clustering of undernutrition indicators of children under the age of 5 years in relation to different scales. Design A community-based cross-sectional study design was employed. We collected anthropometric data, geographic locations/elevations of households and other data from visited households. We used a retrospective purely spatial Poisson probability model to identify and locate clusters (high rates) of stunting and wasting using the software SaTScan™ version 9·1·1. We ran a logistic regression model to help evaluate the causes of clustering. Settings Six villages in the Meskane Mareko District (38·45763°E, 8·042144°N) of southern Ethiopia. Subjects We surveyed 2371 children aged <5 years, who were found in 1744 households. Results We found a micro-level variation in the risk of stunting and wasting within the studied district. We found the most likely significant clusters for wasting and severe wasting in two of the six villages. For stunting, a single large cluster size of 390 cases (304·19 expected) in 756 households was identified (relative risk=1·48, P<0·01). For severe stunting, a single cluster size of 106 cases (69·39 expected) in 364 households was identified (relative risk=1·69, P=0·035). Conclusions We conclude that the distribution of wasting and stunting was partly spatially structured. We identified distinct areas within and between villages that have a higher risk than the underlying at-risk population. Our analysis identified the spatial locations of high-risk areas for stunting that could be an input for geographically targeting and optimizing nutritional interventions.


Local waste management strategies need to take into account all household waste arisings, including those taken to Civic Amenity sites (also known as Household Waste Recycling Centres or HWRCs) and other 'bring' facilities. However research in this area has consistently failed to integrate site-based data with collection round data. Research that deals with one aspect of the household waste stream in isolation can build a misleading picture of the amount and type of waste produced by households in any particular area and can be a serious weakness in the development of realistic waste management scenarios. This paper describes research, carried out in collaboration with Hampshire County Council, to develop a method of integrating compositional data from a limited sample of waste collection rounds with operational data on the relative use of the different collection facilities for household waste. The resultant reconstructed waste arisings and compositional profile for each area was then used to develop scenarios for exploring future policy options.


Hermiticity is an essential requirement of a MEMS package for a device to work properly. Hermeticity also must be preserved during the operations following packaging, during which the package bond should not remelt. Bonding temperature is limited however to avoid damaging the device. Solid-Liquid InterDiffusion (SLID) bonding is interesting in this context, because this process allows one to achieve bonds that are able to subsequently withstand higher temperatures than the temperature at which the bonding is done. In this work, the Au-In and In-Ni binary systems have been studied because they are good candidates to realize such bonds. Indium melts at a relatively low temperature (157 °C), and all of the Au-In and In-Ni intermetallic compounds susceptible to form by interdiffusion have melting points above 400 °C. The optimum parameters for the bonding process depend strongly on the intermetallic compounds that are formed, in particular on their growth kinetics. To study the Au-In and In-Ni reactions from a more fundamental point of view, diffusion couples were fabricated. The intermetallic compounds formed in the temperature range of the bonding process have been identified, and their growth kinetics have been determined. In the Au-In system, the intermetallic compounds AuIn2, AuIn and Au7In3 were observed after heating to either 150 or 250 °C, independent of the reaction time. The majority of the reaction zone consisted of AuIn2, growing irregularly and mainly by diffusion of In. The AuIn phase was observed only in a thin layer. The third intermetallic compound, Au7In3, grows in a columnar morphology and more regularly, its interface with Au being almost planar. Judging by the pores visible in the Au7In3 phase near the Au interface, probably due to the Kirkendall effect, this layer grows mainly by diffusion of Au. In the In-Ni system, only the intermetallic compound In7Ni3 was observed after the sample was treated at 200 or 300 °C. This intermetallic compound grows in the form of fine columns, mainly by In diffusion. A latency period is observed before this growth starts, probably due to the presence of an oxide layer on the initial surface of the nickel. A front-tracking 1D computational model considering only the diffusion of In was developed in order to reproduce the growth of the intermetallic compounds observed. Diffusion in the Au and Ni phases is computed by discretization of Fick's second law. Because the intermetallic compounds are stoechiometric, and thus have fixed compositions, atomic fluxes were determined from the gradients of chemical potential. The velocities of the interfaces were then obtained by applying mass and solute conservation equations, in which the density differences between phases were taken into account. The physical parameters needed as input for the model are the diffusion coefficients and atomic mobilities of In in the various phases. These parameters are not known precisely, and thus they were treated as fitting parameters to reproduce the parabolic growth kinetics determined experimentally. Finally, the temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficients in the various phases was deduced. Bonding tests were also performed by joining glass substrates on which bonding frames had been deposited. The best Au-In bonds were obtained by treating at 200 °C for 15 min with an applied pressure of 2.3 MPa. When the nominal composition was near 60 at. % In, about 17% of the sealings were hermetic. The numerical model, developed for semi-infinite domains, was adapted to simulate the bonding process, i.e. in a system of finite size. The computations reproduce the experimental observations well. Thus, the model can be used with confidence to predict the optimal bonding temperature and time as a function of the initial Au and In thicknesses. The In-Ni bonding tests were not conclusive. Ternary Au-In-Ni bonds were also fabricated. Two ternary phases, each having different compositions and structures, were formed in this case. The hermeticity results obtained were promising. However, this ternary system is relatively unknown, and therefore it is difficult to understand the microstructures formed and their evolution.


A numerical study has been conducted to determine the quality of blast load simulation for non-linear dynamic response analysis of framed structures subjected to such loads at various stand-off distances with due consideration to the provisions and requirements of Unified Facility Criteria UFC 2005. Simulation has been carried out using a general-purpose, commercial software system and a special-purpose, blast-specific software product to assess and compare the quality of response prediction of such computational models. Nonlinear dynamic analysis has been performed using a three-dimensional model of a structure and its corresponding elasto-plastic analysis on its single-degree-of-freedom representation. The results obtained for different positions of explosive charges under the two analysis models have been presented. A comparative analysis of the results indicates that the quality of blast load simulation and associated structural response depend both on the analysis model of choice and the stand-off distances. It was concluded that the quality of response prediction by commonly available general purpose software systems is of inferior quality and that special-purpose software systems need to be implemented when dealing with generalized impulse loads as the standoff distance for the detonation is getting closer to the structure. Keywords: blast loads, Unified Facility Criteria, elasto-plastic analysis, nonlinear analysis, single-degree-of freedom, stand-off distance


We introduce a model that allows of anonymous yet accountable service usage in mobile communication systems. This model is based on the introduction of a new business role, called the customer care agency, and a ticket based mechanism for service access. We motivate the introduction of customer care agencies by analyzing their role and emphasizing their advantages. We introduce the general idea of ticket based service access, present a categorization of ticket types and ticket acquisition models, and identify some possible attacks against ticket based systems. We illustrate how agencies and tickets work together by presenting a ticket based protocol between users, customer care agencies, and service providers. The protocol achieves authentication of the service provider to the user, establishment of a shared session key between the user and the service provider, and correct and undeniable charging. In addition, it provides revokable anonymity for users, which means that the identity of misbehaving users can be revealed.


The premises of the research are rooted in the debate about human rights of migrants and securitisation of borders in the European Union. In this context the body is in the spotlight, since a key component in the reinforcement of external borders has been represented by the growing use of biometric data that is derived from the human body. The paper aims at investigating how and to what extent the human body is considered as an instrument of border control in the European Union. After providing an overview on the relevant EU legislation, the paper explains which human rights implications are entailed by the use of biometrics in the management of migration and asylum. It then introduces the case study of age assessment for unaccompanied migrant children, illustrating in particular the human rights that can be at stake with regard to medical age examinations. Trough the analysis of the selected case study it makes clear the crucial role that the human body plays in the strategies of border control. Eventually the paper argues that, through the deployment of such techniques, States are expressing their power on the body of migrants in order to exclude and not to include them.


This paper centres on the tensions between the introduction of plagiarism detection software (Turnitin) for student and tutor use at undergraduate level and the aim to promote a developmental approach to writing for assessment at a UK university. Aims to promote developmental models for writing often aim to counteract the effects of the structural organisation of learning and assessment in higher education. This paper will discuss the potential for the implementation of plagiarism detection software to operate as a 'change artefact', creating opportunities for a departure from the habits of practice created by the demands of writing for assessment and the potential for the emergence of enclaves of good practice in respect of writing development. Tutor and student qualitative responses, gathered via questionnaires and focus groups, were analysed in order to investigate the effectiveness of this initiative. In this inquiry, plagiarism detection emerges as a dominant theme within regulatory discourses of malpractice in higher education. The promotion of writing development via a tool for regulation and plagiarism detection seems to be a mismatch and the extent to which Turnitin can operate as a change artefact to promote developmental approaches to writing for assessment in higher education is questioned. The suitability of plagiarism detection software as a tool to promote writing development will be discussed in light of the findings from this inquiry.


The Devil actively opposes "the good" in Christian cosmology, by tempting people to swerve from the path of virtue. Formally, Satan and his fellow fallen angels, the demons, controvert the aesthetic and moral values of society: they are dark, smelly, malign and monstrous. The exotika in Greece, a broad category of at least thirty morally ambiguous creatures, are local extensions and variations of the Orthodox Christian idea of demons and the Devil. Local communities have developed detailed narratives of these demonic figures, which far exceed the information found in scripture. Based on field research in the mountain village of Apeiranthos on the Cycladic island of Naxos, and supplemented by comparative accounts from throughout the Greek-speaking world, I study the symbolism of the exotika in order to produce a grammar and lexicon of moral opposition. This analysis allows a new perspective on Greek values, and the struggle to realize them in practice, by following a via negativa and considering in detail the semiotics of ambiguity and evil.Keywords: Greece, exotika, Naxos, via negativa, semiotics, ambiguity, evil


The nature of the relation between trust and Risk Perception (RP) has recently become a focus of increased interest among risk management researchers. Some argue that trust is strongly related to RP and that it therefore might prove to be a key to the development of more effective risk communication techniques. However, others claim that trust is weakly related, if at all, to RP and that it would be of little use to risk communicators and managers. A recent analysis of relevant empirical studies (Earle, Siegrist and Gutscher, 2007) supported neither the strong- nor the weak-relation argument. A wide variety of studies indicated, instead, that the relation between trust and RP is conditioned by certain critical contextual factors. Although much remains to be learned about these factors, the most important among them appear to be: (a) the judged moral importance (to individuals) of the risk management issue, and (b) the individuals' judged personal knowledge of or familiarity with the issue. These factors are elements of a general model of the relations among Trust, Confidence and Cooperation (TCC), the TCC model. In this article, we demonstrate how the TCC model can generate useful hypotheses about the relation between trust and RP in important risk management contexts characterised by different levels of moral importance and knowledge.


The effects of internal quark structure of baryons on the composition and structure of neutron star matter with hyperons are investigated in the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model. The QMC model is based on a mean-field description of nonoverlapping spherical bags bound by self-consistent exchange of scalar and vector mesons. The predictions of this model are compared with a quantum hadrodynamic (QHD) model calibrated to reproduce identical nuclear matter saturation properties. By employing a density-dependent bag constant through direct coupling to the scalar field, the QMC model is found to exhibit identical properties as QHD near saturation density. Furthermore, this modified QMC model provides well-behaved and continuous solutions at high densities relevant to the core of neutron stars. Two additional strange mesons are introduced which couple only to the strange quark in the QMC model and to the hyperons in the QHD model. The constitution and structure of stars with hyperons in the QMC and QHD models reveal interesting differences. This suggests the importance of quark structure effects in the baryons at high densities.


Title of Dissertation: AN EXAMINATION OF THE WORKING CONDITIONS, CHALLENGES, AND TENSIONS EXPERIENCED BY MATHEMATICS TEACHERS Ming Chang Tomayko, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation Directed by: Professor James T. Fey Education Curriculum and Instruction To make the professional work of teachers more effective and personally satisfying, it is important to better understand the nature and effects of the evident stresses in their work. The purpose of this study was to describe the quality of work life of mathematics teachers in Maryland, with an eye on ultimately helping the mathematics teaching profession and the broader education community to improve both the effectiveness and satisfaction of K-12 teachers of mathematics. Since school systems share many features with large organizations, the design of the present study utilized prior research from industry on stress in the workplace to help in understanding the strains of mathematics teaching. A review of literature suggested five potential stressors which formed the basis of the study. The five stressors were: the congruence of individual and organizational goals, teachers' sense of agency, teachers' sense of efficacy and respect, the level of professional interactions between teachers, and the appropriateness of teachers' work load. From these stressors, Likert-type survey statements were generated and organized into a 77-item, online survey instrument. Participants were solicited through flyers and e-mails. The survey data was analyzed in two ways. First, teacher working conditions were evaluated in terms of the five potential stressors. Then, a factor analysis of the survey data identified six underlying components of stress in the work lives of mathematics teachers. Teacher working conditions were then re-evaluated with respect to these six components. Finally, a few of the survey participants were selected for follow-up interviews to provide additional insights into their responses. Statistical analysis using ANOVA and multiple comparison procedures resulted in several findings. Mathematics teachers expressed having a lack of agency, particularly with respect to decisions impacting instruction and assessment. Participants reported feeling overloaded by their job responsibilities and many even cited interruptions to both planning time and instructional time as serious obstacles to teaching. On the other hand, mathematics teachers felt a strong sense of accomplishment. Comments provided by participants indicate that they thrive on seeing students learn, grow, and succeed in mathematics. AN EXAMINATION OF THE WORKING CONDITIONS, CHALLENGES, AND TENSIONS EXPERIENCED BY MATHEMATICS TEACHERS


Mice have two Otx genes, Otx1 and Otx2. Prior to gastrulation, Otx2 is expressed in the epiblast and visceral endoderm. As the primitive streak forms, Otx2 expression is restricted to the anterior parts of all three germ layers. Otx1 expression begins at the 1 to 3 somite stage in the anterior neuroectoderm. Otx2 is also expressed in cephalic mesenchyme. Otx2 homozygous mutants fail to develop structures anterior to rhombomere 3 (r3), and Otx2 heterozygotes exhibit craniofacial defects. Otx1 homozygous mutants do not show apparent defects in early brain development. In Otx1 and Otx2 double heterozygotes, rostral neuroectoderm is induced normally, but development of the mes/diencephalic domain is impaired starting at around the 3 to 6 somite stage, suggesting cooperative interactions between the two genes in brain regionalization. To determine whether Otx1 and Otx2 genes are functionally equivalent, we generated knock-in mice in which Otx2 was replaced by Otx1. In homozygous mutants, gastrulation occurred normally, and rostral neuroectoderm was induced at 7.5 days postcoitus (7.5 dpc), but the rostral brain failed to develop. Anterior structures such as eyes and the anterior neural ridge were lost by 8.5 dpc, but the isthmus and r1 and r2 were formed. In regionalization of the rostral neuroectoderm, the cooperative interaction of Otx2 with Otx1 revealed by the phenotype of Otx2 and Otx1 double heterozygotes was substitutable by Otx1. The otocephalic phenotype indicative of Otx2 haploinsufficiency was also largely restored by knocked-in Otx1. Thus most Otx2 functions were replaceable by Otx1, but the requirement for Otx2 in the anterior neuroectoderm prior to onset of Otx1 expression was not. These data indicate that Otx2 may have evolved new functions required for establishment of anterior neuroectoderm that Otx1 cannot perform.


Many high technology goods are based on standards that require several essential patents owned by different IP holders. This gives rise to a complements and a double mark-up problem. We compare the welfare effects of two different business strategies dealing with these problems. Vertical integration of an IP holder and a downstream producer solves the double mark-up problem between these firms. Nevertheless, it may raise royalty rates and reduce output as compared to non-integration. Horizontal integration of IP holders solves the complements problem but not the double mark-up problem. Vertical integration discourages entry and reduces innovation incentives, while horizontal integration always benefits from entry and innovation.


The aim of this Guide is to inform national and international stakeholders on the definitions, concepts, calculations and data sources for each of the new employment indicators introduced in 2008 under MDG Target 1B. It also reinforces the existing indicator on gender equality in the labour market under Goal 3. The purpose is to assist countries to monitor and report effectively on their employment situation. Includes an example of a brief analysis of these indicators in the case of Pakistan.