'...chance favors only the prepared mind.' --Louis Pasteur Senior executives generally agree that crafting strategy is one of the most important parts of their job. As a result, most companies invest significant time and effort in a formal, annual strategic-planning process that typically culminates in a series of business unit and corporate strategy reviews with the CEO and the top management team. Yet the extraordinary reality is that few executives think this time-consuming process pays off, and many CEOs complain that their strategic-planning process yields few new ideas and is often fraught with politics. Why the mismatch between effort and result? Evidence we culled from research on the planning processes at 30 companies (see sidebar, "About the research," on the next page) and work with more than 50 additional companies points to a common dispiriting explanation: the annual strategy review frequently amounts to little more than a stage on which business unit leaders present warmed-over updates of last year's presentations, take few risks in broaching new ideas, and strive above all to avoid embarrassment. Rather than preparing executives to face the strategic uncertainties ahead or serving as the focal point for creative thinking about a company's vision and direction, the planning process "is like some primitive tribal ritual," one executive told us. "There is a lot of dancing, waving of feathers, and beating of drums. No one is exactly sure why we do it, but there is an almost mystical hope that something good will come out of it." But something good ought to come out of it. In a business environment of heightened risk and uncertainty, developing effective strategies is crucial. But how can companies reform the process in order to get the payoff they need? New goals for strategic planning Part of the answer lies in taking a fresh look at the substance of business unit and corporate strategy. But a more important--and often overlooked--element is to rethink the process by which strategy is made. It can even be argued that without a strong process, it is unlikely that the substance will come out right. A key starting point is the acceptance of the counterintuitive notion that the strategic-planning process should not be designed to make strategy. Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University, calls the phrase "strategic planning" an oxymoron. (1) He argues that real strategies are rarely made in paneled conference rooms but are more likely to be cooked up informally and often in real time-in hallway conversations, casual working groups, or quiet moments of reflection on long airplane flights. What then is the purpose, if any, of a formal planning process? Our research persuades us that the exercise can add value if it has two overarching goals. The first is to build "prepared minds"--that is, to make sure that decision makers have a solid understanding of the business, its strategy, and the assumptions behind that strategy, thereby making it possible for executives to respond swiftly to challenges and opportunities as they occur in real time. GE Capital, for instance, has consistently proved quicker to react and better able to value acquisition opportunities than have its competitors. Part of this success is due to a strategy process ensuring that GE Capital's executives have a strong grasp of the strategic context they operate in before the unpredictable but inevitable twists and turns of their business push them to make M&A and other critical decisions in real time. The second goal is to increase the innovativeness of a company's strategies. No strategy process can guarantee brilliant flashes of creative insight, but much can be done to increase the odds that they will occur. In addition to formal planning at the business unit level, for example, Johnson & Johnson uses crosscutting initiatives on major issues such as biotechnology, the restructuring of the health care industry, and globalization in order to challenge assumptions and open up the organization to new thinking. …


Offering professional advice around the retirement planning process represents an important component of the financial services industry. The authors examine the demographic, investment, and behavioral characteristics of individuals who obtain this advice as well as the economic value that it ultimately adds. Using a survey of more than 4,000 working households, they find that wealth and income levels are positively correlated with the decision to engage a professional advisor, as are factors such as marital status, age, and education level. To assess the value added by this advice, the authors develop a unique metric of retirement income replacement that incorporates health-based life expectancy and household-specific financial circumstances. The approach estimates the percentage of annual pre-retirement income that a household will be able to spend each year in retirement. The authors establish the unconditional finding that advised households generate significantly larger proportions of post-employment spending (both gross and net of Social Security benefits) than do nonadvised households. Controlling for additional explanatory factors, we find that an advisor adds more than 15 percentage points of income replacement in retirement. These findings support the conclusion that obtaining and implementing financial advice in the retirement planning process leads to a demonstrable increase in the level of sustainable retirement spending. TOPICS: Retirement, quantitative methods, portfolio construction Key Findings • Households using financial advisors, on average have higher incomes, and are wealthier, married, more highly educated, more confident in their retirement planning, and more disciplined in their financial process. • A new metric to quantify the value of financial advice is developed focusing on retirement income replacement and incorporating health-based life expectancy and household-specific financial circumstances. • Regression and nearest-neighbor matching methods to control for confounding variables both indicate a significant lift of approximately 15 percentage points in the retirement income replacement score resulting from the use of a financial advisor.


This essay argues that the practical reason approach to the study of social conventions (and social normativity more generally) fails to adequately account for the fluency of social action in environments that we experience as familiar. The practical reason approach, articulated most recently in Andrei Marmor's Social Conventions: From Language to Law (2009) does help us, though not wholly adequately, to understand how we tend to react to, and experience, unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors, that is, those situations in which a certain practice becomes problematic or is problematized, or where we are obliged to, or moved to, justify or deliberate. The reason why the practical reason approach is not wholly adequate when it comes to understanding unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors is that it tends to subsume the unfamiliar under the familiar, that is, it tends to negatively evaluate anything that is deemed to be not in accordance with the rules and reasons already familiar to the observer. This excludes the possibility of the observer having to transform himself or herself, and thus change what is familiar to him or her.


We show that judicial independence can reduce local protectionism and foster crossregional economic integration. We exploit a judicial independence reform in China with staggered roll-out since 2014. The reform removed local governments' control over local courts' financial and personnel decisions, thereby substantially improving local courts' independence. Combining novel data on the universes of civil lawsuits and business registration records, we show that local defendants' rate of winning court cases against non-local plaintiffs declined by 7.0% after the reform. The effect is mainly driven by improvements in the quality of judicial decisions and is more salient for politically connected local defendants. Over time, the reduction in local protectionism encouraged smaller non-local firms to file lawsuits against larger local firms. Using the shareholding network extracted from business registration records, we find that the decline in local protectionism could attract 8.4% more inward investment flows into reformed localities. This has the potential to increase China's GDP by 1.9% when the judicial independence reform is implemented nationwide.


extract] They [Mary Hiscock and David Allan] have both accomplished much in many aspects of comparative commercial law but this little offering aims to honour their distinguished origins as Equity lawyers. It presents unconnected insights into the development of Equity in English law, mostly gleaned from searching primary sources for other purposes. Now we know that the presence, let alone the attitude, of the observer can affect the experiment's result, there is even more justification for publishing the chance discovery.


In this article, I explore political developments on Crete in the Final and Postpalatial periods (the ceramic phases Late Minoan II to IIIB) through the evidence of high status mortuary practices. Patterns in tomb architecture, burial assemblages, and cemetery distributions provide insights into various changes in elite ideologies and in the island's political geography. In analyzing political dynamics, I consider agendas that operated on the intra-island level, to balance the frequent tendency to focus on external (mainland) agency in explaining the cultural and political transformations that occurred on Crete during this period. At the start of the Final Palatial period, new burial customs were introduced at the dominant center of Knossos. The new customs appear to have functioned as a medium for status competition in a horizon of political instability. Following an initial phase of mortuary experimentation, however, changes in the later Final Palatial period suggest a standardization in elites' strategies of mortuary self-representation at this center. Beyond Knossos, similar tomb practices began to occur at several centers in the later Final Palatial period, with an increase in mortuary display in the early Postpalatial phase that seems to indicate resurgent regional elites seizing the political opportunities attendant upon Knossos's collapse. Other aspects of the Postpalatial political geography highlighted are a shift in the focus of mortuary ostentation toward the far west of the island in LM IIIB, and more generally, evidence for further, local elites beyond the known regional centers across the island.


We here describe the sequences and expression patterns of three new Fox (fork head box) transcription factors in Xenopus laevis embryos. xlFoxI2, another member of subclass I, is maternally transcribed. Zygotic transcripts are first detected during neurulation and become localised to the dorsal part of epibranchial placodes. xlFoxM1 like xlFoxP1 are the first members of subclasses M and P described in Xenopus. Both genes are maternally expressed and transcripts are found during early cleavage stages in the animal blastomeres. xlFoxM1 is strongly upregulated during neurula stages and transcripts are localised in the neuroectoderm. Later, expression is found in the spinal cord, the rhombencephalon, the retina and in the branchial arches. xlFoxP1 is activated during organogenesis and is mainly expressed in the brain, head mesenchyme and in the splanchnic layer of the lateral plate mesoderm.


Three species of purple non-sulphur bacteria (PB), Rhodopseudomonas palustris, Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Rhodovulum sulfidophilum, grown in palm oil mill effluent (POME) were successfully used for the first time as feed for rotifers (Brachionus rotundiformis). Rp. palustris cultured in both POME and synthetic medium gave the highest rotifer density (332–395 individuals mL−1) from 3 to 5 days at 10 g L−1 salinity. Other PB cultured in synthetic medium generally support higher rotifer density than PB cultured in POME. Rb. sphaeroides had the highest biomass (1.91–3.34 g L−1) and growth rate (0.64–1.11 g day−1) in both types of culture medium. Nevertheless, only Rv. sulfidophilum grown in POME contained both eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), indicating its ability to biosynthesize them from POME nutrients. Rotifers fed Rv. sulfidophilum grown in POME had significantly higher amounts of protein, arachidonic acid, EPA and DHA than rotifers fed Rv. sulfidophilum grown in synthetic medium. The nutritional profile of lipid-deficient PB can be improved by growing them in POME, and these enriched PB produced at an estimated cost of USD 8.71–35.35 kg−1 dry biomass, depending on species, can support rotifer production in a batch culture system.


SHOULD AN architect or engineer be permitted to limit his liability to an owner for economic damages that may result from the design professional's negligence? A number of recent cases have dealt with the issue of whether limitation of liability provisions in contracts between design professionals and owners or developers are a proper exercise of the parties' common law contracting rights, or are void and unenforceable as against public policy as reflected in various state anti-indemnity statutes. Decisions have been far from uniform. In a recent case, Valhal Corp. v. Sullivan Associates Inc.,(1) the Third Circuit held that a provision in a contract between an architect and a developer that capped the architect's liability at $50,000 was enforceable under Pennsylvania law, where the parties to the contract were sophisticated business entities dealing at arm's length, the limitation was reasonable in relation to the professional's fee, and the developer's damages were purely economic. The court rejected the developer's arguments that the limitation provision was contrary to the Pennsylvania anti-indemnity statute and that the limitation should be applied only to negligence claims, not contract claims. Decisions from other jurisdictions reflect a wide range of views on the enforceability of such provisions based on that particular state's contract law, public policy and anti-indemnity statutes, if any. For instance, some courts hold that these provisions should be construed liberally so as to foster the rights of private parties to contract freely,(2) while others view any provision that limits liability as an exculpatory clause that requires strict construction against the design professional.(3) In addition, the jurisdiction's view on the economic loss rule can prove determinative. As a result, it is often difficult to harmonize the decisions, especially since they depend, in large part, on the particular language used in the limitation of liability provisions as well as the variation among state anti-indemnity statutes. VALHAL CORP. V. SULLIVAN A. Facts Valhal, a real estate development company, was considering the purchase of a parcel of real estate for the construction of a residential high-rise. It entered into discussions with Sullivan, an architectural firm, for Sullivan to provide a feasibility study in connection with the project. The contract between Sullivan and Valhal included the following limitation of liability provision: The Owner agrees to limit the Design Professional's liability to the Owner and to all construction Contractors and Subcontractors on the project, due to the Professional's professional negligent acts, errors and omissions, such that the total aggregate liability of each Design Professional shall not exceed $50,000 or the Design Professional's total fee for services rendered on this project. Should the Owner find the above terms unacceptable, an equitable surcharge to absorb the Architect's increase in insurance premiums will be negotiated. Under the contract, Sullivan's total fee was $7,000. Although Sullivan had signed each proposal, Valhal failed to sign any of them, but by written correspondence it authorized Sullivan to perform the work. Sullivan completed the feasibility report, and then an issue arose as to the applicable height restrictions. Valhal filed an action against Sullivan for negligence and breach of contract, claiming economic damages in excess of $2 million. B. District Court's Decision Sullivan filed a motion for summary judgment wherein it argued that its liability to Valhal was limited to $50,000 based on the contractual limitation of liability provision. Valhal claimed that the provision was unenforceable because it was against public policy and contravened Pennsylvania's anti-indemnity statute, which provides, in pertinent part: Every covenant, agreement or understanding in or in connection with any contract or agreement made and entered into by owners, contractors, subcontractors or suppliers whereby an architect, engineer, surveyor or his agents, servants or employees shall be indemnified or held harmless for damages, claims, losses or expenses including attorneys' fees arising out of: (1) the preparation or approval by an architect, engineer, surveyor or his agents, servants, employees or invitees of maps, drawings, opinions, reports, surveys, change orders, designs or specifications, or (2) the giving or the failure to give directions or instructions by the architect, engineer, surveyor or his agents, servants or employees provided such giving or failure to give is the primary cause of the damage, claim, loss or expense shall be void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable. …


The slow sand filtration (SSF) design parameters as known for purifying surface water cannot be copied for the treatment of secondary effluents. The objectives of the present research were to examine the possibility of slow granular filtration (SGF) as advanced treatment of secondary effluents for reuse purposes and examine filter performance under various design regimes. Slow granular filtration runs where made with four different filters at rate of 0.15 m/h. 0.6 mm, 0.25 mm sand or tuff grains or their combination were used. Grain size of 0.25 mm gave low impurities concentration in the effluent but short filtration runs. Double layer bed caused longer filtration run as well as lower impurities concentration in the effluent, Combining the tuff as the top bed layer caused longer filtration run, probably due to the morphologic and chemical properties of the tuff. The water column above the bed plays an important role in the filtration process. Intense microbiologic activity in the column changes the TSS and COD concentration as well as the availability of the biodegradable matter. The dissolved oxygen concentration in the water column above the bed, and in the bed depth can serve as a good indicator for ripening of the biological layer.


We conducted a cohort study on impact of effects of eight years of annual ivermectin mass treatment administered in eight villages in Imo State, Nigeria. Physical and visual acuity examinations carried out in 462 persons in 1995, prior to the launching of mass drug administration with ivermectin, were compared with re-examinations of 411 (89%) of these same individuals in 2002. We found that gross visual impairment decreased from 16% to 1%, nodule prevalence decreased from 59% to 18%, and papular dermatitis was reduced from 15% to 2%. No change was seen in leopard skin rates (14%). The only incident lesions were three subjects from a single community having the appearance of new nodules (e.g., nodules not identified in the 1995 examinations). Differences in community coverage did not appear to influence the benefit from treatment of individual residents.


Accepted, September 12, 2002. OBJECTIVE: The use of stereotactic radiosurgical systems to treat intracranial and extracranial tumors and other lesions requires a high degree of accuracy in target identification and localization. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the total system accuracy of the CyberKnife (Accuray, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA), a frameless, imageguided, stereotactic radiosurgery system. METHODS: Clinically relevant accuracy or application accuracy of the CyberKnife radiosurgery system is based on 1) the beam delivery accuracy, which combines the robot and the camera image tracking system, and 2) target localization accuracy, which combines computed tomographic (CT) imaging and treatment planning. Clinically relevant accuracy can be measured by delivering a radiation dose to phantoms, in which the target is defined on a set of CT images using all components of the CyberKnife system, including the treatment planning software, the robot, the camera tracking system, and the linear accelerator. Clinically relevant accuracy was measured in head phantoms loaded with packs of radiochromic film. The accuracy measured is the displacement of the dose contours from the treatment plan to that measured in the radiosurgically exposed phantom. RESULTS: Measurements of mean errors of the second-generation CyberKnife system at Stanford University Medical Center, installed in 2001, ranged from 0.7 mm for a CT slice thickness of 0.625 mm to 1.97 mm for a CT slice thickness of 3.75 mm. CONCLUSION: The frameless, image-guided, second-generation CyberKnife radiosurgery system has a clinically relevant accuracy of 1.1 0.3 mm when CT slice thicknesses of 1.25 mm are used. CyberKnife precision is comparable to published localization errors in current frame-based radiosurgical systems.


Porting applications to a new system is a nontrivial job in the HPC field. It is a very time-consuming, labor-intensive process, and the quality of the results will depend critically on the experience of the experts involved. In order to ease the porting process, we propose a methodology to address an important aspect of software porting that receives little attention, namely planning support. When a scientific application consisting of many subroutines is to be ported, the selection of key subroutines greatly impacts the productivity and overall porting strategy, because these subroutines may represent a significant feature of the code in terms of functionality, code structure, or performance. They may also serve as indicators of the difficulty and amount of effort involved in porting a code to a new platform. The proposed methodology is based on the idea that a set of similar subroutines can be ported with similar strategies and result in a similar-quality porting. By viewing subroutines as data and operator sequences, analogous to DNA sequences, we are able to use various bio-informatics techniques to conduct the similarity analysis of subroutines while avoiding NP-complete complexities of other approaches. To further improve accuracy for porting, we also merged some other code metrics and costmodel metrics for similarity analysis to capture the internal code characteristics. In this dissertation, we describe our methodology, which includes presentation of a tool called Klonos. To evaluate the effectiveness of Klonos, we used it to conduct experiments to find strategies for porting of several scientific benchmarks and a large scientific application. Our experiment shows Klonos is very effective for providing a systematic porting plan to guide the users during their porting process of reusing similar porting strategies for similar code regions.


ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on how four artists working with light can reveal the different capacities of illumination and darkness in shaping human apprehension of the world. These artists, I contend, foreground the very particular human ways in which the visual system operates in making sense of the world, for their work explores the different ways in which we sense space at various scales, from the body to the landscape. In Kielder Forest, Northumberland, a Skyspace, created by James Turrell isolates the qualities of daylight and focuses attention on the impact of the sky's light on the landscape. Carlos Cruz-Diez'sChromosaturation highlights the ocular perception and emotional experience of colour, while Olafur Eliasson's Model for a Timeless Garden highlights the temporality of visual perception as well as the persistence of notions about the sublime to appreciation of landscape. Both works underscore the partialities of specifically human ways of perception. Finally, Tino Seghal's This Variation investigates the impact of darkness on the perception of space and its potential for fostering conviviality and sociality.


We investigated the nutritional vulnerability of Zoeae I of the spider crab Maja brachydactyla in experimental treatments with differential periods of starvation. As response vari- ables, the moulting and survival rates, the point-of-reserve-saturation (PRS), the point-of-no- return (PNR), dry mass, elemental composition (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen; CHN), hepatopan- creas lipid vacuoles and activities of digestive enzymes were measured. Average median time spans when 50% of the larvae reached PNR or PRS (PNR50 and PRS50) values were 2.8 and 1.9 d, respectively. In PNR treatments, complete mortality occurred only after extended initial starvation periods of ≥5 d, and in PRS treatments, Zoeae I were capable of completing the moulting cycle after a short initial feeding period (1 d). In continuously starved control larvae, the moulting cycle was arrested at the onset of apolysis. Concomitantly, considerable amounts of biomass were lost and the C:N ratio decreased, indicating lipid degradation during starvation. This effect was also microscopically visible as a decline of lipid vacuoles in the hepatopancreas. Feeding after previ- ous starvation periods of <7 d resulted in a re-establishment of the lipid vacuoles, indicating suc- cessful capture and ingestion of food, but this did not necessarily allow for completing the moult- ing cycle. In fed Zoea I larvae, digestive enzyme activities increased during the moulting cycle, while a significant decrease of enzyme activities occurred under starvation conditions. In newly moulted Zoeae II, biomass values and enzyme activities were linearly correlated with the duration of the feeding periods in Zoeae I. This study shows that biomass, elemental composition, the occurrence of lipid vacuoles in the hepatopancreas and activities of digestive enzymes are suitable indicators of the nutritional condition of early zoeal stages of M. brachydactyla.


The reliable prediction of phase stability is a challenging computational problem in chemical process simulation, optimization, and design. The phase stability problem can be formulated either as a minimization problem or as an equivalent nonlinear equation-solving problem. Conventional solution methods are initialization dependent and may fail by converging to trivial or nonphysical solutions or to a point that is a local but not a global minimum. Thus, there has been considerable recent interest in developing more reliable techniques for stability analysis. Recently, the authors have demonstrated, using cubic equation of state models, a technique that can solve the phase stability problem with complete reliability. The technique, which is based on interval analysis, is initialization independent and, if properly implemented, provides a mathematical guarantee that the correct solution to the phase stability problem has been found. However, there is much room for improvement in the computational efficiency of the technique. In this paper, the authors consider two means of enhancing the efficiency of the method, both based on sharpening the range of interval function evaluations. Results indicate that, by using the enhanced method, computation times can be reduced by nearly an order of magnitude in some cases.


Testosterone synthesis depends on normal Leydig cell (LC) development, but the mechanisms controlling this development remain unclear. We recently demonstrated that androgen receptor (AR) ablation from a proportion of testicular peritubular myoid cells (PTM-ARKO) did not affect LC number, but resulted in compensated LC failure. The current study extends these investigations, demonstrating that PTM AR signalling is important for normal development, ultrastructure and function of adult LCs. Notably, mRNAs for LC markers [e.g. steroidogenic factor 1 (Nr5a1), insulin-like growth factor (Igf-1) and insulin-like factor 3 (Insl3)] were significantly reduced in adult PTM-ARKOs, but not all LCs were similarly affected. Two LC sub-populations were identified, one apparently 'normal' sub-population that expressed adult LC markers and steroidogenic enzymes as in controls, and another 'abnormal' sub-population that had arrested development and only weakly expressed INSL3, luteinizing hormone receptor, and several steroidogenic enzymes. Furthermore, unlike 'normal' LCs in PTM-ARKOs, the 'abnormal' LCs did not involute as expected in response to exogenous testosterone. Differential function of these LC sub-populations is likely to mean that the 'normal' LCs work harder to compensate for the 'abnormal' LCs to maintain normal serum testosterone. These findings reveal new paracrine mechanisms underlying adult LC development, which can be further investigated using PTM-ARKOs.


The operator description of Fourier optics is extended and applied to holography. The existing lens models for ideal holographic processes appear as a self-evident intermediate result; generalization to include apertures, recording-material modulation transfer function, and extended source effects is straightforward. The extended source effect is generally shown to be equivalent to a modification of the actual holographic apertures. The final result is a compact expression for the description of the holographically reconstructed field distribution at an arbitrary plane. A useful, comprehensive list of operator relations is given in two appendixes.


We present a comprehensive model to describe the propagation of single-cycle and broadband optical pulses in anisotropic, dispersive, and nonlinear materials. Two nonlinear coupled wave equations describe the dynamics and interactions of optical pulses in uniaxial second-order nonlinear materials. The equations are first order in the propagation coordinate and are valid for arbitrarily wide pulse bandwidth, providing an accurate modeling of the evolution of ultrabroadband pulses also when the separation into different coupled frequency components is not possible or not profitable. We exploit this model to simulate recently observed femtosecond single-cycle multiterahertz transients in gallium selenide and to predict harmonic generation and spectral broadening in the visible and mid-infrared in lithium niobate.


Venous thromboembolism (VTE) encompasses two vascular conditions that are of significant importance, namely deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). DVT is also the most common cause of PE. Medical and surgical patients, and individuals who are at increased risk of developing VTE through a variety of factors, require adequate thromboprophylaxis. Primary and secondary prevention, as well as the definitive treatment of VTE, are accomplished through the use of a variety of anticoagulant drugs. This article attempts to provide an overview of VTE, and its prevention and treatment.


Objective:To test the hypothesis that among adolescent smokers hospitalised for psychiatric and substance use disorders, motivational interviewing (MI) would lead to more and longer quit attempts, reduced smoking, and more abstinence from smoking over a 12 month follow up. Design:Randomised control trial of MI versus brief advice (BA) for smoking cessation, with pre- and post-intervention assessment of self efficacy and intentions to change, and smoking outcome variables assessed at one, three, six, nine, and 12 month follow ups. Setting:A private, university affiliated psychiatric hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Patients or other participants:Consecutive sample (n = 191) of 13–17 year olds, admitted for psychiatric hospitalisation, who smoked at least one cigarette per week for the past four weeks, had access to a telephone, and did not meet DSM-IV criteria for current psychotic disorder. Interventions:MI versus BA. MI consisted of two, 45 minute individual sessions, while BA consisted of 5–10 minutes of advice and information on how to quit smoking. Eligible participants in both conditions were offered an eight week regimen of transdermal nicotine patch upon hospital discharge. Main outcome measures:Point prevalence abstinence, quit attempts, changes in smoking rate and longest quit attempt. Proximal outcomes included intent to change smoking behaviour (upon hospital discharge), and self efficacy for smoking cessation. Results:MI did not lead to better smoking outcomes compared to BA. MI was more effective than BA for increasing self efficacy regarding ability to quit smoking. A significant interaction of treatment with baseline intention to quit smoking was also found. MI was more effective than BA for adolescents with little or no intention to change their smoking, but was actually less effective for adolescents with pre-existing intention to cut down or quit smoking. However, the effects on these variables were relatively modest and only moderately related to outcome. Adolescents with comorbid substance use disorders smoked more during follow up while those with anxiety disorders smoked less and were more likely to be abstinent. Conclusions:The positive effect of MI on self efficacy for quitting and the increase in intention to change in those with initially low levels of intentions suggest the benefits of such an intervention. However, the effects on these variables were relatively modest and only moderately related to outcome. The lack of overall effect of MI on smoking cessation outcomes suggests the need to further enhance and intensify this type of treatment approach for adolescent smokers with psychiatric comorbidity.


A novel single tapered fiber optical tweezers is proposed and fabricated by heating and drawing technology. The microscopic particle tapping performance of this special designed tapered fiber probe is demonstrated and investigated. The distribution of the optical field emerging from the tapered fiber tip is numerically calculated based on the beam propagation method. The trapping force FDTD analysis results, both axial and transverse, are also given.


The deployment of institutional repository services has focussed on the development of services for managing content within the organisation or by a trusted agency. At the same time we have seen developments to support management of the use of metadata to maximize access to content hosted in repositories. Related technical approaches, such as 'cool URIs' can also make content more discoverable by search engines such as Google. In parallel we are witnessing the increasing take-up of a range of third-party services such as LinkedIn and Academia which are being used by researchers to publish information related to their professional activities, including details of their research publications. The paper provides evidence which suggests that personal use of such services can increase the number of downloads by increasing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rankings through inbound links from highly ranked web sites. A survey of use of such services across Russell Group universities shows the popularity of a number of social media services. In the light of existing usage of these services this paper proposes that institutional encouragement of their use by researchers may generate increased accesses to institutional research publications at little cost to the institution. This paper concludes by describing further work which is planned in order to investigate the SEO characteristics of institutional repositories.


In principle and in practice, the use of prototypes in the companion "interdisciplines" of design and the digital humanities is perhaps surprisingly similar, given the many other differences that exist between the two fields. However, in both cases there are important distinctions to be made between various categories of prototypes. In general, there are three categories of prototype, which are intended for experiment, development, and provocation respectively. Although it might be argued that the overlap between these three groups renders them useless, if they are construed correctly, it becomes clear that the distinctions are not only meaningful, but can also be suggestive of new methods of working.


Background: The consumption of chocolate and cocoa has established cardiovascular benefits. Less is known about the effects of chocolate on arterial stiffness, a marker of subclinical cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to investigate whether chocolate intakes are independently associated with pulse wave velocity (PWV), after adjustment for cardiovascular, lifestyle and dietary factors. Methods: Prospective analyses were undertaken on 508 community-dwelling participants (mean age 61 years, 60% women) from the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS). Habitual chocolate intakes, measured using a food frequency questionnaire, were related to PWV, measured approximately 5 years later. Results: Chocolate intake was significantly associated with PWV in a non-linear fashion with the highest levels of PWV in those who never or rarely ate chocolate and lowest levels in those who consumed chocolate once a week. This pattern of results remained and was not attenuated after multivariate adjustment for diabetes, cardiovascular risk factors and dietary variables (p = 0.002). Conclusions: Weekly chocolate intake may be of benefit to arterial stiffness. Further studies are needed to explore the underlying mechanisms that may mediate the observed effects of habitual chocolate consumption on arterial stiffness.


Effect of irrigation bread wheat plants (Triticum aestivum L., cv. Giza 94) with sea water (10 and 20% v/v), spraying with microalgae extracts obtained from Chlorella ellipoida and Spirulina maxima (5 gL-1 dry weight in 0.1% Tween solution) cultivated under normal and stress conditions were studied. Some plant bioregulators (BRGs, ascorbic acid and benzyl adenine, at 200 ppm) at the vegetative growth stage on photosynthetic pigments, antioxidant components, activity of some antioxidant enzymes, lipid peroxidation products, growth parameters, mineral content and economic yield were estimated. Irrigation of wheat plants with sea water led to an increase in Na+ ion, activities of antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase and total peroxidase, and TBARs components. In contrast, the contents of photosynthetic pigments and yield components were reduced. Furthermore, the overall growth of wheat plants was interrupted by irrigation with sea water (10 and 20%) and the effect was pronounced at higher level (20%). Application of BRGs had a slight effect on plant growth, antioxidant behaviour and activity of antioxidant enzymes in plants irrigation with sea water compared with that in stressed wheat plants. Application of algal extracts significantly increased the contents of total chlorophyll and antioxidant phenomenon. In additional, application of algal extracts exhibited strong positive correlation with increase in fresh weight (FW), grain weight and yield components. It is concluded that productive purpose of wheat crop by mean of brackish water (at 20 v/v level) is possible under a level of economical value through its application of algal extracts.

 Key words: Microalgae, sea water, wheat, salinity stress, antioxidant systems.


The AdS/CFT correspondence between theories in AdS space and conformal field theories in physical space-time provides an analytic, semi-classical, color-confining model for strongly-coupled QCD. The soft-wall AdS/QCD model modified by a positive-sign dilaton metric leads to a remarkable one-parameter description of nonperturbative hadron dynamics at zero quark mass, including a zero-mass pion and a Regge spectrum of linear trajectories with the same slope in orbital angular momentum $L$ and radial quantum number $n$ for both mesons and baryons. One also predicts the form of the non-perturbative effective coupling $\alpha_s^{AdS}(Q)$ and its $\beta$-function which agrees with the effective coupling $\alpha_{g_1}$ extracted from the Bjorken sum rule. Light-front holography, which connects the fifth-dimensional coordinate of AdS space $z$ to an invariant impact separation variable $\zeta$, allows one to compute the analytic form of the frame-independent light-front wavefunctions, the fundamental entities which encode hadron properties as well as decay constants, form factors, deeply virtual Compton scattering, exclusive heavy hadron decays and other exclusive scattering amplitudes. One thus obtains a relativistic description of hadrons in QCD at the amplitude level with dimensional counting for hard exclusive reactions at high momentum transfer. As specific examples we discuss the behavior of the pion and nucleon form factors in the space-like and time-like regions. We also review the phenomenology of exclusive processes including some anomalous empirical results.


Our aim in this paper is to model the bid-ask spread resulted from the quotes of USD/MAD by the Moroccan central bank, which is the reference on the Moroccan foreign exchange market. In this respect, we discussed the microstructure of the Moroccan foreign exchange market, which is of primary importance for the analysis of the high frequency fluctuations of exchange rate. Two results of this study worth to be highlighted. The high degree of centralization of the Moroccan Forex market and the very high speed by which the current bid-ask spread reverts to its statistical long-run level.


Induced defences involve the dynamic deployment of limited and specialized defensive resources across multiple locations, to maximize organismal defensive function and fitness. They have been studied intensively in plants and solitary animals, but the induced defences of complex animal societies are poorly understood by comparison, despite the coordinated defensive actions of these taxa.
Here, we ask whether the level of environmental danger induces shifts in the deployment of limited and morphologically specialized soldiers across multiple nests in colonies of the turtle ant Cephalotes rohweri. Specifically, we test whether less defensible nests induce greater soldier deployment, and whether elevated enemy threat induced further increases in deployment, or reduced deployment consistent with a risk-limiting strategy.
We used colony-collection data to provide natural ecological context to our experiments, a field experiment to address how nest-entrance defensibility and soldier number impact defensive performance, and laboratory experiments to test whether differences in nest defensibility and threat level induce dynamic shifts in soldier deployment to new nests.
Less defensible nests were lost rapidly in our field experiment, irrespective of soldier number, but soldier deployment significantly increased survivorship of more defensible nests. Concordantly, less defensible nests induced the deployment of more soldiers per nest under low threat in laboratory experiments. Nevertheless, high-threat conditions revealed a risk-limiting soldier deployment strategy: with more danger, the number of soldiers per nest was significantly reduced in less defensible nests, as was the overall number of new soldier-defended nests. Total deployment to new nests was also consistently lower under high threat, dropping from 40% to 30% of all available soldiers across colonies.
Induced soldier-based defences in turtle ants are therefore context-dependent, and dynamically scaled back at multiple levels when the environment is more dangerous. This dynamic, risk-limiting strategy is in strong contrast to stable patterns of soldier production in ants, and to typical task-allocation dynamics in members of the worker caste. Moreover, these findings establish that the evolution of specialized defensive agents can be coupled with sophisticated and inducible deployment strategies in complex social taxa, as we see for organisms at other levels of biological complexity.

plain language summary is available for this article.


In this paper, we propose an approach for learning regression models efficiently in an environment where multiple features and data-points are added incrementally in a multistep process. At each step, any finite number of features maybe added and hence, the setting is not amenable to low rank updates. We show that our approach is not only efficient and optimal for ordinary least squares, weighted least squares, generalized least squares and ridge regression, but also more generally for generalized linear models and lasso regression that use iterated re-weighted least squares for maximum likelihood estimation. Our approach instantiated to linear settings has close relations to the partitioned matrix inversion mechanism based on Schur's complement. For arbitrary regression methods, even a relaxation of the approach is no worse than using the model from the previous step or using a model that learns on the additional features and optimizes the residual of the model at the previous step. Such problems are commonplace in complex manufacturing operations consisting of hundreds of steps, where multiple measurements are taken at each step to monitor the quality of the final product. Accurately predicting if the finished product will meet specifications at each or, at least, important intermediate steps can be extremely useful in enhancing productivity. We further validate our claims through experiments on synthetic and real industrial data sets.


OF DISSERTATION THE LINKAGE BETWEEN TRANSCRIPTION CONTROL AND EPIGENETIC REGULATION: THE SNAIL STORY AND BEYOND Epigenetic deregulation contributes significantly to the development of multiple human diseases, including cancer. While great effort has been made to elucidate the underlying mechanism, our knowledge on epigenetic regulation is still fragmentary, an important gap being how the diverse epigenetic events coordinate to control gene transcription. In the first part of our study, we demonstrated an important link between Snail-mediated transcriptional control and epigenetic regulation during cancer development. Specifically, we found that the highly conserved SNAG domain of Snail sequentially and structurally mimics the N-terminal tail of histone H3, thereby functions as a molecular "hook", or pseudo substrate, for recruiting histone lysine specific demethylase 1 (LSD1) repressor complex to the E-cadherin promoter. Furthermore, we showed that Snail and LSD1 are both required for E-cadherin repression and EMT induction, and their expression is highly correlated with each other in multiple human tumor tissues. Our findings have important clinical ramifications in that compounds mimicking the SNAG domain may disrupt Snail-LSD1 interaction and inhibit EMT and metastasis. In the second part of our study, we designed a batch of compounds based on the structure of the SNAG domain and are currently screening for candidates capable of competing with SNAG peptide for LSD1 binding. In addition, we applied a peptide pulldown/mass spectrometry-coupled analysis to identify SNAG-interacting proteins, among which are many chromatin enzymes and modulators. Functional characterization of these proteins will help to elucidate the Snail-mediated epigenetic regulation process. In the third part of our study, we found that Snail interacts with poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) through a potential pADPr-binding motif and is subject to poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation, which can stabilize the Snail-LSD1 complex for enhanced PTEN suppression under DNA damage condition. Our findings added another layer to the delicate Snail transcriptional machinery, and indicated that PARP inhibitors may be applied in combination with conventional chemotherapies to target cancers with high expression of Snail and LSD1. In summary, we demonstrated that Snail cooperates with multiple epigenetic machineries to induce EMT as well as survival of tumor cells. Our findings contribute to a better appreciation of Snail-mediated epigenetic network as well as diversification of therapeutic strategies against cancer.


A Web-based remote interactive laboratory (RIL) developed to deliver Internetworking laboratory experience to geographically remote graduate students is presented in this paper. The onsite Internetworking program employs hands-on laboratories in a group setting that correlates with the constructivist and collaborative pedagogical approach. This paper discusses the pedagogical and technical considerations that influence the design and implementation of the remote laboratory environment given the constraints of the special hardware and learning outcomes of the program. For wide-ranging usability, the remote Internetworking (INWK) laboratory uses de facto networking standards and commercial and broad-band Internet connectivity to ensure real-time secure interaction with equipment. A four-tier role architecture consisting of faculty, local facilitators, remote facilitators, and students has been determined appropriate to maintain academic integrity and ensure good quality of interaction with the remote laboratory. A survey employing a five-point scale has been devised to measure the usability of the remote access INWK laboratory.


After 50 years, World War II still looms large in contemporary thought as a great crusade which kept the world free from the tyranny of the Axis Powers. How the Allied Powers managed to forge their victory, and defeat the enemy, is an oft-told story which has changed little since 1945 when the first memoirs and histories began to appear. Now, in this original and provocative book, H.P. Willmott offers a fresh examination of the two concurrent conflicts that led up to war. Interweaving episodes from the European and Far East theatres chronologically, Willmott narrates the entire course of the conflict from the earliest Japanese and Italian battles of the thirties through the fall of Berlin and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Challenging traditional perceptions of the belligerents and their battles, Willmott places them in the broader context of political, diplomatic and economic struggles that extended from the Versailles Treaty of 1919 into the third quarter of the 20th century. "The Great Crusade" takes issue with commonly held notions about the war, offering new interpretations of major campaigns and individuals and a striking comparison between the American Civil War and the Pacific wars. It argues and debunks the myth of German military superiority.


Authors and researchers have given increasing attention to perfectionism in recent years. This attention has included a proliferation of scales designed to measure perfectionism and investigations of the relationship between perfectionism and a host of emotional and physical problems and diagnoses. Perfectionism has been positively linked to eating disorders (Axtell & Newlon, 1993; Brouwers & Wiggum, 1993), depression (Blatt, Quinlan, Pilkonis, & Shea, 1995), personality disorders (Hewitt, Flett, & Turnbull, 1992), migraines (Brewerton & George, 1993), sexual dysfunction (Quadland, 1980), anxiety (Alden, Biding, W Flett, Hewitt, & Dyck, 1989), and obsessive compulsive disorders (Broday, 1988; Frost, Steketee, Cohn, & Griess, 1994). These findings are consistent with earlier anecdotal and theoretical work that framed perfectionism as pathological and linked perfectionism to lower levels of self-esteem. For instance, Horney (1950) described perfectionists as neurotically attempting to mold themselves to an impossibly idealized image, making low self-esteem inevitable. Missildine (1963) observed that dissatisfaction with self and low self-esteem were key elements of perfectionism. Hollender (1965) described the perfectionist as motivated by profound insecurity to continue attempting to gain acceptance from parents through performance accomplishments and faultless behavior. Burns (1980) maintained that perfectionists, who strain compulsively toward unrealistic and impossible goals of perfection, pay a price that "includes not only decreased productivity, but also impaired health, poor self-control, troubled personal relationships, and low self-esteem" (p. 34). Pacht (1984) suggested that in order to prove that they are loveable, perfectionists set goals unrealistically high. These goals are generally unattainable, and as a result, perfectionists see themselves as failures and unlovable. Pacht noted, "the insidious nature of perfectionism leads me to use the label only when describing a kind of psychopathology" (p. 387). Sorotzkin (1985) further noted that for the perfectionist "any deviation from the perfectionistic goal is likely to be accompanied by moralistic self-criticism and lowered self-esteem" (p. 564). Much of the early empirical work investigating perfectionism operationalized the construct in a fashion consistent with the early theoretical work. For instance, Burns (1980) modified a portion of the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS; Weissman & Beck, 1978) and developed a scale specifically designed to measure the degree to which perfectionists strive "compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and ... measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment" (p. 34). Later efforts at assessing perfectionism have taken a multidimensional approach. Two scales, both called the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990; Hewitt & Flett, 1989), were designed to measure different aspects of perfectionism. Hewitt and Flett proposed three dimensions of perfectionism: self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism. Self-oriented perfectionism includes setting high standards and using those standards to evaluate performance. Other-oriented perfectionism includes holding others to high standards and evaluating others critically when they fail to meet those standards. Socially prescribed perfectionism includes the belief that others are holding one to high standards and pressuring them to be perfect. Hewitt and Flett have consistently maintained that high scores on all three dimensions are considered to be indicative of pathology (e.g., Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, & O'Brien, 1991; Flett et al., 1989). In another attempt to measure perfectionism from a multidimensional perspective, Frost et al. …


1Both a potent marine biotoxin and neurotoxin, saxitoxin (STX) is considered the active chemical responsible for deaths associated with the disease known as Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP). STX manifests as a Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) due to significant algal cell proliferation in aquatic environments. Although its original detection was in 1957, the chemical currently lacks a detoxification pathway and detailed mechanism of action. Moreover, prediction and detection of STX is not fully understood, and frequency of saxitoxin blooms is on the rise. The physical and economic impact of saxitoxin on human and aquatic life continues to increase worldwide, stimulating a renewed interest and research into this chemical.


This book explores how policies of decentralisation and community participation adopted in Cameroon in 1996 have played out on the ground since 2004. These reforms were carried out amid economic crisis, structural adjustment and political upheaval. At the time, popular sentiment was that change on the economic and political fronts was imperative. However, the ruling elite, some of whom had been shuttling around the state apparatus since independence, feared that succumbing to popular demands for change was tantamount to political suicide, as was the case elsewhere on the continent. These elites thwarted opposition demands for a ?sovereign? national conference to discuss constitutional reform. The Francophone-dominated elite fiercely objected to Anglophone demands for the restoration of the Federal state that was dissolved in 1972. Instead, decentralisation was presented as an authentic forum for grassroots autonomy and municipal councils as credible arenas for community participation in local development. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to unearth the permutations of decentralisation and community participation in Cameroon. It explores how local actors have responded to the implementation of state policy of decentralisation. Further, it documents how local issues observed in Bali in the North West Region and Mbankomo in the Central Region of Cameroon impact and are impacted by national policies and processes.


Abstract
 Five species of mosses (Anomodon pseudotristis, Calymperes afzelii, C. motleyi, Mesonodon flavescens, Mitthyridium flavum) are reported as new for New Caledonia. Anomodon and Mesonodon are new genus reports for New Caledonia. Calomnium iwatsukii, a species endemic to New Caledonia and hitherto only known from the type locality, is recorded from a second locality. Sporophytes of Sphagnum novo-caledoniae were found for the first time and are described. The following sporophytic features of S. novo-caledoniae are rare or absent among the genus Sphagnum: sporophytes developed on elongated branches, capsules immersed in perichaetial leaves, pseudopodium extremely short, pseudostomata absent from capsule surface.


Ramie plant ((Boehmeria nivea L. Gaud) bears a volumeous biomass harvested every 60 days. Much biomass is harvested and much nutriens are absorbed and removed from the soil make the nutrient scarse. To maintain the productivity of soil and to supply the requrement of plant to the level of enough nutrition, an experiment was conducted in Tanjungsari subdistrict of Sumedang regency in the month of July to Oktober 2009. The experiment design used was randomized block design with four treatments of fertilization formula (dosages) i.e. 1)A 10 ton Sheep Dung (25 kg N + 25 kg K); 2) B 10 ton Sheep Dung (45 kg N + 45 kg K); 3) C 20 ton Sheep Dung (25 kg N + 25 kg K); D 20 ton Sheep Dung (45 kg N + 45 kg K). Sheep dung was applied only once in the planting time and nitrogen and potassium ferilizer were applied after every harvest. Each treatment was replicated 6 times. Variables of growth and yield which were measured were: number of stalks; length of stalk; diameter of stalk; biomass weight; fresh stalk weight; china grass weight, and; degummed fiber weight. Result showed that responses of ramie plant were significant, better growth and more yields. Potassium fertilizer gave a good effect on quality of fiber. The dosages applied to the ramie plant did not reach the maximum rate. Ramie plant requires much nutrition to support the rapid growth and the big volumeous biomass removed from soil. Ramie plant is consider as a robust plant.


Study of photonic spin-orbital interactions, which involves control of the propagation and spatial distributions of light with the polarization of electromagnetic fields, is not only important at the fundamental level but also has significant implications for functional photonic applications that require active tuning of directional light propagation. Many of the experimental demonstrations have been attributed to the spin-momentum locking characteristic of evanescent waves. In this letter, we show another property of evanescent waves: the polarization dependent direction of the imaginary part of the Poynting vector, i.e. reactive power. Based on this property, we propose a simple and robust way to tune the directional far-field scattering from nanoparticles near a surface under evanescent wave illumination by controlling linear polarization and direction of the incident light.


The delivery of a construction project is characterized by the participation of several individuals. Owner, architect / engineer, and contractor are the most important players of this process. The owner's needs are expressed in plans and specifications created by the architect and physically performed by the contractor. Throughout the life of the project, there are contracts and several direct and indirect relationships among the players. The delivery system characterizes these aspects, from planning to controlling, of a construction project.Multiple prime is one type of delivery system that is the subject of many discussions in the industry. General contractors, architects and owners believe that this system inherently has coordination problems. On the other side, specialty contractors believe that this system has several advantages because of the exclusion of the middleman and the direct relationship of these contractors to the owner. The goal of this study is to objectively analyze the performance of construction delivery systems within public school districts. The districts in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Virginia form the population of this study.Quantitative and qualitative measurements are used as the variables for comparison. ANOVA and two-sample t tests are used as statistical tools for the quantitative, and the Chi-Square test is used for the qualitative analysis. The data collected is divided into two different sets. The first set includes all the valid responses. The second set is limited to the analysis of projects greater than $ 10,000,000. A section with the descriptive statistics of litigation cases is also included in this study.


The Black-Scholes equation is a partial differential equation (PDE) characterizing the price evolution of a European call option and put option on a stock. In this work, we use Multi-Quadratic Radial Basis Functions (Multi-Quadratic RBF) for approximating the solution of the BlackScholes equation and show how it can be applied to a case in which the volatility is not constant but is dependent on the transaction costs (a nonlinear case). That is, volatility satisfies an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck stochastic process. These nonlinear models are also presented in the financial markets characterized by lack of liquidity. After discretizing the problem with the Crank-Nicholson algorithm, we expose a numerical example to validate the developed method. Mathematics Subject Classification: 91G30; 91B25; 91G60


The quantity and quality of military historical work on the participation of South Africa in the Second World War, with few exceptions, namely that of a few significant academic contributions over the last decade, lags appreciably compared to the plethora of titles offered on all aspects of the war in the buoyant international market. This article investigates and evaluates more important South African primary and secondary sources pertaining to the Union Defence Force's participation in the Second World War, highlighting available sources and limitations in published material. Possible opportunities for further research are identified where there are areas of historiographical hiatus.  Reasons are offered for what amounts to a rather threadbare South African historiography, especially when compared to the prolific historiographical output of other belligerents. The article offers a brief survey of primary sources, identifying some of the archives that have received scant attention. Then follows an analysis of secondary sources broken down into official, semi-official and general history that examines their methodological integrity and completeness with a view to identifying what historical contributions may still be made in the light of what has been produced.


Canada has a huge stock of biomass resources, which provides a basis (and a temptation) for development of a major bio-fuels industry. Both federal and provincial governments have engaged in a wide array of subsidies, mandates, and other measures to stimulate production and consumption of biofuels. As a result, biofuels has become a growth industry in Canada with production of ethanol almost 10 times higher than it was ten years earlier. However, this has come at considerable cost to taxpayers. Increased biofuel production has resulted in minimal reduction in greenhouse gases, short run (but not long run) increases in net farm income (that benefited grain and oilseed producers but hurt livestock producers), large increases in the prices of farm land due to the higher grain and oilseed prices, and minimal impacts on rural economic diversification.


This paper reports on a number of very sour gas dolomitic reservoirs suspected of having large amounts of sulphur. This sulphur shows up on the form of inclusions in cores and thin-sections. There is no laboratory method currently available for the determination of the total sulphur in the reservoir rock. Solvent extraction was used for partial removal of the sulphur from two pieces of core. A preliminary project established the value of X-ray Computer Assisted Tomography (CAT) Scanning in determining residual sulphur after extraction. A procedure was established and used for the determination of the sulphur content in a number of core pieces of a target reservoir. The sulphur saturation was calculated using a computer model developed in-house. It is the first time such an approach has been attempted. The results showed a wide saturation range of the sulphur present in the core. The average sulphur saturation of eight core peices has been estimated at 34.1%. The core porosity was corrected to consider the volume occupied by the sulphur as part of the fluid volume.


By analogy to heteronuclear systems, coherence can be transferred adiabatically in the rotating frame between two selected spins I and S belonging to a homonuclear network of scalar-coupled spins. In contrast to cross polarization with const. radiofrequency field amplitudes, the transfer function obtained with adiabatic methods depends in a monotonic, nonoscillatory manner on the duration of the transfer interval. The efficiency of the transfer does not depend on the magnitude of the scalar coupling const. JIS, although it can be affected by relaxation and by couplings JIR and JSR to further spins R. Three methods were studied: (i) adiabatic demagnetization of spin I in the rotating frame followed by observation of the resulting J-ordered state, (ii) adiabatic demagnetization of spin I in the rotating frame followed by adiabatic remagnetization of spin S, and (iii) adiabatic transfer were spins I and S are subjected simultaneously to time-dependent spin-locking fields. In all three cases, the optimum shape of the time dependence of the radiofrequency field amplitudes is discussed, with the help of a geometric interpretation of cross polarization. [on SciFinder (R)]


Due to the ever-increasing number of vehicles, transportation issues, especially transportation safety have gained great importance. One of the social problems in the world, and particularly in developing countries, which each year imposes great casualties, and economic, social and cultural costs on society, is traffic accidents. Traffic accidents cause waste of time and assets and loss of human resources in society, therefore studies and measures to reduce accidents and damage caused by them, particularly in recent decades, has become important. One of the suggested ways to deal with the problem of car accidents is the modeling of accident-prone points, as by identifying these points, factors affecting accidents can be identified, and elimination of these factors leads to a reduction in accidents. Numerous studies have been conducted in this respect, using official police data to identify these points and performing necessary analysis on them. Official data has gaps and shortcomings. Using Volunteered Geographic Information to determine accident-prone venues can be a suitable answer to the problems of using official data. The aim of this study is the use of volunteered geographic information in relation to the accidents and their causes. By taking into account factors affecting traffic accidents in the study area, and determining the importance of each factor, as well as the severity-of-accidents parameter, and using the Expert Choice software, a decision-making software based on the hierarchical analysis, high-risk venues are determined, and the accident-prone points of the study area are specified.


The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines 'traction' as the adhesive friction of a body on a surface on which it moves.1 Within the field of biomedical informatics, we have updated that definition so that the 'body' may refer to a technological advance, and the 'surface' to a person, group, or environment in which the technological advance has been introduced. In this context, traction implies not just adoption, but adherence, or the 'state of steady or faithful attachment'.

By any measure, the past 5 years has witnessed the attainment of traction by computerized provider order entry (CPOE). Certainly, the work undertaken by the Institute of Medicine to position CPOE as the most critical component of a safe decision-making environment,2–5 leading to the eventual mandates for CPOE as a part of certified health information technology,6 justifies this assertion. The early efforts of informatics researchers such as McDonald,7 Miller et al ,8 Geissbuhler and Miller9 and Warner et …

Correspondence to Dr Kevin Johnson, Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, 2209 Garland Avenue, Nashville, TN 37232, USA; kevin.johnson{at}vanderbilt.edu


a b s t r a c t Service-oriented computing has brought special attention to service description, especially in connection with semantic technologies. The expected proliferation of publicly accessible services can benefit greatly from tool support and automation, both of which are the focus of Semantic Web Service (SWS) frameworks that especially address service discovery, composition and execution. As the first SWS standard, in 2007 the World Wide Web Consortium produced a lightweight bottom-up specification called SAWSDL for adding semantic annotations to WSDL service descriptions. Building on SAWSDL, this article presents WSMO-Lite, a lightweight ontology of Web service semantics that distinguishes four semantic aspects of services: function, behavior, information model, and nonfunctional properties, which together form a basis for semantic automation. With the WSMO-Lite ontology, SAWSDL descriptions enable semantic automation beyond simple input/output matchmaking that is supported by SAWSDL itself. Further, to broaden the reach of WSMO-Lite and SAWSDL tools to the increasingly common RESTful services, the article adds hRESTS and MicroWSMO, two HTML microformats that mirror WSDL and SAWSDL in the documentation of RESTful services, enabling combining RESTful services with WSDL-based ones in a single semantic framework. To demonstrate the feasibility and versatility of this approach, the article presents common algorithms for Web service discovery and composition adapted to WSMO-Lite.


Purified elastin was examined by means of dynamic and static mechanical testing, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and a study performed of its swelling characteristics and density in various solvents. Purification of the material was effected by a combination of auto-claving and solvent extraction and the method investigated for suitability by gravimetric analysis, chemical testing and scanning electron microscopy. Investigation of previously reported mechanocalorimetric experiments on elastin (one of the major foundations of the globular theory of elastin structure) revealed a misinterpretation in the results and a re-interpretation could be made which fully supported the concept of elastin as an amorphous elastomer. This re-interpretation was backed by experimental results of swelling studies on the material. Dynamic investigation of the temperature dependence of the shear modulus using a free oscillating inverted torsion pendulum between 0°C and 70°C revealed water and ethanol/water (up to 50 vol % ethanol) saturated elastin to display modulus/temperature characteristics corresponding with those of a rubber at the higher temperature end of its glass transition region. Formamide saturated elastin displayed the linear positive shear modulus relationship with temperature associated with equilibrium elastic rubbers. The effect of varying saturation was also examined by the method. Decreasing saturation was found to increase the glass transition temperature of the water/elastin composite. The glass transition temperatures and secondary relaxations of fully saturated elastin/water and elastin/formamide were investigated by measurement of logarithmic decrement at below 0°C. Further studies of the mechanical states of the various elastin/liquid systems were carried out using apparatus based on the 'Intron' tensile testing machine. The stress responses to step and steady state strains were monitored over varying temperatures. 'Constant swelling' elastin solvents of 20:80 v/v ethanol/water, 30:70 v/v ethanediol/water, and 40:60 v/v glycerol/water were used as well as water and formamide alone. The results confirmed the viscous element of the transition region state of the elastin/water and elastin/solvent/water systems and the equilibrium rubber elasticity of the elastin/formamide system. Further steady-state strain tests on the elastin/water system at varying elongations yielded data which could be analysed to provide an assessment of the energy contribution to the retractive force of the material (fe/f). This ratio appeared to lie in the region 0.0 to 0.1, a value typical of amorphous rubbers and one which re-affirms the random coil concept of elastin structure. Structural examination was performed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Elastin from both elastin/water and elastin/formamide systems was used from both purified bovine ligamentum nuchae and porcine aorta. For high resolution transmission electron microscopy the technique of negative staining was employed to enhance contrast. Specimen preparation was by a method of fragmentation followed by air or freeze drying. Results indicated that previously observed fibrillar structures within the material were probably an artefact caused by the preparation process and not typical of elastin in its rubbery, in vivo condition. The overall conclusion of the work was that the structure of solvated elastin conforms to the classical random coil model and not to the globular, fibrillar or 'oiled-coil' concepts suggested in the literature.


Many residency programs struggle with effective and efficient methods for their program to synthesize and analyze data to create robust milestones-based assessment of residents.  Residents and faculty in the Pediatric Residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center collaborated to design an innovative iterative process for resident assessment using rotation-based Milestones reports, faculty sub-committees, and discussion with the resident. Time spent and frequency of Milestones determinations made at each phase of assessment process were tabulated and feedback summarized from faculty, residents, and administrators.  Our new process integrated milestones determinations into our existing committee review structure without any additional time added to the process. Faculty perceived that the system was efficient and provided more insight about each resident.  The program director used the sub-committee summaries for semi-annual reviews and letters of reference. Residents appreciated the fairness of all residents being reviewed by the same faculty. Milestones determinations were made by: evaluations alone (69%), CCC sub-committee (18%), full CCC (7%), and additional data or PD decision (6%).   The full CCC was needed more frequently for professionalism and systems-based practice Milestones determinations.  Iterative assessment systems have the potential to save valuable faculty time without compromising the quality of assessments.


ABSTRACT Textbooks are an important information resource for tertiary students. E-textbooks are now widely available and accessible to students offering them distinct advantages over print books at lower costs. However the uptake of e-textbooks has been slow and student preferences for either medium are not well understood. This study adopts a qualitative approach using an expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) lens and revealed causal mapping to understand from students participating in focus groups, their intentions to continue using e-textbooks. We extend ECT by including two new constructs: perceived quality and perceived value. The results assist in interpreting students' behavior regarding intentions to continue using e-textbooks and the efficacy of the extended ECT model.


Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify some of existing problems associated with collaboration among SMEs of the same network. Concretely, the problems are focused. The research objective is to identify the most relevant problems existing when SMEs have to deal with decentralized decisions (DDM). Design/methodology/approach: Through the literature review there have been collected collaborative problems caused by inter-organizational barriers. The approach taken is a qualitative study and analysis that classifies collaborative problems from less important to very important. In light of this, we are able to identify what are the most relevant problems to study in the NHN collaborative context. Findings and Originality/value: The developed methodology allows researchers to indentify amongst the collaborative problems those that are most relevant to solve in the NHN context, with the main aim of providing solutions in the future. The research aim is to provide the expert in the collaborative field a starting point to address the collaborative problems SMEs can find when belonging to collaborative networks. Research limitations/implications: Not all the problems that appear when an SME establish collaborative relationships, in a NHN, are considered. The identified problems have been arisen because there are discussed in the literature for addressing collaborative problems among networked partners. Identified problems are also considered because there are relevant to achieve collaboration among SMEs. Originality/value: The degree of coverage and the degree of significance is the taxonomy criteria used to identify the importance of solution degree of the encountered collaborative problems, in NHN context, in order to provide a future research of solutions to overcome them.


OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the oxygen transporting capabilities of hemoglobin vesicles by studying the physiologic responses to exchange transfusion with hemoglobin vesicles in anesthetized rats. Exchange transfusions with phosphate buffered saline, hemoglobin vesicles containing methemoglobin (and therefore, deprived of oxygen transporting capabilities), and washed rat red blood cells were used as controls.

DESIGN
Prospective, randomized, controlled trial.

SETTING
Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University.

SUBJECTS
Twenty-seven male Wistar rats.

INTERVENTIONS
The rats were anesthetized with an intraperitoneal injection of sodium pentobarbital (50 mg/kg). Catheters (PE-20 tubing, outer diameter 0.8 mm, inner diameter 0.5 mm) were introduced into the right jugular vein for infusion and the right common carotid artery for blood withdrawal and mean arterial pressure measurements. The left kidney was exposed by median abdominal incision, and a needle-type polarographic oxygen electrode was placed in the left renal cortex for renal cortical tissue oxygen tension measurements.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Phosphate buffered saline and methemoglobin vesicles were administered as nonoxygen-carrying fluids, and rat red blood cells as oxygen-carrying fluid. Measurements included mean arterial pressure, arterial blood gas analysis, and renal cortical tissue oxygen tension as an indicator of systemic oxygen transport. In the rat red blood cell and hemoglobin vesicles groups, mean arterial pressure was sustained at the end of the exchange transfusion (82.3 +/- 27.5% and 73.5 +/- 11.5%, respectively, from the basal values). However, in the phosphate buffered saline and methemoglobin vesicles groups, mean arterial pressure decreased significantly (p < .05) (33.9 +/- 13.8% and 35.7 +/- 8.2%, respectively). Renal cortical tissue oxygen tension in the rat red blood cell and hemoglobin vesicles groups was sustained at a significantly higher level (p < .05) (83.5 +/- 9.3% and 75.0 +/- 11.9%, respectively) compared with the phosphate buffered saline and methemoglobin vesicles groups (44.9 +/- 12.8% and 58.3 +/- 6.2%, respectively) at the end of the exchange transfusion. Metabolic acidosis was more progressive in the phosphate buffered saline and methemoglobin vesicles groups, manifested as lower pH and base excess values. Platelet counts tended to decrease slightly in the hemoglobin vesicles and methemoglobin vesicles groups, but the changes were not significant.

CONCLUSIONS
Hemoglobin vesicles have an oxygen transporting capability almost equivalent to rat red blood cells and can be considered as a potential artificial oxygen carrier.


This article has unpacked issues surrounding workers' poor attitude in terms of work and focuses on Nigeria and on Africa at large. It addresses the lapses of labour for both employers and the employees, which include misconduct, non-commitment, unfaithfulness, apathy and exploitation, amongst other things. It is the argument of this article that a misconception of work and a lack of work ethics are some of the major factors responsible for these negative attitudes. In order to get around this perceived problem, the article suggests a theological solution which is rooted in the Christian Scriptures. Thus polemic approaches as well as an exegesis of the Scriptures concerning the right concept and attitude to work are employed in this study. The synchronic approach to exegesis is employed in this work. This approach looks at the final form of the text as it stands in the Bible. The particular components of this approach applied in this article are narrative and rhetorical criticism whilst others involve lexical, grammatical and syntactical analysis. In addition, the Intercultural Hermeneutics approach of contextualization is employed. The article points out how work which, from a theological perspective, originated with creation and was not intended to be evil later became conceived as a kind of punishment. It also demonstrates how work became bifurcated into secular and spiritual spheres with its attendant negative consequences in the Middle Ages. It concludes with a presentation of the biblical ethics of work which is recommended as a benchmark for attitudinal change in stakeholders.


In this paper we seek to exploit information geometry in order to define the Riemannian structure of the statistical manifold associated with the Chan-Vese active contour model. This Riemannian structure is obtained through a relationship between the contour's Mumford-Shah energy functional and the likelihood of the categorical latent variables of a Gaussian mixture model. Accordingly the natural metric of the statistical manifold formed by the contours is determined by their Fisher information matrix. Mathematical developments show that this matrix has a closed-form analytic expression and is diagonal. Based on this, we subsequently develop a natural gradient algorithm for the Chan-Vese active contour, with application to image segmentation. Because the proposed method performs optimization on the parameters natural manifold it attains dramatically faster convergence rates than the Euclidean gradient descent algorithm commonly used in the literature. Experiments performed on standard test images from the active contour literature are presented and confirm that the proposed natural gradient algorithm delivers accurate segmentation results in few iterations. Comparisons with methods from the state of the art show that the proposed method converges extremely fast, and could improve significantly the speed of many existing image segmentation methods based on the Chan-Vese active contour as well as enable its application to new problems. A MATLAB implementation of the proposed method is available at http://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/~p12320/code/SmoothNaturalGradient4ChanVese.rar.


An important recent labor market trend is the rapid increase in the number of immigrants employed in the information technology sector who have temporary worker status. The dual labor market theory suggests that temporary immigrant workers will be affected more adversely than native workers during a recession. This study uses OLS regression models to predict wages and employment levels (through usual hours worked) in information technology (IT) occupations as a function of immigration status, education level, age, gender, the recession and a set of interactive terms. The results from this study unexpectedly show that employment of native workers in IT occupations fell during the recession while the employment of temporary immigrant workers in IT occupations rose. Also surprising is that wages of temporary immigrant workers in IT occupations do not appear to be significantly different from their native counterparts in those occupations even during the recession. This suggests that employers retained temporary immigrants and even added to their employment to maximize productivity and fill a skills gap rather than realize alternative benefits of retaining native workers in long-term positions. TEMPORARY IMMIGRANT LABOR MARKET 3


Research data is central to research; sharing and enabling access to research data are now seen as essential to research integrity. Making research data accessible goes beyond validation as it also supports new research and innovation. However, sharing of research data is not yet 'business as usual', though digital technology is making data sharing much easier and Jisc is currently harnessing this in partnership with the UK research community to develop the research data shared service (RDSS). The RDSS will enable research organizations to support researchers to easily deposit data for publication, discovery, safe storage, long-term archiving and preservation. Ultimately it will support researchers in sharing and re-using data and will enable increased reproducibility of research. The initial impetus for the development is to better enable institutions to meet policy requirements around research data, whilst exploiting efficiencies and best practice generated by working collectively. This article examines the development of this service so far, from initial ideas and requirements gathering to entering technical development.


The need for automation of the identity recognition process for a vast number of applications resulted in great advancement of biometric systems in the recent years. Yet, many studies indicate that these systems suffer from vulnerabilities to spoofing (presentation) attacks: a weakness that may compromise their usage in many cases. Face verification systems account for one of the most attractive spoofing targets, due to the easy access to face images of users, as well as the simplicity of the spoofing attack manufacturing process. Many counter-measures to spoofing have been proposed in the literature. They are based on different cues that are used to distinguish between real accesses and spoofing attacks. The task of detecting spoofing attacks is most often considered as a binary classification problem, with real accesses being the positive class and spoofing attacks being the negative class. The main objective of this thesis is to put the problem of anti-spoofing in a wider context, with an accent on its cooperation with a biometric verification system. In such a context, it is important to adopt an integrated perspective on biometric verification and anti-spoofing. In this thesis we identify and address three points where integration of the two systems is of interest. The first integration point is situated at input-level. At this point, we are concerned with providing a unified information that both verification and anti-spoofing systems use. The unified information includes the samples used to enroll clients in the system, as well as the identity claims of the client at query time. We design two anti-spoofing schemes, one with a generative and one with a discriminative approach, which we refer to as client-specific, as opposed to the traditional client-independent ones. The proposed methods are applied on several case studies for the face mode. Overall, the experimental results prove the integration to be beneficial for creating trustworthy face verification systems. At input-level, the results show the advantage of the client-specific approaches over the client-independent ones. At output-level, they present a comparison of the fusion methods. The case studies are furthermore used to demonstrate the EPS framework and its potential in evaluation of biometric verification systems under spoofing attacks. The source code for the full set of methods is available as free software, as a satellite package to the free signal processing and machine learning toolbox Bob. It can be used to reproduce the results of the face mode case studies presented in this thesis, as well as to perform additional analysis and improve the proposed methods. Furthermore, it can be used to design case studies applying the proposed methods to other biometric modes. At the second integration point, situated at output-level, we address the issue of combining the output of biometric verification and anti-spoofing systems in order to achieve an optimal combined decision about an input sample. We adopt a multiple expert fusion approach and we investigate several fusion methods, comparing the verification performance and robustness to spoofing of the fused systems. The third integration point is associated with the evaluation process. The integrated perspective implies three types of inputs for the biometric system: real accesses, zero-effort impostors and spoofing attacks. We propose an evaluation methodology for biometric verification systems under spoofing attacks, called Expected Performance and Spoofability (EPS) framework, which accounts for all the three types of input and the error rates associated with them. Within this framework, we propose the EPS Curve (EPSC), which enables unbiased comparison of systems.


We integrate two powerful ideas, geometry and deep visual representation learning, into recurrent network architectures for mobile visual scene understanding. The proposed networks learn to "lift" 2D visual features and integrate them over time into latent 3D feature maps of the scene. They are equipped with differentiable geometric operations, such as projection, unprojection, egomotion stabilization, in order to compute a geometrically-consistent mapping between the world scene and their 3D latent feature space. We train the proposed architectures to predict novel image views given short frame sequences as input. Their predictions strongly generalize to scenes with a novel number of objects, appearances and configurations, and greatly outperform predictions of previous works that do not consider egomotion stabilization or a space-aware latent feature space. Our experiments suggest the proposed space-aware latent feature arrangement and egomotion-stabilized convolutions are essential architectural choices for spatial common sense to emerge in artificial embodied visual agents.


The concept of need-based systems is that they are not instantiated until they are brought to use. Such systems are either designed, assembled and instantiated for very concrete needs, alternatively built on speculation. They are used for evaluation, training or for real. In most cases they are not instantiated, though possibly brought into use as needed. How should needs be expressed? Needs are expressed in terms of results and effects. They may be simple or complex, where complex needs can be seen as structured compositions of more basic needs. When facing a hostile situation, it is critical to have predicted all needs necessary for resolving the given assignment. The complexity of needs, and of their interdependencies may appear to be overwhelming, and it is important to find optimal solutions to the problem at hand. What is needed is a knowledge-based conceptual model that describes the inter-relation of needs, predictions and effects. This paper proposes a number of viewpoints and tools to be applied to the construction of need-based systems -- viewing needs as a resource economy, as a non-linear dynamical system, making use of game theory, decision theory, and risk management. Models for needs and predictions, and the ways they are utilized, extends current systems engineering methods.


Li Po (AD 701-62) and Tu Fu (AD 712-70) were devoted friends who are traditionally considered to be among China's greatest poets. Li Po, a legendary carouser, was an itinerant poet whose writing, often dream poems or spirit-journeys, soars to sublime heights in its descriptions of natural scenes and powerful emotions. His sheer escapism and joy is balanced by Tu Fu, who expresses the Confucian virtues of humanity and humility in more autobiographical works that are imbued with great compassion and earthy reality, and shot through with humour. Together these two poets of the T'ang dynasty complement each other so well that they often came to be spoken of as one - Li-Tu' - who covers the whole spectrum of human life, experience and feeling.


Physical activity guidelines have become a focal point of mass media messages promoting physical activity to the adult population. Messages regarding sedentary behaviour have also emerged. Further, Chapter 3 identified knowledge of just 18% within a large sample of highly educated and employed UK adults. Of concern is the further finding that knowledge is likely to be higher within this group than within the general population and many groups within society may therefore have even lower knowledge. As many individuals are seemingly not likely to know the current physical activity guidelines, disseminating messages to promote them appears to be a reasonable strategy. However, Chapter 1 of this thesis highlighted the lack of research investigating the efficacy of messages designed around physical activity guidelines. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 began to explore some of the possible motivational implications of messages prominent in mass media campaigns promoting physical activity guidelines. Chapter 4 describes a cross-sectional study which compared the effects of messages using the threshold of 150 minutes a week with a generic message on perceived benefits of physical activity. Messages were representative of those found in mass media campaigns. Those receiving a threshold message held significantly less positive views of the benefits of physical activity at durations below 150 minutes a week. While a threshold message may be motivationally damaging in certain contexts, they tend not to be provided in isolation. Intensity of physical activity i.e. moderate-to-vigorous (MVPA) is another key aspect of physical activity guidelines featured in mass media campaigns. Subsequently, Chapter 5 employed an online survey of highly educated adults to investigate associations between threshold and generic messages describing MVPA as either walking or using a physiological description, with motivational constructs. Interestingly, the message incorporating a threshold was motivationally advantageous when MVPA was described as walking. On the other hand, inactive adults tend to overestimate their physical activity with walking behaviour being serially overestimated. This could result in reduced motivation to engage in MVPA. The influence of regular walking speed on misperceptions was therefore investigated in Chapter 6. Further, accurate knowledge of physical activity requirements has been theorised to reduce misperceptions. Chapter 6 reports findings that regularly slow walkers are more likely to overestimate their physical activity levels while knowledge of guidelines has no effect. This leaves a complex picture of the motivational qualities of messages promoting physical activity guidelines. Finally, Chapter 7 describes a content analysis which broadens the investigation of mass media messages by scrutinising the introduction of messages promoting reductions in sedentary behaviour. Sticking closely to guidelines, combining messages on sedentary behaviour with those on physical activity, the relative omission of standing and the demonisation of sitting emerged as common themes. This thesis highlights the problem of low knowledge of physical activity guidelines within a sample of UK adults and points towards a lack of evidence-based messaging. With knowledge being low, the provision of a threshold is desirable on an informational level. The provision of walking as an exemplar appears to make the threshold more amenable, however, for inactive adults the use of this exemplar in messages may lead to overestimation of physical activity and decrease motivation. Clearly, the motivational implications of these messages are complex and require further investigation.


More and more municipalities in the Philippines are installing CCTV cameras in their streets. But if the cameras are of low resolution or the cars are too far away then identity marks of the car cannot be read. If a video of the car was captured, super-resolution techniques can be applied to reconstruct a high-resolution image from the low-resolution video. In this paper, we examine the effect of downsampling on the quality and resolution of a super-resolved image by measuring their structural similarity index and modulation transfer function at varying resize factors. We simulated a CCTV footage by capturing movies of a remote controlled toy car with a signage attached to its side. To simulate low resolution, we resized video frames from a factor of 0.1 to 1 of their original dimensions. It was observed that text is recognizable at super-resolved images having SSIM index values of greater than or equal to 0.5 which corresponds to a scale factor of 0.41 (in SSIM = 0.5). At this scale factor, the resolution limit is at 7 pixels per line pair.