AbstractThe aim for this article is to generate theory on activity that many teachers perform; the practice of improvisation. Improvisation is a professional method in teaching practice that very often is so taken-for-granted that it to some extent is under-theorized in the area of educational research. In education, an important purpose of the robustness of research involves educational practice. And so, the article is based on arts-based co-teaching project experiences. A primary school teacher and I set the project in a basic education public school in Vaasa, Finland in school year 2015-2016. Improvisation is here approached from a position formed by participatory research practice. Co-mentoring theory (Cf. Mullen, 2012) serves as a backdrop for understanding how the article creates a relation between co-teaching experiences and theory-based reasoning on the phenomena. The research method is informed by a/r/tography. The research question is: what are the elements that can be recognised as improvisation in the teaching experiences from the project? In the project the following questions related to improvisation and development of teachers' professional work were articulated: What are the elements of meanings and interests in teaching improvisation practice? How can we better understand the didactic character of improvisation in teaching practice? What are the outcomes for the profession? How do the connections between art and pedagogy practice show when approaching the practice in order to promote curriculum and instruction development in improvisation as teaching practice?(Published: 16 January, 2017)Citation: Hannah Kaihovirta. ''Teacher Improvisation as Processes of Mosaic, Kaleidoscope and Rhizome an arts-based,co-teaching approach.'' Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, Vol. 1, 2017, pp. 1-15.http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/jased.v1.508 1


We reassess the gains from monetary policy coordination within the confines of the canonical NOEM in the light of three issues. First, the literature uses a number of cooperative and non-cooperative equilibrium concepts that do not always clearly distinguish commitment and discretionary outcomes, and in some cases adopts inappropriate concepts. Second, our analysis is welfare based. Moreover, as with much of this literature, we adopt a linear-quadratic approximation of the actual non-linear non-quadratic stochastic optimization problem facing the monetary policymakers. Our second objective then is to re-assess welfare gains using an accurate approximation for such a problem, a feature that for the most part is lacking in previous studies. Finally, we examine the issue where the monetary authority is restricted to rules that are operational in two senses: first, the zero lower bound constraint is imposed on the optimal rule and second, we study simple Taylor-type commitment rules that unlike fully optimal rules are easily monitored by the public.


The most comprehensive book ever written on nature's most effective stress-relieving plant. This complete guide to kava summarizes the literature and research on a plant that is now considered comparable or superior to anti-stress prescription drugs, and describes its use in the religious, political, and economic life of the Pacific islands for centuries. Beyond its soporific qualities kava is also used throughout the the Pacific as an analgesic, a diuretic, and an anesthetic. There is even evidence suggesting it is effective in the treatment of asthma, tuberculosis, and venereal disease. Exhaustively researched, Kava: The Pacific Elixir offers an extensive survey of this amazing plant from the perspective of the horticulturist, the ethnobotanist, and the pharmacologist.


The world has seen a dramatic increase in immigration levels towards settler countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia. Such levels of immigration are likely to exacerbate the multicultural concerns of states and societies in the world. Migration multiculturalism is the focus of this paper. It looks at the way that migration impacts upon the cultural diversity of many communities today. Does migration multiculturalism pose a serious challenge to the development of society? Does migration multiculturalism represent a threat upon states to foster a singular and coherent national community? States have become the primary gatekeepers to determine who gets to enter and stay as well as be entitled to citizenship rights. Looking at the conditions of multiculturalism in Australia, Japan, and Malaysia, the paper argues that destination countries are grappling with the problematic of how their states will reconstitute their respective societies given the increasing influx of other Asians and non-Whites as well as the reality of their declining fertility rate and the need to transform their economies to maintain overall competitiveness in the global market.


Legal injury without harm is a common phenomenon in the law. Historically, legal injury without harm was actionable for at least nominal damages, and sometimes other remedies. The same is true today of many "traditional" private rights, for which standing is uncontroversial. Novel statutory claims, on the other hand, routinely face justiciability challenges: Defendants assert that plaintiffs' purely legal injuries are not injuries "in fact," as required to establish an Article III case or controversy. "Injury in fact" emerges from the historical requirement of "special damages" to enforce public rights, adapted to a modern procedural world. The distinction between public and private rights is unstable, however, with the result that many novel statutory harms are treated as "public," and thus subject to exacting justiciability analysis, when they could easily be treated as "private" rights for which legal injury without harm is sufficient for standing. Public and private act as rough proxies for "novel" and "traditional," with the former subject to more judicial skepticism. Applying "injury in fact" this way is hard to defend as a constitutional necessity, but might make sense prudentially, depending on the novelty and legal source of value for the harm. Taxonomizing these aspects of "harm" suggests that, even with unfamiliar harms, judicial discretion over value lessens the need for exacting injury analysis.


This thesis focuses on the development and characterisation of a waveguide-based photonic sensing platform for the detection of biofilm. This integrated photonic platform is based upon the high sensitivity of an optical field distribution formed in optical waveguides and the resulting changes in the refractive index and absorption of this environment.
The sensor platform and materials formulations were established from simulation studies conducted with the Olympios software. These simulations demonstrated the importance of correctly specifying the material refractive index to achieve single-mode waveguides. They also highlighted the necessity to deposit a high refractive index layer (HRIL) on top of the optical waveguides in order to increase the intensity of the evanescent field responsible for the sensing performance of the platform.
Platform fabrication exploited a low-cost process using photocurable organic-inorganic hybrid sol–gel materials, which were microstructured by UV-photolithography to form channel optical waveguides. A tantalum-based material was synthesized using the sol–gel process with refractive index as high as 1.87. This material was developed, optically characterised and applied as an evanescent field enhancement layer, deposited at the surface of the waveguide to increase the sensitivity of the sensing platform. The sensor characterisation was performed by monitoring the output intensity of the optical waveguide while contaminated water was monitored in both quasi-static and dynamic flow-rates on the platform. It is shown that the sensing performance of this biosensor platform relies on the applied flow-rate. In quasi-static flow rate, the biofilm formation was detected after 10 min of reactions, demonstrating the early stage biofilm formation in quasi-static flow-rate. The progressive increase of the flow-rate showed an increase of the detection time. Furthermore, the sensing performances of this photonic platform were found to be strongly dependent on the thickness of the HRIL, confirming the simulations studies.
This work proved the concept of employing a waveguide-based photonic platform for the early detection of biofilm formation, including the induction phase, and as such, I believe this system has immense potential for future applications as a label-free and real-time biosensor platform for bioenvironmental applications.


PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
Nurses taking measures regarding the safe handling of hazardous drugs (HDs) can reduce their risk of exposure and environmental contamination. However, the findings of studies examining factors influencing the use of HD safe handling precautions by nurses have been inconsistent.

LITERATURE SEARCH
An integrative review of the Embase® and Scopus® electronic databases was performed.

DATA EVALUATION
The search strategy yielded 907 articles. Ten quantitative studies and two qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. The Health Evidence Bulletin Wales checklist was used to evaluate the quality of the articles.

SYNTHESIS
The outcome variables were categorized as engineering controls, work practice controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE) use. The frequency of PPE use was measured as an outcome variable in all reviewed studies. Associated factors were based on the behavioral-diagnostic model. Perceived barriers to PPE use, perceived safety climate, and workload were common factors related to the use of safety precautions.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Nurses should proactively obtain information about the safe handling of HDs and share their perceptions and experiences of it with their colleagues. Managers should actively construct a safe environment by adopting high reliability principles and provide nurses with sufficient and easy-to-use PPE.


The preparation of donor (D)-photosensitizer (S) arrays, consisting of a manganese complex as D and a ruthenium tris(bipyridyl) complex as S has been pursued. Two new ruthenium complexes containing coordinating sites for one (2a) and two manganese ions (3a) were prepared in order to provide models for the donor side of photosystem II in green plants. The manganese coordinating site consists of bridging and terminal phenolate as well as terminal pyridyl ligands. The corresponding ruthenium-manganese complexes, a manganese monomer 2b and dimer 3b, were obtained. For the dimer 3b, our data suggest that intramolecular electron transfer from manganese to photogenerated ruthenium(III) is fast, k(ET) > 5 x 10(7) s(-)(1).


A recent development in the study of foreign policy is the growing attention being given to bureaucratic politics explanations of national foreign policy behavior.' In fact, it would be no exaggeration to characterize the bureaucratic politics approach or bureaucratic paradigm as a major research thrust in contemporary international relations theory. Foreign policy behavior, the bureaucratic perspective contends, can be accounted for best in terms of the bargaining dynamics among representatives of large-scale organizations. More specifically, the approach assumes that a nation's behavior is derived primarily from the organizations and individuals comprising the foreign policy elite who act to maximize their diverse interests and goals; thus, rather than interpreting national actions as reactions to foreign stimuli or systemic factors (Singer, 1961), advocates of the bureaucratic politics paradigm view foreign policy behavior as the consequence of decision-makers' efforts to enhance their parochial interests. Thus a researcher adopting this approach would agree with Kissinger's view "that if one wants to understand what the government is likely to do, one has to understand the bureaucratics of the problems" (Kissinger, 1973: 84). Such an explanatory framework analyzes a particular nation's foreign policy by "holding constant" domestic politics and international contextual variables as sources of national behavior and by concentrating instead on the activities of those individuals responsible for formulating the external policies of the nation. According to this perspective foreign policy decisions are not made; rather policy develops as the outcomes of bureaucratic interaction. Participating bureaucrats act to protect their personal and organizational interests, and identify national interests with these interests. Popularized by Graham Allison, the bureaucratic paradigm's influence on international relations theory can be assessed as well by the emergence of numerous critiques of that approach (Allison, 1971; Art, 1973; Allison and Halperin, 1972; Halperin and Kanter, 1973; Krasner, 1972). In short, the objectives of the present study are (1) to confront a major analytic framework with data in order to estimate its ability to explain the external behavior of nations, (2) to develop several prescriptions concerning appropriate research strategies for the construction of positive foreign policy theory, and (3) to raise some methodological questions regarding the use of event/interaction data in comparative foreign policy research.


In this study, we are seeking to identify factors predicting value-driven attentional capture in the normal population. Previous research has shown that high levels of stress lead to addictive behaviors such as substance abuse (Sinha, 2001), and also that recovering substance abuse addicts show more attentional capture for rewarded stimuli than the normal population (Anderson, Faulkner, Rilee, Yantis, & Marvel, 2013). We hypothesized that there may be a relationship between susceptibility to stress and potential for attentional capture from rewarded stimuli in the normal (non-clinical) population. A sample of over 450 participants filled out the Susceptibility to Stress scale (Miller, Smith, & Mehler, 1988) online and 23 also independently participated in a gamified visual search training experiment which has previously been shown to lead to value-driven attentional capture (Miranda & Palmer, 2014). Results indicate that higher scores on the Susceptibility to Stress scale were associated with larger amounts of attentional capture for both the low-reward (r2 = .24, F(1,21) = 6.54, p < .05) and high-reward (r2 = .19, F(1,21) = 5.05, p < .05) conditions. Therefore, individuals with high stress susceptibility may be more vulnerable to reward-system engagement. These findings also coincide with previous research demonstrating that stressful conditions can lead to an increase in dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which disrupts PFC regulation and thereby the executive control of attention, producing more bottom-up and less top-down attentional control (Arnsten, 2009). We hypothesize that individuals with greater stress susceptibility may have an overactive dopamine presence in the PFC leading to greater attentional capture from previously rewarded stimuli. We are currently investigating the relationship between participants' current stress levels and the amount of attentional capture they exhibit. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Visual sentiment analysis is attracting more and more attention with the increasing tendency to express emotions through visual contents. Recent algorithms in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) considerably advance the emotion classification, which aims to distinguish differences among emotional categories and assigns a single dominant label to each image. However, the task is inherently ambiguous since an image usually evokes multiple emotions and its annotation varies from person to person. In this work, we address the problem via label distribution learning and develop a multi-task deep framework by jointly optimizing classification and distribution prediction. While the proposed method prefers to the distribution datasets with annotations of different voters, the majority voting scheme is widely adopted as the ground truth in this area, and few dataset has provided multiple affective labels. Hence, we further exploit two weak forms of prior knowledge, which are expressed as similarity information between labels, to generate emotional distribution for each category. The experiments conducted on both distribution datasets, i.e. Emotion6, Flickr LDL, Twitter LDL, and the largest single label dataset, i.e. Flickr and Instagram, demonstrate the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches.


Case studies are an important tradition in the social sciences, particularly when researchers believe that the object under study needs to be captured in vivo, in its own context, not inferred from outcomes. Communities, social clubs, juvenile gangs, occupations, professions, and immigrant families were among the first and most famous case studies carried out by American sociologists in the first half of the 20th century. Their enduring contribution, if one can reduce an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of investigation to one sentence, is the light they shed on how groups, identities, and disparities are produced and then reproduced over time. Two examples of a relatively recent vintage illustrate the point well and also help to put Nelson 's work in context. Rubin's (1976) classic work, Worlds of Pain, is a case study of White working-class families, the "silent majority," who are unable to fulfill the American dream. A great deal had been written about working-class life before and after Rubin's study. What set her study apart was the window it opened into the internal dynamics of family life and the relationship between behindthe-scenes drama and social structures. The "world of pain" that Rubin depicted contrasted dramatically with the world experienced by middle- and upper-middle-class couples. Through her interviews and observation, Rubin chronicled how young working-class men and women, desiring release from conflict and tension in their parents' home, attempt to gain independence by rebelling, having early sexual experiences, and establishing their own individual lifestyles. Yet, as she also showed, the flight from parental restriction and economic dependence often led to other, more oppressive bonds. For example, a lack of sexual experience (particularly for women) and early pregnancy channel many young couples into marriage and parenthood. Furthermore, early family responsibilities, combined with inadequate formal education, yoke working-class husbands into lower status, dead-end jobs; working-class wives are saddled with children and, because of their lack of skills, have extremely limited opportunities for continued education or subsequent investment in work-related skills. Men can struggle to improve their family's economic lot, but cyclical unemployment, tiring work, and organizational barriers to white-collar work create an iron curtain that prevents escape from the working class. The result, as the couples themselves describe, is a situation in which one's family becomes a social and psychological pressure cooker. Rubin's research, though exhaustive in the sense that she studied many facets of these families ' lives, was not built on a random sampling of families or a series of controlled experiments. What it did, by contrast, was systematically document and compare, through in-depth interviewing, the way couples in different classes handled similar situations, for example, courting, marriage, childrearing, employment/unemployment, and the family economy. Moreover, the research was intentionally focused on process-how things got done or came undone-to better assess whether the things others saw as outcomes (e.g., divorces, marital abuse, childrearing practices) were pathologies (e.g., rooted in personality) or the effect of other structures (e.g., labor markets). In-depth interviews made it possible to explore men's and women's own understanding and explanations for their situations, to compare what men and women said so that differences might be investigated further, and, perhaps as importantly, to allow Rubin to illustrate her conclusions using the words of the people she studied. DeVault (1991), in Feeding the Family, looks to carework and gender for insight into what family means in practice. Nurturing, a central and daily aspect of family, sustains group life. The process of "feeding work" is a form of social interaction that engages all group participants. Through meal production, DeVault uncovered the ways such activity draws women into serving others and subordinating their own identities and how the family meal is bound up with the normative ideology of the middle-class family. …


Ixodes scapularis, the blacklegged deer tick, is the principal vector of Lyme disease in North America. Environmental factors are known to influence regional and seasonal incidence of Lyme disease and possibly the endemicity of the disease to the northeastern and upper mid‐western regions of the United States. With a goal to understand the impact of environmental temperature on microbial communities within the tick, we investigated the bacterial microbiome of colony‐reared I. scapularis ticks statically incubated at different temperatures (4, 20, 30, and 37°C) at a constant humidity in a controlled laboratory setting by comparison of sequenced amplicons of the bacterial 16S V4 rRNA gene to that of the untreated baseline controls. The microbiomes of colony‐reared I. scapularis males were distinct than that of females, which were entirely dominated by Rickettsia. In silico removal of Rickettsia sequences from female data revealed the underlying bacterial community, which is consistent in complexity with those seen among male ticks. The bacterial community composition of these ticks changes upon incubation at 30°C for a week and 37°C for more than 5 days. Moreover, the male ticks incubated at 30 and 37°C exhibited significantly different bacterial diversity compared to the initial baseline microbiome, and the change in bacterial diversity was dependent upon duration of exposure. Rickettsia‐free data revealed a significantly different bacterial diversity in female ticks incubated at 37°C compared to that of 4 and 20°C treatments. These results provide experimental evidence that environmental temperature can impact the tick bacterial microbiome in a laboratory setting.


We study soliton generation, based on self-consistent field theory, in cw solid-state lasers with semiconductor saturable absorbers. Various soliton destabilizations, i.e., the switch from femtosecond to picosecond generation (picosecond collapse), an automodulation regime, breakdown of soliton generation, and hysteresis behavior, are predicted. It is shown that the third-order dispersion reduces the region in which the solitons exist and causes pulse oscillation and a strong frequency shift.


In line with the main awareness of partnering in solving the many issues within the global construction industry, the Malaysian government has call upon the local industry to embrace and adapt partnering practices in their project delivery. Although culture has been noted as one of the main enabler for partnering, there is lack of research in highlighting the role of culture in partnering and virtually no evidence of a partnering framework established for a multi-ethnic and racial workforce in a developing country such as Malaysia. This research aims to develop a framework for partnering that aligns organizational culture in the Malaysian construction industry. This exploratory research studies the basic concept of partnering and the influence of culture to partnering success. This research seeks to identify which partnering enablers are readily available in the Malaysian construction industry at present. Apart from that, this research also explores the current organizational culture which affects the level of engagement in partnering among private SME consultant firms in particular and the industry in general. The private SME consultant firms are highlighted in this research due to the evidence that indicates the critical role of the consultants in driving the innovations in the industry, which is also cited as one of the outputs from successful partnering.

This research leans towards interpretivist epistemological standpoint with an inductive approach and employs a convergent parallel mixed methods survey design in order to answer the research questions. In this research, 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with top and middle managers in 4 private SME consultant firms and 69 questionnaires were completed by practitioners from various segments of the Malaysian construction industry. As the design suggests, findings from a critical literature review, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires are merged to form a foundation for the development of framework in this research.

This research contributes not only to expanding the knowledge in the concept of partnering but also for the implementation of partnering in the construction industry particularly in Malaysia through the framework developed. The practical implication of this thesis is to provide the construction practitioners with the method to establish, enhance and maintain a network of successful partnering relationship in Malaysia.


Objectives To describe prescribing trends and geographic variation for trimethoprim and nitrofurantoin; to describe variation in implementing guideline change; and to compare actions taken to reduce trimethoprim use in high- and low-using Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Design A retrospective cohort study and interrupted time series analysis in English NHS primary care prescribing data; complemented by information obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to CCGs. The main outcome measures were: variation in practice and CCG prescribing ratios geographically and over time, including an interrupted time-series; and responses to Freedom of Information requests. Results The amount of trimethoprim prescribed, as a proportion of nitrofurantoin and trimethoprim combined, remained stable and high until 2014, then fell gradually to below 50% in 2017; this reduction was more rapid following the introduction of the Quality Premium. There was substantial variation in the speed of change between CCGs. As of April 2017, for the 10 worst CCGs (with the highest trimethoprim ratios): 9 still had trimethoprim as first line treatment for uncomplicated UTI (one CCG had no formulary); none had active work plans to facilitate change in prescribing behaviour away from trimethoprim; and none had implemented an incentive scheme for change in prescribing behaviour. For the 10 best CCGs: 2 still had trimethoprim as first line treatment (all CCGs had a formulary); 5 (out of 7 who answered this question) had active work plans to facilitate change in prescribing behaviour away from trimethoprim; and 5 (out of 10 responding) had implemented an incentive scheme for change in prescribing behaviour. 9 of the best 10 CCGs reported at least one of: formulary change, work plan, or incentive scheme. None of the worst 10 CCGs did so. Conclusions Many CCGs failed to implement an important change in antibiotic prescribing guidance; and report strong evidence suggesting that CCGs with minimal prescribing change did little to implement the new guidance. We strongly recommend a national programme of training and accreditation for medicines optimisation pharmacists; and remedial action for CCGs that fail to implement guidance; with all materials and data shared publicly for both such activities.


There is no necessary logical connection between religious pluralism and religious freedom. In theory, there could be a nation in which some one religious tradition is dominant and officially established, while members of minority religious groups are perfectly free to worship and witness according to their own convictions. In practice, however, religious freedom has usually arisen out of religious pluralism and conflict. When Professor John Figgis aphoristically remarked that "political liberty is the residuary legatee of ecclesiastical animosities," he expressed one half of the truth. The other half is that the churches have sometimes embraced religious freedom out of friendship and as a matter of principle, as something flowing from the Gospel. In 1960, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches composed a landmark statement on "Christian Witness, Proselytism, and Religious Liberty." Several years later, the Second Vatican Council issued its own Declaration on Religious Freedom. The task of composing this document was significantly assigned to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, which was also charged with fostering better relations with Judaism. Progress in ecumenism and interfaith relations was seen to depend on religious tolerance and freedom. Avery Cardinal Dulles, "Religious Freedom and Pluralism," Journal of Markets & Morality 5, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 169-182


In this study, we explored the behavior of NC_Ar + NH3, an initially highly active catalyst for oxygen electroreduction, in H2/air fuel cells from 0.8 to 0.2 V at 80 °C and 25 °C, in order to find the causes of its instability. We discovered that the decay of the current density always involves the superposition of fast and slow first order kinetics, for which half-lives were obtained. The half-life of the fast decay was practically the same at all potentials and temperatures with a value of around 138 ± 55 min, while the half-life of the slow decay greatly varied from a minimum of ≈2400 min (40 h) to infinity. From the adsorption–desorption isotherm of NC_Ar + NH3, it was deduced that the Fe/N/C carbonaceous catalyst is characterized by interconnected open-end slit-shaped micropores, in which water (with dissolved H+ and O2) quickly flows in the fuel cells if their width is ≥0.7 nm as it has no interaction with the hydrophobic walls of the micropores. The driving force of this quick water flow is the humidified air streaming through the working cathode. Fe–N4-like active sites are thermodynamically stable in stagnant acidic conditions, but according to the Le Chatelier principle, they demetalate in the flux of water running into the micropores. This specific demetalation is the cause of the initial loss of ORR activity of NC_Ar + NH3 catalysts assigned to the fast current decay in fuel cells.


The presumption that diabetes is a disease treated in hospital that cannot be trusted to primary care has shifted in favour of a view that diabetes care should be shared between hospital specialists and general practice. Greenhalgh concedes that there may be some patients for whom the specialist has only a limited role to play. Pereira Gray, however, identifies structured versus unstructured care in general practice as the key issue. This study compares these two approaches in terms of process measures, clinical outcomes, service utilisation and costs. Methods. A retrospective review of general practice and hospital records of patients with type II diabetes (n = 709) was conducted in ten urban practices. In 5 practices care of diabetes was structured around the concept of an identified period of "protected time" - a 'mini-clinic'. In the other 5 the style of care was more traditional. Practices were compared in terms of frequency of measurement of various parameters including body mass index, random blood glucose, blood pressure, glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1) or fructosamine, and fundoscopy. The extent of hospital involvement in care and the economic implications of the two modes of care delivery were also assessed. Results. In terms of metabolic parameters the two models of care were broadly comparable. Measures of process of care indicated that required monitoring was more likely to have been carried out in patients under the care of mini-clinic practices and that within other practices there was both under and over recording of disease parameters. The most striking difference, however, was in the extent of hospital utilisation with the 353 patients in mini-clinic practices generating only 75 hospital visits over a 2 year period versus 288 visits generated by 356 patients looked after in non-mini-clinic practices. This difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05) and was associated with (and the main cause of) an estimated £ 46 (£ 163 versus £ 116) greater cost over 2 years for the care of patients not being care for under the mini-clinic model. Conclusions. This study suggests that the bulk of diabetes care can be managed in primary care and, if properly structured, can achieve comparable metabolic outcomes at a greatly reduced cost.


In parallel I/O systems the I/O buffer can be used to improve I/O parallelism by improving I/O latency by caching blocks to avoid repeated disk accesses for the same block, and also by buffering prefetched blocks and making the load on disks more uniform. To make best use of available parallelism and locality in I/O accesses, it is necessary to design prefetching and caching algorithms that schedule reads intelligently so that the most useful blocks are prefetched into the buffer and the most valuable blocks are retained in the buffer when the need for evictions arises.
This dissertation focuses on algorithms for buffer management in parallel I/O systems. Our aim is to exploit the high parallelism provided by multiple disks to reduce the average read latency seen by an application. The thesis is that traditional greedy strategies fail to exploit I/O parallelism thereby necessitating new algorithms to make use of the available I/O resources.
We show that buffer management in parallel I/O systems is fundamentally different from that in systems with a single disk, and develop new algorithms that carefully decide which blocks to prefetch and when, together with which blocks to retain in the buffer. Our emphasis is on designing computationally simple algorithms for optimizing the number of I/Os performed. We consider two classes of I/O access patterns, read-once and read-often, based on the frequency of accesses to the same data. With respect to buffer management for both classes of accesses, we identify fundamental bounds on performance of online algorithms, study the performance of intuitive strategies, and present randomized and deterministic algorithms that guarantee higher performance.


Although the bivalve dredge used on the Algarve coast (southern Portugal) is highly selective for the target species, in some periods of the year the bycatch can exceed the catch of the commercial species. The present study aimed to quantify the bycatch and discards, estimate damage and mortality, and propose management measures to minimize discards and mortality. A total of 15 fishing surveys (60 tows) were performed using two types of dredges ("DDredge" targeting Donax trunculus and "SDredge" targeting Spisula solida and Chamelea gallina). Of the 85257 individuals (392.4 kg) of 52 taxa that were caught, 73.4% belonged to the target species, 22.1% to commercially undersized target species and 4.5% to bycatch species. Bycatch rates were lower for SDredge (13.5% in number and 6.3% in weight) than for DDredge (46.0% in number and 32.9% in weight). Damage and mortality rates were also lower using SDredge (1.3% and 1.0% of the total catches, respectively) than using DDredge (4.0% and 2.8% of the total catches). Survival experiments revealed the diverse vulnerability of the taxa and confirmed the influence of the damage score on the mortality rate. The results gathered in the present study encourage the adoption of a bycatch reduction device to reduce both direct and indirect mortality.


Studies on knowledge creation are limited in genera l, and there is a particular shortage of research on the topic in sma ll and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Given the importance of SMEs for the economy and the vital role of knowledge creation in innovation, thi s situation is unsatisfactory. Accordingly, the purpose of our study is to increas e our understanding of how SMEs create new knowledge. Data are obtained through semi-structured interviews with ten managing directors of German SMEs operating in the construction industry. The findings demonstrate the influence of external knowledge sources on knowledge creation activities. Even though the managing directors take advantage of different exte rnal knowledge sources, they seem to put an emphasis on informed knowledge sources. The studys findings advance the limited body of knowledge regarding knowledge creation in SMEs.


The nature of how a chirped Gaussian pulse is affected in the system with both polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent loss (PDL) is analyzed. We develop a mathematical description and verify the results through numerical simulation. The delay of a chirped Gaussian pulse depends not only on the group delay characteristic of the transmission system but also on the chirp of the pulse itself. The delay also depends on the magnitude profile of the frequency response of the system. Therefore, the effective PMD for a chirped Gaussian pulse is related to both the PMD and PDL in the transmission system. The results show that the effective PMD may deteriorate when a PDL exists.


Land-use change is the single most important global driver of changes in biodiversity. Such changes in biodiversity, in turn, are expected to influence the functioning of ecosystems and their resilience to environmental perturbations and disturbances. It is widely recognised that the use of functional traits and functional diversity is best for understanding the causes and functional consequences of changes in biodiversity, but conceptual development has outpaced empirical applications. This thesis explores these ideas in grazing systems, which are expected to undergo rapid intensification of fertiliser use and grazing pressure to meet the growing global demand for livestock products. First, a flexible framework for measuring different facets of functional diversity is described, and a new multidimensional functional diversity index, called functional dispersion (FDis), is presented. Second, two vegetation sampling methods are compared with regard to their ability to detect changes in vegetation composition. Third, shifts in plant trait distributions following land-use changes are quantified and compared to null models, and a maximum entropy approach is used to quantify the direction and strength of selection on each trait. Fourth, it is shown that these shifts in trait distributions have cascading effects on primary production, litter decomposition, soil respiration, and ultimately soil carbon sequestration. Finally, data from 18 land-use intensity gradients are used to show that land-use intensification reduces functional redundancy and response diversity, two components of biodiversity that are thought to influence ecosystem resilience to future disturbances. This study illustrates (i) the importance of considering species functional differences to understand how plant communities react to changes in soil resource availability and grazing pressure, and (ii) how such changes directly, indirectly, and interactively control ecosystem functioning, as well as (iii) increasing the vulnerability of ecosystems to future disturbances.


Study Design. A retrospective case series of surgically treated patients with adult scoliosis. Objective. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence, risk factors, and natural course of proximal junctional kyphosis (PJK) in a long-term follow-up of patients with adult idiopathic scoliosis undergoing long instrumented spinal fusion. Summary of Background Data. Although recent reports have showed the prevalence, clinical outcomes, and the possible risk factors of PJK, quite a few reports have showed long-term follow-up outcome. Materials and Methods. This is a retrospective review of the charts and radiographs of 76 consecutive patients with adult scoliosis treated with long instrumented spinal fusion. Radiographical measurements and demographic data were reviewed on preoperation, immediate postoperation, 2 years postoperation, 5 years postoperation, and at follow-up. Postoperative Scoliosis Research Society scores and Oswestry Disability Index were also evaluated. Means were compared with Student t test. A P value of less than 0.05 with 95% confidence interval was considered significant. Results. The mean age was 48.8 years (range, 23–75 yr) and the average follow-up was 7.3 years (range, 5–14 yr). PJK has been identified in 17 patients. The Scoliosis Research Society and Oswestry Disability Index did not demonstrate significant differences between PJK group and non-PJK group; 2 patients had additional surgeries performed for local pain. Seventy-six percent of PJK has been identified within 3 months after surgery. Despite the fact that 53% of total degree of PJK was progressed within 3 months after surgery, PJK continuously progressed to the final follow-up. Pre-existing low bone mineral density, posterior spinal fusion (PSF), fusion to sacrum, inappropriate global spine alignment, and greater sagittal vertical axis change were identified as significant risk factors for PJK (P = 0.04, P < 0.001, P = 0.02, P < 0.0001, and P = 0.01). Conclusion. In a long-term review of minimum 5 years, 76% of PJK occurred within 3 months after surgery. Pre-existing low bone mineral density, PSF, fusion to the sacrum, inappropriate global spine alignment, and greater sagittal vertical axis change were significant risk factors for PJK. Careful long-term follow-up should be done for a patient with PJK.


In distributed algorithms, the pieces of the algorithm are run concurrently and independently in different processes over the distributed systems. Deadlocks are very thorny to detect in distributed systems. This is so because no site has precise knowledge about the system, and each inter-site communication involves a finite and unpredictable delay. Furthermore in distributed systems, depending on the applications, processes make requests according to different resource model such as Single Resource Model, AND Model, OR Model, AND-OR Model, P out-of Q Model (generalized model ) and Unrestricted


PURPOSE
Previous double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that both corticosteroids and progestational agents do partially alleviate cancer anorexia/cachexia. Pilot information suggested that an anabolic corticosteroid might also improve appetite in patients with cancer anorexia/cachexia. The current trial was developed to compare and contrast a progestational agent, a corticosteroid, and an anabolic corticosteroid for the treatment of cancer anorexia/cachexia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients suffering from cancer anorexia/cachexia were randomized to receive either dexamethasone 0. 75 mg qid, megestrol acetate 800 mg orally every day, or fluoxymesterone 10 mg orally bid. Patients were observed at monthly intervals to evaluate weight changes and drug toxicity. Patients also completed questionnaires at baseline and at monthly intervals to evaluate appetite and drug toxicities.

RESULTS
Fluoxymesterone resulted in significantly less appetite enhancement and did not have a favorable toxicity profile. Megestrol acetate and dexamethasone caused a similar degree of appetite enhancement and similar changes in nonfluid weight status, with nonsignificant trends favoring megestrol acetate for both of these parameters. Dexamethasone was observed to have more corticosteroid-type toxicity and a higher rate of drug discontinuation because of toxicity and/or patient refusal than megestrol acetate (36% v 25%; P =.03). Megestrol acetate had a higher rate of deep venous thrombosis than dexamethasone (5% v 1%; P =.06).

CONCLUSION
Whereas fluoxymesterone clearly seems to be an inferior choice for treating cancer anorexia/cachexia, megestrol acetate and dexamethasone have similar appetite stimulating efficacy but differing toxicity profiles.


Visual Telepresence system which utilize virtual reality style helmet mounted displays have a number of limitations. The geometry of the camera positions and of the display is fixed and is most suitable only for viewing elements of a scene at a particular distance. In such a system, the operator's ability to gaze around without use of head movement is severely limited. A trade off must be made between a poor viewing resolution or a narrow width of viewing field. To address these limitations a prototype system where the geometry of the displays and cameras is dynamically controlled by the eye movement of the operator has been developed. This paper explores the reasons why is necessary to actively adjust both the display system and the cameras and furthermore justifies the use of mechanical adjustment of the displays as an alternative to adjustment by electronic or image processing methods. The electronic and mechanical design is described including optical arrangements and control algorithms, An assessment of the performance of the system against a fixed camera/display system when operators are assigned basic tasks involving depth and distance/size perception. The sensitivity to variations in transient performance of the display and camera vergence is also assessed.


The National Retirement Risk Index has shown that even if households work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from reverse mortgages on their homes, 44 percent will be 'at risk' of being unable to maintain their standard of living in retirement. More realistic assumptions regarding earlier retirement and reluctance to annuitize 401(k) balances or tap housing equity would put the percentage 'at risk' even higher. But these previous analyses have not addressed rapidly rising health care costs. When these costs are included explicitly, the percentage of households 'at risk' increases dramatically. This brief explores how rapidly rising health care costs enter the NRRI calculations. It begins with a recap of the NRRI, then describes the health care landscape facing older Americans, and finally reports the results of incorporating retirement health care costs explicitly into the Index. The results show that once health care is considered explicitly, the percentage of households that will be 'at risk' rises from 44 percent to 61 percent. As always, the percent 'at risk' is greater for those at the low end of the income distribution. And later cohorts show more 'at risk' than earlier ones due to the combined effect of a contracting retirement income system and continually rising health care requirements.


The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey has collected plankton samples from regular tracks across the world's oceans for almost 70 y. Over 299,000 spatially extensive CPR samples are archived and stored in buffered formalin. This CPR archive offers huge potential to study changes in marine communities using molecular data from a period when marine pollution, exploitation and global anthropogenic impact were much less pronounced. However, to harness the amount of data available within the CPR archive fully, it is necessary to improve techniques of larval identification, to genus and species preferably, and to obtain genetic information for historical studies of population ecology. To increase the potential of the CPR database this paper describes the first extraction, amplification by the polymerase chain reaction and utilization of a DNA sequence (mitochondrial 16S rDNA) from a CPR sample, a formalin fixed larval sandeel.


We review our recent work on the deterministic (top down) micro/nano structuring and stochastic (random) micro/nano texturing of polymeric materials for a variety of applications. We create polymeric microfludics/microsystems using plasma processing as well as 'smart' polymer surfaces with controlled wetting and optical properties. First, fabrication of polymeric micro-nanosystems and microfluidics using standard photolithography followed by plasma etching is proposed as an alternative method for polymer microfabrication. Second, plasma induced polymer nanoroughening (nanotexturing) is proposed as an extremely attractive methodology to control the wetting properties of polymers and create superhydrophilic or hydrophobic or robust superhydrophobic polymer surfaces. These surfaces may in addition possess controlled optical properties, such as antireflectance combined with good transmittance. Third, ordered spontaneously formed structures are created on plasma processed polymers. Potential applications are discussed.


Abstract:This paper examines the political-ontoepistemological-ethical implications of temporal dis/junction by reading insights from Quantum Field Theory and Kyoko Hayashi's account of the destruction wrought by the Nagasaki bombing through one another. The diffraction [indeterminacy] of time at the core of quantum field theory, troubles the scalar distinction between the world of subatomic particles and that of colonialism, war, nuclear physics research, and environmental destruction; all of which entangle the effects of nuclear warfare throughout the present time, troubling the binaries between micro and macro, nature and culture, nonhuman and human. Barad thus attempts to think through what possibilities remain open for an embodied re-membering of the past which, against the colonialist practices of erasure and avoidance and the related desire to set time aright, calls for thinking a certain undoing of time; a work of mourning more accountable to, and doing justice to, the victims of ecological destruction and of racist, colonialist, and nationalist violence, human and otherwise – those victims who are no longer there, and those yet to come. This task is related to rethinking the notion of the void. Against its Newtonian interpretation as the absence of matter and energy, as that which does not matter and thus works to justify colonial occupation, Barad understands the void in terms of Derrida's hauntology; a spectral domain where life and death are originarily entangled, and inanimate matter itself gives itself to be thought in its mortal finitude. The void is rather the yearning and the imagining of what might yet have been, and thus also the infinitely rich ground of imagining possibilities for living and dying otherwise.


Feature hashing and other random projection schemes are commonly used to reduce the dimensionality of feature vectors. The goal is to efficiently project a high-dimensional feature vector living in $\mathbb{R}^n$ into a much lower-dimensional space $\mathbb{R}^m$, while approximately preserving Euclidean norm. These schemes can be constructed using sparse random projections, for example using a sparse Johnson-Lindenstrauss (JL) transform. A line of work introduced by Weinberger et. al (ICML '09) analyzes the accuracy of sparse JL with sparsity 1 on feature vectors with small $\ell_\infty$-to-$\ell_2$ norm ratio. Recently, Freksen, Kamma, and Larsen (NeurIPS '18) closed this line of work by proving a tight tradeoff between $\ell_\infty$-to-$\ell_2$ norm ratio and accuracy for sparse JL with sparsity $1$.
In this paper, we demonstrate the benefits of using sparsity $s$ greater than $1$ in sparse JL on feature vectors. Our main result is a tight tradeoff between $\ell_\infty$-to-$\ell_2$ norm ratio and accuracy for a general sparsity $s$, that significantly generalizes the result of Freksen et. al. Our result theoretically demonstrates that sparse JL with $s > 1$ can have significantly better norm-preservation properties on feature vectors than sparse JL with $s = 1$; we also empirically demonstrate this finding.


Background & Objectives: Excess body fat percentage is one of the risk factors in the progression of chronic diseases. Anthropometric indices of obesity are screening tools to determine subjects at risk of cardiovascular disease all over the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between abdominal obesity and the early stage of atherosclerosis by Carotid IntimaMedia Thickness (CIMT) on women. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 100 healthy women aged 18–50 year. Anthropometric indices were measured and calculated according to standard protocol. Cut off points for waist circumference (WC), waist to hip ratio (WHR) and waist to height ratio (WHtR) were 88 cm, 0.8 and 0.5 respectively Carotid IntimaMedia Thickness was determined by using non-invasive ultrasound as an indicator of early stage of atherosclerosis. Subjects with mean CIMT≤0.8 mm and CIMT>0.8 mm were considered as "normal subjects" and "subjects at risk", respectively. Results: Average age of subjects was 30.96±8.1 and the mean of WC, WHR, WHtR and CIMT were 95±0.17, 0.87±0.08, 0.61±0.11 and 0.63±0.15, respectively. All abdominal anthropometric indices significantly associated with mean CIMT. Waist circumference with cut off point of 88 Cm had sum of sensitivity and specificity higher than WHR and WHtR. Conclusion: Waist circumference index with cut off point of 88 cm is better than WHR and WHtR to identify subjects at high risk of atherosclerosis.


Lipocalin-2 (Lcn2), a member of the lipocalin superfamily, has been implicated in diverse physiological and pathological processes, such as apoptosis, cell differentiation, inflammation, iron metabolism and wound injury healing. However, most of these reports are of correlations and no cause-effect relationship has been established for Lcn2's role in inflammation and wound healing. Using Lcn2 gene knockout mice (Lcn2), we investigated the role of Lcn2 in both lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced acute lung inflammation response and dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis. Under all the treatment conditions, no significant differences were observed in proinflammatory cytokines expression level between the LCN2-/and wild-type mice for the lung inflammation model. For both of animal models, the histological studies and the observed disease severity also indicated no significant difference between these two types of mice. We conclude from the results of this study that Lcn2 has no causal role in the induction of inflammation nor does it play a protective role against inflammation. In addition to the functional/mechanism studies, Lcn2 has been re-evaluated as a standard biomarker for many diseases. To develop a new detection tool for Lcn2, in the current study we selected and characterized a mouse Lcn2 (mLcn2) RNA aptamer. Binding affinity analysis demonstrated this RNA aptamer has a dissociation constant for mLcn2 of 0.34 ± 0.07 μM, but does not bind the human and chicken forms of Lcn2. RNA foot printing and mutational assay indicated that the nucleic acids to protein contact regions are mainly located on the loops of the aptamer, which was predicted to fold in a 3-way junction secondary structure. Further analysis from site mutagenesis of mLcn2 revealed that the aptamer-protein interaction involves the amino acids in the pocket of mLcn2 that normally bind its native ligand, iron-siderophore, but does not involve the mLcn2 surface polar amino acids. Application of the mLcn2 aptamer as a detection probe in a homogenous assay was also demonstrated by using micro-cantilever system.


The sulfate attack is known to influence the durability of concrete. In general, significant damage due to sulfate interaction results in the structural breakdown of the concrete structure. However, the precipitation of thaumasite due to sulfate concentration, leaching and the role of internal carbonate in case of limestone filler in cement is still not understood in detail. This work has adopted a combination of experimental and modeled data to investigate the formation of thaumasite under different exposure conditions. Experiments were carried out by using the progressive equilibrium approach (PEA). Further microstructural properties such as porosity, sulfate uptake, phase composition and phase transformation reactions during sulfate attack were investigated. The results show that thaumasite formation is favoured at lower temperatures (8 °C) independently of the type of cement clinker (high and low C3A content) used. Thaumasite was found to form only in cement systems which contained a source of carbonate and at high sulfate contents in the cement paste, i.e. the molar SO3/Al2O3 ratio exceeded 3. Leaching, the reduction of alkalies and portlandite, had no significant influence on the stability of thaumasite. It slightly reduced the amounts of thaumasite formed. Thaumasite formation was found not to be a form of the initial sulfate attack. The phenomenon occurs at the late (last) stage of sulfate attack. The initial sulfate induced deterioration is caused by ettringite formation. The thermodynamic approach used to investigate the chemical aspects of sulfate attack turned out to be a good tool for simulating external sulfate attack. However, in the experiments, the predicted equilibrium conditions have not been reached after 9 months. Limestone addition of a few percent in Portland cement increased the compressive strength and reduced the porosity, especially the capillary porosity. Thereby, also the resistance of Portland cement systems against sulfate attack was increased. Furthermore, the hydration of Portland cement was influenced by limestone addition and monocarbonate was formed instead of monosulfate as stable AFm phase.


This study analyzes the loss potential arising from investments into CDS for a sample of large U.S. and German mutual funds. Further, it investigates whether the comments funds make on CDS use in periodic fund reports are consistent with the disclosed CDS holdings. For several funds in the U.S., the potential losses arising from selling CDS protection are almost as high as net assets, while in Germany, this potential can be even higher. Regarding the information funds provide to investors about their use of CDS, the results of the study suggest that comments on CDS contained in periodic reports are often unspecific and sometimes misleading. Thus, investors might have to analyze portfolio holdings in order to learn about the true investment behavior of funds. For instance, in Germany, funds that use more short than long CDS often state that they only use long CDS for hedging purposes. Based on the results, it seems advisable that regulators in both countries tighten rules restricting the speculative use of derivatives by funds to a reasonable level, as well as implement more standardized disclosure policies.


The statistical modelling of extreme values has recently received substantial attention in a broad spectrum of sciences. Given that in a wide variety of scenarios, one is mostly concerned with explaining tail events (say, an economic recession) than central ones, the need to rely on statistical methods well qualified for modelling extremes arises. Unfortunately, several classical tools regularly applied in the analysis of central events, are simply innapropriate for the analysis of extreme values. In particular, Pearson correlation is not a proper measure for assessing the level of agreement of two variables when one is concerned with tail events. This paper explores the comovement of the economic activity of several OECD countries during periods of large positive and negative growth (right and left tails, respectively). Extremal measures are here applied as means to assess the degree of cross-country tail dependence of output growth rates. Our main empirical findings are: (i) the comovement is much stronger in left tails than in right tails; (ii) asymptotic independence is claimed by the data; (iii) the dependence in the tails is considerably stronger than the one arising from a Gaussian dependence model. In addition, our results suggest that, among the typical determinants for explaining international output growth synchronization, only economic specialization similarity seems to play a role at extreme events.


It is a practical approach to store energy in building materials by incorporating Phase Change Materials (PCMs) into their structures. The intend of this present work is to address this achievement. Concrete blocks (both regular and autoclaved), the widely used construction material, were selected as ideal candidate for the experimental evaluation. Followed by previous laboratory work, both Butyl Stearate (BS) and Paraffin (PAR) were selected as PCM due to the fact that they are representing the lower and higher melting temperature ranges. The weight percentages vary with different PCMs and the types of block; furthermore, the adopted incorporating technique is by immersing. The experimental studies were conducted in a thermally insulated wooden box. Twelve identical blocks were laid contiguously to allow continuous air flow through the tunnels formed by their hollow cores. In addition, their temperatures were recorded by digital data logger. Heating and cooling cycle were provided by two sets of microcomputer controlled air conditioning systems. Three different heating and cooling temperature ranges were applied on different combinations. The mean air flow velocities were also set between 2 to 3 m/s. The results showed that: (1) Paraffin impregnated autoclaved blocks (AP) present the highest total storable heat to storable sensible heat in block ratio; (2) the appropriate heating and cooling temperature ranges should be set according to the melting and freezing points of the PCM; (3) it is possible to predict the required charging and discharging time for a designated heating and cooling process. The results exhibited the concept of latent heat storage in concrete blocks is workable and that a higher amount of heat can be stored.


Nigeria is a country where petroleum prices and polio are both booming, where small villages challenge giant oil companies, and scooter drivers run their own mini-state. The oil-rich Delta region at the heart of it all is, as Peel shows us, a troublespot as hot as the local pepper soup. Through a host of characters, from the prostitutes of Port Harcourt to the Area Boys of Lagos, from the militants in their swamp forest hideouts to the oil company executives in London, Peel tells the story of this extraordinary country, which grows ever more wild and lawless by the day as its crude oil pumps through our cities.


Summary This paper studies the association between the unemployment experience of fathers and their sons. Based on German survey data that cover the last decades we find significant positive correlations. Using instrumental variables estimation and the Gottschalk (1996) method we investigate to what extent fathers' unemployment is causal for offsprings' employment outcomes. In agreement with most of the small international literature we do not find a positive causal effect for intergenerational unemployment transmission. This outcome is robust to alternative data structures and to tests at the intensive and extensive margin of unemployment.


script. 4. All quotations, titles, names, and dates should be double-checked for accuracy. 5. The original and a duplicate copy of the manuscript should be submitted with a standard stamped self-addressed envelope. We cannot be responsible for returning manuscripts without return postage. Address correspondence to the Editor, Critical Inquiry, Wieboldt Hall 202, University of Chicago, 1050 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637.


The article substantiates the role of education, proposes and confirms the hypothesis about the importance and necessity of social partnerships for financing and development of education in knowledge- driven economy. To confirm the advanced hypotheses we studied the evolution of concepts of social interaction and social responsibility to justify patterns of social partnerships in the knowledge-driven economy that allowed us, using the model of "triple helix", to show the necessity of the collaboration of government, universities and corporations to advance on the path of innovative development. We considered the industrial districts as territories, which act as a space of coordination of actors, to whom the solution of new production problems is impossible without direct interaction with universities. The lack of budget funds for the development of education requires a search for other sources of funding for infrastructure facilities in education. We revealed the mechanisms of attraction of private funding of educational institutions in Russia, arising challenges, and possible solutions. The article considers the application of concession as a form of public – private partnerships in preschool education, which recently has found application in Russia. Based on studying world best practices, the authors propose to use the investment funds, in particular, the mechanism of impact investment in education as a promising technology. Improvement of Russian legislation concerning investment funds will create the foundation for wide application of exchange-traded mutual funds for collective investments in social infrastructure. Formation of trust funds and grants to finance education becomes widespread in Russia.


Background: Increased anticardiolipin antibody (ACLA) immunoglobulin (Ig) G titers are commonly found in children with arterial ischemic stroke (AIS) or TIA (AIS/TIA). The associated risk of recurrent thromboembolism is unknown. Objective: To determine the risk of recurrent thromboembolism associated with persistently increased ACLA titers of the IgG isotype in children with AIS/TIA. Methods: The authors studied a cohort of children surviving first AIS/TIA tested by standardized ELISA for β2-glycoprotein I-dependent ACLA of the IgG isotype. Children with ACLA titers >15 IgG phospholipid (GPL) units (per manufacturer's cutoff point) on more than two occasions ≥6 weeks apart were classified as ACLA-positive (ACLA+) and compared with ACLA-negative (ACLA−) children with respect to recurrent thromboembolic events (AIS/TIA, sinovenous thrombosis, and extracerebral thromboembolism). Results: The authors recruited 34 ACLA+ children and 151 ACLA− children. Most ACLA+ children (30/34; 88%) had ACLA titers ≤40 GPL units. During the follow-up period (median duration, 2.8 years for ACLA+ children and 3.0 years for ACLA− children), AIS/TIA recurred in 26% of ACLA+ children and in 38% of ACLA− children; none developed sinovenous thrombosis or extracerebral thromboembolism. Based on survival analysis, this difference was nonsignificant (p = 0.54). Using binary partition evaluation, no titer criteria for ACLA positivity (range, 0 to 60 GPL units) predicted recurrent AIS/TIA. Conclusion: In children surviving arterial ischemic stroke/TIA, increased anticardiolipin antibody immunoglobulin G titers do not predict recurrent thromboembolism.


BACKGROUND
Systematic study of clinical phenotypes is important for a better understanding of the genetic basis of human diseases and more effective gene-based disease management. A key aspect in facilitating such studies requires standardized representation of the phenotype data using common data elements (CDEs) and controlled biomedical vocabularies. In this study, the authors analyzed how a limited subset of phenotypic data is amenable to common definition and standardized collection, as well as how their adoption in large-scale epidemiological and genome-wide studies can significantly facilitate cross-study analysis.

METHODS
The authors mapped phenotype data dictionaries from five different eMERGE (Electronic Medical Records and Genomics) Network sites studying multiple diseases such as peripheral arterial disease and type 2 diabetes. For mapping, standardized terminological and metadata repository resources, such as the caDSR (Cancer Data Standards Registry and Repository) and SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine), were used. The mapping process comprised both lexical (via searching for relevant pre-coordinated concepts and data elements) and semantic (via post-coordination) techniques. Where feasible, new data elements were curated to enhance the coverage during mapping. A web-based application was also developed to uniformly represent and query the mapped data elements from different eMERGE studies.

RESULTS
Approximately 60% of the target data elements (95 out of 157) could be mapped using simple lexical analysis techniques on pre-coordinated terms and concepts before any additional curation of terminology and metadata resources was initiated by eMERGE investigators. After curation of 54 new caDSR CDEs and nine new NCI thesaurus concepts and using post-coordination, the authors were able to map the remaining 40% of data elements to caDSR and SNOMED CT. A web-based tool was also implemented to assist in semi-automatic mapping of data elements.

CONCLUSION
This study emphasizes the requirement for standardized representation of clinical research data using existing metadata and terminology resources and provides simple techniques and software for data element mapping using experiences from the eMERGE Network.


The experience of bureaucratic incompetence, confusion, and its ability to cause otherwise intelligent people to behave outright foolishly, opens up a series of questions about the nature of power or, more specifically, structural violence. The unique qualities of violence as a form of action means that human relations ultimately founded on violence create lopsided structures of the imagination, where the responsibility to do the interpretive labor required to allow the powerful to operate oblivious to much of what is going on around them, falls on the powerless, who thus tend to empathize with the powerful far more than the powerful do with them. The bureaucratic imposition of simple categorical schemes on the world is a way of managing the fundamental stupidity of such situations. In the hands of social theorists, such simplified schemas can be sources of insight; when enforced through structures of coercion, they tend to have precisely the opposite effect.


The Cookbook is a place where computer designers can present their ideas, opinions, cries for help, and almost anything else short of social implications. Anything short and to-the-point will be published as-is; longer stuff will usually be abstracted along with your name and address for the benefit of those who want to inquire further. Things that look like regular articles may be referred to the regular editors for regular handling. Send material for this column to Jim Haynes, Applied Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95060.


Smartphone applications that provide transit information are now very popular. However, there is limited research that examines when and where passengers use mobile transit information. The objective of this research was to perform an exploratory analysis of the use of a smartphone application known as Transit App, which provides real-time transit information and trip planning (schedule) functionality. Backend data from Transit App were examined by time of day and day of week in the New York City metropolitan area. The results show that the pattern of both the trip planning feature and overall realtime information usage follow the typical pattern of transit ridership, which has morning and evening peaks. Additionally, self-reported household locations of Transit App users in the New York City area were compared with household socioeconomic characteristics (specifically, income, ethnicity, and age) from census data using GIS visualizations and the Pearson correlation coefficient, but they do not appear to be correlated. This implies that passengers use Transit App regardless of household income, race, or age trends in their neighborhood. This exploratory study examined a rich new data source—backend data from a transit information smartphone application—that could be used in many future analyses to help transit agencies better understand how transit riders use information and plan their trips.


Even though the role of the European Union (EU) in international organizations has generated increasing academic and political interest, scant attention has been devoted to the EU's participation in the Group of Eight (G8). The launch of the renewed Group of Twenty (G20), however, has sparked intense debate among member states about the way in which the EU is represented in the G8 system. The central issue covered in this paper is the participation of the EU in the G8 system. In particular, we focus on the involvement of the 23 non-G8 EU members (EU23) and the role of the European Commission and the Council Presidency. The focus lies on the internal EU level, rather than on the question of the EU's bargaining power at the international level. The paper draws on insights of Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalism to explain the variation of the EU23's involvement in the following policy domains: development aid, energy, finance and monetary affairs and trade. The paper finds a pattern of differing involvement that varies along the lines of the three forums within the G8 system: low involvement in the G8, medium involvement in the G20 and high involvement in the Group of Seven (G7). Four factors are suggested that explain the involvement of the EU23 in the internal EU coordination process: internal competences, intra-EU consensus, policy implications and the role of EU actors


Species that modify their surroundings are known as ecosystem engineers. For example, patches of polychaete tubes enhance soft-bottom intertidal habitat complexity, modify- ing water flow, promoting sediment accretion and affecting nutrient fluxes at the water-sediment interface. Understanding how such structures affect the benthic ecosystem's functioning requires the assessment of their influence on all benthic components and how the related ecosystem serv- ices may be modified. We performed an in situ experimental study, involving the use of artificial mimics of polychaete tubes, to investigate the purely physical impacts of the structures without the complexity of worm activity. Benthic chambers of different mimic densities were used, and their effect on the recolonisation of defaunated natural sandy sediments by microorganisms, meio- fauna and macrofauna was monitored. We also measured air-sediment CO2 fluxes and sediment stability as they constitute crucial ecosystem services provided by benthic habitats. We showed that the biogenic structures stimulated the development of diatom biofilms (microphytobenthos) and their associated extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). Impacts of tubes on meiofaunal and macrofaunal assemblages were significant; in most cases, species and groups were more abun- dant in treatments with few or no tubes. In response to the tube density increase, the whole system tended towards heterotrophy and higher sediment stability, probably as a consequence of the development of the diatom biofilm. Biogenic structures are, therefore, of critical importance for soft-bottom intertidal communities in terms of both structure and function.


The use of benthic indicators has increased dramatically during the last decades. The number of articles published on the subject, as well as the number of citations, has been particularly increasing since the early 90's, notably in relation with the implementation of directives for the management of aquatic/marine ecosystems such as the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Current benthic indicators suffer from severe drawbacks and their practical use is still discussed and might have reached a dead end. Indicators based on species composition are not totally satisfactory, mainly because they exhibit a high spatio-temporal variability (e.g. variable at both seasonal and pluri-annual scales) and are user-dependent (e.g. divergent results from US orEuropeexperts.) In turn, modifications of behaviour, metabolism, phenotype or stable isotopes composition in invertebrates usually occur at short time scales, compared to detectable changes in community composition, and makes their use particularly relevant as indicators of perturbation. It is argued in this paper that these functional indicators might be relatively quickly implemented in the intertidal, and represent an effective alternative to current benthic indicators.


Legal pluralists have long recognized that societies consist of such multiple overlapping normative communities. These communities are sometimes state based but sometimes not, and they are sometimes formal, official, and governmental, but again sometimes they are not. Scholars studying interactions among these multiple communities have often used the term "legal pluralism" to describe the inevitable intermingling of these normative systems.

In recent decades, a new application of pluralist insights has emerged in the international and transnational realm. This new legal pluralism research was born in the decades following the collapse of the bipolar Cold War order in 1989. During this period, it became clear that a single-minded focus on state-to-state relations or universal overarching norms was inadequate to describe the reality of the emerging global legal system, with its web of jurisdictional assertions by state, international, and non-state normative communities.

Traditionally, legal pluralism has been primarily a descriptive enterprise. Anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists have generally seen legal pluralism as simply a reality, neither good nor bad, neither desirable nor undesirable. Instead, they have defined their task principally as an exercise in thick description: cataloging the inevitable hybridity that arises when two legal or quasi-legal systems occupy the same social space, as well as the resulting strategic interactions that occur among those navigating the multiple regimes.

This is not to say, of course, that legal pluralism as a scholarly project was (or ever could be) devoid of implicit values and normative biases. Indeed, one might say that two strong normative undercurrents have always animated legal pluralism. First, legal pluralism was an attack on legal centralism, the idea that law was the sole province of the state and its formal institutions. Pluralists sought to undermine the assumption of state power, discovering agency and subversive opportunities among those presumed to be marginalized. As such, legal pluralism was a way of critiquing the power of the state and even at times celebrating resistance to state hegemony. Second, legal pluralism often had an implicit pro-local bias, particularly in its emphasis on forms of resistance to colonial state hegemony. Perhaps echoing cultural anthropology's more general celebration of the local, legal pluralists tended to make the local, the indigenous, and the anti-colonial the heroes of the narrative.

Nevertheless, even if we grant these implicit value preferences, legal pluralists, following most social scientists, generally have eschewed the sorts of strong normative arguments law professors routinely make: because of such-and-such research, we should now change legal or governmental systems in these particular ways. And there are surely virtues in focusing on thick description rather than normative prescription. Among other things, the constant pressure to produce "useful" work that will appeal to judges and policy-makers often forces legal academics into overly strong normative claims based on little evidence or an incomplete understanding of the complexity at work in social forces. One yearns for more effort to comprehend reality before switching to how best to reform it.

And yet in this Essay, I conduct a thought experiment. What might it mean for legal pluralists to play out some of the normative implications of their work for theories of law, policy, and governmental institutional design? Do legal pluralists have something distinctive to add to contemporary law and governance debates? Or would asking such questions ultimately undermine the core insights of legal pluralism by committing scholars to particular modes of governance hierarchy? And if it did, is that a trade-off we can bear as scholars in exchange for policy relevance? And even if we were willing to make such a trade-off, is a legal pluralist position inherently in tension with any effort at systemic reform because legal pluralism recognizes that any system will always be partial, contested, and contingent? Or might systemic reform that is partial, contested, and contingent nevertheless be better than no reform at all?

Most fundamentally, I believe legal pluralists might be able to mount a clear-throated defense of legal rules and governance institutions that foster interaction and dialogue among those multiple norm-generating communities rather than dissolving diversity either into universalism, on the one hand, or tribalism, on the other. And we need that defense right now, if only to name the values of diversity, dialogue, and communication across difference that are at the core of the world we might be on the brink of losing.


»Economics of convention meets Foucault«. The contribution examines concepts and the methodology of Michel Foucault from the standpoint of the French institutionalist approach of economics of convention (in short EC). EC is briefly introduced. Then, it is argued that Foucault should be regarded as an "ally" for EC, because his theory shares main positions with EC, but Foucault also provides concepts and methodological strategies, which could improve EC's capabilities to analyze practices and strategies of convention-based processes as critique, justification and the social construction of qualities and worth. Some representatives of EC have already adopted Foucaultian concepts. Foucault also pioneered the analysis in domains, highly relevant for EC, as in the field of law and neoliberalism, but these works are not well recognized so far. Moreover, Foucault began the study of individual's strategies of self-conduct and self-formation, which EC approached later on as well. The article claims that it is especially Foucault's notions of episteme and power as well as Foucaultian discourse analysis, which offer innovative theoretical and methodological perspectives for EC.


Background and Purpose: Online food delivery services are third party entities that deliver foods from restaurants to consumers. These services are exploding in popularity around the world. The lack of regulation in this industry creates a scenario for time temperature abuse to occur. This study specifically investigates the efficacy of thermally insulated delivery bags used ubiquitously by these online food services. Methods: 30 samples of Janes Pub-Style Chicken Nuggets were cooked for 30 minutes to an internal temperature of 74°C. The nuggets were then inserted with a SmartButton temperature data logger. The nuggets were then placed into a High-Density Polyethylene take-out container. The whole set-up was then placed into a Winco Thermally Insulated Delivery Bag for a one hour period. Time and temperature of the chicken nuggets was recorded over a one hour period to reflect realistic delivery times. Results: A correlation/regression analysis was performed which showed that as the time increased so too did the temperature. Correlational coefficient, r = -0.9363, coefficient of determination, r2 = 0.8766, (p = 0.000). The equation of the line was Temperature = (67.9996) + [(-0.6828) × Time]. Temperature of the chicken nuggets fell below 60°C after 12 minutes in the delivery bag. The median temperature of chicken nuggets after a one hour period was 44.5°C. This was found to be statistically different from the standard of 60°C with a p-value of 0.0000 Conclusion: The median temperature of chicken nuggets after the one hour sampling period did not reach the food safety standard of 60°C. Foods kept at a temperature below 60°C and above 4°C are considered in the temperature danger zone. In this range, pathogenic bacteria grow at their optimal rate. Therefore, it was determined that thermally insulated bags were unable to maintain foods at temperatures hot enough to be considered safe.


Modern foraminiferal assemblage zones can be used to reconstruct palaeo sea levels when applied to fossil foraminifera down a sediment core. Previous intertidal foraminiferal studies have predominantly focused on assemblages in surface sediments (0–1 cm), with the rationale that surface assemblages reflect the modern-day environment. Foraminifera live infaunally and therefore there is a need to document the infaunal vertical distribution of living foraminifera to fully capture the modern environment. Infaunal foraminiferal populations may compositionally differ from or be similar to those in the uppermost 1 cm of a core sample, but abundance is variable vertically, making it very complex to reconstruct and interpret past sea levels. This can have implications for the choice of assemblages to use as modern analogues for past sea-level reconstructions. This study documents the vertical infaunal distribution of living foraminifera, to allow for more informed interpretations of palaeo-reconstructions in mangrove environments. The down-core vertical distribution and abundance of living foraminifera, along with grain size and organic content, were documented using sediment cores along an elevational transect. Nine taxa were recorded as living at the time of collection, six of which were restricted to the top 4 cm. The majority of these were calcareous and found in the cores situated closer to the intertidal channel. Therefore, we argue that the diversity of living calcareous and agglutinated foraminifera could be restricted by grain size, with coarser grain sizes associated with lower species diversity. The findings suggest that foraminiferal species inhabiting the top 4 cm represent deeper living foraminiferal populations. Therefore, the top 4-cm interval can be used to establish a modern training set upon which reconstructions can be based. The findings from this study will provide guidance on the use of South African mangrove environments for future sea-level reconstructions.


This paper will consider the use of social quality as an analytical tool for the study of social policy, with special emphasis on the social quality of children placed within the framework of family policy. The paper's main focus is on the relationship between parents and children as expressed through family policy. Two central themes are addressed. The first con cerns the expectations from the relationship of parents and children as expressed through family policy, and how these policies enhance the social quality of children. The second theme asks the question whether social quality is a useful tool for policy analysis, and is based on a case study analysing a European family policy document.


Developers who write programs for GNOME use the GNOME API. Working with the GNOME API is preferable because the program will conform to the standard GNOME program look and feel. It also allows the developer to use the GNOME specific libraries in the program, greatly simplifying the development process. "The Official GNOME 2 Developer's Guide" is the official GNOME Foundation guide to programming GUIs and applications using the GTK+ and GNOME API. Developed in partnership with the GNOME Foundation, this book is for programmers working with the GNOME 2 desktop environment. Each section begins with an example program that serves as a tutorial, then develops into a reference on the topic. Includes abundant, well-annotated examples. Knowledge of the C programming language is required, but no GUI programming experience is necessary.


Attention bias modification (ABM) procedures typically reduce anxiety symptoms, yet little is known about the neural changes associated with this behavioral treatment. Healthy adults with high social anxiety symptoms (n = 53) were randomized to receive either active or placebo ABM. Unlike placebo ABM, active ABM aimed to train individuals' attention away from threat. Using the dot-probe task, threat-related attention bias was measured during magnetic resonance imaging before and after acute and extended training over 4 weeks. A subset of participants completed all procedures (n = 30, 15 per group). Group differences in neural activation were identified using standard analyses. Linear regression tested predictive factors of symptom reduction (i.e., training group, baseline indices of threat bias). The active and placebo groups exhibited different patterns of right and left amygdala activation with training. Across all participants irrespective of group, individuals with greater left amygdala activation in the threat-bias contrast prior to training exhibited greater symptom reduction. After accounting for baseline amygdala activation, greater symptom reduction was associated with assignment to the active training group. Greater left amygdala activation at baseline predicted reductions in social anxiety symptoms following ABM. Further research is needed to clarify brain-behavior mechanisms associated with ABM training.


Epidemiological studies have revealed that exposure to PM2.5 is linked to liver cancer. However, the hepatic toxicity and relevant molecular mechanisms of PM2.5 have not yet been fully described. Herein, we report on our investigation of the fibrosis, inflammation, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and apoptosis in the livers of rats, caused by exposure to PM2.5 during summer and winter in Taiyuan, China. Male SD rats were sub-chronically exposed to PM2.5 (in summer: 0.2, 0.6, 1.5 mg per kg of b.w.; in winter: 0.3, 1.5, 2.7 mg per kg of b.w.) via intratracheal instillation once every 3 days for 60 days. The results showed that exposure to high dosages of PM2.5 caused the following: (1) hepatic histopathological changes and liver function decline through elevating the activities of AST, ALT, CYP450 and GST; (2) triggered liver fibrosis, in which TGF-β1, Col I, Col III, and MMP13 mRNA and protein expression were significantly upregulated, and enhanced inflammation with the overexpression of TNF-α, IL-6 and HO-1 versus the control; (3) induced liver ER stress and cell apoptosis via activating the GRP78/ATF6/CHOP/TRB3/caspase 12 pathway. The data also indicated that the liver injury induced by winter PM2.5 in Taiyuan was more serious compared to that induced by summer PM2.5. This work provides new insight into the mechanisms of PM2.5-induced liver injury, and aids the understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which PM2.5 might affect liver diseases.


PURPOSE Spirometry has become an indispensable tool in primary care to exclude, diagnose, and monitor chronic respiratory conditions, but the quality of spirometry tests in family practices is a reason for concern. Aim of this study was to investigate whether a combination of e-learning and bimonthly performance feedback would improve spirometry test quality in family practices in the course of 1 year. METHODS Our study was a cluster trial with 19 family practices allocated to intervention or control conditions through minimization. Intervention consisted of e-learning and bimonthly feedback reports to practice nurses. Control practices received only the joint baseline workshop. Spirometry quality was assessed by independent lung function technicians. Two outcomes were defined, with the difference between rates of tests with 2 acceptable and repeatable blows being the primary outcome and the difference between rates of tests with 2 acceptable blows being the secondary outcome. We used multilevel logistic regression analysis to calculate odds ratios (ORs) for an adequate test in intervention group practices. RESULTS We analyzed 1,135 tests. Rate of adequate tests was 33% in intervention and 30% in control group practices (OR = 1.3; P=.605). Adequacy of tests did not differ between groups but tended to increase with time: OR = 2.2 (P = .057) after 3 and OR = 2.0 (P = .086) in intervention group practices after 4 feedback reports. When ignoring test repeatability, these differences between the groups were slightly more pronounced: OR = 2.4 (P = .033) after 3 and OR=2.2 (P = .051) after 4 feedback reports. CONCLUSIONS In the course of 1 year, we observed a small and late effect of e-learning and repeated feedback on the quality of spirometry as performed by family practice nurses. This intervention does not seem to compensate the lack of rigorous training and experience in performing spirometry tests in most practices.


The demand for translation services by the business community has increased significantly
over the past decade or so, fuelled by socio-economic changes, such as industry globalisation,
and closer collaboration between European countries. Technological developments, such as
the advent of the Internet, the rise of electronic business, and the increase in the use of
electronic documents have also contributed to the demand for translation. At the same time,
translators are required to produce high-quality translations in ever-shorter time periods.
Running in parallel with the increasing demand for translation services, various organisational
developments have had, and are indeed continuing to have, a considerable impact on the UK
translation services sector. Among the range of information and communication technologies (ICT) available to
translators today, Computer-aided translation (CAT) tools, have been designed to increase
translators' productivity and efficiency, thus helping them to meet the demand for their services. This study investigates the uptake of CAT tools by freelance translators based in the UK and
their perceptions of these tools. In order to achieve this, a research model was developed
drawing on previous research undertaken about ICT adoption in small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs). The study was undertaken in two phases. In the first phase, a mail
survey was conducted of a sample of freelance translators to determine levels of uptake of
CAT tools, to explore the characteristics of the adopters of these tools, and the perceptions of
the tools among freelancers. In the second phase, an online survey of adopters and nonadopters
of CAT tools was undertaken in order to facilitate the investigation of what drives
the adoption of these tools, as well as the impact of CAT tool adoption.
The findings of the mail survey (to which 391 usable responses were received) revealed a
rather low level of uptake of CAT tools (28%), and showed that almost half of the translators
in the sample were not familiar with these tools. Further quantitative analysis revealed a
positive relationship between the adoption of CAT tools and the adoption of other specialistpurpose
software used by translators to support the activities in their workflow. A number of
characteristics of CAT tool adopters were identified. These included the fact that adopters
tended to be young translators, holding a university degree in translation studies. Most of
those using the tools undertook technical translation. In addition, although translators'
perceptions of CAT tools were generally positive, attitudes towards ICT in general were more
positive and clearer in terms of specifying the benefits and problems arising from their use.
In the second phase of the study, a sample of 19 adopters of CAT tools was employed to
explore the determinants of the adoption of these tools. This phase showed that the main
motivators for CAT tool adoption were the perceived advantages of the tools, such as
increasing productivity, enhancing effectiveness as translators, or making the translation job
easier. Also a sample of 34 CAT tool non-adopters was used to identify the factors deterring
translators from adopting these tools. It was found that the main inhibitor of CAT tool
adoption was the perceived difficulty of learning to use these tools. This phase also captured
the translators' perceptions of the impact of CAT tools on their work. It was found that
overall, the impacts of adopting CAT tools were largely positive, and included an increase in
the quality of the translations undertaken and increased productivity. This research contributes to the existing body of literature about CAT tools by providing a
model and instruments for investigating CAT tool adoption in the context of freelance
translation businesses. The study benefits various key stakeholders in the
translation sector, notably existing freelancers, newly-qualified translators, translator trainers,
professional bodies for translators, and the developers and distributors of CAT tools by
providing evidence regarding CAT tool uptake, characteristics of adopters, adoption
determinants and impacts of adoption.


Raymond Chandler was America's preeminent writer of detective fiction, and this "Penguin Modern Classics" edition of "The Big Sleep and Other Novels" collects three of the best novels to feature his hard-drinking, philosophising PI, Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler created the fast talking, trouble seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel "The Big Sleep" in 1939. Often imitated but never bettered, it is in Marlowe's long shadow that every fictional detective must stand - and under the influence of Raymond Chandler's addictive prose that every crime author must write. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family - and an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures - is the background to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled detective's iconic image burns just as brightly in "Farewell My Lovely", on the trail of a missing nightclub crooner. And the inimitable Marlowe is able to prove that trouble really is his business in Raymond Chandler's brilliant epitaph, "The Long Goodbye". Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was born in Chicago. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine "Black Mask" in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel, "The Big Sleep", adapted into Howard Hawks' classic 1946 film noir, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. If you liked "The Big Sleep and Other Novels", you might enjoy Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards that others still try to attain". ("Sunday Times"). "Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since." (Paul Auster, author of "The New York Trilogy"). "Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romantic presence". (Ross Macdonald, author of "The Drowning Pool").